by Robert Adams
Investigation of a small pharmacy showed them evidence of an individual or, more likely, a group interested in drugs and nothing else. The shelves of the prescription section had been stripped absolutely bare and even the nonprescription analgesics were gone, but the remainder of the stock of the pharmacy and the attached variety store was as intact as long, long years of baking heat and freezing cold and the incursions of rodents and insects had left it.
Djoolya came over beaming to show Milo her find of a handful of stainless-steel combs of various sizes, and Milo did not tell her that they had been intended for use on dogs and cats. The nomad woman was also beside herself with joy when she found a small cache of sewing supplies—fine needles, straight and safety pins, assorted buttons, thimbles and a full bucketload of spools of thread in shades and colors the like of which she had never before seen.
One of the rarer finds was that of an entire shelf of quart-size apothecary bottles, vacuum-sealed and containing still-edible dry-roasted peanuts, and just as many pint-sized jars of the same kind filled with cashew nuts or almonds; they could eat the nuts, then trade off the colored-glass jars to the easterners for less fragile merchandise.
Despite the amounts of meat already in camp, the young warriors delightedly vied with each other in knocking over squirrels, hares, rabbits and game birds on the way back to camp. Little Djahn Staiklee took the pot-hunter prize by neatly smashing the head of a purplish torn turkey with a shrewd cast of his carven throwing-stick, just as the torn had lifted from off the ground, big wings beating furiously. Under those circumstances, a head hit was not even to be expected, and Milo privately wondered just how much of the kill had been skill and how much pure, blind, stupid luck, but aloud, he joined fully in the praise of the young man’s expertise.
Back at the camp, the gleanings were, as usual, spread out and equally divided among each yurt— Milo’s, Bard Herbuht’s, Gy’s and that of the young warriors. Some would go into immediate use of the nomads, some would be wrought into decorations or useful purposes, the remainder would be traded off whenever they crossed the trail of the eastern traders.
The contents of one of the larger jars of peanuts made an exotic and tasty addition to that night’s soup pot. As soon as the rich soup, the assorted small fowl, and meat from yesterday’s kills and the turkey had been consumed, Milo was immediately pressed by all of the others—humans and cats alike—to once more open his memories that they might hear more of his life in that strange world of so long ago.
Alone in their shared bungalow bedroom, Milo sat buffing his cordovan oxfords, while Betty sat at an improvised vanity table combing her short hair.
“Milo,” she asked casually, “the doctors, have they yet reached any consensus as regards these three Germans?”
Holding up the shoe and examining it critically, Milo spat on the toe and once more went at it with the soft brush. “As a matter of fact, they have. Dr. Smith, who seems to be their spokesman, came to my office late this afternoon to give me the results of their conference. For him, he was quite excited, too. It seems that both Hizinger and Gries were connected with the buzz-bomb projects, both the V-l and the V-2, from almost the beginning until right up to the bitter end.”
“And you then telephoned General Barstow with the message, love?” she said, continuing her long, slow, steady brush strokes.
“I tried to, but he was somewhere off post—the girl didn’t seem to have any idea when he might be back or where Sam Jonas might be, either. So I guess now it’ll have to be morning before I get the info to him and he gets into personal touch with Smith. After that, you know the drill well enough; they’ll fuck around with papers and bureaucratic shit for one or two days before the transport finally comes to take this lot to wherever they go from here.”
Laying down the brush and turning about to face him, she said, “Good. I will be very glad to see these three go. Valuable scientist or not, this man Gries nauseates me. He never ceases to voice his complaints over the loss of his beautiful estate in the Sandland, the lands and the buildings and the loot from all over Europe with which the main house had been furnished and decorated. The way he goes on with complaint after complaint, one would think that Germany had won, rather than lost, the war.”
Milo stopped his buffing and nodded. “I know what you mean. I’ve heard Gries carry on about his unfair losses. But that damned Faber is the one who gets to me. He’s lodged a formal complaint after almost every meal he’s eaten here—he apparently expects haute cuisine and vintage wines out of an Army messhall. Of the lot, I find that haughty, arrogant bastard Hizinger the easiest to stomach, oddly enough.”
She nodded back to him. “I know. That man is dead certain that Hitler is not dead, despite all evidence to the contrary. He makes it abundantly clear that he only is marking time, staying alive long enough to greet and participate in the reborn Dritten Deutschen Reich. Even so, he is more admirable a man than that Gries.”
“Milo, I’m just as sorry as hell, but I don’t know where the general went, where he is now or when he’ll be back. He sent me over to Fort Useless yesterday, and while I was gone he took off, no note, no message, no nothing. I think he’s trying his level best to worry me into an early grave, that’s what I think. But look, if Judy is as sick as you say, I’ll have the dispensary send the meat wagon in there and get her to the doc out here; where she goes from there’ll have to be up to him. Neither you nor Buck know what might’ve caused her to start upchucking and running a fever? Something she ate, maybe?”
Milo sighed. “Sam, we all ate the same breakfast. She’s the only one who got sick. It could be flu, it could be a virus, it could be some kind of internal problem, hell, it could even be poison, I admit. But if it is, how come nobody else ate it? She can’t hold even water down, and with the diarrhea, too, she’s going to be dangerously dehydrated in a very short time. I have some few hard-earned medical skills, but administering IV fluids is definitely not one of them, so you’d better get that ambulance in here on the double and get her to somebody who can keep her going.”
Back at the bungalow, Buck asked anxiously, “Well, Milo, what’s the general say?”
“The general’s still not there, not anywhere on the post,” said Milo. “But I did talk to Sam Jonas and he’s going to send an ambulance from the dispensary to take her back there.”
“Thank God for that, at least, Milo, but she needs a real hospital. She’s terribly ill—a mere dispensary isn’t going to have the facilities to properly care for her.”
Milo looked down at the feverish woman, wrapped in a cocoon of GI blankets, her pale face running sweat, hugged up against herself and with her teeth chattering. “Buck, anybody could see that she’s in a bad way. Once that surgeon at the dispensary examines her, you know damned well that she’ll be on the way to the hospital over at Useless or somewhere. I just pray that whatever she’s come down with isn’t contagious. That would be all we’d need, in here.”
“And I’ve got to go with her, Milo,” said Buck in a no-nonsense tone. “Are you and Sam Jonas going to try to give me flak for that?”
“I’m sure as hell not,” declared Milo. “I don’t think that the general would, either. He’s very fond of her … and you, too. As for Sam, well, if there’s any flak from him, I’ll do the catching of it, Buck. You get cracking and pack what you think the two of you will need in hospital. I’m going back to headquarters and try to type you out an authorization to leave before the meat wagon gets here.”
“God bless you, mon ami, “ said Buck humbly. “You are truly a good and caring man.” Suddenly he grabbed Milo’s hand and kissed the back of it, tears sparkling unshed in his eyes.
Back at headquarters, Emil Schrader was nowhere to be found, and Milo cursed silently; a typist he was not. Cranking the field telephone that connected the various buildings in the small compound, he rang up the WAAC barracks.
A near-baritone voice answered, “WAAC quarters. Staff Sergeant Stupsnasig speaking,
sir.”
“Sergeant, this is Major Moray. I’m at my office and I need a fast typist, on the double. Can do?”
Milo was surprised at just how fast and accurate a typist the tall, beefy woman was. Her hands, bigger than his own and looking to have been intended for effortlessly crushing granite boulders into powder, handled the Underwood with consummate ease and quickly had the form properly filled out and ready for his signature. He was just signing it when Betty and Hugo strolled in, the two Germans, Hizinger and Gries, with them.
Immediately, Milo detected the air of something being wrong, felt his nape hairs prickle up and an inward sense of deep foreboding. But just then the gate guard unlocked the gate and the boxy field ambulance rolled through into the small compound. Outside the bungalow, Buck waved with both arms, and as the ambulance veered in his direction, he stepped back inside to reemerge with the blanket-swathed form of Judy in his arms, carrying her easily, tenderly.
When the vehicle backed up to the front of the bungalow, a medic hopped out and helped Buck arrange Judy in one of the litters. Then, with the rear doors still flapping open, the ambulance made for the headquarters building to pick up Buck’s egress pass.
At the point of two silenced, small-caliber pistols held by Betty and Hugo, Sergeant Stupsnasig had typed and Milo had signed four more passes. Milo was in a state of stunned shock, still barely able to comprehend Betty’s duplicity—so warm and loving, even more so than usual only short hours past, now so cold and detached and deadly of demeanor.
The brawny Hugo jerked Buck out of the ambulance with one hand and slammed the side of the silenced pistol against his head with the other. He took a grip on the blankets wrapped around Judy, but then let her go as the two Germans came out of the headquarters building to level his pistol on them while Betty, who had brought them out, turned and reentered, briefly.
“Give me the key to the telephone that connects to Barstow’s office, Milo. Give it to me immediately or I’ll kill you both, here and now.”
Milo eased up in his chair, fished a keyring out of his pocket and dropped it on the desktop. “What the hell is your game, Betty … if that’s really your name? Those passes will get you out of this compound, but just how do you propose to get out of the main one?”
Picking up the keyring, she half smiled. “We shall crash through the gate, of course, in the ambulance. Why else do you think that I poisoned Judy than to get us an ambulance driver in here?”
He shook his head. “You’ll all be fried. That gate has enough voltage in it to—”
“Please, Milo, spare me. No, we will get through safely enough. The tires of the ambulance are rubber and therefore the vehicle will not be grounded. Hugo explained it all to me.”
“The machine gunners—“ he began, only to be again interrupted.
“Those poor, soft-hearted American men will be most loath to fire on the so-sacred Red Gross emblem, and you know it. As for the jeep patrols, well-armed assistance awaits us only a kilometer or so away.
“You know, it is too bad in a way that I really am not the woman you thought you knew, Milo, for she could have been, I think, very happy with you in America, Because of that, I won’t shoot you, although I know I should … unless you try to stop us or come after us, that is.
“Doh svedahnyah, sweet Milo.”
At the back of the ambulance, she waved her pistol at Judy and brusquely said to Hugo, “Get her out of the ambulance, quickly.” Stepping into the back of the vehicle, she stepped through the cargo compartment to the front and showed the driver and the medic the business end of the pistol. “If you two want to be alive to get demobilized, you’ll do exactly as I say for the next few minutes.”
Staring wide-eyed at the black hole of the muzzle, the driver gulped once, his prominent Adam’s apple bobbing, and said, “Yes ma’am! Ah’ll sho’ly do enythin’ you says.”
Buck had been stunned by the blow from Hugo’s pistol, but not rendered really unconscious, and a whimper from the semiconscious Judy as Hugo jerked her body out of the ambulance and dropped her to the ground brought the short, wiry man into full awareness.
Standing in the doorway of the headquarters building, neither Milo nor Sergeant Stupsnasig ever could say precisely what happened then. At one moment, Hugo was turning to clamber into the back of the ambulance, and only an eyeblink of time later, he was lying thrashing in the dirt, shrieking dementedly, with blood bubbling up out of his mouth.
Betty appeared at the back doors of the ambulance, took but a single look at Hugo, then absently shot him twice in the forehead before slamming the doors shut.
Buck, blood pouring down from the lacerated side of his head, unnoticed, sat in the dust with Judy cradled in his arms, seemingly unmindful of anything else going on around him, crooning to her softly in French.
As the ambulance driver changed gears, Milo dove out of the doorway, came up with Hugo’s dropped pistol and began to rapid-fire offhand at the departing vehicle.
A deep voice spoke just behind him, saying, “Hang on a second, major.”
He looked around just in time to see Sergeant Stupsnasig withdraw her hand from the front of her well-stuffed shirt. The hand was holding a Smith&Wesson revolver. The big woman dropped to a squat, took a two-handed grip on the snub-nosed weapon and, with five shots, blew out both of the rear tires of the ambulance.
As the big woman ejected the cases and began to stuff .38 caliber cartridges into the cylinder, the quiet of the post was suddenly broken by the whooping wails of sirens and the roars of jeep engines on the perimeters, almost drowning out the shouts of the guards. From somewhere not too far distant, around some of the twists and turns of the abominably surfaced dirt road leading to the main post, came the unmistakable sound of a .50 caliber machine gun firing short, controlled bursts.
Milo checked the magazine of the Colt Woodsman to find three rounds left, plus the one in the chamber. Cautiously, he began to walk over to where the ambulance had slewed to a halt just beyond the gate to the smaller compound. But before he reached it, the gates of the main compound swung wide to admit a half-track and a three-quarter-ton field car—the former mounting a .50 caliber machine gun and filled with armed troops, the latter mounting a large radio set and conveying General Barstow, who held a Thompson submachine gun and wore a field jacket over his class-A uniform.
Pulling around the half-track, the driver of the field car accelerated to halt, nose to nose, with the ambulance, turned off the engine, then drew another Thompson from a holder welded to the side of the car and, after arming it, stood up and pointed it at the windshield of the ambulance. Only then did Barstow swing down from the car and walk to the ambulance, his own Thompson leveled and ready, his forefinger not quite touching the trigger.
He opened the door and stepped back, saying, “You two soldiers, get out, now!”
When the terrorized driver and the medic had rolled out the doors, Barstow stepped back to the rear and, careful to keep his head and body shielded, banged on the nearest door with the muzzle of his weapon. Raising his voice a notch, he said, “Betty? Tatiana? Whatever your name really is, there’s no way out now, never was, actually. So you and Hugo had better just come out quietly. Otherwise I’ll have to call my other vehicle over here and turn that ambulance into a sieve.”
Milo heard the general’s words as he approached, and just as he reached the senior officer’s side, he heard Betty’s reply: “Oh, no, General Barstow, you would not dare to do such a thing, not with these two rocket scientists here with me.”
Barstow laughed loudly, to be heard. “If Russian Intelligence is this easy to fool, we should do it more often. Tatiana, Tatiana, the two men in there with you and Hugo are not rocket scientists, they’re not even Germans … well, at least not anymore, not for some years. Formerly they worked for OSS; now they work for me, so you have no chips with which to bargain. I give you one minute to come out, then I’ll call over the half-truck with its heavy machine gun. Come on, Tatiana
, I’m counting …“
Suddenly, from within, there came the phuutt-phuutting of the silenced pistol firing. The vehicle began to rock on its springs; there were several gasps and groans, punctuated by the sounds of flesh hitting flesh, solidly. Then the rear doors burst open and a tangle of three bodies rolled out onto the ground, feet, fists and a gunbutt flailing. Milo dived in and grabbed Betty’s wrist, then forcibly wrenched the weapon from her hand and tucked it into his waistband alongside the one that had been dead Hugo’s.
But even lacking the pistol, Betty seemed more than a match for the two ersatz Germans. Hizinger was already bleeding heavily from nose and mouth, and a shoe toe driven into his crotch sent him rolling out of the fight, clutching at himself and retching. Gries had finally managed to encircle Betty’s throat with his hairy hands, pinning her arms with his knees, but somehow she got her left arm free and smashed the heel of her palm upward against the tip of his nose. With a gurgling, gasping cry, the man slumped to the side and lay unmoving in a limp huddle, blood pouring out to pool under his face.
Barstow feathered the trigger of his Thompson and put three big .45 caliber slugs into the ground some inches from Betty’s head. “That’s enough, Tatiana. This is the end of the road, for you, on this operation, anyway. You should be shot or hung or, at least, thrown into a federal penitentiary for a helluva long time; but to be realistic, considering the numbers of communists and fellow travelers that Roosevelt allowed to infiltrate the government and, in particular, the Department of State, you’ll most likely just be told that you were naughty and shipped back to Russia, which is why we will have a few chats with you before we turn you over to higher authority.”
