The flashlight wavered, beam wandering, while Stutzer inserted the fresh magazine into the weapon and pulled back the slide. Christopher was quite close now. He had a larger chunk of rubble in his hand but did not know how it had got there. He threw it at Stutzer with all his strength and heard Stutzer shriek as it hit him. The flashlight spun away. Stutzer put a hand to his face and with his other hand fired his pistol blindly into the darkness. Christopher was approaching Stutzer from the side. Then as later Christopher did not understand why he did what he did next, but he launched his body into the air in a football block and clipped Stutzer at the knees. Stutzer’s body collapsed as if it his legs had been severed from his torso. His head hit the pavement with another sound from football, that of the pigskin being kicked. The pistol flew into the darkness. The flashlight lay in the street, its beam spreading over tar pavement and reflecting from bouncing raindrops.
Christopher retrieved the flashlight and shone it on Stutzer’s unconscious face. There was no question that this man was Stutzer. Blood ran into Christopher’s eyes. It was salty. It felt like soap in the eye. He could not wipe it away fast enough to keep it from blinding him. Stutzer was wearing a woolen scarf. Christopher pulled it off him, wiped his eyes with it, and then wound it around his head like a sweatband. He could not believe that Stutzer had come alone. There must be others, the black Volga parked around the corner, the thugs posted nearby waiting for a radio signal. If they received it they would come. If they did not receive it after a stated interval, they would come. How could they not have heard the sound of gunshots, silencer or no? Christopher stood Stutzer on his feet. He was alive—Christopher could see his breath—but the head lolled, the knees buckled, the face bled, the jaw hung loose. Christopher wondered if the second rock he had thrown had broken Stutzer’s jaw. He thought, He can’t talk with a broken jaw. He patted Stutzer down and found a handheld radio. He made sure it was switched off, then threw it into the rubble. He found a second pistol and threw that away, too.
He slung Stutzer’s body over his shoulder and headed toward the demarcation line. The burden was so light that Stutzer might have been a very large insect instead of a man. Christopher hurried, counting his footsteps, lighting his way through the rubble with the flashlight. In seconds he had crossed into West Berlin. He had no real sense of where he was or what was the correct direction, so he scuffled toward the nimbus of electric light that hung over the western zones of the city. To keep himself going he counted cadence in German. When had he done this before? He knew that he had and that he had been wounded on that occasion also, but he couldn’t remember where or when, though he realized that on that occasion he had been carrying a different man through a night lit by explosions. He saw headlights, a taxi. He turned and waved. The taxi steered around him and sped by. Blood ran into his eyes again. He wiped them with the back of his hand. He felt the scarf he had wound around his head. It dripped blood. He had seen scalp wounds before and knew that this one would not kill him, but he was losing a lot of blood and he knew that he was going into shock.
He began to tremble violently. He moved forward on rubbery legs. Stutzer, who had until now been as inert as a corpse, began to stir. Ahead of them the lights were much brighter. Christopher heard traffic Stutzer uttered a wordless burst of sound, as if he were trying to talk through a gag instead of a mouthful of blood. Christopher shouted, “Silence!” Stutzer replied with another incomprehensible gargle, as if attempting to scream underwater.
They came to a small park. Among trees, Christopher staggered across its muddy lawns. Stutzer squirmed weakly on Christopher’s shoulder. He seemed to be searching his clothing for his extra pistol. Perhaps he had other hidden weapons. He was so heavily dressed, ankle-length overcoat over suit or uniform, sweaters beneath, that he might well have had a knife or a blackjack. At the edge of the park they came upon a watercourse and Christopher briefly thought that he had walked in a circle back to the River Spree and they were inside East Berlin, but there were too many lights for that to be true. He was standing on the bank of the Landwehr Canal. Christopher was tempted to dump Stutzer into the frigid water and watch him drown. The impulse was momentary. Instead, he went back into the park and shrugged the insect—in his mind he had begun to call Stutzer that—off his back. Stutzer fell heavily, with a loud tongue-tied grunt. He sprawled against a lamppost, arms and legs limp and twisted. Soft light filled with slanted rain shone down upon him. His eyes were the same eyes Christopher had seen many times before—filled with rage but this time with that new something in them as well. Stutzer was afraid. He thought he was going to die, and very soon, at the hands of someone who was unworthy of the honor of murdering him.
Christopher hauled Stutzer to his feet. He searched him again, peeling off the long overcoat and casting it aside, patting him down. He found Stutzer’s MfS credentials and put the folder into his own inside pocket. He found a short stabbing knife inside Stutzer’s left sleeve, a small glass bottle of liquid inside his right sleeve. He threw the knife into the darkness. He took the cap off the bottle, watching Stutzer’s eyes, in which terror suddenly appeared, and dribbled a few drops onto the sleeve of his jacket. Instantaneously the liquid burned holes in the fabric. Christopher smelled sulfuric acid. He held the bottle under Stutzer’s nose, then tossed that away, too.
All this happened in silence. Christopher would not speak, Stutzer could not speak. It was now obvious that his jaw was broken and that his knees had been damaged. The pain must have been excruciating. This, too, showed in his pale eyes, so that expressions of distress and rage and fear succeeded one another. Christopher himself was deeply tired. He could hardly stay awake. His head throbbed. Blood ran less freely from his wound. He was thinking more clearly now and assumed that it was beginning to clot. He held his palms and face up to the rain, which was falling more heavily. The streetlamp glowed at the top of its post. Christopher looked at his watch: 1:24. All this had happened in a mere eleven minutes. This seemed remarkable to him.
He pulled Stutzer to his feet. Stutzer uttered a loud gargle of pain, staggered, and collapsed. By the streetlamp Christopher saw that Stutzer was indeed wearing a uniform. He could not make out the insignia of rank on the shoulder boards. He assumed that Stutzer must have been wearing a military-style cap at the beginning of the evening and that now it lay somewhere between this spot and what used to be No. 8 Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. Was one of Stutzer’s men finding it even now? Had he also found Christopher’s lost hat, perhaps with a bullet hole in it? Was he radioing the news of his discoveries and their awful portent to the swarm of thugs who were supposed to keep this insect from harm? Were the ghosts of Prinz-Albrechtstrasse following along behind Christopher and Stutzer to see if things might come out differently this time?
Christopher stood Stutzer up, bent over, and slung him onto his shoulder again. He seemed heavier now, though he must actually have been kilos lighter now that he had shed his heavy rain-soaked overcoat. He shivered as if from a malarial fever and moaned his blubbery wordless cry of pain as if appealing for help to the ghosts. These giddy thoughts made Christopher aware that he was not himself and that he must soon find a place to keep his prisoner. He had no destination in mind. He kept walking west. Now that his scalp had stopped bleeding into his eyes he saw more clearly, and he was beginning to recognize landmarks. He crossed the Potsdamer Bridge. The lights ahead were brighter now. It was not so late in West Berlin that the streets were deserted. Automobile traffic was steady. Soon Christopher was walking among pedestrians. Some stopped and stared at the spectacle of a man covered in blood carrying another, blubbering person. Some gave him a wide berth, others laughed at the spectacle. One man with a hearty voice, a Christian evidently because he called Christopher brother, asked if they had been in an auto accident. The question sounded like an accusation, as if Christopher’s objective in going out that night had been to wreck a perfectly good car, or perhaps two. Christopher shook his head. The man said, “Someone must call the police
.” But there were no public telephones nearby. Christopher said, “Thank you, but we are almost home.”
He turned into a darker street. No one followed. Up ahead he found a telephone booth. He tumbled Stutzer from his shoulders again and again Stutzer cried out in pain as he hit the pavement. Christopher reasoned—his thought process had never seemed to him to be smoother, better oiled—that the pain would immobilize Stutzer while he made the call. He put coins into the phone and dialed a number that came into his head. He knew, but did not know, whose number this was.
He heard the thick-tongued voice of a man awakened from sleep. He told this person who and where he was, but used a false name. He spoke English, so he reasoned that he must be talking to someone for whom English was a native language. He had stopped shuddering, but Stutzer, curled in the fetal position, twitched uncontrollably. Christopher approached him, meaning to pick him up and continue on his way, but then realized that he must stay where he was if he wished to be found in time.
Found in time for what? By whom? His mind was clouding again. He felt a stab of embarrassment. He did not know whom he had called. Or rather, he knew but could not retrieve the mental records for the person in question. Stutzer writhed, shuddered, moaned. Christopher felt weak. He leaned against the phone booth and waited for the feeling to pass. It did not pass. Nausea welled up in him. He leaned over and vomited. The vomiting was convulsive. He could not stop. His legs failed him. He felt that gravity had been reversed, that he had dived into a bottomless abyss—dark, dark. He let himself fall. He could neither help himself nor save himself. He could not breathe. He heard himself gasping for breath. He believed that whatever was happening to him was the last thing that would ever happen to him. He lost consciousness.
2
Christopher awoke in a hospital room. There was nothing to be seen through the window except a blank brick wall across an alley. His watch had been removed and there was no clock on the wall. Except for a hospital gown he was naked. By the angle of the light he guessed that it was mid-afternoon. The smell of the room and the furniture and equipment were American and could be nothing else. Transparent intravenous tubes ran into both his arms. He was connected to a monitor that registered what he supposed were his vital signs. He could feel and hear a strong pulse throbbing inside his skull, but he had no pain even though the presence of pain was the first thing he had expected to feel when he opened his eyes. His ears rang loudly. He touched his head. It had been shaved and was covered with stubble except for a strip of gauze, fastened by adhesive tape, on top of his head. He felt stitches beneath the bandage. He touched his face and estimated a two-day stubble. He turned his head to the side and felt the rush of vertigo and nausea. He turned his head back to its original position so that he was again lying flat on his back. The vertigo passed. He remembered everything that had happened, including his last moment of consciousness, but nothing after that. A bell-call for the nurse was pinned to the sheet near his right hand. He did not touch it. He knew that no nurse or doctor could tell him the only thing he wanted to know: Where is Stutzer?
A half glass of water with a bent straw in it stood on the bedside table. Christopher picked it up and sucked water through the straw, then put it down. Almost immediately he fell asleep again and dreamed that he was at a picnic with a lot of people he didn’t know and their children. A large poisonous snake slithered into the dream. Christopher killed it with a rock, beating its head to a pulp. The other guests watched in silence, glasses at their lips but not drinking. No one spoke to Christopher or even seemed to notice him until a self-righteous little girl said, “Everyone hates you!” Christopher asked why. “Because you killed that snake,” the child replied.
The dream woke him. Dusk filled the room. A nurse entered and switched on the lights. Christopher was dazzled by their brightness and was now certain that he was in the hands of Americans. “Ah, we’re awake,” said the nurse. She moved his hand back to his side and checked to make sure that his IVs were still stuck firmly in his forearms, then took his pulse, temperature and blood pressure and noted these on the chart at the foot of the bed. She wore captain’s bars on her collar. Her name tag, half hidden beneath the stethoscope draped around her neck, told him that her first name was Krista and her last name began with a K. From her accent he guessed that she was from the Midwest. She said, “Do you know where you are, Colonel?”
Colonel? Christopher wondered what name had been manufactured to go with this manufactured rank. He said, “No.”
“You’re in the U. S. Army Hospital in Frankfurt, Germany,” the captain said. “Until midnight I’m your nurse.”
“What time is it now, Captain?”
“Twenty after five. Do you know what day it is?”
“No.”
“It’s Thursday. You’re going to be fine. Your injuries are not, repeat not, life-threatening. Major Sadlowski, the physician on duty, will tell you the details. I’ll notify him that you’re awake.”
She filled his water glass and held it while he drank through the straw. By her manner, professional but aloof, she created a distance between them. She was a fine-looking woman, slender but buxom. Oddly for an American girl she had not smiled once. She studied his face but avoided his eyes. She made no small talk, not even the standard where-are-you-from. She had made up her mind about him. Clearly she thought that he was not a real colonel, perhaps not even a real American. She would have been far more friendly to a genuine superior officer. A good many Outfit people had passed through this hospital and no doubt she had learned to recognize the type. Christopher wore no dog tags. Almost certainly he had arrived naked, with no personal effects. He wore no wristband with name, rank and serial number. He was an exotic, an impostor, a mystery.
Major Sadlowski was as distant in manner as the nurse had been. He was an enormously tall rawboned man, taller even than Hubbard had been, who had to bend double over the bed in order to use his stethoscope and carry out the rest of his examination. His questions were brief and to the point. He called Christopher sir, not Colonel. He did not call him by name. At the end of his examination he stood upright and looked down from his great height on the supine Christopher and asked if he had any questions. Christopher asked about the vertigo attacks. He did not call it that because he did not yet know what it was, but described the symptoms.
“Vertigo, probably,” Major Sadlowski said. “Have you ever had these symptoms before?”
“No. They began the night I was shot.”
“What makes you think you were shot?”
“Because someone was shooting at me. Am I wrong?”
“No, sir. How’s your hearing?”
“A bit muffled, as if I had cotton in my ears. It comes and goes.”
“That’s interesting. I’ll ask an ENT man to have a look at you. The inner ear, which controls balance, can be affected by a blow to the head. Or the vertigo could be the onset of Ménières syndrome, which sometimes results in hearing loss. Try to lie still, flat on your back, with your head slightly elevated. Don’t look down or you’ll feel like you fell down a mineshaft. The nurse will bring you extra pillows.”
“What about the wound?”
“It’s a gunshot wound, all right. Did it knock you unconscious?”
“No. Just a headache and a lot of blood. And the dizziness and nausea.”
Major Sadlowski nodded as though this information was deeply interesting to him. He said, “You went on functioning normally?”
“I could walk and talk. I was somewhat disoriented. How deep is the wound?”
“Superficial. It dug a furrow in your scalp and blew away some bone fragments but it didn’t penetrate the skull. We cleaned it up and sewed it up. You have a concussion, which is never a good thing, but the pictures show no other damage. Had the bullet struck at a slightly different angle or a millimeter lower, you’d have been in trouble. You also had symptoms of exposure. It took us a long time to get your temperature up to normal, but that’s over now. Ap
art from the wound and the vertigo you’re okay, but we were told that you inhaled some vomit and could have died if the person who found you hadn’t stuck his finger down your windpipe and whacked you on the sternum.”
“Do you happen to know who that person was?”
“No, sir, but whoever he was, he was a quick thinker,” Major Sadlowski said, “All I know for sure is what I see.”
What he really meant, Christopher thought, was, What I see is all I want to know. Major Sadlowski busied himself with the chart, frowning and scribbling.
“If this is Wednesday, I’ve been unconscious for more than twenty-four hours,” Christopher said. “Why?”
“Not exactly unconscious,” Major Sadlowski said, without looking up. “Asleep. You were given a heavy sedative before you got here.”
“What sedative?”
“We don’t know for certain. One of the opiates, probably. Morphine, maybe heroin. Maybe a combination of drugs.”
“But whatever it was put me to sleep for twenty-four hours?”
“Longer than that,” Major Sadlowski said. “It was an overdose. There were people around here, sir, who wondered if you’d ever wake up.”
3
Instead of simply telling Christopher what time it was, Wolkowicz unbuckled his wristwatch—cheap, black, and Japanese—and tossed it onto the bed. Christopher reached for it, feeling a touch of vertigo as he bent forward. It was 4:24 A. M. He offered to give the watch back.
“Keep it,” Wolkowicz said. “I’ve got more.”
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