Fire and Steel, Volume 2

by Gerald N. Lund

  There was a fleeting smile. “The face is familiar, but the name escapes me.”

  Stunned, he stared at her for several seconds, and then he stepped into the tent and let the flap drop. “What are you doing here?”

  “I am here to assist Dr. Schnebling. There are five of us, actually.”

  “But . . .” He was almost too flabbergasted to speak. “Your uncle didn’t say anything about you being here when I saw him the night before last.”

  “I wasn’t here then,” she replied. “I came down yesterday afternoon after Onkel Artur told me he had found you.”

  “How did he find me? How did he know I was here?”

  “When he arrived, he started asking every soldier that came into the hospital if they knew a Sergeant Hans Eckhardt.”

  “And he asked Colonel von Schiller?”

  “Yes. We were elated, of course. So when I got here, I met the colonel and asked him if he might arrange a time when we could talk.” Her eyes were suddenly anxious. “So, can we talk, Hans?”

  “I . . . Of course. I was going to write you today, but. . . .” He shrugged. Lame. It sounded so lame. “I also tried to call you last night, but the phone exchanges are still not fully operational.”

  There was a sardonic smile, but nothing else. There were two cots in the room. She motioned to one and then, not waiting for him, sat down on the other. Hans sat down across from her.

  “I want to apologize for that letter,” she began after a moment. “I . . . uh . . . I actually went back to the hotel to get it, to tear it up. But you had come and gone.”

  “You came back?” It was one bombshell after another.

  She nodded. “When you didn’t call or write, I was frantic. And your mother was frantic too. I had to . . . Anyway, I’m sorry. That letter was unfair. Especially considering what Georg told me about what happened to you. When I realized that you had the letter and had probably read it by then, I gave up and went back to Pasewalk.”

  Wanting very much to reach across and take her hands, Hans shook his head. “It was not unfair. In fact, considering what you saw in my room, I’m surprised you wrote anything.”

  She started to respond, but he cut her off. “Emilee, I don’t have a lot of time. They’re moving our battalion up to the Royal Palace this morning, to help with cleanup. So, though I have no right to ask anything, can I ask one small thing of you?”

  “Of course.”

  “I would . . .” He shook his head. “I could spend the rest of today and the rest of this year apologizing for what happened, but as my mother once pointed out to me, words tend to come cheaply to me. So, let me cut right to the quick of the matter.” He took a quick, deep breath and let it out slowly, feeling his pulse start to race. “If I were to ask you once again, right now, if you would consider marrying me, what would you say?”

  “I. . . .” That had clearly taken her completely by surprise.

  “Be honest. We don’t have time to play games, Emilee.”

  “I would have to say that, as much as I would love to say yes, I can’t. I’m not sure anymore that we are good for each other.”

  He laughed at the irony of her words. “Thank you for being so generous, but I’m sorry. ‘We’ is not the operative word here. I know that you would be the best thing that ever happened to me, Emilee Greta Fromme. I have absolutely no question about that. But I have serious reservations about whether you can say the same of me.”

  “Hans, I . . . Look, it has been an insane time. I need time to think about it. We need time to think about it.”

  He forced a smile. “Granted. However much you need, however long you want.”

  She was watching him closely, as if she might be wondering who this person was. “But,” he went on, “I have one request. And it’s a big one.”

  “What?”

  “Your godfather needs to be here to hear this. Is he still outside?”

  There was a wan smile. “Knowing Onkel Artur, I’m guessing he’s not too far away.”

  8:40 a.m.—Artur Schnebling tent

  It took Emilee several minutes to find her uncle, and Hans’s anxiety rose sharply with each passing minute. What if Schnebling refused to even talk to him? Or maybe Emilee was taking the time to fill him in on what Hans had said. Whatever it was, he was a nervous wreck by the time they returned.

  Always cool and businesslike, Schnebling’s face contained no hint of what was going on in his mind. He sat down on the cot beside Emilee and folded his hands.

  “Okay,” Hans said slowly. “Here’s my proposal. There are two parts to it. First, I have about an hour before I have to report to my unit. I would like to spend most of that time with Emilee. I’m not going to try and talk her into anything, but I have much to explain to her.”

  “I would think so,” Schnebling said dryly.

  Hans stopped, looking at Emilee, but she said nothing, so he went on. “Second, I would like to take Emilee with me to meet some people.”

  Her eyebrows came up. “Your family?”

  “Yes. And I know that sounds like I’m assuming something will come of it, but believe it or not, that’s not my purpose. You and my mother have established a special bond through all of this. If I tell her it’s over, I’ll never hear the end of it. If you tell her it’s over”—he shook his head ruefully—“she’ll probably congratulate you for your good judgment.”

  “And that’s in Bavaria?” Schnebling asked, openly skeptical.

  “Yes. I’ll pay for her train ticket. And we’ll stay with my family. I assure you, Emilee will be well chaperoned by my family. I have three sisters.”

  Emilee turned to Schnebling, watching him steadily and not saying anything. He was searching her face thoughtfully. “And how do you feel about that?” he asked.

  “I would like that very much.”

  He gave a curt nod. “Emmy has her own railroad pass. A ticket won’t be necessary. Is that all?”

  “There are also a few people I need to see here in Berlin before we leave. That will only take half a day, and then we’ll head south for Graswang.” He spoke to Emilee. “It’s not critical that you meet them, but I would like you to.”

  “Why?”

  “I . . . I’m not sure.”

  That caused her brow to pucker. She started to ask another question but then shrugged. “And you’d like them to meet me?”

  The way she worded it caught him off guard. “Uh . . . actually, I guess it’s more that I want you to meet them.”

  “So you’re not seeking their approval of”—she hesitated for just a moment—“your choice?”

  Taken aback, Hans shook his head. “No. It’s not like that.” He was searching his own mind now. “I want you to meet them because they’re a part of my life.”

  “Then yes, I would like to meet them. When would you like to leave?”

  “As soon as Colonel von Schiller releases me. But when can you leave?”

  Emilee turned to her godfather. He responded immediately.

  “With the army here now,” he answered, “I think our work is finishing up here. It’ll take us a day or two to pack up, but we can do that without Emmy.” He turned to Hans. “Are you going to treat her right?”

  “Yes, sir. On that you have my word.”

  Schnebling turned, took Emilee by the shoulders, and drew her in so he could kiss her on the cheek. “Then go, child. Let’s get this settled in your mind.”

  She threw her arms around him. “Thank you, Onkel Artur. I love you.”

  He stood up. “You two talk. I’ll call your mother. In the case of an emergency, I think I can get a telephone call through.” Then to Hans: “If you’d like, I’ll put a call through to your parents, too.”

  “I would like that very much. Danke.”

  “And also,” Dr. Schnebling added with a droll smile, “I’ll bring Emmy a surgical kit, and she can take those stitches out. I’m not sure the Frankenstein look becomes you.” Then, half chuckling at his own little joke, he wal
ked out.

  They sat quietly for almost a full minute after he left. Emilee was studying Hans closely. He was content to submit to her scrutiny. “Don’t listen to him, Hans,” she finally said. “You look wonderful. Well, not your face, of course. That’s awful. It makes me shudder to think. . . .”

  “You should have seen it when it was brown and yellow. But I’m barely aware of it now.” He too chuckled. “Except for when the kids run and hide behind their mothers. But it doesn’t hurt much anymore.”

  “And your ribs?”

  One eyebrow came up. “How do you know about those?”

  “Because Georg told me, remember?” Folding her hands in her lap, Emilee sat back. “All right, I’m listening.”

  Hans drew in a deep breath. “Feel free to break in and ask questions anytime.” And then he plunged.

  He started back when he had left Pasewalk and come to Berlin to get his army compensation. Though she knew some of that, he went through it all again. All of it. Including Katya Freylitsch. He had decided he was going to follow his mother’s advice. No more lies. If he had any chance of healing this breach between them, he had to convince Emilee there was nothing he was holding back. Now, as he watched her eyes slowly narrow as he talked about Katya, he wondered if that had been a good idea. When he talked about going to her flat after learning that the war ministry was closed and then going on their drunken spree together, he could see the hurt in Emilee’s eyes. Glad to be done with it, he stopped and watched her.

  She finally looked up. “Did you kiss her?”

  “Yes.” All right, so he hadn’t told her every little detail.

  “More than once?”

  “Yes.”

  Long silence. “Anything more than that?”

  He lifted his chin and met her gaze. “No. There could have been, but. . . .”

  “But what?”

  “I thought of you, and I got up and left.”

  “Good answer,” she murmured. Then, “Do you plan to see her again?”

  He nodded. “If I can find her. Actually, that’s one of the people I hope to see, but she lost her job when the War Ministry closed. She may not even be here in Berlin any—”

  “Why?”

  “Why do I plan to see her? Because when I told her about you, I promised I would come back and tell her what happened, either way. She made me promise.”

  “Don’t,” Emilee said flatly.

  “But. . . .”

  “You think that’s just me being jealous, Hans. But it will only hurt her. It’s done. Let it stay done. She’ll know when you don’t come back. Trust me on that.”

  He considered that and then nodded. “All right.”

  “Thank you.”

  From there he told her about Fritz and Anatoly Kharkov, how he had wormed his way into a job, and how he and Fritzie had become friends. He talked about riding shotgun and the events that followed.

  She interrupted him as he finished the account of taking down Karl and his Freikorps thugs. “Do you remember that night when I told you that I envied your experience in combat?”

  “I do.”

  “That’s what I’m talking about. I would have been so terrified of them. I would never have stood up to them. But you took them on. Just like that night coming back from Königsberg, when you ran the roadblock. I wish I had that kind of courage.”

  “Or recklessness?” he asked. “Look where it got me.”

  She wept quietly as he continued, describing in detail the night Karl and the others had come for him. He spoke quietly, dispassionately, as though he had been a spectator watching from the sidelines. But when he got to that night in the alley behind Danziger Strasse, the shame was so hot inside him that he had to look away. But he spared no details, describing the scraps he had found and his encounter with the dog.

  He stopped and waited. Emilee said nothing.

  Hans went on. “At that point, I thought I had hit rock bottom. But I was wrong.”

  She was leaning forward now, her elbows on her knees, her face buried in her hands.

  “It gets worse,” he finally said.

  “I don’t know if I can bear any more, Hans.”

  “I’ll stop if you want.”

  “No,” she said in a bare whisper. “Please go on.”

  And so he began to tell her about his encounter with Monika von Schiller in the Volkspark. He watched Emilee closely as he spoke, wanting to see her reaction, but she kept her eyes fixed on the floor of the tent. When it was finally over, he was too filled with pain to say anything more.

  Her head finally lifted. “Thank you, Hans.”

  “Thank you?” he blurted. “That’s all you’ve got to say? Especially about the last part? I thought you’d be deeply shocked.”

  “I was. Earlier today.”

  “What?”

  “Monika von Schiller came to see me this morning,” she said after a moment.

  He nearly leaped to his feet. “What?!”

  “Her husband told her I was here to see you. That we were supposedly engaged to be married.”

  “And she came to see you? Why?” Hans was completely nonplussed by that revelation.

  “Because she wanted to ‘save’ me from the clutches of someone as evil as you.” There was a fleeting smile. “She really doesn’t like you, Hans. I mean, she really, really doesn’t like you.”

  “Can you blame her?”

  “No.” She looked up. “But I wondered whether you would tell me about that.”

  “Well, now you know.”

  She went on as though he hadn’t spoken. “When I went into your hotel room, I was so disgusted by what I found in there. I was furious with you. Fuming mad. Do you know why?”

  “Because it reminded you of your father?”

  “No. Because I kept saying to myself. ‘How could he do this to me? After all the words, all the promises. How could he do this to me. And that’s when I wrote the letter.” There was a deep sigh. “But as Frau von Schiller talked, I had a different reaction. I could barely breathe. I thought I was going to be physically sick. And then I said, ‘How could he do this?’ Not just to me. How could the man I thought I knew and loved do such a thing?”

  Her eyes were desolate when they came up to meet his. “And that’s when I made up my mind that it was over for me. I never wanted to see you again.”

  “Yet here I am. And here you are. Why?”

  “Because she didn’t tell me that you brought back the money.”

  That rocked him back. “She didn’t?”

  “No. She didn’t tell me any of that. The colonel did. He didn’t give me all the details either, but he just kept saying over and over, ‘He brought the money back. Can you believe that? He brought it all back.’”

  Emilee faced him, her eyes glistening again. “When you came this morning, I made a decision.”

  “To give me another chance?”

  “No. I haven’t decided that yet.”

  “Oh.”

  “But I decided that I would listen. See what you had to say. See what excuses you would make. And do you know when I knew you weren’t lying to me?”

  “When I told you about Monika?”

  “No. It was when you told me about Katya.”

  “Katya? Why Katya?”

  “Because no one knew about Katya except you and her. And you knew it was going to hurt me. I could see that in your eyes. But you told me anyway.”

  They sat quietly for a time, both lost in their own thoughts, their own turmoil of emotions. Then Emilee got to her feet. “Well, time is going fast. Let me go see if I can find that surgical kit and get those stitches out.”

  Hans stood too. “Emilee?”

  “Yes?”

  “I didn’t tell you all of that to make you feel sorry for me.”

  “Good. Because if you did, it didn’t work. It fact, even now, I still feel like kicking you. Two bottles of bourbon and three bottles of wine? Stealing a poor widow’s mortgage payment? What were y
ou thinking, Hans? Where was your head?”

  “That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Emilee. I’m better now. I came through it, thanks to Colonel von Schiller. But, who knows when that other Trottel will show up again?”

  Very sadly, Emilee shook her head. “I’ve asked myself the same question many times.” Then after a moment, she turned away. “I’ll go get that surgical kit,” she said.

  January 20, 1919, 8:15 a.m.—Charité Hospital, University of Berlin, Mitte District, Berlin

  “Emilee, let me introduce you to this big ugly guy in the bed there. Fritzie, meet Emilee Fromme. Emilee, this is Fritz Kharkov, from Belarus. He’s going to tell you that some thugs burned down his restaurant. But in reality, it was the food. He put too much vinegar in the sauerkraut.”

  Fritzie completely ignored him. “So this is the young lady from Pasewalk?”

  Emilee came forward and took the outstretched hand that was twice as big as hers. “Yes, I am. And it’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  “But this cannot be so,” he exclaimed. “You are lovely lady.” He jerked his thumb at Hans. “He is jughead, no?”

  Emilee laughed. “In more ways than one.”

  Hans ignored them, walking around the bed as Liliya jumped to her feet and came around to meet him. Her smile quickly disappeared as she looked up into Hans’s face. Tears instantly sprang to her eyes as she reached up and touched the scars on his cheek. “And this is what they did to you? Oh, Hans.”

  He gave her a quick hug. “It’s all right, Liliya. It’s not as bad as a busted spleen.” Then he turned her around. “And this is Liliya,” he said to Emilee. “Marrying her is the smartest thing Fritzie ever did in his whole life.”

  “Ja, ja,” Fritzie boomed. “This is true. She is light of my life.”

  Liliya came around to Emilee and they embraced. “Ah, now I understand,” she said.

  “Understand what?” Emilee asked.

  “Why Hans’s eyes would light up every time he talked about his Emilee in Pasewalk.”