The Rhinemann Exchange: A Novel

  He heard the fierce howling of the dogs, and knew it was directed at him.

  On his knees, he could see the outlines of a huge animal streaking toward him across the grass. His Lüger was poised, level, but he understood that by firing it, he would betray his position. He shifted the weapon to his left hand and pulled the hunting knife out of his belt.

  The black monstrosity leaped through the air, honed by the scent into his target of human flesh. Spaulding lashed out his left hand with the Lüger, feeling the impact of the hard, muscular fur of the Doberman on his upper body, watching the ugly head whip sideways, the bared teeth tearing at the loose sweater and into his arm.

  He swung his right hand upward, the knife gripped with all the strength he had, into the soft stomach of the animal. Warm blood erupted from the dog’s lacerated belly; the swallowed sound of a savage roar burst from the animal’s throat as it died.

  David grabbed his arm. The Doberman’s teeth had ripped into his skin below the shoulder. And the wrenching, rolling, twisting movements of his body had broken at least one of the stitches in his stomach wound.

  He held onto the rail of the pasture fence and crawled east.

  North by northeast! Not east, goddamn it!

  In his momentary shock, he suddenly realized there was a perceptible reduction of the distant gunfire. How many minutes had it not been there? The explosions seemed to continue but the small-arms fire was subsiding.

  Considerably.

  There were shouts now; from across the field by the stables. He looked between and over the grass. Men were running with flashlights, the beams darting about in shifting diagonals. David could hear shouted commands.

  What he saw made him stop all movement and stare incredulously. The flashlights of the men across the wide pasture were focused on a figure coming out of the stable—on horseback! The spill of a dozen beams picked up the glaring reflection of a white Palm Beach suit.

  Franz Altmüller!

  Altmüller had chosen the madness he, David, had rejected.

  But, of course, their roles were different.

  Spaulding knew he was the quarry now. Altmüller, the hunter.

  There would be others following, but Altmüller would not, could not wait. He kicked at the animal’s flanks and burst through the opened gate.

  Spaulding understood again. Franz Altmüller was a dead man if David lived. His only means of survival in Berlin was to produce the corpse of the man from Lisbon. The Fairfax agent who had crippled “Tortugas”; the body of the man the patrols and the scientists in Ocho Calle could identify. The man the “Gestapo” had unearthed and provoked.

  So much, so alien.

  Horse and rider came racing across the field. David stayed prone and felt the hard earth to the east. He could not stand; Altmüller held a powerful, wide-beamed flashlight. If he rolled under the railing, the tall weeds and taller grass beyond might conceal him but just as easily might bend, breaking the pattern.

  If … might.

  He knew he was rationalizing. The tall grass would be best; out of sight. But also out of strategy. And he knew why that bothered him.

  He wanted to be the hunter. Not the quarry.

  He wanted Altmüller dead.

  Franz Altmüller was not an enemy one left alive. Altmüller was every bit as lethal in a tranquil monastery during a time of peace as he was on a battlefield in war. He was the absolute enemy; it was in his eyes. Not related to the cause of Germany, but from deep within the man’s arrogance: Altmüller had watched his masterful creation collapse, had seen “Tortugas” destroyed. By another man who had told him he was inferior.

  That, Altmüller could not tolerate.

  He would be scorned in the aftermath.

  Unacceptable!

  Altmüller would lie in wait. In Buenos Aires, in New York, in London; no matter where. And his first target would be Jean. In a rifle sight, or a knife in a crowd, or a concealed pistol at night. Altmüller would make him pay. It was in his eyes.

  Spaulding hugged the earth as the galloping horse reached the midpoint of the field, plunging forward, directed by the searchlight beam from the patrols back at the stables a quarter of a mile away. They were directed at the area where the Doberman was last seen.

  Altmüller reined in the animal, slowing it, not stopping it. He scanned the ground in front with his beam, approaching cautiously, a gun in his hand, holding the straps but prepared to fire.

  Without warning, there was a sudden, deafening explosion from the stables. The beams of light that had come from the opposite side of the field were no more; men who had started out across the pasture after Altmüller stopped and turned back to the panic that was growing furiously at the bordering fence. Fires had broken out.

  Altmüller continued; if he was aware of the alarms behind him he did not show it. He kicked his horse and urged it forward.

  The horse halted, snorted; it pranced its front legs awkwardly and backstepped in spite of Altmüller’s commands. The Nazi was in a frenzy; he screamed at the animal, but the shouts were in vain. The horse had come upon the dead Doberman; the scent of the fresh blood repelled it.

  Altmüller saw the dog in the grass. He swung the light first to the left, then to the right, the beam piercing the space above David’s head. Altmüller made his decision instinctively—or so it seemed to Spaulding. He whipped the reins of the horse to his right, toward David. He walked the horse; he did not run it.

  Then David saw why. Altmüller was following the stains of the Doberman’s blood in the grass.

  David crawled as fast as he could in front of the spill of Altmüller’s slow-moving beam. Once in relative darkness, he turned abruptly to his right and ran close to the ground back toward the center of the field. He waited until horse and rider were between him and the bordering post-and-rail, then inched his way toward the Nazi. He was tempted to take a clean shot with the Lüger, but he knew that had to be the last extremity. He had several miles to go over unfamiliar terrain, with a dark forest that others knew better. The loud report of a heavy-caliber pistol shot would force men out of the pandemonium a quarter of a mile away.

  Nevertheless, it might be necessary.

  He was within ten feet now, the Lüger in his left hand, his right free.… A little closer, just a bit closer. Altmüller’s flashlight slowed to a near stop. He had approached the point where he, David, had lain in the grass immobile.

  Then Spaulding felt the slight breeze from behind and knew—in a terrible instant of recognition—that it was the moment to move.

  The horse’s head yanked up, the wide eyes bulged. The scent of David’s blood-drenched clothing had reached its nostrils.

  Spaulding sprang out of the grass, his right hand aimed at Altmüller’s wrist. He clasped his fingers over the barrel of the gun—it was a Colt! a U.S. Army issue Colt .45!—and forced his thumb into the trigger housing. Altmüller whipped around in shock, stunned by the totally unexpected attack. He pulled his arms back and lashed out with his feet. The horse reared high on its hind legs; Spaulding held on, forcing Altmüller’s hand down, down. He yanked with every ounce of strength he had and literally ripped Altmüller off of the horse into the grass. He slammed the Nazi’s wrist into the ground again and again, until flesh hit rock and the Colt sprang loose. As it did so, he crashed his Lüger into Altmüller’s face.

  The German fought back. He clawed at Spaulding’s eyes with his free left hand, kicked furiously with his knees and feet at David’s testicles and legs and rocked violently, his shoulders and head pinned by Spaulding’s body. He screamed.

  “You! You and … Rhinemann! Betrayal!”

  The Nazi saw the blood beneath David’s shoulder and tore at the wound, ripping the already torn flesh until Spaulding thought he could not endure the pain.

  Altmüller heaved his shoulder up into David’s stomach, and yanked at David’s bleeding arm, sending him sprawling off to the side. The Nazi leaped up on his feet, then threw himself back down on the grass
where the Colt .45 had been pried loose. He worked his hands furiously over the ground.

  He found the weapon.

  Spaulding pulled the hunting knife from the back of his belt and sprang across the short distance that separated him from Altmüller. The Colt’s barrel was coming into level position, the small black opening in front of his eyes.

  As the blade entered the flesh, the ear-shattering fire of the heavy revolver exploded at the side of David’s face, burning his skin, but missing its mark.

  Spaulding tore the knife downward into Altmüller’s chest and left it there.

  The absolute enemy was dead.

  David knew there was no instant to lose, or he was lost. There would be other men, other horses … many dogs.

  He raced to the bordering pasture fence, over it and into the darkness of the woods. He ran blindly, trying desperately to swing partially to his left, North.

  North by northeast.

  Escape!

  He fell over rocks and fallen branches, then at last penetrated deepening foliage, lashing his arms for a path, any kind of a path. His left shoulder was numb, both a danger and a blessing.

  There was no gunfire in the distance now; only darkness and the hum of the night forest and the wild, rhythmic pounding of his chest. The fighting by the stables had stopped. Rhinemann’s men were free to come after him now.

  He had lost blood; how much and how severely he could not tell. Except that his eyes were growing tired, as his body was tired. The branches became heavy, coarse tentacles; the inclines, steep mountains. The slopes were enormous ravines that had to be crossed without ropes. His legs buckled and he had to force them taut again.

  The fence! There was the fence!

  At the bottom of a small hill, between the trees.

  He began running, stumbling, clawing at the ground, pushing forward to the base of the hill.

  He was there. It was there.

  The fence.

  Yet he could not touch it. But, perhaps.…

  He picked up a dry stick from the ground and lobbed it into the wire.

  Sparks and crackling static. To touch the fence meant death.

  He looked up at the trees. The sweat from his scalp and forehead stung his eyes, blurring his already blurred vision. There had to be a tree.

  A tree. The right tree.

  He couldn’t be sure. The darkness played tricks on the leaves, the limbs. There were shadows in the moonlight where substance should be.

  There were no limbs! No limbs hanging over the fence whose touch meant oblivion. Rhinemann had severed—on both sides—whatever growths approached the high, linked steel wires!

  He ran as best he could to his left—north. The river was perhaps a mile away. Perhaps.

  Perhaps the water.

  But the river, if he could reach it down the steep inclines barred to horses, would slow him up, would rob him of the time he needed desperately. And Rhinemann would have patrols on the river banks.

  Then he saw it.

  Perhaps.

  A sheared limb several feet above the taut wires, coming to within a few feet of the fence! It was thick, widening into suddenly greater thickness as it joined the trunk. A laborer had taken the means of least resistance and had angled his chain saw just before the final thickness. He would not be criticized; the limb was too high, too far away, for all practical purposes.

  But Spaulding knew it was his last chance. The only one left. And that fact was made indelibly clear to him with the distant sounds of men and dogs. They were coming after him now.

  He removed one of the Lügers from his belt and threw it over the fence. One bulging impediment in his belt was enough.

  He jumped twice before gripping a gnarled stub; his left arm aching, no longer numb, no longer a blessing. He scraped his legs up the wide trunk until his right hand grasped a higher branch. He struggled against the sharp bolts of pain in his shoulder and stomach and pulled himself up.

  The sawed-off limb was just above.

  He dug the sides of his shoes into the bark, jabbing them repeatedly to make tiny ridges. He strained his neck, pushing his chin into the calloused wood, and whipped both arms over his head, forcing his left elbow over the limb, pulling maniacally with his right hand. He hugged the amputated limb, pedaling his feet against the tree until the momentum allowed him the force to throw his right leg over it. He pressed his arms downward and thrust himself into a sitting position, his back against the trunk.

  He had managed it. Part of it.

  He took several deep breaths and tried to focus his sweat-filled, stinging eyes. He looked down at the electrified barbed wire on top of the fence. It was less than four feet below him but nearly three feet in front. From the crest of the ground, about eight. If he was going to clear the wire, he had to twist and jack his body into a lateral vault. And should he be able to do that, he was not at all sure his body could take the punishment of the fall.

  But he could hear the dogs and the men clearly now. They had entered the woods beyond the fields. He turned his head and saw dim shafts of light piercing the dense foliage.

  The other punishment was death.

  There was no point in thinking further. Thoughts were out of place now. Only motion counted.

  He reached above with both hands, refusing to acknowledge the silent screams from his shoulder, grabbed at the thin branches, pulled up his legs until his feet touched the top of the thick limb, and lunged, hurling himself straight out above the taut wires until he could see their blurred image. At that split-instant, he twisted his body violently to the right and down, jackknifing his legs under him.

  It was a strange, fleeting sensation: disparate feelings of final desperation and, in a very real sense, clinical objectivity. He had done all he could do. There wasn’t any more.

  He hit the earth, absorbing the shock with his right shoulder, rolling forward, his knees tucked under him—rolling, rolling, not permitting the roll to stop; distributing the impact throughout his body.

  He was propelled over a tangle of sharp roots and collided with the base of a tree. He grabbed his stomach; the surge of pain told him the wound was open now. He would have to hold it, clutch it … blot it. The cloth of the turtleneck sweater was drenched with sweat and blood—his own and the Doberman’s—and torn in shreds from the scores of falls and stumbles.

  But he had made it.

  Or nearly.

  He was out of the compound. He was free from Habichtsnest.

  He looked around and saw the second Lüger on the ground in the moonlight.… The one in his belt would be enough. If it wasn’t, a second wouldn’t help him; he let it stay there.

  The highway was no more than half a mile away now. He crawled into the underbrush to catch his spent breath, to temporarily restore what little strength he had left. He would need it for the remainder of his journey.

  The dogs were louder now; the shouts of the patrols could be heard no more than several hundred yards away. And suddenly the panic returned. What in God’s name had he been thinking of!? What was he doing!?

  What was he doing?

  He was lying in the underbrush assuming—assuming he was free!

  But was he?

  There were men with guns and savage—viciously savage—animals within the sound of his voice and the sight of his running body.

  Then suddenly he heard the words, the commands, shouted—screamed in anticipation. In rage.

  “Freilassen! Die Hunde freilassen!”

  The dogs were being released! The handlers thought their quarry was cornered! The dogs were unleashed to tear the quarry apart!

  He saw the beams of light come over the small hill before he saw the animals. Then the dogs were silhouetted as they streaked over the ridge and down the incline. Five, eight, a dozen racing, monstrous forms stampeding toward the hated object of their nostrils; growing nearer, panicked into wanting, needing the wild conclusion of teeth into flesh.

  David was mesmerized—and sickened??
?by the terrible sight that followed.

  The whole area lit up like a flashing diadem; crackling, hissing sounds of electricity filled the air. Dog after dog crashed into the high wire fence. Short fur caught fire; horrible, prolonged, screeching yelps of animal death shattered the night.

  In alarm or terror or both, shots were fired from the ridge. Men ran in all directions—some to the dogs and the fence, some to the flanks, most away in retreat.

  David crawled out of the brush and started running into the forest.

  He was free!

  The prison that was Habichtsnest confined his pursuers.… but he was free!

  He held his stomach and ran into the darkness.

  The highway was bordered by sand and loose gravel. He stumbled out of the woods and fell on the sharp, tiny stones. His vision blurred; nothing stayed level; his throat was dry, his mouth rancid with the vomit of fear. He realized that he could not get up. He could not stand.

  He saw an automobile far in the distance, to his right. West. It was traveling at high speed; the headlights kept flashing. Off … on, off … on. On, on, on … off, off, off, interspersed.

  It was a signal!

  But he could not stand! He could not rise!

  And then he heard his name. Shouted in unison through open windows, by several voices. In unison! As a chant might be sung!

  “… Spaulding, Spaulding, Spaulding.…”

  The car was about to pass him! He could not get up!

  He reached into his belt and yanked out the Lüger.

  He fired it twice, barely possessing the strength to pull the trigger.

  With the second shot … all was blackness.

  He felt the gentle fingers around his wound, felt the vibrations of the moving automobile.

  He opened his eyes.

  Asher Feld was looking down at him; his head was in Feld’s lap. The Jew smiled.

  “Everything will be answered. Let the doctor sew you up. We must patch you together quickly.”

  David raised his head as Feld held his neck. A second man, a young man, was also in the back seat, bending over his stomach; Spaulding’s legs were stretched over the young man’s knees. The man held gauze and pincers in his hands.