Chesna crouched against a tree trunk, and Michael stood behind her. She pointed, but Michael’s eyes had already seen: in a clearing just ahead, two soldiers with rifles stood over Wilhelm’s writhing body. Chesna lifted her pistol, took careful aim, and squeezed the trigger. Her target staggered back, a hole at his heart, and fell. The second soldier fired wildly into the trees and started to run for cover. Chesna, her face grim, shot the man in the hip and crippled him. As he fell, her next bullet went through his throat. Then she was on her feet, a professional killer in a sleek black dress, and she ran to Wilhelm’s side. Michael followed, quickly making the same judgment as Chesna: Wilhelm had been shot in the stomach and the chest, and there was no hope for him. The man moaned and writhed, his eyes squeezed shut with agony.
“I’m sorry,” Chesna whispered, and she placed the Luger’s barrel against Wilhelm’s skull, shielded her face with her other hand, and delivered the mercy bullet.
She picked up the submachine gun and pushed the Luger down into Michael’s waistband. Its heat scorched his belly. Chesna’s tawny eyes were wet and rimmed with red, but her face was calm and composed. One of her black high heels had broken, and she kicked the shoe off and threw its partner into the woods. “Let’s go,” she said tersely, and started off. Michael, with Mouse across his shoulders, kept pace with her though his thigh wound had opened again. His exhaustion was held at bay only by the realization of what would happen to them once they fell into the Gestapo’s embrace. Any hope of finding the meaning of Iron Fist and communicating that secret to the Allies would be lost.
There was a movement on the left: the glint of sunlight on a belt buckle. Chesna whirled and sprayed a burst of fire at the soldier, who dropped to his belly in the leaves. “Over here!” the soldier shouted, and fired two bullets that thunked into the trees as Chesna and Michael changed direction and ran. Something came flying through the woods at them, hit a tree trunk at their backs, and bounced off. Three seconds later there was a ringing blast that knifed their eardrums, the concussion sending leaves flying. Dense white smoke billowed up. A smoke grenade, Michael realized, marking their position for the other soldiers. Chesna kept going, shielding her face as they tore through a tangle of thorns. Michael heard shouts from behind them, on their left and right. A bullet whizzed past his head like an enraged hornet. Chesna, her face streaked with thorn slashes, stopped in her tracks in underbrush near the edge of the road. Two more trucks had pulled off, and were disgorging their cargo of soldiers. Chesna motioned for Michael to back up, then she guided him in another direction. They struggled up a hillside through dense green foliage, then down again into a ravine.
Three soldiers appeared at the top, silhouetted against the sun. Chesna fired her weapon, knocked two of the men down, and the third fled. Another smoke grenade exploded on their right, the acrid white smoke flooding across the ravine. The hounds were closing in, Michael thought. He could sense them running from shadow to shadow, salivating as their gun sights trained in. Chesna ran along the bottom of the ravine, bruising her feet on stones but neither pausing nor registering pain. Michael was right behind her, the smoke swirling around them. Mouse was still breathing, but the back of Michael’s neck was damp with blood. The hollow crump of a third smoke grenade went off amid the trees to their left. Above the forest, dark banners of crows circled and screamed.
Figures were darting down the hillside and into the smoke. Chesna caught sight of them, and her quick spray of bullets drove them back. A rifle slug ricocheted off an edge of rock beside her, and stone splinters jabbed her arm. She looked around, her face glistening with sweat and her eyes wild; Michael saw in them the fear of a trapped animal. She ran on, crouched low, and he followed on cramping legs.
The ravine ended, and yielded to forest once more. Amid the trees a stream snaked between mossy banks. A bend of the road lay ahead, and beneath it was a stone culvert through which the steam rushed, its opening all but clogged by mud and vegetation. Michael glanced back and saw soldiers emerging from the smoky ravine. Other figures were coming down the hillside, taking cover behind the trees. Chesna was already on her knees, starting to push herself into the muddy culvert. “Come on!” she urged him. “Hurry!”
It was a tight squeeze. And, looking at it, Michael knew he could never get himself and Mouse through there before the soldiers reached them. His decision was made in an instant; as Chesna lay on her stomach and winnowed into the culvert, Michael turned away and ran out of the stream bed into the woods. Chesna kept going, through the slime, and the mud and underbrush closed behind her.
A rifle bullet sliced a pine branch over Michael’s head. He zigzagged between the trees, until a smoke grenade exploded almost in front of him and turned him aside. These hunters, he thought grimly, knew their work. His lungs were laboring, his strength sweating away. He tore through a green thicket, the sunlight lying around him in golden bars. He struggled up a hillside and down again—and then his feet slipped on a carpet of dead brown leaves and he and Mouse slid into a tangled nightmare of blue-black thorns that snagged their clothes and flesh.
Michael thrashed to get loose. He saw soldiers coming, from all sides. He looked at Mouse, and saw blood creeping from the little man’s mouth.
“Please … please,” Mouse was gasping. “Please … don’t let them torture me …”
Michael got his hands free and pulled the Luger from his waistband. He shot the first soldier he aimed at, and the others hit the ground. His next two shots went wild through the trees but the fourth clanged off a Nazi helmet. Michael took aim at a white face and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened; the Luger’s magazine was empty.
Submachine-gun fire kicked through the thorns, showering Michael and Mouse with dirt. A voice shouted, “Don’t kill them, you idiots!” It was Jerek Blok, crouched somewhere up on the hillside. Then: “Throw out your gun, Baron! We’re all around you! One word from me and you’ll be cut to pieces!”
Michael felt dazed, his body on the verge of collapse. He looked again at Mouse, and damned himself for pulling his friend into this deadly vortex. Mouse’s eyes were pleading, and Michael recognized the eyes of Nikita, as the injured wolf lay on the railroad tracks a long, long time ago.
“I’m waiting, Baron!” Blok called.
“Don’t … let them torture me,” Mouse whispered. “I couldn’t stand it. I’d tell them everything, and I … wouldn’t be able to help it.” His thorn-scarred hand clutched at Michael’s arm, and a faint smile played across his mouth. “You know … I just realized … you never told me your real name.”
“It’s Michael.”
“Michael,” Mouse repeated. “Like the angel, huh?”
Perhaps a dark angel, Michael thought. An angel to whom killing was second nature. It occurred to him, quite suddenly, that a werewolf never died of old age; and neither would the man Michael had known as Mouse.
“Baron! Five seconds and we start shooting!”
The Gestapo would find a way to keep Mouse alive, Michael knew. They’d pump him full of drugs, and then they’d torture him to death. It would be an ugly way to die. Michael knew the same fate awaited him; but he was no stranger to pain, and if there was one chance that he might be able to get away and continue his mission, he had to take it.
So be it. Michael tossed the Luger out, and it clattered to the ground.
He put his hands to the sides of Mouse’s head and took the little man’s weight on top of him. Tears sprang to his eyes, burning trails down his thorn-scratched cheeks. An angel, he thought bitterly. Oh yes. A damned angel.
“Will you … take care of me?” Mouse asked softly, beginning to fall into delirium.
“Yes,” Michael answered. “I will.”
A moment later Blok’s voice again: “Crawl out into the open! Both of you!”
One figure emerged from the thorns. Dusty, bleeding, and exhausted, Michael lay on his hands and knees as six soldiers with rifles and submachine guns circled him. Blok came striding up, with
Boots following. “Where’s the other one?” He looked into the thorns, could see the motionless body lying in the coils. “Get him out!” he told two of the soldiers, and they waded into the tangle. “On your feet,” Blok said to Michael. “Baron, did you hear me?”
Michael slowly stood up, and stared defiantly into Jerek Blok’s eyes.
“Where did the bitch go?” the colonel asked.
Michael didn’t answer. He flinched, listening to the sound of Mouse’s clothes ripping on the thorns as the soldiers dragged him out.
“Where did the bitch go?” Blok placed the barrel of his Luger underneath Michael’s left eye.
“Stop the bullshit,” Michael replied, speaking in Russian. He saw the blood drain out of Blok’s face. “You won’t kill me.”
“What did he say?” The colonel looked around for an interpreter. “That was Russian, wasn’t it? What did he say?”
“I said,” Michael continued in his native tongue, “that you suck donkey cocks and whistle out your ass.”
“What the hell did he say?” Blok demanded. He glared at Boots. “You spent time on the Russian Front! What did he say?”
“I … uh … think he said … that he owns a donkey and a rooster that sings.”
“Is he trying to be funny, or is he insane?”
Michael released a guttural bark, and Blok stepped back two paces. And then Michael looked to his side, at Mouse’s corpse. One of the soldiers was trying to get Mouse’s closed right fist open. The fingers wouldn’t give. Suddenly Boots strode forward, lifted a foot, and smashed it down on the hand. Bones cracked like matchsticks, and Michael stood in shock as Boots crunched his weight down on the hand. When the huge man raised his foot again, the fingers were splayed and broken. There in the palm was a Cross of Iron.
Boots leaned over, started to reach for the medal.
Michael said, in German, “If you touch that, I’ll kill you.”
The man’s voice—sure and steady—made Boots pause. He blinked uncertainly, his hand outstretched to grasp a dead man’s last possession. Michael stared at him, smelling the heat of wildness burning in his veins. He was close to the change … very, very close. If he wanted it, it was right there within easy reach …
Blok’s pistol, held at the colonel’s side, came up in a savage arc and thudded into Michael’s testicles. Michael gasped in agony and dropped to his knees.
“Now, now, Baron,” Blok chided. “Threats are beneath royalty, don’t you agree?” He nodded at Boots, who plucked up the Iron Cross into his own fist. “Baron, we’re going to get to know each other very well indeed. You may learn to sing in a higher register before I’m done with you. Haul him up, please,” he told two soldiers, and the men pulled Michael to his feet. Pain throbbed in Michael’s groin, doubling him over; even as a wolf, he wouldn’t get very far before he crumpled into an exhausted heap. Now was not the time, or the place. He let the wild call drift away from him, like a fading echo.
“Come on, we’ve got a distance to travel.” Blok walked up the hillside, and the soldiers shoved Michael ahead of them. Other soldiers walked on either side of him, their guns ready. Boots followed at a distance, the Iron Cross in his hand, and a few more soldiers began to drag Mouse’s body up toward the road. Michael did not look at Mouse again; the little man was gone, and he would not have to face the torture that awaited.
Blok looked up at the blue sky, and his silver teeth gleamed brightly as he smiled. “Ah, it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” he said, to no one in particular. He would leave a detachment of troops to continue searching for her, and he had no doubt that the bitch would be found soon. She couldn’t have gotten very far. After all, she was only a woman. His heart was hurting for being such a fool, but he looked forward to having Chesna in his hands. He had considered himself her agreeable uncle when he’d thought she was a loyal Nazi; now, however, a traitor of Chesna’s magnitude merited treatment that was less familial and more familiar. But what a scandal! This must be kept from the newspapers, at all costs! And, also, from the prying eyes and ears of Himmler. So, a question: where to take the baron for interrogation?
Ah, yes! Blok thought. Of course!
He watched as the baron was shoved into the rear of a truck and made to lie down on his back with his hands pinned under him. A soldier sat next to him, with a rifle barrel pressed against his throat.
Blok walked over to confer with the truck driver as other soldiers continued their search in the forest for Germany’s Golden Girl.
5
MICHAEL SMELLED HIS DESTINATION before he saw it. He was still lying on his back on the truck’s metal bed, his arms pinned underneath him, with armed soldiers sitting all around. The cargo bay had been covered with gray canvas, shutting off all but a crack of sunlight. His sense of direction was impaired, though he knew they weren’t heading into the city; the road was far too rough for the civilian wheels of Berlin. No, this road had been tortured by its share of truck tires and heavy vehicles, and his back muscles gripped with pain every time a rut shook vibrations through the floor.
A strong smell seeped in through the canvas. The soldiers had noticed it as well; some of them shifted nervously and whispered to each other. The odor was getting stronger. He had smelled something akin to it, in North Africa, when he’d come upon a group of British soldiers who’d been hit by a flamethrower. Once the sickly-sweet smell of charred human flesh got up your nostrils, you never forgot it. This smell had burning wood in it, too. Pine wood, Michael thought. Something that burned very hot and fast.
One of the soldiers got up and lurched to the rear of the truck, to be sick. Michael heard two others whispering and caught a word: “Falkenhausen.”
His destination was known. Falkenhausen concentration camp. Blok’s child.
The smell drifted away. The wind had changed, Michael thought. But what in the name of God had been burning? The truck stopped, and stayed motionless for a moment or two. Over the low grumble of the engine he heard hammers at work. And then the truck continued on about a hundred yards or so, stopped again, and a strident voice shouted, “Bring out the prisoner!”
The canvas was whipped back. Michael was hauled out of the truck, into harsh sunlight, and he stood before a German major of the Waffen SS, a thick-bodied man wearing a black uniform that bulged at the seams. The man had a fleshy, ruddy face with eyes that were as white and hard as diamonds, but with none of their luster. He wore a black, flat-brimmed cap, and his brown hair was cropped to the scalp. Around his girth was a holster that bore a Walther pistol and a baton of ebony rubber: a bone-bruiser.
Michael glanced around. Saw wooden barracks, gray stone walls, dense green treetops beyond them. A new barracks building was going up, and prisoners in striped uniforms were hammering the joints together as guards with submachine guns stood in the shadows. Thick coils of barbed wire formed inner walls, and at the corners of the outer stone walls stood wooden guard towers. He saw an entrance gate, also of wood, and above it the stone arch he’d seen in the framed photograph in Blok’s suite. A dark haze hung in the air, slowly drifting over the forest. He caught the scent again: burning flesh.
“Eyes front!” the Nazi major shouted, and grasped Michael’s chin to jerk his head around.
A soldier jabbed a rifle into his spine. Another soldier wrenched his coat off, then tore his shirt away so hard the pearl buttons flew into the air. Michael’s belt was removed, and his pants lowered. His underwear was pulled down. The rifle jabbed him again, in the kidneys. Michael knew what they wanted him to do, but he stared fixedly into the major’s colorless eyes and kept both feet on the ground.
“Remove your shoes and socks,” the man said.
“Does this mean we’re engaged?” Michael asked.
The baton came out of the holster. Its tip pressed against Michael’s chin. “Remove your shoes and socks,” the major repeated.
Michael caught movement to his left. He glanced in that direction and saw Blok and Boots approaching.
“Eyes front!” the major commanded, and swung the baton a short, brutal blow against Michael’s wounded thigh. Pain exploded through his leg as the gash burst open again, oozing scarlet, and Michael fell to his knees in the chalky dust. A rifle barrel looked him in the face.
“Baron,” Blok said, “I’m afraid you’re in our kingdom now. Will you obey Major Krolle, please?”
Michael hesitated, pain pounding in his thigh and beads of sweat on his face. A booted foot was planted on his back and drove him down into the dust. Boots leaned his weight on Michael’s spine, making Michael grit his teeth.
“You really do want to cooperate, Baron,” Blok went on. Then, to Krolle, “He’s a Russian. You know how stubborn those sons of bitches can be.”
“We cure stubbornness here,” Krolle said, and while Boots held Michael down, two soldiers took off his shoes and socks. Now he was totally naked, and his wrists were clasped behind him with iron manacles. He was hauled to his feet, then shoved in the direction the soldiers wanted him to go. He offered no resistance; it would only lead to broken bones, and he was still exhausted from his battle with Sandler and the flight through the forest. There was no time to mourn Mouse, or to bewail his own predicament; these men meant to torture every shred of information out of him. It was to his advantage, though, that they thought he was an agent of the Soviet Union, because his presence would keep their attention on the East and away from the West.
It was a large camp. Distressingly large, Michael thought. Everywhere stood barracks buildings, most of green-painted wood, and hundreds of tree stumps testified to the fact that Falkenhausen had been carved out of the forest. Michael saw pallid, emaciated faces watching him through narrow windows with hinged shutters. Groups of skinny, bald prisoners passed, herded by guards with submachine guns and rubber batons. Michael noted that almost all the prisoners wore yellow Stars of David pinned to their clothes. His nudity seemed commonplace, and drew no attention. Off in the distance, perhaps two hundred yards, was a camp within the camp, more barracks enclosed by coils of barbed wire. Michael could see what looked like three or four hundred prisoners standing in rows on a dusty parade ground, while a loudspeaker droned on about the Thousand-Year Reich. He saw, in the distance on his left, a squat building of gray stones; from its two chimneys arose columns of dark smoke that drifted toward the forest. He heard the groan and rumble of heavy machinery, though he couldn’t see where the noise was coming from. A change in the wind brought another odor to his nostrils: not the burned flesh smell this time, but a reek of unwashed, sweating humanity. In that smell there were notes of decay, corruption, excrement, and blood. Whatever was going on here, he thought as he watched the columns of smoke belch from the chimneys, had more to do with erasure than confinement.