62

Propeller idling, the plane stood in the darkness of a pasture.

“You’re a fool,” Tolan shouted down from the cabin door.

“My own fool,” Spangler agreed, standing on the ground, his Luger trained on Tolan.

“Get in here,” the German commanded. “You’re wasting time.”

“You’ll be meeting a man named Julian,” Spangler told him. “Relay a message. Tell Julian the books are closed. Tell him I am out of it once and for all. Tell him that you and he will understand each other perfectly. And one last thing: Tell him I’m sending you across for only one reason—to let him know exactly what I think of him and all the others like him. Now get inside and close that door, or I’ll put a bullet where it really belongs.”

Spangler watched the plane bounce down the field, lift off and soar into the low-hanging overcast. He returned to the car and started driving north—nowhere in particular, just north.

By morning the headache was unendurable, the shoulder throbbing convulsively, the hand trembling so that he could hardly hold the wheel. He stopped at the nearest town.

Spangler sat at the restaurant table sipping ersatz coffee and munching a hard roll. He stared numbly out the window at the bomb-torn buildings. Laughter was heard. A group of smocked, laughing children skipped along the rubbled street on their way to school. He followed them with his eyes, paid his check and returned to the car.

He drove northwest through the night. Dawn was breaking as he descended the stone steps. He followed the narrow cobblestoned street to the bakery. The lead-paned windows had been boarded over. There was no smell of fresh bread from behind. He continued on to the square and waited beside the copper statue of Goethe in its center. He watched the uniformed woman pass in front of the single-spired medieval church and enter Forst’s columned post office.

“No receipt?” the cherubic postmistress questioned in good spirit.

“I lost it in the east,” Spangler replied from the other side of the counter. “At Stalingrad.”

“You were at Stalingrad? You were at Stalingrad and you returned?”

“Not many of us did. And those lucky few are not good for too much,” Spangler said, slapping a drooped shoulder with a weak hand.

“What did you say the name was on the package?” the woman asked reverently.

“Henri. Ludwig Henri. He was with us at Stalingrad. He was not as lucky as I. I promised to pick up the package and take it to his mother. She used to live near Dobern. Now she has moved to Bitter-feld. She doesn’t know about Ludwig yet.”

“Of course,” the woman said sadly and moved quickly through a side door.

She returned with a dusty suitcase and handed it across without registration.

Spangler’s route shifted east. The pain and trembling were worse than ever. Familiar notices began appearing on walls of villages he passed through. He finally stopped to read one, shifted directions and drove faster.

Spangler sat on the bluffside watching the SS marshal civilians toward the railway depot in the evening rain. A new column was converging on the sixteen windowless boxcars from the west. He opened the suitcase and put on the worn suit with the yellow star sewn to its front.

Another line of men, women and children appeared at the bend and began passing directly below him. Spangler wrapped a prayer shawl around his shoulders. With a sigh of deliverance he started down to join them.