25

Peering through the windshield with aching eyes, as though it were a massive curtain obscuring a movie screen, I calculated my chances. It was two o’clock. I had progressed forty kilometers since entering the autobahn outside of Stuttgart. A little better than twenty miles an hour. At that rate it would take between six and seven hours to return to Bamberg. I would arrive between nine and nine-thirty, barely in time for the phony “pickup” operation.

If nothing else went wrong.

But on the basis of what had already happened, something else was likely to go wrong. Therefore I had to drive faster, fog or no fog.

What if I had another flat tire? There was no spare in the boot, uh, trunk.

Chucky is kaput!

If, disregarding the fog, I increased the speed to thirty miles an hour, I would arrive in Bamberg about six or six-thirty, again if nothing else went wrong. That would be more like it.

What’s the point in being an accountant in the making if you can’t do a little elementary arithmetic?

Could I compromise at twenty-five miles per hour?

No, that would be cutting it too close. So it was thirty, no matter what might be ahead of me on the autobahn. It was night, wasn’t it? And who else but a lunatic would be driving the autobahn at this hour in gooey fog?

So I pressed harder on the gas and leaned closer to the windshield. It would be a long night.

Maybe when the sun rose in another hour and a half or so, it would burn off the fog.

Wouldn’t that be nice?

I had no idea what the visibility was. Moreover I had only been driving for a year and had no experience driving in fog and precious little practice in night driving on a highway. Would I see the red lights on a vehicle in front of me in time to swerve?

I had read an article in the New York Times about the time required to avoid an object ahead of you on the road. As best as I could remember the numbers, I would not have a chance.

Outside of Nürnberg, having relaxed a little and become confident of my ability at flying in visibility zero, ceiling zero (the name of a film I vaguely recalled), I inched up to thirty-five miles per hour. I soon learned how many seconds I had to swerve after seeing the first hint of red lights in front of me.

Two, maybe three at the most.

The vehicle was a big truck carrying a Sherman tank at maybe fifteen miles an hour.

At least the hulking monster that I raced by looked like a Sherman tank out of the corner of my eye. I didn’t bother to look closely. A number of other such monsters were in front of the first one. I stayed in the passing lane until I was sure I had gone beyond them.

What sort of damn fools were moving a convoy of tanks at this hour in the fog?

The United States Army, that’s what kind of damn fools!

Buy Russian war bonds, as we used to joke.

The second encounter was with an oil tanker, maybe fifteen minutes later.

It was an encounter in the full sense of the word: I banged into his rear bumper. And then saw his red lights, as it seemed, below my belt buckle.

It was a light enough bump, though probably enough to scare the hell out of him, even more than it scared me. He knew he was carrying some kind of combustible fuel and was probably terrified at the possibility of going up in a dirty-orange explosion at any moment even before I bumped him. I thought about the puff of orange only after I had swerved around him.

I literally vomited what little food there was in my stomach on the dashboard.

Dear God, what a rotten hero I was.

I pulled into Bamberg at six-forty and parked in front of the Residenz a little before seven hundred. Eleven hours for a five-hour trip. I was so tired and so spent from groping through the fog all night that I could hardly force myself out of the car. And the most intricate part of my scheme was still ahead of me.

God ought not to put such an incompetent into a situation such as this one, I complained.

I cleaned the vomit off the dashboard, staggered into the men’s room, threw water in my face, brewed a cup of coffee, and tried to think what I was supposed to do next.

At ten hundred, Kelly and I and our team of eight men and two jeeps cautiously bumped up to the Bambergerhof. The fog was as thick as it had been on the autobahn, but now it was colored a faint purple instead of jet-black.

“You look tired, Sarge,” Kelly said to make conversation. “Rough nights?”

“Too much school.”

“Gotta do something to stay sane in this burg. Am I glad I’m getting the hell out next week.”

I filed that bit of information. It might be useful. “Remember what I told you about this FBI jerk? We don’t trust him.”

“Sounds like a real asshole.”

“That’s putting it mildly.”

Special Agent Clarke was late. We pulled away from the Bambergerhof at ten-thirty.

“Don’t fret, sport.” His eyes were bloodshot and his face unshaven. “What’s the rush, our friends are not going anywhere, are they?”

“I certainly hope not, sir.”

We went through the full routine in the narrow Untersandstrasse in front of the food store: two jeeps blocking the exits from the street; four men, automatic weapons ready (safeties on, I devoutly hoped), lined up in a semicircle on the street; the other four trudging noisily up the narrow, steep steps.

The Gestapo came in the middle of the night, didn’t they?

Well, they still lost the war.

“Please stay behind my men, sir,” I admonished Clarke, who did not seem disposed to be ahead of them.

“Sure thing, sport.”

We knocked at the door, and there was, of course, no answer. I nodded at Kelly and Crawford. They tucked themselves into corners at either side of the minute landing. My .45 clutched firmly in my hand, I kicked at the door. It promptly popped open. More cooperative than the door out in the Bohemian Alps.

“Cover me, men,” I ordered, repressing a terrible urge to laugh.

I sprang into the room, spun around, weapon in front of me, and surveyed the whole space.

“No one here, sir.”

“Damn,” Agent Clarke muttered. “I didn’t think it would be this easy. Still, it looks like they’ll be coming back, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, sir, it does.”

“Pretty cheap stuff.” He fingered curtains on the single window. “Clean and neat place, isn’t it? Goddamn krauts are compulsive, aren’t they?”

“Yes, sir. Permission to search the quarters, sir?”

“Suit yourself, sport.”

“Kelly, check with the store owner to see if you can learn where these women work and whether there is a father in the family.”

“Sure, Sarge.”

“Crawford, stand guard at the door. Cline, help me to search the quarters.”

“Okay, Sarge.”

Not much respect for their noncom, but Clarke didn’t seem to notice.

While Cline went through the clothes in the closet, I opened the small paper file in which the Strausses had kept their personal effects.

My heart sank. At the very top were their old identity papers, good enough to get them a job in the American zone, but not good enough to get them out. I had not told Trudi to destroy the papers. So, obedient literalist that she was, she had left them.

If Clarke should see them, even such an incompetent gumshoe as he would wonder what they were doing for papers. That would mean that we—or CID—would raid the store of my ex-Luftwaffe friend, and he would, however regretfully, testify about the redheaded sergeant from the Constabulary who had tried to buy forged IDs for three women. Well, maybe he wouldn’t. But I couldn’t take the chance.

It was necessary to think of something. At once.

“Doesn’t look like they’ve left, does it, sport?”

“No, sir. . . . Sir, look at this! Are these the people?”

I held out the picture Trudi had left, just under the old documentation. Magda and Gunther Wülfe and two kids, one of them an infant in her mother’s arms. The young Magda did look enough like the woman I had said good-bye to a few hours ago to be immediately identified as the same person.

“Lemme see, sport? Hey, sure as hell looks like them.”

He walked over to the window to study the picture in the thin sunlight the fog was permitting to shine on Bamberg that August morning so long ago.

As soon as he turned his back, I turned in the opposite direction, so Cline couldn’t see me, and pocketed the three sets of documents.

“Hey, sport.” Clarke whistled softly.

I turned back. He was still looking at the picture. I stuffed the papers deeper into my pocket.

“Sir?”

“Sure as hell looks like them, doesn’t it?”

“If you would compare the picture with your documentation, sir.”

I crossed my fingers.

He reached in his jacket pocket, patted his trousers, tried the jacket again, and shook his head. “Damn, must have left them at the hotel. Well, no harm done, eh, sport?”

“No, sir.”

Not much.

Kelly returned.

“The guy talked up a storm, Sarge. Claims they talked with a Dresden accent, whatever the hell that is. I thought all krauts talked the same. Father died in a raid at the end of the war, he says. Work over at the Bambergerhof. He didn’t notice them leaving this morning.”

“Good work, Kelly. Send Mann up here and take the other three men and see if you can apprehend the three women—their name is Strauss—and report back here.”

“Right, Sarge.”

“Nice thinking, sport.” Clarke heaved himself heavily onto the couch on which Trudi and I had first become lovers. “Damn, I bet I saw them in the corridors over there and didn’t even recognize them.”

“It’s been a long time since that picture was taken, sir.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.” He closed his eyes contentedly.

Someone tapped on the door. Mann opened it. “Kelly would like a word with you, Sarge.”

“Hasn’t he left for the hotel?”

“He wants to talk to you first.”

I walked out on the landing.

“I was waiting for you, Sarge. There’s an odd thing . . .”

“Yeah?” My heart jumped again.

“The old guy down there said there was a GI who used to hang around here. One of ours.”

“Constab?”

“Yeah, old guy says a blue-beret type.”

“Wow! Any description?”

Kelly shrugged. “Old guy didn’t know. Young Yankee in blue beret. I figured we didn’t want that asshole in there going after one of ours, so I didn’t tell you in there.”

“If he doesn’t ask, Kel, we don’t tell him. Right?”

“Right, Sarge. See you later.”

Kelly was an innocent; if he were covering for a redhead sergeant, he couldn’t have kept a straight face. Just the same I’d breathe a sigh of relief when he went home next week.

The rest was easy.

An hour later Kelly was back.

He climbed up the stairs with a rattle that caused the sleeping Special Agent Clarke to open one of his bloodshot eyes.

“Bad news, Sarge,” Kelly announced cheerfully. “I left the others over at the Bambergerhof, but I guess the fox has flown the coop.”

I ignored his mixed imagery. “Details, Kelly.”

“The three women work there all right. Mother and two daughters. Blond. The kids good-looking. Maids. They didn’t show up for work this morning. . . .”

“What time were they due?”

“Zero six hundred, Sarge.”

I looked at my watch, almost noon. “Hell, Kelly, they could be anywhere. Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Mannheim . . .”

“Must have known we were closing in, Sarge.”

“How could they have found out?” Special Agent Clarke stirred himself enough to push off the couch. “Weak security, sport?”

“Might I make a suggestion, sir?”

“Why not, sport?”

“If they worked at the Bambergerhof, they might well have been in your room. . . .”

“So?”

“So, sir, is it possible that they might have seen your documentation and fled because they had learned you were here to apprehend them?”

“Don’t be ridiculous, sport.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets, an elaborate gesture of casualness. “That’s pushing it too hard.”

It also was a bear-trap closing.

The pickup operation fizzled out by the time the fog had lifted in late afternoon. Agent Clarke announced to us that the main goal of his trip had been achieved: Gunther Wülfe was dead.

“The woman and the kids don’t matter, sport. Not at all.”

He meant he could go home and tell his boss that there was no one to turn over to the Russians. “Husband dead, wife probably dead, kids vanished. Empty house.”

All the bureaucracies—Justice, State, Russkies—would be happy.

I sent my team back to their quarters and walked over to the Residenz. I was so damn tired I could hardly move my feet.

In the ballroom, I smiled at Brigie and nodded, sat at my desk for a couple of moments to finish typing my journal of the operation with the appropriate notes, and walked down to the general’s office.

“He said to go right in when you got here,” Polly said, raising an eyebrow in a question.

I gave her a covert thumbs-up sign and she relaxed like a Notre Dame fan when they make the last, decisive conversion.

Maybe it was not her and John I had seen the night before.

“You look rotten, son. Operation blown?”

Without any pretense at military courtesy, I threw myself into the chair on the other side of his desk, a seat in the old days I had persuaded myself was for the bishop’s fool.

“The son of a bitch left his papers lying around the hotel room, sir. The targets might have seen them and ran.”

“Damn!” the general said. “One more failure.”

“Yes, sir.”

He relaxed a bit. “Well, we’re not particularly unhappy about this one, are we?”

“No, sir. The people at the Bambergerhof said they were nice women.”

He rubbed his hand across his face. “Tough times, son. Tough times. . . . You’re not putting his carelessness about the papers in the report, are you, Sergeant?” He frowned heavily at me.

“Course not, sir. Should we put out a search order for them?”

“The husband, Gunther, uh, Wülfe, isn’t it? You’re sure he’s dead.”

“Yes, sir, all our information, even from CID, indicates that there were just the three women.”

“And this FBI man is satisfied?”

“He’s got a report that keeps him clean, sir.”

“If we find them, we send the woman and the two girls back to the Russians. Would you want that to happen to your sisters—you do have sisters, don’t you?”

“I see your point, sir.”

“So, send out a low-priority notice, do me a report, and forget the whole thing until something else comes in, which I’ll give you ten to one won’t happen.”

“Yes, sir.”

I handed him my journal. He glanced over it quickly.

“The idiot would not approve a pickup last night!”

“No, sir.”

“You going to put that in your report?”

“In a low-key way, just in case we need it.”

“Good thinking, son. Good thinking. . . . All right, you look dead tired. Take the rest of the weekend off and do your report on Monday.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Then, exhausted as I was, I saw a solution to the black-market mystery. I saw it clearly and in most of its details, at least as they affected us.

“One more thing, sir,” I said at the door. “I think I know why all our attempts to get the black-market ring have failed.”

“Oh?” The general seemed startled.

“With the general’s permission, I’d like to work on it next week. I’ve got to think it through because it’s complicated and potentially dangerous. I’ll have to interview some people. I don’t want to make charges till I can back them up. I’m afraid I’ll need a car too.”

General Meade considered me carefully. This was a change in our relationship for which he was not quite prepared: I was in effect telling him that I would not disclose my suspicions to him just yet, and he was not sure he liked that.

Then he must have decided. “What the hell, no harm done.”

“No, sir.”

“Have Polly arrange for the car.”

“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”

“I’ll need the car next week,” I told Captain Polly. “Don’t worry, it’s a completely different operation.”

“Do you want it for the weekend?”

“Doesn’t matter.” I had no one to take for a ride in the country this weekend.

“Easier that way. How long? Indefinite?”

“You could spoil me, Captain Polly, ma’am.”

She scribbled the required number on the form. “Just so long as I meet this Clancy kid someday.”

“In the mysterious designs of Providence, as the nuns used to tell us, anything can happen. And the two of you will compare notes like all Irish biddies and I’ll be in worse troubles than ever.”

“It will serve you right.” She smiled at me and gave me the form.

I picked up the stuff at my desk and stopped to talk to Brigie on the way out.

“It all worked out,” I said. “Close at times, but we made it.”

She nodded. “I am so glad.”

“Thanks for the help.”

“Bitte. Why don’t you go home and have a long nap. You look exhausted.”

“Yes, Mommy.”

I walked outside into the clear sunlight of the Domplatz. It was a pleasant day. Despite the fog there was not as much heat or humidity as last night. So, it was all over.

I felt nothing at all, no elation, no satisfaction, only a kind of dull numbness, like the man who is told that he won’t need surgery yet. They were safe despite all my mistakes.

I was lonely, however, terribly lonely; and I had not been separated from my beloved for more than a few hours. I would see her in a couple of weeks and all would be well. We could begin our preparations for marriage and America.

Even then, however, I wondered. I had deliberately not asked the names of their friends in Stuttgart. I didn’t want to know those names if I should be asked. However, I would not be able to get in touch with them until Trudi contacted me.

Would she?

Crowds of people were pouring into the Dom. August 15. Mary’s Day in Harvest time. Holy day of obligation. I might as well go over there and say thank-you. It never hurts when you’re dealing with General Officers.

The Mary portal was banked with flowers. Inside the Dom flowers were everywhere. The congregation were wearing their best clothes, which were not necessarily all that good. The choir was singing a Palestrina kyrie. It was clearly a big feast in Bamberg. Probably some holdover from an ancient Teutonic harvest festival.

“Thanks for helping,” I whispered to the one we were honoring. “Do you play the same role for Himself that Captain Polly plays for General Meade? If you do, that means you’re the one who is really in charge. I guess Jewish mothers are not all that different from Irish mothers.”

Several times during mass I found myself looking for Trudi and her family.

The ceremonies improved my morale. At the end of mass they sang the glorious Marian Easter hymn “Regina Coeli Laetare Alleluia.” I joined in at the top of my voice, though my Italianate American Latin was pronounced differently from the Teutonic version. I sang loudly, but on key. Some of my neighbors in the pew looked at me with disapproval.

Fuck ’em all. I was happy again, at least for a few days.

I decided that, despite Jimmy Randolph’s calm faith, I’d stay Catholic. Messy, confused, unpredictable, Catholicism still had the best images and stories.

My long nap, which lasted well into Saturday morning, was untroubled by dream terrors. When I finally did wake up, I felt as though a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders.