Blackbone (17 page)

Gebhard frowned. It made no sense. Nothing about Kirst made any sense. He looked around at Eckmann, Schliebert, Mueller, all still awake, puzzled.

Gebhard shrugged deeper under the covers. At least now he wasn’t alone. Now they were all wondering about Kirst.

The djinn flooded Kirst’s body with a soothing darkness, sated from its night’s activities and pleased because it had stumbled on what it most needed in the near future—a potential new host. A wealth of repressed fear and anxiety bubbling beneath the surface, this new body would offer much greater sustaining power for the djinn. Its unstable emotional fabric would give the djinn a stronger energy base from which it could launch out and feed on others. Kirst was growing weaker emotionally. Soon he would be just a shell, a walking husk, depleted of all fear, left to wander the camp like some demented soul who has lost his god.

The djinn chuckled soundlessly. Lost his god, most assuredly. When the true god of all men is fear.

Fear in the host was devoured to fan the spark of life. And the terror of victims like Sergeant Vinge and Corporal Strann was food for growth.

Much opportunity for growth in this camp, despite the unpassable walls. The djinn sucked in on itself and curled up in Kirst’s beating heart. Much opportunity... and only beginning to take shape. Fear on the rise. Anger, confusion, ultimately panic... as it was in Ur-Tawaq... and cities before that... it would be that way here... only this time it would be different... the djinn would get out... pass through the walls inside the host, then leave the host and find another more wide- ranging host. ...

The one outside... the one with the so-well-concealed fears... concealed to all but the djinn... nothing escapes the djinn....

Soundless laughter thundered in Kirst’s brain. But he was no longer terrified by it. Fear was becoming a hard tune to play—the more he produced, the more the imp wanted. He was distantly conscious of having not much more to give.

Smoke and mist. The smell of death on the cold morning air. Scorched earth and jagged tree stumps. Bits of shrapnel covered with gleaming dew. Craters rimmed with mounds of dirt and exposed roots. Shattered weapons and human limbs. Crushed and pulpy corpses stiffened into grotesque statues of flesh and bone. Rivers of blood spilling off rocks, down the sloping meadow, seeping into the ground...

French soil. Foreign ground. American soldiers splayed about the hill like clumps of seaweed on a beach. Dozens more blown to bits and scattered over the ground...

Window Hill.

Gilman’s boots squashing in the crimson mud, stopping to examine the men of his battalion, the men he had fought with, joked with, counseled in their fear and helped through the war...

Gilman moves on, drawn to the faces but afraid to look because, in the end, each face he looks into is his own....

Toeing over a corpse, the head—severed between the jaws—rolls off and stops against a rock. Teeth bite into burnt earth. Shock-filled eyes stare back at Gilman. His own eyes, his own bulging blue eyes stare back at him asking why—
why?

Gilman sat bolt upright on his cot, his head pounding, blood pumping furiously in his veins, sweat pouring off his brow. He blinked away salty wetness.

Where are the men? Where are the men?

He could feel the boots on his feet and the cold ground beneath them, then gradually the past began to fade and he saw where he was....

The darkened room in the commandant’s private quarters, Blackbone Military Detention Facility. His own tiny room with its single window overlooking the prison compound, the lone cot and heavy oak schoolteacher’s desk, the wardrobe with the full-length mirror, the yellow- enameled dresser, the portraits of President Roosevelt and Ike, the dresser caddy with his tie clasps and collar stays...

Gilman shut his eyes and tried to hold on to the dream, trying to remember those other Gilmans staring back at him on the French battlefield at Window Hill.

The dream was nearly all he had brought back from France. Certainly he had left the better part of himself on that bloody, mist-shrouded hill.

Gilman fell against the blankets, rubbing his face in the wool. Then he rolled off the cot and stood up, his body clammy with sweat. The floor was cold. He sat down and lit a cigarette. He tried to shake the dream by thinking of something eke and ended up trading one trauma for another.

Nona.

They were supposed to have married when the war ended. But when he returned from France, his spirit broken, she was there to meet him in New York at Grand Central Station. Standing on the platform as he came off the train, she told him it was foolish to wait any longer. Now that he was home, they should marry immediately.

She gave him an aching, sympathetic smile and told him she shared his pain. He had written to her about Window Hill, had poured it all out to her in his letters. And her solution was written in that smile: “I’m going to reward you for failing, for being weak and proving you are only human. I am going to marry you for it.”

He refused. She played the wounded woman. He told her she was posturing. He said that he was no longer the man she had loved, that he would never be that man again. She couldn’t believe he had changed so much: he still looked the same, just a bit tired and gaunt. He told her the war had scarred him forever, but the scars were inside, not worn on his chest where she could be proud of them.

She followed him out of the station, protesting that she wanted to be helpful and understanding. He rejected her help and told her that by destroying their romance, he was doing her a service. He didn’t deserve happiness. He had sacrificed it on the battlefield.

Gilman tamped out his cigarette. He had written Nona off, as he had written off his burgeoning military career. Now, at Blackbone, he was just marking time, like the Germans in his keep. And when the war ended, and the Germans went home to their wives and children and girlfriends and what remained of their country, what would he do? What was left for David Gilman?

He moved to the window and stared out at the camp. Lights swept the fence. Nothing moved. Maybe he should have tried with Nona but, when she got to him, he was in no mood to heal: he hadn’t suffered enough. But now he knew that it never would have worked. She might have come to understand the problem, but she would never have stopped believing that she was the solution.

Gilman climbed back into his cot and wished for only one thing before his eyes closed and he returned to sleep —that he could do it all over again, but this time do it right—
his
way. From now on, he decided, he would listen to the little voice in his head and, when it conflicted with orders, heed it.

Chapter 14

Loring Holloway held her window seat in the club car through breakfast and beyond. She drank a fourth cup of coffee and sat staring out the window at the bleak, overcast cornfields of South Dakota. She had never been this far west and found the scenery fascinating. It was the only thing about this train ride that kept her from thinking of what lay ahead. She wasn’t sleeping very well, her dreams filled with visions of Babylon, Ur-Tawaq, Korbazrah, and drowning Iraqi workers....

Across from her, a grim fat lady in a black cotton dress tippled brandy and dabbed at the sweat on her chest with a silk handkerchief. She had good reason to drink, having barraged Loring with her story immediately upon sitting down: she had two sons in the war, her daughter had eloped with a Mexican, and her husband had recently died of emphysema. She was en route to California to live with her spinster sister, whom she hated, and was dreading it. Loring had offered sympathy but had tuned out when the woman declined breakfast and ordered her second brandy.

Loring fingered the silver talisman Yazir had given her. It was still on her chest, draped from the chain around her neck. Whenever she got to thinking about how to deal with the djinn, her hand automatically checked to see that it was still in place. She hardly knew why. Upon leaving Grand Central, she had immediately dug back through her notes and found that, among the talismen presumed effective against djinn, the pentagon shape was the least commonly mentioned. It seemed to be part of a later mythology, more effective against satanic demons than Middle Eastern ones. But then, as both she and Yazir had pointed out to each other, all these things had their roots. The demons themselves, the tricks and games, the folklore, the weapons—all had their ancient antecedents. Just because the pentagon shape was not considered an official djinn deterrent did not mean that it wouldn’t work.

And so it must be with all the other things, Loring thought. Iron, steel, salt, silver—the list was endless. She would have to try everything and see what worked, what might elicit a response from Kirst. And if nothing happened? If Kirst had no reaction whatsoever? Could she risk believing without proof that the djinn was gone? Or might it have grown stronger and cleverer during all its years of enforced captivity?

A lump of anxiety rose in her throat. She glanced at her hand and discovered it was shaking. Not nerves—too much coffee. She got up and left the fat lady with a few words of encouragement, then she made her way back to her car.

Tomorrow, she told herself, tomorrow you’ll be there. Tomorrow you’ll know. And by then, if the djinn was operating at capacity, everyone at Blackbone would know something was up. They might—and this she found heartening—they might be ready to listen.

“Frisco’s not really my kind of town,” said Corporal Chilton. “What about L.A.? I’ve got girls down there. My mother lives there.”

“L.A. then. What’ve you got?” Hopkins closed the door to his office. Chilton sat down, held up a sheet of neat typescript, and read it like a proclamation.

“The skinny on Major David Gilman, formerly Lieutenant Colonel David Gilman, commanding Second Battalion of the Third Division under Major General Benton Malkin, Seventh Army, under Lieutenant General Alexander M. Patch. On fifteen August 1944, Lieutenant Colonel Gilman’s unit landed on the Mediterranean coast of France as part of the southern invasion force following D-day, assigned to keep the Germans in the south from linking up with units in the north and opposing the Normandy operation. They set up a line of communications along the Mediterranean ports, then swept north and in mid-September hooked up with the Allies near Dijon. They were involved in several skirmishes and distinguished themselves in a manner befitting—”

“Stop glamorizing,” said Hopkins.

“Thought you’d want the flavor, sir.”

“Never mind the flavor. Get to the meat.”

“Yes, sir. Basically, it happened like this...” From here on Chilton stopped reading and used his report only as a referral. “Somewhere in mid- to northern France, Gilman was informed by General Malkin that a captured German officer had revealed the following piece of intelligence—a certain area designated Window Hill had recently been evacuated by the Germans. Malkin wanted Gilman to move his battalion up and take the hill. Gilman was reluctant to do it, pleading for time to soften up the area with artillery then send in a recon patrol. Malkin was impatient and ordered him to go in at once. Gilman protested that they were relying on the word of a prisoner, and he didn’t want to risk casualties without a chance to reconnoiter.”

Hopkins sat back, seeing the confrontation in his mind’s eye: pushy light colonel versus tough general. He had heard about Malkin—no one to trifle with. He fished out his cigarettes, offered one to Chilton. “Go on,” he said.

“Malkin accused Gilman of disobeying a direct order and relieved him of command. The exec was placed in charge and ordered to take the men in. Malkin chewed Gilman out and threatened to court-martial him. Second Battalion took off for Window Hill.”

Hopkins chuckled, enjoying this.

“Then the report came in. Gilman’s unit had been suckered into a trap. The entire battalion was annihilated. No survivors.”

“Wow,” said Hopkins.

Chilton went on spinning his tale, oblivious to the weight of the events he was recounting. “Gilman became an embarrassment. General Malkin refused to admit he was at fault for not questioning the word of a prisoner more closely. He met privately with Gilman—notes were taken by the general’s aide and later transcribed by a clerk—”

“I was wondering how you got all this,” Hopkins snorted. “The network of brother clerks.”

“Yes, sir.” Chilton flashed a smile, then continued. “Anyway, the general told Gilman that he would deny ever having discussed softening up Window Hill, so there would be no point in Gilman relying on that to back up his own actions. It came down to this—no one would believe a light colonel over a two-star general. Then he said he would forget about the court-martial if Gilman would quietly allow himself to be transferred out of Europe.” Chilton paused, grinning.

“What happened?”

“Gilman punched him out.”

“He punched a general?”

“He fucking well did, sir. Flattened him.”

Hopkins whistled.

“Malkin threw Gilman into detention for a week. But he must have realized he could never court-martial Gilman for the punch without the other crap coming out. So he busted him a grade, shipped him home, and had him transferred here.”