Crossword (24 page)

At first light, Larry resumed his pilgrimage, joining the others
who trod the highway. He had tried to wash his hands and face before he ate
last night but he was sure he still looked rather grubby. The almost equally
dirty appearance of most of the other travelers gave him some solace and
confidence that he did not stand out, a feeling that was reinforced by the
total lack of interest from the occasional German patrols that passed him,
whether on foot or in assorted military vehicles. However, he held no misguided
thoughts about what his fate would be if he were discovered. Neither the
soldier, the farmer or the peasant would welcome him as the advance guard of a
conquering army; rather, it was more likely that he would be seen as the cause
of all of the deprivation and defeats they had suffered. It would be only a
question of how and when he died.

These morbid thoughts segued naturally into ruminations
about his own disease and impending death.
There are so many ways to die. I
wonder if there are as many ways to live.
He covered the next several miles
thinking about death. Death by cancer. Death by radiation poisoning. Impaled on
the pitchfork of a vengeance seeking farmer. The interrogation and slow death
of the Gestapo. Variations of each swam through his head, their ripples
spawning innumerable permutations until suddenly, his mind filled with the
image of a Gestapo guard dressed in the overalls of a country farmer who was
about to use a scythe to amputate his fingers. He hauled up short and stopped.
The danger of this kind of thinking, a whirlpool that sucked you down into
despair and led your mind astray into a world of waking dreams, had been
impressed on him during his training and a sudden clarion warning had sounded,
causing the abrupt halt. He stood at the edge of a small village, panting,
sweat appearing on his forehead. Several passersby turned his way, inquiring
looks on their faces. Recovering quickly, he smiled sheepishly, pointed to his
head and shrugged his shoulders.
Don't mind me. Just daydreaming. I'm OK.
Larry played the simpleton, an itinerant worker walking to the big city to look
for work. Still grinning and shaking his head he walked off quickly, fighting
the urge to look back, lest it should make any of the townspeople suspicious
enough to alert the authorities. He kept his head down and picked up the pace,
not slowing down until the village was several miles behind. Only when he was
relatively alone on the road with only occasional people passing by did he slow
his gait to a speed that was more sustainable. There was little sun this day,
but it was not the bleakness of the sky that caused the cheerlessness in those
he saw along the way, it was the despondency of people who, for the second time
in not much more than twenty five years, knew that they would have to swallow
the bitter liquor of defeat.

The young American also knew what lay ahead for him and it
did nothing to buoy his spirits, for the swill that awaited him was a draft
from the river Styx, and so he walked on, his shadow preceding him, growing in
length as the sun behind him declined in the sky.

CARATE BRIANZA, 25 KILOMETERS NORTH OF MILAN, ITALY.

General Heinrich Schroeder was worried and that was unusual
for him. Sitting erect in the back seat of his staff car, lost in thought and
oblivious to the beauty of the northern Italian countryside, his hands
repeatedly clenching and unclenching as he ruminated on the various dangers and
unknown possibilities on which rested the fate of the young woman whose safety
had now become his prime responsibility. As a commanding officer it was not
unusual that he had to await the outcome of some offensive, but in all of those
situations he had been intimately involved in planning and was able to maintain
contact with those in the field. Unexpected events were transmitted to his
staff and he could make adjustments based on information from various sources;
it was a real-time chess game and he felt secure in his knowledge of the moves.
An agent had been sent into hostile territory, an American agent at that, and
Schroeder had had only marginal input into the operational plans. He held a
deep seated and genuine conviction that the plutonium should not fall into the
hands of those remaining in power in the Third Reich, a shrinking group of
ideologues led by a demented little man full of venom and hate. All of the
military men now realized that the war was over and there would be no benefit
to the nation or its people in any desperate attempts to go down to certain
defeat taking as many lives with them as was possible. Sadly, although many in
the military had been in favor of the war, operations had now shifted to the
politicos, and the desperation of impending defeat had winnowed those of sound
judgment, leaving only the chaff.

As strong as his belief in the morality of what he had set
in motion, Heinrich was honest enough to admit to himself that the welfare of
Maria ranked a closely contested second in the very short list of what he
wanted to accomplish before he died. "Perhaps," he thought, "she
is the only thing of importance now. To hell with all the others and to hell
with this world gone mad. What do I care for them? I want only to see her
safely removed from the maelstrom that is brewing as this cursed war collapses
under it's own weight." He was lost in his own reverie and didn't notice
that the car had slowed almost to a stop.

"General." No answer. "General!"
Schroeder jerked to alertness. "What should I do?" His aide turned in
his seat to face him. Ignoring him, Heinrich quickly refocused and assessed the
situation. Ahead, a German troop truck was parked across the road blocking
passage, and ten meters in front of it stood four soldiers, two on each side of
the road, automatic rifles slung over their shoulders but, he noticed, held at
the ready. A lieutenant, hands held behind him, slowly, almost absent mindedly
rocked back and forth on his heels next to the soldiers on the driver's side.
Off to the side, beyond the truck on the grassy area next to the road he could
see the front end of a staff car, the small Nazi flag hanging limply from the
one fender that was visible.

"Pull up alongside him. I'll talk. The Americans may
have advanced farther than we thought possible in such a short time." His
driver pulled the car between the soldiers and Heinrich lowered his window as
the lieutenant approached.

The young officer saluted and bent forward ever so slightly
as he spoke. "General Schroeder?"

"Yes. That's me. What is going on lieutenant?"

"I am afraid you are under arrest. Please come with
me."

"That's preposterous! On whose orders?" The two
soldiers had moved up to the car, flanking the lieutenant, who opened the door
of Schroeder's staff car as he continued. "The command comes from the
Führer himself."

Who betrayed me? And why now?
Momentarily detached
from the world, he tried to sort out the possibilities, staring unfocused as
the uniformed man in front of him took several steps backward, the soldiers
closing ranks and raising the muzzles of their Mauser rifles. He looked up in
time to see the muzzle flashes, the silent scream "Maria" echoing in
his mind as he was thrown back into the car by a dozen rounds of high velocity
lead impacting his body and tearing a destructive swath through flesh and bone.
The lieutenant walked to the other side of the car and opened the rear door.
The body of General Heinrich Schroeder lay sprawled in the back, partially on
the seat with his right arm and leg hanging down onto the floor boards, blood
already oozing from multiple wounds. His head lay close to the door, his cap on
the floor nearby. The officer removed his side arm from its holster, reached in
and fired a single shot to the head, a final indignity to a man who had never
disgraced his uniform or his country.

The driver, who by now had soiled his pants and was visibly
shaking, was ordered out of the car. "You have now been reassigned. These
men will accompany you to your new unit." Still tremulous, but with the
thought that life would continue for him, he exited the car and began walking
towards the truck with the infantry men on either side and the lieutenant a few
steps behind. Unlike Schroeder, the driver neither saw a muzzle flash, nor
heard any retort since the bullet was traveling faster than sound when it
ripped through his head and threw him face down in the dusty road on the
outskirts of a charming northern Italian town.

The soldiers returned to the truck, pausing momentarily to
salute a somber figure who had emerged from the staff car and strode towards
the spot where the driver's body lay in the dirt, the blood forming a circular
pool around his head. The lone figure surveyed the scene —— the
lieutenant standing almost motionless over the body, the car immediately behind
him, its rear door open and one polished boot protruding from a bullet ridden
vehicle. All motionless in the afternoon on a country road. He paused in front
of the youthful officer who still stared at the corpse at his feet, seemingly
oblivious to his surroundings, lost in thoughts unknown. After a few seconds he
became aware of the person next to him and snapped to attention. "General
Gerhard, what would you like us to do now? Shall we remove the bodies and
dispose of the car?"

"There is paint in the trunk of my car. Have your men
paint partisan slogans on Schroeder's car, then return to your emplacement."

"Yes, General."

"I have made my delicate inquiries."

"Beg your pardon, sir?"

"Nothing. Get it done quickly." He walked
hurriedly back to his staff car, his mind already on the next move.

Despite his best efforts, Larry's mind continued to wander more and
more as he continued his trek, his distracted appearance and often unfocused
eyes acting as a useful barrier, keeping away the occasional friendly fellow
travelers as well as the curious. Through no conscious effort he maintained a
detached, eccentric look, sufficient to keep others at bay, but not peculiar
enough to attract undue attention. In this near fugue state, a ragged and dirty
wanderer along the roads of southern Germany, he made his way towards Munich.
Although he was often lost to the world, his strength of purpose and
determination kept bringing him back and he remained steadfast to his plan, the
tradecraft learned in training coming to the fore, keeping him safe and helping
him find shelter at night. Food and water were the greatest problems, the
latter for the most part a temporary problem, a question of doing without for a
time, enduring thirst until a source could be found or a few hurried pulls on
an unattended well pump provided relief; but the former was an emptiness that
gnawed at him, more immediate even than the disease he knew was consuming him.

As he plodded along, a rhythm to his gait that he fine-tuned
to provide the optimal use of his dwindling strength, he would sometimes
refocus his mind, the drifting thoughts that mirrored his outward bemused
appearance coalescing and assuming purpose. At these times he sometimes thought
about the mission —— where he needed to go, his revised route, the
layout of Munich that he had memorized from weeks of studying maps, the
operational plans once he arrived at Maria's apartment, and their exit route.
In addition he ran through contingencies for every likelihood he could think
of, but all told he spent little time on any of this; his training had been intense
and the operation was as close as possible to being hardwired into his brain so
it took very little to recall all aspects. Even the changes made necessary by
the loss of the bike and the dispatch of one of Hitler's own had little effect
on what was now an innate knowledge of what had to be done and how.

Larry's thoughts waxed philosophical. The specter of death
that loomed before him dispelled most of the inconsequential concerns on which
we spend so much of our mental energy. Broader issues —— life,
death, the insensate hurling of one country's youth against those of another,
leading to pitiless death and carnage —— all of these were his
highway companions as were the more personal thoughts, thoughts of his own
death, how he would face it, the manner of his final exit. It was these latter
considerations that insinuated themselves into his consciousness and hung about
like nagging consorts, uninvited but relentless in their cries for attention.
And so he walked on, his mind occupied with its many visitors and scarcely
aware of the journey itself, the distance to Munich shrinking until late one
day, just as he was surveying the landscape for a place to bed down, he came
upon a sign indicating Germering five kilometers away, and he knew that he was
approaching the outskirts of Munich.

A relay tripped in his head and Larry Sabatini, OSS field
agent, took over, all other thoughts and voices that had made incursions into
his mind summarily banished to deeper, silent places, to lay dormant and mute
for the time being. As a wanderer of country highways it was not too difficult
to blend in with the farmers, field hands and other displaced souls who had
joined him each day during his journey, and the outward appearance of a
simpleton served to deflect questions about why someone of his age was not in
the military. It would be more difficult in a major city. He needed to get
cleaned up, make himself look more presentable and get a few calories in him.
The trick was to enter the city very early when people were hurrying to their
jobs or to make the rounds of stores to see what food might be obtained from
the dwindling supplies that reached the population, a time when everyone was
focused on themselves and had little time to ruminate about strangers.
Alternatively, an early evening arrival, when most citizens just wanted to
hurry home and shut out the reality that confronted them on the streets and in
the empty stores, would also provide him with a degree of cover. In either
case, a strong stride and a purposeful gait with no hesitation would be
necessary. Morning or evening, the decision would have to wait until he
completed his preparations.