Iron to Iron (Wolf by Wolf) (4 page)

“I’m guessing this didn’t stop you,” Luka said.

“Ever wonder what it’s like to be a female lemming?” She didn’t wait for his answer. “If you aren’t the daughter of an elite party member, when you turn eighteen you have only two options: find a strapping lad to marry and make babies with or get assigned to the Lebensborn, where you pump out babies sans wedding ring and schnitzel smashing.

“Husband, children, a life shackled to the kitchen… I don’t want any of that. Never did.” Adele let out a breath, watched its smoke curl into shafts of lamplight. “Motorcycle racing is a different story. Pulling out onto the road, feeling the asphalt rush beneath you, the adrenaline coursing everywhere… it’s not just in my blood. It’s
life
.”

Luka knew what she meant. There was something about racing that pulled him onto his Zündapp again and again. It was the opposite of road jitters… a road
high
. Adrenaline at its purest. Tastes of fullness that only made the emptiness that followed more aching.

Life! Life! Is this all there is?

“What do your brothers think about you racing?”

“Felix has always supported me. He’s let me use his papers ever since we were ten. Martin’s dead,” Adele said the last part quickly. “Broke his neck on the track four years ago.”

The night suddenly felt a shade darker. “I’m sorry,” Luka said. (And he was.)

“Life’s short.” Ashes speckled the sand as Adele tapped her cigarette. “It’s getting shorter every day. I’m not going to waste mine fulfilling someone else’s idea of who I should be. That’s why I entered the Axis Tour. I want people to remember my name.”

It doesn’t help,
Luka wanted to tell her.
Even when they’re screaming it at the top of their lungs
.

“But you’re racing as Felix Wolfe,” he pointed out.

“Ever heard of Hanna Reitsch?”

“Who hasn’t?” The aviatrix—with her waspish waist, fair features, and stellar flight record—had been a propaganda centerpiece for as long as Luka could remember. Goebbels gobbled her up, as did the rest of the Reich. “I met her once. We were giving interviews at the Ministry of Propaganda at the same time. She was nice.”

“Hanna Reitsch was so gifted at flying that the Führer himself awarded her an Iron Cross. If Fräulein Reitsch can remain unwed and flying, then there’s hope that I can be unwed and racing. If I prove I’m the best, they won’t care I’m a girl.”

“And by proving you’re the best, you mean winning?” Luka asked.

“I didn’t enter the race to lose.”

At least she was honest.

“There our interests diverge.” As they always did with these alliances. Nothing lasted forever, especially when it came to Axis Tour loyalties. Luka wasn’t too worried. Adele knew her secret was unsafe with him if she tried anything underhanded.

“After we deal with Katsuo we’ll part ways,” he promised.

“Why do you need the Double Cross so badly?” Adele asked. “You already won the Axis Tour. You have everything.”

He had everything, and it was too much. It was nothing at all.

Adele had so many words… so many
reasons
. And Luka? His Iron Cross hung heavy around his throat, and he struggled to even understand this hunger inside of him, much less verbalize it. He didn’t
need
to win. Not the way this girl did. His previous victory assured him his choice of Lebensraum assignment. No lottery would force Luka to move to the never-thawing tundra of the Muscovy territories or to this godforsaken sandbox.

“There’s always something more,” he told her.

Adele was silent after that, nursing the last of her cigarette, staring up at stars or down at ashes. Luka made a study of her face in the lamplight. Striking cheekbones, comet-trail eyebrows, something beneath that was just as strong, far more blazing.

Life. Oomph.
She was full of it.

He was more than fascinated.

He was hooked.

They rode forth with the dawn. Warriors on steeds of steel, galloping across a land of endless dust. This was the part of the tour where Luka usually started reciting the alphabet backward in his head, so he wouldn’t crash from sheer boredom. Sure, the sight of the glistening Mediterranean to his left was pretty, and sure, the Sahara desert was nice, too, but there was only so much water and sand you could see before wanting a change of scenery.

This year there was no need for
Z, Y, X, W.…
Luka had plenty to keep his mind off the thirst that jabbed at his throat between fuel stops. Adele kept snagging his eye, and not just because her rear end was nice.

Most people didn’t talk to Luka Löwe the way this fräulein did: brass-tack sharp and to the point. Most people didn’t listen to him the way she did either. Usually they shouted over him (
Sieg heil!
) or wanted him to say something different. (“Let’s shoot that interview again. A bit less cursing in front of the cameras, please, Victor Löwe!”)

Adele listened as if she actually cared what he had to say.

It was refreshing.

Verdammt
refreshing.

When Adele asked for cigarettes the next two nights, Luka obliged, because he wanted to keep talking. Their conversation wound this way and that, meandering like a drunk booted out of a bierstube. It skirted motorcycle parts (as a mechanic’s daughter, Adele knew far more about the click-and-clack innards of Zündapps than Luka), before landing on who their favorite Reichssender staff member was. (They both appreciated Fritz Naumann, a cameraman with wire glasses, and ever-wirier hair, who insisted interviews be kept as short as possible. “Film is precious,” he’d say when other Reichssender staff fussed at him. “Do you want to radio Goebbels saying you ran out just as they reached the finish line?”) Then they lamented the sad state of their on-the-road meal options: dried chicken/dried beef/dried cardboard.

“Give me some
grüne Sosse
with beef brisket and boiled potatoes.” Adele fluttered her eyelids with phantom taste bud delight. “And a glass of
Ebbelwoi
to wash it all down. Real food.”

“I have a theory that they provide such flavor-leached tack to make us go faster. Keeps us motivated to get to the checkpoint meals,” Luka reasoned.

Adele laughed, a real, true sound that splashed into the canvas of stars above them. It wasn’t until Luka heard it that he realized how much his life had lacked the noise.

“There’s always the hunter-gatherer option. I saw Katsuo fishing out here last year.” Luka nodded toward the ocean. “I have no idea if he caught anything. Or how he cooked it.”

Adele shuddered. “I hate fish. All those slippery, slimy scales. Dead eyes just bulging out at you. They just taste like ocean vomit.”

It was Luka’s turn to laugh. He was surprised at how easily it slipped out. “You wouldn’t fit in well in Hamburg. We love our fish. You can’t pick up a fork without tripping over something of the piscine persuasion.”

“I’ll take the flavorless mystery meat, thanks.” Adele tossed her third cigarette into the sand. It blinked out. She nudged the discarded butts with her boot. “I see why you smoke these things. They have a certain draw, don’t they? Once you get past the initial taste.”

Luka’s cigarette was down to finger-burning length as well. He followed suit, very briefly considering a fourth before deciding he needed to slow down.
They
needed to slow down. At the rate they were smoking, his stash would be depleted before Shanghai, and his road jitters were always at their worst on the last leg.

“I’m surprised you like them so much,” Luka said.

“You’re surprised I tried them at all,” the fräulein countered. “You shouldn’t be. Fish affinities aside, you and I aren’t so different.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Luka waited for Adele to elaborate, but she didn’t. Their conversation was winding down, and just as well, since the night was drawing long.

“We need to get up early tomorrow to make the push to Cairo,” he told her. “Katsuo will probably be off at first light.”

“You still want to let Katsuo stay in first?” she asked as Luka stood, stretching the affronted muscles of his wrists and rear.

“The plan hasn’t changed, Adele.”

“Felix,” she corrected him. “I’m Felix at the checkpoint.”

“We’re not there yet, Adeleadeleadele.” The name was a good one, as far as rhythms went. It flowed naturally into itself, tumbling off Luka’s tongue like a frantic lemming herd. “Goodnight, Adeleadeleadele.”

She laughed again.

A smile crept its way onto Luka’s face as he ducked inside his tent.

March 17, 1955. Cairo came.

Cairo went. March 18, 1955.

The desert continued, all flat. Luka found himself racing not just to keep up with Katsuo and stay cumulatively ahead of Yokuto, but also to get to the evening, when he could exhale words and smoke and feel his insides lift in a way that wasn’t tangled with adrenaline or nicotine.

He didn’t smoke as much the next night. This was the Valley of Thirst—the stretch of race that cut through desert so deserted it had no wells to refresh their canteens. Rationing sips of water was necessary in this two-day stretch, and too much smoke scratching Luka’s throat always made him thirsty. Two cigarettes was plenty, but Luka stayed up talking long after the embers went out. He thought (feared?) they might run out of things to talk about, but the silences between them didn’t stand a chance. Adele shot them down with rapid-fire questions. Some importantly strategic: “Will you help me guard the washroom in Baghdad while I get this road gunk off?” “Does the racing path always have so many potholes?” Others not so much: “Do you know what that star is called?” “Got any more cigarettes?” “What’s your middle name?”

Hers: Valerie. Pretty. Fitting, seamless, into the rest of her. Adele Valerie Wolfe.

His: Wotan. Odd. Antiquated. The name of a grandfather who had probably inherited it from his grandfather before that. When Adele heard it, she laughed so hard that a piece of dried chicken/beef/cardboard got stuck in her throat and Luka had to smack her on the back until the offending meat slipped out.

Adele kept laughing until she cried. “Wotan?”

“You laugh now,” Luka told her. All too aware that he was sitting next to her, close, close. Shoulders touching. This slight contact shot through him with all the heat of the desert day. “Just wait. It will make a surging comeback in baby names once I become double victor.”

“A world full of little Wotans. God help us.”

“Shhh!” Luka held his hand up.

Adele’s laughter evaporated. The light on her face went hard, rage bright. A change so fast, so jarring, that Luka’s breath rattled his throat. “Don’t you
shhh
me—”

“No,” he said, trying to keep his voice low as he reached for his Luger. “Listen.”

Both Luka and Adele stared into the desert.

All was dark. All was silent. The Mediterranean was gone, along with its
hush, hushing
waves. There was no
shift-slide
of sand that meant footsteps. Had Luka’s mind been playing tricks on him? He could’ve sworn he heard movement.…

After several minutes Adele stated the obvious. “I don’t hear anything.”

They were still shoulder to shoulder. An odd pairing, if anyone was eavesdropping. Luka moved away, even though he wanted to do anything but. (Amazing, how such a small point of contact could pin you so heavily. He really had to
pull
to get the brown jacket away from the black.)

“Could be nothing,” he said. “I’ll take the first watch tonight.”

Adele opened her mouth to respond when the desert screamed back. Luka leapt to his feet—pistol pointed forward. The darkness didn’t budge, but the yells kept coming from some distance on, in the direction of Yokuto’s or Katsuo’s camp.

No gunshots. No death shrieks. Just Japanese.

“Sounds like a sabotage gone south,” Adele said.

“You understand Japanese?”
That
could be helpful when it came to eavesdropping on Katsuo at checkpoints.

The fräulein shook her head. “Just the curse words. Whoever’s shouting is using a lot of them.”

Curse words: the most essential part of any foreign language learning experience.
Now that she mentioned it, Luka could hear a few
kuso
s and
baka ka
s being tossed around. He wondered if Takeo’s knife had slipped. Could be that it wasn’t one of Katsuo’s cronies at all. Maybe Kobi Yokuto had an ally no one had accounted for and was trying to sabotage his way into first.…

The shouts faded. The desert plunged back into silence.

Luka and Adele stood apart. Listening.

Swish, swish!
Darkness streaked in darkness, disappearing just as quickly as it came. Whoever initiated the attack had survived in enough shape to retreat, which was more than some racers from previous years could say (if the dead could talk). Luka kept his Luger high, in case the steps backtracked, but they didn’t. And they didn’t. And they didn’t.

Katsuo and his Zündapp were still intact, as Luka was disgruntled to discover the next morning. They were better than intact. They were
fast
. Last night’s events had thrust a bunch of stinging nettles beneath Katsuo’s
Arsch
. His driving was daring, leaving no room for mistakes. It was an unprecedented pace. The Japanese victor was trying to shave off a half day of driving (and the night’s camp along with it), risking life and limb to reach Baghdad by nightfall. Luka strained to keep pace through the constant screen of dust.

Kobi Yokuto—also intact—wove ahead of Luka, following Katsuo’s line of drive: in, out, around, about. Yokuto’s driving was jerky. There was a rage to his engines, one that built up and up as the afternoon pulled into the evening’s golden hours.

Just as Baghdad’s lights began blinking to life on the horizon, Yokuto made his move for first. His scarlet taillight swung to the side; his motorcycle bellowed up the road—faster, faster, furious—until he was even with Katsuo. The victor matched the frenzy of Yokuto’s engines, refusing to let the other Japanese racer pass. Rpm for rpm. Grit for grit. Luka could keep up, but three years of racing this track warned him not to.

Rash speed + rough road = road rash.

Yokuto’s taillight snapped up, as if the night had swooped down and snatched the bike in its talons. Luka clenched his brakes, swerving to the left as Yokuto’s rear wheel arced impossibly high. The pothole kept the Zündapp as a prize, hurling its rider forward in a bomb cloud of dust.

It wasn’t the worst wreck Luka had ever seen. Kobi Yokuto would live. If he was wearing his riding gear properly and landed just right, he might be spared the painful ooze of road rash.

Luka swung around the wreck, falling in line behind Katsuo’s taillight. The other victor had slowed; the wide road next to him begged to be seized—heavy with dusk and dust and the promise of
go, go, win and be worthy
.

Pride before the fall.
The proverb of lesser men, ones who had nothing to be proud of.
Stupidity
before the fall
were the words Luka lived by, and he had no intention of being stupid enough to repeat Yokuto’s fate. There were far smoother roads ahead, and so like any good predator, Luka Löwe would wait.