Iron to Iron (Wolf by Wolf) (9 page)

“Scheisse!”
Luka swept past his old table in a huff, dashing both his teacup and his rice bowl to the floor and smashing through the remnants. Perhaps the exit was bit too dramatic, but Katsuo didn’t seem to notice. The victor was smiling like a cat at a fish market: happy, happy as he brought the first few udon noodles to his lips.

Slurp away, my foe
. Luka struggled to hold back his own smile as he ducked into the corridor, stood with his back to the wall in breathless anticipation.

He’d done it.

They’d
done it.

“Katsuo wolfed down the whole thing,” Adele whispered when she emerged into the hall a few minutes later. “Congratulations, Double Victor Löwe.”

“Don’t jinx me,” Luka teased.

But her eyes just flinted, blazed. “Soon.”

Stomach flu. That’s how the official reports labeled Victor Tsuda Katsuo’s sudden onset of vomiting. To his credit, the Japanese victor tried to get back on his bike as the
Kaiten
drew into port, but dry heaves kept wracking his body with a violence that almost made Luka feel guilty.

Almost.

Today—April 2, 1955—it was hard to feel anything but triumphant. Luka’s name was first on the scoreboard, his lifelong dream just a day’s drive away. His tire pressure was full, and his engine ran flawlessly. The spring sun had nowhere to hide. Cherry blossoms covered trees and roads alike—strewn across the pavement in the fashion of confetti, as if nature itself were cheering him on.

This was, for all intents and purposes, a victory lap. Takeo, Iwao, Hans Muller, and the other middlemen didn’t even try to maneuver for first. Their fight was with each other now, determining third, fourth, fifth. (As if it mattered!) The few cataclysmic racers left were just happy to reach the finish line. Most of them weren’t really
racing
anymore, stopping for snacks and nature’s call and any other minor discomfort.

Luka kept driving forward—hour after hour—until all the others fell away. Well, not
all
the others. Adele—his equal, his match—rode by his side. Once they got to the outskirts of Tokyo, he’d have to pull out all the stops, lose her to the horizon like the others. Crossing the finish line at the Imperial Palace was something Luka had to do alone.

As much as Luka was racing to this end, he also dreaded it. Adele had only been in his life for… what? Three weeks? Now the thought of spending an entire year apart loomed. Twelve months of waiting, fifty-two weeks without her wit, 365 days without her touch. Luka didn’t even want to count the hours.

But the hours were counting down regardless. He and Adele had spent five and a half on the road already—driving out of the morning, past lunch, through Osaka’s fervent crowds, back into a blossoming countryside. It was a long, wonderful stretch of nothing. No Reichssender cameras, no
Sieg heil
s, no other racers. Just Luka and Adele and the road.

Adele spurred her Zündapp forward. The gestures of her free hand told Luka she meant to pull over, take a break.
Would he join her for one last moment together?
Would he park his motorcycle next to hers, under the whisper and wave of the cherry trees?

As if these were even questions…

Luka’s healing hand twinged as he pumped the brakes, guided his bike off the road into drifts of cherry blossoms at the end of their short life cycle. Both engines cut off. Luka dismounted his bike and removed his helmet, savoring the scene. Falling flowers and a sky scrubbed the purest blue—sights he’d never slowed enough to see before.

Even in this landscape, Adele Valerie Wolfe stood out. Luka’s eyes went straight to her: the stretch of her calves, the shine of her hair as she removed her helmet, the faintest hint of curves beneath her riding gear.

How had he ever seen Felix there? It seemed impossible now that Adele was anything other than herself: inimitable fräulein. A girl worth waiting for.

Adele’s eyes met his. A smile burst from her lips.

Luka grinned back. “You wanted to stop and smell the sakura?”

“They are pretty.” She reached to an overhanging bough, snapped off the nearest blossom, and sniffed it. “Not much of a smell, though.”

The petals brushed her lips, and Luka couldn’t care less what it did or didn’t smell like. Would he ever stop wanting to kiss her?

Adele blew at the petals, letting them join the blossoms at her feet. “You got any of that jerky left? All I have are protein bars.”

He did. Luka turned and unbuckled the closest pannier. Inside was a hasty mess of food and camping equipment. It’d take a bit of rummaging to find the jerky.…

“I could use a little extra fuel before Tokyo,” Adele was saying.

Tokyo.
The end he both desired and feared was close. In less than four hours Luka would be rolling through the Imperial Palace gate, camera lenses catching his triumphant image, sending it half a world over, so Kurt Löwe could see his son as he was: double victor. Hero of the Third Reich. Tough as leather, hard as steel. Worthy.

The crowd in Luka’s imagination roared in time to the footsteps behind him:
Sieg heil! Sieg heil! Sieg—

CRACK!

Everything went sharp. Pain bright. Luka’s world turned sideways. Reality and dream alike, falling, falling. Pink sky, blue blossoms, black leather, black…

BLACK.

When Luka’s eyes fluttered open, all black was gone. The pink was still there, smearing into blue. Nothing was sharp anymore. His thoughts scattered and blurred and the sun was so
verdammt
bright! Beaming through his retinas, into his head, exploding out the back of his skull, leaving an exit wound that felt roughly the size of an apple.

His hand migrated to the pain, not stopping soon enough. The back of his skull was wet, screaming against his touch. Luka screamed back, obscenities even
he
was usually loathe to say.

A new color: red. Blood covered his fingertips.

He’d been attacked.

They’d
been attacked.

Luka tried to stand, but his entire body revolted, stomach first. He found himself on his hands and knees: acid scraping his throat, breakfast splattering his knuckles.

Adele! Where is Adele?
He swung his throbbing head to the side, expecting to see her splayed out in the blossoms, sticky with blood of her own.

She wasn’t there.

Luka looked to the other side, his vision barely keeping up.

No Adele.

He was about to call out when he realized what he was looking at: scores upon scores of crushed cherry blossoms formed a path back to the road. A path the exact width of a Zündapp’s tire. Adele’s motorcycle had disappeared, too.…

“Adele,” Luka croaked, but there was no one to hear him. He crouched over sticky petals, trying not to vomit again. Adele’s absence—what it meant—was all around. Luka’s skull flinched and cracked, trying not to believe the undeniable truth.

No one’s untouchable.

He’d been played.

Kisses, cigarettes, brown jacket confessions… Adele had found Luka’s every string, plucked him like a fiddle. She’d known parts of him he’d never shared with anyone, and now she was gone.

To make matters worse, the sun was lower than he’d last seen it. Low enough to tell Luka that his ten-minute lead was as busted as the back of his head. Luka’s 1955 Axis Tour was over, and he was not the victor of victors. He was not tough or hard or worthy.

Just bleeding.

A breeze rattled the branches. It sounded like his father’s sneer:
See? Weak.

For a long time Luka sat, listening to creaking bark, waiting for the world to stop spinning. There were plenty of expletives he wanted to voice, but couldn’t. This was a hurt beyond words. Beyond pain, even. His head throbbed, but all he could feel was the crater in his chest. Luka’s heart wasn’t broken. No—it had been carved out, stolen. His whole being gaped with its absence.

He needed a cigarette.

The last pack with the last few smokes—the ones he’d been saving for the finish line—was still squirreled away in his pannier. Luka dug it out and tapped it against his wrist. Only one cigarette tumbled out. Strange…

It wasn’t a cigarette. Luka realized, but a piece of paper that had been scrolled tight. His fingers trembled when he unrolled it, discovered the words written within:

Luka stared at the script. His hands shook, harder and harder, until the letters blurred together and the paper tumbled into blood-stained blossoms.

He didn’t bother picking it up.

There was only one thing on Luka’s mind as he limped into Tokyo: revenge. He’d fallen nearly two hours behind his projected time, and the Axis Tour crowds were already starting to disperse into the neon-lit night. The finish line—at least—was still waiting for him. It was a quiet crossing, no wild cheers or cameras flashing. Luka almost preferred it that way. He kept his helmet on as he parked his bike. No need to go displaying his head wound for the Reichssender.… If they found out what happened beneath those cherry trees, his reputation would never recover.

Tricked by a fräulein, you soft-hearted dummkopf.

It wouldn’t happen again. It couldn’t.

He was heartless now.

“Victor Löwe!” It was a reporter, shouting. “Victor Löwe! We have some questions!”

But Luka had no answers for them. He kept his lips sealed until the Reichssender staff took his silence for what it was: sore loser syndrome. Luka’s name wasn’t
quite
last on the final scoreboard, but rankings meant nothing now. The only spot that mattered was claimed. Felix’s name had already been erased, replaced by the Wolfe’s true colors.

Luka stared at the numbers. At the name he refused to let himself say.

I didn’t enter the race to lose
. Wasn’t this what the fräulein had told him at the beginning of their journey? Before she lulled Luka into a false security, striking when he least expected it. The fräulein hadn’t just used Luka’s sabotage tactics, she’d mastered them.

She’d mastered them and won.

The Imperial Palace was an ideal place to lick one’s wounds, full of baths, beds, winding paths through manicured gardens.… Emperor Hirohito’s staff went out of their way to make sure the Axis Tour racers were well cared for, even if they weren’t invited to the postrace festivities. Luka knew from years past that only the
worthy
were welcome at the awards ceremony; only the victor was honored at the Victor’s Ball.

It stung, the closeness and distance of everything. If Luka stood by the window of his guest quarters and looked out, he could see the party’s lights, brimming gold against the night. Shadows of guests—high-ranking National Socialist officials and Tokyo’s elite—flitted across the panes, with
her
somewhere among them. Eyes twinkling, laughing the laugh that once made Luka feel so full.

Is this all there is?

Is… Is…

He could hear it. The sound throbbed at the back of his gauze-bound head—freed from both imagination and memory. Some masochistic impulse had driven Luka to switch on the television, where the ball was being aired live. Most of the announcers were Japanese, but he’d managed to find a German-language station, its announcers all aflutter with Herr Wolfe actually being Fräulein Wolfe.

“Remarkable,” one of them said. “It’s simply remarkable, isn’t it? That Adele managed to beat out both Victor Tsuda and Victor Löwe? By more than
two
hours, I might add. It’s little wonder the Führer decided to pardon her rule-bending. She’s fast on her way to becoming the Reich’s sweetheart.”

When Luka looked back to the screen, he saw that the cameras had panned to the new victor. She looked a completely different person—draped in a
homongi
kimono, lips made full with color. Her curtained bangs had been twisted, pinned back into a softer style. The ballroom lights lit her wintry features, making them glow.

“Breathtaking!!” an announcer gushed. “Don’t you think?”

Luka certainly couldn’t breathe. His chest was frozen and on fire, gaping and closed. He wanted to tear it open, get all of this hollowness
out
.

That laugh again… technically it was coming from the television, but the sound reverberated, through the window, around Luka’s head. The fräulein stood by the Führer’s side, surrounded by SS security—laughing at something he’d said.

Adolf Hitler seemed just as taken with
her
as the Reichssender announcers. His eyes had stayed on her the entire evening—through cocktails and toasts and a lavish dinner. Now the pair hovered at the edge of the dance floor.

As vivacious as he was during his
Chancellery Chat
s, the Führer was the very definition of antiparty. Luka supposed that playing hermit for nearly three years would turn anyone into a wallflower.

The fräulein’s magic seemed to be working on Adolf Hitler, too. He laughed along with her, was still laughing when he extended his hand and asked, “May I have this dance, Fräulein Wolfe?”

The ballroom and the announcers gave a collective gasp as the victor accepted the Führer’s arm and stepped onto the dance floor. They swept along under bright lights: kimono shimmering, Adolf Hitler’s hand pressing her waist. It was a magnificent dance, full of twirls and twists and notes that surged against Luka’s skull. When it came to a close, the fräulein curtsied, smiling as she did. Painted lips parted to show white-point canines beneath.

Sweetheart, indeed.

Bile scraped up Luka’s throat again, tickling the edges of his molars. He didn’t swallow it back.
This
was the taste he had to remember, not some sultry minx kisses.
This
was the feeling he had to cling to in the weeks and months to come.

Hate made perfect training fuel, and he had a lot of training ahead. Iron called to iron, and there was always something more. Fräulein would enter next year’s Axis Tour, go for a Double Cross of her own. When she did, Luka would be ready.

He’d be
more
than ready.

Nineteen fifty-six was going to be Luka Löwe’s year.