North Reich (44 page)

He had just come from an evening of talking with two of his lieutenants.
 
They had met at a fairly crowded restaurant that had served execrable food that, combined with poor service, would have made him angry if it wasn’t for the fact that plans were coming along.

      
The waitress had been a sullen and sweaty Negress and he was certain that the restaurant’s owners were Jews.
 
America truly was a mongrel country.
 
Not even in France, which he considered an ethnic sewer, had he seen so many diverse races and nationalities.
 
People who had been in America for generations had no memory of their forebears.
 
Nor were they concerned.
 
They had lost their heritage and that included a number of people with German last names.
 

      
Like a fool, he’d once had sex with a Negro woman in hopes that it would be exciting and savage and evocative of Africa.
 
Only after did he find that she was from Philadelphia and didn’t even know where Africa was.
 
Worse, she’d been a wretched fuck.
 

Many of the ethnic minorities he’d seen in America had fled from their homelands and in fear of the SS.
 
They hoped they’d found safety and sanctuary in the United States.
 
Too bad they were going to be bitterly disappointed when the Reich’s ultimate victory over the U.S. occurred.
 
They would provide more fuel for the furnaces, he thought happily.
 

      
As always, he drove carefully and slowly past his house to see if anything was obviously amiss.
 
He had put pieces of paper in the two doorways and looked to see if they had been disturbed.

      
Shit.
 
The one to the side door was missing.
 
Well, what did that mean?
 
Had someone gone snooping in his house or had the damned thing simply fallen out?

      
After checking for a surveillance vehicle and not finding one, he parked the car halfway down the street and walked to the house next door to his.
 
An older couple lived there and they went to sleep early and slept soundly.
 
They didn’t have a dog whose yipping might attract attention from inside.
 

Stahl entered his neighbor’s back yard, moved with the caution and skill that had kept him alive in Russia.
 
He paused at the chicken wire fence that separated the two yards.
 
He crouched and waited and saw a light flickering inside.
 
It was either a match or a small flashlight.
 
When the light moved to the front of the house, he jumped the fence and scurried to the side door.
 
It had been jimmied and was slightly ajar.

      
He already knew that it didn’t squeak, so he pushed it open and crawled inside.
 
He already regretted not having a gun on him, but that would have been disastrous if he’d been stopped or questioned for anything.

      
As quietly as possible, Stahl opened a kitchen drawer and took out a long-bladed knife he’d used the night before to cut up a cut of roast beef.
 
He could hear the intruder making small noises in his bedroom and that angered him.
 
He was now reasonably certain that it was a simple burglary and there was no one from the FBI to fear.
 
As he got closer to his bedroom doorway, he could hear a man’s voice humming.
 
It sounded like a black man and that further infuriated him.
 
That someone from an inferior race was rummaging through his personal possessions with his dirty black hands made him red with anger.

      
“Nigger!” he shouted and lunged at the small black man who jumped up, a look of shock and horror on his face.
 

      
Stahl plunged the knife into the burglar’s throat, jammed it and twisted it.
 
The black man tried to grab at the blade, but Stahl kept jabbing and sawing.
 
Blood gushed out, covering both men.
 
The burglar sagged to the floor and lay still.
 
Shaking violently, Stahl checked for a pulse and found none.
 
He took a number of deep breaths and steadied himself.

      
Now what?
 
Call the police?
 
No, absolutely not.
 
They might stumble onto something incriminating.
 
Or they might recognize him as someone missing from the embassy roster.
 
There hadn’t been time to disguise himself by growing a mustache or gaining weight or even dying his hair.
 
No, it was time to go.

      
First he went to the bathroom and cleaned the blood off his hands.
 
Then he emptied his closet of all his clothes and personal possessions.
 
There weren’t that many.

      
Next, he dragged the corpse into the closet.
 
He guessed the burglar’s age at about sixteen.
 
Too bad for him, he thought.
 
It was also too bad that the boy likely had a family who would miss him, and maybe he had friends who’d known what he was going to do this night and were waiting for him to bring loot that they could turn into cash.

      
Stahl showered quickly and changed into fresh clothes.
 
He packed everything he had into a suitcase.
 
This time he did stick his favorite Luger in his belt in case the boy’s friends showed up.
 
He took a wet towel and wiped fingerprints off everything he could think of.
 
Too bad there was nothing he could do about what looked like gallons of blood congealing darkly on the floor.

      
He took his possessions and put them in the trunk of the car.
 
He would leave quietly.
 
With only a little luck, it might be days before the body was discovered and that would likely only be because of the stench.
 
He’d closed the windows which might further delay discovery, although whoever finally came in would be in for an awful surprise.

      
He laughed harshly.
 
Who knew that niggers had so much blood?

      
“Out kind of late, aren’t you?”

      
Stahl wheeled at the sound of the voice.
 
It was a cop.
 
Without thinking, he pulled his pistol and fired twice.
 
Both bullets struck the man in the chest, killing him before his expression had a chance to register shock.

      
Stahl swore.
 
Despite all his training and combat experience, he had panicked.
 
Perhaps he could have talked or joked his way out.
 
After all, he lived there, didn’t he?
 
Damn it.
 
The shots had sounded like a cannon and lights were going on in the neighborhood.
 
He jumped into his car and drove away.
 
This time he kept himself under control. He kept the lights off and drove slowly.
 
He had shot a burglar and killed a cop.
 
The FBI would be involved very shortly and his picture would be all over the place.
 
He would have to find another place and it would have to be with his men where he could hide and not be recognized.
 

      
He pounded the steering wheel.
 
Damn it to hell, he raged.

Terry Romano had been given a new bomber and a new crew.
 
He’d also been sent to a totally new location, Buffalo, New York.
 
His primary job was to seek out and destroy German submarines known to be hunting in the Great Lakes.
 
A second chore was to destroy the nasty German E-boats that also prowled the waters of Lakes Erie and Ontario and threatened any invasion of Ontario by American forces.
 
He still wanted that fifth sub kill so he could call himself an ace, although the people he now worked with were impressed that he’d gotten four of the Hun bastards.
 
If he couldn’t get a sub, however, he’d be perfectly content with an E-boat.

      
After being shot down and rescued, he’d spent a couple of days in the hospital convincing the doctors that a crack on the skull was nothing to worry about.
 
While they agreed that Italians had exceptionally thick skulls, they still made him wait.
 
This was followed by reports, discussions, and the seemingly endless filling of forms.
 
The worst part of his life was the writing of letters to the relatives of his dead crewmen.
 
He’d gone over the incident a hundred times and could find nothing that he’d done wrong.
 
Of course he could have done better, but that was hindsight.
 
How was he supposed to know that the Nazis were adding more guns to their subs?
 
Still, he had to fight the urge to say, sorry, but your son or brother or husband is dead because I fucked up.
 
Since he’d grown up Catholic, he’d gone and talked to a priest who’d told him that he had indeed done his best and that war was the end of innocence.
 
The padre hadn’t said anything Tony hadn’t heard or thought before, but it had proved surprisingly comforting.

      
He’d written several letters to Nancy O’Connor back in Baltimore and she’d written back.
 
He’d told her of his sadness and she’d seemed to know just the right thing to say.
 
He found himself thinking more and more of her freckles and her red hair and the feel of her body against his.
 

      
“Shouldn’t we turn back?”

      
It was his new co-pilot, complaining again that they were too close to the German side of Lake Ontario.
 
Didn’t the silly goose understand that you had to look for Nazis in their evil lairs?
 
If the men of the
Vampire II
didn’t do that, they might as well be flying as tourists on a TWA DC-3.

      
But the kid had a point.
 
The Canadian coast was coming up quickly and it really was time to head back.
 
Before he could give the order, the B24 shuddered and convulsed.
 
Again there were screams as bullets ripped through the fuselage.
 
A dark shadow passed by and then another one.
 
They’d been jumped by a pair of ME109s.
 
Tony had been so fixated on looking down that he and his inexperienced crew had forgotten to look up.

      
A quick count told him that all of his men were alive, although a couple of them were hurt.
 
More important, two of his four engines were out and one was burning.
 
He cut the fuel and solved that problem.
 
Steering was worse than mushy and he was now over Ontario with little chance of getting back to Buffalo.

      
“They’re coming back,” his bombardier said.

      
“No shit,” Tony said angrily.
 
Damn it to hell, he was just about to lose another plane.

      
“Bail out,” he ordered.
 
“Abandon ship.”

      
“What are you going to do?” his co-pilot asked.

      
“Try and distract them.
 
I don’t know if they shoot guys in parachutes or not, but let me try and pull them away from you.”

      
He got no argument from his men who quickly jumped out.
 
Tony couldn’t see the chutes open but he thought everyone made it.
 
A few moments later, the German fighters attacked again, their bullets tearing through the dying but largely empty plane. Tony felt he was going to lose what little control he still had. Enough, he thought.

      
He staggered to the open hatch, looked down at the ground thousands of feet below and had the sickening realization that he could be dead in a couple of minutes if his chute didn’t open, or if he slammed into the plane’s fuselage, or if the kraut shot him.
 
He hoped his death would be painless.
 
He jumped into the ferocious wind, counted to ten and pulled the cord.
 
It opened and he whimpered a thank you to a God he’d been beginning to doubt.
 
The German fighters weren’t interested in him.
 
They followed the bomber as it began a spiral and then crashed into the ground.

      
As he neared the earth, he saw vehicles coming down a nearby dirt road.
 
They looked military.
 
He took out his pistol and dropped it.
 
He was not even going to try and fight his way out of this mess.

      
Tony landed and heard his ankle snap.
 
Waves of red-hot pain roared up his leg and he blacked out.
 
When he came to, he was on a cot in a tent.
 
A German officer looked down on him dispassionately and informed him that he was a prisoner of war and would be treated in accordance with the Geneva Convention.