On Desperate Ground (4 page)

Faust stood over the Russian, picturing Anna in his mind. Not the trick of the demons inside the car, but Anna as she had been, innocent and beautiful. He pulled the trigger. The automatic weapon pulsed in his hands as a burst of bullets smashed into the Russian’s chest, slamming him onto his back. Faust emptied the clip into him. Standing over the ruined body, he thought again of Anna. There were only pleasant thoughts. Blood, that was the secret the demons had tried to tell him. Blood will ease the pain. Any blood.

He waited a moment, enjoying the feeling of peace as the snow and mud in the road absorbed the flowing blood. He walked over to Karl and retrieved the camera, thankful that none of his shots had damaged it. He understood that Karl had been firing at the Russian who was about to blow his head off with that pistol, and that Wilfred had pulled him back just in time for the shot to miss. He regretted the loss of his two men, but there was no way he could have let them live after they saw him in that state of transformation. No one could know of Anna. Calmly, Faust put on his snowshoes and headed to the German lines. He had a lot to do. He had to make his report and then get out into the field again. Something about how easy it was to fool the Russians with those fur caps tucked itself away in his mind. Part of the gift from the demons, he knew it would become useful someday.

This was the day Faust marked as his turning point. He was no longer afraid of going insane. He understood too much now. The demons would extract their price from him, he knew, but they had shown him the way, the way for all of them.

From that day on, Johann Faust never wanted the war to end. He never wanted to stop killing. He wanted rivers of blood.

CHAPTER TWO

5 January 1945

Saint Alban’s Military Hospital

Darbyshire, England

White. Everything was white. This morning, like every morning since he first opened his eyes here, he saw white. White walls, white sheets, white uniforms of the nurses as they hurried by, and the white coats of the doctors as they gathered at the foot of his bed murmuring among themselves. His bandages were white. The charts on the clipboards were white. His entire life was swathed in freshly laundered whiteness.

As he did every morning, he closed his eyes against the sterile glare. Across his eyelids, visions of dirty white snow, gray-blue under the clouded sky, drifted gracelessly. Tank treads churned up mud, splattering it against snow banks as they accelerated and turned in the forests of the Ardennes, the snow turned shades of brown from the dirt and black from explosions, leaking oil, smoke and struggle. Then the redness, blood seeping out from the wounded and dead until the white snow absorbed it all and the landscape was all reds and blacks and explosions and dead bodies falling on top of him…

“Jesus!” Matthew “Mack” Mackenzie gasped and woke up gulping for breath. “Goddamn sonuvabitch! Jesus H. Christ on a crutch!”

“Captain Mackenzie!”

Mack looked up, eyes frantically searching for something real, anything not of his dreams. His mouth gaped open, eyes wide at the strange world he found himself in. Closing them again he flopped back onto his pillow.
Oohh noooo, no, no. I can’t take anymore of this!

He opened one eye, hoping that the owner of the voice calling his name would be gone. Focusing on the figure in the doorway to his private room, he saw the face of Doctor Reginald Cuthbert-Hewes, a full colonel in His Majesty’s Medical Service, a distinguished pre-war psychiatrist, and his keeper in the whitewashed prison that was St. Alban’s.

St. Alban’s had opened in 1921 as a private hospital for the upper classes. For those with nervous disorders and other aliments which required they spend their stay secure from public view. The location outside Darbyshire was perfect. The small town did not even have a train station and the road leading to the hospital was unmarked. Gently rolling wooded hills provided both serenity and seclusion. The hospital building was designed in the art deco style popular at the time, and each private room had been decorated with polished teakwood furniture, paintings and hand-woven Persian carpets, all of which was now in storage, having been replaced by military beds and desks since the British Defence Ministry had taken over in 1940. The hidden and little-known facility was perfect for the recovery and recuperation of personnel engaged in top security operations. Spies, commandos, generals and secretive foreigners from occupied nations had all recovered from their physical and emotional wounds within these walls. Or least on paper they did. Battle fatigue, neurosis, and loss of nerve were on occasion cured ahead of schedule when it was necessary to return a patient whose file was marked “Priority Personnel” to active duty.
 

Mack knew that Doctor Cuthbert-Hewes prided himself on his rate of return. He felt it his duty to get those who came into his care back into the fight against Nazism as soon as possible. Cuthbert-Hewes had been in France with the British Expeditionary Force, and had made it out at Dunkirk. He wanted the Germans defeated, and looked forward to the day British troops marched into Berlin. He believed that since Mack had volunteered for hazardous duty, it was only logical to put him back together in body and mind as efficiently as possible and return him to their common fight. Mack felt differently, ever since arriving at St. Alban’s with a severe concussion, shrapnel wounds in his back, a nervous twitch, night tremors, “Priority Personnel” stamped on his file, and a wise-acre mouth. The latter he’d had all his life. The rest was courtesy of the war.
 

“I see we’re still having those nightmares, Captain,” said Cuthbert-Hewes as he tapped his pencil against the clipboard he always carried. “Perhaps we need to increase our sessions to three a day. Do you think you could stand that much of me?”

Cuthbert-Hewes smiled and Mack wondered how his mouth could move like that while his mustache stayed in a straight line. He stared at the doctor, trying to figure it out, tilting his head slightly in either direction so he could see the upward turn on each side of Cuthbert-Hewes’ grinning face. Misunderstanding Mack’s demeanor, the doctor turned solicitous and spoke as if to a small child.

“Now don’t worry, Mackenzie. You’ll pull through. Every man has his breaking point. Once he reaches that, it’s simply a matter of building him up again. One of my patients, quite similar to you, has just gone back on active duty with the Royal Commandoes. What do you think of that?”

The smile went up further as Cuthbert-Hewes recounted his success. The mustache remained exactly straight, parallel to the floor. Mack could not figure out how he did it.

“I think it shows a lot of control. Stiff upper lip,” said Mack.

“Why yes, exactly my point—” Cuthbert-Hewes said.

He was about to continue, but halted as Mack started laughing loudly and hysterically. Too hysterically, Mack knew, even for a guy who liked a good gag.

“I’ll see you later, Captain, when you’ve calmed yourself down,” Cuthbert-Hewes said as he departed.

Through the open door, Mack saw Doctor Chester Fielding, know as “Doc” by his patients at St. Alban’s, ambling down the hall, concentrating on chewing the unlit cigar jutting from the side of his mouth.

Mack laughed some more, listening to his own strange cackle as he wiped his eyes and studied the rumpled, tie-less American uniform and disheveled appearance of Doc Fielding, a direct contrast to the efficient and well-tailored Cuthbert-Hewes. As a medical doctor, Fielding focused on healing the physical wounds of his patients, but his kindly and humane nature allowed him to reach out to them in ways that the psychiatrist could not. Mack got along with Doc, even though Doc was charged with the same mission as Cuthbert-Hewes; healing the wounded so they could once again try to cheat death within the hidden world of secret missions, spies, and assassinations.
 

“Well, Mack, you must be feeling better today,” Doc said, chewing on his cigar. “I’ve never seen Reginald in such a high snit.”

“Must be the Irish in me, I can’t let an opportunity go by to get under his skin,” said Mack. He smiled deliberately and calmly, as he relaxed back into his pillow and linked his hands behind his head. The shock of waking had worn off, but he still felt jumpy. He tried to appear more relaxed than he really felt. The recent memories of blood and snow were still playing across his mind’s eye, receding but not yet fully loosening their grip. A shudder ran through his body and he fought to not let it show. Keeping the smile on his face, he prayed Doc wouldn’t see through it. He wanted to get out of St. Alban’s as soon as possible, assuming, hoping, that now, finally, he could go home.

“So Doc, tell me. When can I get out of here?”

“Well, young man,” said Doc Fielding as he flipped through Mack’s medical chart, “Your shrapnel wounds were minor and are healing fine. The concussion was serious, and I wouldn’t want you to get another like it anytime soon, but you’re coming along well. It’s your nerves we’re worried about.”

“Aw, Doc, I’m OK,” Mack protested. “Just a little shook up from the Bulge. Everyone gets a little nervous in the service now and then. There’s nothing wrong with me that my Mom’s cooking won’t cure.”

Doc looked at him with a frown. He threw down the chart and pulled a chair up to Mack’s bed.
 

“Captain, I’m going to give it to you straight. You’re not going home, not right now.”

There was silence. Mack struggled to respond to what he had just been told. He worked his mouth but nothing came out. It was like he had been punched in the gut.

“Wait a minute, Doc,” Mack finally gasped, grabbing the other man’s arm and raising his voice. “I’ve been hung out and wrung dry a dozen times in this war. I’ve been getting the shit end of the stick since I left the States in ’42, and it’s gotta stop! It’s
gotta
stop! Any luck I ever had, I left back in the Adrennes. I got nothing left, you understand?”

“Now son, every guy thinks he’s special. Remember, lots of boys have been over here that long. And they’re not on SHAEF headquarters staff either,” Doc said with a reprimanding look at Mack. “I’m sure staff officers there all have some vital role to play, although in your case I can’t figure out what that might be. What is your job at SHAEF, if you can tell me?”

Mack let go of Doc’s arm and wearily sank his head back onto his pillow.
 

“I was an investigator for the The Bronx District Attorney before the war. I was going to study law, but my old man thought a few years in the trenches with the DA would be good for me. I’d been at it three years when I joined the army a few months before Pearl Harbor. I figured there was going to be a war sooner or later, and it would be smart to get in uniform one step ahead of a million other guys. I wanted to work for the Judge Advocate General’s Office in Washington, to stay in the game, you know. Good place to make connections, my old man said. Instead, they sent me to North Africa with General Eisenhower. I haven’t seen the inside of a courtroom since.”
 

He discreetly left out the fact that his “old man” was a federal judge who had called in some political favors to insure a position with the JAG office in Washington. All that had changed when the General was sent to take command in the Mediterranean in 1942.

 
“So you lucked out and got a desk job with Ike,” Doc said. “That doesn’t tell me why you think you deserve a ticket home.”

“I thought it was going to be a desk job, as an Intelligence Officer. Turned out Ike wanted a more hands-on approach.”

“You mean at the front?” Doc said, his eyebrows raised in disbelief.
 

“Yep,” answered Mack. “I do work in the G-2 section, but not as an intelligence analyst. My boss calls it the Verification Desk.”

“Get to the point, Mack.”

“Ike wanted someone under his direct control to report back on what was going on whenever he thought he needed some inside dope. Sometimes he thought he was getting snookered by the brass and wanted someone to take a quiet look-see. Sometimes verifying intelligence dope at the front, without letting the division or corps G2 staff know we were checking up on them. A little behind the lines action when needed. And some other stuff I’m not supposed to talk about.”

“Which is why he wanted someone trained as an investigator, and grabbed you from JAG.”

“That’s my guess. He told me I didn’t have to do any of this, that it was on a volunteer basis. But every time I tried to say no, he would start talking and then I’d find myself with his arm around my shoulder, walking me out of the office, smiling, thanking me, and telling me I’d make a great lawyer someday.”
 

“He sounds persuasive.”

 
“When Ike starts in on you, you think everything he says makes perfect sense. You want to be part of the team. You want to help out. Then when you’re out in the hallway and his door shuts behind you and you realize what you just signed on for, you can’t quite remember exactly why in the hell you said yes.”

Doc grinned. “He is an expert at running the war while keeping the Brits, the French, a handful of minor European allies, not to mention Roosevelt, happy. After that, a single young officer wouldn’t be too tough to convince.”

“That’s why I have to get out of here and get my ticket home punched. I’ve been on too many missions already for my own good. North Africa, France, all over the damn place. This last one almost got me killed,” Mack said, pointing at the bandages on his head. “The next one is sure to finish the job. I figure I’ve done my share by now. I’ve seen more action that nearly all those desk jockeys at SHAEF, and damn more than I ever thought I would back in The Bronx. These jobs Ike gives me usually involve getting close enough to the front to get shot at. Once by our side, but that’s another story.”