A Game of Spies (19 page)

His tone was casual, the tone of a man discussing a fine night at the opera.

“Tall tales,” Hauptmann sniffed. “Nobody is so crazy. Not even the Russians.”

“Perhaps,” Frick said. “Or perhaps not. In either case—the game intrigues me. I would very much like to see it played with my own eyes. Do you suppose,
Herr Kriminal Assistant,
that you might stage a demonstration for me?”

The stocky man up front laughed nervously.

“You and the Engländer might challenge each other,” Frick continued. “We will play the safer version. All of the chambers are emptied except one. Then, you see, the chances of survival are higher. The game lasts longer.”

“Herr Kriminal Inspektor,
if you don't watch out, you'll get the reputation for being the funny one.”

“Ah,” Frick said. “Aha. Yes.”

Then they were entering a small clearing; Hobbs could hear the trickle of water in a nearby brook, the susurrous rustle of leaves. The moon overhead, almost full, peeked through narrow spaces between the branches.

The driver twisted the keys; the engine fell silent. For a few moments, nobody spoke.

“So,” Frick said then. “Would you like to play the game, Herr Hauptmann?”

Hobbs could feel the man's confusion. Hauptmann feigned more laughter, hesitantly. “Ha,” he said. “No—thank you,
Herr Inspektor.
No, I would not.”

“Ah, well. To be expected, I suppose.”

He turned to Hobbs. He was a wolfish-looking man, hollow-cheeked and hood-eyed. His expression, in the faint blue moonlight, was somber. “I suppose we'll need to proceed without any more games,” he said. “Eh, Herr Hobbs?”

Hobbs didn't answer. After another moment, Frick reached into his pocket. Hobbs watched, feeling dizzy, his heartbeat a series of fast, shallow fillips.

When Frick withdrew his hand, there was a single chalky tablet of white in the center of his palm.

“This poison,” Frick said benevolently, “is fatal in three seconds. You are fortunate, Herr Hobbs, that I am feeling merciful tonight.”

He kept holding the pill forward. Hobbs kept looking at it. At last he reached for it, and took it between thumb and forefinger. The tablet felt very light and insubstantial, as if it was nothing but a product of his imagination.

The men in the front seat stared straight ahead, seemingly oblivious.

“Go on,” Frick urged. “It is preferable to the other option.”

Hobbs thought that he could hear a wisp of music: distant, keening notes. A bagpipe. Was it “Danny Boy”? He thought that it was.

He almost smiled. That song brought him back, all right. Countless nights in countless pubs, surrounded by his mates and singing rousing choruses of “Danny Boy.” Nothing to worry about except staying sober enough to lift the next pint of courage. Those had been good days, he thought.

In the next instant, the music was gone.

“Go on,” Frick said again, gently. “Show some dignity.”

Hobbs looked back at him, taking the man's measure. He tried to picture himself lurching across the seat, incapacitating the Gestapo agent, and then slipping out of the car—without the ones up front moving to stop him.

He couldn't picture it.

“Herr Inspektor,”
Hauptmann said. “Perhaps we should return the man to Number Eight. He may be able to offer—”

Frick silenced the man with a glance. Then he turned back to Hobbs. “We are waiting,” he said.

Hobbs put the pill onto his tongue. At first, it was tasteless. Then, as it dissolved, it turned bitter.

He leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes. Soon, now, the pain would go away. He wondered if Eva had made it to the extraction site. It would be nice to think that she had. It would be nice to think that he had done something right, before he left this world, by giving her a way out of Germany—that he had done something to make up, at least in part, for all his previous wrongs.

His head was growing lighter. He thought that he could feel his consciousness leaving his body, rising through the roof of the car, untethered. It was a liberating feeling; and, mercifully, there was no pain.

Three seconds,
he thought.

They passed.

He was still alive.

He opened his eyes.

Frick was smiling at him. “How do you feel?” he asked.

Hobbs said nothing.

“I seem to have made a mistake,” Frick said. “It is only aspirin.”

Then he threw back his head and laughed. The men up front also laughed—but apprehensively, without conviction.

“You should have seen your face,” Frick said. “Hauptmann. Did you see his face?”

“I saw it,” Hauptmann lied.

“Now
that
is a joke, Hauptmann. Perhaps you're right. Perhaps I am the one with a sense of humor, between the two of us.”

“Perhaps you are,” Hauptmann said, sounding distinctly nonplussed.

Frick's laughter dwindled. He sat for a few moments without moving, seemingly lost in thought. Then he said abruptly: “Get out of the car.”

Hobbs sent his eyes from Frick to Hauptmann to the driver. Then he reached for the door. He stepped out, planting his left leg carefully, keeping the weight off his right. Frick came out the other side—a gun in his hand now, trained on Hobbs across the roof of the Mercedes.

He motioned Hobbs around the front of the car. Suddenly the headlights came on, glaring hot white. Hobbs could sense Frick coming up behind him, the Luger in his hand. The man's breathing was uneven, strained with excitement.

“On your knees,” he commanded.

Hobbs looked at the ground. The ground looked damp. He didn't move. He wished he could hear “Danny Boy” again, one last time.

“On your knees,” Frick said again.

Oldfield had taught Hobbs how to disarm a man standing behind him. But Hobbs, of course, had not been paying attention to the lesson. He remembered what he had been thinking about instead, with terrible clarity: a pretty young bird named Rose.

“Do not try my patience,” Frick said. “I will not ask again.”

What had Oldfield said? Something about dropping to the ground. Something about rolling, hooking the man's legs with his ankles. He could almost catch the memory. But his mind had been on Rose.

If only Frick was facing him, he thought then. He remembered that lesson clearly enough. It had been a grisly one, and had imprinted itself on his brain.
If you can goad the man into placing the gun against your chest,
Oldfield had said,
then you have him.

He started to turn; but Frick brought the gun down across his skull, driving him to his knees. An instant later, cool metal touched his head an inch below his right ear. The Luger. He squeezed his eyes closed, bracing himself.

Then nothing.

Frick cursed softly.

“Hauptmann,” he called.

Hobbs opened his eyes again, and chanced a glance over his shoulder. The stocky man was coming out the passenger side of the car and stepping forward, backlit by the glow from the headlights. Frick muttered something and handed him the Luger. Hauptmann gave the man his own gun: a Walther P38.

Hobbs gritted his teeth, and—surprising himself—found the wherewithal to rise again to his feet. When Frick turned and saw this, his face registered mild shock. And below that, if Hobbs wasn't mistaken, was a glint of admiration.

Frick placed the gun against his chest. “Turn around,” he commanded. “There is no—”

Hobbs did it exactly the way Oldfield had shown him.

He slapped down at the Walther P38 with his right hand; the web between his thumb and forefinger fell neatly between the hammer and the firing pin. When Frick pulled the trigger, the metal hit the skin, pinching; but the gun did not discharge. He immediately twisted the barrel back toward Frick, trapping the man's finger inside the trigger guard. Then stepped away, jerking the gun down, rotating it in the same motion. The metal edges of the trigger guard did their work, just as Oldfield had said they would.

Frick's index finger was torn from his hand.

I'll be goddamned,
Hobbs thought wildly.
It worked.

He pulled the gun free, shook the severed finger loose. He was dimly conscious of it flying off into the forest, turning end over end. He slipped his own finger over the trigger, leveled his arm, and fired a single shot into Frick's head.

Frick tumbled backward. Hauptmann was staring, astonished—and then he was running, slipping away into the darkness. Hobbs fired once at the man's back. Missed.

He turned to the Mercedes and fired at the driver. The windshield starred but held.
Bulletproof,
he thought.
God damn it.

He dropped to the ground.

Frick was looking at him. A bloody furrow had opened on one side of the man's head. His eyes rolled. Hobbs started to bring the gun around, to finish the job, when he heard the sound of the Mercedes' other door opening. He turned his head and saw a boot stepping onto the forest floor. He aimed and fired; the foot jerked, and the man cried out.

He reached for the fender, pulling himself up. His leg was producing sharp, regular bolts of pain. But the pain cleared his head; the pain kept him alert.

The man he had shot in the foot was sitting on the forest floor, grappling after a gun that had fallen a few feet away. Hobbs stepped around the door and shot the man in the stomach.

Then turned back to Frick. Frick had dragged himself out of the pool of light. Hobbs saw one foot, skittering away through the brush. Only grazed, he thought.

And where was Hauptmann? Somewhere in the forest. But he had given Frick his gun, and taken the Luger. And the Luger had jammed.

The man he had gut-shot was moaning. Hobbs turned back to him and fired again, painting the side of the sedan with a grisly mixture of blood, tissue, and teeth.

The smell of cordite reached his nostrils, mixed with the stomach-turning stench of fresh blood. He bent over, dry-heaving.

Then he swallowed, straightened, and looked around. Frick had vanished, pulling himself away through the leaves like a snake. Hauptmann was nowhere to be seen.
I'll be goddamned,
he thought again.
It worked.

He shoved the corpse away from the door and slipped behind the wheel of the Mercedes. The keys were in the ignition. He reached for them, started the engine, and pulled the door closed. He jammed his foot down on the gas and wheeled the car around, spewing dirt and leaves from the tires in two graceful arcs, snapping the other door shut in the process.

A moment later, he had found the road that was not a road. He glanced into the rearview mirror, looking for Frick or Hauptmann; but there was no sign of them.

His head was pounding. But he had done it. He had escaped. And he even had a car—a blessed car.

Eva,
he thought.

There was still time.

He opened up the engine and the Mercedes jounced over the rough ground, gaining speed.

14

GOTHMUND

Eva knew—in a sinking, helpless way that did her no good whatsoever—that it was only a dream.

In the dream, the dogs were getting louder. She looked to her left, through the open window of the Volkswagen, and then to her right. The signs of the crossroads had been taken down.
In case of invasion,
she thought;
to confuse the enemy.
But as a result she didn't know which way to turn. And the dogs were growing ever louder.

She turned right.

Trees flashed past in a blur. She applied another cautious ounce of pressure to the gas. Every bump in the road was magnified, shaking the chassis like a miniature earthquake. A disturbing image appeared in her mind's eye: the Hindenburg going down in a roiling ball of flame. She took her foot from the gas and touched the brake.

Nothing happened.

She pumped the brake again; but the car didn't slow. Now the dog's hoarse barks were being left behind, and there was something in the road ahead. A fallen tree. She clutched the wheel tighter.

In the last instant before collision, she screamed.

When she came to, the dogs were close again.

She dragged herself to her feet. A frozen lake was spread before her, mirror-bright. She turned to look up the bank, at a great tangle of roots, and then down, at a deadfall that rose above her chest. Passage in either direction would be impossible. But the frozen lake presented its own problems—for she knew with sickening surety that the ice was thin, wafer-thin, deadly thin.

One dog howled: a long, lowing sound that sent shivers up her spine.

She stepped onto the ice.

For a few paces, she thought she would be all right. She fixed her eyes on the far bank, moving out across the lake under a sky the color of candle wax mixed with ash. After another few moments, she had made the halfway point. Too far to go back.

The first creak of the ice was slow, growling, in so low a register that it was almost inaudible.

Then the cracks were spreading out from her feet in a delicate web. The ice around her separated into floes, with frigid water pooling up between the cracks. The floe on which she stood was bobbing, crackling, buckling.

Eva held her breath; then the ice beneath her feet splintered apart and she plunged into the freezing lake.

“Kinder, Kirche, Küche,”
her mother said.

She was looking at Eva with kind, reproachful eyes—mothering eyes; smothering eyes. There was a cup of steaming hot tea in her hands, and she held it forward, tipping it to Eva's lips. Then she leaned back and said it again, this time in English:

“Children, church, kitchen. That's where a woman belongs, Eva. That's all she need concern herself with.”

Eva didn't argue. She had taken ill from her fall in the lake; she was shivering, soaked in cold sweat. But at least she had left the dogs behind. At least she was safe here at home, in her childhood room, in her childhood bed.

“You shouldn't have forgotten that,” her mother said. “I hope you've learned your lesson. No more of this business, Eva. It doesn't suit you. Promise me.”