Stormfuhrer (15 page)

He pretended to mix and played his role to perfection, abashedly downplaying his antics and the rumors about him as mere “propaganda” created by his enemies to persecute him.  All laughed, including Mauer.

Once a number of bottles had been passed around, with Hayes pretending to drink on each occasion that a bottle was passed his way, he got into a conversation with an officer that he knew possessed a motorcycle with a side-car, one he rarely used but was known to brag of on occasion. 

The conversation became an argument about whether the man's standard issue BMW R75 was a better machine than the
Z
ü
ndapp KS-750, which, Hayes said, had been issued to a friend of his (Mauer's) just last month.  Richard's regular reading of the
Munich Illustrated Press
magazine during times of low activity in the game had aided him in creating points that were very specific with regard to the machine in question.  Better horsepower, smoother gear-shifting, better steering control—these were only some of the reasons, according to Mauer, that the R75 would eventually be replaced by the KS-750 in only a few years as the military motorcycle of choice.  The man gave in on some points, specifically those involving modifications with regard to the final drive differential, expecting Mauer, in the spirit of camaraderie, to ease up on some of his points and point out at least one way the R75 might be a better bike, perhaps with regard to style or color options?  Hayes refused to concede any point of inferiority with regard to the KS-750, making the man extremely angry.

At one point, the man pulled out the keys to the machine and swore that the keys were Mauer's and his friend's if either of them could beat him in a race around the camp on their bikes.  His bike was in the back barn and ready for the race whenever he or his friend could produce their KS-750.  Of course, the motorcycle wasn't the officer's to give away, so those listening knew the statement to be a mere gesture, the words of a bruised ego, but this gave away the location of the keys and where the machine had been kept during the winter.  It was only a matter of waiting until after the officer had drunk a few more toasts, and all became engaged in a singalong of all three stanzas of “
Deutschlandlied,
” when, arm-in-arm beside the man, Hayes lifted the keys out of the distracted man's coat pocket.

It had taken some work, but Richard had gotten to the motorcycle in the barn in the late hours of the cold night without being missed.  It was, unfortunately, located at the back of the general camp, past the corner where the two small crematorium buildings sat, now cold and empty of human trace.  It was now a matter of getting Savina to the building by early morning.  It wasn't too dirty a place since there hadn’t been horses in the barn for months.  Still, the wind rattled through the chinks between the broken boards of the dilapidated brown structure.

Savina had been groggy.  Richard had intended to wrap her in as many blankets as he could and walk her, carry her if necessary, to the lonely barn behind a thin copse of trees just inside the camp’s perimeter.  At this hour, the only things stirring were a strong, cold wind from the north and four of the camp's searchlights.  The brick towers would be manned with one, maybe two persons, with one or two soldiers resting below, playing cards or simply napping on bunks.

The biggest problem of getting her there involved the sheer length of the camp, the entirety of which he would have to cover with Savina possibly draped over his shoulder the whole way.  As thin as she was, it was nevertheless quite a distance to walk.

In the ward, no German doctors were in sight, only a few prison orderlies who needed only a brief look to silence any questions that may have been forming in their minds.  When he entered, he stared them down until they dropped what they were doing and left the room, closing the main door behind them.

When Hayes reached Savina, she was awake but groggy.  He grabbed a considerable stack of blankets and threw them into a backpack he found in a footlocker.  He put this around his shoulders and across his back.  He then walked up to Savina and put his hand out for her to take it.  She lay still, staring into his face.

“I'm taking you out of the camp.  You have nothing to lose if you trust me.  Either way, you'll rot here.”

She smiled, ironically, apparently drugged.  She put her hand out, only semi-consciously, and dropped it.  He picked her up off the bed and put her on her feet; she immediately fell back onto the bed.  There was no way she would be able to walk.  He had had the idea of walking her to the back of the camp at gunpoint for “latrine duty” with a few other prisoners he could pick up along the way--to make it look legitimate.  But if she couldn't walk, that plan was dead. 

Hayes sat by her and looked around.  He put the blanket around her, covering every part of her but her head.  He then took another blanket off of one of the other beds and wrapped her in it longways, covering her head.  He then wrapped a third one around her like he had using the first blanket, tightly, like a shroud.  He grabbed some white surgical tape from a nearby kit and wrapped it around the blankets covering her ankles.  He then wrapped it around her covered upper arms and chest.  He made sure there was only one layer covering her face, checked her breathing, and put her over his shoulder with as much care as he could manage.

A recent snowstorm had finally let up, but the wind hadn’t, stirring up the fresh snow around them as he walked with his bundle, looking like figures in some morbid snow globe.  Visibility was further limited by a fog that had settled in, but he knew where he was going.  With the double-rows of endless barracks on his right and the long ditch on his left, he trudged through the snow with his package.  As he neared the first of the towers from which spotlights attempted to pierce the cold early-morning fog, Hayes walked closer to the tower, expecting to be halted and questioned.  A spotlight had been directed squarely on them for a distance of about 20 meters.  He approached the tower with his bundle and stopped, looking up.  A window cracked open and a voice yelled out, “A bit late for hiking,  isn't it?”

“Dead body,” he replied. “We found it stinking up a closet in the Kettle room.  Oh, and here's a little present from Herr Commandant.”  With his gloved left hand Hayes produced a bottle of vodka from his left waistcoat pocket, showing it to the guard.

The window opened wide and a man's head and arms appeared.  “Throw it to me!”  He tossed the bottle to the man and began to walk on. 

The same man called out again after receiving the bottle.  “Hey wait!  Why not just throw the body outside into the snow?  It's not going anywhere.”

“
Doctor says she died of Typhus.  The body is covered in fleas.  Needs to go to the stoves for burning.”  By stoves, of course, he meant crematorium.

The window of the tower shut quickly.

Hayes walked on with his load.  Were it Hayes himself carrying Savina, he would have collapsed from exhaustion before reaching the first tower.  Mauer's six-foot body suited the purpose much better.  By the time he reached the second tower, the spotlight was dancing in front of him, moving side to side from his feet to the direction of the crematorium, as if to say, “Go quickly!”  He waived at the closed windows with his left hand and kept walking.  From there, it had been relatively easy getting Savina past the crematorium and into the old barn behind the trees, but what he couldn't possibly have noticed was that he had been followed.

Placing her on a bed of cold straw, he ripped off the tape and exposed her pale face.  He then closed the barn door and began checking the tires and oil of the motorcycle.  The keys to the barn had been on the same ring as the key to the motorcycle itself.  The heavy padlock had yielded and the half-rusted, frozen hinges creaked as he swung one of the doors outward.

Other machines lay scattered throughout the barn, now a place of refuge for the working and derelict  equipment sheltered there.  A typewriter lay on a rotting desk in a corner.  The hammers containing the letters were rusted together or just frozen in a clump just above the roller.  A cabinet contained painters’ equipment—rollers, old five-gallon cans of light-blue paint.  Richard caught the vague smell of turpentine.  He rifled through the shelves, looking for gasoline.  A small can labeled “Benzin” could be found, and he poured its entire contents into the gray tear-drop tank of the vehicle.

“
What are you doing?”  Savina spoke, groggily, for the first time since her abduction from the warm hospital bed.  Before that moment, she had simply complied, not conscious enough to know what was happening.  Now she was watching him from the bed of straw, wrapped in blankets that were only partial comfort against the stinging cold.

“
Getting you . . . us . . . out of here.”

She raised her head and then let it fall back down.  “Why?” she murmured.

“Because you’ll die here if I don’t, and I’m not going to the front.”  He lied about the second part.  He knew that it was all about her.  He didn’t care where his avatar went as long as she was safe. 

“
You talk differently.  I’ve noticed that,” she said faintly.

“
What?”

“
Your German is more simple when you’re being decent.”

“
And when I am not being decent?” he prodded.

“
You don’t do much talking,” She replied sleepily.

“
So you have not had much to go on.”

“
Not much, but I do know a German accent from a non-German one.”  It was true that Richard usually spoke German through the headset.  He had, off and on, for quite some time.  When he did so, nothing had to be translated, but then his accent came through.  He had thought that his accent was perfect, if not a least passable.  He’d have to be more careful, maybe let the translator take over when speaking to fellow Germans.

She paused for a few moments.  “Who are you?  I mean, who are you . . . today?”

Hayes stopped his work and looked back at her.  “You won’t believe me, but I had intended to tell you.”

“
So.”

“
So it's a crazy story, but here it is.  I’m a guy from the future named Richard Hayes.  From my perspective, this whole thing, this reality, you, this camp,  are part of a game played out on a computer through the Internet, and you are the part of it that I’m trying to save.”  He knew that to her this would make no sense.

She let her head fall.  “Well, I am very relieved that you’re not a psychopath . . .”

He grinned.  “I told you that you wouldn't believe me.”

“
How can I believe anything that doesn’t sound like anything that means anything?  Internet?” 

Richard stopped and looked at her.  What she
had
said didn’t quite seem to translate, so he had to think about it before possibly answering.  He shook his head and continued working to again free the machine’s kick start.

The motorcycle finally roared to life.  He let it run, re-covering it with a tarp.  He squatted near Savina who watched him from the cold mound of hay.  He looked at her for a few moments.  “I am doing this because I love you.”

Her eyes narrowed, then smiled.  She coughed and spoke.  “You highborn Germans are so full of
Schiss
, but there’s something wrong with you in particular, or at least different.  That’s not a compliment by the way.”

“
How about we get the hell out of here and then we can talk about it later.  Or would you prefer to stay and outlive your usefulness in the camp?” 

Savina became silent as Hayes filled the side-car of the motorcycle with half of the blankets that he had brought with him in the backpack.  He lifted her tiny body into it and she snuggled in, painfully, turned on her side, leaving almost no outward sign of even being there.  The remaining blankets, the darkest ones, were used to cover her head.  These Hayes pressed into the remaining spaces and underneath her shoulders.  The sidecar looked as if it merely carried a large bundle of blankets.

Getting out of the camp was easy.  By then, the knowledge that Mauer was dealing with an infected body had already gotten around to all the guards on duty.  A few SS men had already been killed by Typhus, so no one was taking any chances.  When he approached the main gate, he was briefly questioned though his bundle wasn't searched.  No one went near it.  He merely repeated his story, pretending anger that no one had been on duty at the crematorium.  He'd have to take the body outside the camp and burn the damn thing himself.  The can of gasoline attached to the back of the bike confirmed his story.  He was waved through.

Hours later, Richard and Savina found themselves lying behind a bank of snow as a convoy roared through the mud-sleeted icy road ostensibly toward a new Polish camp in the East.  The camp was many kilometers away and was still being built, yet there was no other likely destination for the convoy, to Richard's thinking. 

From behind the bank of snow, Richard and Savina could see a distant farmhouse, half-hidden by a patch of leafless woods.  No smoke poured from its stone chimney.  That was a very good sign.  After riding some forty kilometers through the wind at these temperatures on icy roads, Richard felt that they were far enough away from the camp to hazard a rest through an afternoon in warmer conditions, and that cabin would be perfect.  He also felt that riding at night would give them a greater advantage in hiding from potential pursuers.  It wouldn’t be long before the endless counting of prisoners would soon begin for the day at the Dachau camp.  They would be looked for, hunted down, first on foot across the countryside but later wider distances would be covered by other methods.  An SS officer and a camp prisoner wouldn’t be allowed simply to just disappear.