The Aeschylus (9 page)

“I'm hot, Papa,” Zofia said suddenly, pulling off her coat.

Ari tried to smile. “I wish we had a window. I suppose we'd have to deal with sea water splashing in from time to time, but I'd take it.”

Dominik helped Zofia and Lucja get comfortable, then pulled off his own coat and loosened his tie. It really was getting hot. It was a stark contrast to how freezing it had been above deck, but he supposed the proximity of the furnace and the confined space would do that. Zofia coughed once, gently, and he set her down on the straw.

“I don't like that man,” Lucja said.

Dominik nodded. “The army officer?”

“The one I called a bastard. I'm sorry, Papa. I didn't mean to swear.”

“He is a bastard.”

“I miss Mama.”

“I do too, but we can't do anything yet. We have to play his game for now.”

“That's good advice,” Ari said. “I know these people. They have great plans. Great Plans with a capital 'G.' The army was so scattered after the Great War they'll do anything in the name of king and country, now. I feel bad for men like Dietrich, I really do. They don't realize their fathers were listening to the same propaganda twenty years ago.”

“Did you fight?” Dominik asked.

“No, I was married and teaching at the time. I wasn't conscripted, thank God. But I doubt it would have made any difference in where I am right now. I could have given all four limbs to Germany, and if
The Führer
thought I'd be best served by staying in this pantry, I'd be here.”

“Do you really think he cares about the likes of us?”

Ari thought for a moment. “I can't say. The secret police have been running a strange game these past few years. And to think, the
Gestapo
didn't exist when I was a boy.”

“The cruelty of ordinary people is monstrous,” Dominik said. “My wife...” He couldn't finish.

“I'm sorry,” Ari said, now looking at the floor.

“I just don't know why it had to be us. I don't know why they put so much effort into our little family. We're nothing, aren't we?”

“I've been trying to figure that out. The men in black coats showed up outside the doors to my lab yesterday, and I was foolish enough to think they were looking for someone else. Someone else! Imagine! Before I knew it, I had a bag over my head and was riding up the highway in the back of a car. I got here with the clothes on my back, and that's all. I'm still waiting for an explanation.”

A sound like thunder reverberated through the walls, and Dominik jumped. He wondered if it had begun to storm outside when Zofia giggled, and he realized that Ari had farted.

“Sorry about that,” Ari said, holding his stomach.

“What is it that you do, Ari?” Dominik asked.

“I'm a statistician. Well, a mathematical physicist,” he corrected. “Officially, I teach at Humboldt University, but since the party took over the school, it hasn't been the same. I've been traveling when I can get away with it. My most recent sabbatical was to Oslo to study linear particle accelerators. But that would probably bore you to death. What do you do? Do you teach? You look like a teacher, if you don't mind me saying.”

“I'm a biochemist.” He continued to stare at Ari. This new bit of information was troubling. It could be a coincidence that the Gestapo happened to capture two analytical scientists within two days of one another, but he doubted it. “I'm interested in what you do. Could you tell me?”

“Absolutely!” The man grinned, but then, his face changed. A gurgling noise came from his nether regions. “Ooo... I don't think I can hold this any more.” He put both hands over his gut and started hobbling towards the bucket, paused for a moment as if not wanting to go, then cried out and forced himself onwards. “I'm so sorry, folks. I can't wait.”

“Um—”

“This is so embarrassing,” Ari said, pulling his pants down in a most unembarrassed kind of way. Before Dominik could grab the girls, Ari's hairy ass was staring him in the face. Lucja was stunned, but Zofia only looked confused.

“Just a minute, Ari,” Dominik said. He grabbed both girls and turned them to face the corner of the room. “Let's be nice and give the man some privacy.”

“That's so gross!” Lucja commented. She looked as if she might be sick.

Zofia whispered as if Ari couldn't hear, which he clearly could. “What's he doing, Papa?”

Ari let out another loud gust, this one propelled down into the bucket. It was accompanied by a soft, moaning noise from the man himself.

Dominik, whose cheeks were barely dry, started to laugh. It was soft at first, and then grew to something louder. “I think, honey... I think he's trying to start a car. One of those old fashioned ones with a crank in the front.”

“Hey now, I'm trying to concentrate,” Ari said. His bowels erupted. There was another loud explosion and a soft thud of wet matter into the bucket.

“I take that back,” Dominik said. “It's more like a plane that's flying by. One that's dropping bombs on us.”

Zofia, who was gripping her father's arm, loosened her hold and started to laugh. It was a completely normal sound, something he hadn't heard in days, and it was catching. Before long, Lucja had started in as well.

“It sounds to me more like a dying hippo,” she said. “One of those big fat ones from the zoo.”

Dominik started to cry anew, this time from laughter. He could barely talk he was laughing so hard. “It's starting to smell like a dead hippo in here, Ari.”

“Oh, stop it!” Ari yelled, though Dominik could hear a ghost of a grin in his voice. A piece of bread hit him in the back. “That's for you to mind your manners!”

Any hope Ari had of convincing them to be quiet, however, was lost in another blast. The three unwilling spectators erupted into fresh gales, and they couldn't stop. “Ari... I never knew... you played the trombone!” Dominik said between bursts.

They were rolling on the ground now, and Dominik had to use his arms to keep the girls from rolling too far. He looked at his daughters and thought maybe, just maybe, they would be all right as long as they stuck together.

“You think they want us to build a weapon, don't you?”

That's what Ari asked him when the girls went to sleep. The previous year, Ari had published a theory—
the
theory—on thermal diffusion as a means of separating irradiated uranium, and Dominik was almost ashamed to admit he hadn't heard of him. He had heard of Ari's teacher, of course, the world-renowned Max Planck. It was clear that Ari was one of the man's proteges.

Dominik sighed. “It doesn't quite fit. My field is biochemistry, not physics. If they wanted to build a bomb, they would have grabbed your teacher, not me.”

“But chemical weaponry? Biological weaponry? What of that?”

He had to admit it was plausible, though he didn't like thinking of such things. It was mere hours since he had lost his wife, and his mind was cluttered with other thoughts.

They were interrupted by Burke the cook, and Dominik was saved the trouble of answering. The big man bustled into the pantry, looking harried and sweaty. Dominik was so surprised that it took him a moment to realize the door to the outside world was left wide open. Then, he realized he was being foolish. Even if they overpowered Burke, where would they go? They were at sea now, prisoners of the ocean as much as The Republic. His heart sank at the notion.

“Zofia. Lucja. Wake up,” he said. “Food.”

Ari asked the man if there was any news, but when Burke answered with a rather rude, “Mind your own fucking business,” Ari shut up. He made a rather distressed little shake, and Dominik smiled to himself. He realized he was coming to like Ari. He was one of those harmless, socially inept pundits who seemed incapable of deception. Dominik figured that was the best type of man to be trapped in a pantry with, if one had to be trapped in a pantry.

“Eat up, Ari.”

By the time they were finished, the hours had already begun to dissolve. They talked some more and then slept. They stretched their legs and took turns walking back and forth, and they slept. They used the bucket, they played word games, and they slept some more. Every so often, Dominik would reach into his pocket for his pocket watch, and then remember that it had been taken when Dietrich and the fat Gestapo agent had found them.

You think they want us to build a weapon, don't you?

In the darkness, Dominik found himself returning to the question. Is this where all his years of knowledge and study had
led? As a teacher, he had been removed from such thinking, and he thought the university had as well. Surely if there were a place pure and unblemished by thoughts of war, it was there. But then, he remembered his walk each morning. He remembered that for the past two years, he had passed by the monument to the 76th Army Regiment on his way to work. A huge ugly cube, it jutted from the earth in orthogonal defiance of the peaceful Hamburg campus, some two blocks away. Engravings of soldiers lined the lower perimeter, strutting around the circumference. For all the pride etched onto their faces, the metaphor of men marching in an endless loop seemed lost on the monument's architects.

This is what their country had become.

You think they want—

Something banged on the door, and Dominik jumped, wondering how long he had been sitting mute in the dark.

A moment later, a large silhouette appeared in the entranceway. It gripped both sides of the frame, suggesting a man who was either drunk or seasick, and since all of the men on board were able-bodied, Dominik did not think it was the latter.

“Do you believe this is my ship, boy?” it asked. “Well? I'm talking to you, pantry man.”

“Yes,” Dominik said, confused.

The figure nodded. “Damn right. I am the captain. I am
Captain
Heinrich von Unger, and this is my ship. Nobody tells me what to do on my ship. Do you believe that?”

“Yes, of course.”

The captain looked at Ari. “And you?”

“Yes,” the man said nervously.

“Very good. Then you gather up your children and you follow me. All of you.”

Moments later, Dominik found himself in the open air, face to face with Dietrich once more. Only instead of taking
something, the good lieutenant was prepared to give. At the captain's insistence, Dominik and his family would be given a supervised escort to the deck twice daily for exercise. And though Dominik was relieved beyond measure, on some distant, secret level of his mind, he was also mollified.

Which was why the lieutenant had agreed to Heinrich's request in the first place.

A small taste of freedom can dampen—sometimes even extinguish—one's desire for the real thing. At least, for a time.

The Argentinian Coast:

Present Day

Mason pushed open the church doors and stepped out onto the dirt. The sun was dipping towards the horizon, an orange giant against a backdrop of distant mountains. The church was more cellar than gathering hall, and the air greeted him like a welcome friend. He was assaulted by the smells of the sea, the sounds of his men playing football over the hill. It was beautiful down here, and unlike the others, he wasn't too dim to notice. Also unlike the others, being here always made him think of retirement. That day was coming, and it wasn't far.

He dropped the duffel bags onto the dirt and stretched, feeling sweat trickle down his bare chest. The guns were heavy, and no one had offered to help him carry them up. That was all right. He liked the time alone. He liked the smell of dirt and gun oil and the feel of the old church over his head.

Footsteps echoed above him, and he turned to see old Padre Manuel coming up on the entrance. He nodded. The padre nodded back.

Old Manuel wasn't here with any real purpose, he was just walking the grounds, just as he always did when Mason was here. Seeing that all was satisfactory, the padre continued up the path to the cemetery and the little flower garden behind the
walls. His leg brace, a metal medieval contraption, squeaked as he passed. Some of the padre's history was well-concealed, but some of it—like his mangled kneecap—was not. Mason wondered if that was what was in store for him if he pushed too far into old age and allowed himself to get slow.

His thoughts were interrupted when he looked up the path and saw Reiner coming over the hill. Like Mason, he was shirtless, still sporting a sunburn leftover from their last job in Mexico. He was wearing his cowboy hat and shades, a look that only true rednecks could pull off. And Reiner pulled it off just fine.

“Goddamn, boss. Praise God and pass the ammunition,” he said, sifting through one of the bags with the tip of a steel-toed boot.

“Have a look if you want.”

He did. A moment later, he was holding an AR-15 out in front of him and checking the stock.

Mason wiped the sweat off his brow. “Any complaints?”

“None from me, boss. What else you got in there?”
There
came out
'nare
.

“A couple of Mossbergs, a few forty-fives. Oh, there are two fifty cals. I figure we'll take one per chopper.”

“You think we'll need 'em?”

“Not likely, but you never know. And speaking of shit we don't need, I managed to get a new toy for St. Croix.”

“Oh yeah?” Reiner looked in the bag and found the grenade launcher. “Christ, one of them China jobs? You'll be lucky if that shit don't blow up in his hands.”

Mason laughed. “You know as well as I do that he'll be like a kid at Christmas. If we don't have anything to blow up, he'll find something.”

“Hell yeah, he will. I don't reckon I'll be walking in front of him any time soon.”

“I just want to see that grin of his, the one that makes him look like a monkey.”

Reiner chuckled. “You hate that grin, boss. You know it.”

“You're right, I do. Where's he at, anyways? With the others?”

“Yep,” Reiner said, shifting his hat back. “Want me to get 'em?”

“No, let them have a few minutes. We're still waiting on the civies.” He'd been out of the military for well over a decade now, but some words just stuck.
Civies
was the only way he could think of the soft-bodied.