The Losing Role (15 page)

Rattner shrugged. “Yes. I suppose. What else is
there?”

“How? We’ll need gasoline,” Zoock said.

“I’ll get it,” Felix said. “All right? So how about
it?”

Rattner shrugged again, this time violently,
practically throwing out his shoulder sockets. As if he cared for
nothing now. It gave Max a chill down his back.

“They told you something else, didn’t they?” he said
to Rattner.

“Is that true?” Felix glared.

Rattner started to speak, then stopped. He did this
twice. “Yes,” he said finally. “It’s way behind schedule. All along
the front, from fifty miles north of here to all the way south of
Bastogne. We’re doing some real damage, but it’s stalling. And the
whole thing depends on schedule.” He cleared his throat and spat,
but the attempt misfired and mucous hung from his chin.

Zoock leaned against the hood, shaking his head, his
hands balled as fists. Felix stood over Rattner, as if ready to
knee him in the face. “That all?” he said.

“That all? That all?” Rattner snickered and wiped at
his chin. “No, that is not all. Operation
Greif
, if you must know, has been compromised. The
English speakers, the
Ami
uniforms, our jeep teams, all of
it. Special Unit Pielau. Top that off,
Amis
are using
passwords now, and they’re changing from unit to unit, hour to
hour. Something happened. Someone was found with our plans,
something. The upshot is, the
Amis
know about us and they
have ways of spotting us. And that, my dear Menning, is all.”

Felix pulled back, his arms slack at his sides.

Max rubbed at his raw, itching eyes. Of course it
was true. American intelligence had to have suspected something
ever since that armed forces-wide request for English speakers was
issued two months ago. Now they had all the details. If Max was a
fool—if they were all fools—then the commanders at the top were the
true jokers.

“All of which means,” Max said, “that we don’t know
what the
Amis
will be looking for—that is, which telltale
clues will be giving us away.”

Zoock banged on the hood. “Always have to be so
goddamn correct, don’t you
Herr
Know-it-All?” he said to
Max.

Rattner let his head hang, and his cigarette dropped
into the mud between his legs. Felix let out an anxious,
incredulous snigger that sounded like a pig’s snort.

“I’m only being realistic,” Max muttered, a bitter
saliva forming in the back of his mouth. His sore, surging heart
seemed to rise up into his throat. He could not go back home, nor
flee west, it seemed. And yet he had to keep his comrades together.
He had to lead them. It was the only way to find a way out—so that
he could betray them.

They spent the rest of the day traveling along the
Meuse, skirting the open valleys and sticking to the forest roads,
south then north again, clinging to the hope that the panzer
spearheads would catch up to them. They didn’t even hear the
distant battles for long stretches. The thick clouds glowed
fluorescent, pregnant with snow. Then they grew denser and darker
and it started to snow, heavily, the fat flakes blotching the mud
white and clumping in the puddles.

In a village, Felix stole fuel cans from a parked
American supply truck. “At least we have the gas now,” Max said,
hoping to lighten the mood.

“For what? To return? Return to what?” Zoock
blurted. “Our last Christmas ever? Soon there’ll be no Germany to
return to. Better start learning your
Ami
English,” he
yelled back to Rattner, “because soon we’ll all be chewing chewing
gum.”

No one answered Zoock. They let him drive. Felix
offered Max the last Pall Mall. A couple minutes later Rattner
said, “It’s not over yet. It’s not.”

All the roads were looking familiar. They were going
in circles. Now and then they heard the cracks and pops of
gunshots. Artillery thumped again in the distance.

To the devil with correct—Max had to push it. He
blurted: “I know—if we see an open bridge, why don’t we just take
it? Or we could make a raft. Now there’s a ploy, comrades.” He knew
he was babbling, but he was scared now. He didn’t really want to go
it alone. This might be the only way out—simply get them all stuck
on the other side, together. “Good? What do you all say to
that?”

Felix was grinning. “That’s bold of you,” he began,
but Rattner cut him off:

“Absolutely not. We are ordered to patrol and recon
the eastern Meuse, and that is where we’ll stay. Right here. For
better or worse—”

“Wait, wait,” Zoock said. He had straightened up. He
let off the gas. Up ahead was a jeep off to the right side, its
rear end between two trees and the hood sticking out into the road,
as if it had emerged straight out of the forest. Steam billowed out
the radiator grill.

A GI was slumped over the steering wheel, and
another was hanging out the back.

Felix grabbed a Colt and passed one up to Max, while
Rattner pulled out a tommy gun. Zoock dropped it into first,
inching them closer. Bullet holes dotted the jeep. Its tires were
flat. On the other side of the road, at the edge of the forest
opposite, lay the bodies of two more GIs. Zoock stopped about fifty
yards from the scene. They jumped out and spread out with guns
aimed, crouching as they walked, peering into the woods for sounds
and signs. Nothing. No one. The shot-up jeep’s engine made pinging
noises. Felix took the lead, while Max went over to check the two
GIs across the road. One was on his side as if sleeping. Blood
still ran from his stomach and into the mud, releasing steam. The
other was on his back, his legs bent up high like a frog’s, arms
out straight. His eyes were open, staring up into the clouds. The
snow already covered the eyeballs. The flakes filled the folds in
their uniforms.

“Don’t get it—why would dogfaces shoot at each
other? And from this close?” Zoock shouted across the road to Max
in English.

Max had been thinking the same thing. He crossed
over to the shot-up jeep. Two more dead lay on the other side of
the vehicle, curled up in balls as if they’d been shot trying to
jump out and find cover. In total, four had been in the jeep. The
snow was sticking to them too, dusting them white.

Felix, Zoock and Rattner went silent. They stood in
a line, their guns pointed to the ground. Max thought he
understood—none of them ever saw the dead so up close and freshly
expired. He had. It was the only part of combat he knew, it
seemed.

“You’ll get used to it,” he began to say—

Then he saw it. What they really saw. On the ground
were a lieutenant and a corporal. The lieutenant was staring up at
them with blue-gray eyes that were still melting the snowflakes,
and his hands were clenching at his tunic, which he’d obviously
tried to rip open. Underneath was the field gray uniform of an SS
corporal.

Thirteen

They unbuttoned the other three’s American tunics.
All wore SS uniforms underneath. The jeep’s hood had a white A in
the corner. It was team A from Special Unit Pielau. Lightly, with
fingertips, they brushed snow off the four faces.

“Poor Hasko—dear God,” Zoock whispered. The driver
was his sailor friend, Hasko, the one Felix had mockingly called
“the goat” back in Grafenwöhr. The phony US lieutenant dead on the
ground was a once-great ballet dancer, Scherling.

Rattner scurried back to their jeep to try the
radio.

“Should we hide them, get their German uniforms
off?” Felix said.

“What’s the use?” Max said. Clearly, the GIs across
the road hadn’t bothered to question jeep A—somehow, even they had
been able to spot the four as Germans.

Zoock carried his friend Hasko into the forest, a
few trunks inside the tree line. He struck the ground with a
shovel. It clanged at the icy earth. Felix started toward him but
Max held him back by the elbow. Zoock sat Hasko up against a tree.
Kneeling, he spoke a few words to his friend, in his ear, then he
placed Hasko’s cap over his eyes, which made Hasko look to be
napping. Zoock reached in Hasko’s tunic as if looking for photos
and letters. He found none. They’d been forbidden.

Rattner strutted back smiling, the steam pumping out
from between his gapped teeth. “I got through. The battle plans
have shifted. We’re to return at once. Check out any towns on the
way, they said. Radio in enemy strength. So let’s be off and
fast.”

They sped away, back east toward the German front
lines. All knew what Rattner’s news meant, though none of them
voiced it. The surprise offensive had failed. When they made it
back, they could be reinserted into another absurd and risky
scheme. They might even be thrown into a regular unit.

Zoock drove hard and fast. After a couple miles he
steered the jeep into the woods, stopped, got out and began
scraping the X off the corner of their hood with his knife. Max
helped him, and Rattner and Felix went to work scraping the X off
the rear. They did all this without speaking.

The road turned rough and icy. The suspension
clattered and knocked, and the tires spun on frozen patches with a
ripping sound like the squeals of stampeding boars. Crusty
snowflakes whipped around inside their canvas cab. Yet Max burned
hot under all his wool. The sweat rolled down his chest and back
and itched under his hair. With every mile they went, the Meuse—and
Paris, and
Amerika
—lay further at his back. He was missing
his chance altogether. He wiped the sweat off his neck and forehead
and unbuttoned his overcoat. Even if he were to break free, how
could he know the Americans wouldn’t shoot him on sight? This would
take more than an escape—it would take a miracle.

Now he was cold, freezing cold, and he wrapped a
GI-issue scarf around his neck. He blurted: “We should’ve crossed
the river when we had the chance. Shouldn’t we? Swam it, stolen a
dingy, what have you.” Zoock kept his eyes on the road. Max glared
at Felix and Rattner in back. “Am I right?
Kameraden?
So
perhaps we should just split up now, eh? Go our own way.”

Subtly, Felix shook his head at him.

Rattner snarled: “Corporal Kaspar, get a hold of
yourself—”

“Least we should take off our SS tunics,” Zoock
shouted. “I’m not even in the goddamned SS, and neither is Kaspar
here. Man’s a goddamned actor. Look at him. And I’m a sailor.” He
banged at the steering wheel.

Felix turned to Rattner. He said, softly, “Sailor
boy has a point, now Hartmut, it is a long way back—”

Rattner pushed at Felix. “How dare you call an
officer by his first name? You heard what Skorzeny said—we’d be
shot as spies that way. Who knows what happened back there, any of
you. Maybe one of them lost his head? Betrayed the others.”

As Rattner said this, he locked his scowl on
Max.

Max glared back. “Just what are you implying,
sir?”

“You know perfectly well. So don’t feed me that
gentleman shit-speak.” Rattner grabbed at Max’s collar, then heaved
it loose.

Max turned around and faced the rough and icy road
that was sending them further east. The captain must have been
suspecting him the whole time. Perhaps his drunkenness was only a
ploy. Perhaps they all suspected him. Luckily, Max still had the
Colt in his overcoat pocket. And yet Zoock had a Walther pistol in
his lap, Felix a tommy, and Rattner a tommy.

And they drove on, in silence. They might as well
have been chained together, Max thought, like a team of escaped
convicts.

Afternoon now, December 17. The snow fell in heavy,
churning sheets. Their forest world had turned white. They got lost
twice. They lost time. Yet already they were halfway back to the
German lines. Max’s heart ached and he imagined it black and
clogged, barely pumping. His predicament was suffocating him, yet
his indecision was worse. How could he make a break for it? Here
the Ardennes was all slippery hills and snowbound streams and Zoock
kept racing on, horrified of getting stuck.

Max gripped the Colt in his pocket. He slid off the
safety. “This is it,” he muttered as the snow whipped at his lips.
Whatever he was to do he would do it for Lucy, to show her. And he
would survive it for Liselotte, to love her still.

They passed a sign for a town, but the name was shot
up. Only “Five Kilometers” was legible. Rattner, waving his tommy,
screamed at Zoock to drive on.

The snow and the wind let up, and they heard the din
of battle, growing louder.

Up ahead, a line of GIs was blocking the road. They
saw the white helmet stripes—they were MPs.

“In English, and keep it short,” Max said to the
rest, “let’s keep our guns down. Captain, I suggest you act drunk.
You’ve done such a fine job in the role before.”

Felix smiled at that and Rattner nodded, grunting.
At least their canvas top was up—it would help cover Rattner. Zoock
lowered his Walther to the floor.

Out in the road, two of the MPs moved forward with
rifles raised. The MPs were black. American Negroes. Zoock’s
Confederate hood was free of snow and clear to see.

“Tell them this is not our usual jeep,” Max said to
Zoock out the side of his mouth. “Make up the rest. That clear? You
can do it.”

Zoock nodded, his knuckles white on the steering
wheel. Yards away now. Zoock stopped with a squeal of brakes and a
crunch of snow. One MP approached Zoock’s side. He was a corporal
and a lighter skinned black, with freckles on his cheeks. He had a
thin mustache like Max’s. He saluted for Max. Max saluted back.

“Where you heading?” the MP corporal said to
Zoock.

Zoock grinned. “Hey there, I think we’re lost.” He’d
ditched the Chinese Southern accent for good.

“See your papers,” said the MP corporal. Zoock
looked to Max, who handed over his papers. The MP corporal placed
them on his wrist to read, still aiming the rifle.