The Losing Role (32 page)

“Something like that.”

“Listen. In this war I did my time unraveling the
German character. It’s no different than anyone else’s, just a
little more tragic, and far more unlucky.”

“You can say that for them.”

“That country road down below?” the colonel said.
“You were almost in the next county, then it’s on to Munich. You’re
not decamping so soon, are you?”

“No, sir.”

“Your first day here then? I never saw you
before.”

“That’s right.”

“Fine. Now listen here, that major of yours will
need some GIs to keep an eye. I’m loaning you Horton’s team.” The
colonel offered a hand. “Name’s Spanner. Eugene.”

We shook hands. “Kaspar. Harry. Thank you. Use all
the help we can get, I’m sure.”

The colonel named Spanner laughed. “It’s damn
unreal, isn’t it, Kaspar? Americans taking control in every cursed
corner of this fubar snake pit that used to be Germany. A paradox,
I say. Here we fight and kill enemy, and we lose plenty friends
along the way. Go to a hell of a place that no one’s ever been.
Then you MG swoop on in and you go and help the enemy.”

“It’s not like that, sir. We’re here to help the
refugees, the victims. Children. Germans, they do what we tell
them.”

“That true? Then be sure to remember that, son.”
Spanner said this lightly, as if he should be smiling. He was not.
His mouth had curled down like he needed to spit. He paused a
moment, but it wasn’t the type of pause I could wedge a word
into.

I might have put it all in my next weekly report,
and I could have, but I was no dope. Those freight cars were CIC’s
domain. They well could have held important documents and plans
useful for the war effort, or secret weapons’ parts to be studied,
or anything that could prevent more of the sick misadventures men
had unleashed in these last few years. As for the corpses, this
colonel didn’t need to hear it, not with that grave stare he was
giving me—a stare that was saying, whose side are you on exactly?
This is no way to make a name, son.

So, I smiled for the colonel. I stuffed my notebook
back in my back pocket. His eyes followed my hand until it returned
to my side, and I showed him a thumbs-up, ready for take off. “Will
do, sir,” I said.

“Good. Well done. Then goodbye for now,” Colonel
Spanner said and strolled off, adding, “Swell shoes, kid.”

I fired up my Zippo with a clank, lit up a Lucky and
strolled back to the jeep. Telling myself, I’ll have to be more
like that colonel when I get back to Heimgau. “Can do,” he called
it and I’m the same. Always take the straightest line. That was how
the front-line types handled it. If I didn’t, someone else will
make me compromise, set rules for me. Funny thing though—I was
thinking all this in German even though these were such American
thoughts to me.

The GIs were slinging their guns back on and, led by
Sergeant Horton, heading back into the woods the way they had come.
I wheeled the jeep around and, as I hit the road back downhill,
glanced over my shoulder to see Colonel Spanner climbing up and
into that juggernaut of a loco.

I drove fast and hard, the wind blurring my eyes,
the ruts knocking the chassis and tossing my briefcase, thermos and
helmet around like so much popcorn in the pot.

Down on the main road I turned back the way I had
come, heading back for the corpses and on back toward Heimgau. As I
neared the bend I slowed, and then I had to squint, just to make
myself believe what I now saw.

THREE

The three corpses were gone. Dark blood stains
glistened on the pavement and gravel, coagulating like smashed
black cherries. But that was it. For a moment I suspected Abraham
himself, as if the lifeless hooded man had been able to recover
somehow and haul his dead friends off into the woods. What a
frantic notion. I had witnessed the man dying. So I parked on the
shoulder and stood in the road, hands on my hips, checking things
out. The road was clear either way, and I smelled no exhaust. I
paused to listen and heard only the pings and trickles of my
overworked jeep. The woods around me were all shadow and murk, a
permanent dusk inside there for who knew how far. I entered the
woods and stomped around in the underbrush but found nothing, not
one clue. I didn’t go far though. I’d already lost the corpses and
didn’t want to leave the jeep, since I had no chain to lock up the
steering wheel.

I drove back to Heimgau, making myself chuckle at
the insanity this war brought and would bring. MG Joes like me were
supposed to cure the slow-acting poisons of madmen, but who’d ever
clinched such a deal? I wanted to go back and tell that Colonel
Spanner the corpses had disappeared, but the man had his own
concerns. I had given him a thumbs-up as if he were the gladiator
to be spared, but the truth was he was the Roman tribune with the
final say. As far as his operation went, I really had no recourse
back there even if I did think the colonel was crossing some sort
of line. As our CIC agent, he would see any report I could file. I
had to assume that. It was his job to know everything. He could
have dossiers on any MG officer.

You know German like a native, he had said to me.
Yet he didn’t sneer when he said it, or call me Heini or kraut
while slapping me on the back. That’s what most of them did and I’d
grown accustomed to it, sure I did, in the same way a fellow gets
used to a case of the pox.

Then I got to thinking about my sudden new post. I
was now playing John Law. As horrific as those corpses were, my
find did keep me close to the action. I could show the Germans how
their new liberators delivered Justice compared to the thugs and
racketeers who’d been conning them the last twelve years. I
definitely needed a leg up. This could be it.

I was back up in Major Membre’s new office within a
half hour.

“Find anyone?” the major said from his desk as if
I’d only popped out to check the mail.

“I came across three corpses. Out where the
Heimgauer Strasse hits the woods. Fresh, sir.”

I might as well have told him no mail had come. He
appeared to be reading, but his eyes had not moved. He turned the
page, his mouth formed that O again, and he muttered, “Oh?”

“One passed away right when I got there. I think
he’d been in one of the concentration camps.”

“Passed away? Oh dear, that’s grim. Could he say
anything?”

“It didn’t make sense, I’m afraid. He gave me a
name. So, from here? My first task is to verify, identify—try to
find out if any were German locals, soldiers, even Nazis. If any
are local civs or had been then it’s definitely our
jurisdiction.”

The major nodded. He turned another page.

“They looked like they were tortured,” I added. “Not
a pretty sight.”

“Dreadful. Well, bring them in and ID them. We’ll
get some locals to do the lifting.”

“That’s just the problem, sir. They’re not there
anymore. The corpses, I mean. I left for help but decided to turn
back for them and they were gone.”

Membre looked up, grinning. He slapped at the desk.
“See, now there you go! That’s the way it’s going to be here. Could
have been anyone, those corpses. Could’ve been refugees did
it.”

“Refugees? They’re too weak, hungry to do that kind
of work.”

“Fine, but, the sad fact is we just don’t know what
these people are capable of, and I mean any of them.”

What had I expected? A shiny metal? A shot of CO
wisdom? I wanted to leave, but I kept my feet planted. “Also, I met
the CIC agent on the way in, sir. A lieutenant colonel name of
Spanner.”

Membre’s head popped up. “Oh? Right. We wouldn’t be
here nice and safe if it weren’t for CIC. That’s my feeling.”

Did he even have a feeling? He hadn’t even asked
what Abraham’s name was. So I didn’t mention the train. Why bother?
The major knew nothing about it, I was guessing. He certainly
didn’t ask. He went back to turning his pages and his face
slackened, all serious now like it should’ve been when I told him
about the corpses. His eyes darted along and glittered. “I’m
reading up on church matters. Fine church here, they say. Sure was
a handsome sight coming in, I tell you that. Just glorious. Bet
they have a fine display chamber here somewhere. They all have
those here. Know that? I did. Brocade vestments, jeweled chalices
and such, maybe even a reliquary. Yes, that really would fortify a
man, don’t you think?”

I was raised Lutheran and could give a hoot if this
was Catholic country. Yet here we were taking over an enemy town
and all my new CO wants to do is go tour the old church? He could
tour all he wanted. The parish priest, Father Plant, was one of the
“brown priests.” He had kissed up to the Nazis and even flew the
swastika at mass. So it wasn’t surprising that the brown Father
Plant and his curates and whole rotten retinue had fled the coop
weeks ago.

Meanwhile, three poor souls had been tortured to
death, and this major was blaming refugees?

I didn’t need the CO. I needed to know what made
this Heimgau burg tick, and that meant knowing the people. My
historical backgrounders, typed by an anonymous German émigré in
some faceless MG bureau, had given me a decent start: “Heimgau Town
survives as one of many rural townships within
the 
Alpenvorland
, that green wonderland north of the
Bavarian Alps. The town prevails as
the
Kreisstadt
 (county seat) of
the 
Landkreis
 (surrounding county), which is also
named Heimgau. The town houses the offices and courts, churches and
schools, and main merchants. Though one must not forget the local
artisans. Long ago the area profited from the traffic of a major
Roman road. Ever since, through strife, and famine, and scandal,
the artisan industry and the handicrafts have thrived here,
producing such varied pieces as painted toys and figurines, fine
art recreations, furniture . . . to observers, Heimgau is exactly
what it appears to be: smallish and isolated, devout and
conservative.”

That afternoon I set up an interrogation post in the
cellar of City Hall. I was hoping the prospect of thorny questions
down in that dank catacomb might help bring out the secrets. I set
up a line of empty crates as chairs. I had electricity, so I hung a
work lamp above me. Then I called down those few Heimgau officials
who hadn’t fled or committed suicide, which was easy enough—they
had decided to come out of hiding and were waiting patiently inside
an upstairs restroom.

They had on natty dark suits and debriefed me with
heads lowered. The big Nazis had hightailed it, they confirmed, the
police had done the same, all the schools had been closed for
months. Only the train station had been bombed. Water, electricity,
and phone lines were a mess—it was true. But they weren’t
concerned, because the 
Amerikaner
 come well
prepared, and they nodded in agreement at that, oh, yes.

“I found corpses. Three. All men. Dumped in the
Heimgauer Strasse.” I described them. I didn’t mention Abraham and
his number tattoo. That would only spook them, clam them up for
now. “Civilians perhaps? Locals gone missing?”

The men exchanged glances. One shook his head, and
another shrugged. All studied their feet with the intensity of men
counting money.

I offered each a Lucky and then asked again, losing
the tough-mug act. Yet I got the same response, this time with
smiles. So much for the magic of Virginia tobacco.

“What about recent records? Local loyalists,
resisters? Missing persons?”

More shrugs. Records were destroyed, they said,
burned on orders of the SS.

“And the morgue?” Though I had already checked that,
it was empty and spotless.

This brought a laugh. “
Herr Kapitän
, surely
you know the morgue is now the only place in all of Germany where
there are no dead.”

“Then what about a fellow named Abraham?”

That wiped the smiles right off. A name like that
could not be explained away. The glances returned, and they went
back to getting PhDs in studying their feet. One of them had
scrunched up his face in thought. His gray hair had receded to the
back half of his head in fluffy plumes that made him look like some
ancient record keeper, all that was missing were the reading
glasses on a chain.

“You,” I said to him. “Out with it.”

“There’s nothing to come out with, sir. There may
have been such a man, but it would have been years ago.”

“A Jewish man, you mean.”

“Yes. There were some here in the county. It’s been
years. You would need a last name. You would need those records,
any records. And without seeing a face, who can know?” He held up
his hands as if to say, what good was it? For what?

Without a face
. Under that hood. What a
thorough idiot I was for not looking. “Right. I get you. I’m on my
own,” I muttered.

I finished with the town buck passers. I was taking
a break out on the square when an unmarked three-quarter ton truck
pulled up and unloaded the six CIC GIs from Dollendorf, including
Colonel Spanner’s big lug sergeant, Sergeant Horton. Children had
gathered and they tugged at the GIs’ trousers and Horton tossed
them licorice and Hershey’s. It was good to see someone getting the
people to loosen up. If a palooka like that could manage it, so
could I.

Colonel Spanner had Horton. I needed my own man, I
realized.

Back down in the cellar I read more reports and
backgrounders, smoked another butt, and decided on my final
interview. It didn’t take long to fetch the man. He worked in the
building.

The cellar door screeched open. A stocky fellow in
blue worker overalls descended the stone stairs, taking blunt steps
that would’ve been a fighter’s jabs had those feet been fists.

“Good day, 
Herr
 Winkl,” I said in
respectful High German. Uli Winkl was the City
Hall 
Hausmeister
, a building master being a cross
between a building’s janitor and a super, depending. For every one
of these who was a snoop or a toady, a good many more sang their
own tunes.