The Good German (63 page)

Jake crouched lower, bracing himself against Gunther, so that he didn’t see the water as they plunged into the canal, just felt the shock of the crash, throwing him forward against the dash with a crunch, a sick snapping sound at his shoulder, his head bumping hard against the wheel, a sharp pain that blotted out everything but the last instinct, to take a deep gulp of air as the water rushed in to flood around him.

He opened his eyes. Murky, almost viscous water, too cloudy to see far. Not a canal anymore, a sewer. Absurdly, he thought of infection. But there wasn’t time to think about anything. He lifted himself, shoulder throbbing in a spasm, and reached over the seat with his good hand, grabbing Emil’s shirt and pulling at it. Emil was moving, not dead, squirming up off the floor. Jake yanked the shirt, lifting him over the seat and pushing him toward the window. Buoyant, floating weight, just a matter of steering him out, but the front was crowded, Gunther taking up precious space.

Jake leaned back, twisting Emil’s body so that he could shove it head first, watching Emil’s feet flailing as he kicked his way out. Hurry. The canal wasn’t deep; enough time to get to the surface if his air held. He began to follow through the window, bumping his head again on the frame, pulling himself with one arm, the other useless. Halfway out, Emil’s shoe caught his shoulder, kicking, the pain so startling he thought he might black out and sink, the way rescuers were accidentally taken down by the thrashing of the people they were trying to save. His legs were now through the frame. He began to stroke up to the surface but the shoe struck him again, a strong kick, catching him now at the side of the head, a solid running pain to his shoulder. Don’t gasp. For Christ’s sake, Emil, move away. Then another kick, downward, not flailing this time, deliberate, intended to connect. Another. One more and he might be knocked out, bubbles rising to the surface, not a weapon in sight. No more air. He swam sideways with his good arm, only one effort left, and pushed up. Gentle Emil. What would you do to survive?

As he broke the surface, he barely got a gulp of air before the hand caught his throat and started to push his head back under. A squeal of tires and shouts from the bank. The hand came away. Jake pulled his head up, sputtering.

“Emil.”

Emil had turned to look at the bank, once a solid wall, now bombed in places to slopes of rubble. Shaeffer and his man were picking their way down, their attention on the awkward footing, away from the water. A minute, maybe. Emil looked back at Jake, still gasping, his shoulder now an agony.

“It’s over,” Jake said.

“No.” Barely a whisper, his eyes on Jake. Not like Shaeffer’s, a hunter’s, but something more desperate. What would you do? Emil reached for him and caught his throat again, and as Jake’s head went under, he saw, with a sinking feeling worse than drowning, that he was losing the wrong war—not Shaeffer’s, the one he hadn’t even known he was fighting. A kick to the stomach now, forcing out air, as the hand gripped his hair, holding him under. Losing. Another kick. He’d die, the kick marks no more suspicious than crash bruises. Emil getting away with it again.

He yanked his head down, pulling Emil with him, scratching at his fingers. No good punching through water. He’d have to claw the fingers off. Another kick, below his stomach, but the hand was letting go, afraid perhaps of being dragged under with his victim. Do what he expects. Die. Jake sank lower. Emil couldn’t see through the thick water. Would he follow? Let him think it had worked. He felt a final kick, the shoulder again, and for a moment he was no longer pretending, sinking deeper, without the strength to pull himself back up, the dizziness before a blackout. His feet hit the roof of the car. Below, he could see Gunther’s head lolling out of the car window, floating like kelp. The way he’d look. Bastards. He dropped, bending his knees, no breath left at all, then pushed away with a last heave, away from Emil, toward the bank.

“Here he is!” Shaeffer shouted as his head bobbed up. He sucked in air, choking, spitting the water that came with it.

The other soldier had waded in to get Emil, who gazed at Jake in shock, then dropped his head, looking down at his hand, where the scratches were welling with blood.

“You all right?” Shaeffer was saying. “Why the hell didn’t you stop?”

Jake kept gasping, drifting toward the bank. Nowhere else to go now. Then he felt Shaeffer’s hand on his collar, dragging him onto the bank, struggling, then gripping his belt and yanking, like Tully being fished out of the Jungfernsee. He fell back against the broken concrete, looking up at Shaeffer. A splash, the sound of water dripping as Emil came out a few yards away.

He closed his eyes, fighting a wave of nausea from the pain, then opened them again to Shaeffer. “You going to finish me off here?”

Shaeffer looked at him, confused. “Don’t be an asshole. Here, let me give you a hand,” he said, reaching for him.

But he grabbed the wrong arm. As Shaeffer pulled him up, Jake’s shoulder went hot with pain and he couldn’t stop the scream, the last thing he heard before everything finally, almost a relief, did go black.

Contents
-
Previous Chapter
/
Next Chapter

THEY SET HIS shoulder at the officers’ infirmary near Onkel Tom’s Hütte, or at least he was told they did, a day later, when he lay with a morphine hangover under the pink chenille spread at Gelferstrasse. People had drifted in and out, Ron to check, the old woman from downstairs playing nurse, none of them quite real, just figures in a haze, like his arm, white with gauze and adhesive, hanging in a sling, not his at all, someone else’s. Who were they all? When the old woman came back, recognizable now, the billet’s owner, he realized, embarrassed, that he didn’t even know her name. Then the stranger with her, an American uniform, gave him a shot, and they disappeared too. What he saw instead was Gunther’s face, floating in the water. No more points. And later, awake, the face still in his mind, he knew the haze was not just the drugs but a deeper exhaustion, a giving up, because he had done everything wrong.

He was sitting by the window, looking down on the garden where the old woman had snipped parsley, when Lena finally came.

“Eve been so worried. They wouldn’t let me go to the hospital.” Military only. What if he had died?

“You look nice,” he said as she kissed his forehead. Hair pinned up, the dress he had bought in the market.

“Well, for Gelferstrasse,” she said, a look between them, blushing a little, pleased that he’d noticed. “And look, here’s Erich. They say it’s not so bad, the shoulder only. And ribs. Do the drugs make you sleepy? My god, this room.” She went over to the bed, busy, and straightened the spread. “There,” she said, and for an instant he saw her as a younger version of the old woman, a Berliner, going on. “See what Erich brought. It was his idea.”

The boy handed over half a Hershey bar, eyes on the sling.

Jake took the bar, the haze lifting a little, unexpectedly touched. “So much,” he said. “I’ll save it for later, okay?”

Erich nodded. “Can I feel?” he said, pointing to the arm.

“Sure.”

He ran his hand over the tape, working out the mechanics of the sling, interested.

“You have a light touch,” Jake said. “You’ll make a good doctor.”

The boy shook his head. “
Alles ist kaput
.”

“Someday,” Jake said, still hazy, then looked at Lena again, trying to focus, clear his head. What, in fact, were they doing here? Was Shaeffer keeping him here? Had they told Lena? He turned to her. Get it over with. “They got Emil.”

“Yes, he came to the flat. With the American. Such a scene, you can’t imagine.”

“To the flat?” Jake said. “Why?” Nothing clear.

“He was looking for something,” Erich said.

The files, even now. “Did he find it?”

“No,” Lena said, looking away.

“He was angry,” the boy said.

“Well, now he’s happy,” Lena said to him quickly. “So never mind. He’s going away, so he’s lucky too.” She looked at Jake. “He said you saved his life.”

“No. That’s not what happened.”

“Yes. The American said so too. Oh, you’re always so modest. It’s like the newsreel.”

“That didn’t happen either.”

“Ouf,” she said, brushing this away. “Well, now it’s over. Do you want something? Can you eat?” Busy again, picking up a shirt from the floor.

“I didn’t save him. He tried to kill me.”

Lena stopped, still half bent over, the shirt in hand. “Such talk. It’s the drugs.”

“No, that’s what happened,” he said, trying to keep his voice level and clear. “He tried to kill me.”

She turned slowly. “Why?”

“The files, I guess. Maybe because he thought he could. No one would know.”

“It’s not true,” she said quietly.

“No? Ask him how he got the scratches on his hand.”

For a moment, silence, broken finally by someone clearing his throat.

“Well, suppose we put all that behind us now, shall we?” Shaeffer came through the door, Ron trailing behind him.

Lena turned to him. “So it’s true?”

“Anybody in a car crash gets a few scratches, you know. Look at you,” he said to Jake.

“You saw it,” Jake said.

“Confusing situation like that? A lot of splashing, that’s what I saw.”

“So it is true,” Lena said, sinking onto the bed.

“Sometimes the truth’s a little overrated,” Shaeffer said. “Doesn’t always fit.”

“Where have you got him?” Jake said.

“Don’t worry, he’s safe. No thanks to you. Hell of a place to pick to go swimming. God knows what’s in there. Doc says we’d better get some sulfa drugs into him before we take him to Kransberg. Might spread.”

“You’re taking him to Kransberg?”

“Where’d you think I was taking him—to the Russians?” Said genially, without guile, his smile pushing the rest of Jake’s haze away. Not Shaeffer after all. Someone else.

“Tell me the truth,” Lena said. “Did Emil do that?”

Shaeffer hesitated. “He might have got a little agitated is all. Now let’s forget about all that. We’ll get Geismar fixed up here and everybody’ll be just fine.”

“Yes, fine,” Lena said, distracted.

“We have a few things to go over,” Ron said.

Lena looked at the boy, who’d been following their conversation like a tennis match.

“Erich, do you know what’s downstairs? A gramophone. American records. You go listen and I’ll be down soon.”

“Take him down and get him set up,” Shaeffer said to Ron, giving orders now. “Your kid?” he said to Lena.

Lena shook her head, staring at the floor.

“All right,” Shaeffer said, turning to Jake, back to business. “Why the hell did you keep running away from me?”

“I thought you were someone else,” Jake said, still trying to work it out. “He knew I’d be there.” He looked up. “But you knew I’d be there too. How did you?”

“Boys over in intelligence got a tip.”

“From whom?”

“I don’t know. Really,” Shaeffer said, suddenly earnest. “You know how those things work. You get a tip, you don’t have time to chase around to see where it comes from—you find out if it’s true. You ran out on us once. Why the fuck wouldn’t I believe it?” He glanced over at Lena. “I thought you were doing the lady another favor.”

“No, I was doing you a favor.”

“Yeah? And look what happened. Who’d you think I was?”

“The man who shot Tully.”

“Tully? I told you once, I don’t give a shit about Tully.” He looked over. “Who was it?”

“I don’t know. Now I’m not going to.”

“Well, who cares?”

“You should. The man who shot him got Brandt out of Kransberg.”

“Well, I’m putting him back. That’s all that matters now. The rest, that’s all forgotten.” Another American smile, last week’s game.

“You’ve still got some bodies to account for. You going to forget about them too?”

“I didn’t shoot them.”

“Just the tire.”

“Yeah, well, the tire. I figure I owe you for that one. Not that I fucking owe you anything. But it fits. Ron says we can play it this way.

“What are you talking about? You’ve got people shot in public. Witnesses. How do you play that?”

“Well, that’s a question of what was seen, isn’t it? A German guns

down a Russian officer, hightails it away, gets followed, gets killed. Kind of thing happens in Berlin.“

“In front of the whole press corps.”

Shaeffer smiled. “But the only one they recognize in the whole mess is you. Isn’t that right, Ron?”

“Afraid so,” Ron said, coming back in. “Hard to keep track of what’s what when things are—hectic.”

“So?”

“So they know you were there. You were seen, so we had to explain you.

“Explain me how?”

“Damned fool thing going after him like that,” Shaeffer said. “But that’s the kind of damned fool thing you do. Got a reputation for it. And the press—you can’t blame them—they always like it when the hero’s one of their own.”

“Fuck you. That’s not the way I’m going to write it.”

Ron looked at him. “That’s the way it’s gone out. From everybody. While you’ve been on the critical list. ‘Hanging by a thread,’ as they say. They did, too.”

“I said I owed you for the tire. So now you’re a fucking hero. Not that you deserve it. But it fits.”

“Maybe the Russians won’t agree. They were there too.”

“Only the one who’s dead.”

“You shoot the guys in the Horch?”

“What Horch?” Shaeffer said, looking up. “Next question.”

“Who shot Gunther then? He didn’t die in a car crash. There’s a bullet in him. So who put it there?”

“You did,” Shaeffer said calmly.

Ron leaped in before Jake could say anything. “See, Kalach—that’s the Russian he shot—saw him aim for the stands. Lucky Kalach got to him before he could take out Zhukov—that’s who we think he was after. Of course, not so lucky for Kalach. But hell, it might have been Patton. On Victory Day. That kind of thing brings them out, makes a statement. Apparently there were personal problems—a drunk, never really got over the war. Cop who went bad—you know, when they do that, there’s nothing worse. Do anything. Not that I blame him for having a grudge against the Russians.”