The patroled area allocated for Combined NATO Forces maneuvers, several square miles of field and wood in southern Germany near the Czechoslovakian border, was crowded with hundreds of soldiers and tanks, guns, heavy equipment, plus temporary executive and housing quarters, but the organization and discipline, the limited communications between the polyglot troops and the demands of the rough terrain and weather seemed to isolate the region in a cone of near silence.
The Lucky Thirteenth, with its M60 tanks with 105mm snouts, stretched out on either side of Lasari’s assigned position, hidden in clumps of trees or behind escarpments of rock camouflaged by cut fir branches and mottled canvas netting, shadowed under the night sky.
As Private George Jackson, Lasari’s orders had assigned him to act as tactical observer and assistant scanner to a French tank technician with a sergeant’s rank. That man sat now in a metal sling seat, legs swinging free, as he monitored the night beam and scopes of a Chaparral, part of the Army’s air defense weapons system.
Above the military scene, the air was occasionally whipped and churned by Cobra choppers patrolling the activities of the various sectors.
Lasari asked to borrow a pair of field glasses from the Frenchman and trained them on the horizon, picking out the details of action on the Czech border. Electrically wired fences stood ten feet tall for as far as he could see, illuminated at intervals by yellow arc lights that silhouetted the NATO troops patrolling West German soil, and litup the machine gun towers on the Czech perimeter of the snowy woodlands, both sides guarding a strip of no-man’s land.
Lasari returned the glasses, flexed his stiff fingers and stamped his boots on the icy soil. He had stood in the same position for more than three hours and his hands and feet were almost without feeling. In the days since leaving Heidelberg he had tried to reevaluate his dilemma, to make judgments without panic. Now the potential of this unfamiliar locale, with its parameters and boundaries and searchlights, had stamped itself in his mind like a free-form map. The border crossover into Czechoslovakia was impossible, a deathtrap. To the north, troop deployments occupied the territory for at least five miles. If he could split south in the darkness and reach the Bavarian Alps, he might make it to the Austrian border. From there it could be Italy, Yugoslavia, a boat to Greece... Even though a deserter, he was at this moment an ordinary GI, absent without leave. At two o’clock he would become something else.
An American officer strode by and called out, “Everything normal at this grid?”
“Certainement,” the Frenchman said. “The enemy is looking at us and we are looking at him.” Lasari glanced at his watch. It was 0155 hours.
A few moments later a fresh-faced GI, a reddish cowlick sticking out from under his helmet, slogged over to Lasari and said, “I’m your relief watch. Take a break, soldier.”
Lasari and several dozen soldiers on relief broke position and headed toward the makeshift canteens and latrines sheltered some distance away. Lasari knew he was expected to proceed five hundred yards to Grid 14, to the first latrine on his left, go inside and wait five minutes. Jesus, I don’t even want the burden of choice, Lasari thought. Both decision and indecision seemed equally impossible and he remembered what seasoned GIs in ’Nam had said to newcomers with troubles... just forget it, soldier, write it in your diary, dig a hole in the ground and bury it, but forget it...
A short time later he stood before a urinal in the frigid latrine, shielded on both sides by corrugated slabs of grayish plastic. There were a dozen men in the shed, but no one spoke. There was no joking, no feeling of camaraderie, just a chilled, cross-section of men in different uniforms with different signias, savoring a few moments of respite from the sting of cold winds.
Lasari glanced about him, letting his gaze touch each uniformed stranger. “... even though you do not see us, please do not make the mistake of thinking we do not see you,” Pytor Vayetch had said.
Lasari turned his watch so he could see the dial in the half light. The sweat on his fingers made the watch feel cold and slick. Almost three and a half minutes left before he could step outside the latrine...
He felt like a man about to be executed, a victim without emotional reserves. In an attempt to regain control, he tried to think of memorable events in his life, events that would give some importance and stature to his life. But his mind was a blank. A cloudburst in Durham when he was a child, he remembered that. His mother had come into his room and hugged him. He was five. An old man in the minors, a kindly coach named Dingo who’d been chosen to tell him he was cut from the team — he remembered that man. But he couldn’t recall sunrises and sunsets, specific meals or music he’d enjoyed. He forced himself to think of Carlos and the checker games at Mrs. Swade’s rooming house and the way Bonnie Caidin’s lips had looked, moist and tinted, when she sipped the wine.
It seemed an unbearable moment, the life he’d led before this razor edge of time and what would happen to him when he went through the door. Then a poignant memory hit him, the moment Bonnie had told him about her dead brothers and the sadness that had linked them together then, a compassion and caring that was as endless as the universe itself, the moment of love. He tried to fix that moment in his thoughts, but his time was up.
The plan now seemed to have a life of its own, independent of Duro Lasari. Just outside the latrine a soldier stood in the shadows, a duffel bag at his feet, an unlighted cigarette between his lips.
“Here, Jackson,” the man said.
Lasari moved toward him, fumbling in his pocket for the book of matches from Teufel’s Atelier. The man put out his hand but Lasari stepped closer, struck a match and held it to the man’s cigarette.
The two men stood in the glow of the match, toe to toe, staring at each other, their frozen breath a floating halo to the scene. The stranger was young, no more than twenty, slightly built, sallow complexion and dark eyes, glistening now with alarm. The nails of the hand that held the cigarette to his lips were broken and seamed with dirt, almost the hands of a farmboy, and the tip of the little finger was missing.
The match burned short and Lasari dropped it to the snow. But in the brief light he had seen the markings on the soldier’s field helmet, the cerise oblong with the white three-quarters moon and single star of the Turkish flag. Lasari closed the book of matches and put it in his pocket.
With a sharp intake of breath the Turkish soldier dropped his cigarette and fled the rest area, leaving the duffel bag on the ground at Lasari’s feet.
Lasari quickly looked around. Snow flurries clouded the terrain but the immediate foot traffic seemed normal, the action routine. He picked up the duffel bag and walked to a clearing in the bushes behind the latrines, his boots moving with a whisper through the clean snow. With a second match he checked the outside of the duffel. It was marked in white stencil with the initials Pvt. G.J., followed by his Army ID number.
He unzipped the bag and felt through the folded GI garments inside, shirts, socks, shorts, a couple of wrapped gifts, a carton of cigarettes, shaving things. Then he tried to examine the lining, pinching the fabric, moving his lingers in a rubbing gesture. At first the material seemed coarse, almost felt-like, and then Lasari detected the sliding sensation of a substance between the layers of canvas, a movement like the shifting of fine sugar or powdered silk.
Lasari rezipped the bag, holding it on the ground between his ankles, his thoughts in a turmoil. From an inside pocket he took the small bottle of pills which Vayetch had given him in Heidelberg. He tossed the bottle on the palm of his hand. “... take three,” the man had said.