“Care for another cigarette?” he said.
“That would be nice. By the way, who got killed?”
As Karl got out the cigarette, and one for himself, lit then them both, he said, “They were from Police Battalion, attached to Thirteenth SS Mountain Division, called Scimitar, which is a kind of sword, I’m told.”
“One of those curved things, is that right?”
“Yes. More dramatic than effective. I suppose it has symbolic meaning to certain people.”
“Since you’re alive and I don’t see any lightning flashes about, am I to assume you shot it out with the SS?”
“I suppose we did.”
“Odd, you don’t look insane. But now you’ve killed a batch of your own people, so it seems we’re both going to die.”
“Not exactly,” he said. “On that ‘your own people’ remark, I think I would disagree. But more important for now, I have a plan. It’s quite good, even if I was the one who came up with it, and my plans are usually pretty awful. It seems you’re our ticket to a perfectly good airplane, and I hate to let a good plane go to waste.”
He told her what he intended.
“It sounds risky.”
“It is. But it’s better than being worked on in a cellar by SS.”
“I understand. But let’s be practical. This isn’t the movies. You can’t just fly away.”
“Actually you can.”
“Where are we going to go?”
“I thought we’d try… Switzerland. They have excellent cheese.”
CHAPTER 59
Switzerland!” Swagger said.
“And that’s what they did. They hijacked their own plane and landed in Bern. All of them. They seemed to be some kind of paratroop outfit — very small, commandos, I guess — but evidently they’d had enough of the Nazis. They took her and they went to Switzerland. Some officer figured it out.”
“Jesus Christ,” said Bob, standing on the lone prairie like a movie cowboy.
“Not only that, here’s the twist. Oh, what a twist. He married her. His name was Karl Von Drehle, some kind of aristocratic war-hero type, dashing, from the pictures. He looked a little like Errol Flynn. After they got out of internment, they decided that since Europe had tried so hard to kill them, they’d go someplace sunnier and emigrated to Australia.”
“That’s why you’re in Australia.”
“Her son Paul called me from Sydney. Everything he said checked out. I flew, I’ve been here a week with the family, looking over all the records, looking at the photos. They had four sons and a daughter. The daughter, by the way, was a big Aussie tennis star in the ’70s. And now the granddaughter is on the tour as well.”
“What happened to Mili?” said Swagger. He was almost afraid to ask. Something tight and dry in his chest.
“She died at the age of eighty-four, a few weeks after Karl, surrounded by children and grandchildren. She became a professor of math at New South Wales University, where she was much loved, if the obits are telling the truth. Everyone thought she was German; no one suspected she was Russian.”
“Ain’t that a kick in the pants,” said Bob.
He couldn’t stop imagining Mili in the circumstances she’d deserved: Mili with her kids. Mili goes out to dinner. Mili on the job. Mili in her life, a good life, a life both loved and loving.
You’re in love with her, you crazy old coot.
“Karl brought his wartime sergeant over,” Reilly continued from Australia, “and the two of them went into business. Ever hear of Volkswagen? Karl and Wili became the first Volkswagen dealers in Australia, and the second and the third and so on. He and Wili got rich. Oh, God, Swagger, after all the shit they went through, all the murder and mud and slaughter, they had such good, decent productive lives. It shows there is life after hell. It’s amazing. I cry every time I think about it. Are you crying?”
“Cowboys don’t cry,” said Swagger through some goddamned prairie grit that had come into his eyes.
Acknowledgments
My first thanks must go to my dedicatee, Kathy Lally, whom I have cleverly disguised as Kathy Reilly (while her husband, Will Englund, goes forth under the fiendishly altered nom de guerre Will French). Kathy, who currently shares the job of Moscow correspondent of my old rag The Washington Post with Will, was majordomo of my trip to Ukraine and most things Russian. Because of her, I got to depend on the kindness of friends, not strangers.
Two of those friends we nicknamed “The Two Vlads.” Volodymyr Bandrivskyy was our translator and guide, and despite the tragic history of his nation, he was a merry jokester the whole way. Volodymyr Bak (don’t have a cool name around me or I will steal it) was our historian, who had salient and necessary information at his fingertips or, if not, the next day. Both were boon companions and made the travel — especially over the liver-pulverizing Ukraine roads — a pleasure.
On the home front, Gary (“Gershon”) Goldberg was instrumental, particularly in the “Interlude in Tel Aviv” subplot. Like Vlad II, if he doesn’t know it now, he’ll know it tomorrow. Besides, he is a way-fun guy, and at certain points in any novel, a writer needs to have some way-fun. Gary is my go-to on way-fun. Through Gary, Dr. David Fowler, the medical examiner of the state of Maryland, looked at my anatomy lesson on Senior Group Leader Groedl. Gary also had his friend Larry Baker take a look at the MS, which was helpful.
My little circle of advisers also was of great help in this one: Mike Hill, Lenne Miller, Jay Carr, and Jeff Weber all issued astute advice.
In the professional gun world, Bill Smart, a great friend from Post days, connected me with the great gunscribes, writers Mike Venturino and Rocky Chandler. Rocky, a novelist himself, set me straight on the absolute necessity of zeroing at a thousand for a thousand-yard shot. Barrett Tillman, the great aviation historian, had lots of smart stuff for me. On my own, I found Martin Pegler, author of Out of Nowhere, who was of particular help with regard to the Enfield No. 4 (T) with No. 32 scope. Dan Shea, another good friend and owner of Long Mountain Outfitters in Henderson, NV, let me have a hands-on experience with three of the few remaining FG-42s.
I should also list the dozens of books, films, and websites that were so important to this effort, but I’m too lazy to copy the titles, and you probably don’t care that much anyway. I’d put them on my website except I don’t have a website. I would have read them on my Nook, Niche, Wombat, or Blazer 9, except I don’t have any of them, either. I’m just a book guy, I bought a lot of books. The Amazon bill was mind-boggling. So let me collectively thank the dozens of writers, historians, screenwriters, and directors who’ve tried to keep the memory of the horror and the scale of Ostkrieg alive. It’s too profound to be forgotten, too influential even now to be ignored, and too painful to be suppressed. This book is a humble attempt to be a part of that memory process.
Finally the publishing professionals — agent Esther Newberg, editor Sarah Knight, and publisher Jonathan Karp — oversaw and sustained the project; all manned up and did duties as required. And finally my wife, Jean Marbella, zeitgeist of Baltimore journalism, coffee- and martini-maker extraordinaire, and all-around best chum, provided a rest stop each night and a hot cuppa each morning. Couldn’t have made it to the end without ’em.
As usual, none of these fine people is responsible for errors in fact or spirit; I alone am the root cause.
About the Author
