Carter’s first thought was that he must have accidentally pulled the trigger, but then he saw Dasch, one arm held out and a US government-issue .45 gripped in his hand. Smoke was sifting from the barrel and the receiver.
Ritter set one dusty-booted foot against Galton’s back and rolled him into the grave. A smear of blood and something pinkish-grey lay on the dirt where he had fallen.
Dasch turned to Carter, the pistol still clutched in his fist.
Ritter stepped over to Carter and gently took the Mauser from his hand.
Carter did nothing to stop him.
‘I should never have asked that of you,’ said Dasch.
Carter only stared at him, too stunned to speak.
‘Come now,’ said Dasch, putting his arm around Carter’s shoulder. ‘Let us leave Ritter to his work.’
Carter caught one last glimpse of Galton, curled up in the bottom of the waist-deep hole. The bag that had covered his head was completely torn away now, revealing a crater of blood and bone, all of it filmed with a yellow-green dust of pollen, which drifted thickly in the air.
Carter climbed from the old bomb crater and started off towards the compound in the distance. He kept his eyes on the curls of barbed wire that ran like pencil scribbles along the top of the fence. In between the rustle of his breaths, he could hear the sound of Ritter’s shovel scooping dirt into the grave.
‘In the old days,’ muttered Dasch, ‘that would never have been necessary.’
‘Why the hell was it necessary now?’ demanded Carter. As soon as the words had left his mouth, he knew he should have stayed silent.
Dasch stopped and turned to him. ‘It used to be that everyone was simply trying to stay alive. Sometimes, with the help of a glass of wine or a decent cigar or a little piece of chocolate, they could be reminded of why they even bothered. Some people say I am nothing more than a thief selling stolen goods to other thieves, but the people who say that do not know how it feels to have lived through a war that we lost. What I sell, Mr Carter, is hope that life will someday be worth living again. It was only a matter of time before hope itself became just another black market item. As it turns out, that has a higher price than most people are willing to pay. The man I shot back there was dead before I ever met him, not because of who he was but because his way of life was over and he had simply failed to adapt. It may have been Galton himself who chose to break the law, but who decided to make it a crime for people to enjoy the simple pleasures he and I are selling? If I had not sold the chocolate and champagne that have passed through my hands over the years, do you think they would not have been consumed? Of course they would, and by the same people who criminalised their consumption. They will not give a second thought to Galton or his exit from the world. He will simply be chalked up as a necessary sacrifice, something I am trying very hard to avoid having done to me. Or to you, for that matter.’
Carter didn’t answer. The sun was prising apart his skull. All he could think about was what Eckberg had said◦– that sooner or later he would find himself in a place where he would either be part of the problem or else a part of the solution. And he knew the time had come to choose between one and the other.
Later that day, he put in a call to Eckberg from one of the pay phones at the Cologne central station. The phones were located in cramped little booths painted pale green with yellow trim, lined up along a wall near the men’s and women’s waiting rooms. The doors that closed off the booths were battered, the paint chipped off where people had shoved them open with their boots rather than take hold of the dirty brass knobs. Inside, there was a tiny wooden seat, too small to be comfortable, in order to discourage people from falling asleep. The phone’s heavy black receiver smelled of smoke. From the pack of Camels Eckberg had given him, Carter removed the cigarette with the phone number written inside and pulled it apart, spilling shreds of tobacco onto the floor. The numbers had been written in pencil, almost too faint to read. He kept the paper pressed between two fingers against the wall of the booth while he dialled the numbers with his other hand. Outside, he could hear the announcements of trains arriving and departing, the sound echoing around the cavernous building with its glass-roofed ceiling made dingy by the smoke of locomotives.
Eckberg picked up almost at once. ‘Who is this?’ he asked.
‘Carter.’
There was a pause. ‘I wasn’t sure you’d call.’
‘Something has happened. I think it’s time we talked.’
‘I can meet you tonight, but it will have to be late. Say around ten.’
‘Where?’
‘Go to the cafe where I met you before.’
‘Won’t it be closed?’
‘Yes, but go around back. I have a key. I’ll let you in.’
He was about to hang up when Eckberg spoke to him again.
‘How bad is it?’ he asked.
‘You remember when you told me that people were going to get hurt?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, you were right about that.’
…
Following his discharge from the army, Carter spent several days waiting for his transit papers to come through. His lawyer, Captain Ottway, was trying to secure him a seat on a plane heading back to the States. If that fell through, a berth would be found for him on board a ship. In the meantime, he had nothing to do but sit in his Quonset hut waiting for mealtimes so that he could shamble over to the mess hall.
At first, Carter had been nervous about the reception he might receive from the military policemen who were constantly coming and going from the base. He assumed that everybody must know why he was there and what judgement had been handed to him. As soon as he entered the mess hall, which still smelled mustily of horses, he had the urge to get up onto one of the long collapsible tables where soldiers took their meals, and explain his side of things.
To his surprise, nobody looked his way when he walked in and took his place in the food line, a sectioned tin plate in his hand. He spotted the same military policemen who had put him in handcuffs and escorted him to and from his cell during the trial. They seemed completely oblivious to his presence, as if he were a phantom they could not even see.
The relief he felt to find himself anonymous again was so profound that he lingered in the mess hall, alone but suddenly not lonely, until the cooks finally tossed him out.
Captain Ottway had been gone four days when he finally reappeared, rapping softly with his knuckles on the flimsy door of the Quonset hut.
When he heard the knocking, Carter swung off his bed and let the captain in.
Ottway smiled weakly. It was not the same smile as before. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘We have run into an obstacle.’
When Carter heard those words, the worst thing he could imagine was that he would be travelling home by ship, which might last the best part of two weeks instead of the couple of days it would otherwise take to go by plane.
But it turned out to be worse than that. Much worse.
Ottway explained that the trial, such as it was, had made its way into the newspapers back in America. Celebration of the Ardennes victory had been tempered by the thousands of Allied casualties suffered during the German attack. Reports of the SS massacre of almost a hundred American prisoners in a field outside St Christophe had provoked outrage in an already outraged population. The story of Carter’s dishonourable discharge, although it mentioned that he had been cleared of the most serious accusations, implied that he might singlehandedly have been able to forestall or prevent the attack. It made no mention of the dozens of other deserters who had previously warned of the assault, or of the generals’ refusal to act upon reports from American troops of enemy activity along the Belgian–German border.