He almost lost it all, because the bones seemed to start to reshape in his face before he caught himself, and the blood roared within him and the scent of the wildness that was his deepest essence bloomed from his flesh.
“A statement?” He sprayed spittle. His face was contorted, and he leaned toward the priest with death in his eyes. “A statement of what? That we can kill women just as easily as they can?”
Kollmann said, “Calm down, Major,” as if speaking to a slightly-troublesome moron.
That was very nearly his last utterance upon the face of this earth.
Michael struggled to regulate his breathing. His joints were sore. All his bones had threatened, in the briefest of seconds, to rearrange themselves. Across the back of his neck, against the collar, he felt the scurryings of small coarse black and gray hairs rising and falling like strange tides. Only he knew what they were, and only he knew how much he wanted to kill the priest for even daring to speak this dirty idea into action.
Kollmann, his eyes hidden behind the blue lenses, reached into the pocket of his immaculate coat, and the fingers with their manicured nails returned with a small packet of black licorice sticks. He took one, slid it into a corner of his mouth, and offered the pack to Michael.
“No thank you,” Michael said. “I’m not a drunkard, so I don’t need that to hide the smell of my breath.”
Kollmann sat very still for a few seconds. His face was a blank. He returned the pack of licorice to his pocket.
“We are still where we are,” he told Michael. “The alteration does not come from me. I’m the messenger. But I am told to tell you that you should not blame our mutual friend for the disaster at Arnhem, and you should not blame him for this.”
“I’ll blame whoever I fucking choose to blame,” came the answer, spoken in almost a snarl.
“We need to make a statement,” the priest went on, his voice and demeanor maddeningly calm. “Not to the Germans, but to the Russians.” He lowered his voice, though there was no one close enough to hear. “They have spies here, watching. They want to see how we handle ourselves in matters like this, for future reference. We have to be as ruthless as they are, Major. Otherwise, they’ll walk all over us when they take the world stage. And believe me…when they seize Berlin, which they will…they will claim a large piece of Europe. So the woman needs to be removed, as a statement of what we will not tolerate.”
“One woman,” Michael said bitterly.
“No, she’s not the only one. Of course not. But she’s the one you’re being ordered to remove.”
“Why? Because I’ve gotten close to her?”
“Exactly,” said the priest.
Michael was sweating. It was oozing out of him. He could smell the sourness of himself. He put a trembling hand to his forehead.
“Are you going to be ill?” Kollmann inquired.
Michael lowered his hand. He smiled into the blue lenses, his face slick. “Do you believe in Hell?”
“Certainly I do.”
“You’re a damned liar,” said Michael, “because if you believed in Hell, you would be getting out of that chair and running for your life.”
The fingers steepled again.
“Oh, I see.” Did the mouth, with its licorice stick in one corner, twist into the briefest worm of a smile? “We have a complication.”
Michael stared at the floor, as that ridiculous hollow word clanged in his mind.
“I’ll remind you, Major,” said the priest, “that this woman has been instrumental in the brutal murders of many German patriots. Of many fine men, woman, and children. Because, you must realize, entire families have been destroyed in this. Just disappeared without a trace, but certainly we know they were taken first to Gestapo headquarters. And some of those people—those patriots who risked everything to save this country from its self-mutilation, its sheer drum-beating insanity—were my friends. Now, I suspect, bones and ashes in a garbage pit somewhere. Before we go any further with this, shall I supply for you a list of their names and a display of their photographs? I can show you some grand pictures of the children, all dressed in their nice clothes and smiling. You know, there’s nothing quite like a child’s smile.”
Michael kept his head lowered.
Kollmann nodded, still working on his candy. “They are the future, children are. Such potential, to make things brighter in this unhappy world. But, things do get complicated. Sometimes—very often it seems, in this day and age—the dark and the light get all mixed up together. And there are intelligent men who count on that happening. They are educated to make that happen. It is their most profound desire to do so. Now, I can sit here and say that possibly this woman fell under the spell and influence of such a man. That finding herself surrounded by fellow Germans who bore a grudge against the world and heeded the stirring call of a madman gave her a swell of what she took to be true and most worthy patriotism. Well, he said it: if you don’t follow me, you don’t love Germany. And he’s a fantastic speaker who can make some very convincing arguments. But…” And here he removed the stick and gazed at what had been whittled away. “One can call murder a process of cleansing, an eradication of the unfit, and the preparation for a Thousand-Year-Reich. It’s still murder, even in the language of the lawyer and the politician.” He let that hang for a few seconds. “She’s one of the people who must pay for that murder. Not just of other human beings, but of the country I knew. Because, Major Jaeger, my land has been burned away. I’m just trying my best to save a few seeds to throw on the scorched earth, in hopes anything can ever grow here again.”
“So,” said the priest, “you see, I do believe in Hell.” He brought out the packet and returned the remainder of the stick to its brothers. “I live there.”
Michael put his hands to his face.
“Is there any other way?” he asked, with a note of pleading.
“You don’t have to do it. Our mutual friend suggested it be offered first to you. If you refuse, you can go with me right now to the safe house. We’ll get you out as soon as possible.”
“But she’ll still be killed.”
“Yes. We have people with experience.”
“How—” His voice cracked. He tried once more: “How would it be done?”
The priest watched a Naval officer cross the lobby with a stylishly-dressed woman in a derby hat clinging to his arm. “A knock at the door of her studio, late at night. A silenced bullet to the head. Or someone following her to strangle her with a wire garotte wrapped around her neck. It would be quick.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Michael whispered, in agony. “I suppose one can also call murder a just retaliation for past sins?”
Kollmann’s face was impassive. “I didn’t always need the licorice for my breath, Major.”
The future had come. Michael knew it. And this future was more terrible than he ever might have conceived. The fighter pilots couldn’t kill a woman, because they left that hideous job to the slime on the ground. The shadow men. And him, the most shadowy of all.
“Can’t I get her out?” he tried. “Knock her over the head, use chloroform or something? Can’t I just get her out, and call it done?”
“Too risky. And in the scheme of things she’s more valuable to us dead than alive.”
It took Michael Gallatin awhile to get the words from brain to mouth and out.
“If… I were to do it…how would I?”
“You’re the killer,” said Kollmann.
Michael closed his eyes. But when he opened them again, he was still sitting in a black leather chair in the lobby of the Grand Frederik in the presence of this priest, and there was still a task to be done.
“Yes,” he agreed, “I am the killer. Yes, I am. So.” He lifted his gaze to the blue lenses. “I presume you have a chemist.”