“Tie the German up,” Bokov told Antipov’s men. “Don’t hurt him more than you have to unless he gives you trouble. You, you, and you”-he pointed to three soldiers, one after another-“you’ll come back to Berlin with us and make sure nothing happens to him. Get moving.”
They did. Had he said they were going to London, they would have done the same. After they hogtied Gustav Eduard Fenstermacher, they half-frogmarched, half-lugged him over to the truck. When they were about to throw him in the back, he finally asked the question that must have burned in his mind since Bokov got him out of the shed, or more likely since he let himself be taken alive: “What…will you do to me?”
Images formed in the NKVD officer’s mind. A cell too small to stand up or lie down in. Not nearly enough food. Not nearly enough sleep, which could be even worse. Bright lights. Pain. Fear. Always fear.
Fenstermacher had to be imagining most of those same things. For Vladimir Bokov, they weren’t imaginary. They were the tools of his trade, like a mechanic’s wrench and pliers or a sculptor’s mallet and chisel. But that was all right…to Bokov. Imagination and anticipation were tools of his trade, too. What a prisoner imagined his captors doing to him could break him faster than what they did.
Bokov trotted out a couple of small tools: a pitying sigh and a shake of the head. “You won’t like any of it,” he said. “And by the time it’s over, you’ll tell us everything. You’ll be glad to, and you’ll wish you could tell us more.”
“I won’t.” Even Fenstermacher had to hear how hollow his defiance sounded.
“Oh, you will,” Bokov promised him. “One way or another, you will…. You could come clean before it all starts. Believe me, it won’t change anything in the end, except you’ll be a lot happier.” He eyed the German. “Think about it on the way to Berlin. I’ll ask you again then. If you say no-you’ll find out just what we do to you, that’s all.”
“I-” Fenstermacher began.
“Chuck him in the truck,” Bokov told the Red Army men, cutting him off. Let him stew in his own juices all the way back to the ravaged capital of the ravaged Reich. After that…The NKVD would get its answers. Captain Bokov didn’t much care how.
Diana McGraw was just starting to dust the spare bedroom when the doorbell rang. “Damn!” she said, and then looked around guiltily to make sure Ed hadn’t heard. But the rattle and squeak of the old lawnmower out back told her he was still working on the yard. That was a relief. He didn’t like her to swear, not even a little bit.
She hurried downstairs: a slim woman in her late forties, going from blond to gray but not all the way there yet. She muttered wordlessly as she opened the door. Her daughter and son-in-law were half an hour early. That was annoying, even if they would have little Stan with them.
“Oh!” she blurted. It wasn’t Betsy and Buster and the baby out there. It was a kid in a dark green jacket with brass buttons.
“Mrs., uh, McGraw?” The kid had to look down at the pale yellow envelope in his right hand to get the name. He was just about old enough to start shaving. When Diana nodded, he thrust the envelope at her. “Wire for you, ma’am.”
“Uh, thanks,” she said in surprise. She hadn’t got a telegram in months. “Hold on a second. Let me grab my handbag.”
But when she came back with the purse, the Western Union delivery boy was bicycling down the street, pedaling hard. Her mouth fell open as she stared after him. He hadn’t waited for his tip! How far behind on his work was he? Far enough to be scared of getting fired if he didn’t go like a bat out of you-know-where? That was the only thing that made even a little sense to her.
Then she opened the envelope, and everything stopped making sense. The wire was from the War Department. In smudgy, carbon paper-like printing, it said, The Secretary of War deeply regrets to inform you that your son, Patrick Jonathan McGraw, private, U.S. Army-Pat’s serial number followed-was killed outside of Munich, Germany, on 19 September 1945.
There was more, all of it over the typed signature of a lieutenant colonel. But all Diana saw was Son. Patrick Jonathan McGraw. Killed. That looked big as the world, and blotted out everything else.
She staggered toward the back of the house as if Joe Louis had landed an uppercut right on the button. After a moment, she reversed course long enough to shut the front door.
It was impossible. The war in Europe was over. It had been for months. Oh, there were stories in the paper about fanatics and diehards. They’d even killed General Patton. But Pat’s letters assured her everything was quiet in his sector. Like a fool-like a mother-she’d believed him.
Son. Patrick Jonathan McGraw. Killed.
“Ed?” she said when she got to the back door. One syllable was all she had in her.
The lawnmower stopped. Ed McGraw’s bald head gleamed under the end-of-summer Indiana sun. “Dang!” he said-he wouldn’t swear in front of her, either. “They here already?” Then he got a good look at her face. The half-rueful, half-annoyed grin on his own faded. “What is it, hon? What’s the matter?”
So she had to find more syllables after all. She managed two: “Pat. He-” But she couldn’t say that. She couldn’t. She held out the telegram instead. It had the words. Son. Patrick Jonathan McGraw. Killed.
Ed McGraw stumped over to her. He’d lost the last two toes on his left foot in France in 1918. In spite of that, he’d tried to reenlist the day after Pearl Harbor. They wouldn’t take him. They probably wouldn’t have if he weren’t maimed-he was well overage. So he went on working at the Delco-Remy plant in Anderson, the way he had since he came home with eight toes, making good money and socking away a nice chunk of it.
Anderson, halfway between Indianapolis and Muncie, was almost as big as the latter. But people all over the country had heard of Muncie. Plenty of people in Indiana had no idea Anderson existed. Neither Diana nor Ed cared about that. They liked Anderson fine. They’d raised two good kids there, and expected a fine crop of grandchildren. It had already started coming in. Now…
Diana had just started to cry when Ed took the wire from her, saying gently, “Your mother?”
Her mother was seventy-seven, frail and starting to be forgetful. If, God forbid, something were to happen to her, it would be sad, but it would be part of the natural order of things. But when a parent had to put a child in the ground…
Ed held the yellow sheet out at arm’s length. He wasn’t wearing his reading glasses, not to mow the lawn. Diana wondered if he’d be able to see what it said. If he couldn’t, she’d have to read it to him or tell him, and she thought she would rather die herself.
“Oh, Jesus Christ,” he said hoarsely. He could read it, all right. When he raised his face to her, it bore the same blind, helpless look she had to be wearing herself. “Pat…” He was stumbling over things, too. “Germany…Those crazy fucking assholes…”
Even now, she stared at him. He didn’t say things like that. Oh, maybe at the factory, but never around the house. Never. Except he just did. And why not? What else were the Germans who’d murdered Pat?
“It’s wrong.” If Diana didn’t say what was wrong, maybe she wouldn’t have to think about that. So much. Quite so much. Maybe. “It’s wrong. The war is over. They’ve got no business doing that.” Close call there.
“Pat…” Ed said again. He was a minute or two behind her. Right now, a minute or two bulked big as a mountain. “What are we going to do without Pat?”
He’d come closer to actually talking about death than Diana had. “We have to make it stop,” she said. “The war’s over. How many people are still getting wires like-” She broke off, her mouth falling open. No wonder the Western Union boy pedaled away so fast! She’d heard they didn’t take tips when they brought news like that. It seemed to be true.