Heydrich and Klein looked at each other. They both shrugged at the same time. Heydrich didn’t see how he could leave somebody who might be a betrayer at his back. He also didn’t see how he could quietly dispose of the fellow. Yes, the man might take them straight to the Amis. Sometimes you just had to roll the dice.
“Let’s go,” Heydrich said after a barely perceptible pause.
“Get moving, then,” the Bavarian replied. Off they went.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Klein whispered.
“No,” Heydrich returned. “Are you sure it isn’t?” The Oberscharfuhrer answered with another shrug.
After a few minutes, Heydrich became convinced the Bavarian wasn’t going straight to the Americans. He wasn’t going straight at all. His turns seemed at random, but they all took him and the half-trusting men at his heels deeper into the swamp. Bushes and scraggly trees-the edges of the Lorenzerwald-hid them ever more effectively.
“Right season, you can get all kinds of mushrooms around here.” Their guide smacked his lips.
“I believe it.” Hans Klein sounded more as if he was thinking of death and decay than of a thick slice of boiled pork smothered with mushrooms. Since Heydrich’s train of thought ran on the same track, he couldn’t very well tell Klein to shut up. The Bavarian chuckled. Not only was he at home in this miserable countryside, he was enjoying himself.
“How will you get us past the enemy?” Heydrich asked. One of his wet shoes was rubbing at the back of his heel. Pretty soon, like it or not, he’d start limping. He wondered if he’d do better barefoot. If he had to, he’d try that. But running something into his sole wouldn’t slow him up-it would stop him cold. He resolved to hang on to his shoes as long as he could.
“Oh, there are ways,” the other man said airily.
They came to a shack beside a little stream. The shack might have been built from junk salvaged after the surrender, or it might have been leaning there in growing decrepitude since the days of Frederick the Great…or Frederick Barbarossa. “Nice place,” Hans Klein said dryly.
The Bavarian chuckled. “Glad you like it. Follow me around back.”
Around the back, a stubby wooden pier stuck out into the stream. Like the shack, it might have been there a few months or a few hundred years. The boat tied to the pier wasn’t new, but also wasn’t obviously a remembrance of things past.
“Get in,” the Bavarian told Heydrich and Klein. “Then lie flat. It’s roomier down there than it looks.”
And so it was. This fellow probably didn’t smuggle fugitive National Socialist fighters every day. If he didn’t smuggle something every day, or often enough, Heydrich would have been astonished. Just to make sure of things, the Bavarian draped a ratty tarpaulin over them. The tarp smelled of mildew and tobacco. Heydrich nodded to himself. Thought so-cigarette smuggler. These days, cigarettes were as good as money in Germany. In a lot of places, they were money, near enough.
“Off we go.” The man’s voice came from the other side of the tarp like the sun from the far side of a cloud.
“What happens if the Americans make you stop?” Klein asked.
“We’ll worry about that when it happens, all right?” The Bavarian didn’t lack for nerve.
The boat began bobbing in a new way. It was floating down the stream now. Pretty soon, the Bavarian sat down and started rowing to help it along. The oarlocks creaked. Time stretched, all rubber-like. Heydrich didn’t know whether to be terrified or bored. Beside him, Klein started snoring softly. Heydrich found himself jealous of the underofficer. Sometimes not thinking ahead made life simpler.
After a while, Heydrich jerked awake and realized he’d been dozing, too. Hans Klein laughed softly. “You snore, Herr Reichsprotektor.”
“Well, so do you,” Heydrich said. “How far do you suppose we’ve come?”
“I dunno. A ways.”
“Shut up, you two,” the Bavarian hissed. “Amis on the banks.”
Sure as hell, a voice called out in accented but fluent German: “Hey, Fritzi, you old asslick, you running Luckies again?”
“Not me,” the Bavarian answered solemnly. “Chesterfields.”
He got a laugh from the American. But then the enemy soldier went on, “You seen a couple of guys on the lam? High command wants ’em bad-there’s money in it if you spot ’em.”
“Your high command must want them bad if it’s willing to pay,” the Bavarian observed, and won another laugh. “But me, I’ve seen nobody.” He kept rowing.
If the American called for-Fritzi? — to stop…But he didn’t. The boat slid on down the stream. Heydrich wished he could see what was going on. He could see the bottom of the boat, the tarp, a little of himself, and even less of Hans. It wasn’t enough. He kept his head down anyhow.
After a while, the Bavarian said, “We gave that lot the slip. Shouldn’t be any more for a while. And even if there are, I can make it so they never see us.”
“Good by me,” Klein said.
“And me,” Heydrich agreed. One of the basic rules was, you didn’t argue with somebody who was saving your ass. Heydrich had broken a lot of rules in his time, but that one made too much sense to ignore.
Lou Weissberg could count the times he’d been on a horse on the fingers of one hand. He thought of a jeep as the next best thing, or maybe even the equivalent. A jeep could go damn near anywhere and almost never broke down. The Stars and Stripes cartoon of the sad cavalry sergeant putting a hand over his eyes as he aimed his.45 at the hood of a jeep that had quit only reinforced the comparison in his mind.
Mud flew up from under this jeep’s tires as it roared toward the edge of a two-bit stream. The PFC driving it gave it more gas. “Don’t worry, Lieutenant,” the guy said cheerfully. “I’ll get you there-and I’ll get you back, too.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Lou answered, and he was telling the truth-about that, at any rate. He was worried about Heydrich getting away. If the report was true, they should have grabbed the son of a bitch by now. They’d found the Kubelwagen, or a Kubelwagen, not too far from here. That much checked out. But no Heydrich. That Jerry hoping for a big chunk of change had to be sweating bullets right now, for all kinds of reasons. If the kraut was bullshitting, the Americans would come down on him hard. If he wasn’t, who’d want to sell him life insurance?
The jeep half skidded to a stop. Lou hopped out. Carrying a grease gun, he trotted over to the GIs by the side of the stream. The mud tugged at his boots, but he’d been through plenty worse, plenty thicker. “Seen anything?” he called to the dogfaces.
He’d been thinking of Stars and Stripes. One of the soldiers had a bent nose and a dented helmet, just like Joe of Willie and. “Not a goddamn thing,” he said, adding, “Uh, sir,” a beat later when he noticed the silver bar painted onto Lou’s steel pot. “Only Fritzi running smokes like usual.”
“Who’s Fritzi?” Lou asked.
The GIs looked at one another. Lou could tell what was going through their minds. This guy is supposed to help run things, and he doesn’t know stuff like that? Patiently, the one who looked like Joe explained, “He’s this kraut who lives in the swamp around here. He gets cigarettes-hell, I dunno where, but he does. And he makes his living turning ’em over, y’know what I mean? He’s a good German, Fritzi is.”
“How do you know that?” Lou had met any number of Germans who’d done things that would make Jack the Ripper puke, but who were kind family men and never kicked the dog. You just couldn’t tell.
“Oh, you oughta hear him cuss Hitler and the generals,” the soldier answered. “Far as he’s concerned, they screwed things up like you wouldn’t believe.”
“Terrific,” Lou said tightly. “You searched the boat, right?”
They eyed one another again. At last, the guy who looked like Joe said, “Nah, we didn’t bother. Fritzi’s okay, like I said. And we woulda had to notice the cigarettes, and that woulda just complicated everybody’s life.” His buddies nodded.