“Ready?” Harry said.
They went in the woods, Harry picturing what it looked like that day thirty years ago, seeing the scene in his memory, seeing himself moving uphill through the trees behind the truck and the kubelwagens, running for a few minutes until the truck stopped. He remembered the clearing, thinking at the time how odd it was. The trees just ended, and he was looking out at flat hectares of farmland.
They walked due west from the highway for fifteen minutes, Cordell next to him, saying, “Anything look familiar?”
“Trees,” Harry said.
“Trees, huh? That suppose to be funny? I’m gettin’ eaten alive. These Kraut skeeters like dark meat.”
Harry said, “Why don’t you go back sit in the car, I’ll look around a little longer.”
“What am I going to do in the car?”
“Listen to the radio. You like yodeling?” Harry said it straight.
“Huh?”
“Find yourself a nice yodeling station.” He grinned. “Do me a favor, will you? Get the car and drive back toward Dachau a kilometer or so. I’ll walk through the woods and meet you.” He handed Cordell the keys.
Cordell liked the idea. Get away from the skeeters. He was no Boy Scout, didn’t like communing with nature. He wanted to help Harry but this idea was fucking crazy. He got in the car, adjusted the seat, looked in the rearview mirror, looked through the windshield, saw a car coming toward him on the other side of the road, let it pass and made a U-turn, on the highway now, moving. Watched the odometer and when the number rolled over he slowed down and made another U-turn, pulled off the road and waited, left the motor running, turned on the radio, something classical, turned the dial, heard yodeling, no shit. Man, it was funny. He tried it, no fucking way. Dude singing:
Cordell thought he could bring yodeling back to the D, give it some attitude, see what the brothers thought. He took the sterling silver cigarette case out of his shirt pocket, opened it, took out a Davidoff, tapped it on top of the case, lit up, wished it was a joint, but liked the look of it, skinny bad-ass cigarette.
He turned off the car, rolled down the window and waited. Heard the clock ticking. Felt the wind shake the BMW when a car passed by. Sat there twenty minutes, then thirty, saw something out of the corner of his eye, looked like Harry coming out of the woods. He watched him all the way, watched him open the door, get in with the shovel. Man looked stressed. “What’s up, Harry? Want to keep going?”
Shook his head. “This is crazy,” Harry said.
Cordell was right there with him on that. “What you want to do?”
“Go back to Munich.”
Cordell checked the mirror, put it in gear, got on the road. He was hungry, thinking about some food, and then some poon, in that order. He’d gone maybe a klick when he saw Harry look at him.
“Pull over, will you?” Harry said.
He did, noticed they were back where they started, saw tire tracks in the gravel.
“This is it. I’m going to give it one more shot.” Harry said, like he apologizing.
“Whatever you want to do.”
Harry got out with the shovel and Cordell watched him walk to the woods, disappear in the trees. Wished him luck even if it was some grisly shit he doing. Cordell thinking how they met, and now how they were friends. Sure, part of it was circumstances. Two strangers from the D, meeting in a strange motherfucking land. But was more than that. Cordell liked the dude.
Cordell drove south this time, went exactly a kilometer, pulled over and waited. Same drill as before. Put the seat back as far as it would go, got comfortable. He was thinking about his situation: out of the army, almost out of money, had to go back to Detroit get his stash. Thirty thousand dollars hid at his momma’s house. Only problem, he wasn’t in the service no more. Go home, they make him do his time? But first they got to find him.
He saw something in the mirror, car coming. It slowed down and pulled up behind him.
Twenty
Harry drove the curved tip of the shovel into the soft ground, levered the handle back and brought out a shovel full of dirt. Dug down a foot or so, didn’t find anything, and moved along the edge of the clearing covered with grass, leaves and pine needles. Was he in the right place? There was no way to be sure. The scenery looked different than he remembered it. The trees, mostly pines, were taller, and far in the distance was a factory, a series of low-slung buildings and an asphalt parking lot filled with cars, spread out on what might’ve once been farmland. It was the open angle, the view beyond the forest that seemed vaguely familiar. One hundred yards from where he was standing was a steel chain-link fence marking the perimeter of the property.
He tried to picture the pit, tried to calculate where it was in relation to the tree line. Harry moved along the edge of the clearing, went ten feet out and sunk the shovel in the soil again. Dug a hole a foot and a half deep. Nothing. Now he went out farther from the tree line, drove the shovelhead into the ground, dug down and hit something. It felt like a root. He cleared the earth around it, and wedged the tip of the shovel under it and it came up, a stick caked with dirt. He bent down and picked it up. But it wasn’t a stick. He wiped it on the grass to clean it and now recognized it as a human bone, a piece of a leg, one end brittle, decayed.
Harry dug around the hole, clearing more dirt, making it bigger and deeper, found a stained, tattered piece of cloth, part of a striped Dachau uniform — the number 027 still legible. But now he felt guilty for disturbing the grave of his parents and so many others. Filled in the hole and scattered leaves and pine needles over it.
He moved back toward the tree line, heard the hum of a motor, looked up, saw the Zeppelin coming in just over the treetops, casting a shadow, man with a gun in the open window of the gondola. He dropped the shovel and ran.
Rausch told the pilot to go in as low as he could. He saw Harry Levin at the edge of the trees, a clearing behind him, holding a shovel, and fired a burst from the silenced machine gun, rounds chewing up bark, blowing off branches, Levin running and disappearing in the forest.
The airship spun around, hovering and then gliding back the way they had come, Rausch scanning the ground, looking for any sign of movement. The gun felt good in his hands like it was part of him. He saw Levin appear from behind a tree, emptied the magazine, ejected it, popped in a fresh one, racked it and kept firing, pieces of bark and branches flying. They hovered and waited. He looked down, the floor of the gondola littered with shell casings.
They glided south fifty meters, Rausch and a spotter next to him with binoculars, looking for any sign of movement. He did not see anything. The Zeppelin drifted east and then north, circling back around to where they had started.
He directed the pilot to go west and south this time, making another circle, gliding over treetops. Nothing moved. And now Rausch believed he had shot Harry Levin and Levin was somewhere down there wounded, or more likely, dead. The only way to be sure of course was to land the airship and search the area. They flew back to the clearing. The airship went down close to the ground. Rausch jumped out with the machine gun and went into the woods.
Harry had been lucky, that’s all there was to it. There were trees to take cover behind, trees to hide him as high-velocity rounds tore up everything around him. It had all happened so fast he hardly had enough time to react. The Zeppelin circled around a couple of times, Harry burrowing half under a fallen tree trunk. It continued on, going north, and disappeared. He got up and hid behind a giant oak tree, gripping the Colt in his right hand.