Death of a Citizen Read online

  We faced each other, knives ready. She held hers as if she was about to chip ice for a highball; I remembered that it had been strictly an emergency weapon with her. As for me, as a kid I’d been interested in all kinds of weapons, but particularly in the edged ones. I guess it’s the Viking in me. Guns are fine, but I’m an old sword-and-dagger man at heart. Anyway, with my reach, I could have carved her like a Christmas turkey, almost regardless of our relative skills. She didn’t have a chance, and she knew it.

  I said, “Yes, Tina, I remembered.”

  She laughed, straightening up. “I was just testing you, my sweet. I had to know if you could still be relied upon.”

  “A test like that could get your throat cut,” I said. “Now put the shiv away and let’s stop horsing around.” I watched her retract the sliding blade of the parachutist’s knife and tuck it into the top of her stocking. “Must be hard on the nylons,” I said. “Now tell me all about the kid in the john, with her cute little neck-knife and her trick knee holster.”

  Tina let her dress fall into place and stood looking at me in a measuring and weighing manner. I’d passed the entrance exam, but I could see that she wasn’t quite sure of me yet, after all the years of soft living.

  I’d been looked at like that before. I could still remember, very distinctly, the pep talk we’d got from Mac, each one of us new recruits, the first time we actually saw him. At least I suppose the others all got it, too. Each candidate was handled and trained individually up to a point, so that if he didn’t make the grade he could be turned back to his former branch of the service without too much interesting information in his head.

  So I can’t really speak for anyone but myself, but I remember the shabby little office—like all the subsequent shabby little offices in which I was to make my reports and receive my orders—and the compact, gray-haired man with the cold gray eyes, and the speech he gave while I stood before him at attention. He was in civvies, and he hadn’t called for any military courtesies. I didn’t know his rank if he had any, but I wasn’t taking any chances.

  Somehow, I already knew this outfit was for me if they’d have me; and I wasn’t too proud to take what advantage I could get from a good stiff back and liberal use of the word “sir.” I’d already been in the Army long enough to know that they’d practically give the joint to anybody who could shoot, salute, and say “sir.” And anyway, when you’re six feet four, even if kind of skinny and bony, the word doesn’t sound humble, merely nice and respectful.

  “Yes, sir,” I said, “I wouldn’t mind learning why I’ve been assigned here, sir, if it’s time for me to know.”

  He said, “You’ve got a good record, Helm. Handy with weapons. Westerner, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Hunter?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Upland game?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Waterfowl?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Big game?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Deer?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Elk?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Bear?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Dress them out yourself?”

  “Yes, sir. When I can’t get somebody to help me.”

  “That’s fine,” he said. “For this job we need a man who isn’t scared of getting his hands bloody.”

  He was looking at me in that same measuring and weighing manner as he went into his talk. As he explained it, it was merely a matter of degree. I was in the Army anyway. If the enemy attacked my unit, I’d shoot back, wouldn’t I? And when the orders came through for us to attack, I’d jump up and do my damnedest to kill some more. I’d be dealing with them in the mass under these conditions; but I was known to be pretty good with a rifle, so in spite of my commission it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that one day I’d find myself squinting through a telescopic sight, waiting for some individual poor dope to expose himself four or five hundred yards away. But I’d still just be selecting my victims by blind chance. What if I was offered the opportunity to serve my country in a less haphazard way?

  Mac paused here, long enough to indicate that I was supposed to say something. I said, “You mean, go over and stalk them in their native habitat, sir?”

  10

  How he’d ever managed to sell the project to someone in authority, I never found out. It must have taken some doing, since America is a fairly sentimental and moral nation, even in wartime, and since all armies, including ours, have their books of rules—and this was certainly not in the books.

  I never discovered where or from whom he got his orders. It was fascinating to try to imagine the scene. I couldn’t picture a straight-backed West Point graduate actually putting it into plain English; certainly it was never set down in writing, and you’ll find no records of our activities in the archives of the Department of Defense, as I understand that mighty, unified organization is known nowadays.

  I used to visualize a conference room with a sentry at the door, very hush, with high-ranking general officers in secret conclave and Mac just sitting there in his gray suit, listening.

  “There’s the fellow von Schmidt,” says General One.

  “Ah, yes, von Schmidt, the fighter-group man,” says General Two. “Based near St. Marie.”

  “Clever chap,” says General Three. This would be in London or somewhere nearby, and they’d all have picked up something of that insidious clipped British way of speaking. “They say he’d have Goering’s job if he’d learned how to bend that stiff Prussian neck. And if his personal habits weren’t quite so revolting, not that Goering’s are anything to cheer about. But I understand that there isn’t a female under thirty within a hundred kilometers of St. Marie with a full complement of limbs and faculties who hasn’t been favored with the general’s attentions—and they’re pretty fancy attentions. He’s supposed to have a few wrinkles that Krafft-Ebing overlooked.”

  Mac would shift position in his chair, ever so slightly. Atrocities always bored him. We didn’t, he’d say, go around killing people simply because they were sons of bitches; it would be so hard to know where to draw the line. We were soldiers fighting a war in our way, not avenging angels.

  “The hell with his sex life,” says General One, who seems to be of Mac’s persuasion. “I don’t give a damn if he rapes every girl in France. He can have the boys, too, for all I care. Just tell me how to get my bombers past him. We take it on the chin every time we come within range of his fields, even with full fighter escort. Whenever we learn how to counter one set of tactics, he’s got a new one waiting for us. The man’s a genius, professionally speaking. If we’re going to be given targets beyond him, I recommend a full-scale strike at his bases first, to knock him out of the air for a time at least. But I warn you, it’s going to come high.”

  “It would be convenient,” says General Two in a dreamy voice, after some discussion of this plan, “if something should happen to General von Schmidt during the attack, or maybe just a little before it. Might save the lives of some of our boys, if he wasn’t around to give the last-minute orders; besides keeping him from being back in business within the month.”

  Nobody looks at Mac. General One moves his mouth as if to get rid of a bad taste. He says, “You’re dreaming. Men like that live forever. Anyway, it seems like a sneaky and underhanded thing to wish for. But if he should happen to fall down dead, about four in the morning of April seventeenth would be a good time. Shall we adjourn, gentlemen?”

  I don’t vouch for the language or the professional terminology. As I say, I never learned how it was really done; and I never was a general or even a West Point graduate; and as far as aviation was concerned, it was all I could do, even during the war, to tell a Spitfire from a Messerschmitt. Planes were just something I climbed into, rode in a while, and then climbed out of after we’d landed on some strange and bumpy field in the dark—or jumped out of with a parac
hute, which always scared me silly. Given a choice, I always preferred to start a mission with a boat ride. I suppose that is another thing I owe to some ancestral Viking; for a man brought up in the middle of what used to be called the Great American Desert, I turned out to be a pretty good sailor. Unfortunately, a great deal of Europe can’t be reached by boat.

  The German general’s name was actually von Lausche instead of von Schmidt, and he was based near Kronheim instead of St. Marie—if such a place exists—but he was, as I’ve indicated, a military genius and an 18-carat bastard. He had his quarters—you could spot them by the armed guard in front—only a few doors down the street from the tavern I’ve already mentioned. I kept a long-range watch over the house after I’d made my contact. It wasn’t in the orders, precisely. In fact, I was supposed to show no interest in the place at all, until the time came. I didn’t really know what I was watching for, since I’d already received from Tina a full report on von Lausche’s habits and the routine of the guards, but it was the first time I’d worked with a woman, let alone a young and attractive girl who’d deliberately placed herself in such a position, and I had a feeling I’d better keep myself handy.

  The feeling paid off later in the week. It was a gray evening, and Kronheim was having a little wet, belated snow just to make things more pleasant. There was a stir of movement and Tina came running into sight partially undressed, a small white figure in my night glasses. She stumbled past the guards out into the slush of the street, carrying in her arms what was apparently the cheap dark skirt and jacket she’d worn into the place an hour earlier.

  I hurried out and intercepted her as she came around a nearby corner. I don’t know where she was going, and I don’t think she knew, either. It was strictly against instructions and common sense for me to contact her so openly and so close to our target; and taking her back to my place was sheer criminal folly, endangering the whole mission as well as the French family sheltering me. But I could see that I had an emergency on my hands and it was time to shoot the works.

  Luck was with us—luck and the lousy weather. I got her inside unseen, made sure of the lock on the door and the blind on the window, and lit a candle; it was an attic room, not wired for lights. She was still hugging the bundle of clothes to her breasts. Without speaking she swung around to show me her back. The whip had made a mess of her cheap blouse and underwear, and had drawn considerable blood from the skin beneath.

  “I’ll kill the pig,” she whispered. “I’ll kill him!”

  “Yes,” I said. “On the seventeenth of the month, two days from now, at four in the morning, you’ll kill him.”

  That was what I was there for, to see that she didn’t go off half-cocked—it was her first mission with us—to make sure of the touch, and to get her out alive afterwards, if possible. There might be guards to silence; that was also my job. I was kind of a specialist at silencing guards silently. I never touched her, or even indicated that I might like to, those first half-dozen days. After all, I was in charge and it would have been bad for discipline.

  “You mean,” she whispered, “you mean, you want me to go back?” Her eyes were wide and dark, violet-black now, deep and alive as I’d never seen them. “Back to that swine?”

  I drew a long breath and said, “Hell, kid, you’re supposed to enjoy it.”

  Slowly the darkness died out of her eyes. She sighed, and touched her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. When she spoke again, her voice had changed, becoming flat and toneless: “But of course, chéri. You are quite right, as always. I am being stupid, I love to be whipped by the general. Help me on with the clothes, gently...

  Now as she walked past me into the center of my studio, fifteen years later and five thousand miles away from Kronheim, I could see a little hairline mark across the back of her bare arm. It wasn’t pronounced enough to be called a scar. I picked up her stole and took my Colt automatic from a concealed pocket in the satin lining and tucked it inside my belt. I took a revolver—presumably Barbara Herrera’s—from her purse and found that the girl had packed a real weapon under all those skirts and petticoats: one of the compact, aluminum-framed .38 Specials. I’d read about in the sporting magazines to which I contribute fishing yarns from time to time. It was only a handful, light as a toy; and I was willing to bet that with so little weight to soak up the recoil of a full-charge load, it would kick like a pile-driver. I stuck it into the hip pocket of my jeans.

  Then I took Tina’s gun and carried it, with the rest of her belongings, to where she stood looking thoughtfully at the open bathroom door as if she hadn’t quite decided what should be done with what was inside. I put the purse and pistol into her hands, and laid the furs over her shoulders. I touched the little mark on her arm, and she glanced at me.

  “Does it still show?”

  “Very little,” I said, and she turned to look at me fully, and her eyes were remembering exactly how it had been.

  “We killed the pig, didn’t we?” she murmured. “We killed him good. And we killed the one who almost caught us as we were getting away, and, hiding in the bushes, waiting, we made love like animals to wipe out for me the memory of that Nazi beast, while they hunted us in the dark and rain. And then the planes came in, those beautiful planes, those beautiful American planes, coming right on the hour, on the minute, coming in with the dawn, filling the sky with thunder and the earth with fire… And now you have a wife and three pretty children and write stories about cowboys and Indians!”

  “Yes,” I said, “and you seem to be doing your best to break up my happy home. Did you have to shoot the girl?”

  “But yes,” she said, “of course we had to shoot the girl. Why do you think Mac sent us here, my love, except to shoot her?”

  11

  It changed things. Somehow, even after learning how well she’d been armed, I’d assumed Barbara Herrera was merely a minor character who’d blundered into the line of fire, so to speak. But if she’d been important enough that Mac had made her the target of a full-scale mission…

  Before I could frame a question, somebody knocked on the door. Tina and I looked at each other, startled; then I cast a hasty, appraising glance around the studio, reflecting that Beth must have seen the truck still standing in the yard and my lights on, and come over to help me pack, perhaps with a cup of coffee. The only things I could see that might attract her attention were the shotgun by the door, the pistol in my belt, and, of course, Tina.

  “Into the bathroom, quick,” I whispered, “and flush the john when you get there. Count ten, then close and lock the door.” She nodded, and hurried away, moving on tiptoe so the sound of her heels would not betray her. I turned towards the front door and called: “Just a minute. I’ll be right out.”

  The john flushed—our timing was good—and I tucked the .22 inside my wool shirt, made sure the .38 was well buried in my hip pocket, and stuck the shotgun back in the rack. The bathroom door was just closing. It occurred to me, rather unpleasantly, that it was my wife I was deceiving with such nice, clock-like precision, and with the aid of another woman, a former mistress, to boot. But there was no alternative. I could hardly explain Tina’s presence without going into details I wasn’t free to divulge, nor could I very well escort Beth into the bathroom, show her the thing in the tub, and suggest that she grab a shovel from the garage and start digging… Thinking along these lines, I pulled the studio door open, and saw Frank Loris’s bulky figure outside.

  Even if I didn’t like the man, it was a relief. I stepped back to let him in, and closed the door behind him.

  “Where is she?” he asked.

  I jerked my head towards the bathroom. He started that way, but Tina, having heard his voice, came out before he reached the door.

  “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “Finding out what you’re doing here,” he said. He glanced at me briefly. “What’s the matter, is he balking?” He turned back and looked her up and down, obviously checking on the condition o
f her dress and hair and lipstick. “Or have you two been renewing old friendships? How the hell long do you expect me to sit waiting at the corner in the dead chick’s car, anyway?”

  Tina said, “You had your orders.”

  “I don’t have to like them.”

  “Where’s Herrera’s car now?”

  “Outside in the alley. And the junk’s all in Writer-Boy’s truck. I threw it in back just now. Suitcase, handbag, hatbox, raincoat, and a bunch of dresses and stuff on hangers. Your problem, honey. The heap’s clean, so now I’ll take it the hell down to Albuquerque and bury it like you said. With your permission, of course.” He bowed in a burlesque way, and then turned and walked up to me, looked at me, and said over his shoulder: “Has this guy been giving you trouble?”

  Tina said quickly, “Frank! If you’ve got everything out of the car, you’d better get it out of the alley before somebody sees it here.”

  The big man didn’t pay her any attention. He was still looking at me, and I was looking at him. It occurred to me that with his square jaw, curly blond hair, and powerful frame, he might have seemed attractive to some women. He had strange eyes. They were kind of golden brown with flecks of a darker color, and they were set wide apart in his head. This is supposed to be a sign of intelligence and reliability, but I’ve never found it so. The man with the greatest space between the eyes I’ve ever seen—a Czech with an unpronounceable name—I had to use a club on to keep from betraying our hiding place by cutting loose on a Nazi patrol that had already passed us by. He’d killed once that day, and it had apparently whetted his appetite; he just couldn’t stand seeing all those nice, broad, uniformed backs moving out of range of his gun.