Luis was helpless, and this was a silent misery for him because he felt strong, growing in power even while Germany struggled, even sleepless as he was, the beat in his hand nudging him, to do what? He was forced to stand by and watch the bull be butchered, knowing if he could only run into the arena he could achieve something, save something, perhaps the day, perhaps Germany, certainly his dream of glory. The map of war was not war, and he knew God did not have a map in mind when He brought Luis back to Russia.
At dawn of the fourth morning beside the teetering chart, Luis took in the message that unleashed him.
Erich Thoma lay in a Belgorod hospital, a bullet through his neck. The note was written by Thoma himself, asking Luis to come.
Luis did not relay this information to the two intelligence officers grinding their teeth beside the map. Major Grimm was a mess, untucked and occasionally forced to leave the map room just to mop his anxiety and restore his uniform to some military decorum. Slipping the location of the hospital into his pocket, Luis approached Major Grimm.
‘Major.’
The heavy man raised his gaze to Luis; eyes and cheeks and chin were swollen as though Grimm were a sponge and all the failure on the map was soaked into him, to seep out his pores in the Russian summer.
Luis felt like an icicle beside this bloat.
‘Captain.’
‘I would like an hour, sir. May I be excused?’
‘No!’ the major snapped. He shot a hand at the map. ‘Look. Look for yourself, Captain de Vega. Where is there an hour for you to take?’
‘Go.’
Colonel Breit spoke from across the room, behind his cigarette, a dispassionate voice drilled through the tobacco cloud above the map. ‘He’s been here more than both of us combined, Major. He wants an hour to breathe some air not spoiled by the two of us. Go, Captain. Nothing will get much better or worse in an hour.’
Major Grimm nodded in apology to Luis, overruled. ‘I’m sorry, Captain. Of course, take an hour. Take a walk. I can read bad news as well as you can, I’m sure.’
Luis spun on his boot heels, and left the building. Outside, the slanted sun whitened his skin in the first daylight to hit him for four days. The time was only 0500 but high overhead planes streaked every direction, the cobblestoned street in front of him was clogged with armored vehicles clanking past, ambulances sputtered by, a frenzy of noise and motion assaulted him outside the tense cocoon of the situation room. He stopped only for a moment to take it all in, to absorb this, the senses of real battle, the way Grimm had sopped up the disasters of the map, then moved on, blade lean and ready.
He caught a ride to the hospital in a careening, beeping staff car.
When he told the driver he wanted a lift to the hospital, the soldier thought it was because Luis himself needed care, he looked so bad. He asked if Luis was alright, and was told in a curt voice to drive. The man took off.
At the hospital, Luis picked his way through hallways jammed with squealing gurneys and the hurly-burly of medical heroics. This was the place where the road split for a thousand soldiers this day, onward to life or curving away to death, and Luis was unimpressed, he’d crossed this way a year ago and ended up where no man was supposed to go, in the middle, off the road. He dodged surgeries in the hall, blood on the linoleum; doctors and nurses shouted and scurried like the walls were trenches and death was the enemy pouring over the ramparts down on them. Luis neither admired nor respected any of the wounds in the hall; none, not even the fatal ones, were as bad as his. He kept himself erect, disdainful even, when he looked into the scared eyes of the soldiers on the tables, slumped in corners, bleeding in chairs.
He searched for half an hour - the hospital buzzed, a hive of moaning
- until a harried nurse led him to Thoma. The man lay in his tailored black SS uniform, on a sheetless bed in a corner of what once was the cafeteria.
There were no food smells here, just the clean odor of gauze and the brown smells of soldiers and the dirt they’d fought in. Thoma lay with his hands arranged beside his hips, composed. A collar of bandage swathed his neck, marred only by a red coin of blood below the ear. Thoma was dead.
Luis stood beside the bed.
‘Sniper.’ A grenadier in another cot sat up, his leg was wrapped in a log of gauze. A sniper got him. I heard him say it. A little while ago.’
Luis did not acknowledge the soldier except to pivot his head to the man, then turn away, back to Thoma. Yes, that would be Erich. He would be standing in the turret during the attack, bravado, charmed. Luis lay his hand over the still fingers. Thoma had gone whiter than Luis. He was no longer the man Luis might have become; they’d switched roles. Thoma was now the pale thing.
That’s why Thoma sent word for Luis to come. To make the exchange, to give his blessing.
Luis lifted his hand from cool Thoma. The Iron Cross at Thoma’s throat was not covered by the bandage. The soldier in the other bed had continued jabbering, about the combat, about Thoma perhaps and his exploits, that he might have been a hero. Luis walked off, past the yapping soldier’s bed without exchanging another look. The man gabbled as Luis cut past.
He left the hospital, purposefully. The faster he walked, the more he gained the sense of shedding the failures of the wounded there, the boundaries of the dead, he was alive and hungry and hailing a car. One stopped for him and he got in the back seat, slamming the door with a sound that only the halest of men can make. He rode through frightened Belgorod. The scales of the battle were not tipped just yet, there was still time for Luis Ruiz de Vega to add his weight. Yes, he thought, my weight.
He entered the situation room. The morning was an hour older and nothing had changed, there were no bodies scattered about the carpet, just wooden blocks prodded back or forth. They ought to move this map to the hospital, Luis thought, that’s what Grimm and Breit should have as their backdrop. He walked to Colonel Breit.
‘Sir.’
‘Yes, Captain. Refreshed, I hope.’ The officer’s voice was bland, without sentiment. He’s draining, Luis realized. In a day or two he’ll be as white as Thoma.
‘Sir, Captain Erich Thoma is dead.’
Breit reacted with a bland face. He nodded and reached for his cigarette pack. Major Grimm muttered a curse and set both palms flat on the board to resume his gaze at the pieces. Thoma was nowhere in this room, he was off the board, and the board was all that mattered. Luis reproached himself for tolerating this for the four days he already had.