Macurdy rode back to his hotel feeling pensive. Getting ready for bed, he spotted two of the reasons: Edouard and Berta not only had a child, they had a future in which, with any luck, they'd grow old together.
He doubted their love could be as strong as his and Mary's, but there'd been all those pregnancies without results. And as for growing old together…
Life, he told himself, is a string of choices, a web of them, choosing and living with the results, good and bad, and making future choices on top of the old. Hopefully learning as you go, getting smarter. He paused. No, not smarter. The word is wiser. And hoping that at the end of your life, the overall results will be good.
Which, he realized, was why he was flying to Bavaria in the morning: He had more results to check on.
42
The Bavarian Gate: Goodbye
Lieutenant Colonel William Von Lutzow, stationed now in Munich, met Macurdy at the Bern airport shortly before noon, in a borrowed OSS plane. They had supper that evening at the officers' mess in Kempten, where the army ran the airfield, exercised authority over civil administration, and undertook to supplement the district's inadequate food supplies. Afterward, walking uniformed around town in the long spring evening, Macurdy saw little sign of resentment. Stoicism was more the mode, and poverty. Two young women accosted them, but they declined.
The next morning at ten-thirty, Vonnie checked out a jeep from the motor pool and they headed for Schloss Tannenberg, Macurdy driving. May was verging on June, and though the morning was cool, the day was glorious. The villages along the way showed the drabness of war and defeat, the long shortage of means and manpower. But here and there, flowerbeds and planters were bright with color, and the roadsides were spangled with wildflowers. The beech trees and larches were a fresh and lovely green.
A truck was parked beside what had been the schloss, and using a ramp, block and tackle, and crowbars, several civilians were loading stone blocks. Two of them wore German army uniforms, perhaps the only clothes they had. Clearly gasoline was not entirely unavailable to civilians; presumably, entrepreneurial GIs in the Red Ball Express had set up a black market.
Macurdy barely paused at the schloss-he had no doubt of his results there-but turned up the truck trail to the top of the Witches' Ridge, where he parked on a patch of rock outcrop not far from the gate site. The moon would be full that night; if the gate still functioned, he should be able to feel it at local noon, as a distinct buzz in the Web.
Meanwhile they ate an early lunch in the sun: fried-egg sandwiches, Hershey bars and oranges, bagged for them at the officers' mess, along with two cans each of army three-two beer. "So this is the place," Von Lutzow said.
"..Yep…"
Vonnie did not doubt the Voitar were real. He'd always had faith in Macurdy, had talked with Anna and MacNab about them, and had read the report on the body, with photographs. And they had to come from somewhere. But it was still hard to believe in the gate; his face and aura reflected-not skepticism so much as discomfort.
Macurdy looked at him and smiled. "I know where there's one in the Missouri Ozarks," he said, "that I'm pretty sure still operates. If you'd like, we can go visit it sometime." He laughed then. "'When the spirit comes ahootin'."
Von Lutzow gave him a sideways look, and Macurdy laughed again. "An old Ozarks conjure woman described it that way. She's the one who took me there the first time."
"So what happened?"
Macurdy's smile turned wry. "Don't ask. I might tell you, and ruin a good friendship."
Von Lutzow shifted uncomfortably on his seat, and let matters lie. Macurdy didn't, however, not entirely. "The birthdate on my personnel record is false," he added. "By ten years."
Vonnie knew the comment was not a non sequitur, regardless of how it sounded, but he let that be too.
After several minutes of digesting in the sun, Von Lutzow drove the jeep into the shade and lay down in the back seat, eyes closed. Within a minute he slept. Macurdy, on the other hand, needed to be awake and alert at noon, so he got out and walked along the crest a bit, checking his watch every few minutes. A squirrel scolded; birds chirped and occasionally sang; a hawk whistled shrilly in the sky. He was back at the jeep a few minutes before local noon, and felt nothing, nothing at all. At 12:30 he wakened Von Lutzow, and with minimal conversation drove back to Kempten, ninety-nine percent sure the gate had either been destroyed or rendered inoperable.
That afternoon, the two Americans visited the Rathaus, where the police had charge of the records left by the local Gestapo office. There Macurdy learned that "Gerda Montag" and her grandparents had been arrested by the Gestapo on Wednesday, 10 May 1944, charged with spying and harboring a spy, and been executed on Sunday, 14 May, of the same year. Just as he'd feared.
That night Macurdy drove back to the ridge again, this time alone; ninety-nine percent was not sure enough. The pasture he'd jumped on, more than a year earlier, was flooded by a full moon. Cows, no doubt the same cows who'd been there a year earlier, grazed in the moonlight, a sight he somehow found ineffably beautiful.
Again he drove to the ridgetop, where he parked and waited for midnight. Waited and felt-what? For one thing, an old love, buried but not dead. But this was the wrong gate, and that marriage long past.
Local midnight came and went, and still nothing happened. He gave it an extra forty minutes, then feeling dry as old leaves, started the jeep, drove back down the ridge, and headed up the road to Kempten.
That night too, sleep did not come quickly. Too many memories, too many thoughts. Except for Mary, he told himself, you've had no luck with wives. Varia stolen and married to someone else, which had worked out well for her and Cyncaidh. And Melody, drowned with their unborn child. And Gerda Schwabe, who hadn't really been married to him, though the marriage had been real enough to the Gestapo. A marriage never consummated, though she'd wanted to. All she got out of it was dead.
He tried to shake his mood. Macurdy he told himself, get your head out of your butt and look at the facts. Gerda had been living on borrowed time, and the loan had been foreclosed. She'd been a spy for the British in Lubeck, and was executed as a spy, a German who despised the Nazis. Like millions in the war, damned near including himself, she'd died as a soldier, in her case without a uniform.
And what of Landgraf? He'd been no Nazi, despite being an SS Obersturmbannfuhrer. Decency and patriotism had been his central traits. And loyalty. A decent man supporting a monster! There was no understanding such things.
Rising up on an elbow, Macurdy looked at the watch on his bedside stand. The luminous hands told him it was past three, and the officers' mess stopped serving breakfast at 0800. Tiredly he got up and sat on a metal folding chair, to still his mind through meditation.
In a few minutes he was nodding off, and lying back down, fell quickly asleep. To dream of Yuulith-of Vulkan and Varia and dwarves-and Kurqosz. Though he wouldn't remember it when he awoke.
The next morning he flew to Munich with Von Lutzow, and by noon was on a plane to London. Within hours he was on another, to New York, via Reykjavik and Gander.
Beginning to feel eager. He was done with war, he told himself. There was still Japan, but he'd get around that. Something would intervene. Maybe he'd start limping again; he was good at that.
And he was done with gates. He and Mary would make a new life for themselves, in Nehtaka to start with, then elsewhere. The problems weren't that great. If he looked at them right, they weren't problems at all.