«And I’m an older man, and one thing has nothing to do with the other. I’m merely saying that it’s a privilege to know you.»
«You confuse me, soldier man!»
«I don’t mean to.»
Erin Lafferty pressed the accelerator to the floor and sped ahead.
Wolfgang Hitluh, born Billy-Bob Bayou, walked through the gate and followed the signs in the wide corridor to Logan Airport’s baggage claim area. As one third of the highly, if mysteriously, paid security unit recruited by Manpower Plus Plus, he was to meet his two Kameraden in the enclosed parking lot across from the taxi stand. As identification, he was to carry a folded Wall Street Journal, with various articles clearly circled in red ink, although he had stubbornly argued for a copy of Mein Kampf.
If he hadn’t needed the employment so badly, he would have turned down the job on principle. The Journal was a well-known symbol of the decadent, money-grasping democracies and should be burned along with ninety-nine percent of all of the country’s newspapers and magazines, starting with the despicable Amsterdam News and Ebony, which were published in and for Harlem, a steaming hotbed of inferior black troublemakers, just as Wall Street was a treacherous armed camp of Jewish money! Unfortunately, however, Wolfgang did need the job, as his welfare checks had been cut off—by a suspicious black clerk at the unemployment office!—and so he had put his principles on a back burner and accepted the advance of two hundred dollars and an airline ticket.
All he knew was that he and his two Kameraden were to protect a group of seven people who were in hiding, and three of those were military themselves. That meant that there were six mercs watching over four civvies—a piece of Strudel, which he had come to love from his two glorious months training in the Bavarian mountains with his Fourth Reich Meister. Wolfgang Hitluh, the Journal in one hand, his carryon in the other, dodged the traffic and crossed the unroofed two lanes that led to the parking lot. He must not be conspicuous! he considered as he walked through the late afternoon sunlight toward the huge garage. Everything was so secret, according to Manpower Plus Plus, that he could not breathe a word of the job even to the Führer, if he was alive—always a possibility, natürlich! The assignment obviously entailed the protection of such high officials that the government could not trust the weak, non-Aryan types that had infiltrated the Secret Service… Where were his Kameraden? he wondered.
«You Wolfie?» asked an enormous black man, emerging from the shadows of a circular concrete pillar and approaching Hitluh.
«What?… Who? What did you say?»
«You heard me, little fella. You’ve got the newspaper and we saw the red ink when you crossed those two streets out in the open.» The dark giant extended his hand and smiled. «Nice to know you, Wolf—that’s one hell of a name, by the way.»
«Yes, well … I guess it is.» The Nazi accepted the hand as though having touched the flesh would infect him for life.
«It seems like a good gig, brother.»
«Brother?»
«Here,» continued the huge man, gesturing behind him, «let me introduce you to our partner, and don’t be put off by his appearance. Once we broke out, he couldn’t wait to get back into his usual threads. I tell you, Wolfie, you wouldn’t believe the way those old fortune-tellers and their crazy mustachioed husbands talk!»
«Fortune-tellers …?»
«Come on, Roman, get out here and meet Wolfie!»
A second figure came out from the shadows of the pillar, a muscular man in a billowing orange blouse with a blue sash around his waist above skin-tight black trousers and circlets of dark hair on his forehead; he also wore a single gold earring. A Gypsy! thought Wolfgang. The scourge of the Moldavians, worse than the Jews and the Negroes! Deutschland Über Alles, a Gypsy!
«Hallo, Misstair Wolfowitz!» cried the earringed man, holding out his hand, his blinding white teeth below a dark mustache, the antithesis of Wolfgang’s vision of a Kamerad. «I can tell by the shape of your eyes that you will have a long, long life with great financial assets! No money is required for this precious information—we work together, no?»
«Oh, great Führer, where the hell are ya?» whispered Hitluh to himself, absently shaking hands.
«What’s that, Wolfie?» asked the large black, clamping his huge, strong hand on Wolfgang’s shoulder.
«Nothing, nothing!… You’re sure there’s no mistake? You’re from Manpower Plus Plus?»
«Nowhere else, brother, and from what Roman and I can figure out, this is going to be like picking up bread in the street. By the way, my name’s Cyrus—Cyrus M. My buddy’s name is Roman Z, and you’re Wolfie H. Naturally, we never ask what the letters of our last names stand for—which wouldn’t make a hell of a lot of difference anyway because we got so many different ones, right, brother?»
«Jawohl.» Wolfgang nodded, then blanched. «I mean you’re absolutely correct … Bruder.»
«What?»
«Brother,» added Hitluh instantly, apologetically. «Brother, I mean brother!»
«Hell, don’t get upset, Wolfie, I understood you. I speak German, too.»
«You do?»
«Hell, yes. Why do you think I’ve been in prison?»
«Because you speak German …?»
«Sort of, little fella,» said the dark-skinned giant. «You see, I’m a government chemist, and I was loaned out to Bonn to work for a plant in Stuttgart to help out in a fertilizer project, only it wasn’t.»
«Wasn’t what?»
«Fertilizer… Oh, it was shit, but it wasn’t fertilizer, just gas, very unhealthy gas. On its way to the Middle East.»
«Mein Gott! But perhaps there were reasons …?»
«Sure, there were. Cash and the wasting of a lot of people the bosses didn’t think were too important. Three of them found me one night analyzing the final compounds. They called me a Schwarzer and rushed me, two pulling guns on me… That was that.»
«That was what?»
«I threw all three of those honky Krauts into the vats—which sort of meant they couldn’t show up in court to answer my plea of self-defense… So, in the interests of diplomatic relations, I drew five years in the can over here rather than fifty over there. I figured I owed three months, so Roman and I broke out last night.»
«But we’re supposed to be mercs, not chemists!»
«A man can be different things, little fella. To put myself through two universities in seven years, I took a few months off now and then. Angola—both sides, incidentally—Oman, Karachi, Kuala Lumpur. I won’t be a disappointment to you, Wolfie.»
«Misstair Wolfowitz,» interrupted Roman Z, expanding his orange-clothed chest, and planting his feet as though he were about to do a Gypsy dervish. «You see before you the greatest man with a blade, a silent blade, that you could ever hope to meet!… Slash, slash, parry, thrust!» The words were accompanied by wild gestures and rapid pivots as the blue sash whipped through the air and the orange blouse billowed. «Ask anyone in the mountains of Serbo-Croatia!»
«But you were in prison over here—»