Blok’s pistol, held at the colonel’s side, came up in a savage arc and thudded into Michael’s testicles. Michael gasped in agony and dropped to his knees.
“Now, now, Baron,” Blok chided. “Threats are beneath royalty, don’t you agree?” He nodded at Boots, who plucked up the Iron Cross into his own fist. “Baron, we’re going to get to know each other very well indeed. You may learn to sing in a higher register before I’m done with you. Haul him up, please,” he told two soldiers, and the men pulled Michael to his feet. Pain throbbed in Michael’s groin, doubling him over; even as a wolf, he wouldn’t get very far before he crumpled into an exhausted heap. Now was not the time, or the place. He let the wild call drift away from him, like a fading echo.
“Come on, we’ve got a distance to travel.” Blok walked up the hillside, and the soldiers shoved Michael ahead of them. Other soldiers walked on either side of him, their guns ready. Boots followed at a distance, the Iron Cross in his hand, and a few more soldiers began to drag Mouse’s body up toward the road. Michael did not look at Mouse again; the little man was gone, and he would not have to face the torture that awaited.
Blok looked up at the blue sky, and his silver teeth gleamed brightly as he smiled. “Ah, it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it?” he said, to no one in particular. He would leave a detachment of troops to continue searching for her, and he had no doubt that the bitch would be found soon. She couldn’t have gotten very far. After all, she was only a woman. His heart was hurting for being such a fool, but he looked forward to having Chesna in his hands. He had considered himself her agreeable uncle when he’d thought she was a loyal Nazi; now, however, a traitor of Chesna’s magnitude merited treatment that was less familial and more familiar. But what a scandal! This must be kept from the newspapers, at all costs! And, also, from the prying eyes and ears of Himmler. So, a question: where to take the baron for interrogation?
Ah, yes! Blok thought. Of course!
He watched as the baron was shoved into the rear of a truck and made to lie down on his back with his hands pinned under him. A soldier sat next to him, with a rifle barrel pressed against his throat.
Blok walked over to confer with the truck driver as other soldiers continued their search in the forest for Germany’s Golden Girl.
5
Michael smelled his destination before he saw it. He was still lying on his back on the truck’s metal bed, his arms pinned underneath him, with armed soldiers sitting all around. The cargo bay had been covered with gray canvas, shutting off all but a crack of sunlight. His sense of direction was impaired, though he knew they weren’t heading into the city; the road was far too rough for the civilian wheels of Berlin. No, this road had been tortured by its share of truck tires and heavy vehicles, and his back muscles gripped with pain every time a rut shook vibrations through the floor.
A strong smell seeped in through the canvas. The soldiers had noticed it as well; some of them shifted nervously and whispered to each other. The odor was getting stronger. He had smelled something akin to it, in North Africa, when he’d come upon a group of British soldiers who’d been hit by a flamethrower. Once the sickly-sweet smell of charred human flesh got up your nostrils, you never forgot it. This smell had burning wood in it, too. Pine wood, Michael thought. Something that burned very hot and fast.
One of the soldiers got up and lurched to the rear of the truck, to be sick. Michael heard two others whispering and caught a word: “Falkenhausen.”
His destination was known. Falkenhausen concentration camp. Blok’s child.
The smell drifted away. The wind had changed, Michael thought. But what in the name of God had been burning? The truck stopped, and stayed motionless for a moment or two. Over the low grumble of the engine he heard hammers at work. And then the truck continued on about a hundred yards or so, stopped again, and a strident voice shouted, “Bring out the prisoner!”
The canvas was whipped back. Michael was hauled out of the truck, into harsh sunlight, and he stood before a German major of the Waffen SS, a thick-bodied man wearing a black uniform that bulged at the seams. The man had a fleshy, ruddy face with eyes that were as white and hard as diamonds, but with none of their luster. He wore a black, flat-brimmed cap, and his brown hair was cropped to the scalp. Around his girth was a holster that bore a Walther pistol and a baton of ebony rubber: a bone-bruiser.
Michael glanced around. Saw wooden barracks, gray stone walls, dense green treetops beyond them. A new barracks building was going up, and prisoners in striped uniforms were hammering the joints together as guards with submachine guns stood in the shadows. Thick coils of barbed wire formed inner walls, and at the corners of the outer stone walls stood wooden guard towers. He saw an entrance gate, also of wood, and above it the stone arch he’d seen in the framed photograph in Blok’s suite. A dark haze hung in the air, slowly drifting over the forest. He caught the scent again: burning flesh.
“Eyes front!” the Nazi major shouted, and grasped Michael’s chin to jerk his head around.
A soldier jabbed a rifle into his spine. Another soldier wrenched his coat off, then tore his shirt away so hard the pearl buttons flew into the air. Michael’s belt was removed, and his pants lowered. His underwear was pulled down. The rifle jabbed him again, in the kidneys. Michael knew what they wanted him to do, but he stared fixedly into the major’s colorless eyes and kept both feet on the ground.
“Remove your shoes and socks,” the man said.
“Does this mean we’re engaged?” Michael asked.
The baton came out of the holster. Its tip pressed against Michael’s chin. “Remove your shoes and socks,” the major repeated.
Michael caught movement to his left. He glanced in that direction and saw Blok and Boots approaching.
“Eyes front!” the major commanded, and swung the baton a short, brutal blow against Michael’s wounded thigh. Pain exploded through his leg as the gash burst open again, oozing scarlet, and Michael fell to his knees in the chalky dust. A rifle barrel looked him in the face.
“Baron,” Blok said, “I’m afraid you’re in our kingdom now. Will you obey Major Krolle, please?”
Michael hesitated, pain pounding in his thigh and beads of sweat on his face. A booted foot was planted on his back and drove him down into the dust. Boots leaned his weight on Michael’s spine, making Michael grit his teeth.
“You really do want to cooperate, Baron,” Blok went on. Then, to Krolle, “He’s a Russian. You know how stubborn those sons of bitches can be.”
“We cure stubbornness here,” Krolle said, and while Boots held Michael down, two soldiers took off his shoes and socks. Now he was totally naked, and his wrists were clasped behind him with iron manacles. He was hauled to his feet, then shoved in the direction the soldiers wanted him to go. He offered no resistance; it would only lead to broken bones, and he was still exhausted from his battle with Sandler and the flight through the forest. There was no time to mourn Mouse, or to bewail his own predicament; these men meant to torture every shred of information out of him. It was to his advantage, though, that they thought he was an agent of the Soviet Union, because his presence would keep their attention on the East and away from the West.
It was a large camp. Distressingly large, Michael thought. Everywhere stood barracks buildings, most of green-painted wood, and hundreds of tree stumps testified to the fact that Falkenhausen had been carved out of the forest. Michael saw pallid, emaciated faces watching him through narrow windows with hinged shutters. Groups of skinny, bald prisoners passed, herded by guards with submachine guns and rubber batons. Michael noted that almost all the prisoners wore yellow Stars of David pinned to their clothes. His nudity seemed commonplace, and drew no attention. Off in the distance, perhaps two hundred yards, was a camp within the camp, more barracks enclosed by coils of barbed wire. Michael could see what looked like three or four hundred prisoners standing in rows on a dusty parade ground, while a loudspeaker droned on about the Thousand-Year Reich. He saw, in the distance on his left, a squat building of gray stones; from its two chimneys arose columns of dark smoke that drifted toward the forest. He heard the groan and rumble of heavy machinery, though he couldn’t see where the noise was coming from. A change in the wind brought another odor to his nostrils: not the burned flesh smell this time, but a reek of unwashed, sweating humanity. In that smell there were notes of decay, corruption, excrement, and blood. Whatever was going on here, he thought as he watched the columns of smoke belch from the chimneys, had more to do with erasure than confinement.