Aaron Elkins: Fellowship Of Fear

"Guten Abend, gnadige Frau," he said. "Ich habe… Ich habe nicht mein, mein…" Here German Made Simple failed him. He made key-turning movements. She sat stolidly.

"Das Ding fur…fur die Tur?" he said, continuing to turn his imaginary key in the imaginary lock.

"Schlussel," she said with a disgusted shake of her head.

She turned, plucked the key and its large attached brass plate from the rack behind her, and plunked them on the desk.

"Ach, ja, Schlussel, Schlussel," he cried, grinning with his best try at hearty Teutonic joviality, wondering at the same time why in the world he was trying to placate her. She was, as ever, unresponsive.

Then back upstairs, under her suspicious glower, with heavy feet and a stomach beginning to go queasy. The second piece of Black Forest cake had been a mistake. Or maybe it was the twelfth glass of wine. With a hand less steady than it had been even an hour before, he inserted the big key in the lock and opened the door.

When he flicked on the lights, things happened so fast they barely registered. He found himself looking into a taut-skinned face set on a peculiarly long neck. Before he could react, there was a movement behind him and a stunning blow at the base of his skull. A second blow smashed him heavily between the shoulder blades, driving the breath out of him, and something snapped fiercely around his throat. He fell to his knees, clawing at his neck, dazed and breathless, with dimming vision.

As the darkening room began to swirl about him, the band around his throat suddenly loosened, and he dropped, gasping, to his elbows, letting his forehead sink to the floor.

The long-necked man in front of him grasped his hair and pulled his head up. "All right, Oliver," he said, his voice a deep baritone that didn’t belong with the ferret-like face, "give us trouble and you’re dead, you understand?"

Gideon tried to speak but couldn’t. He nodded his head, his mind a jumble.

"All right, you know what we’re here for. Let’s have it."

Gideon managed to croak a response. "Look, I don’t know what this-" The band which had remained loosely about his neck was tugged viciously from behind. The darkness closed in again. Gideon gasped, swayed backwards, and lost consciousness.

He seemed to be out for only a second, but when he came painfully to his senses, he was lying on his stomach. His jacket had been removed. He groaned and began to turn over.

"Lay there," the baritone said. "Try to move and I kill you now."

While they searched his clothing and probed roughly at surprising parts of his body, he lay on his face trying to gather his thoughts and his strength. What could be going on? Who did they think he was? No, they had called him by name; they knew who he was. It wasn’t money; that was clear. They were looking for something specific. They knew what they were about, and they had the brutal competence of professional killers, at least from what he’d seen at the movies. It had to be a bizarre mistake.

As a man of studied self-observation, Gideon had never satisfied himself as to whether he was physically brave. Sometimes yes, sometimes no. This was definitely a no. His head hurt ferociously, his neck felt as if it had been seared with a hot iron, his stomach was heaving, and his limbs were completely without strength. And he was just plain scared to death; no arguing with it.

"Look," he said, his mouth against the wooden floor, "this is some kind of crazy mistake. I’m a professor. I just got here-"

"Shut up. Stand up. Keep your hands behind your head."

As Gideon began to rise he became aware of something in his right hand. Something cold and hard. The key. The key and its heavy brass plate. Somehow he’d held on to them all the time. He buried them deeper in his palm. Once on his feet, he moved his hands behind his head, keeping both of them clenched, and stood swaying, his eyes closed, while a billow of pain and nausea flowed over him.

The sleek-headed one spoke again. "Now where the hell is it? If we have to cut your gut open to see if you swallowed it, believe me, we’ll do it. I mean it, you son of a bitch." As if Gideon needed convincing, he removed from his inside jacket pocket a thin, gleaming stiletto, like a prop from an Italian opera, but obviously the genuine thing.

When Gideon did not reply, the man gazed thoughtfully at him, his tongue playing over his upper lip, his head nodding slowly.

"So," he said, his rich voice cordial and caressing, "now we see."

He nodded more sharply to the other man, who was off to the side, barely within Gideon’s range of vision, and who now began to circle around behind him. He was very tall. His eyes down, Gideon waited until he could see the large feet behind his own. Then, as suddenly as he could, he scraped his right heel savagely down the other man’s shin and jammed it into his instep. Almost simultaneously he pivoted sharply from his hips with his hands still clasped behind his neck, hoping to find the other man’s head with his elbow. It smashed into his throat instead. There was an unpleasant crackling sound and the lanky form collapsed against the wall.

The sleek, ferret-faced man hissed sharply and sprang with athletic speed into a crouch, the knife in his hand, low and pointing upwards. With an unconsciously imitative response, Gideon bent low and thrust the brass plate forward. The other man checked himself for an instant and stared at the plate. He made a gutteral sound low in his throat, then moved in, sinuous and graceful. Gideon hurled the key and plate at him. They flew by his head and into a wall-mounted mirror, which cracked into several large pieces, hung there for an instant, and slid down the wall with a huge crash.

At the sound, Gideon made for the door, but the smaller man, with a crablike hop, was there before him, still hunched over, still pointing the knife up at Gideon’s abdomen. They stood looking at each other for a few seconds. Off to the side, the tall man groaned and began to get up, clutching his throat. Gideon’s mind was in a strange state. He was certain he was about to die, and almost equally sure it was all a dream. He was calm now, and his mind was focused. He looked about him for anything he might use as a weapon.

His hand had closed on a heavy ashtray when there was a thumping on the door, accompanied by the landlady’s agitated shouts.

"Herr Oliver! Was ist los? Herr Oliver!

The three men froze and watched in fascination as the handle turned and the door opened. When Frau Gross saw the extraordinary scene within, she too remained frozen, so that the four of them seemed-to a slightly bemused, not altogether rational Gideon-like a tableau presented by a high school drama group. Here was the hero, doomed and defiant, lithe, ready to leap; there was the villain, cringing and contemptible, glittering dagger in hand; there was his cowardly minion; and there the heroine, hand upon the door handle, mouth open in artful astonishment…

The mouth opened yet wider, emitted a preliminary bleat, and then a full-throated bellow.

"Hilfe! Hilfe! Polizei!

"Quiet!" whispered Ferret-face urgently. "Ruhig!" He gestured at her with his knife.

At this, Frau Gross’s formidable jowls quivered, seemingly more in indignation than in fear; her hand moved to her breast so that she stood like Brunhilde herself; and she gave forth a shriek that stunned the senses. The two intruders looked at each other, then dashed out the door, shoving

Frau Gross out of the way. For a second she stopped howling. Then she took a measured breath and began again with renewed vigor, staring at Gideon with emotionless, piglike eyes.

With the morning sunlight streaming through the windows of the Hotel Ballman’s breakfast room, and the fragrance of rich European coffee in the air, the horrors of the night had paled to a kind of good guys-bad guys adventure farce, which Gideon was happily describing to a rapt gathering of fellow USOC’rs. He had already gone over the details with the unsympathetic American MPs and the rough, green-uniformed German Polizei who had arrived within minutes after the two men had fled. Now, with a more amiable audience, he was telling things at his own pace, perhaps leaving out a few unnecessary details here and embellishing a little there for the sake of the narrative flow.