Alan Furst - Dark Star

The fat man pointed a blunt index finger at him and partly closed one eye. “You put those on now, that’s plenty of discussion.”

Szara held his wrist up to the faint moonlight in the back window.

“In back-don’t you know anything?” He sighed heavily and shook his head. “Don’t worry, nothing will happen to you. It’s just one of those things that has to be done-you’re certainly aware, comrade, of the many things we all must do. So, humor me, will you? ” He turned back around in his seat, dismissively, and peered through the ground mist rising from the road. As he turned, Szara could hear the whisper of his woolen coat against the car upholstery.

Szara clicked the handcuff around his left wrist, then put it behind his back and held the other cuff in his right hand. For a time, the men in the front seat were silent. The road moved uphill into a wood where it was very dark. The fat man leaned forward and peered through the window. “Take care,” he said. “We don’t want to hit an animal.” Then, without turning around, “I’m waiting.”

Szara closed the cuff on his right wrist.

The car left the forest and headed down a hill. “Stop here,” the fat man said. “Turn on the light.” The driver stared at the dashboard, twisted a button; a windshield wiper scraped across the dry glass. Both men laughed and the driver turned it off. Another button did nothing at all. Then the dome light went on.

The fat man leaned over and rummaged through the open satchel between his feet. He drew out a sheet of paper and squinted at it. “I’m told you’re sly as a snake,” he said to Szara. “Haven’t been hiding anything, have you?”

“No,” Szara said.

“If I have to, I’ll make you tell.”

“You have all of it.”

“Don’t sound so miserable. You’ll have me weeping in a minute.”

Szara said nothing. He shifted in the seat to make his hands more comfortable and looked out the side window at the cloudy silhouette of the moon.

“Well,” the fat man said at last, “this is just the way life is.” A shrill whine reached them from around a bend in the road and the single light of a motorcycle appeared. It shot past them at great speed, a passenger hanging on to the waist of the driver.

“Crazy fools,” the young man said.

“These Germans love their machines,” the fat man said. “Drive on.”

They went around the bend where the motorcycle had come from. Szara could see more woodland on the horizon. “Slowly, now,” said the fat man. He reached over and turned off the dome light, then stared out the side window with great concentration. “I wonder if it’s come time for eyeglasses? “

“Not you,” the driver said. “It’s the mist.”

They drove on, very slowly. A dirt track for farm machines broke away from the road into a field that had been harvested to low stubble. “Ah,” the fat man said. “You better back up.” He looked over the seat at Szara as the car reversed. “Let’s see those hands.” Szara twisted around and showed him. “Not too tight, are they?”

“No.”

“How far? ” said the driver.

“Just a little. I’m not pushing this thing if we get stuck in a hole.”

The car inched forward down the dirt path. “All right,” said the fat man. “This will do.” He struggled out of the car, walked a few feet, turned his back, and urinated. Still buttoning his fly, he walked to Szara’s door and opened it. “Please,” he said, indicating that Szara should get out. Then, to the driver: “You stay here and keep the car running.”

Szara shifted himself along the seat, swung his legs out, and, leaning forward in a crouch, managed to stand upright.

“Let’s walk a little,” said the fat man, positioning himself just behind Szara and a little to his right.

Szara walked a few paces. As the car idled he could hear that one cylinder was mistimed and fired out of rhythm. “Very well,” said the fat man. He took a small automatic pistol from the pocket of his coat. “Is there anything you would like to say? Perhaps a prayer?”

Szara didn’t answer.

“Jews have prayers for everything, certainly for this.”

“There’s money,” Szara said. “Money and gold jewelry.”

“In your valise?”

“No. In Russia.”

“Ah,” said the fat man sorrowfully, “we’re not in Russia.” He armed the automatic with a practiced hand, the wind gusted suddenly and raised a few strands of stiff hair so that they stood up straight. Carefully, he smoothed them back into place. “So …” he said.

The whine of the motorcycle reached them again, growing quickly in volume. The fat man swore softly in a language Szara didn’t know and lowered the pistol by the side of his leg so that it was hidden from the road. Almost on top of them, the cyclist executed a grinding speed shift and swung onto the farm track in a shower of dirt, the light sweeping across Szara and the fat man, whose mouth opened in surprise. From somewhere near the car an urgent voice called out, “Ismailov?”

The fat man was astonished, for a moment speechless. Then he said, “What is it? Who are you?”

The muzzle flare was like orange lightning-it turned the fat man into a photographic negative, arms spread like the wings of a bird as a wind swept him into the air while down below a shoe flew away. He landed like a sack and hummed as though he’d hit his thumb with a hammer. Szara threw himself onto the ground. From the car, the young driver cried out for his father amid the flat reports of a pistol fired in the open air.

“Are you hurt? “

Szara looked up. The little gnome called Heshel stood over him, eyes glittering in the moonlight above his hooked nose and knowing smile. His cap was pulled down ridiculously over his ears and a great shawl was wound around his neck and stuffed into his buttoned jacket. Three shotgun shells were thrust between the fingers of his right hand. He broke the barrel and loaded both sides. A voice from near the car said, “Who’s humming?”

“Ismailov.”

“Heshie, please.”

Heshel snapped the shotgun back together and walked toward the fat man. He fired both barrels simultaneously and the humming stopped. He returned to Szara, reached down, thrust a small hand into Szara’s armpit, and tugged. “Come on,” he said, “you got to get up.”

Szara managed to scramble to his feet. At the car, the second man was hauling the driver out by his ankles. He flopped onto the ground. “Look,” said the man who had pulled him out. “It’s the son.”

“Ismailov’s son?” Heshel asked.

“I think so.”

Heshel walked over and stared down. “From this you can tell?”

The other man didn’t answer.

“Maybe you better start the machine.”

While Heshel retrieved the key and unlocked the handcuffs, the other man took a crank that clamped behind the rider’s seat and locked it onto a nut on the side of the engine. He turned it hard a few times and the motorcycle coughed, then sputtered to life. Heshel made a hurry-up motion with his hand, the man climbed on the motorcycle and rode away. As the noise faded, they could hear dogs barking.

Heshel stood silently for a moment and stared at the front seat of the car. “Look in the trunk,” he told Szara. “Maybe there’s a rag.”

In Berlin, it was raining and it was going to rain-a slow, sad, persistent business shining black on the bare trees and polishing the soot-colored roof tiles. Szara stared out a high window, watching umbrellas moving down the street like phantoms. It seemed to him the city’s very own, private weather, for Berliners lived deep inside themselves-it could be felt-where they nourished old insults and humiliated ambitions of every sort, all of it locked up within a courtesy like forged metal and an acid wit that never seemed meant to hurt-it just, apparently by accident, left a little bruise.