Mark Frost - The Second Objective

Bernie let that go. “They still speak German?”

“That’s right. When we took it back in 1940, they lined the streets and cheered that they were part of the fatherland again.”

“Yeah? What’d they say when the Americans took it back? Heil Roosevelt?”

Bernie glanced back in the mirror at Von Leinsdorf, who couldn’t keep the superior smirk off his face.

“Irony. You’re aware that’s a well-known Jewish trait, Brooklyn.”

Bernie didn’t answer. Halfway through the town, they dead-ended into the International Highway that ran due west from the German border. Von Leinsdorf signaled Bernie to pull over, then stood in the backseat, surveying both ways down the empty road.

“The panzers will drive straight through here,” he said. “Fifty miles from the border to the river and nothing in our way but a rabble of drunken fraternity boys. By God, the plan will work.”

Not if I have anything to say about it, thought Bernie.

“So we keep going?” he asked.

“The next village,” said Von Leinsdorf.

Three miles west they entered the town of Waimes. Von Leinsdorf signaled Bernie to slow down. He took out his officer’s notebook and paged through it.

“What are we looking for?” asked Bernie.

“There’s a curfew,” said Von Leinsdorf. “We can’t stay on this road too late.”

“Ich bin hungrig,” said Preuss, the first words he’d uttered since Elsenborn.

“I didn’t hear that,” snapped Von Leinsdorf.

“I have hungry,” said Preuss.

“I am hungry,” said Bernie, correcting him.

“Yes. Me also,” said Preuss.

“Speak German again,” said Von Leinsdorf, “and I’ll feed you your own leg.”

Von Leinsdorf scanned the buildings as they continued through the encroaching fog. A lettered sign in the shape of an oversized pink pig loomed out of the mist on the right. Von Leinsdorf told Bernie to pull over beside the butcher’s shop beneath it. Preuss looked up at the sign and his mood brightened.

“We eat now,” he said.

Von Leinsdorf banged on the front door. Bernie peered through the front display window. A massive shape carrying a lantern appeared inside and moved behind the door.

“We close,” said a woman’s voice.

“Das Phoenix steigt. Der Pfeil fliegt,” said Von Leinsdorf.

The Phoenix rises. The Arrow flies.

The woman shuffled to the window and held up the lantern to look at them. She stood over six feet tall, wrapped in a cheap house coat. Bernie shrank back on instinct as she appeared in the light.

Her enormous head looked oblong, misshapen, and her skin was flushed with ragged scarlet patches-a peasant’s face, absent a healthy glow of outdoor labor. Bright, small eyes peered out from beneath a thick ridge of simian bone. A fringe of lank, mousy brown hair hung down in greasy clumps. Her tongue darted out between thick sensual lips as she sized them up. With a sidestep she vanished again, and the door opened.

“Gekommen , ” she said.

“Park the jeep around back,” said Von Leinsdorf to Bernie.

Von Leinsdorf and Preuss followed her into the shop. A smell of onions and fried meat wafted off her. With every step waves of cascading fat shimmied down her upper back. She led them through a storeroom behind the sales counter, into a small abattoir with a stained concrete floor. Two bare bulbs provided the only light. A butchered animal carcass hung from a steel hook suspended on a chain connected to a bolt in the ceiling. Judging by the shape, Von Leinsdorf thought it might be a dog. A sharp scent of blood and offal thickened the air. The woman turned sideways to wedge her girth behind the cutting block. She opened a hidden hatch in the wall, then slid out a small shelf revealing a crystal wireless shortwave radio.

“Für zu verwendende Sie,” she said to Leinsdorf.

“Please, fräulein, may we speak English?” asked Von Leinsdorf, indicating Preuss. “My friend needs the practice.”

“The Amis come here, but never find this radio,” she said. “I speak with my contact every day. They tell me you come.”

“Good; that’s what they were supposed to do. The Abwehr was also supposed to leave a package for us here. Do you have it with you?”

“No package. No one comes.”

“Did they contact you about it?”

“No. No Abwehr comes. The Amis take all the food, from all the village. They leave me nothing.” She picked up a large meat cleaver from an array of cutting instruments on the chopping block, which was covered with a mass of some half-minced internal organ. “They don’t tell me you dress like the Amis .”

The cleaver posed both a question and a threat. Von Leinsdorf tried to keep her focused on him, and not Preuss.

“And you mustn’t tell anyone either, fräulein,” said Von Leinsdorf, turning on an authoritative charm. “It is fräulein, isn’t it?”

The big woman blushed, the scarlet patches on her cheeks glowing like embers. “Frau. Frau Escher.”

Bernie entered the house through the back after parking the jeep and came face to face with Frau Escher, clutching the meat cleaver.

“Whoa, what the fuck,” said Bernie.

Von Leinsdorf signaled Bernie to stay calm. “What is your Christian name, my dear?”

“Lisolette,” she said, smiling coquettishly.

“What a pretty name. And might I ask, where is Herr Escher?”

“German Army. Four years. I see him last time two years.”

After a while looking at her, he probably ran all the way to the Russian Front, thought Bernie.

“Four years without your husband is a terrible sacrifice,” said Von Leinsdorf. “We’re proud of you, working for our cause, giving us information with your radio. Risking your life during this American occupation. You’ve done a great service for your country.”

She blushed again. “So kind of you to say.”

Bernie couldn’t tell if she was crazy or just simple. Maybe it was both.

“Another favor, Frau Escher,” said Von Leinsdorf. “We were told you could give us something to eat. And shelter for the night.”

“I would be happy,” she said; then she frowned and re-gripped the cleaver. “But why you dress like the Amis ?”

“A top secret assignment,” said Von Leinsdorf. Then whispering: “On orders from the Führer himself.”

“No.”

“I swear to you, it’s true.”

“ Mein Gott . I go now. You eat.”

Frau Escher laid down the cleaver, flashed a travesty of a schoolgirl smile at Von Leinsdorf, and waddled into the front room. Von Leinsdorf signaled the others to follow, while he turned to the radio. He fingered the tuning knobs; their slotted grooves were slippery with clotted animal fat.

Disgusted, Von Leinsdorf took out his handkerchief and wiped off the knobs. He dialed in the frequency for their corps command post, twelve miles east of the border. He spoke in prearranged code, broadcasting less than a minute, letting headquarters know they were safely across. He made it clear their other jeep squads should steer clear of the Elsenborn logging road, but made no mention of the shooting at the checkpoint. He also let them know the package they’d expected to find from the Abwehr in Waimes had not arrived. After a pause, the dispatcher told him to return to the butcher shop the next day and try again.

Report of their success encouraged Colonel Skorzeny to step up deployment of their remaining commando squads. Before dawn, nine more advance teams of Operation Greif would infiltrate the American line.

Then there would be only twenty-fours hours until it began.