Mark Frost - The Second Objective

“I never saw him before.”

“He called you Lieutenant Miller.”

“Obviously he thought I was somebody else.”

“Hey, it was him or us,” said Eddie. “You won’t hear me complaining.”

“Who was the other cop, the one in the lobby?”

“That prick busted me the other night, Criminal Investigation Division, a real hard-on. Earl Grannit. New York homicide.”

“He’s a police detective?”

“That’s right. He’s on your tail, too?”

“He put some heat on us. I never knew his name.”

“Well, fuck him, he can eat our dust,” said Eddie. “I was gonna say we head down to Paris, what do you think?”

“You know your way around?”

“Been stationed there since August. Got that city wired. Our battalion was floating on a river of cash.”

They heard sirens in the distance toward downtown Reims. When Eddie turned, Von Leinsdorf raised the silenced pistol, ready to shoot him in the back of the head.

“Our train yard’s just west of the city, near Versailles,” said Eddie.

Von Leinsdorf lowered the pistol. “Versailles?”

“Yeah. I’m telling you, you got to check out Paris. It’s a fuckin’ free-for-all. A guy with brass ones like you makes a killing in no time.”

Von Leinsdorf put the pistol away before Eddie turned around.

“The Free French or de Gaulle or the U.S. Army may think they’re running the joint, but nobody’s got a handle on it. And the only God they bow down to in that town is the almighty American buck.”

“You could introduce me to some people?”

“You got a stake we can use to prime the pump, get things rolling?”

“Sure,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Dick, I’m not pushing banana oil here. A couple weeks we could be running our own show. Just me and you, no brass skimming off the top.”

“The army, the MPs, they’re going to come looking for us.”

“Forget it, I know places we could hole up for months. Local cops want nothing to do with the black market, and they’re all on the pad anyway. You make your own law. There’s parts of that city the army won’t even come into.”

“Will these get us there?” asked Von Leinsdorf, showing him some papers from his pocket.

“Road passes, regional business stamps, laissez-passers . Yeah, I’d say you got it covered.”

“We’re Danish businessmen looking into postwar oil contracts,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Let’s get rich.”

They shook hands, climbed into the Renault, and drove off. Von Leinsdorf had positioned the car less than a hundred yards from an entrance to the bridge that would carry them across the river, toward the highway to Paris. The army wouldn’t throw roadblocks up on the bridge until half an hour after they crossed.

Von Leinsdorf glanced at Eddie as he drove. The man amused him, a common thief with a lust for money. So much more useful than Bernie Oster. That he’d left the young American alive remained an irritant, but a minor one. Brooklyn didn’t have the skills to survive alone for long on enemy ground. He’d get himself captured or killed. Even if he talked, he knew nothing about the Second Objective; Von Leinsdorf had seen to that. He smiled. Eddie grinned back.

Everybody needed a little luck now and then.

Bernie stayed behind Earl Grannit’s right shoulder and kept his mouth shut, as ordered. A few of the other MPs shot questioning glances his way-where had he been all night?-but none said a word. Grannit was in charge and he was Grannit’s man.

Grannit’s temper flared once he’d gathered all his MPs and Army Counter Intelligence men in the theater lobby. The killer and a probable accomplice had walked out into the night and vanished. How was it possible that no one saw them or followed them or picked them up once they left the theater? Forty men looking for one man and “Lieutenant Miller” slipped the net like smoke.

Bernie could feel the other officers’ frustration in the tense silence that followed. They had a bona fide deserter from Skorzeny’s brigade dead and three men from his squad alive; didn’t that qualify as a good night’s work? Maybe other German agents had been there, and maybe they’d gotten away, but no one else had seen these two phantom killers in back of the stage or outside the movie house. Not even the three Krauts they’d captured knew anything about them.

It seemed obvious to everyone else in the room that William Sharper had murdered the MP and Ole Carlson. Sharper died with the knife that killed Carlson in his hand. He’d been shot with Carlson’s gun. He even looked like the sketch Grannit had circulated.

An army intelligence officer summed up their reservations. “Even if this Lieutenant Miller was here and got away, what can one Kraut do alone in the middle of France?”

“First of all, Carlson didn’t shoot Sharper,” said Grannit. “He’s got no powder residue on his hand. That knife Sharper had in his hand killed two French border guards earlier today. An SS officer named Erich Von Leinsdorf killed those two men. He came into Reims in an ambulance today, killed the drivers, a female civilian, and our two men here to night. He set up Sharper to take the fall, then killed him and walked away clean when we had him dropped, so don’t fucking tell me what this man can’t do.”

Bernie wondered if anyone figured him as the source of all this, and if so, how he had come to know it.

“I want this sketch of Von Leinsdorf telexed to every checkpoint in France. Expand roadblocks to every road and highway leading out of town. Cover train and bus stations and canvass every street in this part of the city door to door. Do it now.”

Grannit stormed out of the meeting; Bernie followed. They spent twenty minutes with a graves detail outside making sure Ole Carlson would be shipped home instead of being planted under a white cross in a French cemetery. Grannit wrote a letter to the man’s father to accompany the casket. They were about to walk upstairs to the apartment Grannit used as his command post, when he heard the chug of a diesel motor cutting through the fog on the canal. Bernie followed him to the water’s edge. Grannit lit a cigarette and walked along the bank, looking down through a break in the fog at a tug pushing a coal barge downstream.

“He used a boat,” said Grannit, angry at himself for not seeing it earlier. “God damn it, he used a boat.”

“He won’t give up,” said Bernie. “He won’t stop until you kill him.”

“Where’s he going? Give me your best guess.”

“Paris, I think. He said he spent time there before. He speaks the language like a native. I think he’s supposed to kill somebody. Somebody important, I don’t know who.”

Grannit whistled sharply, and two MPs ran toward them from the movie theater. Grannit offered Bernie a cigarette while they waited. Bernie took it and accepted a light.

“Whoever he’s after,” said Bernie, “that’s his next move.”

Grannit didn’t answer, but he turned to the MPs when they arrived. “Search the canal, both directions. Cut off the bridges. He took a boat.”

They scrambled back toward the theater, blowing whistles to summon more men.

“He’s halfway there by now,” said Bernie.

“He’s going after General Eisenhower,” said Grannit. “That’s the target.”

Bernie felt what little strength he had left rush out of him. He stumbled slightly, and nearly went to his knees.

“Jesus Christ.”

“You didn’t know that.”

“No, sir. He wouldn’t tell me anything. I don’t know what to say. It’s my fault. They’re all fucking crazy. I could’ve stopped him; I should’ve killed him when I had the chance.”

Grannit just watched him. “How many men were assigned to this?”