Games Of State (1996) Read online

  Every now and then, Rolf turned to make sure no one approached from the road. No one did, of course. As planned, he and the other two members of Feuer had parked off the road and walked in when the guards were on their coffee break. The men were too busy chatting among themselves to notice.

  Rolf's smoky eyes were alert, and his small, pale lips were pressed together. That, too, had been part of his training. He had worked hard to control his blinking. A warrior waited for an opponent to blink, then attacked. He had also learned to keep his mouth shut while drilling. A grunt told an opponent that a blow had worked or that you were struggling. And if your tongue were extended, a punch under the chin could make you bite it off.

  Rolf felt strong and proud as he listened to the sluts and gays and moneymen beyond the hill on the movie set. All of whom would die in the flames of Feuer. Some would perish today, most of them later. But eventually, through people like Karin and the famous Herr Richter, the world vision of Der Fuhrer would be realized.

  The young man's head was covered with a black stubble which barely concealed the fire-red swastika cut into his scalp. Perspiration from a half hour in the mask gave the hair a bristly, boyish shine. It also dribbled into his eyes, but he ignored it. Karin was big on military formality, and she would not approve if he wiped his brow or scratched an itch. Only Manfred was permitted such liberties, though he rarely took them. Rolf enjoyed the discipline. Karin said that without it he and his comrades "are like links which are not a chain." She was right. In the past, in gangs of three or four or five, Rolf and his friends had attacked individual enemies but never an opposing force. Never the police or anti-terrorist squads. They didn't know how to channel their anger, their passion. Karin was going to change that.

  To Rolf's right, behind the oak, Karin Doring finished removing Werner's uniform while the hulking Manfred Piper put it on. Once the corpse had been stripped to its underwear, the twenty-eight-year-old woman dragged it through the soft grasses toward a boulder. Rolf didn't offer to help. When they'd finally gotten a close look at the uniform, she'd told him to stand guard. And that was what he was going to do.

  From the corner of his eye, Rolf saw Manfred squirm as he dressed. The plan required Karin and one of the men to get close to the movie set, which meant that one of them had to look like a Sichern guard. Because the guard had been so barrel-chested, the clothes would have looked ludicrous on Rolf. So although the sleeves were short and the collar was tight, Manfred got the job.

  "I already miss my windbreaker," Manfred said as he struggled to button the jacket. "Did you watch as Herr Dagover came toward us?"

  Rolf knew that Manfred wasn't addressing him, so he said nothing. Karin was busy hiding Werner's body in the tall grasses behind the boulder, so she also didn't answer.

  "The way he adjusted his badge and hat," Manfred went on, "took pride in his uniform, walked erect. I could tell he was raised in the Reich. Very possibly as a Young Wolf. In his heart, I suspect he was still one of us." The co-founder of Feuer shook his large, bald head. He finished with the buttons and tugged the jacket sleeves as far as they would go. "It's too bad that men of his pedigree get comfortable. With a little ambition and imagination, they could be of great use to the cause."

  Karin stood. She said nothing as she walked to the limb where she'd hung her weapon and backpack. She was not the talker that Manfred was.

  Yet, thought Rolf, Manfred is right. Werner Dagover probably was like them. And when the firestorm finally came, they would find allies among people like him. Men and women who were not afraid to cleanse the earth of the physically and mentally deficient, of the foreign-colored, of ethnic and religious undesirables. But the guard had tried to signal his superiors, and Karin was not one to forgive opposition. She'd kill him if he questioned her authority, and she'd be right to. As she'd told Rolf when he dropped out of school to become a full-time soldier, if someone opposes you once, they'll do it again. And that, she'd said, was something no commander could risk.

  Karin picked up her Uzi, slipped it in the backpack, and walked to where Manfred was standing. The thirty-four-year-old wasn't as driven or well read as his companion, but he was devoted to her. In the two years that Rolf had been with Feuer, he'd never seen them apart. He didn't know whether it was love, mutual protection, or both, but he envied them their bond.

  When Karin was ready, she took a moment to slip back into the girl-on-a-lark persona she'd used on the guard. Then she looked toward the hill.

  "Let's go," she said impatiently.

  Putting his big hand around Karin's arm, Manfred led her toward the set. When they were gone, Rolf turned and jogged back toward the main road to wait for them.

  FOUR

  Thursday, 3:04 A.M., Washington, D.C.

  As he looked at the short stack of comic books on his bed, General Mike Rodgers wondered what the hell had happened to innocence.

  He knew the answer, of course. Like all things, it dies, he thought bitterly.

  The forty-five-year-old deputy director of Op-Center had awakened at 2:00 and had been unable to get back to sleep. Since the death of Lieutenant Colonel W. Charles Squires on a mission with his Striker commandos, Rodgers had spent night after night replaying the Russian incursion in his mind. The Air Force was delighted with the maiden performance of their stealth "Mosquito" helicopter, and the pilots had been credited with doing everything possible to extract Squires from the burning train. Yet key phrases in the Striker debriefings kept coming back to him.

  "... we shouldn't have let the train get onto the bridge ..."

  "... it was a matter of just two or three seconds ..."

  "... the Lieutenant Colonel was only concerned with getting the prisoner off the engine...."

  Rodgers had done two tours of Vietnam, led a mechanized brigade in the Persian Gulf, and held a Ph.D. in world history. He understood only too well that "the essence of war is violence," as Lord Macaulay put it, and that people died in combat--sometimes by the thousands. But that didn't make the loss of each individual soldier any easier to endure. Especially when the soldier left behind a wife and young son. They were only beginning to enjoy the compassion, the humor, and--Rodgers smiled as he thought back on the too-short life--the unique savoir faire that was Charlie Squires.

  Rather than lie in bed and mourn, Rodgers had driven from his modest ranch-style home to the local 7-Eleven. He would be going to see gangly Billy Squires in the morning and wanted to bring him something. Melissa Squires wasn't big on candy or video games for her son, so comic books seemed like a good bet. The kid liked superheroes.

  Rodgers's light-brown eyes stared without seeing as he thought once more about his own superhero. Charlie had been a man who cherished life, yet he hadn't hesitated to give it up to save a wounded enemy. What he'd done enobled them all--not just the close-knit members of Striker and the seventy-eight employees of Op-Center, but each and every citizen of the nation Charlie loved. His sacrifice was a testament to the compassion that was a hallmark of that nation.

  Rodgers's eyes fogged with tears, and he distracted himself by thumbing through the comic books again.

  He had been shocked that comic books were twenty times more expensive than when he was reading them--$2.50 instead of twelve cents. He'd gone out with just a couple of bucks in his pocket and had to charge the damn things. But what bothered him more was that he couldn't tell the comic-book good guys from the bad guys. Superman had long hair and a mean temper, Batman was a borderline psychotic, Robin was no longer clean-cut Dick Grayson but some brat, and a cigarette-smoking sociopath named Wolverine got his jollies ripping people apart with his claws.

  If Melissa doesn't approve of SweetTarts, these sure aren't going to go down real easy.

  Rodgers dropped the stack of comic books on the floor, beside his slippers. He wouldn't give these to a kid.

  Maybe I should wait and buy him a Hardy Boys book, he thought, though he wasn't entirely sure he wanted to see what had become of Frank and Joe. The
brothers probably had lip rings, choppers, and attitude. Like Rodgers, their father Fenton was probably prematurely gray and dating a succession of marriage-minded women.

  Hell, Rodgers decided. I'll just stop at a toy store and pick up an action figure. That, and maybe a chess set or some kind of educational videotape. Something for the hands and something for the mind.

  Rodgers absently rubbed his high-ridged nose, then reached for the remote. He sat up on his pillows, punched on the TV, and surfed through vividly colored vacuous new movies and washed-out vacuous old sitcoms. He finally settled on an old-movie channel that was showing something with Lon Chaney, Jr., as the Wolfman. Chaney was pleading with a young man in a lab coat to cure him, to relieve his suffering.

  "I know how you feel," Rodgers muttered.

  Chaney was lucky, though. His pain was usually ended by a silver bullet. In Rodgers's case, as with most survivors of war, crime, or genocide, the suffering diminished but never died. It was especially painful now, in the small hours of the night, when the only distractions were the drone of the TV and the intrusion of headlights from passing cars. As Sir Fulke Greville once noted in an elegy, "Silence augmenteth grief."

  Rodgers shut off the TV and switched off the light. He bunched his pillows under him and lay on his belly.

  He knew he couldn't change the way he felt. But he also knew he couldn't afford to surrender to sorrow. There was a widow and her son to think about, plus the sad task of finding a new commander for Striker, and he had to run Op-Center for the rest of the week that Paul Hood would be in Europe. And today was going to be a low point on the job, what Op-Center's attorney Lowell Coffey II accurately described as "the welcoming of the Fox to the warren."

  In the night, in that silence, it always seemed like too much to deal with. But then Rodgers thought about the people who didn't live long enough to become oppressed by life's burdens, and those burdens seemed less crushing.

  Thinking that he could understand why a middle-aged Batman or anyone else might go a little nuts at times, Rodgers finally floated into a dreamless sleep....

  FIVE

  Thursday, 10:04 A.M., Garbsen, Germany

  Jody's mouth twisted as she entered the trailer and took a look at the prop list.

  "Great," she said under her breath. "Just great."

  The good-natured exasperation which had marked her conversation with Mr. Buba was tinged with genuine concern now. The item she needed was hanging in the tiny bathroom of the prop trailer. Getting to it around the clutter of tables and trunks would require delicate maneuvering. The way her luck was running today, Lankford would print the scene he was shooting after one take and move on to the next before she returned.

  Placing the heavy clipboard on a table, Jody started out. Though it would have been faster to crawl under the tables, she was sure that if she did someone would see her. At graduation, when Professor Ruiz had informed her that she'd gotten this internship, he'd said that Hollywood might try to discourage her ideas, her creativity, and her enthusiasm. But he'd promised that they would heal and return. He'd warned her, however, never to sacrifice her dignity. Once surrendered, that could not be reacquired. So she walked rather than crawled, deftly edging, leaning, and twisting her way through the maze.

  According to the prop list, she needed to get a reversible winter uniform which actually had been worn by a sailor on the Tirpitz. It was hanging in the bathroom because the closet was full of vintage firearms. The local authorities had ordered the guns locked up, and the closet was the only cubicle with a key.

  Jody sidled the last few feet to the lavatory. There was a heavy trunk and a heavier table beside it, and she could only open the door partway. She managed to squeeze in, though the door shut behind her and she gagged. The camphor smell was overwhelming, worse than it had ever been at her grandmother's apartment in Brooklyn. Breathing through her mouth, she began flipping through the forty-odd garment bags, looking at the tags on each. She wished she could open the window, but a tic-tac-toe design of metal bars had been welded across it to deter thieves. Reaching the latch and lifting the window would be a pain.

  She swore silently. Could anything else possibly go wrong? she asked herself. The tags were written in German.

  There was a translation sheet on the clipboard and, with another quiet oath and a mounting sense of urgency, she cracked the door and squeezed back out. As she renegotiated the maze, Jody was suddenly aware of voices outside the trailer. They were coming closer.

  Never mind the enthusiasm and creativity, Professor Ruiz, she thought. Jody could see her career ending in about twenty seconds.

  The temptation to crawl was great, but Jody resisted. When she was near enough to the clipboard, she leaned over, hooked an index finger through the hole at the top, and pulled it toward her. Desperate, she began to hum, pretending that she was on the dance floor and moving like she hadn't moved since the freshman orientation dance. And soon she was back inside the lavatory, the door shut, the clipboard on the sink as she frantically compared the clothes tags to the computer printout attached to the scene list.

  SIX

  Thursday, 10:07 A.M., Garbsen, Germany

  Mr. Buba turned as he heard the voices from behind the trailer.

  "...I'm one of those people who never has any luck," a woman was saying. Her voice was raspy and she was speaking quickly. "If I go to a store, it's right after a movie star has been there. If I'm at a restaurant, it's the day before a celebrity dines there. In airports, I miss them by minutes."

  Mr. Buba shook his head. My, how this woman did go on. Poor Werner.

  "So here I am," she continued as they came around the corner. "I accidentally find myself on a movie set, just yards away from a star, and you won't even let me see one."

  Mr. Buba watched as they approached. The woman was standing directly in front of Werner, whose hat was pulled low, his big shoulders hunched forward. She was waving her arms, practically dancing with frustration. Mr. Buba wanted to tell her that seeing a movie star was no big deal. That they were just like other people, if other people were pampered and obnoxious.

  Still, he felt sorry for the young woman. Werner was a stickler for rules, but maybe they could bend them so the poor lady could see a movie star.

  "Werner," said his colleague, "since this woman is already our guest, why don't we--"

  Mr. Buba didn't get to finish his sentence. Stepping from behind the woman, Manfred swung Werner's billy club at the guard. The black wood crashed lengthwise against Mr. Buba's mouth, and the guard gagged on blood and teeth as he fell back against the prop trailer. Manfred hit him again, on the right temple, spinning Mr. Buba's head to the left. The guard stopped gagging. He slid to the ground and sat there, leaning against the trailer, blood pooling behind his neck and shoulders.

  Manfred opened the door of the cab, threw Werner's bloody club in ahead of him, then climbed in. As he did, a man from the film crew shouted, "Jody!"

  Karin faced away from the set. She knelt, pulled off her backpack, and slipped out her Uzi.

  The short man shook his head and began walking toward the trailer.

  "Jody, what the hell are you doing there, our soon-to-be ex-intern?"

  Karin stood and turned.

  The assistant director stopped. He was nearly fifty yards away.

  "Hey!" he said. He squinted toward the trailer. "Who are you?" He raised an arm and pointed. "And is that one of our prop guns? You can't--"

  A confident pup-pup-pup from the Uzi dropped Hollis Arlenna on his back, arms splayed, eyes staring.

  The moment he hit the ground, people began screaming and running. At the prompting of a young actress, a young actor tried to make his way to the fallen assistant director. As he crawled toward Arlenna, toward Karin, a second burst from the Uzi slammed into the top of the actor's head. He crumpled in on himself. The young actress shrieked and continued shrieking as she watched from behind a camera.

  The trailer's powerful engine growled to life. Man
fred revved it, drowning out the cries from the set.

  "Let's go," he yelled to Karin as he shut the door of the cab.

  The young woman walked backward, behind her Uzi, toward the open door of the trailer itself. Expressionless, she jumped in, pulled up the collapsible stairs, and closed the door.

  As Manfred roared off through the woods, Mr. Buba's dead body flopped lifelessly to the ground.

  SEVEN

  Thursday, 10 :12 A.M., Hamburg, Germany

  Jean-Michel thought it fitting that his meeting with the leader, the self-proclaimed New Fuhrer, was taking place in the St. Pauli district of Hamburg.

  In 1682, a church dedicated to St. Paul was erected here, on the hilly banks of the Elbe. In 1814, the French attacked and looted the quiet village and nothing was the same thereafter. Hostels, dance halls, and brothels were built to cater to the steamship sailors who came through, and by the middle of the century the St. Pauli region was known as a district of sin.

  Today, at night, St. Pauli was still that. Gaudy neon signs and provocative marquees announced everything from jazz to bowling, live sex shows to tattooists, waxworks to gambling. Innocent-sounding questions like "Do you have the time?" or "Have you got a match?" brought visitors together with prostitutes, while drugs were offered by name in low, careful voices.