Hammer of Angels: A Novel of Shadowstorm (14 page)

Next evening, Monday, February 16, 1981, 8:04
P.M.
CET

Calais, Province of France, GG

When I wake up, I'm still wrapped in blankets, but the boat has turned into a bed and the English Channel has turned into a cozy little room. Someone putters around in the dim light. For a moment I think it's Cleo until I hear the person say something in German. Mom's German is good, but she's got a strong American accent. What I hear now is perfect German, although I'm not used to hearing it spoken so softly.

“Leave Scarlet alone, Moortje. She's sick. Off with you, now.”

I roll onto my side and yelp as sharp, searing pain gushes through my abdomen. The person turns toward me and comes over to my bed. It's a middle-aged woman with thick black hair and big dark eyes with green flecks in them. She studies my face.

“Not on side, please. You stay on back,” she says in German-accented English.

I return to my back.
“Jah, danke.”

“Ah, sprechen sie Deutsch?”

“Jah.”
I say, and continue, in German, “but not as nicely as you.” This earns me a big grin from her. She has a beautiful smile, and her face is very pretty. The woman holds her palm up to my head to see if I'm feverish.

“You still need a lot of rest,” she says.

“Garbo?”

She takes a moment to react. I don't think she gets called that very often. “Yes, that's me. But you're in my house, which means we're friends, so call me Marie.”

“Okay. Marie what?”

“My husband's last name is Schultze-Boysen, but professionally I'm still known as Marie Van Daan.”

I've never regained consciousness on the road before, and I need to get oriented as quickly as possible. “Where's my partner?”

“Darwin is asleep in the next room. I finally talked him into resting after the doctor left and you were settled in.”

“I'm in Calais?” I untangle my right arm from the blankets to check the time, but my father's watch isn't on my wrist.

“Yes, you've been here for a day and a half. It's just past eight in the evening. Here,” she says as she reaches over to a side table and gives me my watch. I strap it onto my wrist and study the room to find the exits, not that I'd be able to do anything but crawl to them right now. There's no one else in the room.

“What floor of your house am I on?”

“We're on the third floor.”

My head slowly unfogs. “Where's Victor?”

“Victor didn't stay. He helped carry you up here and then went back to get rid of the boat. He said he had to meet some people up north.”

That's too bad. Even though Vicberg isn't enhanced like me, I feel safer when he's around. I ask, “Who's Moortje?”

“Oh, he's my kitty. His full name is Moortje Drei because he's my third black cat. The name is Dutch.” I am then treated to a detailed description of the previous two Moortjes. Apparently, Marie had her first one when she was a girl growing up in Amsterdam before her family moved to Brussels. That's where she had black cat number two, but he didn't last long because he used to fight dogs. Marie and her husband have lived here in Calais since they got married twenty-five years ago. She's had other cats, but none of them were black. Blackie number three has been with Marie for about five years now.

I receive all this information as a nonstop run-on story. Marie is a chatty lady.

She says, “Little Moortje has been curled up next to your feet since this morning. He started fussing for his supper, and I didn't want him to wake you, but I was too late.”

Supper.
I haven't eaten in two days. Or is it three? “Marie, can I get something to eat?”

“You certainly can. How about a bowl of dumpling soup?”

This lady is adorable!
“Yes, ma'am,” I say.

While I wait for Marie Van Daan to come back, I examine my surroundings. I'm in a combination guest room and home office. I'm laid out on what is either a day bed or a big sofa with a bunch of orange pillows all over it. Two walls are covered by floor-to-ceiling bookcases. One case is crammed with books about history and mythology. The other one is stuffed with paperbacks and shelf boxes of magazines. Marie is a reader with a capital R.

The wall opposite my bed has a small desk with a lamp, a telephone, and a little computer on it. A wooden leaf, extended from the desk's side, holds a stack of notebooks. A swivel office chair sits in front of the desk, and the fuzzy toy duck on the rug must belong to the cat. It's all very tidy.

I, on the other hand, am a wreck. My right arm and leg have bandages stuck over my grenade cuts, my torso is wrapped in tape to press two large gauze pads onto my bullet wounds, and my hair is hidden under a wrap that holds a dressing in place on top of my head. I didn't know I'd been wounded in the head. Must have been that last grenade in the back of the truck. All this is topped off with a liberal sprinkling of scrapes, bruises, and pulled muscles.

Put me in, Coach, I feel fuckin' great.

I'm also wearing someone else's pajamas—Marie's, I assume. They're striped, white and orange, like a Creamsicle. Next to my bed is a bulging green canvas backpack filled with a new pair of blue jeans, a few days' worth of new underwear and shirts, my SoftArmor vest, and my weapons. I fish out Li'l Bertha and slide her under my pillow.

Marie comes back with a steaming bowl of soup. She's all set to feed it to me, but I don't need to revert that far into my childhood. I set the bowl on my lap. I'm so hungry I could shotgun this whole serving in three seconds, but the stabbing pains in my body and my mother's etiquette training help me avoid making a complete ass of myself.

Between mouthfuls I ask, “Did the doctor say how long I'll be laid up?”

Marie rolls her desk chair over next to my bed and sits down. “He said a normal person would need three months but someone like you may need only a couple of weeks. I'm not sure what he meant, but given the nature of our situation, I think perhaps my ignorance is for the best.”

You don't have to be a doctor to spot a Level, especially one that's all loaded up like I am. My synthetic right hand and artificial joints look natural enough, but the WeaponSynch pad in my left palm and the array of data/IV ports in my hip are dead giveaways I'm less than 100 percent natural. If this doctor has worked on other Levels, he'll have already seen how quickly we can get back on our feet.

The cat saunters back in. He's all black except for his two front feet, which are gray. He stops to sit and lick one of his paws while he decides which one of us is most truly deserving of his regal affections. Marie leans down and makes little kissing sounds at him until the cat hops up on her lap. She sits back in her chair and strokes Moortje's head. “It's kind of a miracle you're here right now. You lost so much blood.”

I say, “Sorry if I ruined a set of sheets or anything, I know I was a mess.”

“Pshh, don't worry.” Marie waves her hand. “That washes out easily enough.”

“Who fixed me up?”

“A doctor friend of my sister, Betti,” Marie says. “She used to be a nurse and still has a lot of friends from those days. Most of them are … sympathetic to the work Betti and I do, and they're willing to help people without asking a lot of questions.”

“Yeah? Questions like ‘How the hell did this short American chick get shot so many times in one day?'”

My hostess grins. “Yes, questions like that.”

“So your sister is a nurse?”

“She was, but when my father retired, Betti took over running my family's company. It made sense. She's the oldest, and my sister has always been very smart in things like science and math. I've always been the more artistic sister.”

“Ugh,” I grunt. “Math.”

Marie's expression sparkles as she leans forward with a conspiratorial smile. “Scarlet, my young friend, I never liked math either.” She passes her palm across my head again. “You're still too warm. You'd better finish your soup and then sleep for a while.”

“Okay.” I've never been much of a cat person, but I add, “And Moortje can come back up here if he wants.”

CORE PER-GARBO-001

Garbo is a Calais-based journalist with access to a steady flow of inside cultural and political information. Her sphere of operation falls within the Greater German provinces of France and Belgium. Garbo's covert career began with a Belgian cell of the Circle of Zion. Her concisely insightful reports eventually caught the attention of the CIA, who recruited her as a stringer.

Garbo's childhood was typical of the Jewish experience in Europe before and during the war. Driven from Germany by Hitler's anti-Jewish laws in 1933, her family emigrated from Frankfurt to Amsterdam. Germany invaded Holland in 1940 and began to persecute the Netherlands' Jews. Many Jewish families went into hiding.

Otto, Garbo's father, was setting up a hiding place in his office building when Hitler was assassinated in early 1942. The Nazi Party's tumultuous collapse and Berlin's chaotic power struggles allowed the Dutch Underground to operate openly for several months. Otto took this opportunity to purchase and implement new identities for himself, his wife, Edith, and his two daughters. It was twelve-year-old Garbo who suggested calling themselves Van Daan because it “sounded like a good Christian Dutch name.” Otto had his company, Opekta, transfer him and his family to Belgium to open a new branch in Brussels.

They escaped the postwar roundups of Europe's Jews into Germany's forced labor program and quietly assimilated themselves into German society. The mother and father eventually retired and immigrated to Massachusetts, where Otto has family. Garbo's older sister Betti inherited control of the family business and is now the president of Opekta, SA.

Three days later, Thursday, February 19, 1981, 5:43
P.M.
CET

Calais, Province of France, GG

Tiptoe, tiptoe. Use bathroom. Don't flush. Tiptoe, tiptoe. Back to bed.

Marie and her husband are downstairs, entertaining company. I hear them as they chat and clink silverware around a melodic Miles Davis song that drifts up the stairs. These guests don't know the Schultze-Boysens have two spies hidden up on their silent third floor, and we want to keep it that way.

We're as quiet as church mice, which is easy for us except I need to go to the bathroom so much from all the fluids I've been glugging. We don't want Marie's guests to hear water running through the pipes downstairs, so my partner and I leave our business in the toilet bowl until we can flush it later. I've never thought of myself as a prude, but this strikes me as especially gross.

This is our fourth day in Garbo's house, and each day the place seems to get a little smaller. The Schultze-Boysens are both very nice and their doctor friend is gentle and clearly good at what he does, but I finished memorizing the ceiling two days ago and I'm ready to go outside.

At least I've found some things to read. Not all of Marie's books are in German. Most of her English-language volumes are nineteenth-century novels by female authors, so I've finally gotten around to reading Jane Austen. Marie said she learned English to read
Pride and Prejudice
as it was originally written, not as it was translated into German. I found Austen's writing absolutely hilarious in some places, although the story remained obstinately free of gunfire and explosions.

The music downstairs changes to James Brown. I listen to Clyde Stubblefield pound through “Funky Drummer.” It reminds me of Dad. He used to play this song on the stereo and dance around the living room. If he wasn't too drunk, Cleo would join him while I watched from the stairs in my jammies. I'll never forget the glow I saw on my parents' faces when they danced together.

Patrick sneaks past my door on his way from the bathroom back to the guest room. I catch his eye and wave my hand toward myself a couple of times.

“C'mere,” I comm.

Patrick pads into my room and gently closes the door. He sits at the foot of my bed.

“How do you feel?” he comms.

“Better,” I comm, “but my sutures feel like they'll pop out unless I move slowly.”

“Well, take it easy, then.” He glances toward the stairs. “We can't get a doctor up here until these people go home.” He gazes at my face for a moment before he comms, “You look much better.”

When he tells me this, I do the last thing either of us would expect. I blush. Heat rises in my cheeks, and I stare down at my hands to hide the dopey grin on my face. We haven't had much time to talk this week. I've been really out of it until today, and one of the Schultze-Boysens is usually up here to make sure we're okay.

Neither of us has mentioned the kiss I gave him in London, but I've sure thought about it. Our mission began four weeks ago, but it feels like forty. All this crazy-ass time with Patrick has diminished my heartache about Trick from a screeching, clawing eagle to a brooding, sullen crow that leaves me alone as long I don't poke at it.

I hold my hand out to my partner and look at him. He clasps his hand into mine. I wait for him to comm, but he stays quiet. I want to say something romantic and mysterious, but I can't think of anything.

Oh, fuck it, he's cleaned bloody bits of clothing out of a bullet hole in my side, he's seen me basically naked, he already knows what a bitch I am in the morning before I have my coffee. Plus, we've had to use the same toilet without flushing. How much mystery is there going to be, anyway?

Finally, I whisper, “So, I liked that kiss.”

He smiles and squeezes my hand a little. “Me, too.”

“I've thought about it when I wasn't puking or bleeding.”

“Same here, except for me it was when I wasn't worrying.” He puts his other hand on top of mine. “Actually, I've done nothing but worry, so I guess I did both.”

My mouth presses into a wide smile, and I can feel the corners of my eyes crinkle as I try not to laugh out loud. I coax Patrick up the bed until he's in range, then lean forward and plant one on his mouth. He gently lays his hand on the side of my face and kisses me back.

I can't pull him into bed with me because of my sutures. Besides, it's not like I feel
that
good. My stomach is upset, and my abdomen still hurts. It's probably better for me to take this slow, anyway.

As I've gotten less frightened of losing my new partner, I've been able to get in touch with how much I like him. He's really similar to Trick, of course, but he's not a duplicate. I know they had the same inception day, but he seems more grown up, more like a man. Sort of like Trick's older brother.

Okay, enough about Trick.

All this smooching makes me lose my breath. I lean back on my pillows and admire Patrick for a moment. Past his head, the stars shine through a window overlooking the roof of a small second-floor porch.

I comm, “Let's go out on the roof.”

“Are you nuts? It's February.”

I ease out of bed. “Don't worry. I'll bring a blanket—”

“Well …”

“—for
you
, wussy-pants.”

Patrick's eyes and mouth open into three perfectly round circles. He's about to slap my leg when he remembers I'm hurt. His hand wiggles back and forth, unable to find a safe place to spank, so he finally puts it back into his lap and makes a face at me.

I drag my blanket across to the window. Patrick follows me, quietly slides the window open, and crawls out first. I hand the blanket out to him and gingerly climb out onto the roof. We sit next to each other, and Patrick wraps my blanket around the two of us like a fluffy igloo. Sharp air hits my face, and I blink back a couple of tears.

It's beautiful. The sky is clear and moonless, so the stars are like a frozen fireworks display. We gawk at the Milky Way for a while, then I snuggle up against Patrick and check out the street in front of Garbo's house. The neighborhood is full of older houses like Marie's, but they're spread out. The nearest neighbor is sixty or seventy yards away.

There are four cars parked out front. Two of them belong to the Schultze-Boysens, one must belong to their guests, and one belongs to … who? I switch to infrared. A jolt of pain scorches across my midsection as I involuntarily twitch in surprise.

In the fourth car is a man watching the house.

CORE MIS-ANGEL-3108