Ice Reich (30 page)

"Anything is possible," she said, frowning. "What if he doesn't appear?"

"Then we'll have to fly without him."

Her eyes scanned the people passing to and fro, looking for some glimpse of Kohl. "I wouldn't like to leave my father in this city. Not with the enemy approaching. Not with my husband."

"Does Jürgen know about Otto's farm?"

"I don't know. We've never visited. I think we should go to the plane."

Hart considered. "I trust your instincts..."

The thought was cut short by a rising, mournful wail. The people around them stopped in mid-step and squinted at the sky, then broke into a hurried trot. Another air raid.

"Damn," Hart said. "Bombing weather."

They could see nothing yet. The American bombers flew so high.

"We'd better go to a shelter, Owen. It doesn't make sense to risk the raid. Maybe my father will find us down in the U-Bahn."

Hart shook his head with amazement. "Now I'll be able to say I was bombed by both sides."

A Friedrichstrasse subway station was nearby. They joined a stream of people clattering down the steps and complaining in a babel of languages swept up from across the Nazi empire. The city was full of slave laborers, mistresses, collaborators, and opportunists: Slavs in padded jackets, blond Danes, smartly dressed French women, dark and thin Italians who looked cold and miserable in their doomed embrace with Germany. Despite the variety everyone looked gray and tired. The station was gloomily lit and crowded, smelling of sweat and fear. The sirens went on and on.

Hart pulled Greta into a corner of the waiting platform and they sat on the concrete, hugging each other. "How long do these last?"

She shrugged. "An hour. Sometimes more. You get past caring. Time loses its meaning."

"I wish your father would come."

He held her in silence for a while, stroking her hair. Her eyes shut and she leaned into him. They began to hear the distant bang of antiaircraft guns and then the heavy tread of bombs. The lights in the tunnel began blinking. A few people moaned and a baby began to cry. Its mother's anxious lullaby echoed in the enclosure. The baby cried harder.

The bombs came closer, a giant walking, and the shelter quaked. Dust filtered down from the ceiling. A light popped, casting the enclosure into half gloom.

She opened her eyes and looked at him. They were shining. "In nearly six years I've never been so happy," she whispered. A bomb hit close and a few women screamed. Greta reached up to touch his face and then kissed him again, long and deep this time. It was a kiss with hunger in it. He kissed her back with urgency and wished irritably that they were already alone.

Then she curled into him, nesting. "I've been lonely, Owen. Empty. Somehow my husband never became my friend."

He hugged her closer. "Was he cruel?"

She sighed. "No. He struck me once at the beginning, when he was frustrated, and then stopped in embarrassment. Later he treated me like a piece of china. We could never achieve the right tone with each other and that was partly my fault, I think: in my sorrow after Antarctica I let him be the solution to my future without caring what kind of future it was. He knew he'd won me, or captured as much of me as he ever could. And decided, apparently, that that was enough."

"For God's sake, why did he marry you?"

"I don't know." She closed her eyes. "He desired me. He hoped I could give him what he needed, even though neither of us ever understood what that was. And he simply can't stand to lose. There's something wrong with him, some fundamental insecurity. Once I agreed to marry him he seemed strangely satiated: as if marriage for him was not the beginning but the end. The relationship itself was inconsequential."

"Jesus."

They were silent for a while. "Did you ask for a divorce?"

"I asked if he wanted one. He told me fate had brought us together and that the future would reveal our purpose for Germany. It's insane! Always for Germany!"

"So what did you do all day?"

"I continued marine research but it was increasingly difficult. Biology was engulfed by the war and my colleagues made me uncomfortable: the Reich wants its women at home. So I made a domestic effort as well: socialized with the other empty wives, read, thought of you. I waited for life to play itself out."

Hart looked pained. "I'm sorry I didn't get back. The storm came, we sought shelter in the cave, and then part of it collapsed. Something triggered an earthquake. Fritz died, and by the time I got out the island was empty. The
Schwabenland
was gone and we couldn't find it. Even the
Bergen
was gone."

"Jürgen blew it up."

"What? Why?"

"To pretend Germans got to the island first. To rewrite history." She thought for a moment. "We could hear the roar of the explosion even outside the crater. Could it have been powerful enough to have caused your cave-in?"

He looked surprised. "I'd never guessed that. Maybe that explains it." He shook his head. "Fritz told me to come back to you, you know. He told me not to give up."

She swallowed. "It's so strange how our lives have intersected. Sometimes I wonder why God brought the three of us together. So much pain, so much lost time... And I'm not surprised you didn't find the
Schwabenland
. Did you know that we went east before we went north?"

"Still exploring, despite that hull patch?"

"Because of it. Captain Heiden said he wanted a following sea while he improved his repair. After a day we turned north. The leak was so well under control by then that we didn't stop until we got back to Germany."

"Do you think Jürgen... ?"

"Went that way to avoid you? I don't know. Subconsciously, perhaps. By that time I think we were all acting more than thinking, and reacting more than acting."

"God, what a mess." He was quiet for a while, remembering events in his mind. "Will you miss him?"

She leaned back against the tile wall of the station platform. "I'll think about him. I can't help that. And while it will be a relief to escape his fervor, I can't help but respect his commitment. So few people have that."

"Look at the horror outside. He's committed to the wrong things."

She closed her eyes. "I know that. But he was also committed to me."

"I'm sorry."

"Don't be sorry for what none of us could avoid."

He kissed her then, aching to be alone with her, imagining her enveloping him. The bombs marched this way and that, rattling their shelter.

Then he became dimly aware that there was a commotion in the crowd, that people were complaining. He straightened to glance around. A group of men were trying to walk across the densely packed platform, stepping or stumbling on huddled bodies to cries of pain and anger. "Sit down, sit down!" some of the shelter dwellers yelled.

One of the trench-coated figures flashed some identification and the complainers grew quiet. The intruders' eyes were sweeping the crowd like radar. Then one pointed at the couple. The finger was accusatory.

"Police," Hart said quietly, standing up. "Gestapo, maybe." He glanced around the station. "The bombing could actually give us cover to get away if we can reach the surface. Do you want to risk it?"

"Of course. I'm not going to be trapped down here."

He grabbed her hand and they started for the southern U-Bahn entrance, away from the one used by the approaching police. It was like wading in deep water. Someone grabbed Greta's leg by the ankle and she turned and stomped on the man's hand, setting off a howl of pain. Then they lurched ahead again.

Hart looked back over his shoulder. "I think we can beat them."

They were nearing the exit when there was a clatter on the tile stairway and a flurry of black boots came into view, descending the south entrance like pumping pistons. An SS detachment was cutting them off. There was a civilian in their midst.

"Damn," Hart said. "It's your father."

Kohl looked pale. As the soldiers reached the platform he was pushed toward the couple, his face bruised and his suit jacket torn. An SS man pointed and Otto nodded miserably. "I'm sorry, Greta."

Hart swung around. The police were still coming from the other direction, the crowd parting from the authorities like a biblical sea. Greta pulled at Owen. "The tunnel! The trains are dead with the electricity cut. If we can reach the tracks we can run to the next station."

The Germans were fanning out to block them. Pistols were being drawn and someone began screaming. The squeeze of the crowd was like being mired in quicksand.

Then Otto whirled, turning in a circle like a dervish with one hand thrown out. Paper spouted from his fingertips and the crowd erupted into frenzy.

It was money! Some of the Reichsmarks that Kohl had collected! "Run!" the German shouted. The SS leader savagely struck Greta's father across the face and he went down in the tumult. "Run!"

The couple bulldozed toward the edge of the platform. The air was filled with fluttering bills, confused oaths, and people springing to catch the notes. The police were shoved this way and that like boats in a storm, their leader howling in frustration.

The platform ended at a brink of darkness that hid even the tracks.

"Always with you it is some cave," Greta said wryly.

"Only because I enjoyed the last one."

"Halt!" There was a bang and something hot and angry buzzed near their heads, whining off tile on the far side of the tunnel. They crouched.

"Do you have a gun?"

"Yes." He glanced backward. "In France."

She gripped his hand and launched them into the blackness. When they sprawled on the cinders something squealed and Greta lurched up and kicked out. A tunnel rat scuttled away. A German mark fluttered down past them.

There was another shot and again a bullet bounced off the tunnel.

"Greta, come on!"

"Wait." She stooped, picked up a handful of rock cinders, cocked her arm, and threw. The aim was imperfect but the effect was like hitting a wasp's nest. Several people yelped and a fight broke out. The platform crowd became even more agitated with shoving people. The police were stuck in greed and anger as if gripped in tar.

"You throw like a girl," Hart judged. "Perfectly."

They began trotting past the stunned faces of Berliners peering down at them, uncertain what to make of the excitement. The rumble of bombs overhead added to the confusion; none of the shouts could be clearly heard above the background thunder. Then they were in the tunnel and it was black. She kicked out again.

"Are you all right?"

"Except for the damned rats. They've gotten fat and bold with the war. Don't stop." She pulled at his hand, her palm slick.

The air was dusty. In the lulls between explosions they heard hurrying boot steps and the confused shouts of their pursuers. Jutting his arm out blindly like a football player to avoid a collision with an unexpected wall, Hart broke into a trot, Greta following.

Suddenly there was a series of pistol shots and the pair fell flat for a moment. A riot of bullets pinged around them.

"Stop it, you fool!" someone yelled, the sound echoing. "You'll hit the police coming from the other end!"

"Are you hit?" Hart asked anxiously.

"No, but I'm scared."

"Me too."

They got up again and staggered on. The pilot looked for an emergency exit but could see nothing. Slowly he noticed light glowing from the next station ahead and saw blocking figures on the track, silhouetted against the illumination. "Damn." The pair of fugitives were still hidden by the dark but appeared to be trapped. Hart let go of Greta's hand for a moment to grope in the gloom. "We've got to find another way out," he said desperately, feeling along the ribs of the wall. "A door, a ladder."

As if in response there was a roar and the tunnel air cuffed them, knocking them down. Hart managed to roll on top of Greta as a blast of heat pulsed by, followed by a spray of rocks and dirt. Smoke choked the air and yet the blackness had given way to a brighter light. The pilot blinked. An American bomb had hit a weak point and punched into the tunnel where it joined the next station, replacing the waiting police with an avalanche slope of new rubble. The escarpment led upward toward a smoky sky.

"Come on!" Greta grunted, shoving Owen off herself and getting to her knees. "We can get out that way!" They both were shrouded in dust, her fine coat torn, her strand of pearls spilled like tears along the tracks. A trickle of blood ran down his forehead.

"God, I love you," he breathed.

"I love you too."

They began clambering up the collapsed tunnel ceiling toward the light, her hand in his. The noise of the air raid was much louder with the ceiling gone, an arrhythmic pounding that seemed to reverberate in their bones. As they emerged he saw the sky far above was freckled with black puffs of flak. There was an unnerving rattle as spent bits of metal from antiaircraft fire rained down on the city like hail.

They clambered out, the crater separating them from the shelter they'd nearly been trapped in. They just needed to run the other way. An apartment building adjacent to the gaping bomb crater had caught fire, its smoke serving as a screen.

"My ankle," Greta gasped. She was limping. Hart draped one arm across her shoulder and they began staggering, passing by two bodies sprawled on the cobblestones. He soon decided she was too slow and scooped her up in his arms to begin a stumbling run. He could see little and was terrified that all he was going to accomplish by coming to Berlin was getting Greta killed. Was the frequency of explosions lessening? He emerged from the smoke...

And slowed, then came to a stop. "Hell." Striding from the entrance of the next station was Jürgen Drexler, holding a pistol. Greta saw him and then clutched Owen's neck and buried her face in his chest.

Hart turned to go back the other way but SS men were emerging from the crater, smoke blowing through their blond hair. They had guns too.

It was over.

Drexler stopped a dozen feet away and lowered his automatic a moment, staring at Hart in amazement. "You're
alive
. . ." He blinked twice, as if not believing his senses. "But how?" A moment passed, then: "Ah, now I'm beginning to understand at least part of this."