Rhineland Inheritance (3 page)

The jeep did a four-wheel skid around an icy corner, almost wrapped itself around a tree, caught hold of the road at the last possible moment, and barreled on. Burnes shouted, “It's amazing you ever survived to fight the Germans.”

Pierre slowed marginally. “These new soldiers are just kids. Full of anger and spite. Some of them feel like cowards because they weren't old enough to prove themselves. Most claim to have been in the underground. Some probably were. All of them are dangerous. To themselves and the Germans.”

Staff Headquarters, and Colonel Beecham's office, was located in one of the few intact houses on the southwestern side of Badenburg. After turning in his duty rosters, Pierre took the time to show Burnes around. The officers' mess was located in what had probably once been a grand ballroom, although the chandelier had long since been dislodged by a bomb. A few links from the heavy chain still dangled from the ceiling. Directly underneath, the shattered flooring had been hastily relaid with stone. It was hard to find wood these days, as the locals were stealing anything they could find to warm their homes.

Jake was still looking at the ornamental frieze encircling the ceiling when they rounded the corner, which was why he walked directly into one of the most beautiful women he had seen in two long years. She backed up a step, set her cap in place, said, “You're straightforward, soldier. I'll have to give you that.”

Jake stammered up an, “I'm sorry, ma'am. I didn't—”

“Apologies accepted. I wasn't looking either.” She was lithe and tall, with auburn hair piled and pinned beneath the cap. Her eyes were the color of smoke from a winter's fire. “Are you supposed to be shepherding this poor lost lamb around, Pierre?”

“Captain Burnes is quite capable of looking after himself,” Pierre replied. “How are you, Sally?”

“Busy. You'll have to excuse me.” She stepped between them. “Nice to have met you, Captain, I suppose.”

The two men watched Sally as she walked down the corridor and out of sight. Jake realized he had been holding his breath. He straightened and asked, “Who was that
that?
”

“Sally Anders.” Pierre's eyes had not shifted from the point where Sally had disappeared from view. “Also known as the Ice Queen. Late of Ottowa. Secretary to the general staff.”

“Married?”

“Her fiance was lost at sea. North Atlantic convoy duty.” Pierre shook his head. “My friend, if I'd had someone like that waiting for me at home, I would have learned to walk on water.”

The three platoons were drawn up under a gray sky that threatened to blanket them with yet more snow. Pierre's orders were given from the hood of the jeep. Jake Burnes understood not a word. Yet his lack of French could not keep him from observing the casual hold which Pierre maintained over the power of command. The troops listened carefully to his clipped sentences. He lightened them with a joke that brought smiles to most faces. He gathered them together and made them feel a part of something larger. Jake did not need to know the words to understand what was happening. He was watching a leader.

Pierre jumped from the jeep, said in English, “There's been a lot of movement down the southern stretch. I thought I'd take them myself today. Care to come along?”

Jake understood that he was being tested. He knew that it would jeopardize their work together if he pointed out that this excursion was not part of his duty roster. “Whatever you say.”

Pierre placed a grizzled Belgian sergeant-major on point and two hard-eyed corporals as back sentries, and ordered them to move out. They were soon tramping along paths that were invisible under their mantle of snow, trusting their sergeant's experience to take them out and bring them back.

The pace was hard. The ground was broken, with invisible
traps for the unwary beneath the white covering. They moved in a silence disturbed only by grunts and heavy breathing.

Every mile or so they would come upon a guardpost, usually invisible until they were almost upon it, any roughness from the recent construction hidden under winter's blanket. A half-frozen man would crawl down from his tree house, stamp up and down, slapping feeling back into his body, and make a shivering report. A new man would be assigned to shinny up the tree ladder. Once in place, the squad would be again under way.

They had been going long enough for Jake to work up a fair lather when the ground exploded at his feet. This time there was no bomb; only a young deer that had taken shelter in a steep-sided levee. The deer bounded upward, throwing up a glorious blast of snow, then disappeared into the woods.

Jake leaned against a tree, slowing his breath and letting the weakness drain from his legs. Around him the men laughed with relief. Jake smiled at chatter he did not hear, and recalled his last injury, when a land mine had exploded less than a dozen feet away. The point man had hit the trip wire, and had simply vanished. Jake had caught a sliver of shrapnel across his forehead, slicing him open clean to the bone. There had been more blood than damage, and after a couple dozen stitches and one night in the mobile infirmary, Jake had been sent back to his squad.

As he stood and gathered himself, Jake glimpsed something moving rapidly to one side of his field of vision.

“There!” he shouted, then was up and after the running figure.

The man raced through the trees in great leaps that lifted him clear of the clinging snow. Jake felt the air pumping in and out of his lungs as he pounded after him. The man was carrying a dark sack, that much Jake could see in his fleeting glimpses as he chased him through the woods. Twice the sack caught in low branches, each time granting Jake a breath's span to close the gap. Behind him he heard whistles
and shouts and crashing sounds, but he had no time to look around. No time for anything but the challenge of the chase.

Then the shot blazed out and smacked the tree beside him, throwing a cloud of snow into his eyes. Jake's war-trained reactions reasserted themselves. He was down and rolling, then crouched and searching, pistol in hand without knowing how it had come free from the holster.

Pierre crawled up beside him, breathless. “Did you see where the shot came from?”

Jake made a vague gesture forward and to the right. “Somewhere up there.”

Pierre motioned for two soldiers to head over, the others to fan out. Then forward. Careful, now. Cautious. But as fast as possible.

They caught the man's tracks and followed them until it began to snow. Dusk was gathering, the men were cold, the quarry had vanished. Somewhere up ahead, the Rhine River marked the border with France, but without proper night gear they would find it by falling in.

Pierre was preparing to turn them around. But Jake wanted to press on. Had to. Someone had shot at him. Wasn't the war over?

Then in the last light of fading day, Jake caught a glint in the snow ahead. Cautiously he approached, bent over, and with wet woolen mittens pulled it from the ground. The sight was so incongruous he stared at it for a dozen breaths before realizing what he had.

“What is—” Pierre came up close enough to see. He stopped cold, whispering, “Nom de Dieu!”

“Gold,” Jake whispered. And it was. A solid gold cross, as heavy as his pistol, attached to a thick gold chain and studded with gemstones. “Gold.”

Chapter Two

“Your first day on the job,” Colonel Beecham said, bristling. “What happens? First you run down the best secretary in the Sixth Army right outside my door.”

“Sir, I can—”

“Then you hook up with this French johnny, go gallivanting out in the woods in the exact opposite direction from where your responsibilities lie.”

“I can explain, if you'll just—”

“Then you start an international border incident by leading an entire squad right smack dab into the middle of an ambush.”

“—let me tell you—”

“And wind up the day by picking a treasure out of the snow and getting the wind up of the entire division.”

“Please listen to my side of the—”

“Not to mention the rumors you've stirred up. The last thing I heard, it was a treasure chest so big it took fifteen pachyderms to cart it home. Don't ask me where you found fifteen grown elephants in the middle of the Black Forest. Left over from Hannibal's crossing, I suppose.” Frosty eyes riveted him to the far wall. “Well? What've you got planned for this evening. An invasion of China?”

“Nossir,” Jake surrendered.

“Glad to hear it. Did you bring that good-for-nothing malcontent Servais with you?”

“He's just outside, sir.”

“Bring him in.”

Jake hastened to the small annex one door down from the colonel's office, where he found Pierre leaning over Sally Anders' desk. Pierre straightened from his position and wiped the smile off his face as he caught sight of Jake's pallor. He followed Jake back to the colonel's office, marched smartly
through the doorway, saluted, and announced, “Captain Pierre Servais, reporting as ordered, sir!”

“Cut the malarkey, Servais,” Beecham snapped. “I've got about as much time for you as I do for your friend here. Now what were you doing out on patrol?”

“Checking out some new men, sir.”

“Don't you have sergeants for that work?”

“Not really, sir.” Servais turned serious. “I lost four just this week on postings back home. And the requests for men to be promoted to fill their places haven't been granted yet.”

“Who's got the paper work?”

“Sir, I believe—”

“Morrows!” the colonel bellowed.

“Sir!” The corpulent sergeant appeared with a speed only possible for someone dedicated to listening through keyholes.

“Find out where the promotion papers for Servais' men are. And if there's any holdup, tell whoever's responsible that I've been meaning to find volunteers to test our new paper parachutes.”

“Right away, sir.”

“Okay, now listen up, you two.” Beecham swivelled around and glared at them. “For your information, the war's over and they've stopped pinning medals on anybody who moves. If either of you two yahoos tries another end run like this, I'll use you as tent pegs! Understand?”

“Yessir,” they said in unison.

“Now, where's the contraband?”

“With Morrows, sir.”

“Good grief, man.” Beecham was genuinely exasperated. “You don't have the brains the good Lord gave a gnat, do you?”

“Yessir, I mean, nossir.”

“Leaving gold with Morrows is like asking a rabbit to take care of some lettuce for you. Sally!”

The auburn head appeared in the doorway. “You rang?”

The colonel's voice softened. “Be a sweetheart and go chase
up our good sergeant. Tell him I expect to have the cross on my desk, chain and jewels intact, or I'll personally stake him out for tank target practice.”

“Only if you give me first shot,” Sally replied, and left. Jake thought he had caught a glimmer of sympathy as she glanced his way, then decided it was just his imagination.

“All right, listen up, you two. Your responsibilities are to liaise with the Americans and the incoming French. This does not include skipping out for a light fling in the snow after lunch. Nor has anybody told you to pretend there are Nazis behind every bush and go marching off to war in the woods. Is that clear?”

“Yessir.”

“Don't let me hear about any such collision courses from either of you, not ever again. I hate to lose good officers. Now get out of my sight.”

“How are we supposed to liaise with troops if we can't go out in the field with them,” Burnes grumbled.

Servais, his elbows propped on the bar and his head down almost level with his glass, gave a restricted little shrug. “Send them love letters, maybe.”

Jake swiped a hand over his head. “I thought for a minute there I was going to get scalped.”

“That's why they call him Smoke Beecham.”

“As in, where there's Beecham there's fire?”

Servais shook his head. “As in, dragon's breath. After Beecham passes, all that's left is a tiny puff of smoke.”

“He seemed nice enough when I first talked with him.”

“The colonel must have wanted something,” Servais mused.

“He did.”

“Like what?”

“He wants me to stay on. Or so I thought this afternoon.”

Servais straightened. “Speak of the dragon himself.”

Jake rose from his slouch just in time to hear the gravelly, “Evening, boys. Give me the usual, Tom.”

“Yessir, Colonel.”

“Can I buy you soldiers a round?”

“Thank you, no thank you, sir,” they said together, still at attention.

“Forget the parade ground razzmatazz for a minute and come join me in the corner,” he ordered, and walked over to the far table. Reluctantly they picked up their glasses and joined him. “Siddown. That's it. Sure you won't take up my offer?”

“I'm fine, thank you, sir.”

“Well, maybe later.” Beecham's easy-going manner carried no suggestion of the earlier roasting. “All right. We've got maybe fifteen minutes before the crowd arrives. Tell me what you think about your little forest run.”

“Colonel,” Jake looked positively pained at having to go through it again. “I'd just as soon—”

“Listen to me, gentlemen,” Beecham said, leaning up close to them. “That little speech wasn't meant for you. Well, not entirely. I've got to make sure you keep your priorities straight. But what I had to make plain to my staff was that I won't put up with any bozos turning into treasure hounds.”

“It wasn't anything like that at all, sir,” Jake protested.

“I know that, son,” Beecham said kindly. “I knew it as soon as I heard you'd left the cross with Morrows. That was a mistake, though. Big mistake. I thought I'd have to use a tire wrench and some dynamite to pry his grubby little mitts loose.”