Chapter 11
At 12:29, two figures approached the black ZIL limousine parked along the desolate loneliness of a deserted Unter den Linden in East Berlin. A stark sky with illumined moonlight shafting eeriely through segmented blocks of clouds, made the dreary wastes of the surrounding rubble look even gloomier than usual. The old Beichstag building, scene of the unholy holocaust of the Nazi era, loomed up in frightening shapes of twisted steel and fragmented stone.
"You will sit back here, please, Sergeant Guthrie," the throaty voice of Alexandrei Gherkov directed as the back door of the limousine swung open, "Commde DeLoach will ride with Anatovich." couldn't force him to. The boy looked enough like him to leave little doubt, though. And wasn't that poetic justice for you?
It was growing dark. He had started toward the Landon house, but changed his course and headed for a tavern. He didn't feel like facing Cory's father right now. He didn't even feel much like facing himself.
If anyone recognized him in the dim light they didn't say anything. He sat alone on a bar stool and drank straight whiskey. He was well aware that he was getting drunk and he didn't give a damn. He was getting pretty sick of being Cory Landon, anyway.
He was drunk, but not drunk enough. He kept seeing Callie Shannon's heart-shaped little face in the bottom of his glass. Each time he had the glass filled he thought that it would drown the image, but it was still there. He wondered drunkenly if there was such a thing as love at first sight. He doubted it. He wasn't even sure there was such a thing as love.
"Fill it up, Charlie," he told the bartender.
"Don't you think you've had enough?"
"I doubt if there is enough."
The bartender shrugged and filled his glass.
A girl slid onto the stool next to him and said, "Well, Cory, fancy meeting you here. Are you slumming, or has the good little boy turned bad?"
He focused his eyes on her with difficulty. It was Sandy Reed, but she looked different. Or maybe it was the whiskey. Or maybe his perspective had changed. Whatever it was, he
"I got the pictures," Joe lied eagerly, sliding in beside the burly KGB man and taking off his watch, "Now ... do I get to see Erika ... take her back?"
"When we develop the film," Gherkov replied slowly and with menace, "Then we discuss the...."
"Oh, damn!" the redhead's voice interrupted just as she started to open the front door.
"What happened?" Joe questioned, looking out the window, "Oh ... dropped your earring, huh? I'll help you look for it...."
"Anatovich will help!" Gherkov roared irritably, grabbing Joe's arm, then holding the minicamera up toward the ray of light from a street lamp.
. The tall Ukrainian got out and stooped down to the gutter, flipping on his lighter to see by. The redhead remained standing.
Joe let out his breath easily. Gherkov had reacted exactly as he had planned it.
"What is this?" The KGB man suddenly angered as he squinted his eyes and turned the watch rewind, "You have taken no...."
It all happened in an instant!
Joe coughed loudly and the redhead instantly brought a hammer from her purse and smashed it down into Anatovich's skull with all her might! Joe whipped out his .45 and jammed it hard in the firm flesh between Gherkov's ribs.
"If you move, I'll kill you! I'll kill you right now!" Joe gritted the threat between his teeth.
"Gordsky Dalimitov!" the Russian cursed, but he knew better than to move, knew the power of vengeance in a man as determined as Joe, "I will obey. Sergeant. But let me tell you of the precautions. You can't possibly...."
"Shut up or I'll kill you!" Joe riled at him, pulling a length of the wire from his pocket, "Bring both hands very slowly behind your back. Do anything wrong and this gun goes off ... it's got a dum-dum cartridge in it I fixed up special just for you. I'd love to see your guts go flying all over this car!"
"I will comply, Sergeant Guthrie," he talked more calmly now, "I have no intention of dying ... and I realize clearly how you would love to kill me."
"What ... what do I do now, Joe ... what do I do?" Martha Anderson, garbed in Delores' dress, was near panic as she stood over the limp chauffer, "He's got a concussion, I think ... We can't let him...."
"Forget it!" Joe snapped, cinching the wire tight around Gherkov's wrists, "He'd do the same to you if he had to ... probably worse. We'll put him in the trunk as soon as I'm through here."
"One word and she kills you ... right now!" Joe vowed, trying not to show his own tenseness and doubts as they approached the gate to the Russian AMTORG shipping docks on Bernstrasse.
In the back seat, Martha tensed tightly to keep ' from shaking, then jammed the Russian's own gun in harder against his ribs. She wanted no part of this, had no idea what she was getting into when Joe had brought her to tears with the story of Hildegard Krauss. But now it was too late. Here she was, a 22 year old American nurse in the big fat middle of the Russian East Sector, holding at bay the most dreaded KGB functionary in all of Germany.
"You are ... nervous, young lady," Gherkov tried to smile, but he too was upset at the trembling trigger finger of the pretty nurse, "Calm yourself, please...."
"Sure, I'm nervous," Martha admitted, becoming bold by the very fright of her all or nothing commitment, "You better do everything Joe says too ... or this gun goes off. It'd be curtains for us, Mister, but you'd see the end first."
"Please, young lady ... lady is no need to threaten," Gherkov assured her, perspiration glistening from his big jowls and the half inch of forehead between his eyebrows and thick hair.
Joe flashed the car's headlights and a small door set in the big truck entrance opened. An aging man in a guard's uniform came out and approached the car.
"Tell him it's all right ... I'm getting more nervous," Martha whispered, the gun shaking as it probed deeper into his side.
Two minutes later they were inside the compound and Joe brought the lumbering vehicle to a precipitate halt. His head went dizzy and light. They faced a row of twelve identical dockside warehouses.
The confusion hit him like a bolt of electrical shock. The building momentum of the race to save Erika was suddenly stilled. A barrier had been clomped down in front of him.
Gherkov chuckled lightly, his voice adding in a sneer, 'The intrepid, indomitable American is lost.
Go ahead ... take your choice, Sergeant. Which one?"
"Damn you to hell, Gherkov!" Joe's bubbling anger erupted, his frustrated confusion fought for an outlet, "Duck, Martha! Duck!"
In a sudden surge of instant violence, Joe swung his arm around in an arc, the side of his fist smashing against the surprised Russian's jaw and banging his Neanderthal head solidly against the door jamb.
"Talk, Jerk!" Joe yelled, poising his arm again.
"I ... don't have...."
The mere sound of a negation in the Russian's voice was all that Joe needed. Without hesitation or any more verbal threats, he smashed his fist again into the same sensitive spot, then turned around on the front seat so he could begin to pummel his fat face with both fists.
"Gardovsky!" Gherkov yelled, covering his face, "I ... I tell ym. Of course, I tell you. It is first ... first building right there."
"Is there a guard?" Joe asked, yanking Gherkov's hands away and aiming his fist again, starting the jab, "Tell me, Jerk!"
"Nyet ... no ... is post lock," Gherkov had trouble forming words through his aching mouth and swelling jaw.
"What the hell's a post lock?" Joe growled, grabbing the lapels of his suit, "Talk ... damn you...."
"In ... glove compartment," the Russian struggled to speak, wincing through the pain in his jaw," ... key fits in post there...."
By the door of the first building Joe saw the long post that reached up to about the level of the car's window. Quickly, he reached into the glove compartment and found the key. He was jerky with his movements. A creeping sense of fear and futility was moving in. He knew in the back of his mind that what he was trying to accomplish was damn near impossible. But he must never let Martha know this.
Inside the incongruously modern and immaculate office of the KGB man, Joe ordered him to sit on the couch. He could take no chance of there being some secret warning device for Gherkov to set off from his private desk.
"Sergeant Guthrie," Gherkov addressed Joe, cool logic and reason in his voice as he rubbed slightly at the side of his face, "Do you realize you are in the middle of the most security conscious enclave in the Communist world? A ten foot high wall lies between you and your Capitalist showplace in West Berlin. Beyond that ... over a hundred miles to the most guarded border in the world ... our so called Iron Curtain stretching all the way from Luebeck Bay in the Baltic to the Turkish coast on the Black Sea. You will never get out alive, Sergeant ... never!"
"What can you offer if I don't try?" Joe snapped, worried about the effect of Gherkov's speech on Martha, who was obviously quite riddled with fear as she listened.
"I can offer you a great deal," the Russian said with a show of enthusiasm, sitting up straighter, "You are a most forthright young man ... merely idealistically misinterpretive of life. You could be very valuable to us here...."
"Lying bastard!" Joe cried out, smashing his hand across the smarting face, "You think I'd have come this far just to turn traitor. No -no, Mr. Jerk. I don't have any choice now. You tabbed it right when you were talking about that Iron Curtain. Either we get back through it ... or we're dead. You bastards never keep your word anyway. If I made the stupid decision to defect right now ... I'd be just as dead tomorrow as if I tried to scale that wall at high noon by the Brandenburg Gate ... and you know it!"
"You ... you so foolish," Gherkov mumbled, shielding his face, "The people's democracy here is...."
"Where is she?" Joe screamed the question with wild virulence.
"I ... a a soldier too, Sergeant," Gherkov managed, swiping at the blood from his puffed lips as he became very stoic and brave, "Soviet soldier ... not afraid to ... to die...."
"You better be afraid to live...," Joe vowed venomously.
Gherkov had his head buried in his hands to ward off another blow from Joe's fists. But Joe's reasoning had gone haywire now in this precipitate moment of naked hate and anger. Standing directly in front of the cowering Russian, who was seated, Joe brought up his knee in sudden violent rage, catching him squarely under the chin. There was a terrible crunching, shattering sound. The Russian merely bobbled a deep throated groan as blood and teeth spewed from his big mouth, and his body slumped over senseless on the big white couch.
"Here ... let me look at him," Martha jumped to his side, relieved actually at the opportunity to be of use in her own field.
"I'll get some water," Joe volunteered, turning toward the washbowl in the room's comer, "That bastard's gotta talk...."
"Oh . ... God!" Martha let out a little terrified yelp and looked over at Joe with helpless despair, "He can't ... talk, Joe! He ... he doesn't have a tongue any more!"
"First aid kit ... in the car!" Joe fired back quickly, fighting off revlusion over his own brutality.
'But, Joe ... I'm not a doctor ... I can't...."
"Do what I say!" Joe yelled, straining to think what he could do next, "Patch him up! Dead or alive, Gherkov's our ticket back through that wall ... our only ticket!"
"I ... I can't, Joe! Oh, God ... Joe, well never get out!" Martha went into hysteria, looking away from the bloody drool that flowed so bizarrely over the light colored upholstery, "We ... well die...."
"Godammit, Martha! Get that first aid kit and patch him up!" Joe pulled no punches, grabbing both shoulders and shaking her violently, "I'll find Erika, and we'll all get out of here! You crap out on me now, and it's your fault if we die! You understand, baby? Your fault ... your goddam fault!"
Joe could barely hold onto is own equilibrium, but he'd seen panic like this before, seen them go into raving hysteria at the scene of fatal accidents when he'd been a cop back in New York State. And counter shock was the one instant way you could usually deal with them.
"I'll ... I'll try, Joe," Martha sobbed out, her body still shaking with fright, "I'll ... try...."
Joe moved stealthily between the packing cases against the pier side of th-; mammoth building, pausing at each of the irregularly placed side rooms to listen. Could they have been warned-heard the ruckus with Gherkov, or perhaps in the brief exchange of Russian gibberish between Gherkov and the guard? Was Erika really here ... in this building? Or had the passion wracked Delores been smarter than he thought? Did they....
Joe stopped dead in his tracks! He had heard a voice-unintelligible, but definitely a human voice.
"Ahh, schoener brueste, Maedchen ... ahh, so gut zu saugen ... sooo gut!" a raspy, sharp woman's voice spoke clearly.
"Nein! Nein!" a young girl's scream responded.
It was Erika!
Joe's fingers instinctively tightened around the .45. His whole body tensed into a giant mass of adrenalized strength ready to burst.
Instead, he bit his lip until he could taste the salty blood. Joe had found out already the price of giving vent to naked emotions ... Gherkov lay speechless, maybe dead, as the result of his last untimely outburst.
Joe crept across an aisle that was left between several rows of boxed auto parts, and listened at the door.
"Nice breasts ... beautiful breasts she has," Use Ganzl vulgarized in unimaginative English.
Why was she speaking English? Ganzl was German, Erika was German. But the discrepancy only flitted through Joe's mind. His uppermost thought was to get Erika away from this foul Lesbian creature, get her away now ... and then get them all three back to West Berlin.
Slowly now, he gripped the door handle and pushed down easily. It was locked.
A small shaft of light hit Joe in the face! He thought sure it was a flashlight, thought sure he'd been discovered! Then he began to relax. It was only the light from a warped crack between the door jamb and the heavy strip of molding down its side.
Joe blinked his eyes and looked through. The sight turned his stomach, set him to seething with almost uncontrollable fury!
Erika was tied to a chair. Her blouse had been ripped down to her stomach, her brassiere torn away.
"Nein! Nein!" her small voice screamed again.
Joe steeled himself against the building anger. The hulking Lesbian monsteress moved into view. She was completely nude and making lewd swipes at her own ghastly body. Her salaciously Sapphic breasts hung over the fat blobs of her bloated stomach. Each monstrous thigh was like the whole body of a hairy, overfed hog. Perspiration dripped from the dirty folds of her inhuman appearing buttocks.
"Nice girl . ... I suck breasts...," the beast drooled thick saliva with her vile mouthings.
"Nein! Nein!" came the pitiful, high pitched protests.
Joe could take it no longer.
"Commde Ganzl! Commde Ganzl!" he called out in a deep throated muffle like the guttural Gherkov.
"Ja ... ja ... Ich komme," she answered breathlessly.
Joe poised himself like a catapult against the packing crate opposite the door. The wait was only seconds, but seemed like eternity. He knew Use Ganzl would have to slip her clothing back on, cover up Erika's exposed breasts, if she believed it were Gherkov.
The door opened.
"Ja ... Ich war...." she broke off the excuse with a horrible scream, doubling up in pain.
Using Ids head as a battering ram, Joe had lunged straight into the fat folds of Use Ganzl's huge stomach and sent her bulbous body thudding to the floor.
Erika looked at Joe with a strange, inexplicable fear. Her voice cried out to speak, but was caught in the mute grip of terror. And then, almost too late, Joe learned why Use Ganzl had been speaking in English, why Erika could not smile at him in blessed relief. Her English mutterings had been for the vicarious benefit of the third person in the room-the handsome blond fellow in the blue suit, the man who had been with Delores at the Kleine Klause, the man whose description fit perfectly that of Milo DeLoach. And the man who was now bearing down on Joe, his pistol raised to crack his skull.
"Son of a bitch!" Joe vented verbally, moving his head to the right.
DeLoach's forearm came down with a crack on Joe's shoulder. The gun spewed from his hand and clattered crazily across the wooden floor and through the open door to the pier outside. Joe reached for his own gun, but it was not there, must have dropped out in his forceful lunge at Use Ganzl, who was now screaming vile curses and trying to extricate herself from the floor.
"Joe ... Joe!" Erika screamed his name helplessly, still bound to the wooden chair.
"Give up, soldier," DeLoach advised, getting a lock hold around Joe's neck.
"I ... I kill both American swine," Use Ganzl swore as she pushed her huge hulk up from the floor.
Joe fought hard against the pinioning arm that was making it harder for him to breathe, pulling up tight against his throat and blurring everything in the room.
Use Ganzl stood up now, trying to focus her snot green eyes. She finally caught the nod from Milo DeLoach toward the pier outside, then spotted the gun laying out there in the murky darkness.
"I kill ... both American swine," she mumbled again, then clomped toward the waterside doorway.
Her myopic eyes clouded by the globs of sweat which reeled off her forehead, and still dizzied from Joe's blow, Use Ganzl did not notice Erika working her chair ever closer to the doorway. She moved her huge, bunion laden feet ever faster to carry the three hundred pounds quickly across the room and retrieve the gun.
Erika meanwhile, strained with every ounce of pressure she had left. She was almost to the doorway now, but could not move fast enough to completely block the beast's path.
But what she did accomplish in that final second, got better results than the helpless Erika Lang could have ever hoped for.
In a surge of energy to block off the advancing woman, Erika pushed so hard that the chair teetered backward. Her legs strained against the ropes at mid calf to regain balance. The rope slipped up just a bit.
The madly scurrying Use Ganzl tripped headlong over Erika's feet which extended into the doorway's path at just the moment her chair was toppling backwards. The corpulent blob of sweat soaked fat slid crazily across the spray dampened pier. Slid right to the edge and never stopped.
There were barely audible gurgling sounds above the frantic splashing in the high tided waters of the River Spree below. And while Use Ganzl's three hundred pounds of gelatinous flab did not let her sink totally, its unbalanced shifting, and her terrified thrashing held her head submerged long enough to accomplish the same effect.
A riverboat tooted in the distance. And after that, Use Ganzl was heard no more.
"Let him go! Let him go!" Erika screamed as she looked back to the scene inside.
But Milo DeLoach was still intent on snuffing the very life out of Joe Guthrie. The sudden demise of his Commde in the murky waters of the Spree, brought no compassionate lessening of his task at hand.
As for Joe, the dizziness and blurs had increased to almost the point of totally uncaring lethargy of mind and body. There was no frustrated surge to blot free anymore-only the vacuum of shock inspired dullness that seemed to anesthetize all feeling, all thought.
"Let him go!" Erika's scream echoed again through the room and against the distant walls of the warehouse outside.
Three shots, or the sound of them at least, blasted through the disappearing world that was Joe Guthrie's.
In the doorway, her hands still trembling, the .9 mm gun of Alexandrei Gherkov still smoking, stood Martha Anderson. She had fired the shots at the ceiling. She was afraid of hitting Joe otherwise. But DeLoach was enough impressed and surprised at their sound, to let go of Joe.
His body slumped to the floor, alertness returned slowly, but he was conscious at least of what must have happened. He tried to speak and it came out garbled.
"Don't ... raggh ... shoot ... shoot him," some words were coherent between huge gasps for life restoring air, "Got ... gogglura ... get ... him ... buh ... back ... alive...."
DeLoach saw the hysteria in Martha's eyes. Saw her fingers relax and nearly drop the gun at Joe's instruction not to shoot.
"You are a ringer for Delores, aren't you," the blond traitor spoke slowly, advancing just a step at a time and keeping his eyes glued on the gun, "You look the same way she does when she's scared too. You better take it easy, honey. Come on now ... come on...."
Joe was coming into his senses now. His breath came easier, flowed into his lungs with a semblance of regularity as opposed to the desperate gulps he had quaffed at first. His brain began to function and he remembered the last quater of a high school football game, remembered the crouching position he'd assumed to prevent the tying touchdown by the opposition. His body seemed to work mechanically, work into that same position for the flying tackle that saved the day. But this time he wasn't sure of his strength, wasn't sure....
"Now just give me that gun, honey...."
DeLoach plunged to the floor as Joe's shoulders impacted against the back of his legs. But Joe was still weak. He had made the plunge with that bit of adrenalized strength that can only last so long. Now, he could barely lift himself from the floor.
"You lousy, goddam GI," DeLoach cursed.
The blood suddenly roared through Joe's body again, the adrenalin had been primed once more. He'd beat the devil out of some 4-F punk in New York who called him that once. And DeLoach was a much lower cut than the anonymous youth he'd met in a bar.
Joe was almost on his feet now, raising to strike at the also rising DeLoach.
The blond defector reached back and grabbed a chair. Erika screamed. Martha felt like passing out.
"I'll kill you ... you goddam GI!" DeLoach swore again, bringing the chair up over his head.
Joe saw he couldn't make it ... couldn't possibly make it up in time to miss the blow. He dropped back to the floor quickly, flattened himself, and rolled.
"Die, you idealistic bastard!" DeLoach screamed.
And then two things happened at once.
The chair came down on Joe's left leg with a resounding crack. The wood splintered, but Joe had to let out a piercing cry of pain.
Simultaneously, Martha regained herself at the sight of Joe's plight, and brought the butt of Gherkov's gun down solidly on DeLoach's head. He fell backwards and hit the floor in an unconscious heap.
"My leg! My goddam leg!" Joe let go when he saw the situation was under control, "I ... think . .
"It's broken all right," Martha let him have it straight, after one look at the bent ankle, "Don't move. I'll make a splint. There's some pieces of wood outside."
"Get her out of that ... that goddamn chair first," Joe strained to talk through his agony, and told Erika about her family's escape while Martha freed her.
In that next instant, the instant when Erika Lang ran to kneel down by Joe, caress and kiss him through her own tears of terror, he knew who he loved. He knew it with no doubt or compunction, as the whole justification of the yet unfinished ordeal became crystal clear even in the disorder of his troubled mind. He would always adore Martha, be eternally grateful for what she had done. But Erika ... Erika was the only girl he could ever really love ... forever.