Chapter 7
The Russian Army troop truck rumbled to a halt at Checkpoint Charlie. It was a routine crossing, the I A.M. change of guard from the Soviet War Memorial located in the West Sector. A desultory American MP pulled back the canvas cloth across the truck's tail, took a cursory look at the two rows of uniformed soldiers lining the sides of the vehicle in erect sitting positions, didn't even glance down at the big weapons box on the floor, then walked back to the cab.
"Okay ... commde," he cleared the driver, with what he hoped was undetectable sarcasm, "see ya t'morra."
"Good night," the Russian struggled with English syllabication, then threw the cumbersome conveyance into gear.
Joe relaxed little as the big vehicle bounced and jarred along the broken pavement of East Berlin. The two Russian soldiers beside him reholstered the guns they had kept jammed at his sides. He loosened the collar of the thick, ill-fitting Soviet uniform they made him wear, and wondered how the Ivans could stand the hot wool-felt in summertime.
There was a small groan from inside the wooden weapons box. The heavy-set Ariatovich, also disguised as a Soviet GI, opened the top to leer inside.
The almost nude body of Hildegard Krauss was trussed and gagged, cramped awkwardly into the pine enclosure. She struggled to speak, but the burly Russian merely slammed the lid and smiled at Joe.
"Tonight, foolish American," he sneered with inbred hate, "You will see what can happen to enemies of the people."
Joe felt the truck stop, heard big doors clang like before, then felt the sudden relief of the warehouse's cool dankness compared with the sweltering humidity of the Berlin summer.
"Come!" Anatovich ordered, jumping from the truck and yelling instructions to the driver in Russian.
"Hey ... what the hell happens to Hildegard? You're not...."
The roar of diesel exhaust cut off his questioning plea, which Anatovich was ignoring anyway. The truck zigzagged a course through the mire of ve hides Joe recalled from before, and disappeared into another section of the massive building.
"We go to see Commde Gherkov," the Russian told Joe, pulling a small packet from his breast pocket, "Russian cigarette? Much better for throat ... more bigger filter."
"You sound like a T-V pitch man," Joe ad-libbed abstractly, taking the small round of dark tobacco that was attached to about three inches of filter.
"Pitch man?" Anatovich puzzled, breaking into a prideful smile when Joe accepted, "Pitch man is for carnival? Circus? No?"
"Skip it. Let's go see Commde Jerk," Joe got away with the mispronunciation as die Russian fought to understand Americanese.
He led Joe between two stacks of sacks piled almost to the ceiling like a sandbagged enclosure, then into the incongruously new and modern office of Alexandrei Gherkov. The burly KGB man was behind his desk, puffing calmly on a pipe and tapping his fingers abstractly on a bulky envelope.
"Commde Frau Ganzl is quite excited that you have betrayed us," Gherkov spoke with ominous casualty, setting down the pipe and reaching into a brown humidor for a black Cuban cigar, "She has become very attracted to your charming girl friend ... and is consequently most frustrated as long as we force her to sublimate her ... somewhat strong desires. Now, of course, I see no sense in prolonging her anxiety."
"G--damn you to ... owww!" Joe screamed suddenly at the vice-like grip that twisted his arm be hind his back and pulled up, up, up, then slowly released as he quieted down.
"You have done two very foolish things, Sergeant Guthrie," The KGB man continued, pouring out metal and glass fragments from the envelope in his hand, " ... destroying the camera, and trying to compromise Fraulein Hildegard."
The pieces of the minicamera tinkled out on the plastic-laminated desk top with a foreboding sound. They were very precise and sure, these Commies. Obviously hadn't left Joe unobserved for a moment except while he was at work.
A knock came at the door to jar Joe's dizzing plight!
Gherkov gave a quickly cautioning nod to Anatovich, who moved back from Joe and stepped toward the door.
Joe jerked his head around in time to see the chauffer open the door and step outside. Joe saw a glimpse of a blue suit for a moment, before the hulking chauffer moved to block his view again.
"A man about to die always receives one last wish ... in my country, as well as yours, Sergeant Guthrie," Gherkov said with new seriousness, shedding his sardonic sneer and wry wit, "And I feel sure this would be yours...."
The door opened wide, and Joe's confused face went from Gherkov to the door, back to Gherkov, back to the door. No one was there, and his head was going left to right like a rabid tennis spectator, who had lost control.
"Joe! Joe! Mein Gott ... Mein Mann! Joe! a voice came through the silent vacuum.
Erika Lang suddenly had appeared silhouetted between the steel jambs of the doorway. She just stood there at first, crying and sobbing, the little gingham dress from the P-X bargain shop disheveled and dirty. Joe wanted desperately to lurch up from his seat and run to her aid or rescue, but Anatovich held her left arm from behind in an apparently less painful version of the same hold he had used on Joe.
"Let go of her, you Ukrainian idiot!" Gherkov showed his European Russian feelings as he remonstrated at Anatovich, "Please, Sergeant ... you must excuse...."
"Erika! Erika, baby! ... baby! Are ... are you all right! Are you...."
Erika literally fell into Joe's arms when they met in the middle of the floor, then clutched desperately at his body to maintain her balance, to snatch a moment of new hope, treasure at least one more moment in the arms of the man she loved.
"Please ... please, Joe!" she was still crying a few minutes later as Joe held her close to savor what might be their last minutes on earth, "They will kill my family. Oh, Joe! I don't want you to be traitor, Joe ... but they tell me yesterday my father has a big accident ... he breaks both arms. But, Joe ... they did it to him. I know. I tell them to kill me ... kill me first, but they say my family gets burned to death if I don't make you do this ... Joe ... Mein Gott!"
Joe gulped hard to fight back his own tears. Here was his Erika, the tantalizingly warm and voluptuous Erika, the one girl he had ever wanted to make it forever with. Here she was ... that same yielding and stimulating body, the same long and beautiful hair and the little eyes that used to sparkle and glow ... begging him to spy on his own country.
"And how is Commde Ganzl treating you?" the imperturable Gherkov asked calmly, picking bits of dirt from beneath his long fingernails, "Tell Sergeant Guthrie about your little nightly conversations, Fraulein Lange."
"Mein Gott! Oh, mein Gott!" Erika shuddered violently, gripping Joe's arms until her fingernails dug into his suntanned skin, "Every night ... every night she don't let me go to sleep. Every night she tells me for hours what she will do to me ... with me if you don't do like they say. Oh, God, Joe ... I gotta die ... I kill myself first, but they tie me in chair so I can't...."
It was becoming too much for Joe. His head was beginning to become dizzy, and all he could think of was killing Gherkov ... maybe he could....
"Nein! Nein! Nein! Mein Gott! Bitte! Bitte!" piercing screams rent through the closed door from the warehouse.
Crazed laughter followed from someone else.
The door was thrown open! Hildegard's naked and bruised body was catapulted into the room and fell to the floor in a sobbing heap! But there was nothing pretty about her now. Long whelps crisscrossed her bare back, rising red and vivid from the soft skin which had reminded Joe so much of Erika's. The long blonde hair hung down in her face, matted to her skin in spots by blood, sweat and tears. Her convulsive and pained body gave a start at the feel of some new jolting ache and she rolled over. The bruises and whelps covered her abdomen too.
"No! No! Look, Joe!" Erika gave a hysterical scream and plunged her terrified face into the haven of Joe's chest.
Joe had to force himself, bite his lip, tense his muscles, to keep from joining her in breaking down at the sight that met them. Hildegard's left breast was distended grotesquely, misshapen. And in place of the little nipple ... there was a bleeding mass of torn tissue.
"Nice ... nice gorl!" Use Ganzl mouthed in a mad drivel, entering the room with a Satanic snarl on her disfigured face, a crimson blob drooling from her mouth like retched catsup.
"You monster! You sadistic monster!" Joe broke into a mad rage, the only thing he could do to vent the spark of protest that gouged his body and brain.
Frau Ganzl, still in a dreamy state of ghoulish savor over her Lesbo-sadistic coups, threw back her hams of arms in surprise when Joe lunged at her! Wild with fury now, he clawed savagely to dig his fingers in her puffed globs of fatty arms and shoulders.
"Anatovich!" Gherkov barked.
And the Ukrainian bully clobbered Joe from behind with one swift rabbit chop to his neck.
Joe pulled the blonde form next to him. He loved Erika, loved her with every fibre of his tired aching body. Now, he felt, she was really his. They were gliding through space, surrounded by little cloud formations and the happy faces of people who waved at them from their own private clouds. Theirs though, his fancies figured, must be cloud nine ... or something like that.
Then the vision shattered! A cruel, bulky face of a man with close cropped black hair, was staring at him. When Joe opened his eyes, he broke into a terrifying laugh that sent great bolts of thunder and lightning through the remaining fragments of the visionary sky and made it disappear.
The sickening jolt of Alexandrei Gherkov's subtly gruesome laughted came at him.
The dream was gone ... but the girl was still there! The fair blonde hair streamed across Joe's arm as he lay on the floor beside her. But instead of Erika, Joe was embracing the blood spattered corpse of Hildegard Krauss.
"You like ... to make love with ... dead woman?" the voice of Anatovich asked from behind Joe, then broke into vile laughter, his foot kicking at the bloodied mass until it rolled over to the corner of the office.
"Where ... where's Erika?" Joe managed between dry gulps that tried vainly to bring up his last meal, but only succeeded in filling his mouth with dry pockets of foul stomach gases.
"She became quite ill," Gherkov leered, leaning down accommodatingly to set a miniature bottle of bitters by Joe's hand, "Anatovich has taken her back to her room. Here ... this makes good for your upset feelings, Sergeant Guthrie. Too bad you had to miss Frau Ganzl's piece de resistance. Every good soldier should witness a person die slowly. It equips him better for the day he must kill and be killed on the battlefield."
"To hell with you!" Joe forced out the bitter words with excruciating venom, biting his lip until he tasted blood, and pushing away the bottle of bitters.
"I ... make you get up," Anatovich volunteered, grabbing Joe under his arms and hauling him into the chair in one sweep.
"Remove the body!" Gherkov directed his henchman sternly, with all the unconcern of asking for a match, then sat down and faced Joe, "Tomorrow night it can be your beloved Erika. And her poor father, crippled as he is ... what could he do if his little house was to catch on fire...?"
Joe was too sick, too totally nauseated and dizzy to think well. But he had to do something, had to stall. Maybe even had to....
"You are terribly upset, Sergeant Guthrie. Too bad you refused the medication," Gherkov came out with a crooked smile, snapping off his wrist watch and setting it on the desk, "But you are indeed a fortunate young man. You will find out now the humane quality of Communist mercy, which your papers so often deny. We are an understanding people, Sergeant Guthrie ... benevolent, considerate, magnanimous. Here then is another minicamera. We give you one more chance!"
The retching spasm returned to Joe's twitching stomach. His head seemed to want to blast apart into a thousand pieces and render him a mental eunoch, incapable of deciding or doing anything. But a thin fragment of courage, a ray of hope, the last grasp at survival tor Erika, her family and himself, egged him on. With this scant grip on temporary survival, there was still the slight piece of optimism for eventual salvation.
"Okay, Jerk," he said with resignation, seeming to pronounce the name unintentionally, "Give me the camera."