The Second Objective

They stayed close to the shoreline, working their oars without a splash. Unable to see the top of the bank through the fog, they twice heard voices and car engines from above near the edge of the canal. Each time they shipped their oars and drifted until the voices and cars faded away.

They rowed downstream for half a mile, and Von Leinsdorf steered them to the left bank. Another small dock at the base of a quay appeared out of the mist, and he angled toward it, jumped out first, and tied off the boat. A small flight of stairs led up to the top of the bank.

They emerged onto a quiet street under a bridge that spa

“I gotta say, Dick, whatever it is they want you for,” said Be

“I didn’t have a chance to tell you. Turns out we’re in the same line.”

“Black market? Can’t say I’m surprised.”

“I had to take out those MPs. They get their hands on me, it’s like this…” He slashed his hand across his throat, then lifted a suitcase out of the trunk. “Don’t know about you, I’m not that interested in firing squads.”

“Brother, I’m picking up your frequency.”

“Maybe they were looking for both of us back there. Doesn’t matter now.”

“Except you saw it coming, set up the boat, left this car here thinking about a way out.”

“Helps to cover the bases, Eddie. We gotta lose the uniforms. Here, help yourself.”

Von Leinsdorf opened a suitcase packed with everyday outfits. Both men picked some out and changed clothes by the side of the car. Eddie noticed a couple of jerricans sitting in the backseat.

“So, Dick, you a deserter?” asked Eddie.

“I am now.” They both laughed. “You?”

“They had my whole battalion in the brig up in Belgium on a black-market beef. The Krauts come across a couple days ago, they tell us we’re off the hook if we’ll go catch a few bullets on the front line. I said hell yeah, why don’t you just fit me for the pine overcoat while you’re at it?”

They laughed again, Eddie in an aggressive, Woody Woodpecker staccato, his mouth contorted like the mask of tragedy.

“It was sayonara suckers before they even knew I was gone. This ain’t my fight; I got no gripe with the Krauts. A freakin’ Chinese fire drill getting down here; I can thank the Krauts for that.”

“Why’d you stop in Reims?”

“That was a neighborhood we used to work; lotta freight moves on that canal. Thought I’d make a pass, see if I could pick up a few bucks.” Eddie tried on a gray fedora, checking out his reflection in the car window. “That guy who came at us in the theater, he’s one of these fellas you were supposed to meet?”

“I never saw him before.”

“He called you Lieutenant Miller.”

“Obviously he thought I was somebody else.”

“Hey, it was him or us,” said Eddie. “You won’t hear me complaining.”

“Who was the other cop, the one in the lobby?”

“That prick busted me the other night, Criminal Investigation Division, a real hard-on. Earl Gra

“He’s a police detective?”

“That’s right. He’s on your tail, too?”

“He put some heat on us. I never knew his name.”

“Well, fuck him, he can eat our dust,” said Eddie. “I was go

“You know your way around?”

“Been stationed there since August. Got that city wired. Our battalion was floating on a river of cash.”

They heard sirens in the distance toward downtown Reims. When Eddie turned, Von Leinsdorf raised the silenced pistol, ready to shoot him in the back of the head.

“Our train yard’s just west of the city, near Versailles,” said Eddie.

Von Leinsdorf lowered the pistol. “Versailles?”

“Yeah. I’m telling you, you got to check out Paris. It’s a fuckin’ free-for-all. A guy with brass ones like you makes a killing in no time.”

Von Leinsdorf put the pistol away before Eddie turned around.

“The Free French or de Gaulle or the U.S. Army may think they’re ru

“You could introduce me to some people?”

“You got a stake we can use to prime the pump, get things rolling?”

“Sure,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Dick, I’m not pushing banana oil here. A couple weeks we could be ru

“The army, the MPs, they’re going to come looking for us.”

“Forget it, I know places we could hole up for months. Local cops want nothing to do with the black market, and they’re all on the pad anyway. You make your own law. There’s parts of that city the army won’t even come into.”

“Will these get us there?” asked Von Leinsdorf, showing him some papers from his pocket.

“Road passes, regional business stamps, laissez-passers. Yeah, I’d say you got it covered.”

“We’re Danish businessmen looking into postwar oil contracts,” said Von Leinsdorf.

“Let’s get rich.”

They shook hands, climbed into the Renault, and drove off. Von Leinsdorf had positioned the car less than a hundred yards from an entrance to the bridge that would carry them across the river, toward the highway to Paris. The army wouldn’t throw roadblocks up on the bridge until half an hour after they crossed.

Von Leinsdorf glanced at Eddie as he drove. The man amused him, a common thief with a lust for money. So much more useful than Bernie Oster. That he’d left the young American alive remained an irritant, but a minor one. Brooklyn didn’t have the skills to survive alone for long on enemy ground. He’d get himself captured or killed. Even if he talked, he knew nothing about the Second Objective; Von Leinsdorf had seen to that. He smiled. Eddie gri

Everybody needed a little luck now and then.

Bernie stayed behind Earl Gra

Gra

Bernie could feel the other officers’ frustration in the tense silence that followed. They had a bona fide deserter from Skorzeny’s brigade dead and three men from his squad alive; didn’t that qualify as a good night’s work? Maybe other German agents had been there, and maybe they’d gotten away, but no one else had seen these two phantom killers in back of the stage or outside the movie house. Not even the three Krauts they’d captured knew anything about them.

It seemed obvious to everyone else in the room that William Sharper had murdered the MP and Ole Carlson. Sharper died with the knife that killed Carlson in his hand. He’d been shot with Carlson’s gun. He even looked like the sketch Gra

An army intelligence officer summed up their reservations. “Even if this Lieutenant Miller was here and got away, what can one Kraut do alone in the middle of France?”

“First of all, Carlson didn’t shoot Sharper,” said Gra