White Flag Down by Joel N. Ross

Author:Joel N. Ross
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9780307455727
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2008-11-24T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 23

Grant overtook the rumbling lorry and looked at Anna. “Who exactly do you work for?”

“Nobody. Anybody. Watch the road.”

He drifted into the right lane. “That’s clear.”

“We pass along what information we find, that’s all, to whomever we can.” Her coal-fire hair caught the sunlight through the car window. “Personnel of the German embassy, number of boxcars crossing the border, domestic secrets of frontists. Nothing but gossip and commonplaces. Until now.”

“You think this woman, Magda Loeffert, she’s the real McCoy.”

“McCoy?”

“You think she’s genuine.”

“I know she is.”

“And she left this note in a hotel room, half in Russian?” He tapped his cigarette in the ashtray. “She’s playing a game.”

“What game?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “And neither do you.”

“She wrote the list for her own use, that’s what I think. She threw away the second page because she’s cautious—and afraid.” She looked down the road. “Take a left where the sign says Kirchenfeld.”

“When you fly into a cloud bank, you start seeing shapes.”

“You think I’m seeing what I want to see?”

He shrugged. “I’m a pilot, not a spy. And you’re a teacher, a mother, and a wife.”

“A widow,” she said.

He passed the Bernese History Museum, turned at Helvetiaplatz toward the bridge. Anna’s silence thickened in the car, and he finally said, “Yeah.”

“Tell me about Martin,” she said. “How did they kill him?”

“Does it matter?”

“You think I can’t bear knowing, but not knowing is worse. Imagining is worse.”

“He didn’t suffer.”

“I know they didn’t shoot him.”

He looked at the traffic on the bridge. “Bayonet.”

“And what happened to you?”

“In China?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing, I’m still here.”

She touched his cheek with gloved fingers.

“By the time I left China,” he said, “I was Captain Scott. That’s what happened. You think I’m the other guy, but I’m not. I lost my edge, I saw this girl, this highborn Chinese girl, I saw her die and—I’m like an empty gun, I’ve got nothing left.”

“Tell me in plain German.”

“There’s nothing to tell. I lost my nerve.”

“You saw too much blood,” she said. “You lost your taste for violence.”

“I had an edge and now it’s blunted, that’s all.”

She took the cigarette from his mouth. “Maybe you didn’t lose your nerve, maybe you found your heart.” She killed the butt in the ashtray. “Are you a good soldier, Grant?”

“I’m nobody’s idea of perfect.”

“You’re not so bad,” she told him. “Park there. Call your brigadier general, and we’ll meet at the hotel.”

“You’re chasing your tail with this woman,” he said, pulling to the curb. “Because you think she’s got what you need.”

“We’re all chasing something, Grant. We’re all chasing what we think we need.”

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