Hammer of Angels Read online

  We return to our ditch away from home and lie down again. It’s important to make sure our bomb actually goes off. If it doesn’t, we can’t leave it there to be discovered later. That would muster extra German security without the benefit of “creating a chaotic and hazardous situation,” per our orders.

  While it was light, we kept our hands over our mouths, partly to warm them but mostly to hide the little puffs of steam our breath makes in the winter air. Small details like that can make or break an operation. It’s dark now, so we can breathe normally. We can also talk a little more.

  Brando goes first. “Miriam, who is the Rabbi? We’ve heard about him, but not from anyone who’s actually met him.”

  Miriam contemplates the stars. “The Rabbi is our heart and soul. He led us out of bondage, taught us to hide, to fight, and—most important—to survive.”

  She tells us the Rabbi was born into slavery and had lived his whole life on a farm in Holland. The farm’s owner fell ill and remained sick long enough that when he passed away, it wasn’t exactly a surprise. However, the dearly departed’s will granted his slaves unconditional freedom, which was a surprise.

  This rarely happens, and when it does, it’s quite awkward because there’s no place in Greater German society for Jewish people. The Reich’s normal protocol is to quickly and quietly deport the noncitizens out of the country.

  The Rabbi, however, disappeared underground and founded the first cell of an abolitionist network for escaped slaves. This network now spans all of Greater Germany. The escapees can leave Europe or stay and help fight slavery. Many opt to stay.

  Miriam stops talking and cocks her head to one side, her eyes pointed slightly upward. For a moment, this gesture makes her look like a Hollywood glamour girl from the 1920s. But that moment passes quickly—I don’t imagine Hollywood starlets having a Star of David tattooed around their left eye. Nor do I imagine them speaking Yiddish.

  “Ach!” she says. “Here comes the verkachta train. It’s showtime, my little meshugenuhs.”

  We wriggle to the top of the ditch. Brando lets Miriam use his starlight binoculars, and I tell him what I see with my night vision.

  “There it is, coming out of Strensall.” The train chugs toward Haxby. When the engine passes over our little present, a flash of light is closely followed by a muffled bang.

  A derailing train is a stunning sensory experience. The ground quakes and the air shimmies from the clamor of a dozen hundred-ton frying pans clanging together. Metallic groans and shrieks echo across the field as the train cars crumple into their earthy resting places.

  Mission accomplished. Miriam cackles as we exit stage left.

  08

  TWO DAYS LATER, TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 3, 5:10 A.M. GMT

  OFFICE OF THE BÜRGERMEISTER, YORK, PROVINCE OF GREAT BRITAIN, GG

  Don’t forget to look up.

  One of my professors at Camp A-Go-Go gave an entire lecture on the human tendency to watch for danger by scanning left and right. What I remember from his explanation is that this two-dimensionality has something to do with our prehistoric lives on the flat savannas of Africa. His class was called Hiding in Plain Sight. The professor’s next lecture was about exploiting our lateral tendency. We explored all sorts of ways to sneak around security systems based on this one idea.

  The maneuver I’m doing right now, the Spider, was developed during these sessions as we practiced adhering ourselves to an interior’s high points. Hiding on a ceiling affords an unobstructed view of the room and allows an agent to attack her target from a completely unexpected direction. The trick, however, is the stick. Not all spaces lend themselves to this move. Luckily, York’s venerable town hall has lots of fancy woodwork and decorative flourishes I can use as climbing handles and perches.

  I feel like a gargoyle. My feet are jammed into a corner molding while my hands press against the ostentatiously decorated ceiling. Brando has crawled under the mammoth couch in front of the mayor’s heavy wooden desk. It’ll take him a few moments to get out of there, but he doesn’t need to make a sensational entrance like I do.

  Getting in here was a breeze. We jimmied open a second-story window that overlooks the back alley, then followed a CIA schematic of the building, sprinkled with notes from one of the janitors, straight to the mayor’s office. Brando picked the lock, and we got ourselves into position.

  05:30. It’s been a hell of a couple days. As we expected, the Fritzes responded to our opening salvo with an all-Britain crackdown. Our rail bombing spurred the mass arrests of suspected dissidents all over Yorkshire. The mayor of York is in charge of these roundups, which is why we’ve made ourselves an early appointment with Herr Bürgermeister to dissuade him from killing the people caught in the raids.

  Once we pull this operation, everyone who works in this building will be prime suspects, whether they’re antislavery or not. Miriam has already evacuated the Circle sympathizers to the Rabbi’s camp.

  05:35. My drugs keep going out of balance. Right now my skin is vibrating from an excessive amount of Madrenaline. My mind is hyperaware but can’t focus. I take a few deep breaths and try to calm down. This doesn’t work, so I have my neuroinjector dose some Kalmers—a little—to try and find equilibrium.

  As usual there’s a lot riding on our mission, but this one feels more personal. We’ve spent time with these people. We know their names, and we’ve seen their scars. Slaves always get the badoingers beaten out of them, and Europe’s Jews are no exception.

  Miriam told us one story I’ll never forget. Her first master, a fat German factory owner named Günther, housed his slaves in an old shipping container behind his factory down in Hull. Günther’s facility was right on the harbor, so it was simple to ship raw materials in and slave-produced items out.

  One night, old Günther was reviewing his accounts. His business insurance had skyrocketed because the local Circle of Zion cells were sabotaging so much of the region’s industry. Earlier that month a nearby clothing company had been attacked. Circle activists dumped a shipping container of raw cloth into the harbor and then spirited the factory’s slave labor force away in boats. Günther bitterly saw he was now required to carry so much additional coverage for his slaves that should they accidentally die, the insurance payout would be higher than the cost of replacing them.

  Which gave him an idea.

  As Miriam tells it, one night she and her fellow laborers were in their unlit, rust-covered container. They were woken by a heavy tractor growling to life outside. A loud clang at one end of their metal living quarters rousted the few slaves who’d managed to remain asleep. The rumbling shipping container screeched over concrete as the roaring tractor shoved them past the loading bays. Chips of paint and flakes of old metal rained down on the people trapped inside.

  Miriam pounded on the door until her whole world tipped over. Screams pealed through the darkness, followed by silence. They weren’t being pushed anymore, but they weren’t sitting still, either. One voice guessed that perhaps their masters had simply relocated them. Then another voice said he felt like they were floating. Finally, a third voice, farthest from the door, confirmed what Günther had done.

  “Water! There’s water coming in!”

  Miriam was crushed against the front door as everyone pressed forward, bellowing in terror. The sea flooded in through the rusty, hole-pocked floor. The container’s front edge caught on an old dock piling, and their floating coffin tipped onto its back end. Miriam grasped the door handle as her fellows slid and sank to what was fast becoming the bottom of their tomb. A ferocious battle erupted, hands and feet slashing out in the blackness to stay on top and gain a few extra seconds of life.

  The cries and thrashes became weaker and fewer until they finally stopped. Miriam hung from the steel box’s top, in water up to her chest. She prayed and prepared to die. She took a breath, then another, and another. The water had stopped rising. The container had come to rest on the harbor’s floor, standing on its end with the
top still exposed. Although the door was locked, there were enough holes and cracks that air still flowed inside. Miriam floated among the corpses until morning, when Günther had his crane operators retrieve the container.

  When they found Miriam still alive, Günther transferred her to his cousin’s cannery outside of Driffield so he could write off his slaves as a total loss to his insurers. He also didn’t want Miriam contradicting the details of his story about being raided by the Circle of Zion. Günther’s cousin in Driffield, by the way, is the lummox whose neck was sliced open with a can lid. Miriam had clearly had enough of slave life.

  05:50. I shift my weight a little and try to stretch my legs. The drugs have finally balanced out, so my skin has stopped trying to move to another ZIP Code. I mentally review this assignment for the umpteenth time. It’s a classic snatch job, featuring the extra thrill of being deep in enemy territory and surrounded by bad guys. I’d check in with Brando, but we’re on comm-silence. He’s probably busy proving some obscure mathematical problem like E = mc to the square root of pluribus unum.

  Footsteps echo in the hallway. A key clicks in the office’s lock. I note the time on my father’s watch.

  06:00. The door opens beneath me. A plump little man waddles in, shuts the door, and crosses the dimly lit office to the desk. He switches on a small lamp, and a pool of light pours onto his face. The man wears a suit and tie, and his hair is neatly trimmed. I compare this man’s face with the picture in my mission briefing. It’s him. I give myself a dose of Madrenaline and vault across the room. My hair brushes the ceiling for a second until I begin my descent.

  The pudgy Bürgermeister has just settled in his chair when I cannonball into his lap. The impact reduces his wooden chair to its component boards and fasteners. He crashes to the floor while I roll to my feet. I body-slam him and fire my knee into his groin, which elicits a loud cry. I stifle his blabber-box with my hand, muffling his shouts while Brando pulls himself out from under the couch. My partner rushes over to us, digs into his X-bag, and plucks out his egg-shaped drug-injector gadget. Its name is Drug Optimization System: Epidermal, or DOSE for short. We used to stab people with plain old hypodermics before we got these high-tech jobbies.

  My partner holds the DOSE against Chubbo’s leg and triggers the injector. The effect is almost instantaneous. Our target goes limp. In fact, he stops moving altogether.

  “Jeez, Darwin. Did you kill him?”

  “Of course not; he’s only unconscious.”

  “For how long?” I climb off the mayor’s squishy body.

  “Honestly, I’m not sure. This stuff is new and hasn’t exactly been tested.” Brando begins searching the mayor’s desk. “It won’t kill him. They assured me of that.”

  Let’s hope so. I bend down and grab Chubbo’s hands. Then I hoist him onto my back and start to lug him out of the office. We’re halfway across the room when the door opens. A young woman enters. She wears a tarty little black dress over black stockings and strappy high heels. Seems the Bürgermeister likes a hot breakfast.

  I jettison the mayor and pounce the chick like a gorilla attacking a banana salesman. I clamp my hand across her yapper and pin her against the wall. I whip out my pistol and hiss, “Stille!” Be still!

  The tart whimpers, then shuts up when I press Li’l Bertha’s barrel against her cheek. Hot breath from her nostrils rushes over my fingers, and her legs tremble against mine.

  Brando says, “Scarlet, don’t kill that woman!”

  “Darwin, I don’t see a lot of options here.”

  “Hang on; I’ll take care of her.” Brando comes over and administers a DOSE of Snooze-Fast into Tarty’s arm. She’s transformed from a stiff statue of terror to a flaccid leaf of boiled spinach in nothing flat. The woman droops forward and slumps to the floor.

  “Swell. Now what?” I gripe. “I can’t carry them both!”

  “You bring the target, and I’ll take the woman. She’s small.”

  “Darwin, who’s going to check our flanks? Let’s leave her.”

  Brando hikes Sleepy Tart over his shoulders. “No, I think she’ll help us make the mayor an offer he can’t refuse.” My partner heads for the door. “C’mon, let’s get outta here.”

  Fine. I pick up Herr Bürgermeister again and follow Brando down the corridor. The town hall is still silent except for our captives’ shoes scraping the floor as we drag them toward the window we snuck in an hour ago.

  I open the window and drape my burden across the sill. Then I jump to the alley and get ready. Brando tips Herr Bürgermeister outside and over two hundred pounds of sausage-fed blobbiness whops into my arms and damn near dislocates my shoulders. Hot, stinging pain lances through my Modded elbows and knees.

  “You all right?” Brando comms, “That looked like it hurt.”

  “Yeah, no shit; he’s a fuckin’ blimp.” I lay Bürgerpüdge on the ground, then hold my arms out and waggle my fingers. “C’mon, gimme the fraulein.”

  Tarty weighs less than I do, and catching her is much easier. My partner drops down to join me and our floppy hostages.

  Ground floor: tools, guns, kidnapped Krauts.

  I run out front to the street. Our getaway driver waits in his truck, parked a block away. I point my father’s watch in his direction and flash the light twice fast, then twice slow. The truck engine starts. I hoof it to the building’s rear, passing my partner as he lugs the Bürgertart toward our pickup point. I boost the mayor off the ground and haul him after Brando.

  The truck parks next to the town hall, and the driver gets out. He’s an antislavery activist named Arvid who delivers milk to supermarkets by day and fugitive slaves to the Circle by night. He also takes advantage of his circuitous delivery routes around Yorkshire to gather intel on German police activity.

  Arvid helps us dump our guests into the rear of his truck. We climb in after them, and our driver shuts the doors behind us. Moments later, Arvid reappears in his seat up front and accelerates away from the town hall. As Brando secures Mister and Mistress Mayor, I check my watch.

  06:04. Not bad. We’d hoped to make our exit in less than three minutes, but four minutes is acceptable considering what a giant improv we had to pull when that woman snuck in.

  Brando tapes balls of cloth into our captives’ mouths, then we go sit with Arvid. The truck’s cabin is warm and smells like hot coffee. Arvid lifts a plastic mug out of a cup holder and gives it to me. I open the top and take a swig. The coffee burns my throat a little, but the heat feels good. I hand the cup to my partner, who holds it under his nose to let the warmth wash over his face.

  We jounce along one of York’s insanely narrow streets from Ye Olde Days, our tires brumbling over well-worn cobblestones. Timber-framed houses pass so close on either side that I feel like we’re being squeezed out of a tube of toothpaste. The truck zigzags through the old part of town and coasts onto a modern two-lane highway.

  Arvid says in German, “You two had better sit on the floor. I’ve seen lots of police this morning. Best if you’re less visible.”

  We smush ourselves onto the cab floor. We’ll have to ignore my whole not-too-intimate-with-each-other thing. I park myself between Brando’s legs and lean into his chest while he wraps one arm around my waist to keep me from sliding around. Now all I can see are Arvid’s feet on the truck’s pedals, the man’s hands on the wheel, and part of his face.

  “So, Arvid,” I ask, “what brings you to this kind of thing?”

  He says, “My mother was in television before the war. When the Nazis came to power, all of her Jewish colleagues were fired. After Hitler was assassinated and the Social Democrats were reelected, she assumed her Jewish friends’ jobs and civil rights would be reinstated. When they were not, my mother began working to help the Jews escape from Europe. She was caught in 1946, but by then she had helped many people run away.”

  Arvid holds his hand up, palm facing out. “Shh,” he whispers. We hear a line of heavy vehicles motoring the other way, toward
York. Arvid’s eyes flit between the road ahead and the passing convoy.

  “Ten trucks full of soldiers, plus two trucks towing artillery pieces,” he says, mostly to himself.

  I whisper to Brando, “Artillery? Who’s that for?”

  He pauses, then quietly says, “Us.”

  Shit. My upgrades won’t help me steer clear of fucking artillery shells. We’re agents, not soldiers. I try to distract myself by asking our driver, “What happened to your mother?”

  Arvid’s face darkens. “Die Teutsch took her to Berlin and chopped her head off.”

  * * *

  CORE

  HIS-NAZI-021

  Legacy of the Nazi Party

  The Nazi Party had hordes of members installed as civil servants, policemen, and military commanders when it was effectively dissolved by Hitler’s assassination in 1942. Although they removed their swastikas, many of these men and women retained the twisted worldview of their deceased Führer. Several Nazi agencies live on, albeit with modified charters and leadership.

  Abwehr

  Although not a Nazi agency, the Abwehr (German for “Defense”) was heavily engaged by Hitler’s command to collect and interpret intelligence. The Abwehr’s performance was at times inconsistent.

  In June 1940, two glaring Abwehr breakdowns occurred within hours of each other. First the agency filed an analysis that wildly overestimated the USSR’s preparedness to withstand a German invasion. Their next report to Hitler is so inaccurate, it appears to be a complete fabrication of Great Britain’s supposedly advanced progress toward developing an atomic weapon.

  Spurious or not, the historical impact of these reports was significant. Hitler was shocked that “the gangster” Churchill might soon have the Bomb, and he dedicated all of Germany’s resources to the successful invasion of England the following year.