Rhineland Inheritance Read online

  She toyed with her cup, her eyes downcast. Jake waited quietly. At that moment, he would have been willing to wait for her all his life, and still count himself lucky. Then she said softly, “If only I could find my way back to what he taught me about the Invisible, maybe I could count my life as worth living again.” She looked at him. “Do you think it might happen?”

  “I don’t know,” Jake replied quietly. “I’ve never been much of a believing man myself.”

  “He would have liked you, Jake” she said, the tender smile returning. “He used to say that strength wed with wisdom was God’s most underrated gift.”

  “I don’t think of myself as particularly strong,” Jake countered. “And I don’t rank high in wisdom.”

  But she chose not to hear. “It’s so easy to talk about God when I think of him,” she mused aloud. “And so hard otherwise. I wish I could understand why.”

  Chapter Six

  The next morning, Servais was ebullient over Jake’s scheme. “A masterpiece,” he declared. “A stroke of genius.”

  “Just trying to feed a few kids,” Jake said.

  “Nonsense. You wait and see, my friend. This will benefit not only your young charges but us as well.”

  “They don’t have a chance in a million of finding treasure, and you know it,” Jake protested.

  “I was not speaking of the treasure,” Pierre answered. “Not just, anyway.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let us wait and see,” he replied. “Come. This is an important meeting today, and we must not be late.”

  The incoming French forces had established an initial base of operations next to the Rhine. The great river began high in the Swiss Alps, ran up through Germany, and ended its twelve-hundred-mile journey off the Dutch coast. It also formed the border between France and Germany from Basel to Karlsruhe, a distance of some one hundred miles. To the west of this border lay the province of Alsace, over which the Germans and French had fought for more than two hundred years. To the east loomed the Black Forest foothills. The river jinked and curved and split and tumbled over drops. The skeletal remains of bombed-out bridges grew giant icicles and stood as silent memorials to the recent war.

  As Pierre set his customary blistering pace down the rutted road, he filled Jake in on the situation confronting the local French patrols. Boats were being intercepted nightly. The vessels were usually loaded to the gunnels with contraband or displaced aliens. These would-be immigrants wandered throughout Europe, in search of a better life. Their final destination remained unclear. Anywhere was better than the bombed wastelands of Eastern Europe, now occupied and stripped to the bone by Soviet troops. Most of these refugees were half-starved and feverish and on their last legs. When stopped they made no protest. They had long since reached a point where they continued moving only because there was no place where they could stand still.

  When Jake and Pierre arrived at the camp, they found the tragedy of these displaced persons mirrored in the deep furrows creasing Major Gilbert’s features. His office was built on a rise overlooking a massive internment camp, which used the Rhine’s sweeping expanse as one natural boundary. Through the windows Jake could see tall wooden guardhouses rising every several hundred meters along the river. Guards watched over the flowing waters twenty-four hours a day. Jake was unimpressed. He saw with a soldier’s eye, and noted how difficult it would be to police the undulating terrain with its many curves and crevices. No doubt a score of boats got through for every one caught.

  The discussion between Servais and Gilbert was in French. Jake did little besides sit and look attentive. But he could tell Servais was getting nowhere. The major repeatedly shook his head, barked a reply, and flung an arm toward the large-scale map pinned to his wall. The response was clear. Until more troops arrived, the major was doing the best he could.

  Pierre sighed in defeat, paused, then launched into a gentler assault. This time the major softened. And softened further still. Dark eyes turned in Jake’s direction. The major tut-tutted in time to Pierre’s words. Jake struggled not to squirm under the major’s gaze, and wished he knew what was going on.

  “Les pauvres garçons,” the major said when Servais had finished his tale. “Et les filles. Les filles!”

  “I informed the major about your little project,” Servais murmured in an aside.

  Jake nodded, concealed his alarm, and said conversationally, “If Colonel Beecham hears about this he’s going to roast us both over a slow fire.”

  The major launched into a hand-waving exposition, full of sighs and headshakes and liquid gazes into the distance. “The major has three children around that age,” Servais translated. “It breaks his heart to think of what those hundreds of children must be suffering.”

  “Strike that,” Jake said. “It’s fifty kids at the outside.”

  Pierre gave his head a minute shake. “I found it necessary to employ a bit of literary license.”

  “Meaning?”

  Pierre shrugged. “I lied.”

  But the major was already up and moving for the door, ushering them along with urgent gestures. Reluctantly Jake allowed himself to be led down a well-worn path toward a trio of warehouses lining one side of the camp. As he walked, Jake glanced over the wire barrier and into the internment camp. His look was returned by a thousand watchful, silent gazes. Bearded men. Kerchiefed women and girls. Boys in oversized caps and ill-fitting clothes. All with a vague sense of alienness that marked them as Eastern Europeans. All with a stillness borne on pleas so intense that no words spoken to a stranger could hold them. At the warehouse entrance Jake returned the guard’s salute, and entered behind Pierre and the major. Inside he found organized pandemonium.

  At their end, supplies from a pair of trucks with red crosses stencilled on sides and back were being unloaded by jostling, sweating, shouting men. In the middle section a group ran to and fro, all carrying clipboards and pens, all pointing and shouting and counting and waving frantically for attention. Farther back, yet another group sectioned big piles of clothing and supplies into much smaller piles, tied them with string, and shoved them on—all the while sweating and screaming and pointing and grabbing for more of this or that. At the very far end, a calm group passed on the little tied parcels to a seemingly endless line of waiting refugees. With each package went a few kind words in a language most of the refugees did not understand. Jake thought the entire scene looked extremely French.

  The major immediately leapt into a swearing match with the two truck drivers. The pair gave as good as they got, at least in the beginning. But gradually they were whittled down to sulking submission. When the major turned away, the drivers retreated behind stinking French cigarettes and serious scowls.

  “The major regrets he can only offer us the use of these two trucks,” Servais translated, wearing a lopsided grin.

  “For what?” Jake demanded.

  “My friend,” Servais said around his rictus grin, “I would strongly advise you to bow and give solemn thanks.”

  Major Gilbert wheeled about and paraded down the aisle, throwing grandiose gestures at the wealth stacked up around him. Pierre hustled alongside, dragging Jake with him, and translating, “All this has been entrusted to me for those in need. Inside or outside the wire, what does it matter? I feel I can trust you to give to those whose life might depend upon the giving. This trust is a rare and precious thing, and one which should be built upon.”

  Jake protested, “What about the refugees? Don’t they need this stuff?”

  The major stopped, and replied solemnly through Pierre, “My detainees are being seen to. They are receiving clothes and food and medicine and shelter. The greatest of their needs, however, is not to be answered by what you see here. They need a home. They need freedom. They need a regime where they do not have to live in fear of the knock on their door. They need a country where the sky does not rain death.”

  Gilbert gave a magnificent shrug. “Alas, these things I canno
t offer. So I feed the bodies, and hope that someone will arrive soon with a way to feed their souls.”

  ****

  Moments later, Jake and Pierre were in the jeep on their way back to base, followed by their convoy of two borrowed trucks. “How could you do a thing like that?” Jake demanded.

  Servais was all innocence. “Like what?”

  “Make the major think I was playing Pied Piper to a townful of kids.”

  “Amazing what a desperate man is capable of,” Servais replied. “Until I hit on that, I was afraid the only way I could crack his armor was with a mortar shell.” For a change, Servais was keeping his speed down to a level that did not leave Jake gritting his teeth and hanging on for dear life. The pair of trucks grinding along behind were incapable of faster speed, loaded as heavily as they were.

  “Only now it’s gone from three dozen kids to three hundred,” Jake complained. “I could throttle you.”

  “I would advise you not to try, my friend.”

  “Yeah, I saw what you did to Connors’ goons. What was that?”

  In North Africa, I fought with a man from Thailand. A Frenchman by birth, but he had lived most of his life in Indochina. He taught me.”

  “It’s impressive to watch.”

  “For a while we weren’t sure they were going to let us fight in the war,” Pierre said. “De Gaulle was always arguing, arguing, and for the longest time all we did was sit around and try to gather news of what was happening. The waiting was terrible.”

  “I’ve never been any good at that either,” Jake said. “Waiting.”

  “So he offered to teach me,” Pierre continued. “Which helped pass the time. It was not easy to learn.”

  “It doesn’t look easy. As a matter of fact, it looks on the wrong side of impossible.”

  “That is my specialty,” Pierre replied. “Doing the impossible.”

  “Great,” Jake said, stretching out as much as the jeep’s cramped confines would allow. “Then we’ll just let you be the one to sell the colonel on this.”

  * * *

  Colonel Beecham scowled as they appeared in the doorway to his office. “Not you two again.”

  “Promising,” Jake murmured. “Very promising.”

  Pierre began, “Sir, we have had—”

  “Don’t stand out there like a couple of bellboys,” the colonel snapped. “Come in and shut the door.”

  “Yessir.” Pierre scowled at Jake’s barely repressed grin as he turned to shut the door behind them. Keeping himself rigidly erect, he started over, “Sir, we—”

  “Keep it short and sweet, mister,” the colonel barked. “And whatever it is that you’re aiming to work up toward, the answer is no. I’ve got too much going on to get involved with whatever fun and games you two have thought up now.”

  Jake covered himself with a discreet cough.

  “Sir,” Pierre persevered, “we have received the support of the French garrison commander, Major Gilbert, for our children’s relief project.”

  “So?” The colonel’s attention was already being drawn back to the papers littering his desk.

  “I, ah, believe Chaplain Fox is a little short of storage space just now,” Pierre said delicately.

  “So go see Stores,” Beecham said. “Why are you bothering me with this?”

  “Yessir.” Jake spoke for the first time. Before Pierre could open his mouth again, Jake grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around. “Thank you, sir. Sorry to have troubled you, sir.”

  But before they could get out the door, Beecham said, “Just a minute.”

  “Almost home free,” Jake murmured.

  “Come back in here and shut that door.” When they had done so, Colonel Beecham demanded, “Exactly what kind of support are we talking about here?”

  “We’re not quite sure, sir,” Pierre replied.

  “Not sure? Not sure of what?”

  “Well, you see, sir, the major got sort of impatient when they were loading the second truck, and sort of took over himself. After that, they just threw in whatever they grabbed first.”

  Colonel Beecham leaned away from his desk and said quietly, “Second what?”

  “Truck, sir.” Pierre motioned lamely toward the unseen front of the building. “Parked just outside, sir.”

  “You have two truckloads of supplies?”

  “Yessir.”

  “Whose life did you mortgage for that payload, mister?”

  “Nobody’s, sir. You see, the major has three children—”

  “Stop right there,” Beecham snapped. “I am absolutely positive I don’t want to hear any more of this. Just tell me one thing, mister. Is any of this payload stolen?”

  “Nossir.”

  “Contraband?”

  “Not a bit of it, sir.”

  “You haven’t passed off a paymaster’s chit?”

  “We didn’t have to sign anything, sir.”

  “Sort of manna from heaven, is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

  “I suppose you might put it that way, sir.”

  “Get out of here, both of you. And if you know what’s good for you, you’ll steer clear of me for the next few days. You hear what I’m saying?”

  “Loud and clear, yessir.”

  “Scram.”

  They swept through the door at lightning speed, closed it softly, breathing a silent sigh of relief. Then they caught a hint of noise from behind the colonel’s closed door. It sounded like a chuckle. Jake formed a question with his eyes. Pierre frowned and shook his head in reply. Not possible.

  ****

  In the hallway, Jake said, “I’m thinking.”

  “Don’t make yourself feverish,” Pierre warned.

  “I’m thinking we could use some reinforcements for breaking into Stores,” Jake said.

  Pierre considered the idea. “Sally?”

  Jake nodded. “Come on, let’s see if she’s around.”

  On the way down the hall, Pierre asked, “Where were you until after curfew last night?”

  “Don’t ask.”

  “Sally?”

  “I told you, don’t ask.” They walked on in silence, then Jake said, “She was right, you know.”

  “About what?”

  “About us wanting to turn that little confrontation the other night into a battle. We didn’t even try to work out a peace.”

  To his surprise, Pierre did not contradict him. “That is the trouble with women, my friend. They are often right. Too often for their own good.” He inspected the man walking alongside him. “You like her, yes?”

  “Very much,” Jake confessed. “Maybe too much.”

  “Yes, I am liking her too. She is not only beautiful but smart enough not to be trapped by her own beauty. That is a rare trait, my friend. Very rare.”

  “She also has walls a hundred miles high.”

  “Ah, but every wall must have a door.” Pierre grinned. “The question is, which one of us has the key?”

  * * *

  Sally was both there and available to help. She gave no sign to Jake that anything had taken place between them the night before, and treated Pierre’s suave banter with polite disdain.

  The trucks, however, brought a rise. When she had walked around them both, peered into the open flaps, smiled a greeting to the still disgruntled drivers, she walked back over and asked, “So who did you kill?”

  “It’s a gift,” Jake said.

  “The first of many,” Pierre boasted.

  Jake cast him a dark glance and said, “The silver-tongued devil here to my right told a French major that I was taking responsibility for the safety of several hundred kids.”

  “Well,” Sally declared, “we can’t make the gallant captain into a liar, can we?”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Let’s find a place to stow these riches, then go have a talk with the chaplain.” Sally climbed onto the running board of the first truck and pointed it forward and around the corner.
/>   Stores was contained within its own private compound, and protected by its own guard contingent. Assignment to guard duty within Stores was one of the most fought-after postings in all Germany. Which Stores did not matter. Each was a gold mine of opportunity. Even the lowliest of privates assigned to Stores possessed an air of smug sleekness. Access to Stores meant a ready supply of trading goods, and in the broken-down economy of war-torn Germany, anything could be had for a price. Anything at all.

  The Stores major was a banker in uniform, and wore an expression that remained constantly on the verge of saying no. He was singularly unimpressed with Sally’s request for help. “Much as I’d like to help you, Miss Anders, I’m afraid storing your items here is absolutely out of the question.”

  “It’s just for a couple of days, Frank. For goodness’ sake, you’re bound to have some corner you’re not using.”

  “That’s not the point. We simply can’t set this sort of precedent. You’re a bright girl, I’m sure you understand what I’m saying. We’re talking about principle here.”

  Sally leaned across the desk, her eyes flashing. “I’ll give you principle, you pompous stuffed shirt. I’ve got sixteen loads of goods on requisition right now, just waiting for the colonel’s signature. It’s a shame the paper work is about to get buried. For about ten years.”

  “You can’t do that,” the major protested.

  “You just watch me.” She held his gaze long enough to drive the point home. “Now please march outside and find us a nice, dry corner. And keep it well separated from any of your own stuff. If I catch any of your sticky-fingered mutts nosing around our goods, I’ll make sure your next shipment of cigarettes winds up in Siberia.”

  While the goods were being unloaded, Sally went off and returned with two able-looking enlisted men, and posted them on either side of the supplies. She also made a hand-lettered sign and pinned it to the first stack of boxes. The sign read, “If you’re found here tonight, you’ll be found here in the morning.”