Brandenburg Gate

Chapter 7

* * *

* * *

Friday, November 2, 1945
3:11 p.m.
Paris

I didn't exactly run back to Rhys' flat; but I did walk very fast.

If Rhys' Sûreté detail was indeed tailing me, on foot, I owed them an apology. But my head was still spinning, and my thoughts were still racing, with everything I'd heard today, with all the plans we'd just made.

And, there was that one thing I still had to do today, that I needed to get done before the light failed.

But apart from everything else swirling around in my head — the overwhelming worry, had I made the right decision, just now — ? Could Ian, Mister Grey that is, and MacLaughlin really pull it off, and get Rhys back? And, what the fucking hell was going on in Rhys' command, what was left of the OSS, to put him in danger like this — ?

Apart from all that, one thought caromed around inside my skull.

 

I was going to Berlin. To be with Rhys; to be with him, to collect him, and bring him back.

 

Down the now-familiar streets, with the scattering of dry, brown leaves crunching underfoot. Down along and over the Seine, the water level visibly low in this epic season of drought. Past the political posters, and the worn-looking people on the streets, and the empty and almost-empty shops, my overcoat off now and over my arm, feeling the refreshing bite of the cold air on my bare face …

 

I was going to Berlin.

* * *

As soon as I got home — in less than two weeks, I already thought of Rhys' flat as 'home' — I started in.

First, I told Madame Duplessis that I was going away for a few days, and would she please see that our bread ration, Rhys' and mine, was temporarily given to the Bouygues sisters, upstairs — ?

These were old friends of Rhys' family, fabulously elegant, fabulously frail, who had somehow survived the Occupation; possibly because they were too ancient to require much in the way of food. Rhys and I had had tea with them, twice. They were very dear to him, and he had long since made discreet, standing arrangements for them to be fed, with meals from L'Oiseau Rouge, among other places. But I'd been in Paris long enough to understand, from Rhys, that fresh bread is much more than just a staple, it's … special. He'd said that it's hard to describe; but to the French, there is something almost spiritual about fresh bread, and an extra ration is always welcome, and never wasted.

Maybe the opposite of Spam, then, I thought.

Then it was up the broad marble steps to the flat, and more fumbling with the front door lock, which despite all the practice seemed to never get any easier for me to negotiate; I cursed at it, as the tumblers fell, and fell again, the keys clashing against the thick wood, until I finally got the damn thing open.

 

Back to the echoing silence, the emptiness. But this time, there was hope, to go along with the fear.

 

First things first. I headed straightaways down the hall to the study; I dropped my coat and cap unceremoniously on the divan, and turned to the writing desk.

This was, like most everything else in the flat, an elegant thing, an escritoire of beautiful inlaid wood, the desktop blotter surrounded on three sides by drawers and cubbyholes and places for inkwells. Papers and letters were arrayed in some of the niches, and the blotter had been well-used; Rhys worked here, I knew. The desk was under one of the tall windows; the pale November light fell on on it, fully.

He'd showed me the drawer, where he kept the key. But which one was it, again — ?

I remembered it'd been on the left.

The first drawer I tried held cancelled checks, and invoices, in tied up bundles. I took them out, and pressed my fingers against the inside back of the drawer, the way he'd showed me. Nope. I put everything back the way it was.

The next drawer held a bundle of old letters, in their original envelopes — 

And I realized, with a start, that they were from me. I took them out, and gazed down at the first one, for a long moment; the address was written out in a shaky hand, that I barely recognized as mine. It was the first letter I'd written to Rhys, from the military hospital in England, right after he'd wired me … I remembered how I'd felt writing it, so well, all the emotions that had just been crashing through me — 

I shook my head, and put them down. And I pressed my fingers against the inside back of the drawer. And I felt — movement. The hidden door opened, moved by a spring.

And inside, was the key I was looking for.

I left my old letters on the desktop, and walked down the hallway to the last bedroom on this floor of the flat.

*

"Just in case," Rhys had told me; when he'd showed me the big chest, at the foot of the empty, unused bed. "You should know how to get into it."

It'd been on the second day of my leave, and his face and tone were grim. Even after so much time apart, I could tell he loathed the thing.

Well, that stood to reason. Rhys had told me that the chest held guns, 'and other equipment'. The tools of his trade, he'd said, ironically. And guns were serious business, in war or peace.

And the business of killing was utterly, utterly loathsome. We both agreed.

"I'll arrange to get this disposed of, before we go home," he'd said. "It will be a job. But for now, it has to stay here. And as long as you're here, you need to know how to get into the chest. And where I keep the key." This came out, flatly.

"Okay," I'd said, quietly. But in spite of his grimness, my heart had been singing, on some level. 'Before we go home,' he'd said. I remembered how light-headed I'd felt, for that one second. Just the words; ' … we go home …  '

*

The chest was an ugly thing, easily four feet long, and completely out of place in the flat. It was massive, heavy-looking, with battered, green-painted wood bound all over with iron, and utterly utilitarian. It had an equally massive, modern-looking padlock.

 

I figured it held Rhys' service sidearm, his Colt automatic; which I badly needed, for tomorrow's trip to Berlin.

 

I fitted the key into the padlock, and it opened easily, with a strong 'click'. I took off the padlock, opened up the three latches, and lifted up the lid, carefully.

Yep; it had guns. Pistols.

There were three of them, laid out side-by-side in a kind of shallow top tray in the chest, sort of like the top tray in my Army footlocker.

But I didn't recognize them. Two were automatics of some kind; their magazines were out, arranged neatly close by. The third was a big, heavy-looking revolver. There were no holsters.

The magazines, I could see, were loaded. All three guns looked like they came from different makers, or maybe countries. And they looked well cared for. I could smell the gun oil, easily.

I didn't touch them. They wouldn't help me. I needed Rhys' service sidearm.

I very carefully lifted up the top tray, to set it aside — 

And I almost dropped the damn thing. I actually jumped back, some.

"Jesus fucking Christ! Jesus!"

There was another tray underneath the top one. It held a machine-gun, a German machine-gun.

Well, to be more accurate, it was a machine-pistol, with a pistol grip and a collapsible stock, black and ugly and evil-looking as sin. It was a Schmeisser — or we called them Schmeissers, anyway — and all the prison guards at my Stalag used them. I'd been prodded with them, had them pointed at me, casually, deliberately, menacingly, far, far more times than I could count, or wanted to remember. I'd seen them fired, warning shots, more than once.

I just stared at it, for a moment, as I waited for my heart rate to go down, and for the immediate shock of it to pass.

I noticed all the too-familiar details. The grips. The sling. The long magazine — in this case, detached, and off to the side.

That magazine, too, was fully loaded.

It was like opening up a trunk, and finding a rattlesnake inside. The shock was that bad.

"Jesus Christ, Rhys," I breathed; and then I carefully, gently set the top tray, the one with the pistols, down on the parquet floor. "Oh, Jesus."

I looked at the ugly thing, for another, long moment; then I gently and carefully lifted up this tray, too, using the cutout handholds on the tray sides. It was surprisingly heavy, I actually grunted as I lifted it up; and I swung it over, and set it down very carefully, next to the top tray.

I took care not to touch the goddamn fucking Schmeisser.

I looked down into the chest; and at last, I found it. Rhys' service sidearm, his Colt automatic, along with its holster. I exhaled, at that.

I found a great deal else.

Ammunition, mostly; boxes and boxes and boxes of it, labelled in French and German and English, it was an enormous store. But there were also spools of wire, and other boxes with cryptic letter-and-number markings which I did not understand … 

The two boxes marked 'BLASTING CAPS', and 'Handle Carefully', were clear enough to me, though. They were stamped with the name of an American firm that I recognized.

Jesus Christ.

I reached in, and retrieved Rhys' pistol, and holster; and being very, very careful, my heart pounding hard, I checked the magazine, and was unsurprised to see it too was fully loaded. I set it aside, far apart from the two trays; and then I slumped down cross-legged onto the floor, and I stared at the two trays, the guns, and the chest.

 

Well.

 

As explosives caches went, it really wasn't all that impressive. My crew and I had flown thousands and thousands of pounds of high-explosives, on every one of our missions during the war. We'd walked casually around the bomb-trucks, as they'd been trundled out to be loaded into our ships, day after day …

 

This was different. This wasn't an Air Force base. This was home. Or at any rate, this was Rhys' home, and that meant it was my home, too.

 

I kept on staring down, at all of the guns, all the explosives; the beautifully-fitted parquet floors, the gray November light, coming through the tall, elegant windows … and it came to me.

It was time for me to get myself under control.

It was time for me to stop letting my mind go careening off into five different directions all at once, fueled by my hopes, my fears, my wild, ridiculous speculations.

I needed to treat what was coming with discipline. I needed to shut down the wild part of my head, and my emotions, and treat this all like a problem in flying. It was time to concentrate, like I had when my crew's lives depended on me.

Because Rhys' life might depend on me, now. At least in part.

It might.

"Oh, fuck, Rhys," I sighed out loud, again; as I looked down into the chest.

NEXT CHAPTER