Fiction! With Nazis! And skewers!
So... we return where we left off. Valentin is in the pub basement, Dante and his fellow agent Bianca have the upper hand.
OR DO THEY?
12-Barkeep
Bianca grabbed a seat at the bar, where a glass of whiskey awaited her. But instead of a bartender, Sinclair stood behind the counter, smirking, both hands on the bartop.
“And what did you gather, Agent St. Cyr.”
“He's a big deal, all right,” she told him, then chugged down some of the whiskey and lit a cigarette.
“Don't keep us in suspense, my dear, tell us what you've learned,” Sinclair leaned forward, conspiratorial.
“He's French,” she whispered.
Sinclair pulled back, whether from surprise or revulsion at the intimacy of her voice, she didn't know.
“He might be half-Russian, and he lived in Russia, but he's French and educated and lost a wife and child in the war. The latest war, he fought in the other one too, at Sonne. The wife and child's names are Oksana and Aleksandra or Aleksandr- at least, those are the names he reacted to- he won't respond to pain but has a serious dependence on alcohol.”
She finished off her drink and sighed, loudly.
“Well done,” said Sinclar, “And, as I suspected, he is a bigger fish in the Communist pond than we anticipated?”
“Hey barkeep,” Bianca leaned forward on her elbow, empty glass in hand.
Sinclair refilled it. She didn't look so bad, in the dim light, with the success of the evening radiating from her face. The play-acting suited her, she becoming a mysterious lady as he became a humble barkeep.
“He will be. Or would have been, if we hadn't caught him,” she said.
“Being educated and French and such,” Sinclair gestured toward the pub's nonfuctional beer taps, then to the ceiling, “Not just ex-con scum. Though if the Commie bosses don't recognize his potential, he may be of little use to us.”
“His resilience is an example to us all, though. I like him,” Bianca gave Sinclair an off-kilter smile.
Sinclair watched her stub her cigarette out of the bartop with a cringe, but said nothing. It wasn't as if the place would be accepting patrons any time in the foreseeable future. And Bianca was in a strange mood.
“I'll relieve the man watching the cars,” she said, and stood.
“You should write your report first,” said Sinclair.
She waved him away, “You're not my fuckin boss. I'll get to it in a minute, but I want some air.”
And Bianca paraded out, to relieve the guard at the cars and tell him to check on the prisoners. It was nine minutes and thirty seconds since she had left the prisoners in the cellar.
Down below, meanwhile, Guzman had spent the first five minutes moaning and griping and struggling from his bonds.
Valentin lay on the floor where the Nazi woman had left him.
“Get me up off this fucking floor,” he croaked.
“What for?” Guzman brushed off his clothes, ran fingers through his beard.
The chair's back had splintered worse than Valentin's arms, miraculously, and he writhed the cuffs out from around the broken wood.
“The guard should be here soon, and-”
“Hasn't been ten minutes yet,” said Valentin, “What are you going to do when the guard shows up? Fight him with that fucking beard of yours?”
“I can't take you with me,” said Guzman.
“Just as far as the cars, then we go our separate ways.”
“I can't.”
“You can't get yourself out of this place. I can get you out! Just get me out of this damned fucking piece of shit char,” Valentin's voice ground to a halt.
Guzman's eyes darted around nervously. He was a doctor, an expert in experiments, not a soldier or a spy. His knowledge dealt with the unconscious men with exposed brains. Causing pain then was no problem, but he was useless against a conscious and mobile opponent.
He knelt beside Valentin and worked the ropes from his ankles, then sat the chair up, forcing the cuffs free of any splintered wood.
Valentin grimaced looking at his feet. Each skewer had to be pulled out, making squishing, fleshy sounds. The first one came out accompanied by needles of agony, and a feeling like running his fingernails over a chalkboard.
Stalling would make it worse. He ripped the skewers out, one after the other. The pain hit him in the stomach a moment after the last skewer came free. His toes bled, tremors ran through his legs, but that possibility of survival loomed larger and larger. Let that be the fuel, he thought, and if I can get through the next half hour I can make it back to Paris.
Valentin tried not to think about how ridiculous he looked, in his underwear, hands cuffed behind his back, limping from pain and numbness.
“Grab that stool. Stand beside the door,” He told Guzman, “No, no, beside where the door opens, you fucking numbskull.”
Guzman obeyed.
Valentin took up a position just in front of the door. And they waited. Only a few moments passed before footsteps sounded from the other side of the door, and the sound of keys, and the sound of lock tumblers turning.
And then the door opened. A man started to step inside, and Valentin slammed all his weight against the door. The door smashed against the guard's body. Guzman moved late, his strike with the stool missed, and the guard shoved back against the door.
Valentin stepped around the door's edge, driving one agonized foot into the guard's groin. The man went down, and mercifully, Guzman had enough sense to smash the stool down on the fallen guard's forehead.
“Drag him inside,” Valentin mouthed.
He nearly collapsed, trying to put weight on his foot. He was falling apart. Only a few more minutes, he thought, but he had to hold it together.
Guzman stood dumbly over the unconscious body.
“Search his pockets! Search his fucking pockets, and get his gun,” Valentin's voice grated against the inside of his throat.
He dropped to his knees, shuffled across the floor to the discarded ring of keys. He had to lay on his side and squirm around to get out of the handcuffs, but he managed it.
But that time Guzman managed to dig up one handgun, a pack of chewing gum, a pack of cigarettes, three matchbooks, some lint, a flask, and a wallet.
The guard had no ID, but he did have some cash. Valentin and Guzman divided the money. Valentin took the smokes and the gun, and downed the contents of the flask. It was warming, a liquid surge of life. Guzman held the keys like they were going to leap out of his fingers.
He paced, muttering to himself while Valentin dressed.
“Your life isn't worth shit to me,” Valentin told him, buttoning his shirt, “You fuck this up, you get in my way for one second and I'll break your fucking neck.”
Speaking of broken necks, the guard seemed to be moving a little too much. Valentin gave his head a good stomp. Fucking fascists, he thought, if they had their way we'd all be their handmaids and footmen, while the horse-faced English gentry laid around in flaccid luxury like the days of Versailles.
So much better the cold and the pinch of hunger, the smooth concrete and rough jackets. That had substance, at least.
Holding the gun ready, Valentin took up a position beside the door. He motioned for Guzman to open the door, but Guzman just stared at him like a sheep.
“Open the door,” Valentin said.
The words seemed to seep through Guzman's brain. He opened the door with the expertise of a two year old. Frustration surged through Valentin, chasing out the various jabs of pain running through every part of his body. The surge of mystery liquor from the guard's flask helped too.
He checked around the corner, then stepped out into the cold dank hallway. A staircase at the other end led to something apparently well-lit, where the sound of voices echoes warmth and camaraderie.
“The pub,” Guzman hissed.
Valentin saw real anger on the doctor's face for the first time.
“Revenge later,” Valentin mouthed, half his meaning probably lost in the dim light, “Stay quiet.”
They were in a cellar of a formerly-functional bar, so it stood to reason that a cellar door would get them to the outside. Going away from the staircase, the hall vanished into darkness. Valentin struck a match, illuminating a few more feet of hallway, and maybe some sort of door-
The match went out.
He motioned for Guzman to follow, and the doctor shuffled after him like an obedient ape.
Valentin's outstretched hand hit the wall with a burning shock. He forced his fingers to get another match and strike it, illuminating a blank wall. Overhead, the low ceiling gave way to a double-hinged cellar door.
Guzman chuckled and mumbled to himself in some foreign language. Like Olivia and her strange multilingual phrases, Valentin thought. He would make her say all kinds of unspeakable things when he got back. The prospect of his own death was now entirely unreal, nothing more than a theory.
Something as minute as a cellar door was not going to keep Valentin Khilkov trapped.
Guzman started to pace in tiny steps.
“How are we going to get through... It's set in the ceiling... we can't break it,” he drew closer to Valentin.
“Go back and get two of those kabob skewers,” said Valentin.
Guzman obediently fetched them, still mumbling to himself.
“Shut the fuck up,” Valentin stuck the skewers through the tiny gap between the hinged doors.
The low ceiling was just over their heads, but even that small reach made Valentin's arms burn with the strain. He needed some food and vodka and some real sleep. Not to mention a bath.
His own degradation slithered through his mind, turned his stomach. There would be time, later, to plot vengeance and figure out how Dante and the rest of the Fascists could be broken. Now, he had to focus on the latch, and hope it wasn't locked from the outside.
This, he thought, was another moment when more naive people might send up a prayer. But if there was a god, he certainly wasn't on Valentin's side. It was luck or nothing.
His luck held out. The latch slid free, and he shoved one of the doors open, in the hope that no guards awaited them outside.
“You first,” he directed Guzman.
Gratitude and panic fought for control of the doctor's face, making his beard quiver. In the wash of moonlight, his skin looked aged and pitted. The strain of being a Nazi, Valentin thought. This Guzman needed a broken neck or a slit throat at the earliest possible moment.
He boosted Guzman up, and Guzman spilled out into the night like a bedraggled crow. A man-shaped shadow sat a few yards away, and he yelped. But it was only the shadow of the porch.
Valentin scrambled up behind him, gun between his teeth.
Guzman's heart stayed in his throat. His was a world of test tubes and electric pulses, not midnight escapes and gun-wielding Russians. This barbarian would have to be killed at the earliest possible moment, he thought.
Valentin, gun in hand, examined the pub windows above them.
Guzman swallowed loudly.
“I thought I told you to shut the fuck up,” said Valentin, in the slightest whisper.
He led the way around the porch, at a crouch, Guzman crawling behind him.
The pub's frosted windows hinted at a scene of merriment, cocktails, King and country. With a little more firepower, Valentin could have charged the lot of them. As it was, the cum-sucking British pigs would have to die another day.
Two cars sat on the lawn beyond the porch. And between them and the cars stood the Nazi woman, a collage of black and white in the moonlight. Her hair was held back in a knot with a pencil, a few stray pieces twisting in the air, serpentine. Her eye sockets remained in shadow, making her bone-white face look even more skeletal. Her sharp face turned this way, that way, looking for them.
Guzman fumbled with the keys in his hand,
“Do you see anyone else?”
The hiss of the S caught Bianca's attention, and she faced them like a wolf on alert. Crouched in the darkness, Valentin motioned Guzman forward.
The doctor stood, hands up, and took a first slow step toward the cars. A second later, Valentin leapt behind him, wrapping Guzman's neck in the crook of his arm, pressing the gun barrel to his temple.
Bianca drew her gun immediately, the force of her stance making great furrows in the ground under her military boots. Soft ground away from the grass, Valentin thought. He'd either have to risk escape in the car, or on foot over the grass.
“Let him go,” she whispered.
“Put your gun away,” Valentin replied, voice low, “Go back inside or I blow this Nazi's brain out.”
“You motherfucker,” Bianca bared her teeth, “I'll drop you both right now.”
Valentin aimed at her head,
“Who the fuck are you to come against me? If you're looking to try your luck, take a shot, right now.”
Bianca backed toward the pub, weapon still trained on Valentin and the shaking Guzman. Her shadowed eyes promised a thousand threats, but she moved steadily up the stairs to the porch, then to the door of the pub, then inside.
“Move toward the cars,” Valentin ushered Guzman forward.
Guzman tried to blubber a request for mercy.
The details of their situation clicked into place. Bianca hadn't counted on Valentin escaping, but she hadn't discounted the possibility. His antagonistic attitude had ruffled her ego, but she would give them a few minutes, let Guzman escape before raising the alarm. She wanted Guzman free more than she cared to see Khilkov dead.
The other agents would be after the car the minute Guzman left the pub. And then he would be stuck with an old Nazi who couldn't fight.
It was time for him to part ways with the good Doctor.
“Get in the car,” Valentin shoved Guzman forward.
He didn't wait to see if the Nazi got in. Dropping back to a crouch, he circled the back of the car, moving back around the porch.
The car engine started, and Valentin hit the ground.
The door of the pub flew open, and three figures sprang out onto the lighted porch. Dante and his larger sidekick, followed by the St. Cyr woman.
The car squealed onto the road. In a minute, the Fascists would give chase, and he could sneak away.
“How the hell did this happen?” one of the men shouted, “You were watching the cars.”
“I just came the fuck in,” Bianca snapped, “Where's Mr. F? He was supposed to be guarding them.”
Valentin crawled backward, smashing his body against the ground, hoping the wet foliage would conceal his trail.
Dante vanished back inside.
“Get the car, I'll search outside,” said Bianca.
She gestured with the machine gun in her hand. The man got in the remaining vehicle, while Bianca vaulted over the porch, heading away from Valentin.
Time to move it. He crawled as fast as his aching arms could shove him, the sound of the second car's engine covering his movement.
He crawled like it was the trenches of some battle or other, with the Nazis' bullets singing overhead, digging in with his elbows and keeping his body low.
He was always crawling through the mud, dragging himself through filth and humiliation, but always surviving like a bitter old animal too ornery to give up and die.
If that wasn't just the metaphor for his life, he thought. Caged and whipped and starved and sent to the slaughterhouse, but surviving in the teeth of the whole fucking world.
The mud analogy wasn't bad either, though. His memories turned away from childhood, its farm mud and bitter words, the constant smell of his father's brandy. He was born that day at Sonne, digging his elbows into the mud and dragging himself along the trench as explosions rocked the sky overhead. And in that trench lay the corpse of an young soldier, an orphan not really old enough to fight, a half-French, half-Russian boy named Valentin Khilkov. The original Khilkov's stomach was a jelly of blood and pieces of innards.
And he crawled to the corpse, he a half-French, half-Russian boy soldier who had run away from pomp and luxury and genteel chivalry. He snapped away the dogtags around the corpse's neck, and was reborn as an orphan named Valentin Khilkov. Born in blood and shit and smoke and mud, to live on with dirt under his fingernails and blood crusting his skin. Still as hollow, still as repulsive as that fucking corpse.
Good to know there were some things in life he could count on.
Within a minute he had reached the edge, where grass and mud gave way to a rocky cliff, where the waves crashed below.
On the other side of the pub, the car zoomed away down the road. In the sudden silence, Dante re-emerged from the pub.
“Mr F. is down,” he said.
“Fucker,” Bianca leaned her gun against her shoulder.
“I'm sure they both got in the car,” said Dante, “Did you see anyone out here.”
“No. I'll give it a last look-over.”
Dante disappeared again. Bianca had that animal look again, like the lions she claimed to have eaten. Valentin put the gun in his belt and eased himself over the edge of the cliff. Distantly, he realized he was shaking. Only a few more minutes. Then he could collapse and shudder and take his sweet time finding a fishing boat to steal.
The rocks scraped his arms, and a finding a steady foothold took endless kicking and searching. He found one handhold and one foothold and suspended himself, flush against the rocky wall of the cliff.
Stealing one glance up, he saw the wretched Nazi woman silhouetted against the sky. Her hair was undone, swirling around her pale face in a great cloud. The machine gun swung loosely from her hand, and she raised her head to the wind as if a scent of the escaped prisoners might linger there.
Valentin pressed his face against the wall, listened to the sea, and waited for her to move on.
Her feet sent a shower of dirt and pebbles onto his head and she turned, and returned to the pub.
OR DO THEY?
12-Barkeep
Bianca grabbed a seat at the bar, where a glass of whiskey awaited her. But instead of a bartender, Sinclair stood behind the counter, smirking, both hands on the bartop.
“And what did you gather, Agent St. Cyr.”
“He's a big deal, all right,” she told him, then chugged down some of the whiskey and lit a cigarette.
“Don't keep us in suspense, my dear, tell us what you've learned,” Sinclair leaned forward, conspiratorial.
“He's French,” she whispered.
Sinclair pulled back, whether from surprise or revulsion at the intimacy of her voice, she didn't know.
“He might be half-Russian, and he lived in Russia, but he's French and educated and lost a wife and child in the war. The latest war, he fought in the other one too, at Sonne. The wife and child's names are Oksana and Aleksandra or Aleksandr- at least, those are the names he reacted to- he won't respond to pain but has a serious dependence on alcohol.”
She finished off her drink and sighed, loudly.
“Well done,” said Sinclar, “And, as I suspected, he is a bigger fish in the Communist pond than we anticipated?”
“Hey barkeep,” Bianca leaned forward on her elbow, empty glass in hand.
Sinclair refilled it. She didn't look so bad, in the dim light, with the success of the evening radiating from her face. The play-acting suited her, she becoming a mysterious lady as he became a humble barkeep.
“He will be. Or would have been, if we hadn't caught him,” she said.
“Being educated and French and such,” Sinclair gestured toward the pub's nonfuctional beer taps, then to the ceiling, “Not just ex-con scum. Though if the Commie bosses don't recognize his potential, he may be of little use to us.”
“His resilience is an example to us all, though. I like him,” Bianca gave Sinclair an off-kilter smile.
Sinclair watched her stub her cigarette out of the bartop with a cringe, but said nothing. It wasn't as if the place would be accepting patrons any time in the foreseeable future. And Bianca was in a strange mood.
“I'll relieve the man watching the cars,” she said, and stood.
“You should write your report first,” said Sinclair.
She waved him away, “You're not my fuckin boss. I'll get to it in a minute, but I want some air.”
And Bianca paraded out, to relieve the guard at the cars and tell him to check on the prisoners. It was nine minutes and thirty seconds since she had left the prisoners in the cellar.
Down below, meanwhile, Guzman had spent the first five minutes moaning and griping and struggling from his bonds.
Valentin lay on the floor where the Nazi woman had left him.
“Get me up off this fucking floor,” he croaked.
“What for?” Guzman brushed off his clothes, ran fingers through his beard.
The chair's back had splintered worse than Valentin's arms, miraculously, and he writhed the cuffs out from around the broken wood.
“The guard should be here soon, and-”
“Hasn't been ten minutes yet,” said Valentin, “What are you going to do when the guard shows up? Fight him with that fucking beard of yours?”
“I can't take you with me,” said Guzman.
“Just as far as the cars, then we go our separate ways.”
“I can't.”
“You can't get yourself out of this place. I can get you out! Just get me out of this damned fucking piece of shit char,” Valentin's voice ground to a halt.
Guzman's eyes darted around nervously. He was a doctor, an expert in experiments, not a soldier or a spy. His knowledge dealt with the unconscious men with exposed brains. Causing pain then was no problem, but he was useless against a conscious and mobile opponent.
He knelt beside Valentin and worked the ropes from his ankles, then sat the chair up, forcing the cuffs free of any splintered wood.
Valentin grimaced looking at his feet. Each skewer had to be pulled out, making squishing, fleshy sounds. The first one came out accompanied by needles of agony, and a feeling like running his fingernails over a chalkboard.
Stalling would make it worse. He ripped the skewers out, one after the other. The pain hit him in the stomach a moment after the last skewer came free. His toes bled, tremors ran through his legs, but that possibility of survival loomed larger and larger. Let that be the fuel, he thought, and if I can get through the next half hour I can make it back to Paris.
Valentin tried not to think about how ridiculous he looked, in his underwear, hands cuffed behind his back, limping from pain and numbness.
“Grab that stool. Stand beside the door,” He told Guzman, “No, no, beside where the door opens, you fucking numbskull.”
Guzman obeyed.
Valentin took up a position just in front of the door. And they waited. Only a few moments passed before footsteps sounded from the other side of the door, and the sound of keys, and the sound of lock tumblers turning.
And then the door opened. A man started to step inside, and Valentin slammed all his weight against the door. The door smashed against the guard's body. Guzman moved late, his strike with the stool missed, and the guard shoved back against the door.
Valentin stepped around the door's edge, driving one agonized foot into the guard's groin. The man went down, and mercifully, Guzman had enough sense to smash the stool down on the fallen guard's forehead.
“Drag him inside,” Valentin mouthed.
He nearly collapsed, trying to put weight on his foot. He was falling apart. Only a few more minutes, he thought, but he had to hold it together.
Guzman stood dumbly over the unconscious body.
“Search his pockets! Search his fucking pockets, and get his gun,” Valentin's voice grated against the inside of his throat.
He dropped to his knees, shuffled across the floor to the discarded ring of keys. He had to lay on his side and squirm around to get out of the handcuffs, but he managed it.
But that time Guzman managed to dig up one handgun, a pack of chewing gum, a pack of cigarettes, three matchbooks, some lint, a flask, and a wallet.
The guard had no ID, but he did have some cash. Valentin and Guzman divided the money. Valentin took the smokes and the gun, and downed the contents of the flask. It was warming, a liquid surge of life. Guzman held the keys like they were going to leap out of his fingers.
He paced, muttering to himself while Valentin dressed.
“Your life isn't worth shit to me,” Valentin told him, buttoning his shirt, “You fuck this up, you get in my way for one second and I'll break your fucking neck.”
Speaking of broken necks, the guard seemed to be moving a little too much. Valentin gave his head a good stomp. Fucking fascists, he thought, if they had their way we'd all be their handmaids and footmen, while the horse-faced English gentry laid around in flaccid luxury like the days of Versailles.
So much better the cold and the pinch of hunger, the smooth concrete and rough jackets. That had substance, at least.
Holding the gun ready, Valentin took up a position beside the door. He motioned for Guzman to open the door, but Guzman just stared at him like a sheep.
“Open the door,” Valentin said.
The words seemed to seep through Guzman's brain. He opened the door with the expertise of a two year old. Frustration surged through Valentin, chasing out the various jabs of pain running through every part of his body. The surge of mystery liquor from the guard's flask helped too.
He checked around the corner, then stepped out into the cold dank hallway. A staircase at the other end led to something apparently well-lit, where the sound of voices echoes warmth and camaraderie.
“The pub,” Guzman hissed.
Valentin saw real anger on the doctor's face for the first time.
“Revenge later,” Valentin mouthed, half his meaning probably lost in the dim light, “Stay quiet.”
They were in a cellar of a formerly-functional bar, so it stood to reason that a cellar door would get them to the outside. Going away from the staircase, the hall vanished into darkness. Valentin struck a match, illuminating a few more feet of hallway, and maybe some sort of door-
The match went out.
He motioned for Guzman to follow, and the doctor shuffled after him like an obedient ape.
Valentin's outstretched hand hit the wall with a burning shock. He forced his fingers to get another match and strike it, illuminating a blank wall. Overhead, the low ceiling gave way to a double-hinged cellar door.
Guzman chuckled and mumbled to himself in some foreign language. Like Olivia and her strange multilingual phrases, Valentin thought. He would make her say all kinds of unspeakable things when he got back. The prospect of his own death was now entirely unreal, nothing more than a theory.
Something as minute as a cellar door was not going to keep Valentin Khilkov trapped.
Guzman started to pace in tiny steps.
“How are we going to get through... It's set in the ceiling... we can't break it,” he drew closer to Valentin.
“Go back and get two of those kabob skewers,” said Valentin.
Guzman obediently fetched them, still mumbling to himself.
“Shut the fuck up,” Valentin stuck the skewers through the tiny gap between the hinged doors.
The low ceiling was just over their heads, but even that small reach made Valentin's arms burn with the strain. He needed some food and vodka and some real sleep. Not to mention a bath.
His own degradation slithered through his mind, turned his stomach. There would be time, later, to plot vengeance and figure out how Dante and the rest of the Fascists could be broken. Now, he had to focus on the latch, and hope it wasn't locked from the outside.
This, he thought, was another moment when more naive people might send up a prayer. But if there was a god, he certainly wasn't on Valentin's side. It was luck or nothing.
His luck held out. The latch slid free, and he shoved one of the doors open, in the hope that no guards awaited them outside.
“You first,” he directed Guzman.
Gratitude and panic fought for control of the doctor's face, making his beard quiver. In the wash of moonlight, his skin looked aged and pitted. The strain of being a Nazi, Valentin thought. This Guzman needed a broken neck or a slit throat at the earliest possible moment.
He boosted Guzman up, and Guzman spilled out into the night like a bedraggled crow. A man-shaped shadow sat a few yards away, and he yelped. But it was only the shadow of the porch.
Valentin scrambled up behind him, gun between his teeth.
Guzman's heart stayed in his throat. His was a world of test tubes and electric pulses, not midnight escapes and gun-wielding Russians. This barbarian would have to be killed at the earliest possible moment, he thought.
Valentin, gun in hand, examined the pub windows above them.
Guzman swallowed loudly.
“I thought I told you to shut the fuck up,” said Valentin, in the slightest whisper.
He led the way around the porch, at a crouch, Guzman crawling behind him.
The pub's frosted windows hinted at a scene of merriment, cocktails, King and country. With a little more firepower, Valentin could have charged the lot of them. As it was, the cum-sucking British pigs would have to die another day.
Two cars sat on the lawn beyond the porch. And between them and the cars stood the Nazi woman, a collage of black and white in the moonlight. Her hair was held back in a knot with a pencil, a few stray pieces twisting in the air, serpentine. Her eye sockets remained in shadow, making her bone-white face look even more skeletal. Her sharp face turned this way, that way, looking for them.
Guzman fumbled with the keys in his hand,
“Do you see anyone else?”
The hiss of the S caught Bianca's attention, and she faced them like a wolf on alert. Crouched in the darkness, Valentin motioned Guzman forward.
The doctor stood, hands up, and took a first slow step toward the cars. A second later, Valentin leapt behind him, wrapping Guzman's neck in the crook of his arm, pressing the gun barrel to his temple.
Bianca drew her gun immediately, the force of her stance making great furrows in the ground under her military boots. Soft ground away from the grass, Valentin thought. He'd either have to risk escape in the car, or on foot over the grass.
“Let him go,” she whispered.
“Put your gun away,” Valentin replied, voice low, “Go back inside or I blow this Nazi's brain out.”
“You motherfucker,” Bianca bared her teeth, “I'll drop you both right now.”
Valentin aimed at her head,
“Who the fuck are you to come against me? If you're looking to try your luck, take a shot, right now.”
Bianca backed toward the pub, weapon still trained on Valentin and the shaking Guzman. Her shadowed eyes promised a thousand threats, but she moved steadily up the stairs to the porch, then to the door of the pub, then inside.
“Move toward the cars,” Valentin ushered Guzman forward.
Guzman tried to blubber a request for mercy.
The details of their situation clicked into place. Bianca hadn't counted on Valentin escaping, but she hadn't discounted the possibility. His antagonistic attitude had ruffled her ego, but she would give them a few minutes, let Guzman escape before raising the alarm. She wanted Guzman free more than she cared to see Khilkov dead.
The other agents would be after the car the minute Guzman left the pub. And then he would be stuck with an old Nazi who couldn't fight.
It was time for him to part ways with the good Doctor.
“Get in the car,” Valentin shoved Guzman forward.
He didn't wait to see if the Nazi got in. Dropping back to a crouch, he circled the back of the car, moving back around the porch.
The car engine started, and Valentin hit the ground.
The door of the pub flew open, and three figures sprang out onto the lighted porch. Dante and his larger sidekick, followed by the St. Cyr woman.
The car squealed onto the road. In a minute, the Fascists would give chase, and he could sneak away.
“How the hell did this happen?” one of the men shouted, “You were watching the cars.”
“I just came the fuck in,” Bianca snapped, “Where's Mr. F? He was supposed to be guarding them.”
Valentin crawled backward, smashing his body against the ground, hoping the wet foliage would conceal his trail.
Dante vanished back inside.
“Get the car, I'll search outside,” said Bianca.
She gestured with the machine gun in her hand. The man got in the remaining vehicle, while Bianca vaulted over the porch, heading away from Valentin.
Time to move it. He crawled as fast as his aching arms could shove him, the sound of the second car's engine covering his movement.
He crawled like it was the trenches of some battle or other, with the Nazis' bullets singing overhead, digging in with his elbows and keeping his body low.
He was always crawling through the mud, dragging himself through filth and humiliation, but always surviving like a bitter old animal too ornery to give up and die.
If that wasn't just the metaphor for his life, he thought. Caged and whipped and starved and sent to the slaughterhouse, but surviving in the teeth of the whole fucking world.
The mud analogy wasn't bad either, though. His memories turned away from childhood, its farm mud and bitter words, the constant smell of his father's brandy. He was born that day at Sonne, digging his elbows into the mud and dragging himself along the trench as explosions rocked the sky overhead. And in that trench lay the corpse of an young soldier, an orphan not really old enough to fight, a half-French, half-Russian boy named Valentin Khilkov. The original Khilkov's stomach was a jelly of blood and pieces of innards.
And he crawled to the corpse, he a half-French, half-Russian boy soldier who had run away from pomp and luxury and genteel chivalry. He snapped away the dogtags around the corpse's neck, and was reborn as an orphan named Valentin Khilkov. Born in blood and shit and smoke and mud, to live on with dirt under his fingernails and blood crusting his skin. Still as hollow, still as repulsive as that fucking corpse.
Good to know there were some things in life he could count on.
Within a minute he had reached the edge, where grass and mud gave way to a rocky cliff, where the waves crashed below.
On the other side of the pub, the car zoomed away down the road. In the sudden silence, Dante re-emerged from the pub.
“Mr F. is down,” he said.
“Fucker,” Bianca leaned her gun against her shoulder.
“I'm sure they both got in the car,” said Dante, “Did you see anyone out here.”
“No. I'll give it a last look-over.”
Dante disappeared again. Bianca had that animal look again, like the lions she claimed to have eaten. Valentin put the gun in his belt and eased himself over the edge of the cliff. Distantly, he realized he was shaking. Only a few more minutes. Then he could collapse and shudder and take his sweet time finding a fishing boat to steal.
The rocks scraped his arms, and a finding a steady foothold took endless kicking and searching. He found one handhold and one foothold and suspended himself, flush against the rocky wall of the cliff.
Stealing one glance up, he saw the wretched Nazi woman silhouetted against the sky. Her hair was undone, swirling around her pale face in a great cloud. The machine gun swung loosely from her hand, and she raised her head to the wind as if a scent of the escaped prisoners might linger there.
Valentin pressed his face against the wall, listened to the sea, and waited for her to move on.
Her feet sent a shower of dirt and pebbles onto his head and she turned, and returned to the pub.