Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [125]
"One of your sons," Cray said.
"That's a poor joke, friend."
The American pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket. From it he withdrew a photograph. He held it up to the sergeant and said grandly, "Wehrmacht Corporal Max Kahr sits in a Russian POW camp six hundred kilometers from here."
Ulrich Kahr stared at the photo, his knuckles white on the bottle. "That can't be him."
"Look closely." Cray smiled again. "This photograph was taken within the past week."
For a long moment the sergeant looked blankly at the photograph, unable to take in all that it conveyed. Then his voice was the ghost of a whisper. "I was told my boy was dead." Kahr blinked repeatedly but he could not stop the tears. Finally he had to dab at his eyes.
Katrin said, "We can get him released from the POW camp, Sergeant Kahr."
"And returned to you," Cray added. "In a matter of days."
Kahr was breathing quickly, the joy flooding him. Forgetful of himself, he swayed, first right, then left. Cray put a hand on the sergeant's knee, lest he might topple.
The sergeant intoned, "You have no idea ... no idea what my boys mean to me. . . . My last boy ... "
"Well, there is one small catch," Cray said, almost apologetically.
And it brought Sergeant Kahr up as if he had been snagged by one of Otto Skorzeny's grappling hooks. "A catch? What? What is it you want?"
Cray held out his hands, palms up, a gesture of complete equanimity. "It's nothing."
"Nothing?" Kahr repeated.
Cray smiled again, reaching for the bottle. "A small thing, really."
10
HALF AN HOUR later they left Sergeant Kahr to his distilling and walked around his farmhouse, then out the driveway, with pasture on both sides. The moon's shadow was dappled by the boughs of elms that lined the driveway. The boundary of Kahr's small property was marked by a stone wall. Cray and Katrin approached their bicycles, which were leaning against the wall near Kahr's mailbox at the mam road.
Cray pointed. "What direction is that?"
"West,"
"How can you tell?"
"See the orange clouds that way?" She pointed, too, but at a ninety-degree angle off Cray's direction. "Berlin burning, a reflection of the fires. Orange clouds are our unfailing compass."
Cray glanced east. "Do you hear something?"
She followed his gaze. "The wind."
"Are there train tracks near here?"
"I don't know."
He looked at her, an impish cast to his eyes. "Thanks for the date tonight. I had a good time."
"Date? What date?"
"You and me, sitting in front of the fire, having a couple drinks."
She was brought up. "That wasn't a date. And you weren't really drinking. You tasted his liquor, and after that was pretending to drink. I noticed that after a while."
He kept on walking, nearing the bicycles. "Then why did I have the most fun in two years, if that wasn't a date?"
"That was a ... a business meeting."
"You had a couple of drinks, you can't argue that."
"Only after the sergeant forced them on me. He seemed so happy, I couldn't refuse his alcohol. I didn't want to spoil it for him."
"And we were sitting in front of a cozy fire."
She glanced at him. "The fire was heating a still."
"And the scent of spring was in the air."
"It was the smell of old goats."
"So it sounds like a date to me," he said. "You and me. A romantic evening in the Prussian countryside."
"And we weren't even alone," she protested. "The sergeant was there, and once we made our deal, he did most of the talking. About old times. No, it wasn't a date. Nothing of the sort."
"Sure it was."
"Not at all." She laughed.
"There. You laughed."
"I did not laugh. I'm a war widow. We never laugh." She laughed again.
"Sergeant Kahr's fire and liquor and hospitality. And my company." He righted her hicycle and gave it to her. "You had a good time for a few minutes. You're laughing, and that proves it."
"I'm laughing because I'm stuck out-of-doors on a cold night in the middle of a war with a crazy foreigner. I never thought my life would turn out like this, that's for sure."
Cray was suddenly sober. "That sound. It's trucks, quite a few of them. Coming this