Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 52, No. 7 & 8, July/August 2007

German Johnson and the Lost Horizon by L. A. Wilson, Jr

THE ETHIOPIAN COASTAL PLAINS, JUNE 13, 1940

A British doctor who had just dropped from the sky walked through a field hospital a few kilometers inland from the Ethiopian coast. He averted his eyes from the anguish-filled gazes of the sick and dying. The long open ward of the hospital tent was saturated with the odors of diseased and dying flesh. The doctor had to do his job quickly. The hospital was an international humanitarian effort, but the Italian invaders remained suspicious and only reluctantly tolerated its presence. As a citizen of a hostile Allied government, he would be shot as a spy if discovered.

At the end of the ward Adonis Abebe lay on a pallet. Abebe’s face was covered by a thick layer of gauze wrapped around his head, giving him the appearance of a mummy. A woman completely covered in black robes sat on the floor beside him, fanning constantly to ameliorate the sweltering temperature as well as to discourage the flies.

The doctor spoke softly to the man as he began to cut away the bandages.

“Do you remember what happened to you?”

His associate translated the question, and Abebe responded painfully with a barely audible whisper.

“Uh... something... I didn’t understand all of it,” the translator said. “He followed something into the desert. It disappeared over a dune.”

The outer layer of dry gauze was cut away revealing an ointment saturated dressing that had been applied directly to the skin.

“What was it?” the doctor asked. “How did this happen to you?”

Abebe responded with a hoarse and weakened voice. He summoned all of his strength in his effort to speak. The doctor’s associate leaned close to him while meticulously avoiding direct contact.

“He says that he remembers light. I think he’s confused,” the translator said.

The doctor removed the final dressing and frowned as if repulsed by what he saw.

Abebe’s face was a bloody bed of ulcers and blisters. His left eye was swollen shut, and the pupil of the right eye was opacified and gray.

“What did you see?” the doctor asked more forcefully. “What did you see?”

Abebe managed hoarse gurgles through fissured lips. The doctor nodded unconsciously at him, although it was obvious that Abebe couldn’t see.

“I... I couldn’t hear that,” his associate said.

The doctor took a syringe from his bag and slowly injected morphine into a vein in Abebe’s forearm.

“Is there anything I can do for you, old friend?” the doctor asked.

Abebe shook his head no in response to the translated question.

The doctor patted his shoulder gently before walking away. He knew Abebe would not recover, and he had done the only humane thing that he could do. Abebe would be dead before he reached the far end of the ward.

Outside the hospital a familiar figure wearing a quasi-military uniform without rank insignias awaited him.

“What did he say?” the man asked.

The doctor shook his head, indicating a lack of information.

“He followed a truck into the Denakil Desert where it disappeared over a dune. He saw a light somewhere. He said he saw the face of God.”

German Johnson was forever a day late and a dollar short. He had learned to fly airplanes before he was sixteen, but when he tried to enter aviator training in Tuskegee, their quota had already been met. Eventually he joined the Army, only to find himself building roads with an all-black engineering unit.

Toward the end of 1939, it looked as though his luck was changing. He was chosen for a squad of black soldiers being trained for special operations, who were eventually loaned to the British government. They were inserted into a group of Ethiopian rebels in an effort to discover and report the nature of an increased Nazi presence evidenced by submarine activity off the Ethiopian coast. German Johnson spent a year of exploring the country from the northeastern plateau to the sun-baked coastal plains, but without confirming anything useful, the operation was scrapped. The Italians were ousted, Emperor Haile Selassie returned from exile in England, and German Johnson returned to digging roads in some of the worst terrain ever conceived. When America entered the war in 1941, German Johnson kept digging roads.

Eventually the Nazis were defeated, Hitler committed suicide, President Truman bombed the Japanese, and German Johnson returned to a society that had no job for him. He became a man without direction. After eight years in uniform, his best available opportunity was waiting tables in a Harlem restaurant.

The Royce was located on Lenox Avenue, a short walk from 125th Street. It was a place whose name implied more elegance than it presented. The restaurant was owned by Leonard Royce, who had named the restaurant not for himself but for the Rolls-Royce he hoped it would allow him to afford.

Leonard was a big man — a towering six feet four inches tall with three gleaming gold upper teeth. He had a penchant for Cuban cigars and the music of the Caribbean in his voice. He never missed an opportunity to recount the lamentable failures of his life. He was a man made insecure by a limited intellect, and he craved acceptance in a society obsessed with discrimination. In such a society, a Negro with gold teeth and a weak mind generally had more detractors than friends.

German Johnson was a friend. Leonard had given him a job when nobody else would and tolerated German’s depressions and bad manners.

German suspected that it was because he had always treated Leonard with respect. He didn’t laugh behind Leonard’s back when he spoke. He didn’t belittle him for his garish taste in clothes. Leonard had passions and aspirations that were no different from his own; the fact that Leonard didn’t articulate them well was no reason to demean him. Besides, Leonard had money, and a streak of mean tenacity that insured that he would keep it. Such a friend was valuable, although German refused to accept that as being the core of their friendship.

Four men gathered at a table in the rear of The Royce. White people dropped by The Royce occasionally, but these men had come consistently once a week for the past three weeks. They would huddle at a corner table, talking among themselves in hushed tones. They always ordered full meals, and they always tipped well. This was the first time they had been seated at German Johnson’s table, and he moved quickly in anticipation of a hefty gratuity.

One of the men, balding and in his forties, fixed German’s eyes with a mirthless gaze. He ordered for the entire table in a slightly accented staccato voice.

German had to struggle to prevent himself from recoiling from the steely stare, yet he was still afraid his surprise was apparent. German had seen the man before, and his presence in this place chilled his soul.

“How do you know it was him?” Angie asked. “I mean, it was a long time ago, and you only saw him from a distance, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, but I saw him maybe fifteen or twenty times. It was him, Angie. It took me back. It was just like I was there again, and I could have reached out and touched him. I could see the pimples on his face. It was him, Angie. I could swear it.”

“So what are you gonna do?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” he sighed.

He saw the expression on her face. The question she didn’t ask was, Why are you talking about this if you’re not going to do anything about it?

Angelina Ruiz had lived with German for two years. She had given his life focus and direction, everything that had been missing during his years in the military. Most people called her his wife, although he had made no effort to legalize their bond. German didn’t understand his own reluctance. There was no other woman in his life, and they had talked about having children, so he had at least made a subconscious commitment to the permanency of their relationship. He found that he depended on her, needed her wisdom, and looked forward to awaking to her smile. Still, there were mysteries about her — things he didn’t understand. He had begun to believe that those things were more about him than about her. He had grown up in a single parent home, and he had come to realize that it was hard to learn to be a man when he hadn’t spent much time around one.

“What do you think I should do, Angie?” he asked.

“You got to tell somebody, German.”

German Johnson had not been able to get the four men off his mind, especially the bald man with the penetrating eyes. Each time German saw the man, he became more convinced that he had seen him before. And if he was right, the man had a history of evil. His presence here could only mean the worst. The next week they were seated at one of his tables again, and German dutifully served their needs while watching the balding man with a jaded eye.

As the restaurant filled quickly with hungry patrons, waiters scurried from table to table. Raucous laughter erupted from the bar and stole German’s attention. Two uniformed police officers sat at the bar sucking down the free drinks that came with the beat, unless the business owner was stupid.

German perceived an opportunity, but he was hesitant to grasp it.

Hardy McPhail was a veteran officer. He was a big redhead whose stomach hung over his belt. He was no friend to the neighborhood. Cops like him came there to break heads and keep the masses in line.

German decided to try him anyway.

“Officer McPhail, can we talk for a minute?”

McPhail scrutinized him from head to toe and appeared annoyed at having been interrupted.

“Whaddaya want, Johnson?”

“Those people at that table in the corner. I think they’re up to something.”

McPhail responded with a skeptical frown. He leaned back on his stool in order to get an unencumbered view of the table at the far end of the restaurant.

“They look all right to me. What are they doing?”

German swallowed the lump in his throat. There was only so much information that he wanted to share with the likes of Hardy McPhail. He was afraid that his suspicions would sound so preposterous that he would be regarded as a fool.

“I don’t know. They’re acting suspicious. Maybe they’re mobsters. I just thought they should be checked out.”

McPhail’s eyes shifted back and forth between German and the men he had pointed out. Finally, he tapped his partner on the shoulder, slid off the stool, and swaggered to the other end of the restaurant.

German watched from across the room as McPhail spoke to the men. Maybe, just maybe, speaking to a cop might rattle them enough to make one of them slip and reveal something incriminating. The more he thought about it, the more uncomfortable he became. The thought was foolish. It was too simplistic to imagine.

To his chagrin, within minutes McPhail was laughing and slapping them on their shoulders. The worst possible outcome seemed to unfold. They looked in his direction as the laughter continued. The balding man laughed as well, but there was no humor in his eyes.

McPhail was a dumb sonuvabitch. They didn’t stick cops like him in Harlem as a reward. They were laughing at him. McPhail had told them who had sent him over there.

Eventually McPhail swaggered his way back to the bar and started gobbling down more free drinks and food.

“They’re businessmen,” he announced, while stuffing his mouth with hors d’oeuvres. “You ought to be glad they’re over here putting money in your colored businesses. They could take their money somewhere else where they’re appreciated.”

The four men left shortly afterward. An uneasy feeling remained with German, however. The balding man’s eyes never left him until they had gone.

“You seem to have developed an unusual interest in me, Mr. Johnson.”

A week had passed and they were back at the restaurant again. The balding man’s gaze was riveting; his eyes would not let German Johnson escape.

German fidgeted uncomfortably as he tried to formulate a response to the unexpected remark. Burning in his mind was the realization that the man had taken the time to remember his name.

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he replied lamely.

“Of course you do,” the man said. His voice exuded smug confidence while projecting an undercurrent of condescension. There was an element of darkness about him that German had seen before. It lay in that superior attitude others like him wore on their chests like medals of honor. But why come all the way to Harlem every week if that was the attitude they harbored? There were plenty of other places to eat in New York City.

Somehow German Johnson muddled his way through the evening. The man with the burning eyes attacked him with a silent malevolence. His gaze seemed to follow German throughout the room. Was it real or was it his insecurity? He continued to serve the four men while gingerly avoiding conflict. By the end of the evening he was convinced that he would have to convey his suspicions to someone of substance.

Waking up with Angelina was the most exhilarating part of German’s life. She hugged him warmly and bathed his face with loving kisses.

“I’ve got to go,” she finally said. “My mother’s expecting me.”

He released her reluctantly. The mention of her mother made him feel guilty. Rosaria Ruiz was a religious woman who could not understand why a man of integrity would allow her daughter to live in a bond without the blessing of the Church. She never spoke about it, but her body language made her thoughts very clear. German started avoiding her a year ago, but her concerns seldom left his mind.

He and Angelina had settled into a comfortable pattern. It had become easier to continue than to change.

Breakfast odors quickly filled their apartment. Angelina’s thoughts were always of him. She would never leave without bringing him breakfast.

Soon she was there — barefoot and clad in only a loose robe and the pleasant aroma of her morning bath. He wanted her more than the food, but she quickly slipped out of the robe and into her clothes.

“I’ll see you this afternoon,” she said and kissed him briefly before walking away.

“Angie, I love you,” he said.

She stopped and turned toward him with a disarming smile.

“I love you too.”

She started to leave again.

“Angie, I mean I really do love you.”

Curiosity clouded her face. She came back and sat on the edge of the bed. Her dark eyes were trying to read him. She waited patiently for whatever was coming.

“Tell your mother that I’m not such a bad person,” he said.

“Where’d that come from?” she asked. “She doesn’t think that.”

“Yes she does, but she’s not right. I’m gonna do the right thing, Angie. I promise.”

She looked at him intently without speaking.

“Okay,” she whispered simply, and then she was gone.

“Captain Bracken speaking.”

For a moment German wished he hadn’t called, but Bracken was the only person he knew who might believe him. It was only that when it came to Captain Roger Bracken, his emotions got in the way. He disliked Bracken as much as Bracken disliked him. Bracken had disliked all of them.

They had never wanted Negro soldiers in the army, but once in, they certainly didn’t want them in the same units with white soldiers. Of course Negro soldiers couldn’t be in charge of themselves, so the Army chose white officers to command them. Roger Bracken’s fortunes had led him to command a Negro unit. After President Truman integrated the military, Bracken’s unit technically qualified as an integrated unit because he was there, and to his chagrin he remained there.

In a sense, Bracken was as much of a victim as the rest of them. His life hadn’t taken the direction he had planned, and he never learned to deal with it, but then neither had the Army.

“Captain Bracken, this is Sergeant Johnson.”

“Who?”

“Johnson... Sergeant German Johnson.”

“I thought you were out of the Army.”

“I am, but I’ve seen something, and I think it may be important. I think it’s connected to our mission.”

There was silence on the other end of the phone.

“Captain Bracken... Captain Bracken. You still there?”

German could hear Bracken sigh over the phone.

“Captain, I’ve seen men here in New York that...”

“Look, Johnson,” Bracken interrupted. “I don’t care what you’ve seen. I don’t want to hear from you. Keep your ass in New York and away from me. Whatever problems you people have up there, they’re your problems. Go tell it to that Garvey fellow. I just don’t give a damn.”

Bracken hung up before German Johnson could absorb the shock of his remarks.

German Johnson stood there holding the dead phone. What the hell was he thinking? It had been a white man’s war, and this was a white man’s problem. Who was he anyway, America’s defender? He couldn’t even get a decent job or make enough money to provide for a family. How could a man ask a woman to marry him on an income derived from two-dollar tips.

German went to work early in the afternoon before Angelina returned. He was still seething from his conversation with Bracken and hoped to work off some of his frustration before the customers arrived.

He could hardly keep his mind on his work. Every negative thought he ever had boiled up inside of him — every muddy road he had dug for the Army, every job that he couldn’t get, every time someone had looked at his face and assumed they had the right to demean him.

The evening passed quickly. Business at The Royce was brisk and steady. German kept his eyes peeled for the four white men who frequented the restaurant, but they didn’t appear, and he was happy about that. These men and their peculiarities were something that he wanted to escape. He wanted to go on with his life without worrying about unfounded suspicions.

The final customers left at two A.M., and German took the long walk back to his apartment.

The flashing light garnered his attention as soon as he had rounded the corner. Police cars and ambulances were such a common part of the Harlem landscape that they were almost unnoticeable. For some reason, a feeling of dread smothered him when he saw them on this night. As he drew closer, he realized that the commotion was in front of his apartment.

He began to run the final block. He bounded into the apartment building with his heart pounding and his mouth dry.

The stairs were congested with policemen as he reached the third floor. They were at his door.

“What has happened? This is my place! What has happened?” he cried.

Two uniformed officers restrained him while a plainclothed officer approached.

“Do you live here?” the plainclothed officer asked.

“Yes!”

“I need to know your name.”

German handed him his wallet. He felt his heart sinking.

“The woman inside, Angelina Ruiz. Was she...”

“My... my... wife.”

The words were difficult for him to say because they weren’t true at a time when they should have been.

He grabbed the officer’s arm.

“Please! Please! Oh, God! Is she all right?”

The officer stared at him without answering, and that alone was answer enough.

Angelina Ruiz had been beaten to death. The apartment’s door had not been forced. Someone had knocked, and Angelina had opened the door innocently.

The pain in German’s heart was inconsolable. He could not tear away the thought of the terror and pain she must have felt as one or more animals inflicted their torturous attack on her.

They had taken her away from him, taken away their joy and deprived them of what they would have become. The one thing that she wanted from him, and the one thing that he had withheld, was his name. Now she would never share it. It was a failing that he could never correct. He wanted to die with her because now he truly had nothing.

Weeks passed without any abatement from the pain in German’s heart. He wandered through his life seeking refuge in the repetitiveness of routine. He could find no solace and no answers to the questions that plagued him. He remained inconsolable. He came to work late and left early, with only the goodwill of those who cared to keep his head above water.

The four men who had frequented The Royce and raised his suspicions had strangely disappeared. That and the knowledge he held from his army days saddled him with paranoia. He couldn’t escape the thought that they may have been involved somehow in Angelina’s death. It was all the more terrible because he had come to believe that her fate might have been intended for him.

It all coalesced in his mind on a single rain-soaked day when his trek to work carried him past a storefront that he had seen a thousand times. He jogged under the awning of the store in hopes that the shower would soon pass. He looked at his watch and realized that he would be late again. A tiny semblance of reason had begun to return to his psyche. He knew that he couldn’t continue his life in this manner forever.

He looked absentmindedly at the display in the plate glass window. It was a tobacco store where men could buy coffee and Cuban cigars. He looked into the store and locked his gaze on another pair of eyes staring back at him. The balding man with the staccato voice watched with an enigmatic smile.

German shook all over, and it wasn’t the cold that made him shiver. He stepped up to the door as suddenly raging emotions threatened to consume him. The door was locked. He jerked at the knob to no avail. The balding man turned and casually walked to the back of the store and out of German’s field of vision.

German pounded on the glass before realizing that other pedestrians were observing his agitated behavior. If he kept this up, someone would call the cops. He made a mental note of the store’s location before he stepped back into the rain. He would be back.

Leonard Royce was waiting when German arrived, and the expression on his face told German that things were not well.

“German, I’m gonna have to let you go,” he announced.

Reality was suddenly thrust onto German. He had known that this would eventually come, and he had been trying to pull himself together, albeit too late.

“Leonard, I... I really need this job. I’m sorry, but things...”

“I been tryin’ to go easy on you, German ‘cause I know what you been goin’ through,” Royce interrupted. “But you don’t come to work on time, and when you get here, you’re rude to the customers. I’m losin’ business, German, and don’t nobody else want to work with you.”

“You don’t know what’s been going on, Leonard, but it’s worse than you think.”

“How much worse could it be?”

German hadn’t talked to anyone about this. He had kept it inside partly out of fear of how he would be perceived. Now, however, he was desperate. He needed to have Leonard Royce understand because he needed this job. He told him about the four white men who had come there every week. He told him about his suspicions. He told Royce that Angelina’s death made no sense unless she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time, but how could she be at the wrong place in her own home? It only made sense if she was the inadvertent victim and not the intended victim. That meant the intended victim had to be German Johnson himself.

Leonard chewed on a Cuban cigar. He fondled it, puffed, and chewed again.

“Did you tell that to the police?” Royce asked.

“Have you forgotten where we live?” German asked. “This is Harlem. What do you think is gonna happen if I say some well-dressed white man broke into a colored waiter’s place to murder his wife for no explainable reason?”

Royce leaned back in his chair and looked at German for the first time. He had been avoiding eye contact with German, as if embarrassed by what he had to do. Now the tautness in his face relaxed into an expression of calm, as if some burden had been lifted.

“Why don’t you talk to this fella?” he finally said.

He handed German a scrap of paper on which he had scribbled a name and phone number.

“Who’s he?”

“He’s related to Sam Joseph, and I hear he has an interest in things like you just told me about.”

“Thanks. Thanks, man!”

German jumped to his feet and grabbed Leonard’s hand.

Leonard started looking away again.

“You’re welcome, man,” Leonard replied.

German released his hand and perused the scrap of paper.

“You still can’t work here no more,” Leonard said.

He fidgeted with a fountain pen while German stared silently with disbelief.

“Leonard, I...”

“I don’t want to talk about it no more, German. I feel sorry for you, but you need to go somewhere else.”

Leonard’s tone dismissed him.

German backed out of the room silently. He didn’t understand, but he didn’t have to understand. He had screwed up again. He had tried to lean on friendship when he should have been doing his job. Leonard was still staring at his own hands when German finally closed the door.

The name on the paper was Francis Waxman. German called the man and arranged to meet him the following day. He had plenty of time since he no longer had a job.

Waxman lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, where people who looked like German Johnson were rarely seen unless they were working. Waxman appeared to be in his late thirties, with swarthy features and an abundance of dark curly hair. He had the kind of appearance that made his ethnicity ambiguous, although his speech pattern was decidedly Caucasian.

Waxman’s apartment was cluttered with boxes, folders, and papers that took up most of his visible living space. It seemed obvious to German that Waxman was single. No self-respecting woman would abuse such an elegant space like that.

“What is it that you think I can do for you, Mr. Johnson?” Waxman asked.

“I’m not sure,” German replied. “What do you do?”

Waxman smiled.

“This and that,” he replied with smug humor. “My uncle didn’t know you, but he said his friend Mr. Royce mentioned that you had problems that may have related to your military activities.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. I was in the Ninety-Fifth.”

“An engineering unit,” Waxman interjected. “Road builders... the Alaskan Highway.”

“That was later. I wasn’t with them then. I was in Ethiopia in ‘41.”

Waxman suddenly sat up straight.

“You and who else?”

“Four others.”

“So, it was really true,” Waxman mused.

“What are you talking about?”

“I had heard that a squad of Negro soldiers were sent to Africa to gather intel on the German presence in the Denakil Desert.”

“We didn’t find much,” German confessed.

Waxman shrugged.

“A few months ago, four men began meeting at The Royce every week. I believe that one of the men was a Nazi officer whom I had under surveillance in Ethiopia.”

“Are you sure?”

“I only watched him through binoculars. I never got closer than thirty or forty yards, but I think it was him,” German replied.

Waxman stood, walked to the window, and gazed at the street below.

“I lost... my wife recently,” German added.

“I’m sorry,” Waxman said.

“I believe they meant to kill me,” German explained.

“You think they did it?”

German nodded his affirmation.

“Had they seen you in Ethiopia?”

“No. Never.”

“Then how...”

“He told me in the restaurant that I had developed and unusual interest in him. She was killed in our apartment the following day. The four of them never returned to the restaurant after.”

“I see,” Waxman mumbled.

“I saw him again yesterday in a tobacco shop off Lenox. The store was locked in the middle of the afternoon. There was an expression on his face. It was hateful... mocking.”

German’s face had become wet with tears, but he was barely aware of it.

“There are evil men in this world, Mr. Johnson,” Waxman observed pensively. “They didn’t all die with the fall of Germany. Many of them are here right under our noses. Let me tell you a story that I think you will appreciate.

“Long before America entered the war, British intelligence smuggled a military physician into a humanitarian field hospital near the Ethiopian coast. He was there to see an Ethiopian rebel who had become critically ill. The man died shortly after he left, but he was able to confirm the cause of death. The man died of acute radiation exposure.”

“What are you saying?”

“The atomic bomb that your country dropped on Japan was developed from German technology.”

“So that’s why they sent us to Ethiopia,” German said. “They thought the Nazis had a bomb in Ethiopia.”

“No. Not a bomb, but perhaps some of the material and technology to create one. In case the war didn’t go well, the Nazis decentralized some of their technology. It made sense. What better place than an isolated site protected by their fascist allies.”

“But we never saw anything.”

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t there,” Waxman replied.

“So what do you think this is about? These men... my wife.”

Waxman fumbled through several folders and finally laid a series of grainy black and white photos before German.

His eyes immediately settled on the picture of a young man wearing a Nazi uniform who had a receding hairline. The similarity was unmistakable. This was the man he had seen in Ethiopia — a younger version of the man with the staccato voice.

“Revenge, Mr. Johnson. The Nazi concept wasn’t just political philosophy. It was a faith, a religion, an evil that transcended Hitler’s moment in history. There are those who won’t accept defeat and the horror they are willing to visit upon you is beyond your wildest fears.”

“Who are you?” German asked. His mind was unable to fathom all that he was hearing.

“My country exists under a British mandate, Mr. Johnson, but we’re not foolish enough to leave our security to others. If we were to fall into that trap, we would share the same fate as our families who died in Hitler’s concentration camps. That’s all you need to know.”

“So you’re some kind of diplomat?”

“Something like that,” Waxman smiled.

German smiled too. He knew a lie when he heard one, but it was a lie he was willing to accept.

Another week had passed, and the knock at German’s door was completely unexpected. Now that Angelina was gone, his phone rarely rang, and the diverse visitors who colored his life no longer brightened his door.

“Waxman. How did you find me?”

Waxman’s only response was a smile.

Waxman needed to see the tobacco store where German had last seen the man with the relentless eyes. Waxman’s purposes were still suspect to him, but it was a task German was all too willing to pursue. The long hours spent alone in grief and reflection had convinced him that the Nazis were involved in the death of his wife. Wife. He had come to call her that as if it had been a reality.

They found a corner where they could observe the store in obscurity. The closed sign on the door never changed, but occasionally there appeared to be movement inside.

Finally they saw the men. Two of them exited the building and got in a car in the alley and left.

German wanted to do something immediately, but Waxman cautioned patience. They watched the building most of the day observing the random exits and returns of the men. There seemed to German to be a pattern of movement developing, but Waxman dismissed it. Eventually all four men left together.

Waxman sprinted across the street with German close behind. He entered the locked door so quickly German thought he had a key. Waxman seemed to have more talents than would be expected in an ordinary man.

“Here,” Waxman said as they moved inside the store.

He handed German a pistol.

“What’s this?” German asked.

“Security. Peace of mind. I thought we might need it. You ever shoot anybody?”

German diverted his eyes and turned away. During his entire tour of duty, he had never fired his weapon. For that matter, he had never felt an immediate threat to his life until he returned home.

The store smelled of the rich odor of tobacco. It appeared well stocked with cigars, pipe tobacco, and cigarettes. There was also cigarette paper for those rugged souls who preferred to roll their own. A few tables and chairs sat in the middle of the floor for customers who wanted to relax with tobacco and coffee.

Waxman moved cautiously toward the back of the store with his own pistol in hand.

A back door led down a darkened stairway to a lower level. A wall switch turned on a single naked lightbulb hanging from the ceiling, illuminating an unoccupied room, which appeared to be a storage area. There were several unopened crates along the periphery of the room. Waxman inspected the markings closely while scowling. He rambled through papers and folders left on a desk. He found notebooks and perused their contents.

“Just as I suspected,” he muttered.

He used the phone on the desk to make a call.

“Who are you calling?” German asked.

“Friends,” Waxman answered succinctly, without making any effort to explain further.

“What is this place? What’s going on here?”

“These are dangerous men, Mr. Johnson.”

“Shouldn’t you call the police... the FBI?”

“Nobody’s going to help us,” Waxman interrupted. “There are no suspects in your wife’s murder, and the police aren’t asking questions anymore. Your former commanding officer didn’t even want to talk to you. There are others coming who could help us, but they won’t be here in time. I’m not absolutely sure how much time we’ve got, but if I guess wrong, hundreds of thousands of people could die. These men who killed your wife want to kill you, and they want to destroy your country as well as mine. We have no choice.”

“I don’t understand. What’s happening?”

“Mr. Johnson,” Waxman began with a weary sigh. “Many of the scientists and theoreticians in Germany were not friends of your country. Some of them accepted every word the Nazis spoke. Had the timeline been slightly different, it could have been New York and Washington going up in smoke and flames rather than Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This man you saw in the Ethiopian desert was in Hitler’s nuclear research program. What better place to hide than Harlem? Hide among the invisible and you become invisible. With a device as small as one of these crates, they could destroy this city and all of its people.”

German thought he felt his heart stop. His mouth was dry. He could feel the flesh peeling from his bones just like the pictures in Life magazine.

They both heard a soft thump. A closing door, perhaps, disrupted the stillness.

Waxman looked toward the stairway and backed into the shadows.

“Get behind me,” he whispered.

“The light!” German exclaimed.

“Don’t worry about that,” Waxman replied.

The four men were halfway down the steps when the man in the lead stopped. He said something to the others in a foreign language before taking another cautious step downward. He looked around the poorly illuminated room suspiciously.

German gripped his pistol tightly. He could feel his heart pounding with anticipation. The man had remembered that the light should have been off.

Suddenly Waxman made a move, and German’s anxiety accelerated.

Waxman stepped out of the shadows and fired point blank into the first man’s chest from no more than five feet away. As the first man fell, the others stumbled over each other in their panicked attempt to escape, but Waxman kept firing.

German bounded out of the shadows. Three men lay bleeding on the stairway. The fourth one — the balding man with the penetrating eyes — stood with his back plastered against the wall, but he wasn’t moving. His eyes appeared glazed, and bubbles of blood emanated from his trembling lips.

“Shoot him!” Waxman yelled.

German just stared at the man. His hands were sweating and trembling as he walked closer to him.

Waxman was frantically trying to reload his revolver.

“Shoot him, dammit! He killed your wife!”

German took another step toward the man. The expression on the man’s face was not one of fear or anger. It was surprise.

“I don’t know your wife,” he gurgled.

The sound of his voice prompted a rage in German. He shot him without hesitation — once, twice, and a third time after he fell.

German couldn’t stop trembling. It wasn’t as he had imagined. There was no feeling of satisfaction. There was no fulfillment. He felt ugly inside.

“The first one is always the most difficult,” Waxman said, but it was no consolation.

There was more noise upstairs. With amazing speed, German’s gun was suddenly pointing toward the top of the stairs.

Waxman quickly moved in front of him and pushed his arm aside.

“It’s all right,” he said.

To German’s amazement, several men wearing coveralls moved past them down the stairs and began gathering the papers. They hovered over the crates with equipment German had never seen.

“Geiger counters,” Waxman explained.

German sat on the floor and cried for the first time since Angelina’s funeral.

German watched several minutes of hushed discussions between Waxman and the men in coveralls before Waxman approached him and informed him that they had to leave.

“What about all of this?” he asked.

“They will take care of it,” Waxman replied.

“What’s in the crates?”

“Nothing. Tobacco. Cigars.”

They went up the stairs into the store.

“But you said...”

“Look, we didn’t find what we were looking for,” Waxman interjected impatiently. “There was no evidence of radioactivity down here. That’s good. That means that perhaps nothing has been imported into your country yet.”

German stood stiffly. For a moment he was frozen by his thoughts.

Waxman looked at him with a curious expression.

“What is it?” he asked.

“They weren’t armed,” German said. “We killed four men, and they weren’t armed. I mean, if they were dangerous spies, wouldn’t they have been armed?”

“Their papers indicated they were interested in explosives. You know their history. You think we should have waited?”

“They had no guns.”

“They killed your wife.”

“He said he didn’t know my wife.”

“You believe him?”

They left it there. They walked together for a time but said very little to each other, then Waxman shook German’s hand and walked down a side street and was never seen again.

Six months later, German was beginning to live again. He had found work, and the pain in his heart was finally beginning to diminish. He saw Irella Hardy as he entered his apartment building and transiently thought that he might linger at the entrance in hopes of avoiding her. She wasn’t really so bad, just an elderly busybody who rarely ventured outside her apartment but still managed to keep up with everyone’s business.

She spotted him and smiled pleasantly as she waited for him to approach.

“Mr. Johnson, I never got a chance to express my sympathy. I was so sorry to hear about your loss.”

“Thank you,” he replied, hoping his terse response would be a sufficient end to the conversation.

“They ever arrest that man who was over here that night?”

“What man?” German asked, suddenly interested in Irella Hardy’s words.

“I told the police all about him. I don’t appreciate strangers hanging around here.”

“A stranger? Did you see him go near my apartment?”

“I don’t know, son. I was scared, so I closed my door. He was so big he looked like a big black giant with them gold teeth shining like they was headlights.”

German’s mouth dropped open. It couldn’t have been. It was impossible. German mumbled something unintelligible and walked away.

His pain returned in an instant. All of his memories and the agony of Angelina’s death came back as if it had happened yesterday. The drawer of his dresser had the only answer he was willing to accept, the gun that Waxman had given him. He stared at it for several seconds before shoving it into his pocket and hurrying out of the door.

The street was dark, but he moved along the familiar route without hesitation. Although lost in thought, his feet moved deftly around a corner and down Lenox, past the tobacco store where the light faded from the eyes of the man he had feared. He hadn’t been on this street since the killings. He looked up at the building, almost stunned by what he saw. The building was boarded up and plastered with warning signs. A uniformed police officer stood on the corner warning people to keep moving.

“What happened here?” German asked the officer.

“Don’t know. Government business. They condemned this building four months ago. Some kind of contamination on the upper floors. They don’t tell us what’s what. They got us here round the clock to make sure nobody goes inside. They come down here every day inspecting and testing. I tell you, I’m getting pretty damn tired of this. Hell, it’s cold out here.”

German nodded and moved away. So it wasn’t in the basement, he mused. Somehow that didn’t make him feel much better. He had killed a man. Maybe he was a bad man, but looking the man in the eye while pulling a trigger stole something from him he could never regain. He had consoled himself with the knowledge that the man was a killer who had taken the only person he had ever loved. Now, he wouldn’t even have that to help him to rationalize his deeds.

The Royce was busy. The waiters who knew him were clearly surprised at his presence.

“Where’s Leonard?” German asked one of them.

“Haven’t you heard? Leonard’s in the hospital, man. He’s pretty bad. They don’t expect him to make it.”

German suddenly had a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. That couldn’t be. He was determined to find Leonard and do what he had intended. He needed to do this for his own sanity. He couldn’t bear to breathe the same air as the man who had killed his Angelina.

Harlem Hospital’s rectangular edifice sprang into the night sky. German walked through the doors adjacent to the emergency entrance and was obscured by its perpetual organized chaos. He was directed to Leonard Royce’s room and stood outside his door steeling himself for what he knew he must do.

He stepped inside with his hand in his coat pocket and the pistol firmly in his grip. He was startled by what he saw. Leonard Royce lay still, with his eyes closed as if unaware of German’s entry. His once muscular frame had become an emaciated shell. His skin, devoid of its subcutaneous tissue, had become only a covering for his skull.

German found it difficult to look at Leonard. He stood at the bedside and pointed the pistol at Leonard’s head. Nothing mattered anymore except the need to stop the pain that raged inside of him. Only the cessation of Leonard’s breathing could satisfy the anger he felt.

German’s finger pressured the trigger. He was surprised at how easy it seemed to be.

Royce’s eyes suddenly opened, and the unexpected development momentarily unnerved German. His finger relaxed as he observed Leonard’s labored breathing. He appeared to be straining to focus on German. His eyes shifted from German to the gun. His lips began to tremble as he managed a hoarse whisper.

“I never meant to hurt her.”

The big man began to cry, but it meant nothing to German. German already had blood on his hands, but it was the wrong blood. He could see the scenario unfold in his mind. Royce, with all of his personal failures, had come to covet acquisitions as symbols of his success. Angelina was elegantly beautiful — too beautiful to waste her life with a mere waiter. She was the kind of woman Royce would think deserved to be with him.

Angelina would have been surprised by his presence at her door, but his familiarity would have provided her with enough comfort to let him in. She would have been disgusted and repulsed by his attempts to approach her. She would have pushed him away, fought him.

German couldn’t bear the thoughts anymore. He jerked the weapon back toward Leonard’s head. Waxman had been right. The first time was the most difficult.

“I always wanted to go back home to Jamaica.”

Leonard’s voice was barely discernible. German’s hand trembled as a moment of indecision crept back into his mind.

He was looking at a breathing dead man — a living skeleton. A bullet in the head would be a blessing, and why should Leonard have that? This slow, agonizing death was exactly what he deserved. What could be any better than Leonard Royce dying by inches in the stench of his own excrement? He pulled the gun away and slipped it back into his pocket.

As he backed toward the door he imagined he could see the disappointment in Leonard’s eyes. Death would not be his rescuer today. There was a certain satisfaction in that.

“Excuse me, are you a relative?”

A physician with a white smock approached him as he left the room.

“Uh... yes, a cousin,” German lied quickly.

The doctor pulled him to the side and in a sympathetic voice informed him of the hopelessness of Leonard’s condition. He was dying of metastatic thyroid cancer. Like a number of others who had frequented the tobacco shop, he had suffered from repeated exposure from a radiation source that had been hidden on an upper floor. Since it had been stored in crates of tobacco products, the cigars Leonard liked to smoke were contaminated as well.

German walked out of the rear of the hospital and into the Harlem night. He walked past his apartment and past a hundred dark streets. He kept walking. He walked until he saw the sun being reborn on the eastern horizon. It was a beacon, like the spirit of Angelina leading him to a new beginning.