Sniper's Justice

Chapter One

Waiting in ambush, Caje Cole shivered in the freezing fog and snow but didn’t take his eyes from the rifle scope. Any minute now, he expected to see a German unit come into view on the snow-covered road below.

All around him, the other squad members were ready. Vaccaro crouched at Cole’s elbow, sighting down the barrel of his own rifle. Lieutenant Mulholland stood behind a tree, pointing his weapon down the slight incline in the direction from which they expected the Krauts to appear. Cutting through steep hills, the road seemed to pass through a tunnel of thick spruces and hemlocks arching overhead, adding to the winter gloom.

“You know what I’ve been thinking?” Vaccaro whispered.

“You thinking? That sounds about the same as you pulling the pin out of a grenade,” Cole responded without taking his eyes off the road. “Give me a few seconds, so I can take cover.”

“Very funny, Hillbilly. What I’ve been thinking is that it probably hurts less to get shot in cold weather. You’re so damn numb that you can’t feel it.”

“City Boy, everybody knows it hurts more to get shot when it’s cold,” Cole said. “Take a hammer and whack your thumb in January and then whack it again in July. See which one you like better.”

“What kind of test is that? I’m talking about getting shot.”

“The thing is, you can only test it once when you get shot. Now with a hammer—”

“Quiet, you two,” the lieutenant said. “Save it for the Krauts.”

Cole grinned. Mulholland was getting antsy. Cole couldn’t blame him. Their squad had been sent back along this road to intercept the Germans behind them. They weren’t necessarily supposed to stop the Krauts, but to buy the rest of the unit some time.

With any luck, they might even lead the Germans right into a trap. Unfortunately, the squad would be serving as the bait.

The cause of the hold-up that necessitated this delaying action was the condition of the mountain roads. The trucks carrying the soldiers and supplies down the slippery, snow-covered roads were having a terrible time negotiating the hills and curves. The nimble Jeeps with their chain-wrapped tires fared somewhat better. Finally, one of the Studebaker trucks had slid sideways into a ditch and managed to get itself stuck.

The problem was that the truck now blocked the road, so they couldn’t just leave it. It was a fact of life that any truck that got stuck instantly became crudely personified as a stubborn bitch. Half a mile behind them, every soldier in the unit, no matter how weary and frostbitten he might be, was now pushing that truck, some of them hauling on ropes secured to the front bumper, trying to get that stubborn bitch out of the ditch.

From the other direction, they all knew that the Germans were coming. It was the squad’s job to slow them down while the rest of the unit got the road cleared.

Everybody kept saying that the Germans were beaten, but apparently, the Germans in these hills hadn’t gotten the message. Every time they ran into the Krauts, those bastards fought like hell.

“I wish those Kraut bastards would hurry up and get here,” Vaccaro said. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Just keep your eyes open,” Cole said.

If there was one thing that Cole had, it was patience. He tended to move slowly and deliberately, a perfect economy of motion without any wasted effort. When he did move in a hurry, it caught people off guard.

He was like a hawk floating easily in the high air that suddenly dives to strike its prey with vicious precision.

If Cole was a hawk, then Vaccaro was more like a junkyard dog. Nonetheless, they made a good team. Cole’s nickname was Hillbilly, a nod to his Appalachian roots. As for Vaccaro, everybody called him City Boy, which fit his Brooklyn origins. Just about every soldier had a nickname, earned for some action or personality trait. As for the greenbeans in the unit, nobody even bothered to give them names. They tended not to last that long.

“Here they come,” the lieutenant said.

Off in the distance, they heard the rumble of motorized vehicles. Mixed in was the distinctive sound of an enemy tank. It was funny how you could hear the difference between a Sherman and a Panzer. This Panzer was definitely coming closer.

If it was any consolation, the Germans would be having just as hard of a time navigating the narrow winter roads. In fact, they might even be having a harder time of it, considering that if the Krauts had a Tiger with them, those tanks were twice the size of a Sherman.

“That’s just great,” muttered Vaccaro beside him. “Tanks. Why does it have to be tanks?”

“We’re just lucky, I reckon,” Cole said.

“We’d be a whole lot luckier if we were about ten miles behind the lines, eating Christmas leftovers.”

Cole didn’t have an answer for that. Like the others, he knew that they weren’t even supposed to be fighting any battles. After a hard fight across France, his squad had been scheduled for some well-deserved R&R over the Christmas holiday.

However, Uncle Adolf had made other plans for the holidays. The Germans had launched a surprise attack through the Ardennes Forest, forcing exhausted troops who had been looking forward to some rest back into the fight — Cole and Vaccaro among them.

The attack had been massive, with thousands of infantry and hundreds of Panzers. Most incredible of all, the Germans had staged their forces in complete secrecy, catching the Allies totally unawares. Nobody had expected troops to attack across that rugged terrain, lending to the element of surprise.

As a result, German forces had pushed the Allies back across 50 miles of hard-won ground, which was a bitter pill to swallow. Since then, the attack had faltered and the Germans had mostly been contained in what had come to be known as the Battle of the Bulge.

Once again, Cole and his fellow soldiers had hoped for some respite. During the battle, he had managed to defeat an enemy sniper known as Das Gespenst once and for all.

Cole had expected to have some time to savor his victory against Das Gespenst and catch up on his sleep. But then on New Year’s Day, the Germans had gone and shown that they were by no means finished. To start off 1945, Hitler had masterminded Operation Nordwind through the Vosges Mountains to the south of the initial attack. Having rallied the forces pushed back initially by Allied forces, the second half of the Battle of the Bulge had begun. Steeped in myths and legends that spanned centuries, the Vosges region was dotted with small villages, valleys, and mountain peaks popular with hunters. This time of year, it was also wintry and frozen.

Cole had heard it said before that war was hell and life wasn’t fair, and he agreed. He also thought that war in Europe was cold. Somewhere in the Pacific, his cousin Deacon Cole was fighting the Japanese. That sounded like a tropical vacation compared to this.

Trying to ignore the fact that he was shivering, Cole listened to the sound of the tank grow louder. He had taken off his gloves before getting set up with the rifle, and his fingertip felt numb on the trigger. Since that morning he had also noticed a scratchy throat coming on, and his bones felt achy. He tried to ignore that, too — the last thing he needed was to get sick out here. As if the cold and the fighting weren’t bad enough, adding to the men’s misery was the fact that the flu had been going around.

Right now, he had more immediate concerns than the flu. If there was one thing that any infantryman feared, it was the German Panzers. The tanks were not invincible — the GIs had certainly proved that by now — but against a Panzer, their individual rifles might as well be pea shooters. Their squad didn’t have one of the new recoilless rifles or even a bazooka. After all, their orders were to slow down the Krauts while the rest of the unit got the road cleared.

Among the trees below, a snowy branch suddenly moved, despite the fact that there wasn’t any wind. Then another branch slightly higher than the first one quivered. Clumps of snow fell. Beyond this localized disturbance, the rest of the forest remained still.

It was a curious phenomenon that could have been chalked up to some forest creature, but Cole knew better. He guessed correctly that it meant a German was climbing the tree, trying to get a glimpse of the road ahead.

For their ambush, the squad had picked a spot where they had a commanding view of a bend in the road. The Krauts weren’t foolish enough to come around that bend right into any waiting guns. Always cautious, they had sent a scout ahead.

“Hey, twelve o’clock,” Vaccaro whispered, suddenly deadly serious. “See that tree moving?”

Cole didn’t respond, but pressed his eye tighter against the rim of the telescopic sight. The icy metal felt as if it was cutting into flesh, but he ignored it, willing his eye to see every detail of the forest below. Another branch quivered, then stopped. High in the tree, Cole caught a glint of something. Binoculars? Rifle scope? The German scout was looking right at them. They just had to hope that they had hidden themselves well enough to fool the scout.

Cole held his fire, although he could easily have picked off the German. He wanted the Germans to think that the road ahead was clear and that there wasn’t any danger.

Seemingly satisfied that this was the case, the tree branches moved again, this time in the opposite order as the scout descended. Cole had to hand it to the Kraut. Other than the stirring of the branches, which would have been hard to notice if you weren’t looking for it, the scout had moved silently and stealthily.

Meanwhile, the Germans came closer. They could hear them, but not see them. The clanking of the panzer treads on the hard-packed ice of the road became distinct. They heard a few commands shouted over the relentless engines — a few Kübelwagen vehicles along with the Panzer. Even if the Allied planes had been flying, the Germans would have had good cover under the canopy of the evergreen forest.

“Here they come,” Mulholland muttered. “Steady … pick your targets.”

There was no need for him to say it. After months of combat, these men knew the drill. All of them aimed their weapons, held their breath, intent on the targets soon to appear around the bend.

They didn’t have to wait long. First to appear were a handful of soldiers wearing white winter camouflage smocks. In the old days, these would have been called skirmishers — sent out ahead of the main force to probe the presence of the enemy.

Still, the men around Cole held their fire, awaiting an order from the lieutenant. The Germans on the road below came closer. Now, the roar and clank of the Panzer sounded even louder. The stink of exhaust reached them like an affront to the clear mountain air. The tank took up most of the road. Despite its size and weight, the Panzer was having some trouble on the icy incline, lurching sideways on the road before straightening itself out.

Cole set his sights on the man in the turret of the Panzer.

“Fire!” Mulholland shouted.

The first burst of gunfire dropped three of the enemy soldiers. The others scattered into the ditches and trees. They knew better than to throw themselves flat on the road, right in the path of the Panzer, where they would be turned into German pancakes.

Through the scope, Cole could see the tank commander in the Panzer turret, pointing in the squad’s direction. It was all too clear that the Unteroffizer was ordering the Panzer to target them. The barrel of the tank’s gun swiveled toward them, the muzzle looking big and black as a pit into hell. Any second now, the Panzer was going to blow them all to Kingdom Come.

Not so fast, Cole thought. He squeezed the trigger. The tank commander slumped in the turret. Cole’s squad had a temporary reprieve from the threat of the Panzer’s main gun. That didn’t prevent the tank’s heavy machine gun from buzzing like a metallic hornet’s nest.

More soldiers poured in from the sides of the tank, setting up an assault on the squad’s position. Cole had seen it all before. You could count on the Germans to be efficient. After years of battle, they knew their business.

Then again, so did the squad. The soldiers around Cole poured a withering fire down the road. The squad had the advantage of being behind cover, while the Germans on the road mostly remained exposed.

Down on the Panzer, someone from below pushed the body out of the turret and the dead Unteroffizer rolled down the side of the tank and fell to the snow like a sack of grain. He noticed that unlike the infantrymen, the tank crew didn’t wear camouflage.

Another man appeared in the turret, this one armed with a Schmeisser. He let off a burst in the direction of Cole’s squad, then shouted something down into the tank. Once again, the big gun began to swivel in their direction.

“Ain’t gonna happen,” Cole muttered. He put his crosshairs on the soldier in the turret, and fired. The tanker slid back down into the hatch.

But this time, there was no stopping the Panzer from sending a round in their direction. The tank fired. The muzzle blast lit up the forest canopy with an orange glow, the shock wave from its big gun making the branches all around dance as if hit by a gust of wind. Snow showered down.

Traveling at nearly four thousand feet per second, the tank round whooshed over their heads and struck the road behind the squad, punching a hole in the icy road. They had dodged a bullet — a damned big bullet, at that — but the squad might not be so lucky again. Already, the Panzer’s gun was angling lower.

“Fall back!” Mulholland shouted.

Nobody needed to be told twice. Their orders were to delay the German advance, not stop it. For that, they would have needed a lot more firepower.

Besides, the Americans up the road had a surprise in store for the Germans.

Cole slipped from behind the fallen log that he had been using for cover, even as a burst of fire from the Panzer’s 7.92 mm MG 34 machine gun chewed up the bark. Time to go.

The squad began a running battle back to the rest of the unit. They stopped now and then to fire at the Germans who had outpaced the tank.

Cole threw himself down flat on the road, locked his arms into a prone position, and waited for the tank to come back into sight. He was disappointed that the tank crew had figured out not to put anybody back in the turret — either that, or they had run out of crew to sacrifice. Instead, a couple of soldiers had climbed onto the tank to serve as its eyes and ears as it navigated the road. While the Panzer had viewing slits and periscopes like any tank, it was easier to drive when somebody had eyes on the road. One of the soldiers leaned over the hatch to shout instructions down into the tank.

Cole picked him off.

Then he and the others were up and running again, back toward the main position.

“I hope they know we’re coming,” Vaccaro panted, laboring to run in the awkward pac boots. Though the rubberized boots kept their feet more or less dry, it was like trying to run with canoes strapped to your feet. It didn’t help that the rubber soles slipped and slid on the hard-packed road.

“They’d have to be deaf not to have heard that Panzer,” Cole said, chancing a look back over his shoulder. So far, the road was empty, but they could hear the enemy tank approaching with its steady clank, clank and straining engine.

Around another bend in the road, they found the rest of the unit. The truck had been pulled out of the ditch, and already the convoy was rolling on. But they had left behind an insurance policy in the form of a Jeep with a recoilless rifle mounted on it. The Jeep sat in the middle of the road, its weapon pointing toward the oncoming Germans. The gun had been sighted in on a crest in the road. All they needed was a target. From the shouts of the approaching Germans and the sound of the Panzer echoing through the forest, they wouldn’t have to wait for long.

“You guys are a sight for sore eyes,” Vaccaro panted.

“You know how to sweet-talk a guy,” said the GI set up behind the recoilless rifle. The weapon fired a HEAT round that could spell trouble for a Panzer despite its thick armor — if it hit just the right spot. “Stick around and enjoy the show, why don’t you?”

Sure enough, the Germans were coming up the road. Cole got behind a tree and brought his rifle to his shoulder. He was just lining up the sights when the Panzer came over the crest in the road and the recoilless rifle fired.

Again, the orange muzzle flash lit up the tunnel-like canopy of forest hanging over the road. The sound was deafening, like somebody had just stabbed his eardrums.

There was a white-hot flash as the round hit the Panzer dead-on.

The tank lurched to a stop, smoke and flames pouring from the hatch.

There was no need for a second shot, and no time for that, anyhow. Undeterred by the destruction of the Panzer, German troops stormed up the road.

“Hop on, boys,” the gunner said. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

The squad didn’t need to be told twice. They scrambled onto the Jeep and hung on tight. The engine had already been running, and seconds later they were rolling. The Jeep wasn’t exactly fast, not on that treacherous road, and it was now overloaded with men clinging to any available surface, but it was going in the right direction at least — away from the Krauts.

Cole looked back and had one last glimpse of the burning Panzer and the white-smocked Germans dodging around it. The scene was marred somewhat by the appearance of a burning figure crawling from the wreckage of the tank. He looked like a sausage that had caught fire on a grill. The burning man tumbled down from the tank and stood in the middle of the road, doing a terrible dance. Maybe he only imagined it, but Cole thought that he could hear the man screaming.

Cole raised his rifle. It was a long shot, taken from the back of a bouncing vehicle, but he quickly pulled the trigger and put the enemy soldier out of his misery.

The gunner from the recoilless rifle turned to him and angrily snapped, “What the hell did you do that for? That’s a waste of ammo.”

“Shut up,” Vaccaro told him.

The gunner opened his mouth to say more, but Cole flicked his cut-glass eyes at him, and the man fell quiet.

Years later, it would seem like Cole could only recall bits and pieces of the war, like some half-remembered bad dream when you woke up the next morning. The older that he got, the more that the memories of the war became more like pictures in a scrapbook than a movie in his head. A movie that he had lived through.

He didn’t know it then, but this scene of the burning Panzer illuminating the forest gloom would be engraved forever in his mind’s eye. To him, it summed up the whole Battle of the Bulge.

“It’s a hell of a thing,” Vaccaro said, watching the scene fade into the distance.

Cole didn’t ask Vaccaro to explain. He knew exactly what he meant.

Chapter Two

Cole bent over the knife blade, honing it to perfection. He loved the warm, buttery feel of the steel under his fingertips as he coaxed it into shape.

This piece of metal had come from an old farm implement on an abandoned property he had found while roaming the mountains. Cole had knocked the rust off with a grinder, then hammered it flat to reveal the perfect, gleaming metal underneath. He liked metal with character and a story, not to mention the challenge of making something old useful again. This old metal had some life in it yet.

As he bent over the knife, the cheaters he wore to see the close work were one of his few concessions to age. That, and some gray hair, though his hair was still thick. He wore it long now like some old mountain man, the hair in back touching his shirt collar.

The process of transforming a cold, rectangular bar of metal into a useful object never ceased to enthrall him. Cole had spent much of his earlier life destroying things and it gave him pleasure to do the opposite now.

Each knife was a journey. He started with a blank piece of metal and a rough idea, but the true knife was hidden somewhere within the steel. When he thought about it, his whole life had been much the same, a journey and a transformation, just as any good life was when you looked back on it.

That fall morning, Cole reckoned that his own journey was winding down. He was becoming an old man. Seventy was on the horizon. Age often made him introspective these days. Back in WWII or Korea, there were times when he hadn’t expected to live until the next minute, let alone for several more decades. Many good men on both sides had not been nearly so fortunate. He had tried to live a good life for them.

Cole hoped now that when the end did come that it would be in his bed, or better yet, hunched over his workbench or hunting in the woods. You couldn’t always choose how you went, but he could hope.

Meanwhile, the world kept changing. Color television. Games that you played on TV, instead of with a ball. Frozen dinners that came in an aluminum foil tray, eaten by a lot of people even up here in the mountains, where folks ought to know better. Then there was the politics. Cole hadn’t bothered to vote for anyone until Eisenhower, who had been worth the effort of going into town and casting his ballot. An actor named Ronald Reagan had been president, then George H.W. Bush. Bush had been a pilot in the war, and he was from Texas, two things in his favor. There was talk of a young man from Arkansas running in the next election. Arkansas? The next thing you knew, there’d be a president from someplace like Delaware.

Cole turned back to his workbench and put all of the world’s nonsense out of his mind.

Then came the knock on the workshop door.

“Gran sent me up here,” announced his grandson, Danny, sticking his head cautiously through the door. He had learned the hard way that it was not in his best interest to startle his grandfather. Best to knock first. “She said a letter came special for you.”

“Put it over there,” Cole said, nodding toward the table.

“Aren’t you going to read it?” Danny asked.

Cole gave the boy one of his looks, but he couldn’t make it stick. He had too much fondness for the boy.

At sixteen, Danny looked startlingly like Cole had at that age, all arms and legs and sinew, but better fed. That wasn’t the only place where the similarity ended. Danny had soft brown eyes and was popular with the local girls at school. School. Cole had made damned sure that his grandson learned to read and write, getting a better start than he had himself.

Where Cole possessed a natural-born ornery streak, he recognized kindness in the boy. Cole considered that to be a good trait, but it surely hadn’t come from his side of the family.

Danny wouldn’t even go hunting with his grandfather because he didn’t like killing animals. Then again, Danny wouldn’t starve if he didn’t fill the stewpot as had been Cole’s case at the same age. Times had changed for the better.

The boy could be nervous as a cat around the old man when Cole was in one of his moods, causing Danny to act a little scared of him. Cole was aware of his own rough edges and did his best to handle Danny gently. Cole’s own daddy had whipped hell out of him, so he had promised himself that he would never raise a hand against any child. One glance from his cold, gray eyes was all the correction that was ever needed.

Cole took those eyes off the knife long enough to give the envelope a glance. It was in a square envelope made of fine, ivory paper, with his name written on it in script. Looked like a fancy wedding announcement. Some relative expecting him to put on a department store suit and give them a gift.

“Unless it’s the electric bill, I ain’t interested.”

“Gran said you ought to open it right away because it’s from Germany. C’mon, Pa Cole. See what it is.”

“You open it, boy. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Danny gave a dramatic teenaged sigh. “All right.”

“Here, use this.”

Cole shed his eyeglasses, then handed his grandson the knife blade he was working on, which Danny used to slit open the envelope. Cole frowned when he saw that the knife had struggled a bit against the thick paper, so he took it back and returned it to the grindstone.

“It’s an invitation,” his grandson announced.

“I don’t know nobody in Germany,” Cole said.

“Maybe not, but they know you, evidently.” The boy was always talking like a teacher, which secretly pleased Cole. “They’re opening a WWII museum in Germany, and there’s an exhibit about you and they want you to be there for the dedication. You’re famous, Pa Cole.”

Cole grunted. He didn’t hold with any of that Pee-paw or Mee-maw silliness, or God forbid, Pop Pop. Danny called him Pa Cole and the boy’s grandmother was Gran. As for the invitation, he could not imagine what sort of fool would put him in a museum.

He nodded toward the potbelly woodstove in the corner. “Throw it in the fire,” he said. In Cole’s mountain accent, the word sounded like far.

“No way! Aren’t you even going to look at it?”

“Nope.”

“There’s a note in here from somebody named Colonel Mulholland. It says you ought to come.” The boy’s voice rose an octave with excitement. “All expenses paid!”

Mulholland. Now there was a name from the past. As a young man, Mulholland had been Cole’s sniper squad leader in Normandy and beyond. What the hell did Mulholland want after all these years?

Curiosity finally got the better of Cole. Reluctantly, he put down the knife and held out his gnarled hand. “Give it here.”

Danny hesitated, as if he worried that Cole still planned to toss the thing in the fire. Instead, Cole read the note from Mulholland. Years before, that would have been impossible because Cole had been illiterate. Growing up in the mountains during the Depression era had been about survival, not learning his letters. When he had finally returned from Korea, Cole had set about learning to read and write with a great deal of help from Norma Jean Elwood, who had become Norman Jean Cole in short order.

Grumbling, he shoved his cheaters into place and read:

“Don’t that beat all,” Cole said. Mulholland had managed to touch upon duty and a heartstring at the same time. He always had been a smart SOB. Cole hadn’t known that Mulholland had made a career of the military, but he wasn’t all that surprised.

“Are you gonna go?” the boy asked.

“Hell no,” Cole said, but he shoved the letter and invitation into a pocket instead of tossing them into the wood stove.

“You and Danny are going,” Norman Jean announced at suppertime, once she heard the news. Of course, it was Danny rather than Cole who had spilled the beans.

Cole stopped chewing. “What?”

“It will be good for you. Hillbilly, you ain’t hardly been out of these mountains in ten years.” It was just like Norma Jean to call him by his old nickname. “Besides, it will get you out of my hair for a spell. My sister might come down from Baltimore to visit.”

Norma Jean’s uppity sister had moved north and married a steelworker, and Cole got along with her about as well as magpies got along with hawks. Which was to say, not at all.

Cole felt like his wife and grandson were ganging up on him, so he found an excuse after supper to head back out to the workshop, where everyone would leave him the hell alone. If it hadn’t been dark, he would have taken his shotgun and headed into the woods.

But Norma Jean wouldn’t let him be. No more than half an hour passed before she came through the door. Unlike Danny, she never bothered to knock first.

“Can’t you leave a man alone?” Through an unspoken rule, they had long-ago reached an understanding that the house was her domain and the workshop was Cole’s. Both knew to tread lightly in the other’s territory, which made for a long and happy marriage.

“We ain’t done talking about this trip,” Norma Jean said.

“All right. Say your piece, but I ain’t going.”

“You’re only thinking of yourself,” she said. “It will be good for the boy. He’s never been anywhere. It would be good to have some experience before he goes off to college.”

“College?” Cole almost choked on the word. He shook his head. His wife had been pushing for the boy to get a real education, but Cole wasn’t nearly as convinced that it was important.

“Times are changing, you dumb hillbilly. Danny can’t stay on this mountain forever. The world’s a big place and it’s about time he started seeing some of it for himself.”

“The army took care of that for me.”

Norma Jean put her hands on her hips. “The army? You mean those folks who sent you halfway around the world to get shot at? Is that what you would wish on Danny?”

“No,” Cole agreed. Besides, it was all too clear that Danny wasn’t like him.

“You write back and tell them you’re going, and that you are bringing your sixteen-year-old grandson.”

Norma Jean went out and shut the door.

Cole grumped and muttered during the next several days, but Norma Jean ignored him. Gran had spoken, and that was that. Cole knew that he had gotten his marching orders. Sometimes, he thought that General Eisenhower or even MacArthur himself could have learned a thing or two from Norma Jean.

He wrote back to accept the invitation and sure enough, two plane tickets soon arrived in the mail.

The way that Danny had come to live with them was a story in itself, and not an altogether happy one. Shortly after returning from Korea, he and Norma Jean had gotten married. They lived for a time in the small cabin that Cole had built, but when it was clear that a child was coming along, Mrs. Bailey had announced that she was moving into town with a maiden aunt and that the house near the knife workshop was the young couple’s if they wanted it.

“A cabin ain’t no place to raise a baby,” Mrs. Bailey had announced.

Cole liked his cabin just fine, but in the mysterious ways that women often operate, between Norman Jean and Mrs. Bailey, he found himself moved into the modest two-story clapboard farmhouse. He couldn’t even say exactly how it had happened. One of the two upstairs bedrooms had been done over into a baby’s room — a nursery, as Mrs. Bailey proudly called it.

The house was very modest, with just the two rooms downstairs, two rooms upstairs, and a lean-to kitchen off the back. Hollis Bailey’s father had built the place, using fieldstone for the foundation and logs for the floor joists. The house didn’t have a lick of insulation, but worn braided rugs across the painted floorboards kept the worst of the cold at bay through the mountain winters.

Cole and Norma Jean’s daughter, Janey, never had much liked the mountain life. No sooner had she graduated high school than she took up with a group of friends, traveling around to rock concerts and smoking dope. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, this was what a lot of young people were doing. Their daughter had gone hippie on them. It didn’t seem to bother Norma Jean, who saw Janey as a strong young woman following her own path, but truth be told, it just about broke Cole’s heart when Janey left the mountain. He missed the young girl he had once known who liked to run barefoot through the grass, catching June fireflies. But Janey had gone and grown up.

Then the news came that she’d had a child by some young man she wasn’t married to. Cole had to be talked out of arranging a good ol’ shotgun wedding. Even Norma Jean was not pleased by the situation. Janey promised to come by soon for them to meet their grandson, but the months passed. Whenever she called or wrote, she always seemed to be living in a different place.

It fell to the local sheriff to knock on their door one winter’s night with the news that the car Janey had been riding in was in a terrible accident somewhere in upstate New York, sliding off the road during a snowstorm. Janey and her man both died in the crash, but by some miracle, the baby had been spared.

There was no question that Cole and Norma Jean would raise the child as their own. Janey had named him Danny. As for the last name, well, Janey had never married the boy’s father, so as far as his grandparents were concerned, the boy’s name was Danny Cole.

Cole and Norma Jean had done the best they could for the boy, hoping that someday, things would turn out better than they had with Janey. The loss of their daughter nearly broke their hearts — the little boy was the only thing that kept them from being overwhelmed by grief.

Of course, Cole was always taking the boy into the woods, showing him all that he knew, from the names of the trees, to the shapes of the tracks beside a mountain stream, to the constellations in the winter sky. Cole had reached an age where he felt that it was important to pass things along. It was something he had not done with Janey, her being a girl and all, but Cole could see the error of his ways. If he had only spent more time with Janey, maybe things would have turned out differently. He didn’t plan on making the same mistake twice.

When the boy was ten, Cole gave him an old single-shot .22 rifle, expecting that he would cut his teeth as a hunter on the local squirrels and rabbits. While the boy was responsible with the rifle and learned to be a crack shot, he never brought home any game.

“I don’t like killing,” he had explained to his puzzled grandfather. Danny made a joke of it. “If I could shoot a Snickers bar out in the woods, I’d be the best hunter ever!”

Just once, when the boy was twelve, Cole had taken him deer hunting. It had been nothing short of disastrous, and by an unspoken mutual agreement, they had never discussed it since.

For Cole, his fondest memories of childhood — and those were few and far between — had been waking early to go with his old man into the woods to go hunting. He had thought to share something equally as special with Danny.

Sure enough, Danny had been excited to head out into the woods before dawn. The late fall morning felt crisp as the sun slowly crept above the hills. Cole had already found a likely spot where a buck he had been scouting all summer liked to pass through on his way to forage for hickory nuts. They set up behind a fallen log and waited.

“There he is,” Cole said quietly. “Aim just behind his shoulder, just like we talked about.”

Danny put the rifle to his shoulder. The lever-action .30/.30 kicked like a mule, but the boy could handle it for one shot.

Across the clearing, the buck seemed to sense them, lifting his majestic head. The first rays of the morning sun caught the antlers, reflecting off the ivory tips. It was a sight that damn near took Cole’s breath away. The buck was a ten-pointer and weighed more than two hundred pounds. Any boy ought to be proud to take an animal like that as his first deer.

Beside his grandson, Cole waited tensely. Seconds dragged by. Any moment now and the buck would be gone.

“Go on,” Cole whispered.

But Danny refused to shoot. Slowly, he lowered the rifle.

“What’s wrong? You’ve got a clear shot.”

“I can’t do it. I can’t kill him.”

The buck had not moved. Cole put his rifle to his shoulder, lined up the sights, and started to squeeze the trigger. He was about to kill again, just as he had done so many times before. He breathed out, breathed in, held it.

That’s when he sensed Danny at his elbow, the boy holding his breath. He glanced at the boy and saw a stricken white face, the soft brown eyes filled with tears.

Cole lowered the rifle. The buck seemed to look directly at them, maybe catching their scent at last, then leaped away. The sun-dappled clearing stood empty. The buck that Cole had watched and waited for all summer was gone, likely spooked for good.

“You let him go?” Danny asked.

“I reckon we’ll let him live another season and get even fatter,” Cole said.

“I’m sorry, Pa Cole,” Danny said, looking as if he might cry. “I know I let you down.”

Cole worked through several emotions in the space of a few seconds, from anger to disappointment, then resignation. For better or for worse, Danny was never going to be like him. He reached down and squeezed the boy’s shoulder, then managed to force a smile for the boy’s sake.

“Ain’t nothin’ to be sorry about,” Cole said. “Let me tell you, there are a lot of ways to disappoint someone, and letting that buck go ain’t on my list. Besides, that buck ain’t none too sorry!”

“But we came all the way out here this morning and we’re going back empty-handed.”

“There’s no such thing as a bad morning in the woods,” Cole said, taking a deep breath of the fall air that smelled of fallen leaves and frost. On mornings like this, when it felt so good just to be alive, he often thought of the dead who weren’t there to enjoy it. He hoped that heaven was like the mountains on a fall morning. “Coming out here with you this morning is enough for me.”

“What will Gran say?”

“What, about not shooting a deer?” Cole snorted. “She don’t care about that. What Gran is goin’ to say is, do we want buckwheat pancakes and bacon for breakfast, that’s what. Now, let’s head on back.”

Chapter Three

Already, the trip to Germany was turning into an adventure. For starters, Cole had never flown on a massive, wide-bodied, Boeing 767. Each row of seats sat seven people, with groupings of two seats, then three seats, then two seats, separated by two aisles down the middle of the jet.

“Big as this plane is, I’m amazed the damn thing can take off,” he said.

“I’ve got a window seat!” Danny exclaimed, fiddling with the shade. “Pa Cole, do you think we’ll see the ocean from up here?”

“Gonna find out,” Cole said. “Once we’re in the air, look for a lot of blue water underneath us. That’d be the ocean.”

“Very funny. I think I’ll know it when I see it.”

Danny’s enthusiasm felt contagious. They hadn’t even gotten into the air yet, but Danny bounced in his seat like a puppy, taking in all of the sights and sounds. He had never flown before and was excited about the experience.

Cole had to admit that he was pleased to see Danny so excited. He realized that Norman Jean had been right all along. If nothing else, this trip would be memorable for their grandson. Although they saw each other every day, this trip was a chance to spend some one-on-one time with Danny; soon enough, the boy would be heading off to college or all his attention would be focused on a girlfriend. Cole knew well enough that time passed and things changed, even when you were standing still.

Maybe he ought to get out more and travel, but he felt content at home in the woods and mountains, hunting, or working on his knives. At first, the hurly-burly of the massive airport, along with the crowded plane, felt almost overwhelming. But Danny’s excitement helped him see the trip through the boy’s eyes and made him realize that he was just being what Norma Jean would have called a grumpy old man.

Besides, Cole reminded himself that all he had to do was sit back and relax for the eight-hour flight to Munich.

Most of the passengers appeared to be well-heeled tourists, some of the women wearing skirts and the men in dress slacks and sports coats. This being the early 1990s, anybody who wasn’t a college kid or teenager still dressed up to get on an airplane. His grandson had on jeans, a polo shirt with a little alligator on it that cost more than Cole’s first pickup truck, and Nike sneakers. Gran had taken Danny shopping before the trip and bought God knows what else that the boy wanted.

Cole’s needs were simpler. Hell, as a boy he’d gone whole summers without wearing shoes. He wore a dark brown corduroy sports coat with elbow patches that Norma Jean had found brand new at a thrift store, along with his best pair of Levis, freshly ironed, and sturdy brown shoes.

More than a few of his fellow passengers were Germans close to Cole's age. He found it jarring to hear them speaking in German, the sound of the guttural language taking him back to memories he hadn’t visited in a long time. More like dredged up, he thought. He told himself that he had better get used to it. He’d be hearing a lot more German spoken during the next couple of weeks.

Cole’s German consisted of a few phrases that were still stuck in his head, such as Surrender or Don’t shoot or even his personal favorite, Stirb, du Nazi-Bastarde. Loosely translated, this meant, Die, you Nazi bastards.

Somehow, he didn’t think those phrases would be a whole lot of use in the next few days.

He couldn't help but wonder if he had faced one or two of these German passengers from the wrong side of a battlefield. It was a strange thing to think about, but he reminded himself again that the world was always changing.

Several people had brought along books to read on the plane, including a World War II novel by Ken Follett called Night Over Water, which was a current bestseller. Appropriately enough, it was about intrigues during a transatlantic flight. The in-flight movie was going to be Quigley Down Under, a shoot-‘em-up western starring Tom Selleck that was set in Australia, of all places.

Other passengers had newspapers and magazines with them to pass the time on the flight. Several of the headlines focused on the recent fall of the Berlin Wall. For more than forty years, Germany and Berlin itself had been divided. Western Germany operated as a free democracy. The people and the economy thrived in the post-war years. Eastern Germany found itself behind the Iron Curtain, as part of territory seized by the Soviets. There, people were forced to live under Communism, a highly dysfunctional system of government that treated the needs of its population as an afterthought.

That repressive system had finally collapsed under its own weight, helped in no small part by the efforts of President Ronald Reagan, who had been determined to win the Cold War for once and for all, famously declaring, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

Prompted by many other calls for change from every quarter, the Soviet premier had listened. The opening of the border and the demolition of the wall were justifiably headline news. The Germany that they were visiting was being reunited for the first time in decades.

To Danny’s delight, they caught a few glimpses of the endless sea before the jet climbed above the clouds. The sky darkened as the sun went down; this was an overnight flight and they would awaken in Germany the next morning.

Once they were well out into the Atlantic, the free drinks flowed. These tourists set about drinking like it was their job.

“Something for you gentlemen?” the stewardess asked.

Danny looked at Cole. “Can I have a beer?”

“No.”

“I’m sixteen! The drinking age is fifteen in Germany.”

“We ain’t in Germany yet. Besides, if your Gran finds out I let you drink beer on the plane, won’t neither one of us get any older.” Cole looked at the stewardess, who had known better than to get involved in their beverage decisions, and said firmly, “Two Coca Colas, miss.”

With a sigh, Danny accepted his plastic cup of soda. “Well, when we get to Germany, does that mean I can have a beer?”

Cole thought about that. He didn’t intend for this to be one of those exhausting trips that parents and grandparents knew all too well, where Danny kept asking to do things or buy things, and Cole would be forced to say no. After all, his grandson wasn’t eight years old anymore.

He knew that he had to let the boy off the leash sometime to make his own discoveries — and mistakes. Hell, Cole hadn’t been much older when he shipped out for the war. But he had been a different person. Danny seemed a whole lot younger in Cole’s eyes, even a little naive. As for allowing his grandson to drink beer, Cole himself mostly steered clear of alcohol, knowing what it had done to his father. It wasn’t a habit he wanted to encourage in his grandson, but he knew that forbidden fruit always tastes sweeter.

“You know what?” Cole finally said. “You are sixteen years old. I ain’t gonna hold your hand every minute of this trip. You may want to go off on your own and explore, and that’s all I’m gonna say about that.”

Danny nodded, grinning. His grandfather hadn’t come out and given him permission to hoist a tankard, but he was saying that Danny could make some of his own decisions.

“That’s a deal. Just so long as I don’t have to keep you out of trouble,” Danny said.

“I’m an old man. What kind of trouble would I get into?”

“Gran told me not to let you shoot anybody.”

Cole snorted. “Your gran always had what I’d call a dry sense of humor, ever since she stole my clothes from that swimmin’ hole on Gashey’s Creek.”

“Huh? I never heard that story.”

“You ask your gran about that sometime when she’s acting high and mighty.”

Since Danny had taken the window seat, Cole found himself directly across the aisle from a fellow who looked to be about his own age. Like Cole, the man had opted for soft drinks and Cole couldn't help but notice that he had a slight German accent. Finally, he caught Cole’s eye and said, “Hello. Have you been to Germany before?”

Cole nodded. “A long time ago,” he said. “During the war.”

The other man nodded and offered his hand across the aisle, “Hans Neumann,” he said. After Cole had introduced himself in turn, his fellow passenger continued: “I, too, was in the war, but I suspect that I fought for the other side. You see, I was a soldier in the Wehrmacht. But not for long, thank goodness. I was captured and sent as a prisoner to Ohio.”

“A POW, huh?”

Hans smiled. “It was the best thing that ever happened to me. I felt like I had gone to heaven! The people were kind and I was just a boy really, who didn't have much choice about going into the army.”

“Nobody had much choice,” Cole agreed.

Hans nodded. “No, and that is why I was glad to be out of the war. There was plenty to eat in Ohio. There were pretty girls. I ended up staying there for the next forty years, ha! I found a wife and bought a farm and raised a family. I became an American citizen, which was my proudest day. But you see, I still have a few relatives in Germany, so here I am on this plane.”

Cole appreciated that Hans had summed up his life story in a few sentences, like the summary on the back of a book. Cole doubted that he could do the same; his life was a little more complicated.

“Good for you,” was all he said.

Hans smiled. “Good for me, indeed. This may be my last time going back. I have a bad heart, you see. Growing up, we were always told to eat lots of cheese and butter. It’s good for you, we were told! Well, the whole time it was clogging up my arteries.”

Cole snorted. “Yeah, don’t get me started. No salt, no sugar—”

“No fun!”

Cole found himself taking a liking to Hans, the Wehrmacht soldier-turned Ohio farmer. They were now just a couple of old codgers, bitching about the things that all old codgers bitched about. At this point in his life, he liked that just fine.

Cole had felt some uncertainty beforehand about this trip, but now, talking with Hans, he was finally starting to relax. Maybe Norma Jean was right that he was always too worried about what could go wrong.

“You hit that on the head, Hans. It’s no fun getting old.”

“You are from the south?” Hans asked. “I can hear it in your accent.”

“Born and raised. Got me a little place in the mountains and couldn't be happier.”

Hans nodded agreeably. “Look at us, having survived that nightmare, we are here today. We are blessed, my friend.” Hans raised his glass of soda in salute and Cole did the same. “Is that your grandson with you?”

“That's right,” Cole said. “We're taking a tour of Germany.”

“He is a good-looking boy,” Hans said in a tone of grandfatherly approval. “I have three grandsons myself. I am so glad that your grandson is going as a tourist and not as a soldier, as we had to do.”

“Amen to that.”

“Listen, I am going to put my head down and take a nap. All this traveling has made me tired and like I said, my heart is not what it used to be.” Hans took a pen from the pocket of his blazer and jotted a phone number on a cocktail napkin. “This is my telephone number and the address where I am staying in Munich. I still have many friends there and many family. If you and your grandson need anything while you are in Germany, you get in touch. You never know when you will need a friend.”

Cole took the napkin and nodded his thanks. “Much obliged, Hans.”

Left alone now, with Danny wrapped up in gazing out the window at the play of fading light across the pillowy clouds, Cole found himself lost in reflection.

Cole thought about his own arrival in Europe aboard a landing craft at the Normandy beachhead. There had been lots of training in England, of course, but nothing truly prepared anyone for the horrors they had experienced on that beach. On that beach, Cole had picked up an abandoned sniper rifle and his real career as a soldier had begun.

Consciously, he knew that he should be saddened and filled with regret at all the lives lost and the killing that he had done. But a deeper, raw part of Cole that he sometimes thought of as “the critter” hadn’t minded at all. In fact, that part of him missed it. He missed the excitement and even the camaraderie of fighting alongside good men.

Maybe these weren’t the best realizations to be having thirty thousand feet over the Atlantic. He let his mind wander to other things, and soon Cole managed to drift off.

He awoke to the gentle chiming of the seatbelt light and the pilot giving a weather report.

Next stop, Germany.

Cole felt butterflies in his stomach, but he told himself that it was just from the jet changing altitude.

Chapter Four

After they disembarked from the plane and went through customs, with a bored official waving them through without even looking at their passports, they emerged into the busy international arrivals terminal to see a uniformed driver holding a sign that read, “Herr Cole.”

“I reckon that’s us,” Cole said.

Much to Cole’s embarrassment, the driver insisted on carrying their bags to a shiny black Mercedes. The uniform was simply that of a chauffeur, but deep down, it made Cole uneasy. He had some experience with uniformed Germans, and it hadn’t been good.

However, this German was friendly and pleasant. He spoke perfect English, and explained that he had been a school teacher before retiring and deciding to keep busy by ferrying important passengers around Munich.

“Last week, you would not believe that I met Jim Palmer. A famous American baseball player! I even got his autograph. Are you famous?”

“Not for anything that you’d want to know about.”

The driver laughed good-naturedly, then whisked them from the airport to the hotel. On the way, he explained that the hotel near the airport was popular with travelers from all over the world and was much larger and modern compared to the traditional hotels within the city itself, which were more like Gasthäuser—guesthouses. “I know you Americans like everything the bigger, the better,” he said.

In the lobby of the massive Hilton hotel, Cole was taken aback by the shiny glass doors, the gleaming trim, the expansive veined marble. He gave a low whistle.

“This sure ain’t the Apple Blossom Motel,” he said. “It’s kind of fancy.”

“We’re just like rock stars,” Danny said happily. “Or country music stars, at least.”

“Don’t get used to it.”

But things kept getting better. Cole was half-convinced that they must have been dropped at the wrong hotel, but sure enough, the clerk had a reservation for them, along with a voucher for meals.

“We even get our own rooms,” Danny said. “We don’t have to share.”

“It's something, all right,” Cole agreed, still amazed by the lavish surroundings. Not for the first time this day, he realized that he was a long way from the ramshackle cabin where he had grown up in Gashey’s Creek. Back then, he’d been lucky if he got some biscuits to go with his squirrel stew. He had slept on the bare wooden floor of the loft with his brothers and sisters, body heat alone keeping them warm on winter nights. When he had gotten older, there had been a mattress stuffed with corn husks. During the war, he mostly slept on the cold, hard ground and hadn’t minded.

After washing up, they’d come back down and had a massive breakfast in the hotel restaurant, with the waiter squeezing fresh oranges table-side for their juice.

Sated, they made their way back up to their separate rooms. Danny was excited to give the cable television a whirl to watch the German version of MTV. Cole was more interested in a nap before they had to meet Colonel Mulholland that afternoon.

He closed the door, took off his shoes, and tried to get settled on the enormous bed. However, he just couldn’t seem to relax. The soft mattress kept threatening to swallow him whole. So much luxury felt overwhelming. After a while, he gave up and pulled some of the blankets onto the floor. Just like old times. With the reassuring feel of the hard floor beneath him, Cole finally slept.

Cole awoke to the sound of somebody pounding on the door. Annoyed with himself, he realized that he had overslept. Traveling had taken a bigger toll than he had expected. Not as young as I used to be. He glanced at the Timex on his wrist. He was supposed to go down and meet Colonel Mulholland in just half an hour.

Through the peephole, he saw that it was Danny knocking. Cole unlocked the door.

“I can’t believe I had to wake you up,” his grandson said. The boy noticed the blankets and pillow on the floor. ”Pa Cole, did you fall out of bed?”

“Something like that,” Cole replied. “Just give me a minute. I’ll be ready. Don’t you worry about me.”

He slipped into the bathroom. A shower would have been nice to help him wake up, but he settled for putting on a fresh shirt and splashing some water on his face, trying to get rid of the groggy feeling. It felt like his head was packed full of wool. Well, that was jet lag for you. Back home, it was close to his bedtime. At the moment, his bones felt every one of his years.

He emerged from the spacious bathroom feeling only marginally refreshed. However, seeing Danny bubble over with enthusiasm was better than a cup of coffee.

“Here, you better take my extra key,” Cole said. “Just in case I don’t wake up next time.”

“Why wouldn’t you wake up?”

“Because I’m dead, that’s why.”

“That’s a terrible thing to say!” Danny replied, but he was grinning. He had gotten used to Pa Cole’s dark sense of humor over the years. “Do I have to give you my extra key?”

“What, are you worried I might walk in while you are entertaining some cute young Fräulein?”

Danny’s face turned the shade of a mountain sunset. “No, that’s not—”

“You hang onto your keys,” Cole said. “C’mon, let’s go down.”

Danny looked him up and down. “You look kind of nice, Pa Cole. You’re wearing your sports coat again.”

“I reckon it’s best to look nice when you’re going to meet a ghost from the past.”

They took the elevator to the lobby, not saying much. Like a kid, Danny kept wanting to press all the buttons, making stops at each floor. Cole told him he could ride the elevator on his own time. There was that fluttery feeling in his belly again, which Cole was quick to blame on the elevator ride.

In the lobby, Colonel Mulholland was already waiting. Cole had wondered if they would even recognize each other after all these years. Cole still saw himself as a young man, but knew that the mirror said otherwise. To his surprise, Mulholland hadn’t changed all that much. He was still tall and lean, except for a bit of a paunch that hinted at good living. He wore eyeglasses with a bluish tint. Mulholland’s back was straight as a ramrod. In fact, from his posture to his close-cropped haircut, Mulholland looked very much like what he was, which was a retired Army officer.

“Caje Cole, as I live and breathe,” his old officer said, grinning ear to ear. “I’ll be damned if it’s not my favorite hillbilly.”

“Colonel Mulholland,” Cole said, gripping the man’s hand.

Mulholland laughed. “I’m just Jim these days.” He turned his attention to Danny. “This must be your grandson that you said was coming with you.”

“Nice to meet you, sir,” Danny said politely.

They spent some time catching up. It turned out that there was a Mrs. Mulholland, who would not be accompanying them today.

“She has heard enough about the museum,” Mulholland said with a laugh. “Of course, she will be coming to the museum opening. It’s going to be quite a party.”

For Mulholland, there were children and grandchildren, too. They all lived back in the U.S.

It was funny what you remembered about someone, Cole thought. The Mulholland that he remembered had been a decent officer, both courageous and fair, even if he and Cole hadn’t always agreed on how to fight the war. As a very young man, he had led Cole’s squad across much of Europe.

The one time that he and Mulholland had really clashed had been over a French Resistance fighter named Jolie Molyneux. The young lieutenant had set his sights on Jolie, flirting with her in his polite manner and his high school French, seeming to think that she would naturally gravitate toward him as an officer who was superior to a mere enlisted man, but it had been Cole who caught her eye.

There never had been anything polite about Cole. A brief and fiery wartime romance resulted. That affair prompted some tension between the two men until Jolie had been wounded during Cole’s fight with the sniper known as Das Gespenst and she been forced out of the picture.

Of course, that had been a lifetime ago. Cole wondered if Mulholland had ever told his wife about his infatuation with a lusty French Resistance fighter. He sure as hell had never said a word to Norma Jean. A smart man didn’t reminisce about old girlfriends and flings in front of his wife. Cole liked his head just fine without it being flattened by an iron skillet.

Mulholland turned his attention back to Danny. “I’m glad you’re here representing the next generation, although I’m sure you are sick and tired of hearing your grandfather’s war stories.”

“He’s never said much of anything to me.”

For the first time, a troubled look crossed Mulholland’s face. Both he and Cole knew that there were some war stories better left untold. He forced a smile. “Well, over the next few days, we’ll see if we can share the ones that matter,” he said diplomatically. “If you’re all set, let’s head over to the museum. It’s not open to the public yet, but considering that you are one of our VIPs for the grand opening, we can give you a preview.”

To Cole’s surprise, Mulholland was driving himself around Munich in a silver BMW. He explained that he had been stationed for so long in Germany that he had gotten a driver’s license, a car, and even an apartment where he lived except for trips back to the U.S. to visit relatives.

“At least we’re on the right side of the road over here,” Mulholland said. “Driving in England is a whole different story, believe me.”

“At least there aren’t any landmines this time around.”

Mulholland laughed. “You’ve got that right.”

Looking out the car window was a strange experience. Cole kept expecting to see bomb-damaged buildings and German POWs marching past with their hands in the air. However, the scars of war had long since healed. He could not think of a small city that looked more prosperous than Munich. By far, the broad streets and well-kept buildings put any grungy American city to shame.

At the wheel, Mulholland seemed to sense Cole’s bewilderment as the old soldier synced his memories with the modern Germany presenting itself beyond the windshield. “Now you see why some people joke that the Germans won the war, after all. Impressive, isn’t it? However, if you’re looking for monuments or historical markers, you’ll be disappointed,” he said. “The Germans have done all that they can to minimize recognition of the war.”

“Back home, there’s at least one monument to some war in every courthouse square and you don’t have to go far to find a historical marker on the side of the road. I think there’s one for every skirmish from the War Between the States. There might even be some markers for where the Yankees stole some chickens.”

“Yankees? The War Between the States? You must mean Union troops? The Civil War?” Mulholland laughed. “I know you Southerners have a different view. Didn’t we decide that we had relatives on opposite sides back then?”

“I reckon we did.”

“It’s funny, but Americans seem to tolerate Confederate monuments. There may come a time when they get pulled down. Who knows?”

“Wouldn’t be right,” Cole said. “It’s our history.”

“History has a way of getting swept under the rug,” Mulholland said. “Anyhow, here in Germany, that’s already been done. There’s almost nothing to recognize that most of the country became a battlefield. There aren’t any monuments, not even to the thousands, make that the hundreds of thousands of Germans, who perished during the Allied bombings.”

Cole looked around at the pristine buildings, but what he still saw in his mind’s eye were the ruins of war.

“The closest you’re going to get around here to a war memorial is Dachau,” Mulholland said.

Cole was familiar with Dachau, one of the original and most notorious Nazi concentration camps, which happened to be located in the suburbs of Munich. Looking at some of the older pedestrians they passed on the sidewalks, Cole realized that it was entirely possible that some of them had lived here when the concentration camp was in full operation.

Cole shook his head. “Dachau. It is hard to imagine the evil that people allowed to be done to one another.”

“Awful,” Mulholland agreed. “But there’s a small museum that recognizes what took place there. The barracks and other buildings where the prisoners languished are being allowed to fall into slow disrepair because no one was interested in preserving that horrible and troubled past.”

“They ought to have bulldozed that place.”

“Maybe. The one museum that Munich is known for is the massive Deutsche museum. There are some exhibits to the aircraft industry that include the development of Messerschmitt fighters, but aside from that, you won’t find much military history. It’s mostly about transportation and science.”

From the back seat, Danny spoke up. The two men had almost forgotten he was there. “Transportation and science? Ugh. Sounds like a place for school field trips.”

“You’re probably right. That reminds me. I brought you something.” Keeping one hand on the wheel, he reached into the glovebox and took out a chunk of concrete about the size of a baseball, then handed it back to Danny.

“A piece of concrete,” Cole said. “That’s right generous of you.”

Mulholland laughed. “It’s not just any chunk of concrete. It’s a piece of the Berlin Wall. That’s the real deal. I picked it up myself.”

“Wow!” Danny said. “I’ve seen the Berlin Wall all over the news.”

“This is a truly eventful time in Germany,” Mulholland said. He was referring, of course, to the fall of the Berlin Wall that had divided free Berlin from East Berlin. “Needless to say, the German people are elated to finally be reconnected with old friends and family that they had not been able to communicate with for more than forty years.”

They had all seen the news reports. The economy of East Germany was far behind that of the West, which had flourished under the capitalist system enabled by the Allied victory. The beautiful city around them was evidence of that success.

Mixed with the elation that the wall had finally come down was the growing concern that the former Communist territory might be a drag on the economy. These Germans would need jobs and decent educations. Germany had a lot of work to do ahead of it in finally reuniting the country. In some ways, the reunification was the closing chapter of the war era. Although Germany could fit neatly inside the state of Texas with room left over, it was geographically large for Europe. It was no small task to combine the two sides into a single modern nation of nearly eighty million people — equivalent to one-third of the current U.S. population. Back during WWII, Germany’s population had been closer to one-half the size of the United States, which had grown exponentially.

“All of the excitement about the Berlin Wall has overshadowed the museum opening somewhat, but I won’t complain. There’s such a thing as too much attention. Our museum board has faced some controversy about opening a museum. Considering the way that Germany has downplayed the war, that’s not surprising. But we need to tell the story of the war before those of us who remember it are all gone.”

In the backseat, Danny hefted the chunk from the Berlin Wall. “This is really cool. Thank you.”

“If you think that was cool, you haven’t seen anything yet.”

Mulholland drove past a soaring ultra-modern building built of stone and huge sheets of glass. With the sunlight glinting off it, the building looked like the tip of an iceberg exploding from the ground. This building made it clear that it had something to say.

The BMW pulled into a long entrance road, freshly blacktopped, that led to a parking area.

“Whoa,” Danny said. “Is this the place?”

“Welcome to the World War II Museum of Europe. Or to put it another way, Das Museum des Zweiten Weltkriegs in Europa.”

As Mulholland parked the BMW and they got out of the car, Cole said, “Quite a place.”

“Ha, you haven’t even seen the exhibit hall yet,” Mulholland said. “You’re one of the stars of the show.”

Cole wasn’t sure that he liked the sound of that. Just a few minutes before, Mulholland had mentioned that there was such a thing as too much attention. Cole agreed.

He stood for a moment, taking in the monumental grandeur of the building, and then slowly followed Mulholland and Danny toward the entrance. He didn’t know what to expect, but he suddenly dreaded the memories that this museum was dragging up.

Chapter Five

The museum grand opening was to be held in two days, which left them time to explore the city. Cole wasn’t one to sit in his hotel room. If he and Danny had come all this way, they were going to get out and see something. Plus, he wouldn’t mind tracking down some more Bratwurst, which he had sampled at dinner. Grilled, garlicky, and served with Sauerkraut … the stuff was that damn good. He didn’t remember eating any Bratwurst during the war, most likely because there hadn’t been much of anything to eat in Germany back then.

“You know, I’ve got an idea,” Cole announced the next morning over breakfast, once the waiter had finished squeezing their fresh orange juice again. He pulled out the cocktail napkin on which the old German soldier he had met on the plane had written his telephone number. To his surprise, he had found himself thinking about their conversation. Several things that Hans said had resonated with him and left a positive impression. “I think I would like to invite Hans to the grand opening. I think he’d appreciate it.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll need your help to call him. I don’t know how to work these damn German phones.”

“We don’t even need to use the phone,” Danny said. “We’ll just ask the hotel concierge to call him for us.”

“The what?”

“You’ll see.”

Cole shook his head. Danny was learning fast. Cole felt like he was getting left in the dust.

They finished their breakfast, eggs and fried potatoes with ham, with lots of hot German coffee, then headed over to the concierge, who obliged by placing the call and handing the phone to Cole. He could handle this part. Not only did Hans agree to attend the museum dedication as Cole’s guest, but he also invited Cole and Danny to meet him in the city later that day.

That afternoon, they met Hans at a coffee shop not far from the Marienplatz, a wide cobblestoned square in the heart of Munich. Expensive shops and restaurants lined the surrounding streets. The city itself dated far into ancient times and was known as the capital of Bavaria. Loosely interpreted, München as it was known in German, translated to “The Monk’s Place” in reference to the ancient monasteries around which the city had grown.

“There you are!” Hans said as they came through the door. He shook Cole’s hand vigorously, smiling. The old man’s grip was strong. “Forgive me, but I already feel as if we are old friends.”

“Us old-timers need to stick together,” Cole said.

Hans turned to Danny and shook his hand enthusiastically as well. “It is good to see you helping your grandfather. Who knows, you may even learn something from him?” The old German turned to indicate a pretty teenage girl at his elbow. Cole had to admit that he hadn’t paid attention to the girl when he had first entered the shop. However, he could see that Danny’s eyes were riveted on her. “Allow me to introduce my niece, Angela. My grand-niece, actually. Like Danny here, she is keeping an old man out of trouble.”

It was clear that Angela instantly had Danny’s full attention. From the stunned look on Danny’s face, it was evident that his grandson had taken one of Cupid’s arrows right through the heart.

“Uh hi,” Danny said.

“Hello,” Angela said. It was obvious from her bright smile that meeting a young American her own age was an unexpected benefit of escorting her great-uncle around town.

Hans winked at Cole, who thought with amusement that the old German knew exactly what he was doing. Like Danny, his grand-niece had likely expected a boring afternoon keeping her aged uncle company, but Hans had set the stage for something else.

More coffee arrived, along with a plate of pastries, and after some polite exchanges among the four of them, the table divided into two conversations, one between Hans and Cole, and the other between Danny and Angela that seemed to focus on music.

“I want to thank you for inviting me to the museum dedication,” Hans said. “I am truly honored. I am also curious. I must admit that we Germans have mixed emotions about anything to do with the war.”

“That’s understandable,” Cole said.

“Of course, the people of Munich have an even more difficult relationship to the war, considering that the Nazi party got its start in the beer halls here. Berlin may be the capital of Germany, but Munich is seen as the capital of the old Nazi party.”

“Not the proudest history.”

Hans shrugged and sipped his coffee. “But you know, the Nazi party involved relatively few people here, especially at first. It is the end of the war that many people have the bitterest memories of. That’s when the Allied bombings took place and so many people died. People in my own family. Women and children. What did they have to do with the war? Nothing, really. Many see those bombings as retribution. It was revenge, pure and simple.”

Cole nodded. He had no love for Nazi Germany, but he had to admit that the thought of the many civilian deaths in the air raids made him uncomfortable. “The war wasn’t fair,” he said.

“It left many people bitter,” Hans said. “Also, here in Munich at the end of the war, many Germans saw us as giving up too easily when the first Allied troops arrived. There was very little fighting except by a few die-hards.”

“Maybe most people had the good sense to know when to call it quits.”

Hans nodded. “If only they had called it quits much sooner. We might all have been spared a great deal of sorrow.”

The conversation moved to more pleasant topics, which was just fine by Cole. Already, he was having some misgivings about the big museum opening tomorrow. The war had ended decades before, but some wounds took a long time to heal. The museum was intended to help that healing process, but Cole couldn’t help but feel that the museum was still managing to pour salt in some of those wounds.

As the afternoon moved toward evening, with the shadows lengthening outside and after-work crowds beginning to fill the street, they started to say their goodbyes for now. Cole was starting to think about his supper and maybe trying the Schnitzel tonight.

But to Cole’s surprise, Danny announced, “Hey, Pa Cole, Angela invited me to the Hofbräuhaus with her friends after this. If it’s all right, I mean.”

“I reckon I can find my way back to the hotel.”

Hans said, “I certainly won’t get lost, either. I’ve known Munich my whole life. You two go along and have a good time with friends. It is what young people should do.” He looked at Cole. “Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Cole said.

Danny and Angela headed for the Hofbräuhaus. Hans melted into the crowds flowing home. Cole returned to the hotel and ate alone, which was, well, lonely, but the food was good.

Much later, back in his room, he heard Danny return. His grandson was out in the hall, fumbling with the door to his own room. He seemed to be having some trouble fitting the key to the lock and getting it open.

Cole went out and found his grandson reeling a bit, but smiling happily.

“I guess someone had a good time,” Cole said.

“Probst!” Danny replied, then hiccuped. “I had two beers! I feel a little dizzy.”

“Oh boy,” Cole said. In his experience, a German beer was a large stein of strong lager. “Let’s get you to bed.”

He got the door open, helped Danny get his coat and shoes off, then tumbled him into bed.

Danny fell asleep instantly.

Shaking his head, Cole decided to stay and keep an eye on his grandson. The damn fool boy. He sat in a chair by the window, where he could look out and see the lights of the city. From time to time, a plane took off, bound for New York City or maybe London or Paris. His thoughts wandered across the years, strung out like beads of dew on a spiderweb. He dozed. At first light, reassured that Danny was fine, he slipped back into his own room.

“I’ll never drink another beer as long as I live,” Danny stated miserably.

They were having a late breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Danny sat slumped with his head in his hands, looking miserable.

Cole had to laugh. “If I had a nickel for every time I heard someone say that the next morning, I coulda bought Rockefeller Square.”

“You’re making fun of me,” Danny said.

“No, it’s just something to keep in mind when you feel better tonight and you have an urge to visit that beer hall again. I ain’t gonna lecture you. Hopefully, you learned your lesson.”

Danny just groaned.

Cole gave him his fresh-squeezed OJ. “Don’t worry. You’ll live.”

“I did have a good time, though. Angela was nice. Her friends were fun. She said I ought to come back and visit this summer.”

Cole surprised himself by saying, “Something to think about.”

By the time the hour arrived to get ready for the museum opening that evening, Danny was fully recovered and back to his usual chipper self. That was youth for you, Cole thought, along with some help from a nap and an afternoon swim in the hotel pool. In fact, it was Cole who felt himself dragging after he had put on his suit, freshly pressed by the hotel staff. Sure, part of it was the damn jet lag. But another part of him was simply dreading the opening and all of the old wounds it might open.

Colonel Mulholland picked them up promptly, pulling up in his BMW in front of the hotel.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” Cole said, slipping into the front seat while Danny got into the back. “I haven’t felt so nervous since D-Day, but I’ve got to say, this car is a lot more comfortable than a landing craft.”

“Here we go then,” Mulholland replied, pulling away crisply from the hotel.

The museum was just a few minutes away. When they arrived, Cole was amazed to see soldiers, Jeeps, and a couple of German Kübelwagen pulled up on the lawn. Pup tents dotted the grass. Some of the troops wore vintage WWII GI uniforms, some had on the sheepskin coats favored by aviators, but most had on Wehrmacht uniforms.

“Who the hell are they?” Cole asked. “Actors?”

“They’re WWII reenactors,” Mulholland said. “You know, like Civil War reenactors back home? Over here, reenacting WWII is becoming a popular hobby. Of course, you’re going to see mainly German reenactors. Nobody wants to be the bad guys.”

“Bad guys?”

“Us,” Mulholland said. “Americans.”

“That’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen,” Cole said.

“They go out on the weekend to shoot blanks at each other, and maybe camp out,” Mulholland said. “It’s also an excuse to drink, pee in the woods, and get away from their wives. They were more than happy to come out for this event.”

Cole shook his head, not sure what to say. Who wanted to play at being a soldier? He’d had enough of the real thing.

They continued to the parking lot, only to discover that more of these reenactors stood along the sidewalk leading to the entrance.

“Looks like we have an honor guard,” Mulholland said.

“You do see that these are Germans? Should I put my hands up to let them know we surrendered?”

Mulholland laughed. “I think we’ll be OK.”

Inside, there was quite a crowd already. Almost everyone looked to be older, and well-dressed. Drinks flowed from an open bar and servers offered trays of fancy hors d'oeuvres. Cole didn’t know what some of the things were, so he stuck with the miniature sausages on toothpicks. The delicious smells of food and tangy champagne filled the air, mixing with wafting cologne and perfume.

One thing for sure, Cole thought, was that tonight was all a long way from the mud, the stink of open latrines and death, the shivering in the chill air or sweating in the heat, that all soldiers had known back then.

Cole heard a lot of English being spoken, sometimes in British accents, with only a smattering of German. It made sense that most of those in attendance seemed to be American or English because from what he had seen during the preview, this museum celebrated the Allied contribution to winning the war. Most of the pictures of Germans showed them with their hands up. Most of the photos of Germany showed the devastation wrought by the Allied bombing.

To his relief, he spotted Hans strolling around the exhibit hall. His pretty grand-niece accompanied him. The old German smiled when he spotted Cole. The girl wore a big smile as well, but it wasn’t for Cole.

“Hello,” she said to Danny.

“Hi!”

The two young people drifted away, leaving Cole and Hans to explore the exhibits together. Cole had seen some of them before, but it was all somewhat overwhelming. Everywhere he looked, there were life-size images of soldiers. Many had been black-and-white photographs originally, but were now colorized. Physical artifacts that ranged from rifles to grenades to helmets were on display.

“It’s a strange thing, isn’t it? Back then, who would have thought that all this would be in a museum. I mean, they’ve got ration cans and old packs of cigarettes on display. Stuff we threw away. Hell, we were mostly just trying not to get shot.”

Hans smiled sadly. “Difficult memories,” he agreed.

They came to the exhibit focused on sniper warfare, and the reason for Cole having come all the way from the United States for the museum opening. The exhibit briefly explained tactics, and a battered rifle with a telescopic sight was on display in a glass case. The worn wooden stock had several notches carved into it, and while just about everything else in the museum was explained in detail, no explanation was needed for what those notches meant. This was not Cole’s actual rifle from the war, but there was no doubt that this sniper rifle had seen use during the war.

A large photograph featured an American GI hunched over a rifle with a telescopic sight. The young man’s face looked gaunt, the single eye that was visible looked startlingly intense.

“You,” Hans said.

“Yep,” Cole said. “That’s me when I was a whole hell of a lot younger.”

“Ha, we were all younger then, my friend,” Hans said, then grew serious. “You must have been an accomplished sniper to be featured here.”

“The truth is, I made the mistake of letting them write a story about me way back then. A famous reporter named Ernie Pyle wrote it. They even took my picture.” Cole pointed to a copy of the news clip, which had been reproduced here.

“He would not have written a story about just anyone,” Hans said. “You must have been a very good sniper to be noticed.”

“I’m not proud of it,” Cole said, although he knew he wasn’t entirely telling the truth. He was proud of what he had done. Hell, he was proud of what every last soldier had done to win the war. “I was just doing what I was supposed to do. Doing my duty.”

“Then you should take pride in that,” Hans said. He straightened. “We all should.”

For a split second, Cole felt an old warning vibrate within him. It was that sixth sense that had kept him alive, warning him of danger. He had not felt that in a long, long time.

Behind them, a deep voice spoke, heavily accented, “I wonder, did you have the father or grandfather of someone here tonight in your crosshairs when that photograph was taken?”

Cole realized that it was a good question.

He turned to find himself staring into the face of someone he had not seen in decades. It didn’t matter how many years had passed — he could still recognize those features and those cold eyes. Back then, the face had been magnified some distance away in his telescopic sight. It was not a face that he had ever wanted to see again, that was for damn sure.

Cole stared. The man smiled back at him, but there was no warmth in his expression. Neither man spoke, both of them tense, waiting to see what the other would do next. It was as if two old rival wolves had suddenly crossed paths in the forest.

Standing in front of Cole was Gefreiter Hauer, the German sniper that Cole had known as Das Schlachter.

The Butcher.