The Young Lions

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

THE men in the trucks fell quiet as they drove up to the open gates. The smell, by itself, would have been enough to make them silent, but there was also the sight of the dead bodies sprawled at the gate and behind the wire, and the slowly moving mass of scarecrows in tattered striped suits who engulfed the trucks and Captain Green's jeep in a monstrous tide.

They did not make much noise. Many of them wept, many of them tried to smile, although the objective appearance of their skull-like faces and their staring, cavernous eyes did not alter very much, either in weeping or smiling. It was as though these creatures were too far sunk in a tragedy which had moved off the plane of human reaction on to an animal level of despair – and the comparatively sophisticated grimaces of welcome, sorrow and happiness were, for the time being, beyond their primitive reach. Michael could tell, staring at the rigid, dying masks, that a man here and there thought he was smiling, but it took an intuitive act of understanding.

They hardly tried to talk. They merely touched things – the metal of the truck bodies, the uniforms of the soldiers, the barrels of the rifles – as though only by the shy investigation of their fingertips could they begin to gain knowledge of this new and dazzling reality.

Green ordered the trucks to be left where they were, with guards on them, and led the Company slowly through the hive-like cluster of released prisoners, into the camp.

Michael and Noah were just behind Green when he went through the doorway of the first barracks. The door had been torn off and most of the windows had been broken open, but even so the smell was beyond the tolerance of human nostrils. In the murky air, pierced ineffectually here and there by the dusty beams of spring sunshine, Michael could see the piled bony forms. The worst thing was that from some of the piles there was movement, a languidly waving arm, the slow lift of a pair of burning eyes in the stinking gloom, the pale twisting of lips on skulls that seemed to have met death many days before. In the depths of the building, a form detached itself from a pile of rags and bones and started a slow advance on hands and knees towards the door. Nearer, a man stood up, and moved, like a mechanical figure, crudely arranged for the process of walking, towards Green. Michael could see that the man believed he was smiling, and he had his hand outstretched in an absurdly commonplace gesture of greeting. The man never reached Green. He sank to the slime-covered floor, his hand still outstretched. When Michael bent over him he saw that the man had died.

The centre of the world, something repeated insanely and insistently in Michael's brain, as he kneeled above the man who had died with such ease and silence before their eyes. I am now at the centre of the world, the centre of the world.

The dead man, lying with outstretched hand, had been six feet tall. He was naked and every bone was clearly marked under the skin. He could not have weighed more than seventy-five pounds, and, because he was so lacking in the usual, broadening cover of flesh, he seemed enormously elongated, supernaturally tall and out of perspective.

There were some shots outside, and Michael and Noah followed Green out of the barracks. Thirty-two of the guards, who had barricaded themselves in a brick building which contained the ovens in which the Germans had burned prisoners, had given themselves up when they saw the Americans, and Crane had tried to shoot them. He had managed to wound two of the guards before Houlihan had torn his rifle away from him. One of the wounded guards was sitting on the ground, weeping, holding his stomach, and blood was coming in little spurts over his hands. He was enormously fat, with beer-rolls on the back of his neck, and he looked like a spoiled pink child sitting on the ground, complaining to his nurse.

Crane was standing with his arms clutched by two of his friends, breathing very hard, his eyes rolling crazily. When Green ordered the guards to be taken into the Administration Building for safekeeping, Crane lashed out with his feet and kicked the fat man he had shot. The fat man wept loudly. It took four men to carry the fat man into the Administration Building.

There was not much Green could do. But he set up his Headquarters in the Commandant's room of the Administration Building and issued a series of clear, simple orders, as though it was an everyday affair in the American Army for an infantry captain to arrive at the chaos of the centre of the world and set about putting it to rights. He sent his jeep back to request a medical team and a truck-load of ten-in-one rations. He had all the Company's food unloaded and stacked under guard in the Administration Building, with orders to dole it out only to the worst cases of starvation that were found and reported by the squads working through the barracks. He had the German guards segregated at the end of the hall outside his door, where they could not be harmed.

Michael, who, with Noah, was serving as a messenger for Green, heard one of the guards complaining, in good English, to Pfeiffer, who had them under his rifle, that it was terribly unjust, that they had just been on duty in this camp for a week, that they had never done any harm to the prisoners, that the men of the SS battalion who had been there for years and who had been responsible for all the torture and privation in the camp were going off scot-free, were probably in an American prison stockade at that moment, drinking orange juice. There was considerable justice in the poor Volkssturm guard's complaint, but Pfeiffer merely said, "Shut your trap before I put my boot in it."

The liberated prisoners had a working committee, which they had secretly chosen a week before, to govern the camp. Green called in the leader of the committee, a small, dry man of fifty, with a curious accent and a quite formal way of handling the English language. The man's name was Zoloom, and he had been in the Albanian Foreign Service before the war. He told Green he had been a prisoner for three and a half years. He was completely bald and had pebbly little dark eyes, set in a face that somehow was still plump. He had an air of authority and was quite helpful to Green in securing work parties among the healthier prisoners, to carry the dead from the barracks, and collect and classify the sick into dying, critical and out-of-danger categories. Only those people in the critical category, Green ordered, were to be fed from the small stocks of food that had been collected from the trucks and the almost empty storerooms of the camp. The dying were merely laid side by side along one of the streets, to extinguish themselves in peace, consoled finally by the sight of the sun and the fresh touch of the spring air.

As the first afternoon wore on, and Michael saw the beginning of order that Green, in his ordinary, quiet, almost embarrassed way, had brought about, he felt an enormous respect for the dusty little Captain with the high, girlish voice. Everything in Green's world, Michael suddenly realized, was fixable. There was nothing, not even the endless depravity and bottomless despair which the Germans had left at the swamp-heart of their dying millennium, which could not be remedied by the honest, mechanic's common sense and energy of a decent workman. Looking at Green giving brisk, sensible orders to the Albanian, to Sergeant Houlihan, to Poles and Russians and Jews and German Communists, Michael knew that Green didn't imagine he was doing anything extraordinary, anything that any graduate of the Fort Benning Infantry Officers' Candidate School wouldn't do in his place.

Watching Green at work, as calm and efficient as he would have been sitting in an orderly-room in Georgia making out duty rosters, Michael was glad that he had never gone to Officers' School. I could never have done it, Michael thought, I would have put my head in my hands and wept until they took me away. Green did not weep. In fact, as the afternoon wore on, his voice, in which no sympathy had been expressed for anyone all day, became harder and harder, more and more crisp and military and impersonal.

Michael watched Noah carefully, too. But Noah did not change the expression on his face. The expression was one of thoughtful, cool reserve, and Noah clung to it as a man clings to an expensive piece of clothing which he has bought with his last savings and is too precious to discard, even in the most extreme circumstances. Only once during the afternoon, when, on an errand for the Captain, Michael and Noah had to walk along the line of men who had been declared too far gone for help, and who lay in a long line on the dusty ground, did Noah stop for a moment. Now, Michael thought, watching obliquely, it is going to happen now. Noah stared at the emaciated, bony, ulcerous men, half-naked and dying, beyond reach of any victory or liberation, and his face trembled, the expression was nearly lost… But he gained control of himself. He closed his eyes for a moment, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, and said, starting again, "Come on. What are we stopping for?"

When they got back to the Commandant's office, an old man was being led in before the Captain. At least he looked old. He was bent, and his long yellow hands were translucently thin. You couldn't really tell, of course, because almost everyone in the camp looked old, or ageless.

"My name," the old man was saying in slow English, "is Joseph Silverson. I am a Rabbi. I am the only Rabbi in the camp…"

"Yes," Captain Green said briskly. He did not look up from a paper on which he was writing a request for medical materials.

"I do not wish to annoy the officer," the Rabbi said. "But I would like to make a request."

"Yes?" Still Captain Green did not look up. He had taken off his helmet and his field jacket. His belt was hanging over the back of his chair. He looked like a busy clerk in a warehouse, checking invoices.

"Many thousand Jews," the Rabbi said slowly and carefully, "have died in this camp, and several hundred more out there…" the Rabbi waved his translucent hand gently towards the window, "will die today, tonight, tomorrow…"

"I'm sorry, Rabbi," Captain Green said. "I am doing all I can."

"Of course." The Rabbi nodded hastily. "I know that. There is nothing to be done for them. Nothing for their bodies. I understand. We all understand. Nothing material. Even they understand. They are in the shadow and all efforts must be concentrated on the living. They are not even unhappy. They are dying free and there is a great pleasure in that. I am asking for a luxury." Michael understood that the Rabbi was attempting to smile. He had enormous, sunken, green eyes that flamed steadily in his narrow face, under his high, ridged forehead. "I am asking to be permitted to collect all of us, the living, the ones without hope, out there, in the square there…" again the wave of the hand, "and conduct a religious service. A service for the dead who have come to their end in this place."

Michael stared at Noah. Noah was looking coolly and soberly at Captain Green, his face calm, remote.

Captain Green had not looked up. He had stopped writing, but he was sitting with his head bent over wearily, as though he had fallen asleep.

"There has never been a religious service for us in this place," the Rabbi said softly, "and so many thousands have gone…"

"Permit me." It was the Albanian diplomat who had been so useful in carrying out Green's orders. He had moved to the side of the Rabbi, and was standing before the Captain's desk, bent over, speaking rapidly, diplomatically and clearly. "I do not like to intrude, Captain. I understand why the Rabbi has made this request. But this is not the time for it. I am a European, I have been in this place a long time, I understand things perhaps the Captain doesn't understand. I do not like to intrude, as I said, but I think it would be inadvisable to give permission to conduct publicly a Hebrew religious service in this place." The Albanian stopped, waiting for Green to say something. But Green didn't say anything. He sat at the desk, nodding a little, looking as though he were on the verge of waking up from sleep.

"The Captain perhaps does not understand the feeling," the Albanian went on rapidly. "The feeling in Europe. In a camp like this. Whatever the reasons," the Albanian said smoothly, "good or bad, the feeling exists. It is a fact. If you allow this gentleman to hold his services, I do not guarantee the consequences. I feel I must warn you. There will be riots, there will be violence, bloodshed. The other prisoners will not stand for it…"

"The other prisoners will not stand for it," Green repeated quietly, without any tone in his voice.

"No, Sir," said the Albanian briskly, "I guarantee the other prisoners will not stand for it."

Michael looked at Noah. The pensive expression was sliding off his face, melting slowly, and violently exposing a grimace of horror and despair.

Green stood up. "I am going to guarantee something myself," he said to the Rabbi. "I am going to guarantee that you will hold your service in one hour in the square down there. I am also going to guarantee that there will be machine-guns set up on the roof of this building. And I will further guarantee that anybody who attempts to interfere with your service will be fired on by those machine-guns." He turned to the Albanian. "And, finally, I guarantee," he said, "that if you ever try to come into this room again you will be locked up. That is all."

The Albanian backed swiftly out of the room. Michael heard his footsteps disappearing down the corridor.

The Rabbi bowed gravely. "Thank you very much, Sir," he said to Green.

Green put out his hand. The Rabbi shook it and turned and followed the Albanian. Green stood staring at the window. Green looked at Noah. The old, controlled, rigidly calm expression was melting back into the boy's face.

"Ackerman," Green said crisply. "I don't think we'll need you around here for a couple of hours. Why don't you and Whitacre leave this place for a while, go out and take a walk? Outside the camp. It'll do you good."

"Thank you, Sir," Noah said. He went out of the room.

"Whitacre." Green was still staring out of the window, and his voice was weary. "Whitacre, take care of him."

"Yes, Sir," said Michael. He went after Noah.

They walked in silence. The sun was low in the sky and there were long paths of purple shadow across the hills to the north. They passed a farmhouse, set back from the road, but there was no movement there. It slept, neat, white and lifeless, in the westering sun. It had been painted recently, and the stone wall in front of it had been whitewashed. The stone wall was turning pale blue in the levelling rays of the sun. Overhead a squadron of fighter planes, high in the clear sky, caught the sun on their wings as they headed back to their base.

On one side of the road was forest, healthy-looking pine and elm, dark trunks looking almost black against the pale, milky green of the new foliage. The sun flickered in small bright stains among the leaves, falling on the sprouting flowers in the cleared spaces between the trees. The camp was behind them, and the air, warmed by the full day's sun, was piney and aromatic. The rubber composition soles of their combat boots made a hushed, unmilitary sound on the narrow asphalt road, between the rain ditches on each side. They walked silently, past another farmhouse. This place too was locked and shuttered, but Michael had the feeling that eyes were peering out at him from between cracks. He was not afraid. The only people left in Germany seemed to be children, by the million, and old women and maimed soldiers. It was a polite and unwarlike population, who waved impartially to the jeeps and tanks of the Americans, and the trucks bearing German prisoners back to prison stockades.

Three geese waddled across the dust of the farmyard. Christmas dinner, Michael thought idly, with loganberry jam and oyster stuffing. He remembered the oak panelling and the scenes from Wagner painted on the walls of Luchow's restaurant, on 14th Street, in New York.

They walked past the farmhouse. Now, on both sides of them stood the heavy forest, tall trees standing in the loam of old leaves, giving off a clear, thin smell of spring.

Noah hadn't said a word since they had left Green's office, and Michael was surprised when he heard his friend's voice over the shuffle of their boots on the asphalt.

"How do you feel?" Noah asked.

Michael thought for a moment. "Dead," he said. "Dead, wounded and missing."

They walked another twenty yards. "It was pretty bad, wasn't it?" Noah said.

"Pretty bad."

"You knew it was bad," said Noah. "But you never thought it would be like that."

"No," said Michael.

"Human beings…" They walked, listening to the sound of their composition soles on the road deep in Germany, in the afternoon in spring, between the aisles of pretty, budding trees.

"My uncle," Noah said, "my father's brother, went into one of these places. Did you see the ovens?"

"Yes," said Michael.

"I never saw him, of course. My uncle, I mean," Noah said. His hand was hooked in his rifle strap and he looked like a little boy returning from hunting rabbits. "He had some trouble with my father. In 1905, in Odessa. My father was a fool. But he knew about things like this. He came from Europe. Did I ever tell you about my father?"

"No," said Michael.

"Dead, wounded and missing," Noah said softly. They walked steadily, but not quickly, the soldier's pace, thirty inches, deliberate, ground-covering. "Remember," Noah asked, "back in the replacement depot, what you said: 'Five years after the war is over we're all liable to look back with regret to every bullet that missed us.'"

"Yes," said Michael, "I remember."

"What do you feel now?"

Michael hesitated. "I don't know," he said honestly.

"This afternoon," Noah said, walking in his deliberate, correct pace, "I agreed with you. When that Albanian started talking I agreed with you. Not because I'm a Jew. At least, I don't think that was the reason. As a human being… When that Albanian started talking I was ready to go out into the hall and shoot myself through the head."

"I know," Michael said softly. "I felt the same way."

"Then Green said what he had to say." Noah stopped and looked up to the tops of the trees, golden-green in the golden sun. "'I guarantee… I guarantee…'" He sighed. "I don't know what you think," Noah said, "but I have a lot of hope for Captain Green."

"So do I," said Michael.

"When the war is over," Noah said, and his voice was growing loud, "Green is going to run the world, not that damned Albanian…"

"Sure," said Michael.

"The human beings are going to be running the world!" Noah was shouting by now, standing in the middle of the shadowed road, shouting at the sun-tipped branches of the German forest. "The human beings! There's a lot of Captain Greens! He's not extraordinary! There're millions of them!" Noah stood, very erect, his head back, shouting crazily, as though all the things he had coldly pushed down deep within him and fanatically repressed for so many months were now finally bursting forth. "Human beings!" he shouted thickly, as though the two words were a magic incantation against death and sorrow, a subtle and impregnable shield for his son and his wife, a rich payment for the agony of the recent years, a promise and a guarantee for the future… "The world is full of them!" It was then that the shots rang out.

Christian had been awake five or six minutes before he heard voices. He had slept heavily, and when he awoke he had known immediately from the way the shadows lay in the forest that it was late in the afternoon. But he had been too weary to move immediately. He had lain on his back, staring up at the mild green canopy over his head, listening to the forest sounds, the awakening springtime hum of insects, the calls of birds in the upper branches, the slight rustling of the leaves in the wind. A flight of planes had crossed over, and he had heard them, although he couldn't see the planes through the trees. Once again, as it had for so long, the sound of planes made him reflect bitterly on the abundance with which the enemy had fought the war. No wonder they'd won. They didn't amount to much as soldiers, he thought for the hundredth time, but what difference did it make? Given all those planes, all those tanks, an army of old women and veterans of the Franco-Prussian War could have won. Given just one-third of that equipment, he thought, self-pityingly, and we'd have won three years ago. That miserable Lieutenant back at the camp, complaining because we didn't lose this war in an orderly manner, the way his class did! If he'd complained a little less and worked a little more, perhaps it might not have turned out diis way. A few more hours in the factory and a few less at the mass meetings and party festivals, and that sound above would be German planes, maybe the Lieutenant wouldn't be lying dead now in front of his office, maybe he, Christian, wouldn't be hiding out now, looking for a burrow, like a fox before the hounds.

Then he heard the footsteps, coming in his direction along the road. He was only ten metres off the road, well concealed, but with a good field of vision in the direction of the camp, and he could see the Americans coming when they were some distance off. He watched them curiously, with no emotion for the moment. They were walking steadily, and they had rifles. One of them, the larger of the two, was carrying his in his hand, and the other had his slung over his shoulder. They were wearing those absurd helmets, although there would be no danger of shrapnel until the next war, and they weren't looking either to the left or the right. They were talking to each other, quite loudly, and it was obvious that they felt safe and at home, as though no notion that any German in this neighbourhood would dare to do them any harm had ever crossed their minds.

If they kept coming this way they would pass within ten metres of Christian. Silently he brought up his machine-pistol. Then he thought better of it. There were probably hundreds of others all around by now, and the shots would bring them running, and then there wouldn't be a chance for him. The generous Americans would not stretch their generosity to include snipers.

Then the Americans stopped. They were perhaps sixty metres away, and, because of a little bend in the road, they were directly in front of the small hummock behind which he was lying. They were talking very loudly. One of the Americans, in fact, was shouting, and Christian could even hear what he was saying.

"Human beings!" the American kept shouting, over and over again, inexplicably.

Christian watched them coldly. So much at home in Germany. Strolling unaccompanied through the woods. Making speeches in English in the middle of Bavaria. Looking forward to summering in the Alps, staying at the tourist hotels with the local girls, and there no doubt would be plenty of them. Well-fed Americans; young, too, no Volkssturm for them; all young all in good condition, with well-repaired boots and clothing, with scientific diets, with an Air Force, and ambulances that ran on petrol, with no problems about whom it would be better to surrender to… And after it was all over, going back to that fat country, loaded with souvenirs of the war, the helmets of dead Germans, the Iron Crosses plucked off dead breasts, the pictures off the walls of bombed houses, the photographs of the sweethearts of dead soldiers… Going back to that country which had never heard a shot fired, in which no single wall had trembled, no single pane of glass had been shattered… That fat country, untouched, untouchable…

Christian could feel his mouth twisting in a harsh grimace of distaste. He brought his gun up slowly. Two more, he thought, why not? He began to hum to himself softly, as he brought the nearest one, the one who was yelling, into his sights. You will not yell so loud in a moment, Friend, he thought, putting his hand gently on the trigger, humming, remembering suddenly that Hardenburg had hummed at another time which had been very much like this one, on the ridge in Africa, over the British convoy at breakfast… He was amused that he remembered it. Just before he pulled the trigger he thought once more of the possibility that there were other Americans around who might hear the shots and find him and kill him. He hesitated for a moment. Then he shook his head and blinked. The hell with it, he thought, it will be worth it…

He fired. He got off two shots. Then the gun jammed. He knew he'd hit one of the swine. But by the time he looked up again after working fiercely to clear the jammed cartridge, the two men had vanished. He'd seen one start to go down, but now there was nothing on the road except a rifle which had been knocked out of the hands of one of the Americans. The rifle lay in the middle of the road, with a pin-point of sparkling sunlight reflecting off a spot near the muzzle.

Well, Christian thought disgustedly, that was a nicely botched job! He listened carefully, but there were no sounds along the road or in the forest. The two Americans had been alone, he decided… And now, he was sure, there was only one. Or if the other one, who had been hit, was alive, he was in no shape to move…

He himself had to move, though. It wouldn't take long for the unwounded man to figure out the general direction from which the shots had come. He might come after him, and he might not… Christian felt that he probably wouldn't. Americans weren't particularly eager at moments like this. Their style was to wait for the Air Force, wait for the tanks, wait for the artillery. And, for once, in this silent forest, with only half an hour more light remaining, there would be no tanks, no artillery to call up. Just one man with a rifle… Christian was convinced that a man wouldn't try it, especially now, with the war so nearly over, when it was bound to seem to him such a waste. If the man who had been hit was dead by now, Christian reasoned, the survivor was probably racing back to whatever unit he had come from, to get reinforcements. But if the man who had been hit was only wounded, his comrade must be standing by him, and, anchored to him, not being able to move quickly or quietly, would make a beautiful target…

Christian grinned. Just one more, he thought, and I shall retire from the war. He peered cautiously down the road at the rifle lying there, scanned the slightly rising, bush-and-trunk-obscured ground ahead of him, shimmering dully in the dying light. There was no sign there, no indication.

Crouching over, moving very carefully, Christian moved deeper into the forest, circling…

Michael's right hand was numb. He didn't realize it until he bent over to put Noah down. One of the bullets had struck the butt of the rifle Michael had been carrying and, whirling it out of his hand, had sent a hammer-blow of pain up to his shoulder. In the confusion of grabbing Noah and dragging him off into the woods, he hadn't noticed it, but now, bending over the wounded boy, the numbness became another ominous element of the situation.

Noah had been hit in the throat, low and to one side. He was bleeding badly, but he was still breathing, shallow, erratic gasps. He was not conscious. Michael crouched beside him, putting a bandage on, but it didn't seem to stop the blood much. Noah was lying on his back, his helmet in a bed of pale pink flowers growing close to the ground. His face had resumed its remote expression. His eyes were closed and the blond-tipped lashes, curled over his pale-fuzzed cheek, gave the upper part of his face the old, vulnerable expression of girlishness and youth.

Michael did not stare at him for long. His brain seemed to be working with difficulty. I can't leave him here, he thought, and I can't carry him away, because we'd both buy it then, and fast, moving clumsily through the woods, a perfect target for the sniper.

There was a flicker in the branches above his head. Michael snapped his head back, remembering sharply where he was and that the man who had shot Noah was probably stalking him at this moment. It was only a bird this time, swinging on a branch-tip, scolding down into the cooling air under the trees, but the next time it would be an armed man who was anxious to kill him.

Michael bent over. He lifted Noah gently and slid the rifle from Noah's shoulder. He looked down once more, then walked slowly into the forest. For a step or two, he could still hear the shallow, mechanical breathing of the wounded man. It was a pity, but Noah had to breathe or not breathe, unattended for a while.

This is where I probably catch it, Michael thought. But it was the only way out. Find the man who had fired the two shots before the man found him. The only way out. For Noah. For himself.

He could feel his heart going very fast, and he kept yawning, dryly and nervously. He had a bad feeling that he was going to be killed.

He walked thoughtfully and carefully, bent over, stopping often behind the thick trunks of trees to listen. He heard his own breathing, the occasional song of a bird, the drone of insects, a frog's croak from some near-by water, the minute clashing of the boughs in the light wind. But there was no sound of steps, no sound of equipment jangling, a rifle bolt being drawn.

He moved away from the road, deeper into the forest, away from where Noah was lying with the hole in his throat, his helmet tilted back away from his forehead on the bed of pink flowers. Michael hadn't thought out his manoeuvre reasonably. He had just felt, almost instinctively, that sticking close to the road would have been bad, would have meant being pinned against an open space, would have made him more visible, since the forest was less dense there.

His heavy boots made a crunching noise on the thick, crisp, dead leaves underfoot and on the hidden, dead twigs. He was annoyed with himself for his clumsiness. But no matter how slowly he went, through the thickening brush, it seemed impossible not to make a noise.

He stopped often, to listen, but there were only the normal late-afternoon woodland sounds.

He tried to concentrate on the Kraut. What would the Kraut be like?

Perhaps, after he'd fired, the Kraut had packed up and headed straight back towards the Austrian border. Two shots, one American, good enough for a day's work at the tail end of a lost war. Hitler could ask no more. Or maybe it wasn't a soldier at all, perhaps it was one of those insane ten-year-old boys, with a rifle from the last war dragged down out of the attic, and all hopped up with the Werewolf nonsense. Michael might come upon a boy with a mop of blond hair, bare feet, a frightened nursery-expression, a rifle three sizes too large… What would he do then? Shoot him? Spank him?

Michael hoped that it was a soldier he was going to find. As he advanced slowly through the shimmering brown and green forest-light, pushing the thick foliage aside so that he could pass through, Michael found himself praying under his breath, praying that it was not a child he was hunting, praying that it was a grown man, a grown man in uniform, a grown man who was searching for him, armed and anxious to fight…

He switched the rifle to his left hand and flexed the fingers of his numbed right hand. The feeling was coming back slowly, in tingling, aching waves, and he was afraid that his fingers would respond too slowly when the time came… In all his training, he had never been instructed how to handle anything like this. It was always how to work in squads, in platoons, the staggered theory of attack, how to make use of natural cover, how not to expose yourself against the skyline, how to infiltrate through wire… Objectively, always moving ahead, his eyes raking the suspicious little movements of bushes and clustered saplings, he wondered if he was going to come through. The inadequate American, trained for everything but this, trained to salute, trained for close-order drill, advancing in columns, trained in the most modern methods of the prophylactic control of venereal disease. Now, at the height and climax of his military career, blunderingly improvising, facing a problem the Army had not foreseen… How to discover and kill one German who has just shot your best friend. Perhaps there were more than one. There had been two shots. Perhaps there were two, six, a dozen, and they were waiting for him, smiling, in a nice orthodox line of rifle-pits, listening to his heavy footsteps coming nearer and nearer…

He stopped. For a moment he thought of turning back. Then he shook his head. He did not reason anything out. Nothing coherent went through his mind. He merely transferred the rifle to his tingling right hand, and kept on, in his thoughtful, rustling advance.

The log that had fallen across the narrow gully looked strong enough. It had rotted a little here and there, and the wood was soft, but it looked thick. And the gully was at least six feet across and quite deep, four or five feet deep, with mossy stones half buried in broken branches and dead leaves along the bottom. Before stepping out on to the log, Michael listened. The wind had died down and the forest was very still. He had a feeling that no human beings had been here for years. Human beings… No, that would be for later…

He stepped out on to the log. He was half-way across when it buckled, tearing, turning slipperily. Michael waved his hands violently, remembering to keep silent, then plunged down into the gully. He grunted as his hands slithered along the rocks and he felt his cheekbone begin to ache immediately where it had slammed against a sharp edge. The splintering log had made a sharp, cracking sound, and when he had hit the bottom it had been with a dull crash and a crackling of dried twigs, and his helmet had bounced off and rapped loudly against some stones. The rifle, he was thinking dully, what happened to the rifle?… He was groping for the rifle on his hands and knees, when he heard the swift rushing sound of footsteps running, running loudly and directly towards him.

He jumped up. Fifty feet away from him a man was crashing through the bushes, staring straight at him, with a gun at his hip, pointing towards him. The man was a dark, speeding blur against the pale green leaves. As Michael stared, motionless, the man fired from his hip. The burst was wild. Michael heard the shots thumping in, right in front of his face, throwing sharp, stinging pellets of dirt against his skin. The man kept running.

Michael ducked. Automatically, he tore at the grenade hanging on his belt. He pulled the pin and stood up. The man was much closer, very close. Michael counted three, then threw the grenade and ducked, slamming himself wildly against the side of the gully and burying his head. God, he thought, his face pressed against the soft damp earth, I remembered to count!

The explosion seemed to take a long time in coming. Michael could hear the bits of steel whining over his head and thumping into the trees around him. There was a fluttering sound in the air as the torn leaves twisted down over him.

Michael wasn't sure, but he thought, with the noise of the explosion still in his ears, he had heard a scream.

He waited five seconds and then looked over the edge of the gully. There was nobody there. A little smoke rose slowly under the overhanging branches and there was a torn patch of earth showing brown and wet where the leaves and mould had been torn away, but that was all. Then Michael saw, across the clearing, the top of a bush waving in an eccentric rhythm, slowly dying down. Michael watched the bush, realizing that the man had gone back through there. He bent down and picked up the rifle, which was lying cradled against two round stones. He looked at the muzzle. It hadn't been filled with dirt. He was surprised to see that his hands were covered with blood, and when he put up his hand to touch his aching cheekbone, it came away all smeared with dirt and blood.

He climbed slowly out of the gully. His right arm was giving him a considerable amount of pain, and the blood from his torn hand made the rifle slippery in his hand. He walked, without attempting to conceal himself, across the clearing, past the spot where the grenade had landed. Fifteen feet further on, he saw what looked like an old rag, hanging on to a sapling. It was a piece of uniform, and it was bloody and wet.

Michael walked slowly to the bush which he had seen waving. There was blood all over the leaves, a great deal of blood. He is not going far, Michael thought, not any more. It was easy, even for a city man, to follow the trail of the fleeing German through the woods now. Michael even recognized, by the crushed leaves and familiar stains, where the man had fallen once and had risen, uprooting a tiny sapling with his hands, to continue his flight. Slowly and steadily, Michael closed in on Christian Diestl.

Christian sat down deliberately, leaning against the trunk of the great tree, facing the direction from which he had come. It was shady under the tree, and cool, but shafts of sunlight struck down through the other foliage and lit, in oblique gold, the tops of the bushes through which Christian had pushed himself to reach this spot. The bark of the tree felt rough and solid behind his back. He tried to lift his hand, with the Schmeisser in it, but the hand wouldn't move the weight. He pushed annoyedly at the gun and it slithered away from him. He sat staring at the break in the bushes where, he knew, the American would appear.

A grenade, Christian thought, who would have thought of that? The clumsy American, crashing like a bull into the gully… And then, out of the gully, a grenade.

Then he saw the American. The American wasn't cautious any more. He walked directly up to him, through the thin, green sunlight. The American was no longer young, and he didn't look like a soldier. The American stood over him.

Christian grinned. "Welcome to Germany," he said, remembering his English. He watched the American lift his gun and press the trigger.

Michael walked back to where he had left Noah. The breathing had stopped. The boy lay quiet among the flowers. Michael stared dryly down at him for a moment. Then he picked Noah up, and, carrying him over his shoulder, walked through the growing dusk, without stopping, back to the camp. And he refused to allow any of the other men in the Company to help him carry the body, because he knew he had to deliver Noah Ackerman, personally, to Captain Green.