“Are you crazy?” Emil shouted from the back, his hand on the top of his head where it had bumped the roof.
“Stay down,” Gunther said calmly, twisting the wheel to avoid a stump.
Jake looked back through the dust. The other Horch had started after them, jouncing over the same rough ground. Farther behind, a jeep, presumably Shaeffer, was tearing away from the crowd that had formed around the dead Russian. Through the open window, bizarrely, came trumpets and the steady thump of drums, the world of five minutes ago.
“I tried to delay them,” Gunther said. “The wrong time. I thought you would be gone, know something was wrong.”
“Why you?”
“You were expecting me. I would lead you to the car, for the per-mits. But he saw Brandt. Running. So. An impulsive people,” he said tersely, holding the wheel as they bounced over another hole in the pitted field.
“You were pretty impulsive yourself. Why you and not the American?”
“He couldn’t come.”
Jake glanced back. Gaining a little. “He did, though. In fact, he’s coming now.”
Gunther grunted, trying to work this out. “A test maybe, then. Can they trust a German?”
“They got their answer.” Jake looked over at him. “But I should have. I should have known.”
Gunther shrugged, focused on driving. “Who knows anyone in Berlin?” He jerked the wheel, skirting a Hohenzollern statue that had somehow survived, only the face chipped away by blast. “Are they still there?” he said, not trusting himself to look away to the rearview mirror. Jake turned.
“Yes.”
“We need a road. We can’t go faster like this.” The traffic circle at the Grosser Stern was now in sight, a bottleneck jammed with marchers. “If we can cut across-hold on.” Another swerve to the left, jolting the car away from the parade, deeper into the battered park. In the back Emil groaned.
Jake knew that Gunther was taking them south, toward the American zone, but all the landmarks he had known were gone, the stretch ahead of them desolate, broken by stumps and twisted scraps of lampposts. Ron’s lunar landscape. The ground was even rougher, not as cleared as the border of the chausee, the earth thrown up here and there in mounds.
“Not far,” Gunther said, rising out of his seat over a bump, even the solid Horch springs pounded flat, and for a moment, looking behind at the dust, the cars coming after them, Jake realized, an unexpected thought, that Gunther finally had his Wild West, stagecoach bucking across the badlands at a gallop. And then, eerily, the other Horch entered the Karl May dream too, firing at them from behind. A firecracker sound of shots, then a shattering pop at the back window.
“My god, they’re shooting at us,” Emil yelled, his voice jagged with fear. “Stop. It’s madness. What are you doing? They’ll kill us.”
“Keep flat,” Gunther said, hunching a little farther over the wheel.
Jake crouched and peered back over the edge of the seat. Both vehicles firing now, an aimless volley of stray shots.
“Come on, Gunther,” Jake said, a jockey to a horse.
“It’s there, it’s there.” A clear space of asphalt in the distance. He steered right, as if he were heading back to the Grosser Stern, then sharply left, dodging a fallen limb not yet scavenged for firewood, confusing the two cars behind. More shots, one grazing the back fender.
“Please stop,” Emil said, almost hysterical on the back floor. “You’ll kill us.”
But they were there, crashing over a mound of broken pavement piled up at the edge of Hofjagerallee and landing with a loud thunk on the cleared avenue. Improbably, there was traffic-two convoy trucks, grinding toward them on their way to the traffic circle. Gunther shot out in front of them and wrenched the wheel left, tires squealing, so close there was an angry blast of horn.
“Christ, Gunther,” Jake said, breathless.
“Police driving,” he said, the car still shuddering from the skid.
“Let’s not have a police death.”
“No. That’s a bullet.”
Jake looked back. The others weren’t as lucky, stuck at the side of the road until the trucks lumbered past. Gunther opened up the engine, speeding toward the bridge into Liitzowplatz. If they could make it to the bridge, they’d be back in town, a maze of streets and pedestrians where at least the shooting would stop. But why had the
Russians fired in the first place, risking Emil? A desperate logic__ better dead than with the Americans? Which meant they thought they might lose after all.
But not yet. The Horch behind them had picked up speed too on the smooth road. Now the route was straight-get past the diplomatic quarter at the bottom of the park, then over the Landwehrkanal. Gunther honked the horn. A group of civilians was trudging down the side of the road with a handcart. They scattered in both directions, away from the car but still on the road, so that Gunther had to slow down, pumping the brake and the horn at the same time. It was the chance the Russians were looking for, racing to close the gap between the cars. Another shot, the civilians darting in terror. Still coming. Jake swiveled to his open window and fired at the Horch behind, aiming low, a warning shot, two, to make them slow down. Not even a pause. And then, as Gunther slammed the horn again, the Russians’ car began to smoke-no, steam, a teakettle steam that poured out of the grille, then blew back over the hood. A lucky shot ripping into the radiator, or just the old motor finally giving up? What did it matter? The car kept hurtling toward them, driving into its own cloud, then began to slow. Not the brake, a running down.
“Go,” Jake said, the road finally clear of civilians. Behind them, the Horch had stopped. One of the men jumped out and rested his arm on the door to take aim. A target gallery shot. Gunther pressed the accelerator. The car jumped forward again.
This time Jake didn’t even hear the bullet, the splintering pop through the window lost under the noise of the engine and the shouts behind. A small thud into flesh, like a grunt, not even loud enough to notice, until the spurt of blood splashed onto the dashboard. Gunther fell forward, still clutching the wheel.
“Gunther!”
“I can drive,” he said, a hoarse gargle. More blood leaping out, spattering the wheel.
“My god. Pullover.”
“Not far.” His voice fainter. The car began to veer left.
Jake grabbed the wheel, steadying it, looking around. Only the jeep was chasing them now, the Horch stranded behind it. They were still moving fast, Gunther’s foot on the pedal heavy as dead weight. Jake threw himself closer, putting both hands on the wheel, trying to kick Gunther’s foot off the pedal. “The brake!” he shouted. Gunther had slumped forward again, a bulky, unmovable wall. Jake held on to the wheel, his hands now slippery with blood. “Move your leg!”
But Gunther seemed not to have heard him, his eyes fixed on the blood still spilling out onto the wheel. He gave a faint nod, as if he were making sense of it, then a small twitch of his mouth, the way he used to smile.
“A police death,” he mumbled, almost inaudible, his mouth seeping blood, then slumped even farther, gone, his body falling on the wheel, pressing against the horn, so that they were racing toward the bridge with the horn blaring, driven by a dead man.
Jake tried to shove him aside, one hand still on the wheel, but only managed to push his upper body against the window. He’d have to dive underneath to move Gunther’s feet, get to the brake, but that would mean letting go.
“Emil! Lean over, take the wheel.”
“Maniacs!” Emil said, his voice shrill. “Stop the car.”
“I can’t. Grab the wheel.”
Emil started up from the floor, then heard another shot and fell back again. Jake looked through the shattered window. Shaeffer, blowing his horn now, signaling them to stop.
“Grab the fucking wheel!” Jake yelled. Another truck appeared in the oncoming lane. Now there wasn’t even the option of spinning in circles, hands slipping around the bloody wheel, trying to keep a grip. The bridge ahead, then people. Get the brake. With one hand he pushed hard against Gunther’s leg, a cement weight, but moving,
