“I’m free now,” Jurgen said. “What I want to do is go out West and be a cowboy.”
Walter came in while they were talking about going out on a dark night, what Darcy called “the owl hoot trail,” Jurgen serious, wanting to know if they could ride horses, do it as they did out West. Jurgen serious but sounding like he was kidding.
He saw Walter approaching, Walter looking excited for a change, telling them, “Honig was here.”
Jurgen said, “The girl in the car,” to Walter, “your former wife?”
Walter said, “Yes, Honig,” and said to Darcy, “Did you see her?”
“Out there on the road,” Darcy said, “but I wasn’t sure it was her.”
“They came in the back,” Jurgen said, seeing the Pontiac again, “and turned around.”
“My sis,” Darcy said. “I told you about her, Miss Sunshine? Use to be Walter’s old lady.” He said to Walter, “What’d she want, see if you become American yet? I didn’t recognize that guy she had with her.”
“He’s a federal officer,” Walter said, “but is not with the Federal Bureau.” Walter’s hand went into his pocket as he turned to Jurgen. “He’s looking for you and Otto.”
“He told you his name?”
Walter’s hand came out of the pocket holding Carl’s card with the gold star engraved on it.
Jurgen could feel it between his fingers, taking the card and seeing deputy u.s. marshal carlos huntington webster and thinking, You’ve found me.
He would be seeing Carl again and liked the idea of it, talking to him, smiling at things he said, but didn’t want to go back to Oklahoma, not until the war was over and he could look up that marshal who had worked with Carl Webster, the one who’d been a bull rider in the rodeo before he became a marshal. Spend time with guys like that, and Carl Webster. Watch them and learn how to spit. There was a lot of spitting involved with chewing tobacco.
“He didn’t want to search the house, the grounds?”
“It was time for supper,” Walter said. “He was hungry, so he left . . . with Honig.”
Jurgen thought he was going to say “with my Honey.”
“But he’s coming back,” Jurgen said.
“We have to believe that,” Walter said. “He knows you. You must have told him you lived here at one time and of course have friends here?”
Jurgen nodded.
“Yes, he’ll come back. I’m going to speak to Helmut,” Walter said, looking at the three cutters. They stood by the cow now hanging head-down, all three of them sharpening their knives. “Helmut, Reinhard and Artur, excellent men. Helmut will take you with him when he leaves.”
Jurgen said, “I’m going to live with Helmut?”
“No, you’re going to stay with the countess, Vera Mezwa. Helmut will deliver you. I’ll drive into Farmington to call her on a pay phone, tell her you’re coming. I think she won’t mind taking care of you, have something to do for Germany at this depressing time, something that will please her.”
“It sounds like you’re giving me to her as a gift, something to cheer her up.” He thought Walter was smiling but couldn’t be sure. “Is she really a countess?”
“She’s Ukrainian. Married a Polish count.”
“Killed in the war.”
“Yes, a hero. They sent his wife here, trained in military intelligence. Vera Mezwa was the most important German agent in America.”
“How old is she?”
“I don’t know. Older than you.”
“Is she attractive?”
“What difference does it make what she looks like? She’s going to hide you.”
Jurgen believed a woman with the name Vera Mezwa, a countess, a German espionage agent, could not be as boring as Walter. He was ready to move on.
Fourteen
Vera Mezwa’s eyes and Jurgen’s eyes met on the same level. She took his hand, stepped close and kissed him on one cheek and then the other, Jurgen feeling her lips brush his skin and they were eye to eye again, Jurgen knowing she was glad to have him here but not making a show of it. He could tell by the way she took his arm saying, “Come, let’s sit down and be comfortable,” her English bearing the hint of a Slovak sound. He had known Ukrainians in Hamtramck, a part of Detroit, who spoke English trying to sound American. She said, “Tell me what you like to drink.”
Her manner confident, the leader of a spy ring, but with a wonderful scent that softened her before his eyes. He saw her lying on a bed naked and imagined muscle beneath the curves of her body, but with the breasts of a bodybuilder, and could tell she dyed her hair, preferring the raw tint of henna and a deep-red lip rouge, quite startling against her pale, powdered features. She was a handsome woman in the style of Central Europe and he liked her immediately.
“Whatever you’re having,” Jurgen said, confident it would be a drink with alcohol.
Her heels brought her eye to eye with him, her age would be somewhere in her late thirties, perhaps forty. Her age didn’t matter to either of them. The living room furniture was formal, dull. Jurgen imagined it already here when she moved in. They took cigarettes from a silver dish, Vera lighting them with her Ronson, Vera sitting with him on the sofa, Vera facing him, her legs drawn up in a wool skirt, a shade of rose that matched the sweater she wore and was loose on her body, nothing beneath the sweater, pearls displayed in the open neck. Her head raised and she was looking past Jurgen.
He turned enough to see a young man wearing a white apron over his T-shirt and red neckerchief standing in the room waiting, his hands on his hips, shoulders somewhat slumped, a slim young fellow standing relaxed as he waited.
Vera said, “Bo, the vodka in the refrigerator, please.”
Jurgen watched him turn without a word and go off through the dining room. He believed the young man wore his full head of blond hair in bangs and over his ears in the style of Buster Brown.
“Bo’s my houseman,” Vera said, “Bohdan Kravchenko. He was my husband’s steward aboard ship when my husband, Fadey, was running the blockade during the siege of Odessa, June to October 1941. Perhaps you know already Fadey’s ship was sunk and he went down with it. Bo was in my employ when Odessa fell to the Romanians you pushed ahead of your troops. An
Jurgen said, “He escaped?”
“Finally,” Vera said. “But first Bohdan gave all his food each day for ten consecutive days to an inmate, a man who somehow was in possession of a butter knife and didn’t know what to do with it. Bo honed the small knife on a stone until he had the edge he wanted. He cut the throat of a guard who made him kneel down and open his mouth and the SS thug would try to piss in it from two meters away. Bo crept into the guards’ barracks, found the pisser sleeping and sliced open his throat, and two more while he was at it, without making a sound. He would have been shot whether they found he killed the brutes or not, they were shooting everybody. We left Odessa-I brought Bo with me to Budapest dressed as a woman and finally to America as part of the agreement I made with the German espionage service.”
Vera stubbed out her cigarette and lighted another.
“Listen to this. One night at the Brass Rail, downtown, he tells the sissies he’s getting drunk with he works for a German spy. The Federal Bureau hears of it. They ask Bohdan would he like to work for them, become an agent of the United States and spy on me. Or, be locked up as an enemy alien and sent back to the Ukraine after the war. Bo hopes someday to become a citizen of the USA and he said yes, of course, and asked how much they would pay him. They asked him how much he valued his freedom. That was his pay. He tells me about it, he’s
