Cold War

weapon, released a crisp stream of fire. Bullets studded the risers beneath Nimec, throwing up a bright shower of sparks.

Nimec gestured his men back, his finger continuously squeezing the trigger of his VVRS as he leaped down the stairs and attempted to track the source of the volley with its flash attachment.

Darting clear of his shots, Burkhart brought up his gun for another staccato burst, heard a single sharp tak! as one of his own bullets ricocheted off the handrail… and then felt a slap on the upper left side of his chest, followed immediately by a hot needle of heat in the same region.

His finger still looped around his rifle’s trigger, Burkhart looked down at himself. Blood seeping through the front of his parka where the rebounded bullet had struck his heart, the strength seeping from his hand as shots continued to spurt from the Sturmgewehr’s barrel in loose, wildly straying patterns, he looked down at himself.

He could have almost smiled at the sublime jest as he fell.

* * *

Nimec crouched beside the dying man, heard him struggling to say something to him, couldn’t make out what it was.

He leaned closer, removed the man’s night-sight goggles, pulled the balaclava from his face, and for a moment focused on an odd crescent-moon scar on the man’s right cheek.

“Die Ironie des Lebens,” Burkhart said in German.

Nimec shook his head, unable to understand.

Burkhart realized his mistake. He pushed his head off the stone ground, coughed up blood.

“The irony of life,” he managed to say in English.

Or thought he did in his fading confusion.

In fact, the words never left his mouth.

EPILOGUE

“The sister took the child,” said nan as Gorrie sat down at the table.

“What sister?”

“The Mackay infant. The sister will take him. Seems to be a fine family. The husband is an engineer.”

“Good for him then,” said Gorrie. A fresh loaf of bread sat wrapped in a napkin on a plate at the center of the table. “You baked this bread?” he asked, taking off the cloth and finding it warm.

“I did.”

Gorrie broke out a thick piece and began buttering it. “Got home early from school?”

“No earlier than normal,” said his wife.

“I was worried about the child,” admitted Gorrie. “I was worried what he would think growing up.”

“They wouldn’t have told him.”

“Not a thing to keep a secret,” he told his wife. “Sort of thing can’t be held inside. At least now he’ll know the truth. Hard thing, but better than what he might have thought.”

Nan busied herself at the stove. She’d made a roast and mashed potatoes — elaborate fixings for a weekday. She carved a few slices and presented a plate as properly as if they had been in a fine restaurant.

“What’s all this, Nan?”

“We call it dinner,” she said.

“Aye.” He swirled a bit of gravy into the potatoes. She’d used an extra helping of butter in them, exactly as he liked them despite the doctor’s warnings about cholesterol. “The runny tap in the loo?”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re buttering me up for something, sweets. Out with it.”

Instead of the laugh he expected, Nan sat down at her place with her elbows on the table, propping her chin in her hands. “Frank, now be honest — were you worried about the child?”

“As I told you.”

“Did it make you — have you thought — do you feel as if…”

They would not have to have been married for so long for him to know exactly what she was thinking, but having been married for so long — twenty-six years that fall — they found it difficult to speak of certain subjects. The fact that in their case the number of these subjects was limited did not ease the difficulty.

“Very old rocks,” Gorrie said softly.

“It is.”

“To be honest, I hadn’t given it a thought, not in that way. Just doing my job, as it had to be done.”

She picked up a forkful of potatoes and ate slowly. When her mouth was empty, she said, “You would have made a lovely father. You still might.”

Gorrie laughed. Then he looked into her face. She was no centerfold nudie girl, but Scotland was not the place for one. She was made of harder stuff — more beautiful in her way than any centerfold, he thought.

“Do you want a child, Nan?” he asked.

“Sometimes I think of it. But—” Her eyes glided from his and scanned the kitchen before returning. “I think I’m content, if that’s the word.”

“You would tell me if you changed your mind.”

“I would.”

“Forty’s not too old these days.”

“I wish I were forty. Is that what you’re doing, slicing years from your age?”

“Just yours,” said Gorrie, starting in on the meat.