Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves(83)
At that, Bull Dog grunted, slammed shut the door and waved the van on. Gideon was not surprised to find his ‘borrowed’ gray wool field cap saturated with sweat. He expected any second to hear either the gunfire from the camp’s SS Panzer pursuit squad or the siren sound of Oranienburg’s Grüne Polizei.
Less than a kilometer down the highway, Romy swerved abruptly onto a dirt road used primarily by local fisherman. Dust spiraled as she roared along the road, walled by trees leafed with autumn’s brilliant oranges and blood-reds. At last, the broad blue of the Havel River shimmered welcomingly before them.
A small barge, a rusted-out steel-bottom scow, floated fifty meters off shore. It was heavily laden with what appeared to be bags of stones, destined clearly for the Klinkerwerk docks.
Romy braked the transport to a neck whiplashing halt.
The single transport from shore to barge awaiting at the Havel’s bank was a two-man pedal boat, purloined by Irina from Spandau’s Bürgerablage bathing beach. All had worried how the pedalboat would accommodate a third person. But time and resources had not been plentiful.
As he sprang from the truck, along with Romy and Luca, the sound of automatic guns firing from behind concerned him more.
However, he was caught up with their flight’s exhilaration -- the sight of Canadian geese, winging overhead in a v-formation for victory, and the Havel’s crystal water below, soaking his uniform’s gabardine trousers, and then by crimson foam polluting the tide’s splashing, clear water.
§ § §
North of Berlin’s ritzy Spandau district, Duke, dressed in a fisherman’s red ribbed sweater, brought about the transformed barge. Its bags of stones had been hastily dumped overboard by Giorgio and replaced by a pair of folding deck chairs. An anxious, pacing Luca refused to recline in one of them, but in another slumped Goldman.
With his bullet-riddled body splayed across the small pedal boat’s casing and bullets zinging the water, it had been all Luca and Romy had been able to do to pedal the small float to the barge.
Frantically, she labored now over Goldman. He needed immediate medical help. More than the futile staunching of her lab coat on his wounds could accomplish. “If only I hadn’t returned to the lab . . . ” she was weeping. “We might have escaped without ye getting – ”
Goldman stared up at her through glazed eyes. “Glad you . . . killed Doc.” A wry grin parted lips dappled with bloody spittle. “Not the Seven Dwarf one. The evil one.”
“Well,” she choked out, “a good lawyer like yuirself, Gideon, knows that justice must be served.”
“As good a lawyer . . . as I am,” he wheezed, “I don’t think I’ll be around to get you off this case.”
“Of course, ye will. Just ye wait and see, in no time we’ll . . . .”
A thin, copper line dribbled from one corner of Goldman’s mouth. Then came the sound of a dying breath.
As Duke watched, her body stiffened. She dropped to her knees, face in her hands, and shuddered violently. Not a weeping now but a keening, howling noise, he heard. She was a terrifying banshee of Ireland. A fairy woman.
And he knew, knew that the Jewish attorney had expired.
Goldman had been a damned good man. Duke fought down the gut-sickening feeling of helplessness. He lamented that he had not steered the barge closer to the shoreline; that might have given the three fugitives the edge; that might have saved Goldman. But then there had been the danger of beaching the barge on a hidden shoal.
And he lamented even more that he was unable to assuage Romy’s sorrow. If something needed to be done, he could do it or would find a way to get it done, but he did not know shit about how to heal a female’s hurting. As a kid, he had tried but failed miserably to make right his mom’s suffering.
Hell, what was he doing in a foreign country anyway, where he stuck out like a sore thumb, when he should be back at the S&S, haying or making repairs to the antediluvian ranch equipment or stringing barbed wire? He should be chopping winter firewood or weaning the calves. He should be anywhere but here, helping the misfit moppet Romy Sunshine.
Yet, if he truly thought her life would be better with him, he would brand her as belonging to him. But such was not the case. Nevertheless, he had sworn to get her through this safely – to her la querencia, if she was to be believed.
He heard her throwing up over the side of the barge and forced his gaze back to the Bürgerablage bathing beach. A large, circular main restaurant, a pier with a café on it and a marina, were catering to the hoard of visitors, regardless of the late season.
Near the beach’s thatched pavilions, a sign forbidding Jews access to the year-round public baths took prominent display. He was to put in on the lido’s south side to rendezvous with Irina. According to plan, she was keeping watch with binoculars from the closed-roof colonnade.
At the marina pier, Giorgio leaped from the barge to secure its rope around a piling. By that time, Irina, in a khaki jumpsuit with cargo pockets, was rolling over the sand-packed beach a wheel chair. Originally, it had been intended for Luca, since, at the time of hammering out the rescue, his physical condition had been uncertain.
Once on the dock, her eyes widened at the sight of her half-brother. She paused, swayed. Only her hands on the empty wheelchair handles, it seemed, kept her from collapsing. With an expedience mandated by time, she pulled herself together and hustled to the roped-off barge.