The Scarlatti Inheritance Page 6

  “Where are you going?” asked the captain in consternation.

  “Back where I can do some good! Give me ten minutes and then start firing. Keep it up for at least three or four minutes, but for Christ’s sake, shoot left. Don’t kill me. I need the diversion.” He abruptly stopped and before the captain could speak reentered the field.

  Once in the tall grass, Scarlett sprung from one German corpse to another, grabbing the helmets off the lifeless heads. After he had five helmets, he lay on the ground and waited for the firing to commence.

  The captain did his part. One would have thought they were back at Château-Thierry. In four minutes the firing stopped.

  Scarlett rose and ran back to his company’s lines. As he appeared with the helmets in his hand, the men broke into spontaneous cheers. Even the captain, whose resentment disappeared with his newfound admiration, joined his men.

  “God damn it to hell, Scarlett! That was the bravest act I’ve seen in the war!”

  “Not so fast,” Scarlett demurred with a humility not in evidence before. “We’re clear in front and on the left flank, but a couple of Krauts ran off to the right. I’m going after them.”

  “You don’t have to. Let ’em go. You’ve done enough.” Captain Jenkins revised his opinion of Ulster Scarlett. The young lieutenant had met his challenge.

  “If you don’t mind, sir, I don’t think I have.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My brother.… Rolly was his name. The Krauts got him eight months ago. Let me go after them and you take the ground.”

  Ulster Scarlett disappeared back into the field.

  He knew exactly where he was going.

  A few minutes later the American Lieutenant crouched by a large rock in his tiny island of stone and weeds. He waited for B Company to start its assault on the forest of pines. He leaned against the hard surface and looked up at the sky.

  Then it came.

  The men shouted to give themselves a touch more courage in the conceivable event they met the retreating enemy. Sporadic shots rang out. Several fingers were nervous. As the company reached the forest, a shattering volley from a score of rifles could be heard.

  They were firing at dead men, thought Ulster Scarlett.

  He was safe now.

  For him the war was over.

  “Stay where you are, Amerikaner!” The voice was thickly Germanic. “Don’t move!”

  Scarlett had reached for his pistol but the voice above him was emphatic. To touch his revolver meant death.

  “You speak English.” It was all Lieutenant Scarlett could think of to say.

  “Reasonably well. Don’t move! My gun is aimed at your skull.… The same area of the skull where you put a bullet into Corporal Kroeger.”

  Ulster Scarlett froze.

  There had been someone! He had heard something!… The corpse in the field!

  But why hadn’t the German killed him?

  “I did what I had to do.” Again it was the only thing Scarlett could think of to say.

  “I’m sure of that. Just as I am sure you had no alternative but to fire on your own troops.… You have … very strange concepts of your calling in this war, do you not?”

  Scarlett was beginning to understand.

  “This war … is over.”

  “I have a degree in military strategy from the Imperial Staff school in Berlin. I’m aware of our impending defeat.… Ludendorff will have no choice once the Mézières line is broken.”

  “Then why kill me?”

  The German officer came from behind the huge rock and faced Ulster Scarlett, his pistol pointed at the American’s head. Scarlett saw that he was a man not much older than himself, a young man with broad shoulders—like himself. Tall—like himself, with a confident look in his eyes, which were bright blue—like his own.

  “We can be out of it, for Christ’s sake! We can be out of it! Why the hell should we sacrifice each other? Or even one of us.… I can help you, you know!”

  “Can you really?”

  Scarlett looked at his captor. He knew he could not plead, could not show weakness. He had to remain calm, logical. “Listen to me.… If you’re picked up, you’ll be put in a camp with thousands of others. That is, if you’re not shot. I wouldn’t count on any officers’ privileges if I were you. It’ll take weeks, months, maybe a year or longer before they get to you! Before they let you go!”

  “And you can change all this?”

  “You’re damned right I can!”

  “But why would you?”

  “Because I want to be out of it!… And so do you!… If you didn’t, you would have killed me by now.… We need each other.”

  “What do you propose?”

  “You’re my prisoner.…”

  “You think me insane?”

  “Keep your pistol! Take the bullets out of mine.… If anyone comes across us, I’m taking you back for interrogation … far back. Until we can get you some clothes.… If we can get to Paris, I’ll get you money.”

  “How?”

  Ulster Scarlett grinned a confident smile. The smile of wealth. “That’s my business.… What choice have you got?… Kill me and you’re a prisoner anyway. Maybe a dead man. And you haven’t much time.…”

  “Get up! Put your arms out against the rock!”

  Scarlett complied as the German officer took Scarlett’s revolver out of his holster and removed the cartridges.

  “Turn around!”

  “In less than an hour others’ll be coming up. We were an advance company but not that far ahead.”

  The German waved his pistol at Scarlett. “There are several farmhouses about a kilometer and a half southwest. Move! Mach schnell!” With his left hand he thrust Scarlett’s empty revolver at him.

  The two men ran across the fields.

  The artillery to the north began its early morning barrage. The sun had broken through the clouds and the mist and was now bright.

  About a mile to the southwest was a cluster of buildings. A barn and two small stone houses. It was necessary to cross a wide dirt road to reach the overgrown pasture, fenced for livestock, which were not now in evidence. Chimney smoke curled from the larger of the two houses.

  Someone had a fire going and that meant someone had food, warmth. Someone had supplies.

  “Let’s get into that shack,” said Ulster.

  “Neim! Your troops will be coming through.”

  “For Christ’s sake, we’ve got to get you some clothes. Can’t you see that?”

  The German clicked the hammer of his Luger into firing position. “You’re inconsistent. I thought you proposed taking me back—far back—through your own lines for interrogation?… It might be simpler to kill you now.”

  “Only until we could get you clothes! If I’ve got a Kraut officer in tow, there’s nothing to prevent some fat-ass captain figuring out the same thing I have! Or a major or a colonel who wants to get the hell out of the area.… It’s been done before. All they have to do is order me to turn you over and that’s it!… If you’re in civilian clothes, I can get us through easier. There’s so damned much confusion!”

  The German slowly released the hammer of his revolver, still staring at the lieutenant. “You really do want this war to be over for you, don’t you?”

  Inside the stone house was an old man, hard of hearing, confused and frightened by the strange pair. With little pretense, holding the unloaded revolver, the American lieutenant ordered the man to pack a supply of food and find clothes—any clothes for his “prisoner.”

  As Scarlett’s French was poor, he turned to his captor. “Why don’t you tell him we’re both German?… We’re trapped. We’re trying to escape through the lines. Every Frenchman knows we’re breaking through everywhere.”

  The German officer smiled. “I’ve already done that. It will add to the confusion.… You will be amused to learn that he said he presumed as much. Do you know why he said that?”

  “Why?”

&n
bsp; “He said we both had the filthy smell of the Boche about us.”

  The old man, who had edged near the open door, suddenly dashed outside and began—feebly—running toward the field.

  “Jesus Christ! Stop him! God damn it, stop him!” yelled Scarlett.

  The German officer, however, already had his pistol raised. “Don’t be alarmed. He saves us making an unpleasant decision.”

  Two shots were fired.

  The old man fell, and the young enemies looked at each other.

  “What should I call you?” asked Scarlett.

  “My own name will do. Strasser.… Gregor Strasser.”

  It was not difficult for the two officers to make their way through the Allied lines. The American push out of Regneville was electrifyingly swift, a headlong rush. But totally disconnected in its chain of command. Or so it seemed to Ulster Scarlett and Gregor Strasser.

  At Reims the two men came across the remnants of the French Seventeenth Corps, bedraggled, hungry, weary of it all.

  They had no trouble at Reims. The French merely shrugged shoulders after uninterested questions.

  They headed west to Villers-Cotterêts, the roads to Epernay and Meaux jammed with upcoming supplies and replacements.

  Let the other poor bastards take your deathbed bullets, thought Scarlett.

  The two men reached the outskirts of Villers-Cotterêts at night. They left the road and cut across a field to the shelter of a cluster of trees.

  “We’ll rest here for a few hours,” Strasser said. “Make no attempt to escape. I shall not sleep.”

  “You’re crazy, sport! I need you as much as you need me!… A lone American officer forty miles from his company, which just happens to be at the front! Use your head!”

  “You are persuasive, but I am not like our enfeebled imperial generals. I do not listen to empty, convincing arguments. I watch my flanks.”

  “Suit yourself. It’s a good sixty miles from Cotterêts to Paris and we don’t know what we’re going to run into. We’re going to need sleep.… We’d be smarter to take turns.”

  “Jawohl!” said Strasser with a contemptuous laugh. “You talk like the Jew bankers in Berlin. ‘You do this. We’ll do that! Why argue?’ Thank you, no, Amerikaner. I shall not sleep.”

  “Whatever you say.” Scarlett shrugged. “I’m beginning to understand why you guys lost the war.” Scarlett rolled over on his side. “You’re stubborn about being stubborn.”

  For a few minutes neither man spoke. Finally Gregor Strasser answered the American in a quiet voice. “We did not lose the war. We were betrayed.”

  “Sure. The bullets were blanks and your artillery backfired. I’m going to sleep.”

  The German officer spoke softly, as if to himself. “Many bullets were in empty cartridges. Many weapons did malfunction.… Betrayal.…”

  Along the road several trucks lumbered out of Villers-Cotterêts followed by horses pulling caissons. The lights of the trucks danced flickeringly up and down. The animals whinnied; a few soldiers shouted at their charges.

  More poor, stupid bastards, thought Ulster Scarlett as he watched from his sanctuary. “Hey, Strasser, what happens now?” Scarlett turned to his fellow deserter.

  “Was ist?” Strasser had catnapped. He was furious with himself. “You speak?”

  “Just wanted you to know I could have jumped you.… I asked you what happens now? I mean to you?… I know what happens to us. Parades, I guess. What about you?”

  “No parades. No celebrations.… Much weeping. Much recrimination. Much drunkenness.… Many will be desperate.… Many will be killed also. You may be assured of that.”

  “Who? Who’s going to be killed?”

  “The traitors among us. They will be searched out and destroyed without mercy.”

  “You’re crazy! I said you were crazy before and now I know it!”

  “What would you have us do? You haven’t been infected yet. But you will be!… The Bolsheviks! They are at our borders and they infiltrate! They eat away at our core! They rot inside us!… And the Jews! The Jews in Berlin make fortunes out of this war! The filthy Jew profiteers! The conniving Semites sell us out today, you tomorrow!… The Jews, the Bolsheviks, the stinking little people! We are all their victims and we do not know it! We fight each other when we should be fighting them!”

  Ulster Scarlett spat. The son of Scarlatti was not interested in the problems of ordinary men. Ordinary men did not concern him.

  And yet he was troubled.

  Strasser was not an ordinary man. The arrogant German officer hated the ordinary man as much as he did. “What are you going to do when you shovel these people under ground? Play king of the mountain?”

  “Of many mountains.… Of many, many mountains.”

  Scarlett rolled over away from the German officer.

  But he did not close his eyes.

  Of many, many mountains.

  Ulster Scarlett had never thought of such a domain.… Scarlatti made millions upon millions but Scarlatti did not rule. Especially the sons of Scarlatti. They would never rule.… Elizabeth had made that clear.

  “Strasser?”

  “Yah?”

  “Who are these people? Your people?”

  “Dedicated men. Powerful men. The names can not be spoken of. Committed to rise out of defeat and unite the elite of Europe.”

  Scarlett turned his face up to the sky. Stars flickered through the low-flying gray clouds. Gray, black, dots of shimmering white.

  “Strasser?”

  “Was ist?”

  “Where will you go? After it’s over, I mean.”

  “To Heidenheim. My family lives there.”

  “Where is it?”

  “Halfway between Munich and Stuttgart.” The German officer looked at the strange, huge American deserter. Deserter, murderer, aider and abettor of his enemy.

  “We’ll be in Paris tomorrow night. I’ll get you your money. There’s a man in Argenteuil who keeps money for me.”

  “Danke.”

  Ulster Scarlett shifted his body. The earth was next to his face, and the smell was clean.

  “Just … Strasser, Heidenheim. That’s all?”

  “That’s all.”

  “Give me a name, Strasser.”

  “What do you mean? Give you a name?”

  “Just that. A name you’ll know is me when I get in touch with you.”

  Strasser thought for a moment. “Very well, Amerikaner. Let’s choose a name you should find hard to forget—Kroeger.”

  “Who?”

  “Kroeger—Corporal Heinrich Kroeger, whose head you shot off in the Meuse-Argonne.”

  On November 10 at three o’clock in the afternoon the cease-fire order went out.

  Ulster Stewart Scarlett bought a motorcycle and began his swift journey to La Harasée and beyond. To B Company, Fourteenth Battalion.

  He arrived in the area where most of the battalion was bivouacked and started his search for the company. It was difficult. The camp was filled with drunken, glassy-eyed, foul-breathed soldiers of every description. The order-of-the-early-morning was mass alcoholic hysteria.

  Except for Company B.

  B Company was holding a religious service. A commemoration for a fallen comrade.

  For Lieutenant Ulster Stewart Scarlett, AEF.

  Scarlett watched.

  Captain Jenkins finished reading the beautiful Psalm for the Dead in a choked voice and then led the men in the Lord’s Prayer.

  “Our Father Who art in heaven …” Some of the men were weeping unashamedly.

  It was a pity to spoil it all, thought Scarlett.

  His citation read in part:

  … after single-handedly destroying three enemy machine-gun nests, he took out in pursuit of a fourth dangerous emplacement, destroying that also and thereby saving many Allied lives. He did not return and was presumed dead. However, until the fighting ceased a week hence, Second Lieutenant Scarlett provided B Company with an inspiring cry of ba
ttle. “For Old Rolly!” struck terror in the hearts of many an enemy. Through God’s infinite wisdom, Second Lieutenant Scarlett rejoined his platoon the day following the cessation of hostilities. Exhausted and weak, he returned to glory. Through presidential order we hereby bestow …

  CHAPTER 5

  Back in New York, Ulster Stewart Scarlett discovered that being a hero let him do precisely as he wished. Not that he had been confined, far from it, but now even the minor restrictions such as punctuality and the normal acceptance of routine social courtesies were no longer expected of him. He had faced the supreme test of man’s existence—the encounter with death. True, there were thousands like him in these respects but few were officially designated heroes, and none was a Scarlett. Elizabeth, startled beyond words, lavished upon him everything that money and power could make available. Even Chancellor Drew deferred to his young brother as the male leader of the family.

  And so into the twenties bounded Ulster Stewart Scarlett.

  From the pinnacles of society to the owners of speakeasies, Ulster Stewart was a welcome friend. He contributed neither much wit nor a great deal of understanding and yet his contribution was something very special. He was a man in working sympathy with his environment. His demands from life were certainly unreasonable but these were unreasonable times. The seeking of pleasure, the avoidance of pain, the enjoyment of existing without ambition were all that he seemed to require.

  Seemed to require.

  But not what Heinrich Kroeger required at all.

  They corresponded twice a year, Strasser’s letters addressed to a general post office box in mid-Manhattan.

  April, 1920

  My dear Kroeger:

  It is official. We have given a name and a new life to the defunct Workers party. We are the National Socialist German Workers party—and, please, my dear Kroeger, don’t take the words too seriously. It is a magnificent beginning. We attract so many. The Versailles restrictions are devastating. They reduce Germany to rubble. And yet it is good. It is good for us. The people are angry, they lash out not only at the victors—but at those who betrayed us from within.

  June, 1921

  Dear Strasser:

  You have Versailles, we have the Volstead! And it’s good for us, too.… Everyone’s getting a slice of the pie and I’m not missing my share—our share! Everybody wants a favor, a payoff—a shipment! You have to know the right people. In a short time I’ll be the “right people.” I’m not interested in the money—screw the money! Leave that for the kikes and the greasers! I’m getting something else! Something far more important.…