Chapter Text
Gale checked into the Hotel St. George on the evening of August 29th, after a four-hour train ride on the afternoon Marylander from DC.
The hotel was advertised as the largest in New York City. Gale didn't doubt that for one second: the whole thing took up an entire city block. It had been built right above the Clark Street subway station, and he'd taken the elevator up from the platform into its vast Art Deco lobby—a glittering architectural triumph, gilded with winking metallic embellishments and gleaming mirrored surfaces. On either side of the front desk, twin staircases curved up and out of sight. Guests walked in, out, sat talking in square-backed chairs at low candlelit tables, or at the long shellacked lobby bartop under slim geometric lamps, leaning toward one another, voices humming low.
He walked across a floor tiled in black and white and gold, and felt as though he was parting some kind of veil, entering another world. “You're in room 568, Mr. Cleven,” said the receptionist, after Gale had signed the register, handing him his room key. “Enjoy your stay.”
He reached out to take the key, and someone behind him said:
“Buck Cleven?”
Gale turned around.
The man who stood in front of him had not changed very much since their first—and last—meeting. He was still slender, still fox-faced, still handsome, but now Americanized; he had assumed the appearance of a modest academic instead of the serpentine pencil pusher he’d been, sitting prim and proper in the shadows. His blond hair was no longer darkened by pomade, or clipped into a strict military cut, but combed into a loose side part. His thin rimless eyeglasses had been replaced by tortoiseshell horn-rims, and he no longer wore a uniform, but a smart dress shirt and a pressed pair of trousers. But it was, undoubtedly, the same slight, sharp-eyed Luftwaffe lieutenant who had interrogated him four years ago in the cold hard cells of Dulag Luft.
Gale wondered, briefly, if he was dreaming. One of those bizarre walking dreams he sometimes experienced, which put him back in time, divorced him from his surroundings, and lost him in a labyrinth of cold, hellish recollection.
Gale Cleven. Major. O-399782.
“Ah, it is you,” said the man. He offered his hand for a shake with a small, pleasant, vacant smile. “I thought so. Ulrich Haussmann. It's been some time since we last spoke.”
It was like the entire world stopped spinning on its axis for one terrible, precarious moment. Somehow Gale maintained his composure, took Haussmann’s hand, and shook it once. He heard himself respond, “I remember. Lieutenant.”
Haussmann’s smile lines tugged all the way up his cheeks to his eyes, rippling the smooth flesh. It drew his skin tight over the handsome cleft of his chin. “I’m sure you’re surprised to see me.”
“Hell of an understatement,” said Gale.
“I, on the other hand, am completely unsurprised to see you.”
“Here for the reunion?” Gale asked, humorless, flat, not sure what he’d do if Haussmann answered yes. This could not be coincidence.
Another smile. “In a sense, yes, thanks to Bucky. We’re eating at the Fish Grill and Oyster Bar in an hour. You should join us.”
Gale’s hearing whited out. Radio static. He wasn't sure he'd understood. Rage crawled through him, but it was not the billowing heat of a fire, roaring, but the slow creeping cold of winter, chilling him down to the bone, freezing his organs in layers of jagged rime.
“Bucky,” he repeated, a million other questions piling up on the back of his tongue.
“Indeed. I’m sure you are eager to see him. He’s quite eager to see you. Please, join us. Seven o’clock.” He flipped up his wrist and checked his watch—a Stowa B-Uhr. “I would love to stay and chat, but I’ve been sent on a vital errand. I hope to see you later, Major—we can catch up then. Bis später.”
Gale watched him walk straight out of the lobby and onto Clark Street, where he hung a sharp left and disappeared out of sight.
He stood there in numb shock for a long moment before a passing bellhop said, tentatively, “Sir? May I help you?” and he came back to himself with a little jolt, like someone had rocked the lip of his rowboat, tipping him off-balance.
“No, thanks,” he said, and went up to his room in a fugue.
He dropped his suitcase on the bed. He sat down in the armchair by the window. He stared out at the skyline across the East River toward downtown Manhattan. The sun was dipping behind the financial district, turning its skyscrapers to dark, featureless headstones, dotted with a thousand tiny stars. The room was equipped with a state-of-the-art 10-inch RCA 630-TS and a rotary phone, but Gale did not use either of them. He sat in silence.
After an unknown stretch of minutes, he checked his watch. It was nearing six. He had plenty of time to freshen up. He hadn’t been planning on doing that; he had been planning on having a quiet night in before the reunion. He had been preparing to see John again. Tomorrow.
Not tonight. And not with Ulrich Haussmann.
Join us, he'd said. In that thin, meticulous voice.
Us.
He stripped out of his travel clothes, showered, and changed into a nice shirt and pair of trousers. He looked at himself in the mirror. Rubbed his hand over the honey rasp of stubble that had come in over the past week. Gale was a changed man, more tired around the eyes, scarred in the face, but Marge had been uncompromising in her crusade to nurse him back to health. He’d regained color, weight, muscle. The sun was back in his hair, in his skin. He liked how he looked. He was proud of his appearance.
He barely remembered how he'd looked before the war. Those photographs seemed fake now, staged, constructed—a life lived by some other man. That kid didn't know what he’d see or do, who he’d meet, who he’d kill. That kid hadn’t dropped bombs, hadn’t watched men die screaming long before they hit the ground. That kid was some other Gale Cleven, chubby-cheeked and smiling, a fool and an idiot, who thought he’d suffered a hard life before, but hadn’t known the half of it. Hadn’t known how hard it could get.
But his satisfaction with his outward shell did not extend to what it hid. How he felt. That hadn’t changed since June of 1943. Gale didn’t feel like he'd come back with everything he'd left with. Parts of him were still frozen and buried in Europe. Parts of him hacked out and decayed, smudged with stalag dirt and hidden beneath rotting grimy floorboards, while he walked above, missing cartilage, a limb, veins shriveled, deprived of living blood.
He'd tried to grow new flesh with Marge. Fill up all those empty spaces. But the mechanism inside him that had once manufactured happiness had rusted over, and Marge, although she’d tried, did not possess the right tools to make him completely whole again.
Haussmann’s cheeks had been baby-smooth. Gale flicked out his razor, smeared his own jaw with shaving cream, and carefully carved himself a few years younger. He patted on a dash of aftershave and combed his hair until it gleamed, until the apparition in the mirror had become a passable approximation of a handsome human man. He held his own gaze for a moment, looking for a spark behind bruised, blue-ringed pupils. He saw only blackness.
≡
The last time Gale had seen John Egan, he’d been roaring drunk at his wedding reception, needling at everyone who told him to take it easy, letting his mouth run poisonously loose. Gale had been forced to take him inside to the bathroom, where John, in his dress uniform with all his medals, doubled over, missed the toilet, and vomited over the lip of the tub—nothing but bile and bourbon. On his knees, John had put his sweaty forehead to Gale’s thigh and slurred, I’m fine. I’m fine, Buck. Jesus. Lighten up. You're no fun. Gale had almost strangled him.
He'd sent John off in a taxi afterward. Apologized to Marge. Apologized to Marge’s family. To his own mother, who had watched John unravel with pained and troubled eyes, seeing the same ghost that haunted Gale whenever John got drunk enough.
Now, standing from his seat at the bar, John Egan was—not at all like that pathetic wreck of a man on his knees, but lucid, bright-eyed, unchanged. Healthy, tall, broad. Curls loose, eyes curved, squinting into crescents.
And beside John stood Haussmann, smiling his snake’s smile.
He was a full head shorter than John, and much slighter. John’s wide hand rested on his slim shoulder, huge, nonchalant. He did not move forward. He did not move at all. Rusted alarm bells clanged and blared in Gale’s mind.
It was, for the most unsettling of moments, like looking into a funhouse mirror: a skewed reflection of himself, a reality where John had chosen some other blond pilot to claim as his own, a reality where John had defected, where he’d given the name Buck to the enemy instead, dogged his every footstep, teased him relentlessly, leaned into his body, gripped him with inescapable hands. Gale had stepped sideways into a dream, a nightmare.
Traitor, Gale thought.
He couldn't stand to look at him.
“Buck,” John said, once Gale had entered his orbit. He extended a hand past Haussmann—the same hand that had been on his shoulder. Gale took it. It was big and warm and dry and familiar, and Gale imagined crushing all of its tiny important bones to pieces in his grip. Instead, the skin of their palms whispered as they met and slid together. It was the first time they'd touched in two years.
“Bucky,” said Gale.
John squeezed his hand. Then he dropped it and made a sweeping gesture toward Haussmann—large and theatrical. “And you know Rick already!”
Rick. Gale wanted to laugh. Bark it out, sharp and mean. Jesus.
Instead, he said, “You could say that.”
They sat down, and a waitress came over to take their orders.
“What can I get for you gentlemen?”
“My friend and I will have the, uh… blue point oysters and the Kennebec salmon. A Coke for him, and a Jim Beam, neat, for me. Thanks, sweetheart. Buck?”
It took Gale a bitter, staggered moment to realize John had not ordered the Coke for him. My friend. Haussmann. Gale hadn't even looked at the menu.
“The same,” he said. He had to force it out. “But make it a ginger ale. Thanks.”
The waitress went and got them their drinks. John winked at her as he took the glass of whiskey from her hand, and then the Coke, which he set down in front of Haussmann. As Gale received his ginger ale, John’s other hand stretched long and languid out over the back of Haussmann’s chair. Gale’s stomach lurched. Haussmann didn't seem to mind. He didn't acknowledge it. He seemed used to it, like John did it all the time.
Gale felt, bizarrely, like he had been drawn into some kind of stage play—some movie set. Nothing made sense otherwise. This couldn’t be real, and yet it was happening to him. Right in front of him. Perhaps he was the one watching a film. He had become an audience member, an observer, a shadow, in his own life.
“I suspect you're wondering how and why I’m here,” said Haussmann. He took a sip of his Coke. “I am not attending the reunion, of course—that would be in exceptionally poor taste—”
“Ah, I don't know, I think it’d be pretty funny,” said John. Gale imagined reaching over the table and tearing the grin right off his face. He watched John’s thick fingers tap and squeeze Haussmann’s shoulder, the meat between neck and joint. “You’ve probably interrogated half the guys who’ll be there. Imagine the looks on their faces!”
“Precisely,” said Haussmann dryly. “As I was saying before—I am only here because of Bucky. He asked me to visit New York with him after he received the invitation, and I thought, how can I refuse? Truthfully, I wasn’t given much of a choice.”
There was warmth and tolerance and exasperation in Haussmann’s voice, and a sly, teasing mischievousness in John’s, like they'd been good friends for a long time. But they were only two years out from the war. Gale felt like hitting something. Damaging a priceless artifact. He couldn't believe John had befriended Haussmann. He couldn't believe John could stand to share the same air as him, let alone touch him.
“Oh, don’t be so sour, Buck!” John laughed. “I know how it looks, but Rick here works for us now. He got shipped off to El Paso last year while I was at Biggs. I saw him walking around Fort Bliss and couldn't believe my eyes.”
“Neither could I,” said Haussmann, smile unwavering. Gale wanted to punch it in past his teeth and down his throat. “It was a fortuitous meeting.”
Gale needed a toothpick. He needed something to do with his teeth. He took a long swallow of ginger ale. Something slithered around in the bottom of his stomach, vile and poisonous.
“Why were you in El Paso?” he asked. “Long way from Germany.”
“I was invited. By your government. There are about a hundred of us ‘War Department Special Employees'. So far.”
Gale stared at him. “You're an engineer,” he said, putting it all together. He should have anticipated this. The Luftwaffe had been packed with Germany’s best and brightest—scientists, mathematicians, engineers, scholars. Men with doctorates and degrees, educated men—just like the AAF. Now the United States was poaching all the best German scientists before the Soviets could disappear them into Russia.
“Before the war,” Haussmann said, amused, waving an all-encompassing hand, “I actually studied here in New York. Columbia University. I received my American pilot’s license before my German one, if you can believe it.”
He could believe it. But he didn’t want to, because it infuriated him.
“Then why interrogation? Should’ve been flying planes.”
Should've been shot down with the rest of us.
“I was fluent in English,” Haussmann said. “I was familiar with Americans and what Americans liked. Not to mention my deteriorating eyesight. The Luftwaffe needed me in Intelligence. So, they sent me to Oberursel. You know the rest.” Haussmann leaned forward, interest sparkling behind his eyeglasses. “But enough about me. I've heard that you're in the process of earning your doctorate, Major. Astrophysics, isn’t it? At Georgetown?”
Gale smiled thinly. “Bucky tell you that?”
“He talks about you often,” said Haussmann. “Quite the change from when we first met.”
John grinned, easy and open. “Back then, you were the one who wouldn’t shut up about Buck.”
“Quite so,” said Haussmann. “But you still didn’t crack.” He looked at Gale. “Your best friend is an impressive man, Major. I’ve always thought so.”
“Oh, I don't know about best,” said John. “Least, not anymore. Buck here’s only got time for his missus.”
Chills of rage and hurt and humiliation traveled up and down Gale’s spine. John was being cruel on purpose. Gale knew it. He knew it just as he'd known it back in Sagan, and in the days leading up to the wedding—John drunk and bitter and unable to keep it buried, crawling out of his self-imposed grave like a revenant: a hollow man with dark, accusing eyes, and grasping hands that would touch Gale too much and too long, until he had to stop him and tell him, Don’t push it, John. I’m not kidding.
The waitress returned with their supper, laying down three plates of salmon and one of blue oysters. Gale took up his napkin and laid it in his lap. His fingers found a loose thread and picked at it. He couldn't bring himself to start in on his meal. His appetite had vanished.
“How is Marge, anyway?” John continued, cracking open an oyster. “Can’t help but notice she’s not here with you.”
“She's fine,” Gale said. “Decided to stay in DC.”
I’d just feel out of place, Gale, she’d told him, making herself a martini. This reunion is for you and your war friends. I don’t want to get in the way of that.
“Oh, she did, did she? Doesn’t sound like her.”
“Perhaps she couldn’t take the time off?” said Haussmann. “I imagine she is being kept quite busy, as—what was it? A secretary to a Washington lawyer? That is no easy job.”
Gale looked straight at John. “You tell him that too?”
“Didn’t know it was sensitive information, Buck.”
“So you decide that means you can discuss everything about my personal life with an enemy intelligence officer?”
“Not everything,” John said, casual, sipping his whiskey. “Lighten up, Buck. He's American now.”
Lighten up. You're no fun.
“Well, not quite,” corrected Haussmann. His eyes glittered. “But getting there.”
Gale ground his teeth together. “Listen, Bucky. Marge wanted me to enjoy this trip with my friends. With you.”
“Hm,” John said. He slurped the meat out of another oyster with a loud wet sound. “Real nice of her. But then again, she's always been a considerate gal. Made sure you were well looked after, huh, Buck?” He grinned and leaned in to Haussmann. “He’d huff her letters like snuff in the stalag,” he stage-whispered. “She’d perfume ‘em. Sometimes even we could smell it. Can't begin to tell you what that did for the guys at night. Certainly raised my morale, if you get me.”
The insinuation was lewd and inappropriate and unkind, but more than that, it was wrong. John had hated those letters. He'd tried to hide it, soften it, turn his burning envy into a joke—tried to shield Gale from it—but its jealous acid had always dripped through, hissing and souring and warping every conversation they'd had about Marge, which were rare enough to begin with. Now John wasn’t even trying. He’d cloaked his florid disdain behind a fig leaf of humor, but Gale wondered why he was even bothering with the fig leaf—John wanted to wound him, and he was succeeding. And he wanted Haussmann to watch him do it.
Gale’s hands curled into fists beneath the table. “What the hell’s the matter with you, John?”
“Sorry,” John said, waving a hand. “Sorry, sorry. Just, seems to me, you’re wasting the love of a good woman. You’re sitting here giving me excuses when you should’ve brought her along, Buck. That’s all. Can't imagine how she felt when you didn't even insist.”
Gale stared at him, disbelieving, then stood up and tossed his crumpled, fraying napkin down on the table beside his untouched salmon.
“Don’t act like you want her here,” he said. “You, of all people.”
He walked away. Neither of them stopped him.
≡
Back in his room, Gale sat on the bed and reached for the rotary phone—a fat black brick of Bakelite on the bedside table. He dug his finger into the dial and pulled it around seven times.
“Cleven residence,” came Marge’s voice, after two rings.
“Marge, it’s me.”
“Gale!” she said, sounding surprised. “I wasn’t expecting to hear from you tonight.”
“Just wanted to let you know I made it,” he said. “Hell of a hotel.”
“Well, I’m glad. Ready for tomorrow? I'm sure the men have missed you something awful. I bet Bucky's just dying to see you!"
The name pulled his teeth together, pressed them tight. “Marge,” he said, haltingly. “Did you want to come with me? Would've brought you if you’d asked. You know I would’ve.”
“I know, Gale,” she said softly. There was a faint rustle. “If I really wanted to be there—if I thought you needed me there, I would’ve come along. God’s honest truth. Something wrong?”
Beginning to think I should’ve insisted, he thought. If Marge were here—well, she would have smoothed everything over. Gale would have been able to slide his arm around her waist, just like John had slid his arm over Haussmann's shoulders—that would've shut John up. Would've made him simmer and boil inside, not out. But Gale didn’t want John to be right. He didn’t want John’s words to mean anything. So he just said, “Been a while since we were apart, I s'pose.”
“Oh, Gale,” she said. “I’m right here. In just a few days, you’ll see me again.”
“Yeah,” he said. The receiver was cold against his ear. Gale realized he was gripping the handset hard enough to creak the plastic. “Few days. ‘Til then, sweetheart.”
“Goodnight, my love. Good luck. Say hi to the boys for me.”
Gale put the handset back into its cradle. He felt calmer. But the anger hadn’t fully left him, buzzing like a nest of wasps just beneath his sternum, paper comb built in and around his lungs. He took out the well-worn book he’d brought, A Shropshire Lad, and settled down to read, hoping its familiar lines would soothe him, just as they had back at Thorpe Abbotts. It hadn't been anger, back then—he wasn't sure what it had been.
As the desk clock ticked over to 9:00 PM, there came a crisp, polite knock on Gale’s hotel room door.
He looked up. Watched the door for a moment, wondering if his visitor might leave. If they’d wait. The image of John standing on the other side, denied, punished, was an enticing one. John, slinking back to him with his tail between his legs, repentant and ashamed.
The knock sounded again. Gale put his novel down on the bedside table, got up, and opened the door.
It was Haussmann.
Gale experienced a disorienting flash. He was sitting on a bed in a small dark cell. Haussmann was there, silhouetted in steely blue. Good morning, Major. Would you care to take a walk with me? Here he was again, standing sleek and small outside of a dark room, speaking precise, clipped, ingratiating English to the man trapped inside it.
Gale reminded himself that he was not trapped. He put his arm up on the doorframe. He was taller than Haussmann by at least half a foot. This close, he could look down his nose at him. Under the hallway light fixtures, Haussmann’s face looked expertly carved, shadows cast in perfect chiaroscuro.
“How did you know which room was mine?” he asked.
“Ah, you must forgive me—I saw your key,” said Haussmann, with a droll, unapologetic look. “At the front desk.”
Gale drew his tongue against the ridge of his teeth. “What do you want?”
“First, to apologize for John’s behavior.”
John’s behavior. Not Bucky’s. Gale’s cheek twitched. He’d been Bucky an hour ago.
“It’s not your apology I wanna hear.”
“Nevertheless, I am offering it.”
“Did he send you?”
“No,” Haussmann said. “I am no one’s messenger boy. Rather, I wanted to extend you another invitation, to make up for dinner—that we might start fresh.” He patted something he was carrying under one arm—a rolled up towel, Gale realized. “I am going for a late night swim. The pool here is supposed to be magnificent. It would be a shame not to take advantage. Would you care to join me?”
Gale frowned. He didn’t understand. This was bizarre. He did not want Haussmann’s invitations, his platitudes, his friendship. He did not want to accept his overtures over a desk or a threshold. He would not walk into his spider’s parlor. He wanted him gone. Gale was no longer held captive, stripped of his dignity and agency—he didn't have to play these games anymore.
He had to work his mouth open around his clenched jaw, but managed, “It’s been a long day. Gonna be an even longer one tomorrow. I’ll pass.”
“I understand. Well, if you change your mind,” Haussmann said, and walked down the hall and out of sight.
≡
“Gale Cleven. Major. O-399782.”
Haussmann laced thin delicate fingers over the file on his desk. A pile of newspapers and article clippings were stacked neatly by his elbow. Gale caught one headline from The New York Times:
Eighth Air Force Smashes Bremen
LOSES 30 FORTS
“Gale Cleven,” repeated Haussmann. “But your friends call you ‘Buck’, do they not?”
John had told that story to anyone who’d listen, man or woman, all across the States and into England. So you're Bucky and he's Buck? Of course the Germans knew.
“I hear your friend John Egan gave you that nickname,” he said. “Or should I say Bucky? A strange custom indeed, to name you after himself. Or—his childhood friend, was it? But I am not sure I buy that.” He smiled. “Do you? Which do you think is more likely?”
Gale had just spent two days in solitary confinement, fed on thin soup and dark bread, sleeping on a rickety cot. He wasn't in a talking mood, and it would be a mistake to answer Haussmann with anything he was not legally obligated to provide under the terms of the Geneva Convention.
So Gale did not answer. Not aloud.
You ask me, I don’t think Manitowoc Buck ever even existed.
“Ah, well. Perhaps it doesn’t matter,” said Haussmann. “I am getting ahead of myself. Excuse my manners. I would offer you a whiskey and a cigarette, but I know that you abstain from such vices. You are the first pilot I have met that does. Commendable restraint, Major.” He took out a glass bottle of Coca-Cola from beneath his desk, twisted the cap off, and slid it over—how and where he'd gotten it, Gale had no idea. “Now I will tell you what else I can give you. I can offer clean, comfortable accommodations, and medical attention for your wounds. I can even tell you things about your fellow pilots that you may not already know. But I must ask that you repay me in kind.”
Gale picked up the Coke. It was lukewarm. He took a sip. The flavor burst on his tongue like a small contained explosion. He savored it.
“Would you like to know how Bucky’s weekend in London went?” asked Haussmann.
Gale swallowed another biting mouthful of clear sugar and syrup-spice, and it turned to sludge in his throat. How Haussmann knew about John’s weekend leave, Gale couldn’t even begin to fathom. John must have done something loud and stupid and dangerous out there—something to bring him to German attention. Gale was gripped with sudden, paralyzing fear. No.
“I don’t mind telling you, Buck,” Haussmann said. “As his friend, you deserve to know. He died in one of our air raids. They found him in bed with another man. Probably for the best he didn’t make it, hm?”