The Joy of Battle chapter 30

Chapter 30: Animals

To every person he met inside the hospital, Fear was Lucia's rather vulture-like cousin.  With his long coat, greasy hair, and pointed nose, he could have stood in for Julius Streicher's stereotypical Jew.  He spoke Spanish to Lucia, and the Americans, unable to distinguish the accent of southeastern Spain, assumed he was Mexican.
He pushed the locked door on the third floor.  "What's the code?"
"I don't know."
"Of course you do.  You work here, don't you?"
"Why are you here?" she asked with an accusatory glare.
"To visit someone."
"Couldn't you have gone to the front desk and asked?"
"She doesn't want to see me."
"Going to do to her what you did to the woman outside?"
"That's right.  And you too if you don't open this door."
Lucia, who looked like she was about to say something insulting, turned to the lock and chose the combination.  She held the door open and bowed for Fear to go first, but he pushed his hands against her round behind and shoved her in front.  She seemed slightly delighted for a moment but then glared at him sourly.  Fear would have laughed if he had not seen a thin man with a head of pale blond hair hurry out of one of the rooms.
"Which room is Dr. LaSalle's patient in?" Fear demanded.
"Oh God.  Don't hurt her!"
"I'm not going to.  Is it the room that man just left?  Don't look at him!  Is it?"
"Go check yourself," she spat.
Fear glanced down the hallway.  The man was pushing another door now.  Damn Astrus for sending the Sorrow!  Damn him straight to the deepest circle of hell!  Fear grabbed Lucia by the front of her blouse and threw her headfirst into the wall.  She slumped to the floor with a trickle of blood running between her eyes, but she was alive.
Fear shot down the hallway after Sorrow and prayed to Lucia's God that he wasn't too late.

The restroom was lit brightly by blue-tinted lamps on the ceiling.  Sorrow's target stood at the sink with her back to him, but he knew it was Sabine DeMille.  He stepped closer, and she bristled.  They could see each other in the gleaming mirror.  This was not a bathroom that was often used.  Sorrow reached back with his left hand and turned the lock that the cleaning crew used to keep out patients and visitors.
"The Sorrow," Sabine said, watching him in the glass through her tiny spectacles.  "The Soviets or my brother?  I'm assuming the Soviets because you have a gun."
Something heavy slammed against the door with a muffled shout.
"Better finish me.  Right in the back of the neck like a good comrade."  Sabine lifted her hair to show the nape of her neck.
The person outside pounded on the door, and Sorrow realized that the shout was his own name – his code name – over and over.
"Before you kill me, Sorrow, tell me how Astrus convinced you to come after me.  Did he tell you that I caught his French mole in Reims?  Or did he just have to say that your American whore was here in my care?"
"Suka!  Bitch!" Sorrow shouted, shooting one of the overhead lights.  It shattered, sending milky blue shards of glass into a rain around Sabine.
For the first time, he wanted to kill.
"You are the father, then," Sabine purred, regaining her composure.  Blood dripped onto her white coat from a cut on her cheek.  "I could never get her to tell me.  Your comrades certainly thought you were, but it's nice hearing it from you.  Tell me, Sorrow, is she nice to fuck?"
Sorrow squeezed the trigger but switched his aim to the mirror behind her.  She screamed again as it shattered into the sink.
Sabine breathed heavily and stared at Sorrow with a defiant smile.  "You don't really want to kill me, do you?  You almost killed her, you know.  If it weren't for the baby, she would have let the bullet hit her gut."  Sabine was almost delirious with rage as she screamed, "How does it feel to bring down the Philosophers' best operative?"
"Do not be so arrogant!"
"Not me, you idiot!  The Joy!  You've practically destroyed her, the woman I admired, lying in a hospital bed with your child in her womb!"
Sorrow spoke calmly and deliberately, "Sabine, I do not want to kill you, but Astrus gave me that mission to complete.  I killed a nurse in the parking lot, and I would do it again if necessary.  Now I'm going to shoot out that window.  I want you to jump.  I don't care if you break both legs.  If you don't jump, I will shoot you where you stand."
Sabine seemed docile, almost hypnotized.  She nodded somberly.  The change in her attitude was abrupt, and Sorrow suspected that she really was afraid to die.  With another bullet, he destroyed the window, which was made from brittle decorative glass.
As Sabine threw a leg over the glass-covered sill onto the ledge Sorrow had seen running below the windows on the third floor, she turned back for one more insult.  "I knew you wouldn't shoot me, coward.  You don't deserve her."
Almost involuntarily, Sorrow's finger, which he had left irresponsibly on the trigger, curled.  He heard the report, Sabine's tortured scream, but he had already fled for the door.  He burst into the hallway, prepared to kill whomever stood in his way, but it was empty except for the Fear who reacted to Sorrow's sudden appearance by raising his crossbow.
"What the hell did you do, Sorrow?"  Fear's voice shook, but his hand was steady, ready to kill.
"What I had to do."  Sorrow realized after he spoke that he was baiting the Fear, so he added, "I did not kill her.  I would know if she was dead."
Sorrow brought his pistol to his side, and Fear lowered his crossbow only slightly.
"Don't you find it strange," Fear said, "that with all that noise, no one has come up here to investigate, like they were warned that you would come?"
"I am sure it will not stay that way.  I must leave, and you too.  Take Sabine and leave."
"I'll bet the Joy is laughing somewhere because you didn't finish your mission."
"She is here."
"You mean you've been talking to her?"  Fear eased his grip on the crossbow.
"She is alive, in this hospital."
"Then why aren't we getting her out?"
"She wants to stay.  Please, take Sabine.  She may be injured.  I will meet you in London."
The combination door swung open with a chorus of shouts, but Sorrow scurried the other direction, through the short cut Anne had used to take quick breaks on nice days.  She may have been a vain woman, but the dusty breezes of Albuquerque comforted her.
Fear darted into the restroom, and although he had heard the noise muffled through the door, he was startled by the destruction Sorrow had caused.  Blue- and silver-coated glass covered the tile floor, accented by drops of fresh blood.  He heard someone groan and ran to the window.  The wall under the jagged shards was streaked with blood.
On the decorative ledge that ran around the outside of the third floor, Sabine lay in a once-white coat, her body arched in agony.  One of her bloody hands was clamped over a wound below her right knee.
"That filthy Communist FUCKER!" she screamed.  "He shot me!"
Fear climbed carefully onto the ledge through a frame of broken glass.  If anyone from the hospital saw him, they would immediately assume he was responsible for the mess in the restroom.
"Get on my back, Sabine," he said, gripping the wall below the ledge.  He had never scaled a wall with another person on his back, but at least they were going down instead of up.
"Thank you, Fritz," she sighed, and she slid her legs around his waist, wincing as her wounded leg brushed his wool coat.  She curled her arms around his shoulders rather than his neck – she had been carried before.
Their progress was slow, but this part of the building had blessedly few windows.  Fear felt Sabine's labored breath as she pressed her face into his collar.  Pain was right – she was nothing like the boss, but she made him feel a measure of masculine bravado.  He did not have to threaten her, and yet she gave him respect, not the respect between comrades that he got from the boss but the respect of a woman to her husband.  Still, he wondered if this Sabine was the true Sabine.  Her personalities changed abruptly, like costumes in a fool's play.  Which Sabine had Sorrow shot?
Fear dropped on all-fours to the ground, and Sabine rolled off of him.  Police cars swarmed the parking lot, but Sorrow was gone, probably in one of the Soviets' nondescript cars on his way back to the train station.  Fear hefted Sabine into his arms and fled to the safe house.

Sorrow's driver spoke only Croatian, so they spoke little aside from the few simple phrases the man had learned for getting around in America.  Already, Sorrow regretted showing so much emotion.  He understood what the Fury must feel – anger to the point of anguish and a desire to take revenge if only on the nearest inanimate object.  The sounds of his gunshots and the shattered glass tinkling against the tile floor had been somehow therapeutic.
Sabine had provoked him.  Did some part of her want him to kill her?  Or did she hate him so vehemently that she was willing to die for her hatred?  He had only met Sabine once before, but even then he had been hesitant to trust her.  It was as if every action she made was calculated to get the precise reaction she wanted.
Sorrow hoped that Fear could at least keep her out of sight until they all reached London.

"Good," Astrus said stolidly.  He leaned forward in his chair with his elbows resting on his knees and his hand folded under his chin.  It was a casual pose, but to Fury, he looked like a tiger prepared to pounce.
The pair met in Astrus's office at the country house, probably once a nursery – the walls were painted with a mural of anthropomorphized animals at a picnic.  Astrus had covered much of the image with colorful posters advertising appearances of "The Astounding Astrus" now long past, but most of the mural was still visible in greens, soft blues, buttery yellows, and the grays and browns of animal fur.  It was painted with the detail of the best children's picture books, meant to inspire the children of the baron who had once lived here.  A pair of cats shared a sandwich while a party of birds fought over the crumbs they had dropped.  Even the ants had their own picnic laid – only inches high – using a four-leaf clover as a blanket and an acorn hat as the merry-go-round for child ants.
The animals had human expressions made almost carnal by their wild features.  A gray fox watched a pair of red foxes in Victorian dresses with parasols from the bushes.  It was probably the artist's intention to make him look forlorn, but the grin that never quite disappears from a canine snout betrayed his hunter soul.  The Fear would have loved the mural – or perhaps hated it – for the surreal combination of beast and man in the expressions.  To Fury, it was ghastly.
Astrus sighed as if he were throwing a heavy load from his shoulders.  "Over two years with them in the war, and the Americans, with all their talk, have failed to open a true European front."
Fury nodded grimly.  "But they're more concerned with the Pacific."
Astrus dropped his hands to his knees and pushed himself up.
"That's a naval battle," he snapped.  "They have a large military.  And don't try to say anything about Italy.  The Italians practically won it themselves before the Yanks even noticed Mussolini was part of the Axis."
The old magician plucked a corner of his silver mustache.  He pulled a few bristly hairs away and flicked them onto the floor.  His jolly demeanor had faded in the months since Fury first met him in France, leaving instead a scornful, caustic humor that was not meant to inspire laughter.
"You sound like a man with a goddamn plan, Astrus," Fury muttered.  He loved the way English curse words rhymed so musically.
"Their problem," Astrus said, standing suddenly, "is that they feel so little urgency.  The war is in Europe.  The war is on the Pacific islands.  Women on the home front aren't taking up arms against the Nazis.  They're just baking with less sugar.  They don't know how it feels to be invaded."
"You're not bloody serious?"
"Have I told you how well you speak English?  You've really got the timbre of our colloquialisms - ."
"None of your shit, Astrus.  You brought me up here to tell me about it, so tell me."
"How much do you know about Mexico, Fury?"
"The Krauts tried that during the Great War and landed on their asses."
"Old Zimmerman only failed to convince them because it was obvious the Germans had no means to support Mexico in an invasion.  We do.  Thousands of Communists could take weapons onto passenger ships and join the Mexicans before the Americans and their British bulldogs had any idea.  They wouldn't sink an Allied vessel."
"Sounds like a great way to burn a hell of a lot of money."
Astrus smiled, not a comforting smile but the vicious grin of a guard dog.  "Very soon, money may be of no real concern for us."
A military-disciplined knuckle rapped on the door.  Astrus sat behind his desk and nodded to Fury who opened the door with a gentlemanly bow.  The American man who stepped stiffly into the room was hulking and dark-skinned with close-knit eyebrows that gave him a constant look of pain.  He snapped his eyes immediately toward Astrus and saluted like an American.
"Message for you from Washington, sir!"
"Yes, Briggs?" Astrus asked with a single eyebrow raised.
"Snake Charmer was seen at the Rose Garden last night dining with a strange man."
"Who sent the message?" Astrus asked, resting his chin against his thumbs.
"Mask, sir."  Fury knew this was a code name for a high-society woman who often sent messages about American politicians and the various ambassadors who lived in her nation's capital.
"Did she give a description of the man?"
"'Strange' was her word, sir.  She said he was tall, thin, dark, strikingly unattractive."
Fear, Fury thought with a hint of relief.  He did not let the feeling linger.
"Thank you."  Astrus dismissed the American with a nod and turned to Fury.  "It seems your friend Sorrow failed."
"He's not my friend…," Fury grumbled, but Astrus ignored him.
"Sabine is alive, as I suspected.  Blood and broken glass and discharged casings but no body.  I didn't want to tell you until I was certain, but now we know that Sorrow never completed the mission."
"What will you do to the… him?"  Fury's first instinct was to call Sorrow a "useless bastard", but he held back.
Astrus laughed.  "Nothing.  He'll be brought back here.  Sabine wasn't important anyway.  It was a test for the Sorrow."
"What the hell do you mean?"
Astrus stood and turned his back to Fury, stretching his muscular arms over his head.  "In the end, he did kill someone."
He studied one of his posters intently.
"Who?" Fury asked quietly.
The magician did not answer, did not even turn back to Fury.
"Who did he kill?"
"It wasn't part of his mission," Astrus said to the poster.
"Who the fuck did he kill?" Fury stood so fast that his chair tipped with a crash to the hardwood floor.
Astrus brushed a finger across the face of his younger self on the poster and then took his cloak and hat from the rack by the door.
"It was no one important.  Let's head to London," he said, tossing the cloak over his broad shoulders.

The Joy sat across from the brown-haired young man called "Pyro".  He wore the crisp, clean winter uniform of an NKVD officer, but his face was sunken like a prisoner's.  He glared across the table at her with dark mahogany eyes, and ran a hand through his sweat-streaked hair.
"Your name is Ilya Yezhov?" she asked in Russian.
The man answered in a growl, and Joy looked at her translator, a thin man with a long chin who looked a little like a wasp.
"He says that his name doesn't matter.  Everyone calls him 'Pyro' anyway, and so should you, stupid c – ."  The translator stopped and looked down at his feet.
"It's okay," Joy said.  "I understand."
"And I can fucking understand English!" the man shouted as he slammed his hands on the table and stood.
Joy noticed that the other officers in the room had moved toward Pyro as if to seize him but stopped.
"I'd rather speak English so that these pigs can't understand," he grunted.  "So what do you want from me, bitch?"
His wrists were crossed with red lines mostly hidden by the tight cuffs of his jacket – rope burns.  Joy stood and returned the man's glare.
"I want to get you the hell out of here," she said.

The charcoal remains of Joy's father's home stood black against the darkening sky.  A sign at the end of the wooded drive had marked the property as "sold" and Joy wondered vaguely who had been paid.  A crane stood like a sentinel over the grand house, ready to complete the demolition begun by arsonists.  Joy imagined that some young family had bought the property.  As their children grew up in the new house, their friends would call it a "murder house" and ask for tours as if they would find new clues.
Part of Joy's mind expected Astrus to step through the blackened front door and give some thin explanation for his presence, but no one appeared.  She was alone on the green hill in a new dress the color of budding leaves.  A cold late-April wind lashed her ponytail against her bare neck.  After she left the hospital, there was not time to have a uniform made to fit over her new body, so Joy had bought a loose dress.
She knew that she should be crying, but no tears fell.  Instead of sadness, Joy felt only a murky sensation that something had been lost, like searching your house for something only to forget what it was.  She wondered why she had come here at all.  Her father's grave would have been more appropriate, less painful.
Her Philosophers contacts in Kitty Hawk seemed trustworthy, an old couple whose large house had once been part of the Underground Railroad, but she wished the Fear were here to make certain.  Pain and Fury would stand with her on the hill and feel the anger she couldn't.  Then, as Sorrow took her hand, the End would muse on the transience of life, something of a eulogy.  Joy smiled, glad that she could imagine her unit again after months of struggling just to call their faces to mind.
With a solemn salute, she turned away from the ruined house.  She would see the Cobras again in less than a week.