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Chapter Seven

The Big Friend

February 1944

Karolina felt guilty, careless, utterly incompetent, useless as an intelligence agent. What kind of operative let a foreign threat walk into their town without detection, stab their fellow operative, knock the officers of the company around, and then watched as the spy killed themselves before any information could be tortured out of them?

A useless operative, that's who. The only good thing that came from the fight was the black eye left on Speirs's face, almost identical to the one Karolina had worn. Ella, despite her stab wound and her hazy eyes, had cackled when he had walked into the light of the street lamp.

She had taken Ella to a shocked Roe, had stood over her bed and supervised as Roe stitched the girl's thigh together, and then had marched over to the foreign agent's corpse. One of the MP's had deposited the woman's body onto an empty cot towards the back of the room until Colonel Sink could make his way from Battalion HQ to give the dead woman a look-over for himself. Karolina couldn't afford to wait.

"Where's the knife?" she had said, and Nixon, who had been standing in the doorway scanning the night air for any other mysterious women, took the weapon from his coat pocket and handed it to Karolina.

Sure enough, on the hilt there was a tiny swastika, masked by grime. Karolina licked a thumb and rubbed off the dried blood. "Army issue," she said to Nixon, turning and walking back to the body. She grabbed the woman's jaw, forced it open, and peered into the mouth. "Flashlight?"

Nixon looked away from the woman's face but tossed over his pocket flashlight. Speirs stood behind Roe across the room, and Karolina caught his eye and motioned him over. He looked hesitant as he approached the corpse.

"I need you to hold open her jaw for me," she said, and he recoiled slightly. "Just for a moment. I need to make sure she was Abwehr before I alert London."

Karolina clicked the flashlight on and put it in her mouth, twisting the knife in her hand. She put the blade in the woman's mouth and tapped the back molars with its point, listening to the noise of the steel against teeth.

"What are you looking for?" Speirs asked.

"Cyanide tooth," Karolina replied.

Nixon gave her a strange look before peering down into the open mouth. "I've only heard of them, never seen anyone with one before."

"You wouldn't," she said, tapping the woman's last molar on the right. The blade clinked against the porcelain veneer and she took the flashlight out of her mouth and held it out towards Nixon. "Most people who have them eventually use them."

She angled the tip of the blade against the woman's gum and sliced downward, hitting the bone of the jaw. Nixon covered his mouth with his hand and forced down a dry-heave and Speirs stared up at the ceiling, his hand tight around the woman's jaw.

"They once gave us pills," she said, wedging the knifepoint under the molar. "L-pills, they were called, for us to take if we were caught." The side of the tooth popped out of its socket, and she grabbed it with her fingertips and gave it a twist. It came away clean, with the slightest bit of blood on the underside. She removed her hand from the woman's mouth and held the fake tooth up to the light.

"The Abwehr thought this would be better," she said, dropping the tooth into Nixon's palm. "It's hard to grab a pill when tied to a post."

He rolled the tooth around in his palm. "So, this woman was for certain an Abwehr agent?"

Karolina nodded. "The tooth proves it," she said, her tongue feeling the slick, scarred flesh inside her mouth. "I had one. OSS ripped it out."

"Show us," said Speirs. His eye was already turning green around the edges, and the lamplight made it look worse. Karolina sighed before hooking her index finger in the corner of her mouth and pulling her cheek away from her teeth.

"Wow," Nixon said, and Speirs leaned forward, his eyes zeroed in on the gap in her teeth. She smiled and unhooked her cheek. She could almost feel the pain again, the sensation of the cold pliers in her mouth, the tangy iron of the blood in her mouth.

Nixon handed the tooth back to Karolina. "Should we file some sort of report?"

"You have enough papers to deal with," she said, giving him a knowing look. He had the grace to be sheepish. "I will do it." She wiped the woman's saliva off of her hands and onto her pants before rising up and walking over to where Ella lay. The girl was under a deep wave of morphine but smiled when she saw the tooth in Karolina's hand. Ella stuck her hand in the air, palm up, and Karolina dropped the tooth onto it.

"A present," she said. "Your lucky day."

Ella brought the tooth towards her face and looked at it, entirely cross-eyed. "A tooth for a thigh," she said, and then giggled weakly before closing her eyes.

That night, alone in their billet, Karolina started as someone wiggled a thick blue file under the crack in her door. No punches necessary, said the note attached to the top, and she smiled as she kicked off her heels and got comfortable on her bed. It was time to discover just how much the Allied forces knew about her.

And now, Karolina watched Ella scratch at the bandage on her thigh that was rubbing against her OD pants. She reached down and grabbed the girl's wrist, giving her a chastising look before putting Ella's hand firmly on the butt of the rifle she was meant to be cradling.

They were on a night march, apparently an old favorite activity that the past leader Sobel had enjoyed, and though no one seemed to like it, the men were used to the exercise and did it every Wednesday night. What had taken Karolina by surprise was the way she had been asked to participate in the march.

She had been the first one to the officer's table at dinner that night, and she looked down at the dry Salisbury steak on her plate in disgust. The English could have made some gravy at least, or some mashed potatoes. She couldn't think about mashed potatoes for too long or she'd feel a pang in her stomach, hungry for something she couldn't have. Real mashed potatoes had butter and cream. She couldn't remember what butter tasted like.

A shadow fell over her plate, and she looked up to see Guarnere standing there, a serious look on his face. "Come eat with the guys and me," he said.

Karolina glanced over at the table of men, all of them cracking up over some joke, and looked back at Guarnere. He sighed.

"I mean it," he said. "The guys wanna know ya. We're all curious."

She sighed loudly and shoved herself up from the table. Bill grinned at her and picked up her tray of food and marched off towards the men, looking overjoyed. She steeled herself before she walked their way.

"They finally give you extras?" said Luz, but then he caught sight of Karolina trailing behind Bill. "Oh."

"The agent's sitting with us tonight, boys," Bill said, setting her tray down beside him. "No funny business, there's a lady present."

Karolina felt as if she were being played, knew she should turn around and just leave the mess hall, but for some reason she sat down. Ten pairs of eyes looked at her curiously, some still hostile, but most genuine, and she braced herself.

No one had really spoken to her since the night of the alleyway incident, but she had heard whispers, and Nixon was about to blow a gasket if one of the men asked him about the details of the fight one more time. It was natural that they would be curious. Maybe Guarnere was telling the truth. She picked up her fork and twirled it in her fingers.

"First time I ever ate with a German," said Luz, making a crack at the ice.

"Not the first time I've eaten with Americans," she said, trying out a small smile. The man chuckled and took a sip of his water. There was a charged silence for a few seconds, and then Toye leaned across the table. "You ever seen Hitler?" he said.

"Jesus fuckin' Christ, Joe," Guarnere said, slapping his hands down on the table. "What the fuck did we talk about, huh?"

Karolina found herself laughing quietly. Men were hopeless. "Yes," she said, surprising herself. The table froze. "I have. Only once."

"Seriously?" said Perconte.

She nodded, and suddenly she was there at the rally in Nuremberg, shouting along with the thousands of others, the strange feeling of transcending her own body pounding in her chest. "He's short," she said, taking a sip of her water, trying to regain her foothold in the present. "Well, shorter than most men."

"When?" said Randleman, and she grimaced.

"1936," she said. "I was sixteen. It was at a gathering in Nuremberg. There's a stadium there, it can almost fit a million people inside. We had to go every year, and Hitler would speak about German unity and the endlessness of the Reich."

Luz's mouth was gaping open, and Muck reached over with his spoon and pushed it shut.

"What's Germany like?" said Shifty from the far end of the table. Everyone turned to look at him, and he stared down at his hands. "My Pa fought in the Great War, he said it was beautiful."

She nodded. "It was beautiful," she said. "My city was very beautiful. Two rivers ran through it, and the lights would shine on the water. We had famous composers, too - Reinecke, Mendelsshon, though they're long gone."

"What city?" Martin asked.

"Hamburg," she said. "It's destroyed now. The RAF firebombed the entire city."

"What about your family?"

It was an innocent question, but she inhaled sharply. "I don't have..." she began, but then thought of Philippe, who was her family, but who wasn't, not anymore. "I had a brother, and I tried..." A boat on the river. Philippe, his military jacket unbuttoned, looking flustered. The flashlight on the shore. "I tried, but..." She stared into her peas, seeing nothing. "I don't have a family."

Everything had gone awkward, and she picked up her fork and tried to eat. This was why she didn't share. This was why she didn't make friends. They made her remember. They made her acknowledge the past.

"Eh, nevermind, huh?" Guarnere said, knocking her shoulder with his own. "I got five siblings and they're all a pain in the ass."

"I have seven," said Luz, raising his glass. "You can have some of mine."

That made her smile, and Luz smiled back.

After that, Bill had invited her on the night march. "It's not fun or nothing," he said. "But we shoot the shit. You should come."

And she had, and Ella had decided to tag along, despite the fact that her leg hadn't completely healed. She had chatted animatedly with Guarnere, who marched on the other side of Karolina, about the best Italian food and corrected his pronunciation of Italian words.

"Stop bothering it," Karolina said for the second time, slapping Ella's hand away from her leg. "It makes it worse."

"I got stabbed in the arm once," Ella said to Guarnere, seeming delighted by the memory. "It was infected and didn't heal until three months later." Guarnere nodded politely but shot Karolina a look of distress.

"Hey, Shütze," said Malarkey, turning around to look at her. "Nixon wants you up front."

She nodded to the redhead and slipped out of line, giving Bill a shrug as she left him behind to deal with Ella. Nixon spearheaded the march with Winters and Speirs, who had recently begun to spend more time with Easy in what Karolina saw as an obvious attempt to be transferred into the company. She slipped in beside Winters and tapped Nixon on the elbow.

"One day you'll have to show me how you can wear these goddamn boots and not make a sound," he said.

"What is going on?" she said.

"Well, Dick and I had a wonderful idea," said Nixon. "Since we're invading Europe and all, and going to be fighting the German army, and since we have our own German here..." He smiled sweetly at Karolina, who did not like where this conversation was going. "Why don't you teach us some German?"

She gave him a withering look. "You have Liebgott."

"What are you saying about me?" Liebgott demanded from the behind her.

"You speak German, yes?" she called over her shoulder. The men tittered as Liebgott puffed up.

"Not to you," he said venomously. She rolled her eyes as the men hooted in response.

"Ich spreche Deutsch," said a voice to her left, and she looked over to see a man she hadn't met. He looked eager to please. Karolina indulged him.

"Wie heißen Sie?"

"Webster," he said with a grin. "David Webster."

"Schön dich zu treffen," she said, and he preened, clearly delighted that she had chosen to speak to him. Johnny Martin rolled his eyes.

Nixon glanced between Webster and Karolina. "It sounds so wild," he said. "What was that last thing you said?"

""Schön dich zu treffen"?" she asked, and he nodded eagerly. "It means "nice to meet you"."

"Schön dich zu treffen," Speirs said. He looked over at her, his eyes narrowed in the moonlight. "Sounds like a threat."

Karolina huffed. "English sounds like a bunch of mush running together."

"Better than a barking dog," he said.

"Sitzpinkler," muttered Liebgott. Karolina turned her face away to hide her smile.

Ron did not like Shütze. He didn't like the way she talked to people, he didn't like her attitude, he didn't like the fact that she had almost bested him in a fight, and he didn't like the way she smirked as if she knew what he was thinking. She was slowly wearing down everyone's defenses, but not him. No, he didn't trust her at all.

"But you ran into the alleyway that night," said Nixon after he shared his suspicions with the man. "And you got punched in the face fighting for her."

Ron had shrugged. "There was a Nazi agent trying to murder an ex-Nazi agent," he said. "We couldn't let that happen at our base."

"Uh huh," said Nixon, giving the man a sidelong glance. "Sure."

"What does that mean?"

Nixon was never one to shy away from Ron's black moods. "You pried the woman's fingers off of Karolina's neck," he said. "That's a bit more dedicated."

"Doesn't mean I like her," he had said, and then he simmered. He sounded like a fourteen-year-old boy.

"Well, hell, we're not getting paid to like her," Nixon had said, lighting a cigarette. "Just go easy on her a little, alright? Karolina's a tough son of a bitch, that's for sure, but it's a miracle she's still alive."

"Why?" he had asked, and Nixon pretended to debate whether or not he should reveal the source of his information before he caved in.

"Look, she's wanted dead or alive by the Reich," Nixon said. "That girl defected, was caught, sent to a Nazi prison camp where she had to kill to escape, and somehow was smuggled into England without getting caught again." He took a puff from his cigarette. "Let her live a little." Nixon had walked away then, leaving him feeling slightly ashamed.

He had left her alone for an entire month, but he kept an eye on her. There was something familiar in the way that she carried herself - she had an air of 'Just try and fuck with me and see what happens' with a square of the shoulders that announced absolute authority and control. He envied that attitude and found himself unconsciously emulating her posture. He'd be embarrassed if it hadn't worked so well with the men he commanded in Dog.

He had watched her sit with Ella, looking both supremely annoyed but also hungry for company, though she tried to disguise it. She didn't like physical touch, always pushed the girl away, but after the fight in the alleyway, something had changed. Every now and then, Shütze would put a hand on the girl's shoulder, but would never leave it there for long.

And he had watched her with the men. Though most of them still wouldn't speak to her directly, there were a group of six men who always seemed to stand near her when the company did PT or field exercises, never quite interacting with her, but watching her closely. After a few weeks, Ron realized that those men had been the ones to take her up on her madcap grenade demonstartion on her second day in Aldbourne. They clearly admired her.

He had started taking notes on all of these things until he realized he genuinely cared about what Shütze did every day, and he was so mortified by this realization that he threw his notebook into the trash bins behind the mess hall.

He jogged down the dirt road that led into the fields outside Aldbourne, his breath cloudy in the early morning chill. Running was the only way for him to get rid of the stewing dislike of the German that settled in the pit of his stomach every day, gave him a moment to himself before he was forced to deal with the incompetence of his men. His eyes focused on the mist on the horizon, just thick enough to make him feel as if he was alone in the world, no war to worry about, no people to annoy the shit out of him. That is, until he turned the corner by a farmer's brick house and saw Shütze sitting on the wooden fence of a pasture, a fistful of grass in her hand. She was dressed in a white PT shirt, one she had stolen from the airborne, and black PT shorts, her cheeks red from exertion, clearly just finished with her own early morning run.

She clicked her tongue and stared into the mist, and Ron heard the clomping of hooves before he saw a big Clydesdale amble up from the depths of the pasture with its ears turned forward with interest.

Shütze held the handful of grass towards the horse, and the Clydesdale swished his tail before stepped up carefully and nibbling at the end of the grass. Shütze reached forward and patted his nose.

"Hallo, hübsche," she cooed to the animal, and somehow the words seemed softer. "Oh, du bist so süß, weißt du wie süß du bist?" She said the last phrase with a sing-song lilt, and Ron's chest grew tight.

She petted on the horse before the Clydesdale grew bored and ambled off, and she stayed perched on the fence for a moment longer, sighing deeply and staring into the sunrise. It was only when she turned around to descend did she spot him standing by the wall.

"Oh," she said, caught off-guard. "Good morning."

"I didn't know you liked horses," he said. What?

She gave him a perplexed look before she crossed her arms over her chest. "I run this way in the morning," she said. "I noticed him the other day. He is sweet."

Ron found himself nodding with nothing to say. "He looks big."

Shütze scoffed. "He is a big chicken." She jumped over the ditch that separated the pasture from the road and walked towards him, wiping a bead of sweat off her brow. "That's the saying, right?"

"Yeah, you're right." Ron felt like a big chicken. "Do you run out of town often?"

"Every morning," she said, looking bemused.

"And is the only thing you talk to that horse?" he said, trying to regain his bravado.

"You were following me?" she said, her temper returning. Half of her hair had fallen out of her ponytail. "Did you hit your head in that alleyway when Axis operative tried to kill me?" She gave him a hateful look before breaking into a jog and heading back towards town.

"I have better things to do than follow you around," he called after her, trying to catch up. She was fast, already had five feet of distance on him.

"Oh, yes, that's right," she said between breaths. "You need the time to write down secrets in that little notebook."

His eyes narrowed, and he finally pushed himself to run beside her. "You may have Nixon and Winters fooled, but not me."

"When are you going to realize," she said, her breath labored. "That everyone - the OSS, the Nazis, the Allies, the Axis powers - wants to kill me?" She turned and gave him a full glare, and he shrank back a little. "Even you all want me dead. Only the horses like me."

"Ella likes you," he said. "But she's an idiot."

Shütze looked at him for a moment as if he had spoken Chinese, and he watched her face change as she comprehended what he had just said. Ron had zeroed in on a freckle on her nose before she snapped him back to reality with a furious look, and before he could stop her, she reared back and pushed him into the ditch.

Ron landed on his ass in a few inches of dirty water from the previous night's rainfall, splashing mud onto his shirt and right into his boots. He lay there for a moment, stunned, before he realized that Shütze hadn't stopped jogging - in fact, she was halfway back to town. He rose up from the ditch and threw a piece of mud off of his boot in her direction, but it landed short.

"Are you serious?" he yelled at her. She didn't look back.