Chapter 21: Secrets

The young man's golden eyes were shot with crimson like the sky at sunset as he watched the three camouflaged soldiers approach. The one in the back was tall and wore a hood over his face. The man in the middle stomped unceremoniously on twigs and dry leaves, making a racket that seemed to annoy the soldier in front. The lead soldier wore his blond hair to his shoulders, tied back at the nape of his neck. The two faces he could see were confident, almost cocky. They weren't scared. Oh, no, not scared yet. The young man in the tree aimed his crossbow at the front soldier's thigh. He could hit each man with a poison-tipped bolt, and they would live long enough to warn others not to enter the forest, his forest.

The lead soldier's eyes flicked toward the young man lying along a tree limb, and as the bolt flew, the soldier dove for cover behind a tree. The bolt hit the second soldier above his ankle, and a second bolt missed the third soldier as he reacted to their leader's dodge.

"Shit!" the wounded soldier shouted, falling to the forest floor. "Shit! Oh, God dammit!"

He tried to stand.

"If you move, the next one goes straight through your heart," the man who would become the Fear cackled.
"What do I do, Joy?" the Fury moaned.

"I'm thinking." The Fear was surprised to hear a woman's voice answer.

"You don't have much time, lady," he warned. "The poison I used on those arrows is potent. In only a minute, he will be screaming in agony. Would you like my advice?"

"Fuck your advice!" Fury roared. "Joy, just leave me here. I'll deal with this freak!"

Fury stood, and Fear aimed for his heart. A movement to the left caught his eye – Pain raising his pistol. He shot the Pain in the arm and leapt to another branch.

"Now, before your friends die, I suggest you take my advice," Fear called from his new hiding place. "All of you leave your packs, go back into town, and never come here again. Oh, and the lady stays here."

"You little… I'm going to – aargh!" Fury screamed, arching his back suddenly as pain tore through his body.

"Fine." Joy stepped into Fear's view. "Pain, you take Fury with you, and go back."

Seeing her standing between the trees as her comrades departed, Fear wondered how he had mistaken Joy for a man. She stared at him with eyes full of confidence, but she was now alone and unarmed. He lowered the crossbow.

"If you want our packs, you'll have to get them yourself," she called. "I can't climb up there like you."

"You'll have to learn if you're going to stay with me."

"I'm just as happy to go home." She turned.

Fear shot a bolt into the tree beside her. "You won't be leaving."

"Then I'll just sit here for a while."

"I'll kill you."

"Then I guess you'll be alone again."

She sat for an hour as the sun rose higher in the sky. A breeze lifted her hair every few minutes, and she smiled wanly at Fear. He circled her, leaping between the trees like a jungle cat. He would make this woman his, love her until he destroyed her. He licked his lips. They must be carrying food in those packs, and he had not eaten a true meal in weeks.

Fear dropped to the ground and approached the woman who simply smiled as she had for the past hour. He touched her arm and immediately felt her fist smash against his nose. Cartilage twisted, and blood splashed across his face. The woman grasped his shoulder and shoved him to the ground, then landed with her knee in his back and her hand tangled in his long, matted hair.

"Now I can give you some advice," she growled. "You can make up the time you lost for us by being our guide, or I can break your neck. I suggest the first option."

Revenge would be simple. Sorrow was like a child. He wouldn't even have to hurt him, just scare him enough to make him leave the unit. Perhaps spiders… or maybe he could be left in Italy somehow. Sorrow talked to dead people, right? So if he killed one of the Germans, told him something horrible before he died… Whatever happened, Sorrow would deserve it. He had warned him, hadn't he? And the other Cobras…

Fear grinned as he gazed across the German base. Why take revenge now, with such hot-blooded impatience? He would tell the Cobras when the moment was right.

"These are the heroes of the Reich!" an amplified voice cried over the din of the crowd.

A man with a camera paused on the Joy's face, and she shuddered. When the newsreels played, the world would see her, hailed as a Nazi hero in Berlin. The Philosophers had a plan, she reassured herself. Thomas was nothing compared to the true Philosophers, a simple assassin hired by Volgin. He had not given her the order to go to Italy, but he took credit for it to scare her father. Others knew she was here. Mark Astrus knew she was here.

Joy was appropriately reserved as Adolf Hitler himself saluted her. She glanced at the End on her left. He started to raise his hand to his face as if making the sign of the cross, but then he dropped his hand to his side. Sorrow shook on her right as an October wind howled through the crowded square. Skorzeny held his face sternly, but she could see a smile threatening to burst upon his lips.

When the ceremony was over, Joy walked back toward the hotel which was their new headquarters. Old Boy caught up with her.

"Frieda!" he panted. "You walk so fast."

"I have paperwork to do."

"This will only take a moment," he said, seizing her wrist.

"What do you want?" she sighed.

"To say good-bye. I have my own unit. Friedenthal was temporary." His eyes were so mild for once, almost sorrowful.

"You knew," she said. "You knew, and you didn't tell anyone."

"I-I was glad to serve with you, Lieutenant."

"Thank you, Lieutenant." She smiled.

He leaned close to her so that their lips almost touched, but at the last moment, he turned her face gently and kissed her cheek.

"Good luck, Frieda." He dropped her hand and departed.

Joy did not return to the hotel immediately. She had the impression that a man in a dark coat was following her. He had been merely a shade in the crowd at the ceremony, but while she and Old Boy were talking, she saw the man again, passing several yards away with his hat down. If she had to fight him, she did not want a crowd to see. She strolled into the darker parts of the city, where once-great buildings were rubble that spilled into the street.

Listening for footsteps, she paused for a moment and hoped she looked lost. There was no sound except for the distant crowd. The bombed portions of Berlin were as eerily silent as the desert.

"Good afternoon, Joy," said a voice in English. The man in the dark coat had appeared at her side silently as a lion. He twirled his silver mustache around one finger and laughed jovially.

"Astrus!"

He threw his arms around her waist and spun her like a child. His face darkened as the sky does before the rain.

"I have some terrible news."

"What?"

"Your father has been murdered in America."

She did not have to feign her reaction as the weight of his words crushed her smile. He had not merely died. He was murdered, targeted by men he had trusted.

"I fear all signs point to a German spy."

No! Joy shouted in her mind, but though Astrus knew Sorrow could speak to the dead, she felt suddenly that he should not know the extent of Sorrow's powers.

"We are investigating, of course," he said. "I urge you not to take revenge yourself. Let the Philosophers take care of this. Until then, I will need your help. We will meet at a designated time twice per week, and you will relay to me every scrap of information you have."

"Yes, sir."

"And my dear Joy, don't misunderstand, but I need to know everything about the men in your unit as well. Not Unit Friedenthal. The Cobra Unit. Find out who they spoke to on the way to Stuttgart. Tell me about their secrets and fears and especially how they use their abilities."

"This is important to the Philosophers?"

"More than you know. Imagine ten Cobra Units, a hundred, even a thousand. Each man's powers could be honed when he is still a child. Super soldiers, Joy."

She stared at him in disgust. "You're sounding like Joseph Goebbels."

"Not at all. I'm offended you would say that."

"I've had quite enough of Nazi philosophy. When will we leave Berlin?"

"In time, Joy. This is your mission. Will you complete it?"

"Of course, Major."

"We will find the men who killed your father."

Sorrow met her with a light kiss when she returned to their room at the hotel.

"Where were you?" he asked, taking her coat.

"Visiting a friend."

Sorrow knew that was as much of an answer as she would give.

Joy laid a hand on each of Sorrow's shoulders and silently thanked Old Boy for letting them live. Sorrow was alive and she was alive and some part of her hated Old Boy anyway for betraying his country, and she wanted to express all of this passionately, physically. She pulled Sorrow toward her as if their bodies could merge. If she were dead, she could live in his mind, but only in this corporeal existence could she feel this intoxicating intimacy. Astrus would hear nothing of what the Sorrow did tonight.

"A child," Joy said stolidly a month later as she sat between the End and the Sorrow on the same bed in the same hotel room.

Sorrow knew what happened to women who got pregnant in war. They died in childbirth. They died, and their unborn children died with them. Battlefield medicine was a cruel judge. Still, if she lived, if the child lived… he would be a father.

"Please… please excuse me," Joy gasped.

She stood briskly, freeing herself from Sorrow's grip, and left without a look at either Sorrow or the End. Taking her coat from a hook on the wall, Sorrow followed her into the corridor.

"Don't," the End said.

"Why not? She needs a coat."

"You mean, 'They need a coat,'" the End said, lifting an eyebrow.

"Yes…"

"I know you want to play the father, but this woman is not your wife. Do you really think, if it came down to that, you could protect her… or your child?"

Sorrow's face flushed.

"You can't - ," he stammered, turning his back on the man he admired. "You don't know what I can do!"
"Sorrow, I have been in love more times than you can count on your fingers. She is not a woman you can fall in love with. You will never have the happiness you want."

"You - ."

"The two of you pretended, and no matter how you are reacting, both of you knew what would happen."

The End paused until Sorrow nodded slowly, cautiously.

"You want to be afraid for her," the End continued. "But you and I know she is a woman who will choose her own death."

"You don't… have some sort of power?"

The End laughed, and his parrot, quiet until this moment, mimicked the sound.

"Not a psychic power! I only speak from the experiences of a long life, too long a life, perhaps. I have outlived children and grandchildren. Many have inherited the blood of the warrior from my line. I had a granddaughter who fought in the Sino-Japanese conflicts. She met a Chinese man, talked about marrying him, but when she saw him fall in battle, so her comrades said, she impaled herself on his bayonet, killing both her and her baby. It seems she did not want the child pulled from her dead body."

The End smiled pensively as the parrot repeated, "Her dead body," in the same mournful tone.

Sorrow sighed and laid Joy's coat on the bed. She could be anywhere in Berlin by now.

Joy tripped over a crack in the brick pavement but caught herself quickly.

A moment, she thought. I only need a moment, and then I'll be fine again.

A man in a black cape appeared in front of her so suddenly that they almost collided.

"My dear Joy!" Astrus cried. "Running through the city without a coat or anything."

"Why are you here?"

"No need to be so sour, my dear."

"Last week, Tuesday. You never showed."

"Things… have changed. It is utterly serendipitous that we have this chance to meet."

He threw his cape over her shoulders, but she stepped out of it.

"Our meeting means I didn't have to do the horrendously dangerous task of sending a messenger in to find you."

"Wonder how you would have done that."

"The sarcasm is unbefitting of an officer."

"Funny, Astrus. I don't remember ever being an officer. The Philosophers denied me that."

"And that is going to change, but first we need your help."

"I'm in no position to - ."

"Hang your position!" Astrus's kind eyes burned with such ferocity that even Joy could not say anything. "Do you think having our best special forces unit trapped in Germany is a comfortable position?"

"Trapped?"

Astrus sighed. "I do wish you didn't have to be involved in this, my dear, but with your father's death, we really have no choice."
"How are we trapped?"

"Persistent. You aren't trapped. Your unit is. It seems one of the other Philosophers has let it slip that there is an Allied unit hiding among the Germans. The Gestapo is closing in. We can get you out of the country, but only you."

"But I'll be on a new mission."

"Correct."

"Without my unit."

"Yes."

"I can't just leave them here to be killed." She turned back toward the hotel.

"There's a German spy. In the United States."

Joy stopped, but she did not face Astrus.

"He is involved in a secret U.S. weapons program that even the Philosophers – well, he is in a sensitive position, so we need our best operative to assassinate him."

"Me."

"Naturally, Joy. At exactly thirteen minutes after two tonight, you will need to meet me here."

"And my unit."

"We are working out how to get them out of the Occupied territory. Trust that they will be safe."

"But I will not."

"Whatever do you mean by that?"

"This mission," she said, turning to face Astrus again, "is likely to be one-way. That's why you chose me."

It's just as Thomas said, she thought.

"I get into… wherever. I assassinate the spy, and you have no plan for getting me out."

Astrus gazed at her from under his bushy silver eyebrows.

"We will get you out," he said finally.

At two o'clock, Joy leaned over the Sorrow, naked under the sheets. They had tried to make love that night, but he had felt so fragile beneath her. She wanted to kiss his closed eyes but could not risk waking him. His quiet snores rose and fell like they had the night before, like ocean waves lapping the sand. She took her small bag and closed the door silently behind her.

Historical Notes:

The participants in Operation Oak were honored after the mission in a ceremony in Berlin on October 13. This is when Skorzeny was promoted to Major (remember that I said that I had his rank wrong earlier in the story) and awarded the Knight's Cross. The real ceremony was indoors, but I set it outside. The inclusion of Operation Oak in this story in the first place started with a famous picture of this ceremony where a woman is standing with the troops. Then I realized that the timing fit, and I wrote this story around it.

One of the most famous Nazis, Joseph Goebbels was the Reich Minister of Propaganda for Nazi Germany.

The Second Sino-Japanese War (a war between China and Japan) took place from 1937 to 1945.