The Berchtesgaden Debriefing – Chapter 2

"You waiting for someone, mister?"

Crawford looked up from the Times' financial section he had folded and laid on the bar between his glass and the ashtray. The glass was more water now than either bourbon or ice (he had tried to make it last, so as not to have to drink more than was necessary); the ashtray was nearly filled. He had another half-smoked cigarette between his fingers. At first he had checked every ten minutes, and then every five, but the paths of his immediate future bore a bland resemblance to his present. This bar; this bartender.

No contact.

"Not particularly," he said.

The barman glanced him up and down, taking in the tailored suit and the Burberry he'd folded over the top of the next barstool with something approaching skepticism in his expression. "Haven't seen you around here much."

"I'm in town on business."

The man grunted, returning to his meticulous polishing of mugs and stemware. He was a hulking man, with skin the colour of French-roast coffee; Crawford suspected he served partly as security. Perhaps the place needed it on busy nights. Tonight in particular it was nearly deserted, except for Crawford himself and a trio of scruffy kids sporting studded leather and black/orange/piss yellow hair. They'd given him a cursory, contemptuous once-over when he'd walked in, and now ignored him entirely, lounging with pool cues in hand around the farthest of the three tables pushed up against the opposite wall. Every once in a while – as if a passing remark in their deliberations had served to remind them of a particularly noisome duty – one of them would take a shot, sending one coloured ball after another ricocheting into the corner pockets with tedious accuracy. The clatter punctuated the auditory background provided by a tinny radio behind the bar, tuned to a French oldies AM station with the volume down low. Incongruous music.

"You American?" the man said after a moment. Crawford looked up again.

"Not many people can tell," he said.

The barman only grinned, as if Crawford's words had been a particularly pleasing confirmation. "Ten years across the pond for me," he said. "Cincinnati – and not Indian Hills, either. You?"

Crawford took a sip from his glass, for the form. "New England. We moved around." It was close enough to the truth: he had been moved around. A house in Boston, a summer place in Martha's Vineyard, a boarding school in New Hampshire... Memory, well-trained, ventured no further back.

Ten years sounds about right.

"You look as though you're at a crossroads, young man."

The accent was heavy, East European. Crawford turned quickly. The woman who had nudged onto the stool diagonally across the bar from him was a conservative thirty years too old to be cohabiting a drinking establishment with the pool-table punks. She wore several layers of cardigans and shawls over a shapeless, sombrely patterned dress; Crawford saw that she was small-boned beneath, but the overall effect was of a bulky, poorly made-up bundle. Her hair was grey, and wound back into a slipping semblance of a bun. Make that forty years.

She was gazing at him with rheumy blue eyes, apparently expecting an answer.

Crawford exhaled softly. Just what he needed. "Every moment of every day is a crossroads, madam."

"Ah, but your life is on the verge of changing greatly. Peter!" The old woman gestured at the barman imperiously. Crawford made a half-irritated, half-disbelieving sound, but she raised her voice to override him. "I will show you, yes? I will show you."

She slammed the flat of her palm down on the bar between them. Crawford did not jump, but his breath caught when the age-spotted hand lifted and he saw what had been underneath: a tattered deck of playing cards, face downward, the design on the back unremarkable. Not tarot, at least. He averted his eyes quickly, irritation rising like a groundswell.

Just what he needed.

The barman set a tumbler in front of the old woman, ice clinking in what could have been vodka or gin or even water, although the latter was unlikely. She reached for it and gulped down two-thirds of the contents at a go, but her gaze stayed on Crawford.

"Cut the deck," she said.

"I'm sorry," said Crawford, straining for politeness. If he allowed himself the knowledge, he would see the position of each card; what each would be, rather, if he reached for it. And following upon that the old woman's words, and then the choice of yet other cards, one by one the swiftly diminishing combinations radiating like forked lightning into a protean infinity of multiplying universes... his talent stirred in the back of his mind, threatening to become a thought-obliterating roar. "I'm not fond of... predictions."

"Come, come, young man. You must be curious; all men are. Here, just pick one." Her hands moved deftly, shuffling the deck. Crawford wrenched his gaze away, but he could still hear the distinctive silkrain sound of well-worn cards rubbing against each other, and he had to grit his teeth against the urge to make a scene. He had a tight enough leash on his visions now, but it would mean a headache later on.

Surely there was some—

The bartender made a sound of fond exasperation. "Goddamn, Baba, you know the house rules. No hustling in here, all right? I let you, I gotta let everyone." Baba tossed down the dregs of her drink and nudged the tumbler forward with one wizened finger.

"Shut your mouth, young man," she said without rancour. "I'm not one of Ritter's fools."

"Yeah?" The man caught the glass from her, dumped the ice into the sink and reached for the dispenser nozzle. "Ritter's dead, Baba, I ain't worried about Ritter or his goon parade. It's your baby boy plying his trade as can bring down the tone of this joint."

"He pays his tab."

"He pays yours, Baba, and I swear to God that's what keeps the both of you welcome. One of Old Man Flores'," he added in Crawford's direction, as if that said it all. Crawford set his cigarette down.

"The baby boy?"

The bartender snorted. "His name," he said gnomically, "is Schuldich. So he says, anyway. Jesus, Baba, are you going to put it away or not?" Baba muttered something that sounded uncomplimentary, but made the card deck disappear within her shawls. She took a slow swig from her refilled glass: Crawford could see the last drink working in her like a tangible warmth.

"I'm not sure I understand," he said. That got him a sour look.

"Just our little local fixer-upper is all. You got a hankering, that is, he'll fix you up – street price per gram or hour. I hear there's a preferred customer discount. The regular pretty poison."

"A hustler," Crawford translated. The bartender grunted.

"Trouble with a fake ID," he said. "Don't know what those kinds see in him, but I've had guys going batshit insane in here, and that's with him sitting there not even doing anything. I swear to God if it weren't for Flores—"

"Shut up," Baba said too loudly, cutting him off. "Shut your goddamned mouth. You don't know a thing—" She went into a fit of coughing, doubling over her lap. The pool-table punks glanced over at the noise and back again, dismissive.

"Not on the floor, Baba," the bartender warned. "Or you're not getting another. Christ, will you look at this joint?" Crawford concentrated on folding his paper carefully.

"Does he come in here often? This Schuldich boy."

"You seem pretty interested, mister." Crawford shrugged, expressionless, and after a moment the bartender did too: a ponderous shifting of stance as if casting off a weight.

"Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I guess he does. If you—" he broke off. "Shit. Speak of the devil and he shows his horns."

Crawford followed his gaze. A boy – not much more than mid-teens – had just pushed through the door of the bar, and was making his way toward them with a smile on his face. He was slender, dressed simply in a black, long-sleeved shirt and black jeans; he looked nothing like what the bartender had implied. Red hair cascaded over his shoulders, glowing in the dimly electric light. A couple of the punks lifted their heads to watch him pass, their conversation dying with the clank and rumble of their game. The room was suddenly very quiet.

He was halfway across the floor before recognition hit Crawford, accompanied by an odd sensation in the pit of his stomach.

Danger.

He brought up his mental shields, wary, but no more precise vision came. Schuldich did not even glance his way as he slid onto a stool between him and Baba. The bartender tilted his head questioningly, but the boy shook his head.

"Not tonight, Pete. I'm just dropping by... Hello, darling," and he threw a careless arm about the old woman's shoulders, dropping a kiss on her cheek. She swatted at him irritably, muttering, but her watery eyes were dull and tender with the alcohol. Schuldich smiled at her and propped his elbows on the bar. One of the punks wandered up and asked the bartender for a refill, and the man turned away to draft another pitcher.

It was only then that Schuldich shifted, pinning him with eyes of a well-remembered feline green, and Crawford realized he'd been staring.

"You must be visiting," he said. "Like Amsterdam? Have you been down to the harbour yet?"

"Only once, a long time ago," Crawford answered without missing a beat. The exchange sounded natural: his talent had warned him before the code phrase actually fell from Schuldich's lips, time enough to hide surprise. But his mind was racing. It could not be coincidence. After all this time (memory rose of a sudden, insistent – warm unexpected lips)-

What was he doing here?

"Then you have to," Schuldich said. "The sunsets are beautiful. Lovely colours."

"You know each other?" asked the bartender.

"We've met," Crawford said. "Briefly."

"I'm afraid you've made a mistake," Schuldich said.

/Munich/ Crawford thought at him deliberately. /Fräulein Eikener's soirée three years ago. You tried to sit in my lap while I was standing./

Schuldich shrugged, not quite looking at him. "I could have forgotten," he added.

There was a brief silence. Crawford drew on his cigarette, trying to think. He was expecting a regular, but if he'd been ferreted out by Flores-

"Schuldich," he said eventually. Schuldich. Schuldig. A German word. Guilty... "First name or last name?"

Schuldich laughed. "Have you been talking about me, Baba?" But Baba was huddled over her drink, no longer responsive. Schuldich glanced up at the bartender, who held up three fingers and shook his head. "It's a name, Herr- Crawford, isn't it? First name or last name?" Before Crawford could answer he reached over and plucked a cigarette from Crawford's half empty pack. "Pass me a light?"

Crawford reached for his lighter automatically. Schuldich smiled a little wider around the filter, leant over the corner of the bar and touched the unlit end of the cigarette to Crawford's own. He inhaled and it caught, glowing cherry red for a moment before Schuldich leant back again and blew out the smoke.

"Thanks," he said. The bartender made a soft, disparaging sound between his teeth, but Crawford ignored him. Schuldich's hair had brushed against his cheek in passing, and the afterimage of the half-imagined contact tingled on his skin. He was suddenly certain there would not be another informant tonight.

Pretty poison indeed.

"Can we talk here?" he asked, for the form. Schuldich gave him a look that struck him as indulgent.

"Sure," he said. "Sure, if you want to, Herr Crawford. Or we could—" he made a vague gesture- "take a walk."

Crawford could sense the bartender's attentiveness beneath his apparent disinterest. He did not rise to the challenge. Let the man assume: Crawford would not lose such a find again. His heartbeat quickened with an unaccustomed anticipation.

"A walk, then," he said.

Schuldich smiled.

Baba never looked up as they left.


Smoke rises languidly from the smoldering butts in the ashtray. The man flips through the stapled document, moistening the tip of his finger at every third page. Forward, forward, back. "The subject," he says finally. "Did the two of you engage in sexual relations?"

His voice is dispassionate. Crawford closes his eyes for the check, reflexive by now. The man floats behind his eyelids in a full-color stereogrammatic approximation of reality, hijacked from the room by a helpfully photographic visual memory. He has stopped shuffling through the report, and is watching Crawford with a certain bored professional alertness. Crawford reopens his eyes.

The man is flipping through the stapled document. Smoke rises, languid, from the ashtray beside him.

The woman leaning against the file cabinets in the corner turns her head, glancing from one of them to the other. Crawford betrays no reaction. They would have shielded the house, but that would only amplify the psi energy inside. Perhaps that was the intended effect. The woman's sober pantsuit bespeaks an Institut empath, a progressive-model, dark-eyed lie detector.

He cannot stop the visions yet.

The Institut scientists considered them useless: hallucinations his mind induces upon itself as sensorial packaging for the extrasensory information it is unequipped to process. They weigh dead on his reaction time. Much more efficient if he can accept the knowledge for what it is, so Crawford trains toward their elimination. He knows one day the future will only have to whisper, mystery-less in the intimate space between action and reaction, and he will understand.

And surely he is strong enough for the inevitable madness, if even Schuldich could—

"The subject," the man says, looking up. "Did the two of you engage in sexual relations?"


"The light switch is beside you," Schuldich said, not turning. "You want a drink?"

Crawford's questing fingers met string. He pulled, hearing the click somewhere over his head, and with a warning flicker a fluorescent tube mounted on the wall sprang to life, filling the room with its subdued electric hum. In the abrupt illumination the red of Schuldich's hair showed cruelly over-bright. "No," he said.

"Good. 'Cause I haven't got anything." Schuldich shrugged, rotating the movement into a lazy stretch. Crawford glanced away. Schuldich had a sofa bed, the cheap type that was mostly a folding foam mattress, and no other furniture he could see. A pair of wicker chests gathered shadows in the corner. The walls were bare, painted in a periwinkle-blue dulled by dirt and beige splotches of wallpaper glue. Rust streaked the space under the boarded-up window. He took a step forward and felt something crunch under his shoe. There was water damage all along the ceiling molding, darkening with mildew where the plaster had bubbled up behind. An old poster decorated the opposite wall; Robert Plant gazed out at him with greasy-ink flyer eyes, the turn of his mouth gnomic. What was "Stairway to Heaven" in German?

"Literally?" Schuldich said. He smiled over his shoulder as Crawford centered himself and strengthened his shields. "There's all kinds of heaven, Herr Crawford. You think this is a dive, don't you?"

Crawford was silent a moment. "Why did you bring me here?"

"'Cause it's quiet." Schuldich sat on the edge of the mattress, too-long teenager legs stretched haphazardly before him. "This building's marked for demolition. Water in the foundations – could go any minute. Even squatters leave it alone. There's nobody in any of the apartments except us." He grinned, a flash of pearly white teeth. "All by our lonesome."

"You have electricity."

"I run it in from the main line. I know how."

"I would've thought you'd know better."

He was standing over the boy, overshadowing him without quite knowing how he'd gotten there. Schuldich tilted his head up and gave him a slow smirk. Very deliberately he let himself fall back onto the mattress.

"Maybe I do," he said. "Maybe, you know, hell is other people for me. Maybe I like my beauty sleep, or maybe I'm so loud at night I get my ass evicted all the time. How would you know?" He arched his back a little to emphasize the question.

Crawford could see the taut hardness of his nipples under the thin fabric of his shirt. He knelt, straddling Schuldich's hips, and braced his hands beside his shoulders so he could look into his face.

"I want to know who sent you," he said. "Where's Mara?"

"I don't know what you mean."

"You do. And I think you'd be best advised to tell me."

Schuldich looked at him, his lashes lowered. "You talk too much," he said. His red hair was a halo against the mattress's fabric cover, filling Crawford's peripheral vision.

Perhaps it was the unaccustomed effort of the mental shielding, but he had one of those rare moments when the knowledge simply came. No visions, no packaging. He held back the unbidden smile and bent his head, bringing his lips to within an inch of Schuldich's. The boy was quiet at this, watchful; Crawford could feel his respiration stir evenly against his skin. He thought if he listened hard enough, he could hear Schuldich's heartbeat.

"Do I?" he whispered, the words melding into the moist warmth of Schuldich's breath. "I don't believe I've ever been told that." And before Schuldich could answer, he lowered his head a little further and completed the incipient caress.

Schuldich's green eyes slid closed; the subtle watchfulness in his body lasted only a moment longer before it, too, was let go. His lips parted under Crawford's in perfectly timed willingness, with a shy flicker of tongue against the invasion. The calculated artlessness of it all sparked amusement and sent heat shivering down Crawford's spine. He deepened the kiss aggressively; one of his hands slid upward and down, trailing across Schuldich's collarbone and throat before catching at the button at his collar.

There was, for those mindful of detail, a satisfaction to be derived from navigating small intricacies sans flaw or hesitation: unhooking a brassiere without looking, or undoing a shirt one-handed. Crawford was nothing if not a meticulous man.

Schuldich murmured something indistinguishable as Crawford's hands travelled over his skin, the tone of his voice lazy and warm. He shifted under Crawford accomodatingly, winding an arm about the other man's neck to draw him down. Crawford's hips pressed against the denim-clad warmth of Schuldich's inner thigh, and he almost closed his eyes. Skillful. Too skillful, and the balance was becoming increasingly difficult to strike.

Permission, he told himself, thought of nothing but desire, and let his wards fall.

Schuldich inhaled sharply.

Crawford cut off the incipient moan with another lip-bruising kiss, tasting the unspoken satisfaction – my game now and you want me, came the thought – his hand trailing down Schuldich's belly to dip beneath the waist of his low-slung jeans. Two top buttons, neither particularly recalcitrant, a question of a zipper. Schuldich shivered, bucking against his touch. Crawford stroked his erection roughly under the denim, broke the kiss at Schuldich's gasp to nip hard at his throat. My game. He thought he wanted to see Schuldich plead. But the familiar feel of certainty had taken the place of instinct, the next vision flaring behind his eyes—

—the smoke-and-alcohol flavor of the boy a mere foretaste of danger—

He caught Schuldich's wrist before the barrel of the gun quite touched his temple, in a trained grip that numbed nerves.

For a moment they stared into each other's eyes. Crawford sensed the impending struggle and reacted, pinning Schuldich's other arm to the mattress with all his weight behind it. It should have been painful. Schuldich evinced no sign. He was flushed and breathing hard, a tiny smile fixed on his lips; the gaze he turned up toward the older man was not quite focussed.

"All right," Crawford said softly, "I'll try again. Who sent you? Because if it was Flores, you must have impressed him."

Schuldich laughed. The sound was drunken, and oddly mirthless.

"Fuck you," he said, slurring slightly.

"Thank you, but no." He watched Schuldich's eyes; the colour of them had deepened, he noted. The pupils were dilated as well. He hadn't drunk back at the bar. Some sort of coated pill... he'd wanted to be clear-minded for the pick-up. Crawford wondered briefly if Schuldich had caught the flash of precognition in his mind, and if so, whether he'd understood what it was. "You know a man named Hans Ritter, Schuldich?"

"He's dead."

"So I hear. I hear he had a pretty extensive business too, here in Amsterdam, and by a puzzling coincidence most of the top people in it are dead too. People in Amsterdam, London, Sofia..." He tightened his fingers on Schuldich's wrist. "Tell me. Is Juan Saavedra Flores a smart man?"

Schuldich was silent.

"I think he must be. I think he must have known there were important, higher interests that would be perturbed by the disintegration of Ritter's organization. People who don't care which middleman they deal with per se, but who don't like it when things don't go their way. People who take measures." He twisted his grip, trying to make Schuldich drop the gun, and met more resistance than should have been possible under chemical influence. "I think that if he's rocking the boat after so long, it's because someone out there convinced him he was safe. I'd very much like to know who that someone was. Do you understand what I'm saying, or is it all becoming a blur?"

Schuldich's eyes narrowed, and then he smiled. Crawford only had the barest sliver of warning before the psychic attack slammed into his shields. It was enough – there was no more finesse to that screaming red power than there had been the last time – but the raw strength of it made the room spin. He fought it back and heard Schuldich give a short scream of frustration. He was clutching Schuldich's wrist hard enough to bruise, but the boy would not give.

Beautiful, something in him whispered, beautiful—

"Our current—" he said, and had to pause for breath. "Our current circumstances are not beyond negotiation, Schuldich. I would double Flores' terms for your information—"

"I don't have any fucking information—"

"-but quality merchandise isn't my forte. Though I suppose any central nervous system depressant would take the edge off." Drink would, if he drank enough. Seconal, or heroin... "Does the noise keeps you awake otherwise? You can't block it out, can you?"

Schuldich made a sound that was half hiss and half snarl. Crawford felt the sudden desperate tension in his arm and threw his weight against it, swinging the gun's muzzle up just as it went off with a deafening bang. The recoil jolted it out of Schuldich's hand; there was a crash, and the room was plunged into sudden darkness.

Schuldich was fighting him, rolling and kicking out. Crawford tangled his legs in his own, using gravity again to his advantage. Before Schuldich could try for another swing he twisted his arms around and behind his back. A judicious wrench, and Schuldich let his head fall back against the mattress, panting hard.

Electricity arced fitfully in the broken fluorescent tube somewhere behind Crawford's back, casting blue shadows. He thought he heard glass tinkling still – the ringing in his ears? He bent until his lips were hovering by Schuldich's ear, and he could sense the warmth emanating from the boy's skin. He smelled of cinnamon and almonds, and some buried part of Crawford's mind whispered that the scent had not changed from years before.

"Would you like to learn how?" he murmured.

Schuldich went still.

A flash of forward vision assured Crawford the immediate danger was past. He gave it a second or two more, then relaxed his grip, sitting up and retrieving Schuldich's Saturday night special in the same motion. It was a small-gauge Sig-Sauer, surprisingly well-balanced in the hand. He wondered how well the boy could shoot when not at point blank range. But then, so many skills necessitated only training and discipline. From the Organization's point of view, it was the talent requirements that made difficulties...

A small sound made him turn as he was smoothing his shirt and jacket. Schuldich had rolled over and was sprawled bonelessly supine on the mattress, watching him.

"There's a cleanup team outside," he said finally. Crawford raised an eyebrow.

"How many?"

Schuldich's gaze went distant, and remained there. "Three." Crawford nodded, dropping the clip out of the Sig-Sauer briefly to check the number of remaining rounds. He could see the first one in his mind, a target unaware as he would step around the corner, raise his arm—

"It won't be a problem," he said.

Schuldich gave the same odd little laugh. Crawford felt his gaze on his back, but paid it no attention. The Sig-Sauer went in the shoulder holster and his own Walther P5 stayed out. He reached for the door handle.

"You're SS, aren't you." The words made him pause and turn, but Schuldich didn't seem inclined to follow up with further accusations. He had propped himself up into a sitting position, the dark shirt pooled at his elbows. He was staring at the broken lighting fixture as if calculating how much it would cost to have it replaced. Crawford felt a smile catch at the corners of his lips.

"Does it matter?"

Schuldich turned his head slowly, and Crawford went still. There was drugged heat in Schuldich's leaf-shadowed eyes, and something beneath that as well; something feral. Crawford thought of starved wild creatures, and of food left in obvious traps.

"No," said Schuldich. "No, it doesn't."