Black Scorpion (36 page)

The receiver remained quiet still, as it would for two more days until I finally received my response, although not the one I was expecting. I was ordered to stand down immediately, cease all actions, and return home. Operation Sledgehammer had been summarily shut down. I'd learn later that some oversight committee in Washington had caught wind of the operation's existence, necessitating its shuttering for political reasons. I didn't care one bit about politics; all I cared about was Hans Wolff, the primary target that had brought me to Romania. A psychopath and sadist I couldn't simply turn my back to, no matter what my orders were.

What, though, was I to do? I was no gunman or killer, much less the kind of trained assassin who'd used my intelligence to dispatch a host of Nazi targets during my single year in Romania. I never met a single one of those assassins; there was no reason for me to. But now I needed to become one, lest Hans Wolff be allowed to escape justice yet again.

I knew I was violating my orders, knew that if I managed to succeed in the mission I'd assigned myself, I could never return to my life in military intelligence. A price I was more than willing to pay if it meant giving Wolff what he had coming to him.

He and his trio of Romanian thugs had come to the
crisma
for “entertainment” for three consecutive nights already. I decided I would strike on the fourth. Wolff and his men drank and drank that night, while I lingered over my dinner far longer than I needed to, my back to them so I'd draw no notice. I had interest only in Wolff, not his thugs. I'd already arranged for Stefania to tell me in which room I could find him once the group went upstairs with women in tow. I'd taped my Beretta pistol under the table earlier in the day so as not to arouse any suspicion from Wolff and his thugs if they spotted me toting a weapon.

Twenty minutes after the men disappeared upstairs, Stefania passed me a note indicating Wolff had retired to a room on the third floor, immediately below mine, and asked her to bring a bottle of whiskey up to him. I was concerned about her safety, wanting her nowhere near such a monster. But she assuaged my fears and told she'd be right back, and I could take that for the signal to move on Wolff while he was busy with drink as well as a woman.

Stefania …

She had brought beauty and light into the dark nature of my mission, the ugliness of a cause that marks men for execution, no matter how much they deserve it. In the wake of what I was about to do, this would have to be my last night in Romania and my thoughts turned to how I might spirit her away with me, then settled on the fact it was too risky for both of us. Better I go alone and come back for her, or send for her, someday.

I believe she's the reason I'm penning these words today. Not for duty, obligation, or testament, but to remind myself of her so I might feel her close to me again, since we never saw each other again after that night. I think of her every day and dream of her every night, wonder how my life might have turned out if I'd chosen to stay with her in Romania, or to have somehow brought her with me.

My concern became palpable when Stefania still hadn't returned ten minutes after climbing the stairs toting a bottle of whiskey and a single glass on a tray. I reached under my table and pulled the Beretta free. Then I headed upstairs, padding my way toward the third-floor room where Wolff had taken his woman. I hesitated outside the door, composing myself with several deep breaths while trying to still my gun hand that was trembling so badly I could barely maintain my grasp of the Beretta.

Hesitation was one thing, doubt something else again. And before that doubt, and second thoughts, entered into the picture, I felt myself bursting through the door, a shoulder following a kick, before I changed my mind.

“Drop the weapon,” Wolff ordered me from the bed, where he was seated with a knife pressed against Stefania's throat.

I had no choice but to comply, and as soon as my gun clamored to the floor Wolff slammed Stefania's head against a nearby wall and let her drop to the floor like a sack of garbage.

Two of his thugs were on me immediately and I realized I'd walked straight into their trap. They tossed my pistol aside and I felt their punches hammer my face and gut. Wolff should've simply killed me, but one of his thugs tied me weakly to a chair instead. Wolff hovered over me, and I watched him slide a black SS death's head ring with the initials “HW” from his pocket and slip it on his finger, as if to remind me of his legacy and the source of his power. I noticed the scar near his chin looked shiny in contrast to the rest of his face, almost seemed to glisten in the room's thin light.

“You think I don't know when someone's hunting me? I've been hunting men all my life.”

I remained silent and noticed the third of his thugs had taken up post at the door, as if guarding it.

“You think I was born yesterday?” Wolff said over me. “You think I've managed to remain free all these years by not sniffing the air for the scent of scum like you?”

“Go fuck yourself.”

“While you fuck that pretty girl over there who cleans up all the shit in this place?”

I felt my eyes widen, looking toward Stefania still slumped in the corner.

“Who sent you here?”

“No one. I came on my own.”

Wolff leaned in close enough for me to smell the dry foul odor of his breath. “I ask you again, who are you working for?”

“No one.”

“Who else knows I'm in Romania?”

“No one.”

Wolff spit in my face. “You're no Jew. I know a Jew when I see one, when I smell one. Whatever mission you're on, whoever sent you after me, it all ends tonight.”

With that, Wolff signaled to one of his thugs who pulled a can of gasoline from the corner and brought it over. I watched him screw off the top.

“You will drink this,” he said.

“No.”

“You will drink this and I will set your insides on fire so you die slow and horrible,” Wolff added, flicking to life a lighter embossed with a skull and crossbones.

“No,” I repeated, indignant to the last.

“Then I will carve a hole in your throat and pour the gas down it,” he said.

“Fuck you.”

“You want to play tough? Fine.” He started toward me. “If you don't swallow the gasoline,” he resumed, eyeing Stefania with a grinning sneer, “I'll tape your eyelids to your forehead and make you watch me cut your woman apart one piece at a time.”

“All right,” I relented, “I'll drink it.”

His thug holding the gasoline can came forward, stopped by Wolff.

“Let me,” he said, handing the man his lighter and taking the can in its place.

A second thug held my head back and pushed open my mouth. Wolff tilted the can's opening and gasoline splashed across the floor and walls, its rich scent instantly taking control of the room's air. He started pouring and I took as much of the gasoline into my mouth as I could without gagging. But I didn't swallow it, no.

Instead, I spewed it straight into Wolff's thug who'd just flicked his lighter to life.

His face caught with a
pooooffffff
, flames devouring all of his features, filling the air with the scent of burning skin, hair, and fabric.

At that point, everything became a blur that has yet to sharpen to this day. I remember bounding up out of my chair, tearing free from the knots Wolff's thug had hastily tied. I remember Wolff desperately trying to put out a patch of flames that had splashed with the gasoline to a jacket he struggled to shed. I remember his Romanian thug by the door coming at me with pistol ready to fire, when I rapidly jerked it around and added my own finger over his. Pulling again and again and feeling the thud of each bullet's impact into him.

I tried to wrench the pistol from his grasp, but it had clenched tight reflexively in death, so I gave up and spun toward Wolff instead. His charred shirt was still smoking, as he worked to free his own pistol. I slammed into him and we whirled about the room, struggling for control of the weapon.

I managed to fight Wolff to a draw but his final surviving Romanian thug had recovered enough of his bearings to shoot at me, too. He fired twice, resulting in deafening percussions that turned my hearing hollow. A series of shots I recognized as coming from my own Beretta followed and I glimpsed the thug crumpling to the floor to reveal Stefania kneeling behind him, having recovered my lost pistol and emptying its magazine into him.

I coughed, felt hot, acrid smoke burn my throat, and realized the room had caught fire. All three of Wolff's thugs were dead, but our struggle had slammed us against the closed door, blocking the escape route for Stefania.

The flames were spreading fast by then, the old
crisma
little more than a tinderbox of dried wood and the cheapest furnishings, fueling the spread farther until the fire was climbing the walls and spreading across the ceiling. Wolff and I continued to struggle, exchanging blows. He tried to tear his pistol free again, but I managed to latch a hand onto his wrist as we pirouetted across the room. I saw the window coming up too fast to avoid it, felt the intense heat bred by the fire replaced by the chill night air as we crashed through the glass, still struggling against each other.

A first-floor awning slowed our fall enough to save us from breaking our necks on impact with the ground. Wolff's pistol was lost somewhere and both our gazes sought it out while we continued to exchange blows, rolling around the ground and then the pavement.

Finally I ended up on top, even as those pouring from the burning building in panic rushed by us like we weren't even there. Each time I managed a glance, more of the building was consumed. I felt my fists pounding Wolff's face, the knuckles spitting blood as his skin split and teeth flew past me through the air. I knew I was killing him and wouldn't stop until the deed was done.

But then I heard Stefania's screams coming from the third floor room where she must still be trapped. I stopped my pounding of Wolff to reveal his battered face and mashed nose, his blood coughed against me. But he still had plenty of life left, and taking the moments needed to finish him would mean Stefania would die a horrible death.

Before I knew it, before I could claim the thought, I had lurched off him and was charging past those still emerging from the building, coughing and retching, some with blankets covering their heads. I rushed up the stairs, the flames growing bigger, stronger, and hotter the more I climbed. I finally reached the third-floor room and kicked in the door warped by the flames and heat. Stefania collapsed into my arms. I scooped her up and carried her back toward the stairs.

She looked more beautiful to me than she ever had before. My love for her had made the last year tolerable, our nights of joyful pleasure together filling me with purpose and her beauty helping to negate the ugliness of my work.

I rushed down the stairs, shielding her as best I could from the spreading flames, feeling their heat as I staggered through them. I rushed toward the feeling of air, nearly overcome by the smoke. I felt my legs weakening at the bottom of the stairs, going soft, then stumbled outside with Stefania still in my grasp as a flashbulb went off, someone from the press snapping a picture.

Some bystanders who'd just reached the scene were there to catch me when I fell. They laid Stefania down and one pressed an ear against her chest, nodding to the man next to him that she was still alive. I collapsed next to her, feeling my breath return and the hot tingly sensation of the skin that had singed beneath my clothes. But then I remembered the other women of the
crisma,
saw none of them anywhere around, which could only mean they were still trapped inside somehow.

The fire department had just arrived and one of the men in uniform tried to grab hold of me to prevent me from rushing back into the flames. I shook him free, gasping too much myself to argue and charged back up the stairs to the second floor. Sure enough, Wolff's thugs had smashed the door latches of the three rooms on this hall, trapping the women inside them from where I could hear their desperate cries for help.

I kicked those doors in just as I'd kicked in the one on the third floor to rescue Stefania. Two of the women had been incapacitated by smoke and a third was barely mobile. But I managed to get them into the hall and carried the two in the worst condition down the stairs over either shoulder, holding my breath the whole time. Then I rushed back inside a third time and climbed the stairs through flame and smoke for the final woman.

I reached her just in time, tucked her face against my chest and surged down those stairs yet again. I was heaving for breath, feeling my parched throat burning when I laid her down near the others. Swallowing made my throat feel like sandpaper and I pictured it charred black inside.

I started to sink to my knees, before I found Stefania being tended to by a member of the fire brigade and stumbled over to her. I took her head and laid it in my lap. Her eyes opened and she wet her lips, managing a smile. I stroked her hair, hot to the touch of the fingers I could still feel. Some of the strands came away in patches, baked dead by the heat and fire.

“It's going to be okay,” I managed. “Everything's going to be okay.”