Читать книгу Seeking Valhalla - Eric G. Swedin - Страница 14

CHAPTER TEN

He smelled the smoke first. Coming around the chalet, he saw smoke trickling out of an open door. Looking inside, he saw broken glass on the floor and a merry fire licking along the floor and up the walls of a kitchen. The Germans must have thrown an oil lamp onto the floor before fleeing, intent on burning the home rather than let it fall to the Americans intact.

Carter ran around the house, tried another door and found it locked, pumped half a magazine of bullets into the door near the handle, spraying splinters, and kicked it open. He was in a parlor, with furniture made mostly of fine woods and not much padding. He could smell the smoke, but not see it in this room. He tried the first door. Bedroom. Not interested in that. The second door opened into a library. Sunlight streamed in from large windows, making the center of the room glow, but the bookcases on the walls remained in shadow.

It had been over two years since he had been around so many books and the scholar in him was intrigued. As he quickly walked around the room, the smell of smoke came to him at the same time that he noticed the open safe by the wall. The safe was half-full of papers and books, including some that had spilled onto the floor. Carter had obviously interrupted the occupant of the house in the process of grabbing his treasures.

Carter ran back into the parlor, threw his carbine out the front door, wincing at the disrespect that he was showing his weapon, went into the bedroom, ripped off the top blanket and rushed back into the library. The smoke was getting heavier now and he coughed as he scooped all of the contents of the safe onto the blanket. He folded the edges of the blanket over the top, wanting to tie it closed, but there was no time. He picked up the bundle into his arms and hurried over to the door to the parlor.

The fire had spread from the kitchen and was licking along the ceiling, tendrils of flame reaching out like a hungry monster. Holding his head low, Carter ran across the room and out the door that he had kicked in.

Waddling over to where the lawn reached the edge of the forest, he dropped his booty. He turned to find that the fire had engulfed the house, sending a plume of grey smoke high into the sky. It was frightening how fast a fire could move; he shivered, amazed at the reckless risk that he had taken. On just a whim.

Checking his carbine to see if he had damaged it with his neglect, he found only grass stains, though he suspected the sights were probably off now. Walking around the burning house, he found a water pump that emptied into a trough. The water looked clean enough and he drank deeply, placing his lips on the surface of the water, like the unwise soldiers in the biblical story of Gideon, washing the smoke out of his throat. He splashed water on his face and rubbed his hands in the water, watching the blood from the greenhorn soldier form streaked clouds.

The door to the longhouse was ajar, almost an invitation. Carter went inside, his carbine leading the way. Bunks lined the walls. From the amount of military gear in the room, it was obvious that soldiers had roomed here. Probably the unit that his soldiers had just wiped out at the temple. He counted the bunks. Twenty-four spaces, but three of them were obviously not being used, holding rolled up mattresses among stacks of gear. His troops had killed nineteen back at the temple, which meant that only two remained, plus whoever lived in the house. Thinking back, he realized that there had only been three other people in the escaping car besides the girl.

Carter walked past the two cast-iron stoves in the center of the room and opened the door on the far side of the room. This was an eating room, with two tables, benches, a stove, two sinks, an icebox, and cabinets. Everything was smartly taken care of, with no clutter or even a dirty dish in the sink. Another door led further along the building. Carter opened this and found a room bathed in light from two large windows.

A carved wooden statue dominated the room. It was obviously Odin, with a raven on each shoulder, and the grimace of a warrior. On a small table before Odin were two daggers with Nazi insignia on their handles, and wooden bowls with some water in one, a hardened crust of bread in a second, and a piece of dried meat in the third. Several stacks of bones, probably from small animals, completed the offerings. Benches with runes carved into them faced each other across the room. A Nazi SS battle flag was pinned to the wall above the door that led from the room.

A shrine. Even after finding the temple to Odin, Carter was surprised to find this.

The final door led out the other end of the longhouse. Carter exited and walked past a pair of outhouses back to the burning house. As he came around the corner, he found that the fire had reached the lawn and was creeping towards the pile of papers and books from the safe. He rushed over, laid down his carbine, gently this time, pulled the blanket out from under his loot, and used it to beat the fire down.

Picking up his carbine again, Carter walked around the house, seeing if any other forays had been made by the fire. He could just imagine the forest catching fire and becoming a raging monster that threatened his Rangers back at the temple. Fortunately, the lawn proved to be a decent firebreak.

When Carter rounded the house back to the side nearest the road that ran into the forest and back to the temple, he found a middle-aged woman watching him. She wore a simple dress with pale flowers on it and dark leather shoes that looked like they had been repaired many times.

“Who are you?” Carter asked in German.

“Frau Smuller. I am the housekeeper.”

“You lived in the house?”

“No, I live down the road with my husband. I only came here to work.”

“Who lived here?”

She looked at him with suspicion and he imagined the thoughts going through her mind. She shouldn’t pass information on to the enemy. The war was lost. “My son was killed at Anzio.”

That answer surprised him. “I’m sorry that he died. Too many people have died in this war. Do you have more sons?”

She shook her head and looked down at the ground, tears running down her cheeks. “He was my only one. He was married and I have a grandson. He is all that is left now.”

“The killing is coming to an end. The war is about over.”

She looked up and touched the cross at her neck. “Praise the Lord.”

“Yes, praise the Lord.”

She looked back at the fire. “I don’t have a job anymore.”

“I’m sorry about that. I didn’t start the fire.”

They watched the fire together for a while. Both stepped back when part of the roof collapsed, sending out a gout of flame and a geyser of sparks. The death of house reminded Carter of his purpose.

“Frau, I came here because I am chasing the people who I think lived in that house.”

“Only one man lived in that house,” she said. “The other men lived in the longhouse.”

“You cooked for them?”

“Only the Standartenführer.”

“Who was this Standartenführer?”

The question brought only slack cheeks and closed lips from her. Carter sighed, reined in the frustration that threatened to erupt, and explained all that he had found: Dachau, the virgins, the temple of Odin, and the kidnapping of the red-haired girl.

“I don’t believe you,” she said. “You are telling lies. Dachau was for criminals, not young girls. The Standartenführer was a good man, a good German. You are trying to defame his name.”

“Standartenführer who?”

She shook her head.

Carter grabbed her arm, pulled her face close to his, and hissed, “What is his name?”

“Hans von Krohn,” she squeaked.

“That’s better.” He asked more questions and learned that she had worked for von Krohn ever since he had divorced four years earlier. She seemed to genuinely know little about the colonel or what he did.

“Where do you think that he has gone?”

“I have no idea.”

Carter released her and she fled, dress flapping against her legs. Feeling a sense of helpless frustration, he checked his carbine, realized that the magazine was half-empty from shooting at the door, put in a fresh magazine, and walked around the burning house to see if the fire threatened to expand. The thatch roof of the long house seemed to be an open invitation to the sparks, but so far it hadn’t caught. Coming back around, he stopped at the pile of papers and books. The housekeeper had not returned, nor had she sent any friends.

He sat down and began to go through them, practicing his German reading skills.