“Ask one of the Germans. We have to get her to a hospital. Krankenhaus.”
The GI looked at him, bewildered.
“Krankenhaus,” Jake said again. “Just ask.”
The boy moved away unsteadily, a sleepwalker, and sank to his knees by the obelisk where the other GI lay. A few people had crept back into the square, looking left and right, wary of more fire.
“Don’t worry,” he said to Liz. “Just hold on. We’ll make it.”
But at that moment he knew, a shudder through his body, that they wouldn’t, that she was going to die. No ambulance was going to come, no doctor in a white coat to make everything better. There was only this. And he saw that she knew, wondered how you filled those last minutes-a roar in the head or was it utterly still, taking in the sky? In the time it took to snap a picture. Her eyes moved, frightened, and his moved with them, keeping her here, and then she opened her mouth as if she were about to speak, and he heard the gasp, not dramatic, quiet, a little intake of ragged air that stopped and didn’t come back, trapped somewhere. None of the noisy theater of birth, just an interrupted breath of air and you left your life.
Her eyes had stopped moving, the pupils fixed. He took his hand away from her neck and wiped it on his pants, smearing blood. The thick smell of it. He picked up the camera lying next to her, still dazed, every movement an effort. Everything gone in a second, one flash at a time, too fast even for a Zeiss lens.
Shaeffer groaned again and Jake wobbled over, still on his knees. More blood, a patch spreading across the left shoulder.
“Take it easy,” Jake said. “We’ll get you to a hospital.”
Shaeffer reached up with his good arm to grab Jake’s and squeeze it. “Not Russian,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Get me out of here.”
“It’s too far.”
But Shaeffer clenched his arm again. “Not Russian,” he said, almost violent. “I can’t.”
Jake looked toward the square, filling up now, people shuffling aimlessly, the moment after an accident. Russians everywhere; a Russian town.
“Can you move?” Jake said, reaching behind Shaeffer’s head. Shaeffer winced but lifted himself slowly, stopping halfway, like someone sitting up in bed. He was blinking, dizzy with shock. Jake reached under his shoulder and began pulling him up, straining under the weight. “The jeep’s over there. Can you stand?”
Shaeffer nodded, then fell forward, stalled. Jake glanced again toward the square. Anybody.
“Hey, St. Louis!” he shouted, waving the GI over, keeping Shaeffer propped up as he waited. “Here, give me a hand. Get him in the jeep.”
Together they managed to drag Shaeffer to his feet and lugged him forward, each step a mile, panting. Fresh blood seeped out of the wound. “Not Russian,” Shaeffer mumbled again, sounding delirious, then yelled in pain when his body hit the passenger seat, a final heave, and passed out, head drooping down on his chest.
“Is he going to make it?” the GI said.
“Yes. Help me with the girl.”
But when they got there and saw Liz lying in her pool of blood, the GI balked, staring at her. Impatient, Jake reached under and lifted her by himself, his knees shaking, and staggered back to the jeep, as if he were carrying somebody over the threshold, with her head dangling down. He laid the body in gently and went back for the gun. The GI was still standing there, pale, holding Liz’s camera in his hand.
“You got blood on you,” he said stupidly.
“Stay with your buddy. I’ll send somebody,” Jake said, taking the camera.
The GI looked at the soldier lying on the ground. “Jesus Christ Almighty,” he said, his voice breaking. “I don’t even know what happened.”
A new group of Russians had arrived, surrounding the Horch like MPs, examining the dead Russian. The running soldier who had started it all was gone, swallowed up in Potsdam. No other bodies, just Liz and the boy going home at the end of the week. When Jake got to the jeep, anxious now to leave, one of the Russians started toward him, gesturing at Shaeffer slumped in the front seat. There would be questions, a Soviet doctor-what he’d wanted to avoid. Jake got in and started the jeep. The soldier called out to him, presumably telling him to stop. No time now. The closest army hospital would be HQ in Lichterfelde, miles away.
The Russian stood in front of the jeep, holding up his hand. Jake raised the gun, aiming it. The Russian cowered and stepped aside. A kid no older than the GI, scared, who saw a madman covered in blood with a gun in his hand. The others looked up, then ducked away too.
The power of a gun, as heady as adrenaline. Nobody stopped you when you held a gun. They were still backing away toward the Horch as the jeep spun out of the square and headed toward the bridge.
