ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 14

Snow blanketed the nuked city and the icy sleet glowed with radioactivity. Sean sheltered in a dugout with attack survivors from the howling wind. No one spoke in the cold darkness, but someone was speaking a foreign language and he recognized the words as German.

Sean opened his eyes and sharp sunlight charred his retina. He sat up in bed and nearly swooned back into the pillow. This was no simple hangover.

Someone handed him a glass of water, then two tablets, which he hoped hoping they were painkillers.

"Thanks."

Petra sat on the edge of his bed. She wore the same clothing from last night.

"How are you feeling?"

"Like my brain is out of place."

In his youth he had been a brawler, but last night had once more taught him no one wins all their fights. Sean hoped that wouldn't need any more schooling on that subject.

"SS Tommy is famous for his knock-out punch."

"Now I know why."

"You were dreaming. A bad one."

I haven't had a good one for a long time." Sean had purchased Jung's DREAM INTEPRETATION to analyze these Armageddon reveries, but a quick scan of the material shed light on the source of these atomic destruction dreams, then again Jung had lived way before Hiroshima.

Her own sleep was plagued by the visitations of her beating, but she shared none of that horror with anyone, especially not a stranger. She stood up and went to the door.

"Are you leaving?"

"Just to get some food. I'm hungry, you must be too."

"I don't know for what."

I'll surprise you." Petra sensed his eyes on her and covered the distorted side of her face with her hand. "I will be back soon"

Ich bliebe hier." Sean said and added, "Thanks, Petra, for last night."

"Gar nichts. Kurt asked me to take care of you and we Germans are very good at following orders." She exited from the room and after the door shut, Sean rose to his feet, only to have the room spin like an LP at 78rpm. He held onto the bed, till the vertigo dissipated, then walked onto the terrace.

It was a lovely afternoon and the air was perfumed with the scent of cut grass, but something was not right, for the usual mumble of the cars on Mittelweg had been replaced by a padded marching of a ghost army. The street was filled by thousands of people, protesting the deployment of strategic nuclear missile on German soil. The Pershings were capable of reaching Berlin in seconds and Moscow within minutes. President Reagan was playing hardball with the USSR, betting the lives of millions of European to force Russia to abandon the Cold War.

The bells of St. Johannis tolled eleven times and Sean hoped his dreams were a harbinger of global destruction and then returned inside.

He returned off the TV and lay on the bed to smell the sheets.

There was no trace of Petra's scent. He had slept alone last night. s Nothing had changed between them, then again he had no reason or hope to think they ever would. He was only killing time here no matter how much he wanted his stay here to become something else.

Sean went into the bathroom and inspected his face in the mirror. By summer's end the thin scar would fade to a white line. He stripped for a shower. The doorbell rang. Thinking it was Petra, he went to the entrance with a towel wrapped around his waist. Sean opened the door and Kurt Oster entered the apartment, carrying a suit.

Ah, mein Freund. How was your night with Petra?"

"I was in a coma most of it. Petra played night nurse, that's all and nothing more. She's gone out to get food for breakfast." Sean tightened the knot holding up the towel and walked into the living room.

"Well, you never know where this might lead." Kurt clapped him on the shoulder, sending a shock up to Sean's head. He slouched into the wall. The German asked, "Still not 100%"

"More like 17%, which is better than last night." Sean straightened up with Kurt's help.

"You'll lived." The German inspected the scabbed cut on the American's forehead.

Yeah, I'm a lucky man," Sean commented caustically, for the big favors required a change in life. He sat on the sofa and studied his guest.

Kurt's eyes were the color of deviled ham and his skin was pale as ashes. He was amazingly alert and a sniffle convicted Kurt of cocaine use. It seemed like everyone in the Malchek was living on something other than what was good for them, but he was in no position to throw stones.

"I am very sorry about last night, but I warned you about those people."

"It's hard to ignore the pimps' trafficking in women."

"I didn't know you were such a saint."

"I'm not, but I've never been around pimps. It's not like they're poets."

"Some are bad and others are worse, but there will always be pimps in Hamburg," Kurt announced, as if this was written in stone.

"Yes, you're right, but that doesn't mean they have the run on the Malchek."

"I will do what I can to keep most of them out, but there will be those we can not refuse entrance."

"Like SS Tommy?"

"He is Cali's man."

"And we can't upset Cali?"

"Correct, does that create a problem?" Kurt hoped the American would say no, for it was a little too late to pull a Plan B out of his sleeve.

"For better or worse I am stuck with this arrangement."

"Good, I knew I could count on you." Kurt threw a Lufthansa ticket packet on the bed. "Remember I told you about picking up money in Geneva. After last night you deserve a trip."

"You want me to go down and pick up some money, right?" Sean recollected their conversation from the first night in the nightclub.

"You fly down, stay in a hotel. In the morning my accountant will drive you to and from the bank. You fly back to Hamburg and I pick you up on this end. One, two, three," explained Kurt.

If it's so easy, why don't you do it yourself? Sean was uncomfortable with being entrusted with so much by someone he knew for such a short time.

"If I were to be caught with the money, it might be trouble, but you can legally carry whatever amount of money between here and Switzerland," Kurt replied with the facility of a veteran liar.

"I checked the currency laws."

"And?"

"What you say is true, but New York taught me, if it sounds too good to be true than it usually is too good to be true."

"Switzerland is a land of cheese and chocolate. Nothing bad happens there. You will get a thousand marks a trip. All expenses paid, plus if you have to miss a night of work, you will get paid for that as well. Think of yourself as being a top-class courier."

"Like an extra in a James Bond movie."

There was something else to this trafficking with money. Something that involved getting people in trouble, but Sean's rapid calculation of the next four weeks' earnings from these trips translated into an accelerated departure date from Hamburg, so he said, "Okay, I'll do it."

"Good." Kurt pointed to the packet on the bed. "The ticket for the 16:45 flight is inside. You transfer in Frankfurt. The next flight gets you into Geneva around Eight O'clock."

"I'm flying to Geneva today?" Sean looked at the clock on the night table. His flight was leaving in less than four hours.

"The only direct flight to Geneva from Hamburg leaves at 6:10am. You think you can wake up that early?"

"I'm not really a morning person. Tonight's fine."

You will be staying at the Hotel Beau-Rivage. Very Old World. Tomorrow you go to this bank and speak with Herr Egard and him alone. He will take care of you." Kurt dropped the suit on the sofa, saying, "This should be the perfect disguise for your trip. You can buy a shirt and tie in Geneva. After your pick-up, my accountant will take you to the airport and I will meet you at this end."

"I bet you will."

"Then I see you tomorrow." Kurt started for the door, but Sean stopped him by saying, "Not so fast, Kurt."

"What?"

"My money. I get paid before not after."

"You don't trust me."

"First rule in New York. Trust no one, not even yourself."

"As you like." Kurt took out a wad of bills, all 500 Mark notes, from his jacket. He handed two to Sean and said, "One more thing do not tell anyone what you are doing. Not Petra, not anyone else. The best secret is the one you never tell. Guten Reisen."

The door shut behind Kurt.

Sean's main reason for having come to Germany had been to avoid the mess into which he'd got in New York and now he was on the verge of stepping into a very gray area of criminality. He should have had plenty of other choices, but couldn't think of any this morning.

Sean went into the bathroom and showered for several minutes, trying to make sense of everything that had happened over the last few days. There was no A to B to explain to anyone had they been interested in listening, so he simply washed off the nightclub's tobacco stench and razored level every pinprick of stubble to the pore. The very simplicity of cleanliness made him feel better, even if it was an illusion, showing him how easy it was to be happy in this world.

Upon exiting from the bathroom, he spotted flowers in a vase. The smell of eggs frying and coffee brewing filled his nostrils. . THE SEVEN SAMURAI played on the television. The suit had been hung in the closet. He nearly called out for Petra, but he knew where she would be.

Within the kitchenette Petra was preparing a classic German Fruhstuck. If they were lovers, this would be the time to kiss her, instead he said, "I think I died and went to heaven."

"I thought you almost died last night."

"Not even close."

"You are tougher than you look."

"I have a thick skull."

"Lucky for you."

Petra emptied scrambled eggs onto two plates crowded with wurst, then motioned for him to back away, as she picked up a heavily laden tray.

"We will eat on the terrace."

Sean followed her outside to the terrace on which she had set up a small table and two chairs on the terrace. The air was softer than a caress. After Petra lowered an awning, she asked, "Is that better?"

"Very much so. What did I do to deserve this treatment?"

"After your evening I thought I could prove not all Germans are bad." She poured coffee into their two cups and passed him the sugar and milk.

"People are people to me, until they prove differently. Just because I fought one person doesn't mean all Germans are bad. I mean, how many Americans have you met."

"Soldiers, businessmen at the Eroscenter, and you."

"Then you can't have such a high opinion of my countrymen."

"You are right. I do not think much of Americans or any men."

"People being good or bad isn’t a matter of sex or nationality.”

"You really believe that?"

Yes, but that doesn't keep me from feeling like the only person in this town or any other." Sean saw her eyes moisten around the edges. He was getting too close to her heart and his own as well.

"I have felt the same way too," Petra admitted against her wishes, wondering whether this man had bucked the impossible odds of there being someone for her. She didn't dare hope for such a gift that hope, but found herself fingering with a shank of hair at the back of her neck like a nervous schoolgirl, as he said, "Plato or one of the Greek philosophers said that there was a finite number of souls. I think it was a round number, say 25,000. After that everyone was soulless and could be used as slaves."

"There are billions of people of Earth. Not all of them are slaves."

"That’s because the devil and God have emptied people from Hell and Heaven."

"What are you talking about?"

"It's a crazy idea, but God and the devil got tired of watching everyone all the time and wanted someone to take over. So had the Vatican approached the credit card companies and banks. They agreed to take over the duties of the after-life and had their agents offer people in heaven and hell a once in eternity chance to go back to earth. Everyone in hell agreed quickly, though the people in heaven were a much harder sell. This theory explains why there is so much evil in the world and so many people."

"You are mad."

"I didn't say I believed in this."

"Dank Himmel. Now eat before the eggs get cold," Petra ordered and watched, as the American ate with his knife and fork like a European unlike the rest of his compatriots who ate with a one-hand technique like they had their left arm amputated at birth.

She warned herself that he was no different from any man and that he was a 'mark'. Her caring for a man was a mortal sin, but she found herself saying, "You should eat slower."

"Eating fast comes from living in a big family," he explained and then told her about his life to give her a picture of who he had been, was, and might be. No German, male or female, would have been so open. Time seemed to have stopped or he wanted it to keep repeating the moment, but she rose from the table and he asked, "Where are you going?"

"I have someplace to go." She had to get out of here before she did something stupid.

"Lukas?" Sean immediately regretted his query.

Petra wheeled on him and said, "You are not my pimp?"

"I never said I was."

The barb had hit its mark hard, then again she was unaccustomed to being gentle with men.

Petra had no intentions of even saying good-bye, but before she could reach the door, Sean spun her around and kissed her. The seconds became an eternity, as her heart beat with his. She told herself this was not supposed to be happening and pushed him away.

"Never do that." She slapped him in the face.

"Sorry.” Sean stepped away from the door and Petra glared at him, saying, "Sorry is not enough. That will cost you."

"Whatever the price, I'm willing to pay it."

"Don't be so sure of that."

The door slammed shut, leaving him alone and dizzy from her open palm.

He could do without any more head rattling in the near future and sat on the bed. All in all today was working out to be a better day than yesterday and there was no telling about tomorrow or the days to follow.

He was more dead than alive for the first time in months and he sensed that there was more to come, especially on a sunny day.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 29

The bells of St. Johannis rang out Seven O'clock, each hour's peal a mournful warning of a gray wet day. The final tolling died out and Sean woke with Petra's arm draped over his shoulder. Her face was buried in his neck and her leg straddled his hips. This would have passed for love in any book he had ever read and would do so now, because even Tammi had never slept this close to him. He would have loved to stay in bed, except he had a flight to catch and extricated himself from Petra's tangle of limbs, then slipped out of bed to get dressed in his black suit.

Strangely there was no noise from outside.

No cars or buses.

No jets overhead.

Sean thought he had gone deaf, but distinctly heard Petra's breathing.

He went out on the terrace. He leaned through the pelting rain and peered over the edge of the terrace. Mittelweg was devoid of human activity.

He instantly thought that the Soviets or USA had released a nerve virus killing the rest of humanity. It was that quiet and Sean why Petra and he had survived the heavenly holocaust. They were a strange choice for Adam and Eve, then again God's sense of humor tended to run on the cruel side. He was about to go back inside and break the news of the apocalypse to Petra, when an accordianized bus appeared out of the rain and he laughed to himself. He had been using his fear of global annihilation to reinforce his lack of purpose. Petra's being there had changed everything. When he returned inside, Petra sleepily asked, "Wie ist der Wetter?"

"Es regnt," Sean answered, as a harder downpour splashed off the terrace.

"Du gehst nach Geneva jetzt?" Petra murmured in bed, throwing off the sheet to reveal her nakedness. She spread her legs and covered her vagina with one hand. She knew the effect that had on men and Sean was no exception to the rule.

"Soon." Sean sat on the mattress and pushed back her hair, wrapping the thick strands in his fingers.

Petra purred contentedly, then said, "Be careful."

"Of what?" He lay his head on her belly, the pungent smell of her sex wafting in the air like an exotic perfume he was forbidden to own, but had somehow found in his possession.

"Do not trust Kurt." Her hands massaged the tendons in his neck.

"Why?" His palms caressed her thighs.<

"He is what he is."

"Which is to say?" He unhanded her and slid back away from her.

"A thief no one can trust. Now that I found you, I would hate to lose you."

"This is no different from any of the other trips other than it is the last one," Sean explained, though he didn't really need the money that Kurt would pay him. Not with her with him. They could have left Hamburg today for India, but he couldn't stop thinking about taking one last shot at taking it all. He weighed telling her about his plan to steal the money, if given the chance, then decided to keep it. " I go down in the morning and come back at night. I work two more nights at the club and then we leave. I'll be careful.

The two kissed, but Sean felt Petra tremble. No words could still her apprehension. when they broke away, she stared at him with her good eye and bit her lips, as if she had something to tell him, which he could not force from her. she dropped her eye and said, "Sean, do not get mad."

"Why should I get mad?"

"Because I will tell you something. When you first come to Hamburg, Kurt paid me to keep an eye on you."

""And that was the only reason you saw me?" Sean's heart crinkled like a stepped-on origami paper.

"At first, yes."

"And now?"

"You have to ask?"

"I'm a little thick sometimes."

"I'm not through with you yet."

"You did?"

"I hope not."

Twenty minutes later, as he left the apartment, Petra said, "I was telling the truth, when I said I want you back again."

"I believed you too. Everything will be fine. I only die in my dreams." Sean kissed her good-bye and wondered if that was true.

Ten minutes later there was a knock on the door.

Petra smiled to herself, thinking Sean had forgotten something or else had called off the entire trip. She opened the door, and all her fears for Sean were answered by discovering Mack 'Die Alte' in a dripping raincoat.

She tried to slam the door shut, but the old pimp forced his way into the apartment. Her nails raked his cheek, adding to the furrows of previous scars, but his long years on the Reeperbahn had made him an expert at fending off a woman's attack. Nothing takes the fight out a woman like a slap across the face, except for when you clenched your palm into a fist. He warned the naked woman on the floor, "Do not make this hard on yourself. Now get dressed and sit on the sofa."

Mack shut the door and then pulled on his gnarled knuckles, popping them back into a human shape, glad Petra had only needed one pop. That was all his hands could take.

Petra stalked away and he followed her into the bedroom. If there was anything he hated, it was sitting in the same room with a woman who wanted to be someplace else. It was going to be long day and nothing he could do would make it go any faster.

Hopefully nothing would, because things going too fast was always a sign of things going bad.

Always.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 39

Twice footsteps approached room 341 In the Intercontinental Hotel. Petra sat in the corner with a 9mm in her hand. Footsteps neared the unlocked door. She raised the weapon . The people proceeded down the corridor. She had been wearing the dominatrix corset, vest, and girdle for hours. The leather cut into her flesh. She quickly stripped and put on a thick cotton robe, then asked herself, "Where is he?"

SS Tommy was not the kind of man to let her off for running amok up his world. At any second the cold-blooded kill might smash through the door. She ran through the drill one more time.

Point and shoot.

A hail of bullets.

SS Tommy dead on the floor.

More minutes in the quiet hotel room. She grew drowsy and shut her eyes for a second, telling herself, that she would not go to sleep.

"Schiesse."

Sleep was SS Tommy's ally.

She composed a list of men who deserved death.

Her father for raping her.

The neighborhood priest for his fiery sermons on Hell and boring platitudes of Heaven.

She spared the boys in Hochschule who glimpsed up her dress, her first clients as a Strichmadchen on Lange Reite and the old men smitten by the top girl of Hamburg, because she had known what she was doing and taken advantage of the situation as best she could, although no matter how much you tell yourself otherwise, the one being paid was never the one on top.

Her blood burned at the thought of SS Tommy whipping her and Cali for allowing the beating.

Kurt was guilty by association.

Lukas also deserved a bullet and lastly Sean Coll, who had weakened her resolve.

They all had excuses, but 'Sorry' would not give back her eye or remove away the scars. If to forgive was divine, then she was purely human. Every man was guilty of something and her capacity for mercy was on empty. The next man to walk through the door was a dead man, even if he were room service. One was as good as the other. They were all the same.

Her teeth clenched tightly and her jaw muscles locked place. She had no power to speech and stiffness spread through her body to sculpt a taut statue. Footsteps neared and stopped before her door. She sighted the gun head high and held her breath to steady her hands. This would take less than a second. A man opened the door. His silhouette outlined by the hallway light was the perfect target, until he asked, "Petra?"

Sean peered inside the unlit room and his eyes slowly adjusted to the darkness.

A woman was in the corner.

He suffered a mal de déjà vu, dating back to discovering her in the old house on Kaiserringstrasse, then light glinted off the metal in her hands.

A gun.

He hated life repeating itself for higher stakes, but he had been on a losing streak too long and tonight that bad luck was going to end one way or the other.

"Petra. Don't."

"Go away." Her voice trembled with anger.

It never paid to argue with someone holding a gun, but Sean could not leave and stepped inside the room.

"No closer or I will shoot. Go away."

"So you can kill yourself. No, I'm staying," Sean spoke and recollected an old news story from Miami about some man getting shot in the head five time and complaining later to the doctors in the emergency that he had a bad headache. He had been shot with a 22. A 9mm was less forgiving.

He took one another step.

"Petra, I know you want to kill someone. Me?"

She said nothing and his hand snaked out to slap at the pistol. The gun went off before he touched it. A shot thundered in his eardrums. Her involuntary flinch had deflected the bullet's course. He snatched the pistol from Petra before she could pull off another round.

"You crazy fucking bitch. You could have killed me." Sean threw the weapon into the corner, then struggled to restrain Petra's fists, knees, and feet. Her screaming cut through the ringing in his ears, then she freed her right hand to strike him in the jaw.

A left landed and his head snapped back. Petra was not holding back. Sean grabbed her arms and twisted her body. They fell onto the floor. Her nails lacerated his face. If she had been on the top, he would not have stood a chance.

Sean seized her wrists and sat on her stomach. He almost hit her and Petra winced in expectation. He shook his head. The last thing he had on his mind was hurting her or letting anyone else touch her.

"Ist da ein problem hier?" someone asked, startling Sean.

A very respectable man in his pajamas stood at the door and Sean rolled off Petra. "There's no problem, mister. Just go to sleep. We will try and be quiet. Sorry to disturb you."

Sean shut the door and picked up the pistol from the corner. The barrel was warm to his touch and the smell of gunpowder was nauseating, especially since the bullet had whizzed by his ear.

Petra sat on the chair and her talon-sharp nails raked back her hair. She stared at him with unrefined hatred and announced dejectedly. "You are lucky to not be dead."

"You got that right."

He should be lying on the floor, his head surrounded by a halo of blood. He shuddered, sensing sensed the ebbing of life from that dead man. Almost a dead man alive for the next few seconds, then gone. Sean reckoned this was his third close call with death since coming to Hamburg. Surviving a fourth was out of the question.

"Why don't you go away?"

"Because that would be easy." Sean stuck the gun behind his back.

"You do not understand anything." The anger vented from deep within her and she screamed, "How can you tell what's good for me or even you? Who made you God?"

"I never said I was anything special."

"Special? You're no saint. You'll never change either. You'll end up dead on a slab like the rest of your kind. Dead, dead, dead with no one to shed a tear either."

Petra rocked from side to side, her knotted hair masking her face, repeating the word 'dead' like a record skipping its track, until she was down to just 'd'. Someone chanting his death mantra, even if it was under their breath, wasn’t good for your karma, but even worse for hers and Sean shouted, "Stop it, Petra."

"Why? To be a good girl? Is that what you want? This is as good as I get"

"That's a lie. Believe me, I know when someone is good or bad."

"What are you Santa Claus?"

"No, but I have been good and I have been bad."

"I guess you are not as big a bastard as you look." snarled Petra.

"You think you're the only one in the world to get the shit kicked out of you. I've been one foot in the grave before. Beaten to the ground outside a New York nightclub with bats. I was on the ground dying or as close to dead as you can get. To this day I have no idea why they stopped. I came to covered in blood with my ribs broken, but I was alive. I searched for the guys who did that with two friends and found them in a bar. We had guns. I could have killed them, but didn't."

"Why?"

Sean touched the scar underneath his eyebrow, reflecting back to the moment when they caught his attackers. The man dared Sean to shoot him, but he had walked away and it was time for Petra to join him.

"Because I'm not a murderer and neither are you."

"I will be."

"Who? SS Tommy? You're too late. He's already dead."

"I will believe that, when I see his body."

"His body in in the Elbe and Kurt is also dead. A heart attack in Geneva. not be possible," Sean said and sat on the bed.

"There is Cali and Lukas."

"Cali is lucky to be alive." Sean understood exactly how she was feeling, but also how she would feel later and said, "He isn't so easy to kill, but SS Tommy tried and failed. Lukas on the other hand. I don't know where he is, but I'm sure Cali will take care of him. They have issues to resolve and resolve only one way."

"But I want my revenge."

"Yes, and I wish I could buy it for you, but I can't and neither can I make you forget your beating, but that the pain will always be with you. Everything we do and is done to us always is. I'd like to say that I will not ever hurt you and hope that you will never hurt me, but that's a promise no one can keep. All I can say is that I love you. I'm leaving here for Paris. We have money. Are you coming or not?"

A second ticked in time.

"Paris."

"It's a good city to forget the past."

"With you?"

"With us?"

Petra stretched out a hand and Sean helped her to her feet. He put his coat over her shoulders and they walked from the room. This thing between them might not last forever, but it seemed like it could. Neither of them would talk about it though, since telling your wish after breaking a wishbone was bad luck and both of them wanted this wish to come true.

ALMOST A DEAD MAN - CHAPTER 41

The pulsing agony from Cali's wound kept him awake. Luckily the penthouse apartment on Mitterlweg was stocked with videos. Throughout the night he watched SUPERFLY, SHAFT, and RAGING BULL without concentrating on any of the dialogue or subtitles, though during the last film's fight scenes, the blows body-punched his body.

By dawn Cali felt like a million Lira in a dirty bag. He should have taken the doctor's advice and gone to a hospital, except a six-inch gash was long enough to have the hospital call the police and he wasn't in the mood to answer questions.

"Not today.

Not tomorrow.

Cali bit his lip and gazed enviously at the sleeping woman on the bed. The Valiums had blessed the blonde with a quiet night, although her lips mouthed indecipherable words. He should have left the apartment in favor of a more secure safe house, but he owed his dead friend the favor of watching over Vanessa, if only for being his first real friend.

Cali's earliest contact with the outside world came through visits from his Grossmuti. Her flinty stare warned him to keep his distance. Every visit the old woman muttered Nigger under her breath and his mother hushed the gray-haired lady. The word meant nothing to Cali and he hoped it might be a term of endearment. He found out soon enough how mistaken he was.

When his mother was hired by a small shipping company, she left the young boy alone and instructed him to never go outside without explaining why. Being a dutiful son, he obeyed her edict and day after day Cali watched the other boys of his age playing in the rubble of the reconstructed quayside.

Soon he thought of little else other than joining these hooligans in throwing rocks at the scraggly rats lurking by the garbage, setting the derelicts' shacks on fire, hurling cats into the harbor, or being chased by the shopkeepers after they stole candy.

Finally their endless cries of delight lured him to open the apartment door. The hallway was empty. He was a good son, but the laughter from the street was an irresistable siren song. He shut the door and crept down the stairs, as if he expected a policeman to arrest him for escaping his cell. When he reached the ground floor, he stepped outside on his own for the first time in his life.

He was four years old.

Upon seeing him, the boys stopped what they were doing and sauntered over to his doorway. At first he thought they would hug him like his mother did, except their eyes were icy cold like those of his grandmother.

He heard the word 'Schwartzer' and understood that they were talking about his skin color. Worst names flew from the mouths of the children, for Hafenstrasse was a tough street and its children were all older than their years. One blond boy emerged from the pack. Cali held out his hand and the boy pushed it away with a laugh. The other boys joined in and so did Cali, until the other boy slapped his face.

The sudden smack came as a shock, though nothing could have prepared him for the combined attack of the street gang. Cali went down after the second punch, then sat helplessly, as they all gleefully took shots at the young black boy. After a few minutes they were exhausted or bored and the pack of boys returned to their games.

Even a six-year old's fist hurts, when there are too many of them. No one helped Cali to his feet. He crawled upstairs and lay on the couch, waiting for his mother to come home. The sight of the bruises horrified her and she scolded him for leaving the house. Her son said he was sorry. She told him he was not to blame. When he asked why the boys had attacked him, she said it was their way of playing. Later in life she would believe she had not lied to him, though that was only because she had not told him the truth.

Instead of remaining inside, he bravely ventured out to endure the same beating day after day.

While the ten-on-ones rarely varied in intensity or length of time, this regularity gave him a chance to throw two or three punches before the collective pummeling buried him. Each day he returned for more and picked a new face to hit, although he never gave out worse than he got.

One day, as the weather was getting colder, Cali came out of the apartment building, wearing the new coat his mother had bought him. The street boys discussed who was getting the first punch. The tall blond boy decided he should have the honors and ordered Cali to give him his coat.

"No."

"No? That is a mistake. I tell you what, little man, I will give you the first punch."

"Okay." Cali swung his fist and hit him in the jaw. The tall boy dropped like a sack of potatoes , his nose bleeding. The felling of their leader by the smaller boy momentarily stunned the pack, because no one had seen Cali pick up a rock with which he had struck the older boy.

He attacked them before they had a chance to regroup, hoping to avenge all the previous beatings in one day, but within seconds a flurry of punches and kicks swarmed over Cali. The young boys' knuckles popped against his head and Cali joined the blond boy on the cobblestones. Booted feet thudded into his body and he soon felt like he was drowning.

Suddenly the beating ended when someone broke rank to help him.

At seven years-old Kurt Oster had witnessed hundreds of fights on Hafenstrasse.

Sailors used knives. Boys fought with sticks and stones. and couple battered each other with firsts and frying pans.

At first the street urchins' daily attacks on the young black boy had been an amusing diversion. Nothing out of the ordinary for the harbor street, except the younger boy never shed any tears. Soon he respected the black boy's courage and realized that the younger boy would never break, so he jumped into the fray to stop the one-sided beating.

The butcher's stepson flailed at the black boy's persecutors with the thick leather strap his stepfather used on him. The strop sliced through the air and cracked indiscriminately on the pig pile of young boys. They lit out like rats with their tails on fire, taking their fallen comrade with them. Kurt Oster stood victorious without bragging, since no one on Hafenstrasse won all their fights and tomorrow he might be the one on the bottom.

"Thanks," Cali said, then tongued his lip, tasting the salty blood.

"You know why they did that?" Kurt grabbed the young boy's hand and lifted him to his feet.

"No." Cali swiped at his nose.

"Because you are a nigger. A black man." Kurt led him upstairs to the apartment over the butcher shop. "They hate you for being different. For not being 100% German, but none of them are 100%. Me too."

"Why did you help me?" Cali fought back the tears of gratitude.

"I was getting tired of seeing you get beaten up." Kurt washed away the dirt and blood with an old towel. "Plus you are a bastard and so am I."

"I thought you had a father." Cali had seen Kurt working at the butcher shop for the thick-necked man cutting meat off the bone.

"That pig is my step-father," Kurt announced with disgust, then went to the icebox and took out a hambone, savagely slicing off several slabs of pink meat to make the younger boy a sandwich. "He tells everyone what a great soldier he was. If he was a Nazi, then I hate all Nazis. Someday I will kill him."

"Then who is your real father?" These were the most words anyone other than his mother had ever spoken to him.

"He died on the Eastern Front fighting with the Wehrmacht." Kurt poured two glasses of milk and sat down at the table. He picked up his sandwich and took a bite, chewing the meat like a dog gnawing an old bone.

"I never knew my father," Cali mumbled through his first bite. It was the best sandwich he ever tasted and the young boy remembered his mother telling him that the butcher always saved the best pieces of meat for himself.

"He was probably an American. Maybe from Harlem."

"Where's that?"

"America. You'll learn all about it in school. They killed millions of us and ruined the cities with their bombs."

Later once Cali learned to add and subtract, he discovered the numbers between the war and Kurt's birth was out of synch. Cali forgave his friend this lie, because he too made up a story about his mysterious father, which he believed more than the people to whom he told the tale.

Cali always remembered Kurt's help and the two had remained close friends throughout the years. The boys in the neighborhood called them Salz und Pfeiffer. In later years the Hamburg Kripo would borrow the title of a Michael Jackson/Paul McCartney duet, EBONY AND IVORY to describe what they viewed as a criminal partnership. Now only EBONY was left and it was only now Cali realized how great a loss he had suffered.

During the night he had been told that his friend's body had been placed in the house on Rue de la Tour. In the morning the maid would discover him. She would scream and call the police. The 'flics' would take him down to the morgue along the Seine. He would have someone identify him. The body would be taken up to Pere-Lachaise and the cremated ashes spread over Chopin's grave. They had each discussed their deaths and their burials hundreds of times and Kurt had never wavered from his wish.

Cali reckoned if he was going to die, yesterday would have been the day, for it's not every day you survive an ax attack. He weighed out the pros and cons of his failure. His ribs were staved in. Kurt was dead. SS Tommy had killed Willi and the banker. The Eroscenter was in chaos. The police were after him, as they always were, when something bad happened in Hamburg. SS Tommy's being dead and his being alive were about the only pluses along with Vanessa's being saved from whatever his ex-associate had planned for her.

Kurt and Cali had underestimated the baron and paid dearly for that mistake. What was worst was that Lukas had a good shot at getting away with it all. If the baron had been someone of Cali's class, murdering him would not be a problem, however the government came down heavy, whenever one of the privileged class got what coming to them.

As disastrous as yesterday turned out, Cali fully intended on preventing today from being the second bad day in a row. His main concern was that Petra was still after him. Everyone else involved in the beating had paid their pound of flesh. There was very little he could do to make everything right for Petra, but if it meant going down on his knees, then that was what he would do, even if there was no guarantee begging would grant him forgiveness. Not because it was the right, but it was the only choice he had left.