Red Baron, Red America (Part 1)

The most merciful thing in the world, Manfred von Richthofen thought, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all of its contents. It was, for example, still difficult to relate his present state, a warm body on a trans-Atlantic Zeppelin, with the person he'd been before the War. He'd been wounded twice. The '17 wound ... he grimaced at the memory. The hammer blow. The shrieking pain. The blood blinding him. At the infirmary behind the lines, as the doctors labored over him, he caught a glimpse in a mirror of his naked skull, white and deathlike, grinning out from ragged flesh. The '18 wound, the one which had sliced within a half inch of his heart as he flew too low ... yes, he could admit it now, if only to himself ... too low over Morlancourt Ridge--now that had been a true brush with the hereafter. The doctors, talking loudly over the victorious rumble of artillery while the Imperial Army raced for the Channel, had told him he was lucky to be alive.

Mortal existence was a rare and precious thing.

Since the end of the Great War von Richthofen had felt more ectoplasmic than human. That he was a knight the ether than of the air.

"Are you all right?" The unctuous Englishman smoothly slid into the seat across from von Richthofen. His German was very good. The Englishman's head resembled a freshly peeled boiled egg. His bovine, fleshy face wore a ravenous look. His lips were womanish--was that lipstick? Over the past few days von Richthofen had noticed the curious round spots running along the veins in the Englishman's arms, as if he'd been nipped by insects. Yet there were no insects aboard the Heinrich Mathy.

With New Jersey only a few hours ahead the Zeppelin's dining salon teemed with activity. All the passengers were present, and hungry. Stewards hustled about, serving cold Westphalian ham, fine cheeses, fresh brötchen, plates of sliced fruit. Coffee and tea steamed in silver urns. In von Richthofen's glass bubbled a fine mineral water, astringent and refreshing. The airship's engines throbbed pleasantly like the ministrations of some unobtrusive masseuse. Seen through the promenade windows, the blue-green Atlantic, some two hundred meters down, was lightly frosted from the brisk west wind.

"Quite all right," said von Richthofen cautiously. He had become inured to others seeking to touch his fame as if it were a talisman. Yet there was something disconcerting about this Englishman that von Richthofen couldn't name.

"You had a vague look on your face. Very unpleasant to see--you have such keen, clear eyes. Have you ever been to America?"

"Never. You?" Von Richthofen waved to a passing steward over to fill his teacup.

"I spent the war here. Mostly in New York. A different country then. Placid and content, but seething under the surface. Not like that anymore, eh?"

"No," said von Richthofen quietly. "But we are working to restore order here."

"I want to go to California. But it's just not possible. Too dangerous. Riots! Battles! Gunfire! Bang!" The Englishman laughed "Your Zimmermann was a canny bastard, eh? The Mexicans are ruthless. They're turning out all the Anglos." The Englishman's eyes fluttered. "Even though I detest Latins I can't really blame them. Do what thou wilt! shall be the whole of the law. You, of course, are going to the real America?"

"The rump of it. What is it called? New England, yes?"

"All that's left." The Englishman shook his head in exaggerated pity. "Poor country. Such a mongrel entity. They were never a true nation." He winked. "Not really united. Merely blind enthusiasts for striped bunting." He fingered the blue-enameled Maltese cross hanging at von Richthofen's neck. "The Pour le Mérite? Were you a pilot, or something, in the war?" His tone became breathless, his eyes liquid, needing. Yet his flesh sucked warmth out of the air as if he'd just seeped down from outer space.

Von Richthofen nodded, his hunter's eyes narrow and suspicious. He withdrew slightly. The Englishman read the gesture and embarrassed, maybe, snatched back his hand. But the desire did not leave his eyes.

What a peculiar bugger. Von Richthofen considered himself too old for such advances. Sipping his tea, von Richthofen said coolly, "A pilot, yes. I killed many of your countrymen."

The Englishman's lips pursed in a displeased moue. "They're not my countrymen." He tucked into his ham. "Not really."

"You don't seem to be very English," said von Richthofen. "You still have money, for example. They tell us since the revolution you English as are poor as the Indians you once ruled."

"In religion," said the Englishman, chewing wetly, "money is like a spring which never dries up."

"Are you 'in religion'?"

"Yes."

"Presbyterianism?"

Mortified: "No!"

"Roman Catholicism?"

The Englishman's eyes narrowed, glinting like a winter sunset on steel. Swiftly he masked it. "No. Something more ... esoteric. It is difficult to explain. More difficult to comprehend. Unless one is ... initiated." Wriggling eyebrows suggested unnatural congress.

"I am steadfast in my forefathers' faith. How did you get permission to leave England?" A tactless question, deliberately posed. Few could actually leave that de-sceptered isle, what with Albert Inkpin's secret police running the show. The Kaiser, wisely, sought an ultimate solution to the Marxist question. The nature of that solution was under investigation. The best minds of the Reich had been turned towards it. Part of the reason von Richthofen came to America was to judge the strength of the Communist movement here. Soon enough the Reich could plan its strike against the Red Horde of perfidious Albion.

The Englishman shrugged. "I'm an expatriate. I haven't seen my homeland since before the start of the Great War."

"Why were you in Berlin? It is difficult for the stateless to be admitted to the Empire."

"Oh, I have my papers," said the Englishman. He sipped tea. "Let us share names. Mine is ... Simon Iff. What brings you to America?"

"The game," von Richthofen said.

Aghast: "Baseball?"

"Base--what? No. Elk. Bison. Moose. Bear."

"Ah. Hunting. Yes." Iff laid his hand lightly on von Richthofen's wrist. "You have the killer look about you. Where will you hunt?"

"Vermont," von Richthofen said, again withdrawing. Iff's flesh was clammy like cave slime. "I lodge in a town near ..." he frowned; his memory was not so good these days "... Brattleboro."

"Vermont. Yes. Very wild. Very rugged. Very manly. Some lurid tales, I've heard too." Iff nodded, leaned close, whispered: "Since you're coy, let me guess. Are you Udet?"

"No."

"Göring?"

"No!" To be confused with a corpulent opium addict ... if this bugger were a gentlemen von Richthofen would challenge him to a duel!

"Then you're ... Lothar?" The smile was ironic.

"As near as can be."

Iff winked. "You're truthful. How chivalrous. How many victories?"

"Ninety-three," said von Richthofen. "I hoped for a full century but--you surrendered!"

The Englishman hissed. "Ninety three. An interesting number. In my esoteric studies, ninety three is the value of thelema and agape."

"Fascinating."

"The ninety third name of Allah is An-Nur. The Light."

"You are a learned man."

"Part of he ninety third trigraph of the Ling Ch'i Ching reads:

A hidden dragon is about to ascend,

dark clouds are rising up.

All under Heaven will receive good fortune.

At first there will be obstruction, later happiness."

Silently von Richthofen ate.

Iff rhapsodized:

"The crescent moon restored to fullness,

On the flowered branches the colors renewed.

Along the road returning to T'ao-yüan,

Someday you will meet a spiritual immortal."

"Cryptic," said von Richthofen.

"Not at all," said Iff. "Not at all."

"Are you immortal?"

Earnestly: "I long to be." He moistened his lips. "Do you?"

"Who doesn't?"

Iff snorted. "'Who doesn't.' Indeed."

Von Richthofen put Iff out of his mind after Heinrich Mathy moored in Lakehurst. People of his ilk, common nowadays, were of little import.

These Americans were a rather seedy lot--at least those handling the passports and visas at Lakehurst. They were ignorant, loud as honking geese, prone to coughing and spitting. The name Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen drew no looks of recognition. To them he was merely another Prussian aristocrat, and their attitude implied Prussian aristocrats should remain in Prussia. It was a return to von Richthofen's half-forgotten anonymity.

It had taken some time for von Richthofen to adjust to his fame. After the war, when, shattered and disconsolate, barely able to wake, barely able to crawl from his bed, dreaming of the cold velvet lining of a casket and the silent drip-drip of moisture falling from the roof of a tomb,, von Richthofen secluded himself on the family estates near Ostrowo, in Schlesien. There had been days, weeks even, where he'd done nothing but stare at his wrist and think of razor blades. He remembered a bitter day when all he could do was think don't do it this minute; wait just one more; just one more; don't do it this minute; wait just one more. A circle almost as fatal as Morlancourt Ridge. A bitter time, yet a necessary time; a time to turn his back on the world, and time to confront himself and what he'd transformed into during the Great War. A time to regain a hold on sanity.

He'd passed through that fire. Emerging on the other side there was the triumphant Kaiser, resplendent in his uniform and encrusted with medals and insignia of Prussia's chivalrous orders, his good arm extended, inviting von Richthofen back to duty, imploring him to be a hero again, to be the knight of the blood-red Fokker. He became the Kaiser's mouthpiece, and began living a life not unlike a microbe's under a microscope.

Tell us about the War! children shrieked.

Tell us about your enemies! fathers demanded.

Tell us about you! mothers implored.

So, granted a new single-seater monoplanes, he took to the air again, flying from city to city throughout Europe. The audiences. French, Serbian, Hungarian, Montenegrin, Austrian. Women begged for a lock of his hair, to touch his body. Men sat enraptured by his tales and dreamed of being von Richthofen, the Kaiser's aerial knight. Little boys crouched behind imaginary machine guns, chattering away, slinging invisible death towards invisible foes.

But this was America.

Finding someone to tote his luggage from the airship to the train wasn't difficult. Money brought supplicants. As in the slums of Europe, so in the slums of America.

America, alien America, pressed heavily on him as he rode the train towards New York. What a destitute land. The Mexican invasion, orchestrated by Arthur Zimmermann, the Foreign Minister, and Franz von Papen had shattered it on more levels than the political. Weeds strangled once-rich farmlands. Gaunt, starving faces peered suspiciously at the train. Rust bloomed on empty factories like mold. Giant chimneys shed bricks. Doors hung askew. Fences sagged, shed boards. Shattered windows stared out a sere landscape like the eyes of Faust.

A thin, wasted folk these Americans. Von Richthofen could only pity them. He'd heard so many tales before the war. Of the prosperity, of the bountiful land, of shining towers of marble and steel. He'd almost believed that only a race of übermensch could create such a nation. Reality dispelled that childish notion. Clearly this was a race that could create nothing more than fables, than illusions, than thin meaningless theatricality. For übermensch could not be laid so low over so trivial a loss as they'd suffered.

It was clear to von Richthofen that these folk had never had anything more than their material wealth. Take that from them and their soullessness lay naked.

It would be easy for English propagandists to clothe that void with Marxist-Linkpinist livery.

If New Jersey made him shudder, New York revolted him. Refugee camps stuffed with human misery ringed the city. Negroes escaping the genocide in the New Confederacy; Texans escaping the Mexican purges; Midwesterners fleeing the armed bands roving the Ohio River valley. Clearly liberty's beacon had flickered out and the huge statue in the harbor was a great ironic jest.

The city itself was a forest of burned out shells. Trenches scored parks, squares--any open space. Sandbags blocked streets. At intersections machine guns nested behind barbed wire. And the bodies! They were fresh, and countless. From their ragged dress it was clear the poor comprised the slain. Ethnicities mingled in death--Negro, Jew, Italian, Chinese, united in the final equality that time inevitably bestows.

Not übermensch; not men, von Richthofen thought. These are jackals.

On the island of Manhattan von Richthofen discovered prosperity. A hotel called the Waldorf-Astoria loomed above Fifth Avenue. Clearly a building of some importance. A ring of armed plainclothes men protected it from the fears of the men who dwelt within. Here von Richthofen stayed for a few days.

Von Richthofen conversed with the Ambassador in what was called the Men's Café, which was darkly opulent beyond the dreams of Nero.

"Perhaps I was too hasty," he mused. A half-eaten Waldorf salad reposed on a gilt plate.

"Eh?" said Franz von Papen. An elegant Westphalian, von Papen had been military attaché in Washington D.C. during the war, and had orchestrated the key (and surreptitious) gold shipments to Mexico that allowed the completion of their formidable armaments program. After the war the he returned as Ambassador. It was said in Berlin he was vastly displeased with his new post as it was so rapidly fragmenting.

"I judged the Americans to be destitute," said von Richthofen. He indicated the mahogany and rosewood café.

"Oh, most of them are. And they are unimportant. Sheep, easily manipulated. In this land, Freiherr, money speaks, not blood. The Astors. The Carnegies. The Rockefellers. The Morgans. These are the dynasts who matter. They control the Congress. They gave Mr. Harding the money for his re-election, though he's senile enough to forget it. They buy and donate rifles to the War Department. They rule as surely as did the Cornelii, as the Caecilii Metelli, as the Julii Caesares."

"The proletariat seethes," said von Richthofen.

"It does more than seethe," said von Papen. "I've cabled Berlin and demanded more soldiers to police the embassy. And I am not a man to demand anything from the All Highest--except in dire need. The need is dire. A bomb goes off nearly every day. The walls are scaled at night. I am terrified of arson."

"Will there be a revolution here?"

"My dear von Richthofen--" von Papen was incredulous "--you are in the middle of one." Leaning forward he lowered his voice. "Listen. I'm aware of why the All Highest dispatched you here. And I approve of it. But I caution you. This is a dangerous country. A frontier land. Uncivilized. You are not safe here."

Smiling, von Richthofen patted a buttoned pocket. "I have more than one Luger."

"A gun may not defeat all perils. You must be suspicious and distrustful of everyone here. Americans are a devious folk. They lie as naturally as they breathe. For so long they assured the world they were motivated only by altruism, by a nobility we cynical Europeans could never comprehend. Now, faced with crisis, we learn that they worship the Golden Calf and not the Word of God."

Von Richthofen, knowing von Papen's reputation as a supercilious, unscrupulous manipulator, smiled an enigmatic smile.

The next evening he met a woman when he stopped in the bar for a whiskey.

Smoking contentedly a black cigarette she was very American, very fashionable, wearing a crimson Jean Patou dress. Her eyes were placid and calm like an oxbow lake cut off from a river. She was slender, supple as a willow in the breeze. It was clear from the direct way she came towards him that she'd been seeking him. Her walk revealed a consciousness--an obsession with her sexuality.

"You're the hunter," she said, her eyes delighted with him. "Gossip says you've got lots of guns."

"I am a hunter, yes," said von Richthofen. Though he desired a hunter's pensive, moody solitude she mesmerized him. Gallantry he'd thought latent resurfaced. "Would you like a drink?"

She swirled a whiskey sour in her glass. "Later." She crushed out her cigarette. "I have friends down at Lakehurst. You're Voss, aren't you?"

"You sound like--" But he stopped in time. "I am called Manfred, not Werner. And I am not dead." Voss. Now there was a melancholy memory. The woman would've entranced Voss. They would've fought over her. Von Richthofen smiled wistfully. Yes, it would be good to joust again with Voss. Uhlans on motorcycles, machine guns their lances ... this beauty their damsel. He pushed the thought down. War was a bitter drink.

"Old blood, then." She licked her lips. "Call me Alexandra. I used to be an Astor, but lawyers got involved. So I'm back to being an Edwards. Do you understand?"

"A divorce." Von Richthofen waved the bartender over.

"Eventually, I hope," she said. "Your eyes are like ice."

"And your dress is like fire." He had not felt excitement like this for many years. He ordered Glenlivit from the bartender, but all they had was bourbon. In a black market miracle, it was Kentucky bourbon.

Alexandra smiled at him in a lascivious way over the rim of her drink. "How many men did you kill in the war, hunter?"

"I shot down ninety three planes," said von Richthofen. "I don't know how many I killed."

"It must be wonderful to be you," she said. "To be admired. To be fawned upon. To be worshiped."

"It is not so wonderful as you'd think."

"Your Kaiser adores you, I've heard."

"'Adores' is too strong a word. And inappropriate, I think. He honors me. And that is sufficient."

"How do you find America?" Alexandra asked.

He sought something inoffensive. "Rough."

Her head rolled back and she laughed to shake the crystal chandeliers. The sound of it pleased him immeasurably. "Are you here for a Chautauqua?"

"A what?"

"A lecture. Like the one you gave in Paris .. when was it? '25? I saw you. I doubt you saw me."

"If I'd seen you, I'd never have forgotten you." He remembered Paris in '25. The Red uprising, orchestrated by the insidious London politburo, had been a dangerous thing. Léon Blum's body had still smoldered and sizzled like pork in a hot skillet when von Richthofen arrived. Smoke rose from the Tuileries. The Kaiser's divisions lay camped on the Marne, ready, even eager, to restore order. Von Richthofen, diverted from a holiday in Interlaken, had been ordered to soothe the French. Though he'd expected failure, the French succumbed to von Richthofen's blandishments with surprising ease. Perhaps they were at last weary of war.

"Suave. Debonair. I like that. So ... ?" Alexandra cocked her head to one side like a curious puppy.

"Beg pardon?"

"Why are you here?"

"To hunt," he said.

"In New York? How brutal." A thoughtful pause. "Yet apt."

"No," von Richthofen said, "I'm traveling."

"Where are you going?" she asked.

"Vermont." He frowned, trying to recall the name. "Townshend. Near Brattleboro."

"Vermont. Townshend." She clucked. "Very dangerous."

"Rioting?"

"No, you silly transparent man. Floods! They've just had floods not even Noah could ride." She tossed off her whiskey sour. "You can buy me that drink now."

They danced for a while. The music was jazz and thrillingly pagan. They dined on terrapin and trout and even caviar, good Russian caviar. Black market, Alexandra assured. It wasn't a temple to capitalism unless there was caviar. A rich American, she was nothing to fear, and feared nothing.

She was warm and human and smelled like spring.

Later von Richthofen took her back to his room. He was vigorous with her, and rough, but she egged him on, enjoying it, begging, needing, eager for him. When it was done he felt relaxed, content as a baby swaddled in wool.

He dreamed that night of flight. But not of a plane. He was a hawk, free of machinery. Checkered fields and meandering rivers whirled beneath him. Clouds cavorted like winged dragons. A curious sense of liberation, of fear. Those emotions were not so different: quivering bellies full of lightning. Oddly he never felt the kiss of wind. Disembodied, he was a mind perambulating on its own in a high blue cathedral.

In the morning, curled against him, she felt different. Her skin sagged and stretched as if she were a deflating gas bag. Her eyes were more bovine than doe-like, glassy and stupid. The luster was gone from her black hair. Strange tiny bruises had appeared on her arm. Her flesh was cold.

Saffron rays streamed in the window. "What a golden dawn," Alexandra murmured. She rolled over. "Do you want me to leave?" A scar, livid and pink, ran past her ear.

He reached to touch it. She grunted and pulled away.

"No, no," he said hastily, scratching his head, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. Wanting her to leave.

"Men always want me to leave." A subterranean river of sadness flowed in her.

Von Richthofen essayed a thin smile. "I'm not like most men." As a mask that smile was not his best, but she was naive enough to fall for his ploy. Or wise enough to not dig too deeply.

Coldly, he satiated a physical urge and made love to her again.

The shower afterwards was warm. He took his time. Soaped thoroughly.

After he toweled off he discovered she was gone. He was happy.

Late that afternoon he was on the train to Hartford, his luggage handled by a porter named Egan he'd hired away from the Waldorf for an outrageous sum. Egan had feigned reluctance at leaving New York for the "wilds;" but the moment the price was fixed his sullen demeanor melted into something almost rapturous.

Von Richthofen concealed 9mm Luger in the inner pocket of his jacket. It was America.

A tranquil city, Hartford dreamed like an opium-smoker on the banks of the Connecticut River. The fairy-like State Capitol, crowned by a golden dome, loomed like one of King Ludwig's mad castles. It was a sane place. No refugees. No smoldering ruins. No Communists carrying red-bordered placards featuring Inkpin and hirsute Marx. A green and verdant city, replete with parks and neat houses. An island of the past weathering a churning sea.

There was a problem at Union Station.

The train master's expression changed from mild boredom to frank irritation upon hearing von Richthofen's accent. "You can't go! You can't travel at night!" The train master was adamant. "There's been floods, all sorts of mayhem, up the tracks to Brattleboro and beyond! No trains at night! Are you mad? Do you want to go plunging off some washed-out trestle? Have you taken leave of your senses!? Do you know what can happen out there?"

"Gott verdammt!" He pounded the counter with his fist.

The train master blinked once, then fixed von Richthofen with a steely gaze. "I think you should leave."

So von Richthofen and Egan took lodging in a small, cramped hotel not far from the station. The desk clerk was blasé about von Richthofen's name and accent. He took the gold coins, weighed them, extended the leather-bound register, and passed over a key before returning to his amusement, a magazine, with a ravening octopodous beast on the cover, called Weird Tales.

The first train to Brattleboro puffed out of the station a little after nine in the morning. The train chugged amiably along the Connecticut's banks. Huge, ancient trees spread leafy boughs over the tracks. Farms sheltered in shallow valleys--some fields golden with wheat, others fallow. Why? Economics? A blight? Lack of labor? Sheer neglect by the incompetent government led by a man who'd lived far beyond his time, the corrupt Warren Gamaliel Harding?

A weak country. Fertile ground for Communist agitators. The Kaiser must address this problem. And soon. Otherwise the Empire would face a second Communist enemy, one with far greater potential than the People's Republic of Britain.

For all the train master's foreboding last night they reached Brattleboro without incident. No washed out trestles or tracks. Yet signs of recent flooding abounded. Naked tree trunks stripped of leaves lay strewn on islands. In the riverside meadows the grass lay flat as if trampled by invisible Cyclopean creatures.

Von Richthofen left the Brattleboro station, followed by Egan. Main Street was lined with small well-stocked shops, the proprietors possessing the sober air of efficient capitalists. Brattleboro was a pleasant, uncomplicated town, dominated by steeples, great maples, and surrounded by innumerable hills. The architecture was solemn and austere in the American fashion.

Not far from the bridge across the river he found the office of the agent who represented von Richthofen here. A man named Noyes.

Noyes was an urbane man, fashionably dressed. He sported a small immaculately trimmed mustache. His polished fingernails shone. He suggested a well-off professor at a prestigious university. In his meerschaum pipe smoldered pungent tobacco.

He rose from his desk. "Freiherr von Richthofen." Crisply he snapped his heels together. His voice was rich with the intonation and cadences of English speech, lacked the swallowed vowels and outrageous diphthongs of the native tongue. "I recognize you from your photographs. They do you credit, but not justice."

"Please," von Richthofen said. "I'm here as a private citizen, not as an embassy from His Imperial Majesty." Noyes' Junker-like bearing disturbed him.

"Of course. Of course." Noyes was smooth. He indicated a chair. "Be seated. Can I offer you tea?"

"Tea, yes."

Egan, grumbling, collapsed onto a couch.

"Helena!" Noyes called to a woman scratching away with a pen at some papers. "Our guest would like tea. The best. From Boston, if you please." He raised an eyebrow. "How was your journey?"

"Illuminating," said von Richthofen. "I've heard much about America. To see it ... quite an experience."

"Yes," said Noyes, his eyes carefully measuring. "Vermont, though, is different. It is another world. At least to me. I come from Boston. I am not popular here, but I am accepted. I am not Negro. I am not Italian. I am not Southern. I am not Mexican. I'm certainly not Communist. The people round here like this."

Von Richthofen nodded. "And the hunting?"

"Ah, yes, the hunting. This is not the ideal time of year for the bigger game. But you're still planning on staying several months?"

"At least. I may travel as well."

"The man who'll be serving as your ... servant? butler? I'm not sure of the correct term ... will be able to help you there. His name is Elwin. He's lived in Townshend all his life."

"This farmhouse I've hired. It is close to the forest?"

Noyes rose and strode to a window. He threw back the curtains. Across the Connecticut River rose a huge mountain dome, utterly sylvan. "Wantastiquet," said Noyes. "For your perusal our forest primeval. They tell strange tales about it." Noyes bit his lip as if corking a story he didn't want to tell.

"Oh?" said von Richthofen, taking the tea from the quietly efficient and dead-eyed Helena.

Noyes pulled the curtain. "The folk here are primitive. Peasants, you would call them. Superstitious. Backwards. Prone to confabulation. They would believe in fairies--or Mi-Go, the Snow Men of the Himalayas--if that were the tradition around here."

"I see." He sipped. "Do I need to acquire permits? Licenses? Do I need to be cleared with any authority?"

Noyes laughed. "This is America. We loathe authority. Hunt! And be content."

Von Richthofen smiled. Loathe authority indeed. "I will do as you bid me, Mr. Noyes."

Noyes laughed heartily. "That is for the best, Freiherr."

Noyes owned an impressive automobile, a Packard 243 Touring, glossy black with chrome trimmings. Fit for royalty. He beamed when von Richthofen mentioned, as if in passing, that the Kaiser himself owned one. The Packard operation was, as were many manufacturing firms in the American Midwest, currently benefiting from Krupp and Opel ownership.

They left Brattleboro, taking a route along the banks of the West River. The trees were ancient columns supporting a verdant canopy fit for a pagan priest and his blasphemous entourage. Granite crowned peaks stared down at their lonely auto racing through the winding, narrow valley.

"That is Black Mountain," said Noyes, pointing out a steep height rising across the West River. "Look up top. Can you see it?"

Von Richthofen peered. "I see nothing."

"Ah, you have to look closely. There is a gap in the trees. If you catch it just right you can see it."

"See what?"

"There's an old stone circle there. Stained dolmens surrounded by menhirs. There are many places like this in the hills. Many tales. Sinister tales, in fact."

"Really? Such as?"

"Well, they're not very entertaining if told by daylight." Noyes chuckled. "They work best by firelight, after a nightcap or two. It's believed--by some, not by me, of course; I'm an educated man--that Indian sorcerers sacrificed virgins up there to a race of dark and malign gods which came to the Earth in past eons."

Quaint superstition. "Yes. I heard something similar during the War. Such tales require firelight. Shellfire. And schnapps!"

They passed through Newfane, shadowed by mountains west and east. Locals gawked at the mighty Packard as it throbbed through the village like a supernatural steed. They seemed a degenerate lot. Thin and shifty, dressed in ill-fitting clothes, with sallow faces, sagging shoulders, hunched backs. Their eyes hungered after the sleek Packard.

Too strongly they recalled the starving men and women of New Jersey. An aberration? Or was the veneer of peace and prosperity weak here?

Von Richthofen would begin making notes for his report to the Kaiser tonight. Thoughts swirled in his head.

"Dark Mountain!" Noyes exulted. There was a strange light in his eyes. "Look. See that turnoff? That goes to the old Akeley place. There's still an Akeley living there, but you don't want to visit that hermit. A recluse, and a violent one. His dogs are vicious." A ferocious look quivered on his face. Hastily masked. "He has guns. And he will use them."

"Then I will avoid him." Petty local rivalries.

It turned out that von Richthofen had hired a small farm just a little south of Townshend itself, on the banks of Mill Brook. A stone fence delineated the property. A single-story white farmhouse, surrounded by a porch, was shaded by a clutch of ancient maples. The barn sagged as if drunk. Tall grass grew in the fields. Behind rose steep forest-clad slopes, almost like cliffs of jade, or maybe like a giant ineluctable wave engulfing Atlantis.

Noyes introduced him to the factotum.

"Frank Elwin." He was narrow-eyed and stony faced. His grip was like a being caught in the coils of an anaconda. His skin was leathery. His forearms, exposed beneath rolled-up sleeves, were thick and powerful. He regarded von Richthofen critically.

"Manfred von Richthofen." Titles didn't seem appropriate.

The look softened. "The flyer, eh?" A wry smile. "You're not as tall as I'd thought you'd be."

"I am my own height," said von Richthofen. "You know the lands hereabouts?"

"Like the back of my hand."

"Hmm?"

"He knows them very well," said Noyes.

"Mr. Egan." Von Richthofen slipped back into military mode. "Take my luggage into the house. I'll arrange passage for you back to New York."

Groaning, Egan began to unload the luggage from the Packard.

"His Lordship's got the master bedroom. That the first door on the right when you go down the hall." Elwin spit a dark brown viscous fluid. "You got any guns, eh?"

"Many," said von Richthofen.

"Good luck," Noyes said before he left in the Packard. "And don't bother Akeley."

#

Cold water streamed from the pump into the tin bucket. Von Richthofen washed his face, spluttering. The morning air was vigorous like early autumn in Sweden. Sleep had refreshed him. It was easy to sleep here. The hills brooded silently--the only sound von Richthofen remembered hearing last night was the dogs barking down at the Akeley place.

Elwin emerged from the barn, carrying two huge pails brimming with milk. "Morning," he said gruffly.

"Any horses in the barn?" Von Richthofen shook the cold water out of his hair.

"No," Elwin grumbled. "Sold after the war." Without pause he continued up the path to the kitchen door..

Von Richthofen dried his face and followed.

Elwin stared through the window towards the forest. The milk pails rested on the countertop next to him. He didn't turn as von Richthofen entered.

"What is it?" von Richthofen asked.

"Oh, nothing, nothing at all," Elwin said. He opened a cabinet. "Breakfast? We've eggs, some bacon I got down at the general store, I can make gravy--"

"Please," said von Richthofen. "How long?"

"Ummm?"

"Until it is ready."

"Oh, say about a half hour."

Von Richthofen frowned. Sloppy. "Have it ready in twenty minutes."

Elwin blinked. "I--"

"Breakfast in twenty minutes, if you please," said von Richthofen.

Elwin bobbed his head, his eyes mere slits.

Von Richthofen made his way to the room he called the study because of the bookshelf, lined with those volumes the farm's previous owner had chosen to collect, and because of the desk. He pulled out sheets of creamy paper from a drawer. Dipping the pen in a jar of good India ink he began scribbling notes for his report.

The faces he'd seen Newfane, haggard and hungry in the midst of this forested beauty, haunted him. No other sight could more clearly suggest the vulnerability of these Americans to Communist propaganda and sedition. He had many thoughts to collect before he drafted the final report.

Twenty minutes later--precisely--von Richthofen reentered the kitchen. Eggs sizzled in the frying pan on the stove. Bacon popped explosively. Thick gravy bubbled.

Elwin looked up hopefully.

"Satisfactory," said von Richthofen.

Elwin nodded once.

"Coffee?"

Elwin pointed. "You want me to pour for you too?"

"Of course," said von Richthofen.

Elwin ate with von Richthofen. There wasn't any conversation. Elwin's downcast eyes from time to time shot inquiring looks at von Richthofen's face.

Von Richthofen held off from dealing with those looks until he was finished. He shoved his plate towards the center of the table. "What is it you want to know?"

"Tell me a story."

"A story. About what?"

"They talked about you, before the War. And I always wondered what was the most exciting thing that ever happened to you?"

This tale von Richthofen had rehearsed for years. It came out of him like a song played by a phonograph. "It was November, a little over ten years ago. I was on my own, flying behind our lines. The war was still static. The sausage-grinder years, we call it." Von Richthofen knew, and missed, many young men who had gone into the sausage grinder and emerged as pinkish-gray meat, fit only for burial. "Three Englishmen saw me. They were flying fierce-looking planes. You know, we called the English marking's the 'Devil's eyes.' So I had three devils bearing down on me."

"I bet you were scared!" Wide-eyed, like a boy on Christmas.

"Not hardly," von Richthofen said coolly. "One gets used to being shot at in a war. Weren't you in the war with the Mexicans?"

"Oh, no!" Elwin shook his head sadly. "I couldn't do that."

Von Richthofen let an uncomfortable silence hang for a moment. "So one of the pilots peeled out of line and came after me, diving. Yes, you think, 'machine guns blazing,' but only amateurs do that. And this man was no amateur. He was Lanoe Hawker, the English Immelmann. He'd won the Victoria Cross. Even tackled a Zeppelin shed, and those were always ringed by guns. A brave man, a clever man--one of the best, I think."

"I've heard of him. They talk of him down in Brattleboro."

"Who talks of him?"

"Well, there's this tavern I go to, and there's some men who came from foreign parts there, and they tell stories, kind of like the one you're telling."

"You must take me there some time. Major Hawker came at me, trying to get behind me. He wasn't shooting. When you're flying, Elwin, you want to shoot from behind."

"Shoot 'em in the back?" Elwin was horrified.

"Not like that. It's not a cowardly thing when you're in a plane. Getting behind another pilot is one of the most difficult things there is. He can turn left, turn right, climb, dive--and you don't know what your quarry's going to do until he does it. It's very difficult. So there I was, turning like mad, and Major Hawker was on my tail. We were over German territory. We started maybe three thousand meters in the air--that's ten thousand feet. We circled round and round. Twenty times to the left. Thirty times to the right. He should've broken off--I knew right then, in the middle of that battle, that I wasn't dealing with some dewy boy just out of school. He was a killer, a hunter like me, hard and steely."

Elwin was rapt.

"But he was a knight." Von Richthofen, in his mind's eye, still saw that day above Bapaume, still remembered the wind whistling through his plane's bracing wires. The stinking trenches, the shell-pocked mud; above the blue vault of heaven. "He didn't break off. Lower and lower we circled. And remember--we weren't firing. The guns were silent. I could hear his engine. I could look into his cockpit. If he hadn't been wearing his leather gap and goggles I could have seen the expression on his face."

Elwin rested his elbow on the table, propped his chin up on his fist.

"No guns. Just turning and turning. We both knew we had to get the position just right. We'd gone all the way from three thousand meters all the way down to a single hundred. Circling. We'd checkmated each other in the sky. But Major Hawker had a choice to make. He could land--and I would of course have spared him, but he would've become a prisoner. Or he could break for his lines. Which he did. Bang! Then he opened fire!"

"And you got him!"

"Not quite. Major Hawker was cunning. He jigged back and forth, weaving and dodging. Not easy for me. I couldn't shoot. But we were low, and there was only so much he could do. I aimed for him. It was the hardest thing I'd ever done, getting him in my sights. And I hunt, Elwin. I'm a hunter, I've always been a hunter. I stalk, then I kill. It is the same in the air as on the ground.

"I fired! Bullets streamed from my plane. Coming closer and closer. But I wasn't seeing the fabric pop. I wasn't hitting him. Do you know what I mean? And up ahead were the trenches. My heart was beating like this--" von Richthofen punched his fist in the air "--and I could feel the blood in my skull pulsing.

"Then my guns jammed."

Horrified: "Oh no!"

"But I was lucky. The last bullet that I fired, I think, was the one which got him. He spiraled down, crashed maybe fifty meters behind our lines."

"You got him!"

"I got him. I've got his weapon still. It hangs over the mantel in my family home back in Germany." A pause. "I wish I could talk to his family. And tell them what a fighter their son was. You can't do that when you kill a boar, or an elk. You can tell a father, though, that his son was a valiant man, worthy of honor."

Eyes shining, Elwin asked, "Have you ever felt like you were being hunted?" Elwin asked.

"Most of my life," said von Richthofen. "That is why I enjoy hunting so much. For it is wonderful to turn the tables on your enemy, to see them fleeing for the safety of their trenches, or watching the pillar of smoke rise from their pyre, while you fly back to aerodrome for a warm drink, for the latest gramophone record."

A huge smile broke over Elwin's face. "It is an honor to meet you at last, sire!"