The Scarletti Inheritance - By Robert Ludlum Page 0,19

his captor. 'Why don't you tell him we're both Germans?... We're trapped. We're trying to escape through the lines. Every Frenchman knows we're breaking through everywhere.'

The German officer smiled. 'I've already done that. It will add to the confusion. You will be amused to learn that he said he presumed as much. Do you know why he said that?'

'Why?'

'He said we both had the filthy smell of the Boche about us.'

The old man, who had edged near the open door, suddenly dashed outside and began - feebly - running toward the field.

'Jesus Christ! Stop him! Goddamn it, stop him!' yelled Scarlett.

The German officer, however, already has his pistol raised. 'Don't be alarmed. He saves us making an unpleasant decision.'

Two shots were fired.

The old man fell, and the young enemies looked at each other.

'What should I call you?' asked Scarlett.

'My own name will do. Strasser. Gregor Strasser.'

It was not difficult for the two officers to make their way through the Allied lines. The American push out of Regneville was electrifyingly swift, a headlong rush. But totally disconnected in its chain of command. Or so it seemed to Ulster Scarlett and Gregor Strasser.

At Reims the two men came across the remnants of the French Seventeenth Corps, bedraggled, hungry, weary of it all.

They had no trouble at Reims. The French merely shrugged shoulders after uninterested questions.

They headed west to Villers-Cotterets, the roads to Epernay and Meaux jammed with upcoming supplies and replacements.

Let the other poor bastards take your deathbed bullets, thought Scarlett.

The two men reached the outskirts of Villers-Cotterets at night. They left the road and cut across a field to a shelter of a cluster of trees.

'We'll rest here for a few hours,' Strasser said. 'Make no attempt to escape. I shall not sleep.'

'You're crazy, sport! I need you as much as you need me!... A lone American officer forty miles from his company, which just happens to be at the front! Use your head!'

'You are persuasive, but I am not like our enfeebled imperial generals. I do not listen to empty, convincing arguments. I watch my flanks.'

'Suit yourself. It's a good sixty miles from Cotterets to Paris and we don't know what we're going to run into. We're going to need sleep - We'd be smarter to take turns.'

'Jawohl!' said Strasser with a contemptuous laugh. 'You talk like the Jew bankers in Berlin. "You do this. We'll do that! Why argue?" Thank you, no, Amerikaner. I shall not sleep.'

'Whatever you say.' Scarlett shrugged. 'I'm beginning to understand why you guys lost the war.' Scarlett rolled over on his side. 'You're stubborn about being stubborn.'

For a few minutes neither man spoke. Finally Gregor Strasser answered the American in a quiet voice. 'We did not lose the war. We were betrayed.'

'Sure. The bullets were blanks and your artillery backfired. I'm going to sleep.'

The German officer spoke softly, as if to himself. 'Many bullets were in empty cartridges. Many weapons did malfunction... Betrayal - '

Along the road several trucks lumbered out of Villers-Cotterets followed by horses pulling caissons. The lights of the trucks danced flickeringly up and down. The animals whinnied; a few soldiers shouted at their charges.

More poor, stupid bastards, thought Ulster Scarlett as he watched from his sanctuary. 'Hey, Strasser, what happens now?' Scarlett turned to his fellow deserter.

'Was ist?' Strasser had catnapped. He was furious with himself. 'You speak?'

'Just wanted you to know I could have jumped you... I asked you what happens now? I mean to you?... I know what happens to us. Parades, I guess. What about you?'

'No parades. No celebrations... Much weeping. Much recrimination. Much drunkenness... Many will be desperate - Many will be killed also. You may be assured of that.'

'Who? Who's going to be killed?'

'The traitors among us. They will be searched out and destroyed without mercy.'

'You're crazy! I said you were crazy before and now I know it!'

'What would you have us do? You haven't been infected yet. But you will be!... The Bolsheviks! They are at our borders and they infiltrate! They eat away at our core! They rot inside us!... And the Jews! The Jews in Berlin make fortunes out of this war! The filthy Jew profiteers! The conniving Semites sell us out today, you tomorrow!... The Jews, the Bolsheviks, the stinking little people! We are all their victims and we do not know it! We fight each other when we should be fighting them!'

Ulster Scarlett spat. The son of Scarlatti was not interested in the problems of ordinary men. Ordinary men did