Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.

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Intersect: Danger

a novel

by John T. Cullen

42.

San Francisco: August, 1945

Two carloads of NKVD agents cruised down the street and pulled up at the side entrance of the Hotel Auger. Looking right and left, eight men in long overcoats got out. They had their hats pulled down and their hands in their pockets. Leaving a driver in each car with the motor running, they paraded through the courtyard and approached the back door. Already, one of them was pressing the buzzer, and the others gathered impatiently around him.

In the window several stories above, in a darkened apartment, Meg looked out with a feeling of devastation. She saw the men below and knew who they were. She knew they were armed and that they were operating right under the noses of the American police. Not since her disastrous marriage and the loss of her baby had the world looked so utterly bleak. Her country had promised so much, yet failed to protect her then—it had offered so much upon her return, and her hopes had ridden so high as she’d given the very sanctity of her sex in its service, and yet America was failing her again. In any case, what was there to live for? With Corie and Tim gone, she lacked the push to get once more and fight on.

Hearing a knock at the door, she turned and waited.

“Miss Meged!” someone said sharply. “Miss Meged! Open up!”

It was an American voice, a familiar gruff one. She rushed to the door and fumbled with the latch. She heard a crash below as someone forced the metal door with his shoulder, and men’s rough steps clattered coming up the steps. In two or three minutes, they would be here, and she’d be on her way, pinned helpless between them—to a ship back to Siberia, as had happened to others like her in the past. The NKVD never forgot, never forgave, and never gave up.

“Miss Meged!” It was Detective Bannerby, poised in the doorway with his .38 in the air. “Hurry. We can make it if you come along.” He grabbed her hand and pulled.

She heard the Soviet agents’ voices now, the rumbling of their shoes, the click of more than one gun safety being released for action as they came to the door that would admit them in to the hallway.

“Come on!” Bannerby said, towing her across the hallway.

Already, a shoulder rammed repeatedly against the door at the top of the steps. As the door splintered, Meg glimpsed dark hats and shapes beyond it.

Across the hallway, a door opened under the hands of the old Chinese-American man. Beside him, an ancient face looked out, that of Anna Auger, in her wheelchair. “In here, kids. Quick!”

Somewhere a distant siren began to keen.

Bannerby shoved Meg into the apartment so that she stumbled and landed on one knee at Miss Auger’s lap. Behind her, Bannerby closed the door as quickly and quietly as he could and locked it, double-bolted it. “Get away from the line of fire in case they start shooting,” he whispered, waving at Miss Auger and Meg.

Miss Auger just had time to take Meg’s hands in hers and kiss them. Meg rose as the Chinese-American man pulled the old woman out of the way.

They heard angry voices in the hallway outside, but the sirens were rapidly getting louder, and the Soviets did not dare become any bolder now.

“They’ll go back where they came from,” the Chinese-American man whispered. “I called a friend at the police, someone I could trust.” He grinned. “Bannerby loves good lo mein, and he’s been a customer at my cousin Yeo’s restaurant on Grant Avenue for years. These Commies, they just don’t get it, man. They don’t grasp how America works. They can’t defeat us with their lies and murder. Honest people make good food for good people. It’s all self-evident, like Lincoln said.”

While the elderly man held forth, Miss Auger took Meg’s hands and pulled Meg to a safe spot in the bathroom. They three peered out from the dim recess. Moonlight gleamed on the white tile floor with mosaic tiles in black.

“Doesn’t matter,” Bannerby said from the living room where he waited with his men. “Ladies, there ain’t time. We gotta go. Say your good-byes and off we go.”

Miss Auger looked tearful as she gripped Meg’s hands in her gnarled ones. “I’m sorry, my dear. I had no idea that you were working for us all.”

Meg leaned down and planted a kiss on her forehead. “We do what we have to do, Miss Auger, and you’ve done your duty now. Thank you for saving me.” Miss Auger trembled so hard she couldn’t speak. She could only reach out with both hands, but Meg was beyond her grasp now. Meg blew a kiss goodbye as she and Bannerby let themselves out on the black iron fire escape. The old man waved.

More voices resounded outside as the first San Francisco Police officers in their blue uniforms poured up the stairs with their guns drawn, a captain with gold braid in the lead, to surround the Russians. The Soviets, who professed to be unarmed, refused to surrender or even hold up their hands, claiming embassy status. The SFPD had been groomed and lectured about diplomatic immunity. The captain knew enough to let them go rather than contribute to an international incident so close to this critical time of the founding of the United Nations. The captain’s parting words to the alien agents were: “We just finished pounding the piss out of the Nazis, and we’re going to kick the Japs in the ass, and then your Uncle Joe had better watch his own keyster because we have the means and the motive to stuff a few boots up in there.”

“Thanks,” Meg said as she dashed down the steel steps holding Bannerby’s hand. He half ran, half backed down the stairs, aiming his revolver around. “My duty,” he said. “I'm gonna get you out of town safe or die trying. You've done your part. Now we do ours. That's how things work in America.”

Several detectives met them at the bottom of the stairs—strong, silent men with determination written on their faces. All held drawn guns and waited with their long overcoats rippling softly in damp air.

“Come on, boys, we’ve got someplace to go in a hurry.”

While the uniformed police and the Soviets faced off on the other side of the building, with the SFPD herding the Reds out through the courtyard and back to their waiting cars, Bannerby and his detectives hustled Meg out through a small hedge entrance on the other side of the property, to a big black unmarked police car that sat running with steam puffing from its exhaust. The car rocked as Bannerby, Meg, and four detectives piled in. The rear doors softly slammed shut as the big powerful car sped away with a slight chirp of ripped rubber.

When they got a few blocks away and were heading down the main streets to get out of town, the driver put on the siren. The wailing echoed up and down, bouncing off house and store windows. Traffic screeched to a halt as they tore through intersections with red lights blinking left-right, left-right, left-right inside the front bumper grill and in the back window.

Bannerby and another man sat on their knees with their guns over the back seat, watching for any pursuers. “We’re clear,” Bannerby said after a while. He told the other man: “Stay there and keep an eye out.”

“Thank you,” Meg said again. She rubbed her hands over her face. No tears came, just a feeling of being overwhelmed.

They came to an intersection in the Mission District on the way out of town. There, they pulled into a gas station. As Meg watched, mystified, they pulled around the small brightly lit pump island, past the gas station, and around the corner into a gravel parking lot shielded by tall hedges and lit by a single overhead light, on a telephone pole, under a metal hood.

Another large car sat waiting with its lights off but its engine running. Beside the car stood several persons in long dark coats, with down-turned hat brims shadowing their faces.

Bannerby’s car pulled up alongside.

Meg recognized two of the people standing there.

She threw the door open and jumped out. “Tim! Corie!”

Tim and Corie opened their arms, and she flew into their embrace. She started crying. Corie laughed and cried. Tim looked grave and shaken and happy. “I thought I would never see you again,” Meg quavered. Tears dribbled down her cheeks and bounced off her wrists. She felt weak in the knees and thought she might collapse.

Bannerby still held his revolver and paced uneasily up and down. “Come on, you three. I want you out of town as fast as possible. We will tail you for a while to be sure you’re safe. Then you’re on your own.” He waved his gun eastward. “It’s a big wide open country out there. I’m sure you can find a place to settle down.” If he meant to say more, it seemed he couldn’t because his voice became gravelly and he had to clear his throat.

Tim climbed into the big brown Chevrolet. Corie rode shotgun, and Meg sat in back. “Thanks, Bannerby,” Tim called out as the car started rolling.

“My pleasure. We’ll be right behind you. Good luck to you!”

Meg threw herself happily against the front seat and hung her arms over it, putting a hand on each of her companions’ shoulders. She wanted to tell them how happy she was but she could only cry loudly and continuously.

Behind them, the detective car followed like a destroyer escort. Its lights and sirens were off, but the dark shapes inside were armed and ready for anything. Nobody was following them and after about an hour the police car winked its headlights several times and then pulled over to turn around. Last Tim and Corie and Meg saw, its dwindling headlights were pulling out into the road to do a U-turn.

Ahead were safety and a new life together in the vast and comforting emptiness of the continent. And that was as it should be. They had each served and served well. Now their country would serve them in turn, and it would be a good life for Tim and Corie and Meg.