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Will that fucking window even open? If it doesn’t, then what?
What if someone sees me putting him out the window?
Would it be better to throw him and the luggage out all at once, or to wait a little, so the body will be a couple of kilometers from the luggage when it’s found?
The first thing to do is the first thing: See if the fucking window will open.
For a moment the window seemed frozen in place, but then he saw that there was a track for it to move upward. He gave a mighty heave, and the window opened.
Now that he had taken one action, everything seemed to fall into place.
The thing to do first is get rid of the body.
He looked out the window, then up the track. He could see nothing up ahead but the roadbed.
He grabbed the body under the armpits, heaved, and got the head into the open window.
The sonofabitch weighs five hundred pounds!
He wrapped his arms around the waist and heaved and shoved at once. Fulmar’s face was right next to the entrance wound. A glob of blood oozed from it. When he let go, the body was halfway through the window, bent double at the stomach.
He wrapped his arms around the knees and heaved and shoved again. For a moment it seemed caught on something, but all of a sudden the body let loose and was gone.
Without thinking why, he closed the window and sat down on the seat. He was sweat-soaked and exhausted.
After a while, he hoisted himself to his feet and turned and opened the suitcase. He took out a brimmed cap with the Nazi eagle on the crown and the SS skull and crossbones on the band, and tossed it on the opposite seat.
Sure as Christ made little apples, that hat is either going to slide down over my ears, or be so small it will sit on my head like a pimple.
There was a shirt and a tie in the suitcase, a tunic with Sturmbannführer’s insignia on the collar and epaulets and the SD triangle sewn to the left sleeve above the cuff, a black leather belt for the outside of the tunic, a pair of breeches, a pair of calf-high black leather boots, and finally, on the bottom, a black overcoat.
Fulmar wondered where the uniform had come from. Probably stolen, he decided. The next thing he noticed was that the SS uniform was cheap and shoddy compared to the U.S. Army wool gabardine pinks-and-greens he had left at Whitbey House. He was surprised. He had been told the SS had the best uniforms and equipment.
He dumped the contents of the suitcase onto the seat, then quickly stripped to his underwear. After that, he put the discarded civilian clothing into one of “Reber”’s suitcases. At first he just threw it in, but then he reconsidered. Presuming it did not burst open when it hit the railroad right-of -way, it would be best if the suitcase were found neatly folded. He therefore carefully folded “Reber”’s clothing and placed it in the suitcase.
Then he dressed. It had been “projected as a possible difficulty” that the uniform would not fit him. But it had been decided that nothing could be done about that. As it turned out, the shirt fit, but the breeches were too large and the tunic was tight. The hat that he had worried about fit perfectly, but the boots were so tight that he had difficulty getting them on.
The likelihood that the boots would not fit had been another “possible difficulty,” but for this problem there had been a “possible solution”: Soak the boots in water and keep them on until they dried. That might permit them to stretch.
He found a match and burned the Reber passport and tickets one page at a time, catching the ashes on a sheet of newspaper. Then he opened the window and quickly closed it again. Up ahead the track was curving, and there were buildings in sight that suggested they were approaching a town.
The town flashed by the window a minute or two later. When there were no more buildings in sight, he opened it again. He got rid of the ashes by letting the wind catch them. But the track ahead was curved, and he could see six or seven cars and the locomotive. If he could see those cars, someone in those cars could see his. And might see him throwing the suitcases out.
After what seemed like a very long time, the track straightened out.
He seemed to be thinking more calmly now. There was no reason to throw the suitcases out the window at all.
If someone came into the compartment, he could say the suitcases had been here when he came into the compartment and he had no idea whom they belonged to. It would be much safer to wait until they got to the next stop and see if there would be an opportunity to safely dispose of them then.
He put Reber’s suitcases in the rack and carefully checked to see if there was anything he had missed in the compartment. He stepped to the compartment door and unlatched it, then sat down and picked up the newspaper.
The excitement of a few minutes before was gone, replaced now by a terrible feeling of depression.
He allowed himself to dwell on the feeling that he was being used. He wondered what Dick Canidy would have done if he had told him to go fuck himself, that he had no intention of putting his head on the block under the guillotine by going inside Germany.
Shit! The fucking Q pill is in the change pocket of Reber’s jacket. I forgot about it. I almost threw it out the fucking window!
He took the suitcase from the rack, found the jacket and the glass vial, and—taking a perverse pleasure from doing so—put it between his teeth as he closed the suitcase and replaced it on the rack.
