Deliver Us From Evil (A. Shaw 2)

“I’m sorry, Dom, what were you saying?” she asked sheepishly.

They were at a restaurant a few blocks from her London flat and her mind had drifted to other things while he’d been speaking.

“That I knew Whit talked to you about what was coming up.”

“He stopped me outside the shooting range. Did he tell you he was going to?”

“I was actually the one who suggested he go to you.”

“Why me? He could have gone directly to the professor.”

“He and Whit don’t always get on.”

Reggie frowned. “None of us get on all the time. It’s the nature of the beast.”

She swallowed some tea and played with a biscuit on her plate. It was gray and drizzly outside, and a sharp wind smacked against the window, apparently trying to force its way inside. Across from them an ill-nourished fire sputtered in the soot-caked fireplace. Reggie knew if the weather stayed like this through the summer, half of London would become suicidal and the other half would seriously contemplate it. Ordinarily, a trip to warm, sunny Provence would be a godsend. Ordinarily.

“You know he wanted a frontline place with Huber but the professor objected?”

She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “That was Huber. Whit going in guns blazing wasn’t going to work in that situation. The old Nazi wanted boobs and ass, not a touchy Irishman with tats and a Glock.”

Dominic raised an eyebrow. “Whit has tattoos?”

Reggie sighed wearily. “Get on with it, Dom. I’m tired.”

“But perhaps with Kuchin Whit can participate?”

“I told Whit I’d talk to Mallory, and I will.” She eyed him over her cup. “What about you? What part do you want to play?”

Dominic shrugged. “I’ve been reading up on the Holodomor ever since our first meeting. I really want to get this bastard.”

“Just don’t let your emotions run away with you. That makes you lose your focus, and that’s where mistakes come in.”

“How do you turn it off? How do you not feel?”

She leaned still closer and her lovely eyes grew wide and her smile seductive. “I’ll tell you how. Every time Huber put his hand on my ass I pretended it was you, Dom, feeling me up. And that got me through it.” She tongued a piece of biscuit into her mouth.

Dominic blinked and looked confused, his cheeks tinged red.

Reggie laughed. “I’m just kidding. I’m taking Whit’s advice to lighten up more. Seriously, when he did that he wasn’t touching me, he was grabbing Barbara, his German bimbo. I had to play the role in order to take him down. One step at a time. It was just a role. That’s how I got through it. I get emotional and lose it, he walks. That’s the best motivation not to ever lose it. Because then they win.”

Dominic swallowed the rest of his beer. “What was it like?”

She stared dully at him. “What, when he had his bloody hand up my skirt?”

“No, I meant when you, you know?”

“I really didn’t think about it, to tell you the truth. I just did it.”

“I’ve never had to do it yet. I was just wondering.”

“When the time comes you’ll deal with it, Dom. Everyone does it differently, but you’ll finish the job. I have no doubt.”

He was silent for a moment and then said in a low voice, “The other Nazi hunters turned them over to the police and they were tried in court. Why don’t we do it that way?”

Reggie leaned forward and said in a near whisper, “Those are just the cases you read about in the newspapers. And do you really think there aren’t groups that turned the Germans directly over to the Israelis? And do you think the Jews gave them their day in court? And people are losing interest. The Americans have a division at their Justice Department devoted to the Nazis. Funding and personnel have been slashed because everyone believes the old Hitler lovers are mostly dead. As if the bloody Third Reich had a monopoly on evil. I’ve seen genocide in Africa, Asia, and Eastern Europe that would bugger the imagination. Evil has no geographic boundaries. Anyone who thinks otherwise is barmy.”

After a few moments of silence Dominic changed subjects. “So how do you see the plan formulating?”