I had been half asleep, dozing despite being twisted up like a pretzel. The sudden stop jammed my head against the front of the smuggler’s compartment. My eyes snapped open and a reflexively reached for a weapon I didn’t have.

  Despite the pain and surprise, I didn’t dare make a sound. Was this a stop by Wotanvolk? A bathroom break? The end of our journey? No way for me to know for sure.

  I tried to glean a clue from my companion. “What’s going on?” I whispered so softly that the sound couldn’t travel further than a few inches from my mouth.

  She didn’t answer. Kris’s warm body crammed up next to me, she felt tense. Was she ready for me to make a move or were we both in danger. I listened carefully, trying to discern some clue as to the activities beyond my claustrophobic confinement.

  At first, I didn’t hear much beyond the hiss of Kris’s breath mere inches from my ear. Eventually, I could make out the low murmur of male voices and the rhythmic clank of metal on metal.

  The hatch into the smuggler’s hold slammed open. Before I could react, two pairs of strong hands grabbed me by my ankles and jerked out of the compartment and onto the ground. A small pile of hay kept me from smashing my face against the ground, but it still hurt. I rolled over and surged to my feet, my fists swinging at the two forms above me. A ham sized fist drove me back to the ground with a firm with a hammer blow to the top of my head. That one made my head swim.

  “You are safe now.” The familiar voice cut through the half-concussed daze. “But if you try to fight us, I will hit you again.”

  “Ouch,” I said once the stars stopped dancing behind my eyes. “Nice to meet you guys too.” I squinted upwards to see Jan looming over me along with another equally sturdy and blond man that could have been his brother if not his twin. “Guten tag, meine freunden.” I shook my head to clear some of the cobwebs from it.

  “Hallo,” grunted Jan’s friend after a moment of quiet consideration.

  Jan took a moment longer before answering me in imperfect English, “Come with me now. We will your payment discuss.”

  “Crap,” I rolled up off the ground and dusted straw and dirt off my clothes.

  They allowed Kris to clamber out of the compartment in a far more sedate (and less painful) manner than my own exit. Jan had parked the VW in an old barn. The weathered wood of the walls allowed in bars of sunlight to streak the hay covered floor in alternating stripes of light and shadow. A few chickens scratched around in the hay and a collection of farm tools that could have been made in the Medieval Era hung from the walls. Two of them gently clanked together in a slight breeze coming from the door.

  I mimed looking around the room, my hands on my hips as if I were a bitchy interior decorator from New York City. “I hope this isn’t your headquarters, because you guys can use some remodeling. Don’t get me wrong, it’s cute, in a rustic Bavaria sort of way, but doesn’t quite send the vibe of desperate revolution that we are looking for.”

  “Shut up,” Kris replied wearily. “Yes, I misled you, but you do not need to be such an ass about it.”

  “Kommen Sie!” Jan demanded.

  “Don’t crap your lederhosen, Klaus. I’m coming.”

  “My name is Jan,” he said with an icy glare that I probably would have found intimidating if I weren’t in such a bad mood.

  “Whatever,” I grumbled as I followed Jan out of the barn.

  The barn sat in a nice slice of Saxon farmland and forest. Like most of rural Europe, the countryside here seemed immune to change. I imagined that my view of quaint farmhouses, cornfields and small patches of dark forest looked pretty much the same whether its ruler was Otto von Bismarck, Adolf Hitler, Angela Merkel or Wotan. Whomever was in charge, it always amused me how much corn they grew in Germany. I’m not sure what I expected Germans to farm, barley maybe, but certainly not corn; corn belongs in Nebraska.

  Jan stomped over to a house that looked like it had once hosted the Brothers Grim (a natural partner the barn). When Jan knocked I half expected an ancient hausfrau to totter out with a plate of fresh strudel. Instead, a suspicious looking man who looked a dead ringer for Walter Matthau except with a mustache and a sub-machine gun peered out and then motioned for us to come in.

  The inside of the farmhouse was as quaint, and small, as the outside. Between Jan, his doppelganger, Kris, the Matthau look alike and me, the front parlor was feeling damn near claustrophobic. It took a couple minutes of awkwardly bumping into each other and moving chairs around before we were all seated and I found myself under four semi-hostile gazes and the muzzle of an MP 40 that probably dated back to WWII.

  “So…” I said into the silence. “What’s for dinner? Kugel or sp?tzle?”

  “Before we let you go further we need to know how you can help us,” stated Kris bluntly. I looked at her face to try and discern the barest glimpse of human kindness from the woman that was once my lover. Her face remained blank and hard like a mask of marble. She had indeed changed over the last ten years since our relationship ended.

  “And if I can’t help you?”

  “Then you can stay here and help in our struggle. I’m sure that we can use a man of your skills. Of course, if you don’t want to help…”

  “I get it… I get it… When did you take the class in Super-villain lingo?”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  “The Resistance has a correspondence course…” Well, at least she still had a sense of humor. “Can you help us?”

  “Alright,” I relented a little bit. “What is the status of the Resistance? Beyond having correspondence courses in Fleming dialog that is.”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  “It will help me figure out how I can help your organization.”

  “I cannot compromise our entire operation…”

  “I’m not asking you to. I just need a general idea of your size and reach. Am I dealing with just the four of you or do you represent a larger network?”

  “I do not believe that your CIA would know so little about our resistance,” said Matthau skeptically; he spoke German but his accent indicated that he hailed from parts further east, probably Czech or Polish. “I think now that you might be tricking us, working for the Ancient Ones.” The muzzle of the old gun he carried twitched of towards my face.

  “No trick.” I held up my hands defensively. “The CIA had given up keeping tabs on resistance movements a long time ago. We lost too many agents when your organizations were compromised and eliminated. Honestly, I’m a little surprised that you guys are even around. Official assessments had you as non-effective or extinct years ago.”

  Mustachioed Matthau seemed to mull that over for a few minutes before responding. “We are not dead. We have just gotten a lot better at hiding. In the early years, everyone wanted to help fight the Ancient Ones; we had many enthusiastic recruits; many stupid, enthusiastic recruits. They are all dead now. Those of us that are left are the smart ones, the committed ones. Do you understand?”

  “I think I do mister…”

  “You can call me Vaclav.”

  “…Mister Vaclav. And I also understand that if these smart survivors are taking the risk of reaching out to a burned CIA agent then they must also be desperate.”

  “Of course, we are desperate,” spat Vaclav. “We are fighting beings who call themselves gods and have the power to back it up.”

  “Some people say that they are gods.”

  “Then some people are fools. There is only one true God and He would not resort to such parlor tricks,” one of Vaclav’s calloused fingers hooked a rosary out from under his workman’s shirt which he then raised to his lips for a brief kiss. The others in the room, except Kris, crossed themselves. Oddly enough, the fact that the monotheistic gods did not come back to slaughter everyone had restored faith in them amongst many, I didn’t get that.

  “These are ancient, magical creatures who claim to be gods to better control us, but we will not let them,” Vaclav continued. “You want to know how you can help us? You can help by getting three or four aircraft carriers in the Baltic Sea and thirty thousand of your Marines to invade Rostok and Hamburg.”

  “Yeah… that’s not going to happen,” I said and I did try to not snicker when I did. The thought that the US Government would invade Germany on behalf my ass was pretty ridiculous.

  “I know. I am not a fool. We will ask for something you can provide then. Weapons, intelligence and fire support would be a good place to start, I think.”

  I sighed dramatically and buried my face in my hands before looking back up at Vaclav. “And now we have gone full circle. I can’t get you what you want but I just might be able to get you what you need, or at least what the United States Government might think you need.

  “Now, what you need is going to vary upon what your organization is like. If the “Resistance” is just you four playing poker in an old farmhouse then your “needs” are going to be very different than if you have several thousand active fighters and a god killing super weapon.” I could practically see the perfidy dance behind Vaclav’s morose brown eyes and decided to kill it quickly. “And don’t try to lie to me, the CIA will verify everything that you tell me and if you lie and try to pretend to be something that you are not then you will not be getting any help.”

  That may have been a slight exaggeration, but Vaclav and Co didn’t need to know that.

  “We are one cell of larger resistance network,” replied Vaclav after several moments of glaring at me through his oddly hound-like eyes and working his jaw as if he wanted to chew on his words a little before speaking.

  “I need more.”

  “In our network there are over one hundred cells across Germany, Austria, Poland, Benelux, Denmark and the Czech Republic with over two thousand members.” By the way he was emphasizing the names of dead countries it was obvious that he considered that a rebellion in itself. “We are in contact with other Resistance Networks in France, Italy and Sweden. Is that enough for you?”

  I felt my eyebrows rise of their own accord. That was far larger than I had expected, larger than any of the best-case estimates that the CIA had churned out. Either Vaclav was blowing smoke up my ass or they really had gotten better at hiding.

  “We are also in contact with the Free Cantons in the Alps,” Vaclav added as if that statement were an afterthought.

  “What Free Cantons?” I tried to cover my surprise and failed.

  “You do not know?” asked Kris with a smirk. “So much for your vaunted CIA. I see some things really have not changed.”

  “We kind of have a lot on our plate right now what with most of the world being controlled by eldritch beings from myth and legend and all,” I said acerbically. “We are bound to miss a few things. What are these Free Cantons?”

  “There are valleys high in the Alps where no false god rules,” answered Vaclav. “Where men and only men are the masters. They are poor, hungry and beset on all sides; but they are free.” I nodded and mentally filed away that little piece of information, both as backup plan and as something I could give Langley later so they wouldn’t black site me.

  “Ok,” I began. “If everything that you have told me is true…

  “It is,” bristled Vaclav.

  “…then the CIA and the United States government will be very interested in helping you. Just to give One Eyed Willy and family a good stick in the eye if nothing else. I could see at least see some clandestine shipments of weaponry and other supplies plus a few Green Berets to help you use them. I really can’t promise anything, I don’t have that kind of power. What can promise is that if I don’t get on my sub out of here then you get anything.”

  “How can we trust that you will even attempt to help us if you do escape?”

  “You may not trust me, but I am guessing that you trust Kris; and last I heard she was planning to come with me anyway. Or was that just I line of bullshit so that I wouldn’t get suspicious of you helping me?”

  She at least had the good grace to look slightly ashamed. “Perhaps a little bit of both.”

  “Well, if you are still willing then you can come and make your case to my superiors yourself. Then,” I turned back to Vaclav, “you can rest easy knowing that you have at least one friend in Washington.” The Resistance leader appeared to mull things over for a few seconds though I already knew that I had him. No matter how big, experienced or well organized their movement, they were still fighting gods and could use all the help that they could get. Even if he thought helping me was a Hail Mary he still needed to do it.

  “Very well,” Vaclav finally replied, “we will help you get to the sea. Then you will help us.”

  “I will do everything in my power,” I stuck out my hand so that the man could shake it.

  In the intelligence business we call this working an asset. That’s how we were trained to see the people we encountered on missions, as assets. That was important because otherwise, agents could become too attached to the people feeding them intel. Assets were disposable resources that an agent could ditch when necessary. An agent didn’t have to risk himself for an asset. An agent didn’t have to keep a promise to an asset.

  Sometimes being a secret agent man really sucked.