Free The Informer by Craig Nova

smile at her or sneer or anything like that at all. Instead his glance, with that same appalling certainty, seemed to hit her like a light.
    Mani kept ball bearings in the pocket of his coat, and now, when he reached inside, they made a click like the kiss of a pool ball. Karl rolled his shoulder, as though trying to get loose.
    Gaelle had been told that a dog could tell if someone was scared, and she wondered if the young men on the other side of the train could tell, although she realized, as she looked at them, that it wouldn’t have made much difference.
    Karl put his lips, as thick as sausages, next to her ear and said, “Pick one. Tug on his clothes. I’ll take it from there.” He nodded at a man on the other side of the train who had blond hair and very blue eyes, the color of a delphinium. “Him. I’ll be waiting for you.”
    The S-Bahn went along the Spree, which curved through the city behind the Reichstag, the Berliner Dom, the museums, and the Lustgarten, too. A proper woman in a silk dress and furs got up and went to the door between this car and the next and pulled it open. She went through and let it slam shut behind her, without looking back.
    “There’s a smart one,” said Georg.
    Karl watched her go and said, “Yes. That’s a good idea. If you don’t like trouble.”
    The train stopped at the Zoologischer Garten station.
    “This isn’t like dressing a beautiful young woman. That’s just vanity, you know, standing up to that kind of thing when I ask you. Or letting the crowd get a look at you.”
    “You’d be surprised,” said Gaelle.
    Mani shrugged.
    “I thought I’d see how serious you were,” he said.
    “What I’ve done doesn’t count for anything? You’ve used me and then we end up like this?”
    “Just pull on one of their arms,” said Mani.
    “That one,” said Karl.
    The young men in brown pants on the other side of the car sat straight up, all watching her, or so it seemed. It was as though they were thinkingthe same thing, and for all she knew, they were. The one on the end, with the eyes as bright as a delphinium, kept staring at her. She felt the atmosphere in the car press in on her. Then she thought of the creeps she had handled in the park. That had been all right, and she had been plenty scared then, too. Then she thought of the parasitic aspect of the scar that invited all the worst from those people who looked for a flaw or a weakness to exploit.
    The young men on the other side of the train stood up. Mani raised an eyebrow, and then Karl, Georg, and the others stood up, toe to toe with the men in brown pants. Gaelle stood up, too. Mani reached into his pocket for a ball bearing and made a click when one of them knocked against another. Karl lifted his large hand, and held it in a fist at the side of his chest. One of the young men looked along the line from Karl to Georg and then to Gaelle.
    “What a mug,” he said. “Did you bring her along to scare us?”
    “What did you say?” said Karl.
    A man in a blue suit, a woman in a green dress, a boy in short pants, a young girl with a hat that had a large glass stick pin in it moved away, and as they went, they were careful not to look at the men in the white shirts or the members of the Red Front.
    “You heard me,” said the same young man.
    Mixed in with the muffled sound of someone being hit in the chest there was another, harder crack. Gaelle had thought this kind of fighting would be more like boxing, but instead the men shoved at one another and hit out sloppily, like struggling through brush. Karl pushed her aside. She stepped back. Three or four ended up on the floor of the train while the others stood around and kicked when they had a chance. The entire mass looked like a horse with fifteen pairs of legs that had gotten loose on the train, although it had different shoes on its feet. That same man, the one with the blue eyes, glanced in her direction.
    The train stopped and the doors slid open. Gaelle