Five Past Midnight (32 page)

"Yes, sir."

"I believe in fate, and my fate is tied with my city, Inspector." Hitler lightly rubbed the side of his chin. "I will never leave Berlin." Another small smile. "And there's that other factor: I have nowhere to go."

"Yes, sir"

"Do you know the story of Leonidas at Thermopylae?"

"Of course, sir."

"And Horatius at the bridge?"

"Yes."

"The lesson of these great men is of the power of the will. The will conquers all."

"Leonidas died at Thermopylae, sir."

"Don't ruin my story, Inspector." Another quick smile. "The Reich's resources are diminishing by the hour. Yet my will must prevail."

"Yes, sir"

"And for that to happen, I cannot meet my end at the hands of an assassin."

"Yes, sir"

"As I said, Inspector, I think like an enlisted man. And here is another example of it. It would never occur to an officer to personally thank his men. But an enlisted man knows the power of gratitude. I asked you here to thank you." Dietrich stared at the leader.

One more smile. "And to encourage you to work a little harder."

"I will, sir. Work harder."

Hitler struggled to rise from the chair. Dietrich resisted the urge to rush to him to help, to put a hand under his arm to help him up. What happened to those who dared to touch the Führer
?

Using the seat back for support, Hitler moved to the desk. He opened a side drawer to pull out a gilt picture frame. He held it out to Dietrich

In the frame was a photograph of Hitler. Dietrich gingerly accepted it.

Hitler said, "My health is poor, Inspector."

"Yes, sir."

"It will be much poorer if that American gets near me."

"Yes, sir."

Hitler escorted Dietrich back into the conference room. "Good-bye, then And send Keitel in. My meeting with him won't be as pleasant as this one, I assure you."

Minister Goebbels blocked the door into the hallway. He gripped a piece of paper in both hands. His smile was wrapped around his bony face, so wide it seemed to hang from his ears. He fairly danced on his one good leg. "My Führer, Roosevelt is dead."

Hitler's eyes widened. He inhaled quickly, his breath hissing. "Roosevelt? Dead?"

"Dead." Goebbels was trembling with the news, the dispatch shaking in his hand.

"By God, we are saved, Goebbels." Hitler's voice rose like a storm. "The Reich is saved." He breathed heavily. The news straightened his backbone and put color into his face. He slapped a fist into a hand, then again and again.

Dietrich moved to step around Goebbels, but Hitler arrested him with a gaze. "Detective, do you know of Empress Elizabeth? What her death meant to the Fatherland?"

"Yes, of course." Once again Dietrich tried to step around Minister Goebbels. Christ, he wanted out of here.

But Hitler grabbed his sleeve. "In 1761, Frederick and fifty thousand soldiers were surrounded by Russian armies."

Goebbels added exuberantly, "Frederick was suicidal, his armies were about to be annihilated."

"And then Frederick's archenemy Empress Elizabeth died on the Russian Christmas Day," Hitler said. "Her nephew and successor, Czar Peter III, was an admirer of Frederick, and the first thing he did as the new czar was to order the Russian armies home. Frederick was saved."

"The death ofjust one person can rescue a civilization," Goebbels concluded. "That's Frederick's lesson to us."

Hitler rasped fervently, "It was foretold to me, Goebbels. I have long known I would be taken up from these ashes. And now it has happened."

"We go forward from here, my Führer."

Hitler turned away, back to his study. Goebbels followed him like a lapdog.

Dietrich had been instantly forgotten. He stepped into the long corridor. Keitel's face darkened when Dietrich indicated he should enter Hitler's rooms. Dietrich was oddly satisfied by the general's reaction. The orderly escorted Dietrich back up the stairs, and back out the blockhouse door. Dietrich stepped between the SS guards into the garden.

Peter Hilfinger was waiting for him. "You returned. I had my doubts."

"So did I." Dietrich filled his lungs with the outdoor air. "President Roosevelt is dead."

Hilfinger chewed on the news a moment. "It won't make any difference."

Dietrich nodded. "Not to you. Not to me. Not to anybody below- ground in that bunker. Not to Germany."

They walked away from the concrete structure, toward the empty fountain. The British had come and gone, hitting a neighborhood somewhere upwind. Soot and smoke carried in the breeze.

Hilfinger asked eagerly, "What's he like? The Führer."

Dietrich stared at the framed photograph. "He almost convinced me, almost had me."

"What?"

Dietrich pulled at an earlobe. "I don't really know what happens in his presence, but..." His voice trailed off.

Hilfinger stepped around a puddle on the walkway. "What do you mean?"

"I almost fell for him, like some schoolgirl." Dietrich glowered, then tossed the framed photograph onto a pile of gravel near the concrete mixer. The glass shattered, a tiny sound by Berlin standards. "Like some goddamn swooning schoolgirl."

4

DIETRICH SLID HANGERS along the pole in the closet. "Cray would take a military uniform, if there was one. Anything on that? A husband or son in the military?"

Hilfinger looked at his notes. "She was a widow Husband dead fifteen years. So even if she didn't throw his clothes away, there probably wasn't a modern uniform here, something that wouldn't stand out."

"There's some man's trousers in here. Civilian. So maybe he's dressed again as a civilian."

Dietrich and Hilfinger and Egon Haushofer occupied most of the small bedroom, and they picked through the old lady's belongings, looking for evidence of Jack Cray's destination. During the night Dietrich's detectives had searched city records for Katrin von Tornitz's relations, and had found that she had two sets of uncles and aunts and two adult cousins living in the city, at least at the start of the war. The detectives had driven to the addresses, and all of them had been destroyed, reduced to piles of debris. Then the policemen had dug further into the records, this time at the Berlin Graves Registration Office, and had found more evidence of Katrin von Tornitz's relations, including a great-aunt who lived in the city, information that was waiting for Dietrich and Hilfin- ger when they returned to the station at three in the morning.

They had rushed to Dahlem, Dietrich wondering again whether the American was part of a feint, an intricate ruse designed to tie up the Reich's scarce resources. Sometimes Cray left an obvious trail. Other times he moved invisibly. Thousands of men and women were looking for him. Perhaps this was the American's only purpose.

The great-aunt's home was a brick structure from the last century, covered with vines, and still standing. It was dark—all Berlin houses were dark—but not shuttered. Dietrich had sensed they were too late and, after spending almost an hour approaching and entering the house, the detectives covering each other, Dietrich's suspicion had been confirmed. Dietrich had found a pair of Wehrmacht uniform trousers with ash and a few spots of blood on them. Cray had been in the house, and had already gone.

The Gestapo had told Dietrich nothing about their raid on the physician's office. He had learned of it from the precinct watch officer, who had investigated the clinic after the Gestapo had left, and had then telephoned Dietrich. Doctor Holenbein had been a casual acquaintance of Dietrich. Early in the war their wives had volunteered for bandage- packing gatherings, and had dragged their husbands to the coffee Watches afterward. The doctor had once spoken of his brother, a professor of architecture at the University of Berlin. After the watch officer had hung up, Dietrich had telephoned the doctor's brother and had told him what had happened, and that the Gestapo would undoubtedly be rushing through the professor's door at any moment, casting their net wide and gathering in many innocents, and that if the professor and his family had anywhere they could repair for hiding, they had better do so immediately. The professor had thanked Dietrich profusely, but quickly, and was frantically calling his wife to wake her before his telephone receiver was back on its cradle.

Dietrich stuck his finger into a blue ceramic washbasin. The water was cool and stained red. Cray had tended his wounds here. So the American hadn't been treated successfully at Doctor Holenbein's office before the Gestapo arrived.

Hilfinger rifled through a sewing basket, then the drawers of a desk. "Here's an address book." He dropped it into a canvas satchel he had brought with him. "And Christmas cards. A lot of return addresses on them. Maybe Katrin von Tornitz and her great-aunt have mutual friends, another place Cray might hide." The cards also went into the satchel.

Haushofer fingered a miniature doll collection. "You know why I became a detective
?
"

Dietrich answered, "So you can lawfully snoop around other people's bedrooms?"

"Precisely"

"You don't follow orders, do you, Inspector?" A new voice, abrupt and coarse.

Dietrich turned to find Heinrich Müller at the bedroom door, with Agent Rudolf Koder at his elbow.

The Gestapo chief stepped into the room. "How long have you known about this address
?
"

Dietrich feared this man, but he would not let Hilfinger and Haushofer see it. In a level voice, he replied evenly, "About an hour. Rather than spend time contacting whomever at your office, I thought it best to rush over here. We were still too late, as it turns out. The American has been here, and gone." Koder entered the room.

Müller rose on his toes, a bucking motion, his hands behind his back. "I specifically ordered you to report all your leads to me."

Dietrich sucked on a tooth before answering. "With Himmler's letter, I unordered myself."

Hilfinger smiled at his boss's dangerous impudence. So did Heinrich Müller, but narrowly, meanly. "It is a lack of respect, isn't it, Inspector? You simply do not respect my organization, and this leads to a lack of cooperation." Dietrich idly rubbed his jaw.

Müller bit down with such pressure that his lips paled. A signal must have passed, but Dietrich did not see it. Nor did he see the pistol in Koder's hand.

Koder took one step toward Peter Hilfinger, placed the muzzle of the pistol against Hilfinger's temple, and pulled the trigger.

Hilfinger collapsed to the floor. Blood and bits of his brain dribbled down the wall above the desk. Koder swung the pistol toward Haushofer, freezing the detective's hand as it reached under his coat for his weapon. Hilfinger's perpetually bemused grin was still on his dead face. Blood snaked across the floor toward the window curtain.

"Perhaps you won't forget to report next time, Inspector," Müller said pleasantly. He walked out of the old woman's bedroom.

Koder shrugged and put his palms up, perhaps a gesture seeking understanding, the pistol still in one hand, then backed out of the room, following Müller.

5

"IT IS JUST like cloth, isn't it?" the old lady asked. "Just poke and pull."

"Take it easy, will you?" Cray spoke through clenched teeth. "This isn't as much fun as it looks."

"Do you want me to sew you up?" The lady was cheery. "Or are you going to walk around with holes in your arm
?
" She pricked his skin again, then pulled the needle through, the thread trailing behind.

Cray grimaced. He was sitting at the woman's feet, leaning back against her overstuffed chair. She was bent over him, legs to one side, the needle gleaming in her hand. The bulb of a gooseneck lamp was bent almost to Cray's shoulder. She worked quickly, professionally.

"Are you going to tell me how you got these holes in your arm?" She tugged at the thread, closing the wound. "A bayonet."

"Didn't your mother ever tell you not to play with bayonets?" Cray glanced over his shoulder at her. She smiled with strong yellow teeth. The skin of her face was sallow, and was wrinkled like an elephant's leg. Her hair was too black — badly dyed — and pulled into a bun at the nape of her neck and secured by a red ribbon. She wore a shawl over a red print dress with ruffles at the neck. Her eyes were daylight blue and bright with humor. She was enjoying her work. On a lamp table next to the woman was a black Bakelite radio from which came a Deutschlandsender broadcast of Wagner.

The American said, "You're pretty good with a needle, ma'am."

"I don't want you to think I was always a seamstress, young man." She again slid the needle into his skin. "I didn't always make my living sewing the
Klamotten."

"I don't know that word, ma'am."

"It's Berlin slang for clothes." She narrowed her eyes at her needle, wiping off a drop of blood between her fingers. "I once had a home on the Graf Spec Strasse, and I was a friend of the Casardis and Fürsten- bergs, the della Portas and Meinsdorps."

"Never heard of them." Cray winced. "Take it easy, will you? You're killing me here."

"But when the bombs came, my friends all boarded up their windows and left the city. Some to Rome, some to country villas. Our family has been a bit embarrassed for a generation, if I may say, and I don't own a country retreat." Her words were becoming clipped as anger rose at the unfairness of it all. "When my house was destroyed—it was sucked off its foundation by a bomb blast — I found this apartment in Bleibtreustrasse. And now I take in alterations and repairs." She yanked the thread through Cray's skin.

Cray yelped, "Kindly don't take it out on me."

"Before my society disintegrated, I was known for my table and my wit. Now I'm known for my sewing." She stabbed him again.

Cray sucked wind through his teeth.

"What are all these purple punctures? Must be a hundred of them. And these stitch scars?"

"A dog."

"Just one dog made all these teeth marks ? Did you just stand there and let the dog eat you?"