Five Past Midnight (12 page)

The POWs remained impassive.

"You probably were not informed of the reasons Cray was to escape. He may not know the reason himself as yet But he is going to try to commit a murder. Knowing this might reduce your pleasure from Cray's escape."

After the translation, SAO Hornsby said in a crabbed voice, "We need a lot of things in this castle, but moralizing from a German isn't one of them."

Dietrich locked his gaze onto Hornsby's. After a moment the investigator replied, "No, perhaps not." He buttoned his coat. "Good-bye, gentlemen. You told me nothing, but I learned a lot." He stepped to the door. Janssen and Heydekampf followed.

12

THE
LINE
OF
REFUGEES
at
Sergeant Hans Richter's checkpoint was growing. His post was on the road between Colditz and Leipzig, at the small town of Rotha. His company had erected a barricade across the road and was checking all vehicle and foot traffic. He took documents from the next traveler in line.

Richter was a member of the Police Group General Goring, a guard unit originating in Prussia, where in the early years of the Reich, Goring had become commander in chief of the Prussian Police. The unit was now under the auspices of the Luftwaffe, with Goring at its head. On the left sleeve of Richter's green greatcoat was a dark green cuff title with silver Gothic letters spelling LPG GENERAL GORING. The sergeant wore a service knife and a canteen on a belt at his waist.

Richter's unit had been at the road barricade for the past twenty- four hours. At their barracks in Berlin the sergeant's men had been given thirty minutes to pack their kits and climb into troop trucks headed south. Fire police, barrack police troopers, railway protection police, waterways police, police tank crews, motorized traffic police, female police auxiliaries, Party member volunteers, members of the Security and Help Service, the Air Raid Warning Service, National Labor Service guards — Richter had seen them all heading south to isolate a portion of Saxony. The size of the operation awed him. Three of his mates had been killed in a British strafing run during the journey south.

The checkpoint was on the outskirts of Rotha. Pastures were on both sides of the road. Fields were overgrown because cattle that would have grazed the grass down had been added to the Reich's ration. Police patrolled the fields, insuring that the refugees kept to the road, funneling them to the checkpoint. The company's first duty when arriving on the Rotha road had been to dig a slit trench to dive into if Allied planes were spotted.

Richter was only twenty years old, and his face was moist and undefended, a twelve-year-old's countenance, he knew. He compensated by scowling while on duty, molding his face into one of authority. The Schmeisser submachine gun he carried across his chest helped.

He passed the identity card back to the refugee and waved him through. The refugee grabbed his suitcase with one hand and his daughter with the other, and continued on. Richter rose to his toes to glance back along the line. Must be three hundred people waiting to pass through, he guessed. They were hollowed-eyed with fatigue. They wore a mixture of cast-off military uniforms, peasants' field clothes, and city attire. Some had blankets over their shoulders. Many had stuffed newspapers into their coats and down their pants because nights were cold. They pulled carts and pushed wheelbarrows. Horses led wagons piled with furniture and trunks. Richter even saw a cart drawn by a white goat.

Low clouds had moved in over the hills to the south. The clouds were about the only defense Germany had left against Allied planes. Richter was glad for the respite from skyward vigilance. It let him do his job, searching the line of refugees.

He looked again at the clipboard attached to the back of his Borg- ward troop transport at the side of the road. On the board was a large print photo of an American. At the briefing that morning Richter's captain had warned that the fugitive was to be shot on sight.

A horn bleated, and a Horch limousine parted the refugees as it approached the checkpoint. The auto had a lieutenant general's ensign above its sweeping black fenders. The driver stopped the automobile at the crossbar and rolled down his window.

Sergeant Richter bent to the window "May I see your papers, please?"

From the back seat came a bark, "I am Wehrmacht Lieutenant General Karl Drager. Let me through immediately."

"I must see your identification, General And your driver's. Those are my orders, sir."

The general leaned across the seat back to bellow, "And I'm giving you new orders. Raise the barricade right now."

Sergeant Richter put his hand around the Schmeisser'b pistol grip. "Sir, I'm a guard, and spend most of my time at factories and government buildings. I have gone the whole war without shooting anybody, and I'd hate to begin with a Wehrmacht general."

Accompanied by a spewing curse, the documents were passed through the window. Richter took his time with them, flipping through the pages with a studied insolence. He held up the general's identity card to the daylight as if to detect a forger's mistake, and earned more profanity from the back of the Horch.

From somewhere in the growing line of refugees came a shout, "The big shot gets to ride while we walk."

Another angrily yelled, "That's all this war got us, a bunch of bloodsuckers."

Richter waved them to silence. Carrying a carbine in his arms, one of his men moved back along the line, shaking his head, warning the travelers. A cargo truck slowly approached along the road, pausing frequently while walkers stepped aside.

The sergeant bent low to stare at the general's face, which was crimson from indignation. The Wehrmacht general's hooked nose could not be mistaken for the fugitive American's. The general was wearing a tailored gray-green greatcoat with scarlet facings, buttoned at the neck. Next Richter examined the chauffeur's papers. The driver was a fifty-year-old corporal undoubtedly called from the reserves. No American there, either. Richter glanced at the Horch's floor to make sure no one was hiding there. He handed the documents back through the window.

"Stay where you are while I search the boot," Richter ordered. He lifted the trunk lid, then pushed aside several camouflaged travel bags.

Nothing but changes of uniform. He closed the trunk and then walked slowly to the Horch's hood. He opened it to reveal the eight-cylinder engine.

Richter glanced at one of his corporals across the road. The corporal was grinning. Seldom could one thumb his nose at a general, and a rude one at that.

"You idiot," the general shouted from inside the cab. "Nobody could hide under the hood."

Moving even more sluggishly, Richter latched the hood. He used a mirror mounted on a pole to look under the car, then walked to the cross arm, a red and white bar with a counterbalance. Even his words were slow. "Please proceed, General."

The Horch shot forward, trailing curses like exhaust. Richter joined the corporal in a laugh. The truck neared the checkpoint. Richter was able to pass several more refugees through, and then the truck arrived at the crossbar. It was an Opel Blitz two-axle vehicle with an enclosed bed.

Richter stood on the running board to ask the driver for his documents. The corporal was on the other side of the truck, and another guard positioned himself at the rear. The checkpoint guards had been ordered to bracket all trucks so no one would be able to escape.

As he passed his papers and his cargo manifest through the window, the driver asked, "You looking for anybody in particular?" He had a Swabian accent, which to Berliners sounds lisping.

Richter returned the papers. "Not you. Your ears stick out too much and you're about a foot too short."

The driver smiled thinly. "I guess a lad carrying a submachine gun is allowed to have a smart mouth."

"Your cargo doors locked?"

The driver shook his head.

While one of his men searched the truck's underside with the mirror, Richter went to the back of the truck, where the guard there lifted his rifle to cover the sergeant. Richter lifted the hasp and pulled open the doors. The cargo was beef carcasses, hung from rods in two rows. The carcasses were still swaying from the truck's stop. They dripped blood from their butchering. They hung there, teasingly rocking on their hooks, five tons of meat not seen by most Germans in two years.

Gasps came from the refugees. Several stepped toward the truck. The guard moved his rifle to the ragged crowd.

"My God, look at all the beef." came from someone in the crowd.

"Enough to feed a village."

"Another load for Wilhelmstrasse?" came from another refugee. Wilhelmstrasse was Berlin's diplomatic and government quarter.

"Goddamn Berliners," another roared. "The countryside is sucked dry to fill Berliner's bellies while we starve."

An old man atop a horse cart cried, "We've given them our sons and our grandsons, and they still aren't satisfied."

A woman dropped her cloth bag to shake a fist. She raged, "My boy starved to death in the east. And look at that truck. Look at all the meat."

The crowd had transformed into a mob. Fists were raised and oaths yelled. The swarm moved tentatively, then, fed by its own momentum, it surged toward the truck.

Sergeant Richter raised his Schmeisser until the stubby barrel was pointed at the sky. He squeezed the trigger. The submachine gun bucked and brayed. Spent shells flew to the roadway.

The mob instantly halted.

"I'm not going to have to use this goddamn gun in earnest, am I?"

The refugees stared at him with fear and hatred and hunger, but slowly the crowd ebbed from the meat truck. The corporal held his carbine at the ready while the refugees listlessly reformed their line at the barricade. Sergeant Richter stepped onto the Opel Blitz's bumper, then into the cargo bay.

The cattle carcasses had been skinned and dressed out. They hung by their rear legs. Short poles passed between the two bones of each hind leg, and the poles were hung from hooks on short chains. Some of the animals were bulls, with torsos much larger than the others, reaching from the hook almost to the truck bed. As hunger mounted, the Reich had begun slaughtering its breeding bulls. Richter pushed the carcasses aside. He searched the length of the bed, looking behind each swinging bovine cadaver, making sure no one was hiding behind the suspended carcasses. Blood from the carcasses stained his uniform. He also checked the corners of the van.

He peeked back out the truck, then stepped behind a side of beef, drew his service knife, and cut a dozen jagged sirloins from the hanging beef. He was no butcher, and he struggled with the beef cuts, taking several minutes. He tucked them into his coat under an arm. For a month his men had been eating nothing but
Eintopfgericht,
a wartime stew consisting of butcher-shop sweepings, the men suspected. Tonight would be different. Richter made his way between the rows of hanging beef carcasses back to the door. Holding the sides of his coat so he wouldn't drop his prizes, he jumped down to the road and closed the truck's cargo doors.

Sergeant Richter returned to the cross arm to lift it, then waved the driver through the checkpoint. He placed the beefsteaks on the front seat of his troop transport. The sergeant again began checking the refugees, one at a time, occasionally glancing at the photo of the American to refresh his memory. When the woman who had shouted that her son had starved in the east passed for inspection, he returned to the transport to slip her one of the sirloins. Her startled and grateful expression almost made the war worthwhile for the sergeant.

When the meat truck was two kilometers west of the checkpoint, Jack Cray's knife emerged from between the breastbones of a bull carcass. The blade slashed through the twine he had used to tie the ribs together after he had entered the organ cavity. He wrestled with the bones, grunting with the effort. He slithered out of the bull, dropping like a newborn calf to the truck bed. He was covered with blood and offal. His hair was matted with pieces of sinew and blood. His clothes were sodden. A veil of red slime covered his face.

He squeezed between the swaying and jolting carcasses to the cargo door, then slipped his knife between the door edges to lift the hasp. He pushed open a door, waited until the truck slowed for a corner, then leaped into the overgrowth at the side of the road. He rolled twice before finding his feet. He put his knife into his waistband, then pulled a compass from his pocket.

The compass had been made by the Colditz escape committee out of a molded phonograph record, a sewing needle, and a magnetized strip of razor blade. Cray sprinted across the road, climbed over a pole fence, and entered a glade of trees.

The compass needle pointed north, and Cray headed that direction. North, toward Berlin.

PART TWO

1

OTTO DIETRICH stared between the blast tape crisscrossing the bay window out onto Kammler Street. Fractured and charred pieces of his neighbors' homes had been pushed into piles at even intervals along the sidewalk. Across the street, old Frau Fodor tended an iron pot hung over a fire, stirring it with a wooden spoon. Passersby stopped to stare into the pot and nod, enjoying the steam that wafted across their faces. Turnips and a potato were in the pot. Frau Fodor's home resembled a pile of kindling, and she was living in a tool- shed in the back, but did her cooking on the sidewalk so she could share the scents and steam with her neighbors.

Dr. Scheller asked, "They said they'd bring her here?"

"Two o'clock. They are three minutes late." The detective rocked back and forth on his heels, his eyes still at the window. His knuckles gripping the window frame were white. "Those people are never late."

The detective had pushed aside a lamp table so he could stand at the window. The doctor sat on an overstuffed sofa. Fabric on the sofa's corner was ragged where Maria's cat had sharpened its claws over the years. The cat had disappeared, Dietrich suspected into Frau Fodor's pot. The telephone rang, but Dietrich stayed at the window. His hands abruptly began to tremble, so violently that he grabbed his pant legs. Since his release from prison, his hands would begin shaking, for no reason and at any time.