Five Past Midnight (17 page)

Geysers of dirt and stone shot up from the road, so much soil and pebbles and muddy water that the road seemed to turn on its side. The motorcycle bucked. Cray lurched forward over the handlebars, his legs suddenly in the air behind him. The BMW spun left. Then the careening front wheel caught on a stone. The sidecar rotated up and over and the cycle rolled. The gas tank smacked into Cray, launching him into a ditch at the side of the road.

The motorcycle continued a few more yards onto the field. Then its gas tank exploded in an orange plume. Bullets had passed through various parts of the BMW. The motorcycle and sidecar and Cray's new weapons burned furiously. A stick grenade detonated, casting motorcycle parts across the pasture.

Cray pushed himself to his knees in time to see the Thunderbolt bank out of the valley. The fighter skimmed the eastern hill, rising to make another run at the motorcyclist. Cray knew the plane had six 50- caliber Colt-Browning machine guns, and that in a moment they would all be aimed at him again. He could see the silhouette of the American flyer under the cockpit's glass. The pilot was probably smiling.

Cray mentally checked himself. Nothing broken But his ribs ached where he had bounced against the BMW's tank. The sound of the eighteen-cylmder Pratt & Whitney engine filled the valley. The Thunderbolt leveled off, coming at the road at a ninety-degree angle. Now sunlight glinted off the cockpit glass, hiding the American flyer, making the plane seem pilotless and even more sinister. The Allies must be running out of targets, to take after a lone cyclist with that fearsome machine, then to bother to come back to make sure the job was done.

Cray leaped from the ditch and sprinted across the road toward a barn. He could see muzzle flashes from the Thunderbolt's wings. Spouts of dirt rose from the road and rushed toward him. Cray dove behind a corner of the barn — his ribs jolting him with pain — then scrambled on his hands and knees along the side of the barn away from the road.

Behind him, the barn's corner disintegrated in a cloud of splinters as bullets poured through it. The roof sagged and creaked. The plane soared by a hundred feet above the ground, the bellow of its engine dropping to a low growl as it passed. The fighter sped away down the valley. Cray smelled its exhaust.

He lifted himself from the ground and brushed the mud and straw from his uniform. He started back the way he had come, south down the dntroad. The Thunderbolt disappeared to the west. Cray splashed along the road and in ten minutes came to the field of German casualties. The locomotive was pouring smoke into the sky. A white banner with a red cross was draped across the front of the locomotive, hung between a marker lamp and the bell, and two more red crosses covered the side of the boiler below the steam dome. The red crosses had spared the train the Thunderbolt's deadly attention.

Looking for sentries but seeing none, Cray stepped onto the muddy field and began walking among the injured German soldiers. They were scattered across the field, many lying on greatcoats and blankets. A few wore the black uniforms of tank crewmen. Most were in the Wehrmacht's gray-green. Several SS troopers wore their black. Blood was everywhere, on the uniforms, on skin, smeared across the mud. Most of the casualties wore bandages or splints or some combination. Cray smelled the stink of gangrene and the sourness of sulfa powder. Many of the soldiers had died here waiting for help, and were lying on the ground with their eyes and mouths open, often wearing startled expressions. Litter bearers carried the wounded toward the train. Those who could walk waited in lines near the cars.

Cray searched for fifteen minutes. He was asked no questions by the wounded or the nurses or the train crew. He had a large selection, soldier after soldier who had gone to war and had paid the price. Cray finally found what he wanted. He knelt by a dead Wehrmacht major— a fair-haired man about Cray's height—who had suffered a deep shoulder wound. The hole was packed with cotton wadding. Judging from the red ground under him, the officer had bled to death.

The American glanced up to confirm no one was watching, then pulled off the dead man's dressing. He tied the bloody rag to his neck. A medic had pinned the dead major's papers to the man's stained coat. Cray attached the documents to his own coat.

He walked slowly toward the train, stepping around groups of wounded soldiers. Some smoked, some talked in low voices with each other, but most were in too much pain to do anything but wait. Cray joined a line of walking wounded, most with blood on them in colors from bright and fresh to brown and old. The soldiers had haggard faces and thin necks. They had been hungry longer than they had been injured. The line made its way slowly toward the railcar.

When Cray reached the car's step, a medic glanced at his documents, but the man was so tired he was not seeing anything. A brigade medical officer with a white band on his right arm and a greatcoat covered in blood helped Cray aboard. He asked Cray a question, but Cray pointed to the bandage on his neck and shook his head. The medic nodded his understanding that Cray could not speak, and led him to a seat on the car.

Most other seats were filled. Soft moans came from some passengers, the blowing rasp of tortured breathing from others. After a few minutes the locomotive's whistle blew. The sound of couplings under sudden stress rolled from front to rear. The train lurched forward, leaving most of the injured to wait for yet another train.

Cray trusted his German only enough to hide it in a rough whisper. He asked the soldier next to him, who had a bandage around his head covering his eyes,
"Wo gehen wir?"
The soldier answered, "Berlin."

The American nodded to himself and said just above a whisper, "Berlin."

5

O
TTO
DIETRICH slumped on the three-legged stool next to the bed. His wife's hand was in his. She lay there, her breathing shallow and occasional. Her face was rose-red and splotchy, the same rash that covered most of her body. She had moaned much of the morning, but now she was quiet, and Dietrich knew the end was near. Her lovely face was sunken and her sandy gray hair was spilled about the pillow.

She was bone thin, and Dietrich had been told by Dr. Scheller that it was her time in detention and not the disease that had wasted her away. Her eyes were dark hollows. The skin of her face was so thin he could see capillaries. She had always had an inexhaustible supply of expressions, and now the stillness of her face was alien to Dietrich. She seemed a stranger.

Kurt Scheuer had given her a few days, and he had been generous. Now her time was up. Dietrich sat in their old house, the back two rooms boarded up from a bomb blast fourteen months ago, squeezing her hand, wondering how he would continue after today. Long ago he had determined that only two things were certain in his life: the love between Maria and him, and his investigating skills. Two things he could always count on, the two constants that would get him through a hard day, a hard week Now one of those constants was leaving him

Christ, he loved his wife. He blinked and blinked. A photograph framed in silver was on their bedside table, and he turned to it rather than look at her. She was her old self in the photo. A flash of teeth, merrily angled eyes, mischief right there for all to see. Dietrich glanced behind him, to the dresser, to a photo of them on their wedding day, as handsome a pair as had ever been joined together at the Charlottenburg Lutheran Church. Next to the photo was his service pistol and a manila envelope containing the photograph of the escaped POW.

Feeling he was being unkind — looking at her in the old photographs rather than as she was now before him, drawn and skeletal — he turned back to the bed. Her chest rose and fell, just a suggestion of movement. He wiped a bit of spittle from the corner of her mouth, then caressed her forehead. Her fever had ended only because her body no longer had the strength to generate heat. Her eyes were closed as they had been since the Gestapo had delivered her.

The telephone rang for the tenth or eleventh time since he had brought her home from the hospital. He ignored it again.

Time and time again when he was in the Lehrterstrasse Prison, Dietrich would reconstruct their wedding day. Each time he remembered more detail, until after several months in his cell he could play it out before his closed eyes like a cinema, even though it had been twenty-five years ago. All the bouquets, the champagne, his father-in- law's lederhosen, the cream and strawberries, every faux pearl on Maria's dress. Their wedding, all the way through, over and over.

As he stared at his wife, Dietrich was about to begin again with his memory, with his arrival at the church with his brother who was best man. But Maria shuddered and gasped. Her body straightened as if pulled from both ends. She inhaled loudly and let it out, her nose flaring. Then her head moved on the pillow and her eyes opened. She looked at her husband a few seconds, and she whispered his name, "Otto".

Then she was still. The life went out of her, her eyes still open. He knew she was dead. He had seen enough dead people to know But he checked the pulse in that thin arm, and there was nothing there.

Otto Dietrich stared at his wife for five more minutes, or it might have been thirty. Grief bore down on him. He held her hand, then he held his head in his hands, vaguely wondering how he would ever leave this room. Then he closed her eyes with his fingers, and bent to kiss her forehead.

He stepped across the room to the dresser. She was gone, and now if there was anything left of him, it was his ability as a policeman. He did not know if it would be enough to carry him through the days to come.

He pulled Jack Cray's photograph from the envelope, staring at it with the same intensity he had gazed upon his wife. He put the envelope in his pocket, then lifted his pistol. He went downstairs and out of the house to his automobile.

6

THE TRAIN moved in fits and starts, often on hastily reconstructed tracks that sank under the train's weight. At the Plane River all the wounded soldiers disembarked to lighten the load because the bridge had been heavily damaged in a bombing raid. Soldiers limped across or were carried across on litters, and reboarded on the other side. Often only a mile would be gained in an hour, and the train was frequently shunted onto sidings for no apparent reason. Twice American dive- bombers soared low along the train, looking for evidence that the train carried anything but wounded soldiers. The locomotive was using peat for fuel, which caused sparks to gush out the stack like fireworks.

Cray's car was hot and fetid. The odors were of unwashed uniforms and old dressings. The soldiers rocked and swayed. When a Wehrmacht corporal slumped sideways and fell to the floor, he was returned to his seat even though he was dead because there was no other place for him. Medics occasionally passed through the car, but they had few supplies and so relied most often on kind words. An infantry NCO in the seat in front of Cray had suffered a head wound, and blood seeped from under the gauze pads onto the seat back. Cray surreptitiously dipped his hand into the blood and dabbed it at his neck to freshen the appearance of his dressing.

Across the aisle, a tank corporal in a black uniform wore a wrap around his right wrist where his arm newly ended, and softly dictated a letter to his seatmate, a grenadier lieutenant. The lieutenant's left pant leg had been cut off and replaced by a white wrap that was dappled with blood. The soldier behind Cray moaned softly.

Through the fogged window Cray saw a sign announcing the town of Linthe. The train passed a thicket of trees, then a station house where four armed guards patrolled the platform. Next came a water tower and an equipment shed. Then the couplings sounded and the train began to slow. Out Cray's window was another guard, this one in a coal-bucket helmet and the padded gray anorak of the Waffen-SS, and carrying a submachine gun. Then into Cray's view came four, then eight more Waffen-SS troopers, a line of them. Behind them were officers in gray greatcoats. And further back were a dozen or more members of the Rural Police in their brown knee boots and old-fashioned double- brimmed caps. All eyes were on the train. The Waffen-SS troopers were taking their submachine guns off their shoulders. Brakes shrieked all along the cars.

Cray quickly rose from the seat and moved to the rear of the car. The other passengers were too exhausted to glance up at him, except for a Wehrmacht captain with burn blisters across his right cheek and down his neck. He nodded at Cray, who pushed open the rear door and stepped into the coupling housing. The slatted floor shifted beneath his feet. Out the small housing window Cray saw more Waffen-SS troopers. The housing was made of ribbed canvas. The train slowed. Cray inserted his hand between the rubber flanges that connected the two cars' housings. The rubber was pliable, but only when he struggled against it. The car came to a stop. He again glanced out the window. A guard walked past the coupling, saying something to another guard who was out of Cray's sight, then the guard disappeared behind the corner of the car.

Cray knew it was a gamble. Policemen and soldiers would be watching the car doors, not the couplings, but even so, a guard might step into sight of the coupling. The guards were undoubtedly going to start a car-to-car search, and Cray had to get off the train. He squeezed an arm and shoulder through the rubber so that the flanges gripped his trunk. He struggled against the frame, and forced the ribbed canvas back like an accordion. He pushed himself further through.

Cray was extruded through the gap. With his trailing leg still squeezed between the rubber flanges, he dropped to the gravel and ties below He frantically kicked his leg free, then crawled under the train.

He was below the coupling. Arm over arm, he moved back a few feet until he was hidden by wheels. Black boots walked on the gravel nearby. Two guards laughed at something. Cray grabbed the brake hose with one hand and the top of the iron wheel with the other, then lifted himself up to the undercarriage of the car. He inserted a foot between the hose and the bottom of the car, then an arm, and so could hang onto the undercarriage. He pulled himself up tightly against the slats.