Five Past Midnight (19 page)

The driver shook his head. "I hear that every day. It's all life or death."

"I'm giving you an order," Keppler barked. "Get off the motorcycle. I'm commandeering it."

"Goddamn know-it-all lifer sergeants." The driver turned to his sidekick. "Hang on." The driver accelerated the engine and kicked the motorcycle into gear. The rear tire spun gravel as it passed Cray and the Germans.

The driver called over his shoulder, "L.M.A., Sergeant." The abbreviation was universally understood in the German services, and was short for
Leck' mich am Arsch
—lick my ass.

The motorcycle sped away to the south. Cray brought his hand away from the sergeant's neck. The American said, "Shakespeare it wasn't, but not bad." He pulled the Mauser away from Enge and inserted the clip.

"You weren't really going to kill Sergeant Keppler, were you?" Enge's eyes were wide. "With that knife of yours?"

"Nah. I was pretending." Cray's knife had disappeared.

Keppler said, "Enge, you are dumber than a stone."

"I'm going on alone," the American said. "You two walk back in the other direction."

"Really?" Enge blurted. "We can go free?"

"Walk back the way you came."

The sergeant said sourly, "He's going to wait until we are five meters away, then shoot us with your Mauser."

Cray spread his hands in a gesture of reasonableness. "Would I do that?" He started north, his boots splashing puddles of rainwater. He rested the rifle on his shoulder.

Enge followed him. "Our lieutenant is going to murder us for being absent without leave. He's a real bastard."

"That really isn't my concern, Private." Cray picked up his pace.

Enge matched the American step for step. "Well, it's your fault."

"My fault? The whole war is your fault."

"And the SS is shooting soldiers for running away. Maybe some Blackshirts will find Sergeant Keppler and me and shoot us. You'd have that on your conscience."

Cray sighed, something he didn't like to be heard doing. He turned to the private. "What do you want me to do?"

Enge pulled out his flyer of the American commando. "You can write a note to my lieutenant."

"Write him a note?"

Enge nodded earnestly. He pulled a pencil from a front pocket and pushed it and the flyer into Cray's hand.

"Enge, you are a moron," Sergeant Keppler called.

The private turned around to offer his back as a surface for the paper. "Write this: I am the American terrorist whose photo is on this poster. I kidnapped Sergeant Keppler and Private Enge so they were late to return to their duty.'"

Cray transcribed the dictation. "Anything else?"

Enge thought for a moment. "They acted honorably and bravely, especially Private Enge."

Cray added the sentence. "Anything else?"

Enge pursed his lips. "How is the lieutenant going to know it was really you who signed this?"

Cray offered, "I'll add something about the Vassy Chateau that very few people know, that you couldn't know."

"Like what?"

Cray scratched his chin. "The third soldier I killed had a white patch over one eye. How's that?"

"Perfect."

Cray finished the note, signed his name, then passed the flyer back to Private Enge.

Enge grinned his thanks before trotting back toward Sergeant Keppler.

"The Russians will overrun this place someday soon," Cray called. "Don't let them kill you, Private."

Enge cackled victoriously
as
he rejoined his sergeant. "If you couldn't kill me, neither can the Russians."

Cray resumed his walk north. "No, probably not."

8

THE WEIGHT of the message slowed her, seemed to be a yoke around her shoulders, and she had to will her legs to carry on. She could feel her heart in her chest. Katrin von Tornitz suspected she was a coward.

She had yet to decode the message, but its length terrified her. She had transcribed the dots and dashes, and toward the end of the message her hands had been shaking so badly she could hardly keep the dots from being dashes. She had come to calling the faceless sender of the messages the Hand, and the Hand was asking her to break its own rule about her making long broadcasts because the information it had wanted had then taken five minutes to send. She had signed off with her Vs and fled the ruins of the abandoned house a kilometer from her own home, and now walked in the darkness of Berlin's Nikolassee neighborhood, carrying the radio in her suitcase.

Night covered the neighborhood. Streetlights were out, blackout curtains hid windows, and the few automobiles on the road had tape over their headlights that allowed only thin beams of light. Katrin made her way along the street, stepping over small, stray branches of oaks and elms that had been cut down for firewood. A slight scent of smoke hung in the air, but she could not tell if it was from her neighbors' fireplaces or from that day's bombing runs in the eastern part of the city.

When she passed the home of Gauleiter Eckardt, the smell of pastry made her slow, made her glance
up
the brick walkway to the door. The gauleiter had an inexhaustible supply of food because he controlled the city's warehouses. The day after Adam's arrest, Eckardt had appeared on her doorstep offering her the benefits of his pantry and the protection of his household if she would help him overcome the loss of his wife and children, who had left for the safety of Switzerland. Katrin had politely declined, but such was the power of her hunger that she always slowed
as
she passed the gauleiter's walkway She would detect the scents of beef or venison, or chicken soup, which Berliners like to sip through straws, and once she had smelled
a
blackberry Strudel, she was sure of it. She wondered if now—all these months of hunger later—she would be able to resist his offer should it come again, whether her mouth would be able to form the words to turn him down. She shook off her revolting speculation.

Thoughts of food were a familiar companion, and they calmed her. She walked steadily, the vapor of her breath trailing over her shoulders. On these cold spring nights Berlin was as silent as a country pasture. The citizens had fled or were dead or were inside their homes huddling before small fires, if they had somehow found wood. At least until the British bombers came at midnight, Berlin's residential neighborhoods sounded as the areas must have a thousand years ago, with the soft sough of wind and the occasional lupine cry of a dog. On these long walks she could will away the war.

And she could will back Adam. She was still two blocks from her home, so she had time to re-create one of their dates. She smiled to herself as she picked his birthday dinner — his last birthday dinner ever — at Horcher's. They had sat near the window at the tiny restaurant at Lutherstrasse 2, and had begun the meal with sherry and caviar surrounded by shaved ice, followed by consomme Marcelle, then crabs in a dill sauce served over red nee, then venison in sour cream. Then a 1928 Lieserer Niederberg and peaches flambe, which was brought to the table by two waiters. The peaches and sugar were placed in a silver bowl and cooked over an alcohol lamp for five minutes. Then the skins were removed and the fruit cut in half and placed over shaved ice in another bowl to chill. Finally the peaches were layered on ice cream and topped with crushed nuts and apricot brandy.

Katrin ruefully wiped the corner of her mouth. She had begun to salivate like a dog. And she was painfully aware that, as she had brought back that lovely and departed day she was focusing on the food rather than on Adam. Her home was now just half a block more along the street. It rose in front of her, a dark shadow on a black night, unleavened by a light or the hope of a warm greeting at the door. Instead of a sanctuary, her home had become a roof and a bed to her, offering no joy that was not a memory. She wondered what she would eat that night, could not think of a single item left in her pantry. Maybe there was a potato in the bin on the back porch. She would cut away the rotted black spots. She passed the laurel hedge that marked the edge of her lot.

The sound of auto tires came from behind her. Katrin looked over her shoulder. A black sedan was moving slowly, was following her, and was running without headlight slits. The cab was dark and she could not make out faces. Then she saw a circular antenna on the car's roof. This was the Opel that Colonel Becker had warned her about. The agents inside the car must have been able to fix on her broadcast, and had been following her since she left the abandoned house. A window rolled down on the car's passenger side, and a hand holding a pistol emerged.

Desperation and fear abruptly wrapped around her like a coat. She walked faster, approaching her brick walkway. She held the wireless in front of her, as if she could possibly hide it now. Anything she could do, any thoughts she might have, seemed useless and small. Then she broke into a run, slipping on the brick, but catching herself. She hurried up her walkway toward the front door, aware her attempt to escape was so hopeless it was comic.

Maybe she had known she could never accomplish what the Hand wanted. Maybe she had known they would find her. Without Adam waiting for her in the living room with a fire roaring on the grate, it didn't seem to matter if she reached her door.

The Opel accelerated to her walkway, then slowed. Two men in dark coats leaped out before it was fully stopped. The driver stayed in the car. Katrin braved a glance at them. Both wore belted coats and both carried pistols. One yelled at her to stop.

She thought vaguely that perhaps she could make it into her house. She climbed the eight steps to the porch, passing ivy planters on both sides. The home had been in Adam's family for eighty years, but she and Adam had planned after the war on finding a house with more light and fewer rooms. The enormous black oak door had a wrought-iron grate over a center portal. She uselessly fumbled for her keys. Maybe if she could get inside, look at their wedding portrait once more.

The Gestapo agents scrambled up the front steps and onto the porch behind her. Perhaps only because it was habit, the taller agent clubbed her with the butt of his handgun. Katrin sagged against the door, then slid to the mat.

The second agent caught her suitcase as it fell. He was a plug of a man, with his weight in his chest. He slipped his pistol into his belt and opened the suitcase. The plug grinned. "A pack radio."

The first agent said, "We've been looking for you a long while. You've kept a lot of us busy." He bent to dig roughly into her pockets.

He pulled out her one-time pad. "Looks like we've found ourselves a professional." He continued his search of her, patting her down, but found no weapons.

"They all talk down IN the cellar, professional or not." The plug laughed. "They talk and talk and talk."

The agents lifted Katrin by her elbows. She found she could focus her eyes. Pain from behind her ear poured down her neck and into the rest of her body. Her legs were rubbery, but the agents held her up. They carried her down the stairs and along the walkway toward the car. They chatted about something, but she could not think beyond the agony of her head. They approached the Opel, with its sweeping fenders and long hood shaped like a coffin. Darkness hid the driver.

The taller agent opened the back passenger door. Gestapo cars have the cab lights disconnected to hide comings and goings. The tall agent bent to enter the car first.

The plug waited behind Katrin. He said tonelessly "You can tell us about your radio broadcasts on the way to Prinze Albrecht Strasse. It'll save us time once we get there."

She thought she heard the tall agent cough from inside the cab. The plug put a hand on her head and pushed her down toward the door. He shoved her onto the back seat.

Everything inside the car was entirely wrong. Instead of the tall Gestapo agent, a blond, chop-jawed man sat in the middle of the leather seat, a knife in his hand. Blood dripped from the knife onto his trousers. The body of the tall Gestapo agent was pushed against the far door, crumpled and slack, blood gushing from a wound in his throat. In the front seat, the Gestapo driver was bent over his steering wheel, his hands loose at his sides. Katrin could hear blood from the driver's neck splashing onto the floor. The radio direction finder was on the seat next to the driver, its gauges glowing amber.

The blond man held a finger to his lips. He was smiling narrowly behind his hand. He wore a Wehrmacht major's uniform. For all his concern, he might have been sitting in a pew in church.

The plug had heard nothing When he bent to enter the cab, the blond reached across Katrin, gripped the agent by a coat lapel and jerked him into the car.

The agent did not even have time to register surprise. The blond brought the agent's head down over the knife, and the blade worked swiftly. The momentum of the plug's body carried him across Katrin. The agent shook violently and then relaxed in death, his last sound a liquid sigh. His body came to rest on the first agent. In one smooth motion, the agents had entered one door alive and ended up against the other door dead. The agents seemed a pile of leather. Less than ten seconds had elapsed since the first agent had entered the car.

The blond man wore stubble across his chin. His face was full of harsh angles. The knife disappeared somewhere.

With a broad accent, the blond man asked, "Do you have anything to eat?"

9

KATRIN
SAT on the only piece of furniture left in her bedroom, a Gothic armchair of carved and gilded wood with velvet upholstery. The one-time pad was on one knee and her pages of dots and dashes on the other. The room was meagerly lit by an oil lamp resting on a windowsill at her shoulder. On a bitterly cold night three months ago, with no electricity or coal, Katrin had ripped apart her bed and used the frame for firewood. Then onto the fire grate went the dresser and her antique desk on which she once wrote letters to Adam, and even the chair with the scroll legs and ball feet made by the Huguenot Daniel Marot two centuries before. She had huddled near the fireplace and watched the flames blacken and eat away the old wood, so happy to be warm she hadn't given the heirloom furniture another thought.