Five Past Midnight (28 page)

"There's something about the American I can't figure out," Hilfin- ger said after a moment, pushing aside a telephone so he could sit on the front of his desk facing Dietrich.

"Only one thing?"

"Why didn't he hide his progress toward Berlin?" Hilfinger asked. "I mean, he had that conversation with that old lady, and he let those two Wehrmacht soldiers live, Sergeant Keppler and Private Enge. The American must have known they'd report to the authorities."

"I think it's Jack Cray's way of boasting. He is telling us we can't catch him, even if he gives us glimpses of himself." Dietrich scratched his chin. "Or maybe he doesn't care if we catch him."

"What sense does that make? Why would he go to all the trouble of traveling to Berlin if he doesn't care if we find him? He could have saved himself and us a lot of trouble by getting caught nearer Colditz."

Dietrich shook his head by way of an answer.

"Do you think Jack Cray is a feint? That the enemy has another plan underway, and Cray's purpose is only to distract us? Maybe that's why he let those folks live, when he knew they'd report him."

Dietrich replied, "Maybe he let those people live because he doesn't like to shoot down someone in cold blood."

"You're suggesting Jack Cray is a nice guy?" Hilfinger laughed.

"I don't know if he is or not, and I hope never to have to put that suggestion to the test. But, feint or not, I'm only in charge of finding Cray."

Hilfinger said, "We'll have our hands full with just him, it looks

like."

"General Eberhardt can worry about the others, if Cray is a feint." Dietrich toyed with the fire nozzle. "One of the few things I'm certain of is that Jack Cray is almost certainly still disguising himself in a German uniform. Not in a refugee's clothes, or some other civilian's clothes."

"What makes you think so?" Hilfinger asked.

"Jack Cray is most comfortable in a uniform. Soldiers the world around think and act alike. Cray knows the soldier's walk and mannerisms. Because he doesn't have to be an actor when he's in a uniform, his job is easier."

"What else do you know, Inspector?" The new voice at the doorway was dreadfully recognizable.

Dietrich spun in his chair to see Rudolf Koder, who had pushed aside Haushofer. Dietrich tightened, as if expecting a blow.

The Gestapo agent smiled, perhaps in recognition of his effect.

"This is my office," Dietrich managed, trying to make himself sound angry rather than afraid. "Get out."

"I'm your case officer," Koder said in a tone of finality, as if that explained everything.

"I'm done with you." It was more a prayer.

Koder lifted half-frame reading glasses from his coat pocket and inspected them a moment before replying. "You are unfamiliar with our procedures, Detective Dietrich, and for that I apologize. We close a file only upon the death of the subject. As long as you live, I am your case officer."

Peter Hilfinger demanded, "What are you doing here?" Berlin police detectives could spot a Gestapo agent as readily as blood on snow.

Koder grinned, a malevolent crease that split in half his narrow head. "Detective Dietrich, you were a little too clever, shaking our car outside the medical examiner's office. So General Müller has ordered me to assist you."

"To watch me," Dietrich corrected.

Koder pursed his lips. "Your organization and mine have different methods, to be sure. We in the Staatspolizei are a bit more"—he hesitated, apparently searching for the precise word—"direct. But I can be of help in your search." He added pleasantly, "While I watch you."

Dietrich stared at his tormentor. Then he reached into his coat pocket, pulled out Himmler's letter, and held it up so Koder could read it. "Now go away"

"That's truly impressive. I wish I had a letter like that." The Gestapo agent shook his head with transparent sadness. "But I report to General Müller, and can't take orders from anyone but him."

Koder lowered himself to a captain's chair below a bulletin board. To his right was a floor-to-ceiling map of Berlin, with colored pins stuck here and there. A row of lockers lined the north wall. Three other detectives were at their desks in the room. Somewhere nearby the telephone poles were down, so lines had been jury-rigged through a window near Dietrich's desk. A wadded coat had been plugged into the gap around the phone lines. Because the office had no heat, the detectives were wearing overcoats. Around Hilfinger's neck was a blue scarf his mother had knitted.

"I'll ask again, Inspector," Koder said. "What else do you know?"

Peter Hilfinger's face had gained the pink hue of anger. He had learned his craft from Dietrich and revered the man. Like all detectives in the room, Hilfinger knew the circumstances of Dietrich's disappearance into the Gestapo dungeon. And here was one of the devils, in their own midst, bullying the great man. Hilfinger's hand slid toward the lead-filled sap in his coat pocket as he sidled toward the agent. A look from Dietrich froze him.

"I've learned nothing else," Dietrich answered.

"And is that why, even though a barbarous killer is roaming the city, you and your boys are sitting here, rather than out on the streets looking for him?"

Reassured that Koder had not arrived to escort him back to Lehrterstrasse Prison, a modicum of courage returned to Dietrich. "Koder, how many reliable people do you have reporting to you on, say, the Schiffbauerdamm?"

This street, near the Spree, was where Berlin shipwrights had lived and worked during the reigns of the Great Elector and Frederick the Great.

Koder studied Dietrich, perhaps wondering how he was being asked to incriminate himself. "Three or four."

"Three or four in the entire neighborhood." Dietrich glanced at Hilfinger. This lesson was for him and Haushofer and the others. Rudolf Koder was beyond lessons. "In the summer of 1941, I arrested Gotthard Henneberg, a house painter who had murdered three young women on the street over the prior twelve months. Henneberg was convicted of the murders and executed."

"Is there a point to this nice little story?"

"The neighborhood was relieved and grateful, and now I have two hundred people on the Schiffbauerdamm who report to this office the slightest of peculiar circumstances. You rely on fear. I rely on respect."

"Jack Cray is still out there," Koder said flatly.

"But he can't evade me long. Not in Berlin. I have thousands and thousands of pairs of eyes looking for him."

When the telephone sounded, Dietrich lifted the handset to his ear. "This is Dietrich... Yes, I remember you, Captain."

The detective grabbed for a pencil and rose from his chair as he dashed off notes on the back of an envelope. "Von Tornitz ? I don't know that name..,. His widow? Are you sure?"

Dietrich dipped his chin at Peter Hilfinger, who picked up an extension to listen in.

"And the American?" Dietrich asked. "A bandage over his face?"

Dietrich cupped his hand over the phone. He ordered Hilfinger, "Adam von Tornitz. A Wehrmacht captain, dead now. Lived in Berlin. Get his address."

He turned his attention again to the telephone. "That's all?... Thank you, Captain. You'll hear from me again." Dietrich lowered the telephone. He grinned meanly at the Gestapo agent. "One of my pairs of eyes saw the widow of Adam von Tornitz walking with the American near the Tiergarten."

Hilfinger ran his finger down a page of the city directory.

"Von Tornitz?" Koder asked. "I know that name. He was involved in a plot against the Führer. He was hanged, as I recall. I might have witnessed his execution on Lehrterstrasse." He waived his hand airily. "But perhaps not. They are hard to remember, one from another, after a while."

Hilfinger wrote down an address. "It's in the Nikolassee." He handed the address to Dietrich.

Dietrich dialed, then barked orders into the telephone. Still grinning, waving the address like a prize, he sped past Koder on his way out of the office, a line of detectives following him.

"HAVE YOU SEEN HIM?" Dietrich whispered, even though
the
house was sixty meters away. He had just gotten out of his car. Night was almost complete, with only faint purple left of the day in the western sky.

The plainclothes policeman shook his head. "I've been here ten minutes. There's someone in the house. At least I think so. A shadow crossing a window is all I saw. My men have had the house surrounded for those ten minutes, so if he's in there, he can't get out."

"You look silly, carrying that machine pistol," Dietrich chided easily. "Detectives and machine pistols don't mix well."

"Then you dash into that house withjust your puny handgun, sir." The policeman's name was Erwin Nolte. He quickly added, "With all due respect." He wiggled the weapon. "I'm going to keep this damned thing right in front of me, with the trigger half pulled back. That American scares the crap out of me."

"Me, too." Dietrich carried binoculars in one hand and a pack radio in the other. He sucked wind through his teeth as he watched three cars pull up along Kenner Street, a block west of the von Tornitz house. Peter Hilfinger and Egon Haushofer climbed out of the first car. Hilfinger gave directions to policemen who began to array themselves around the house, but at a distance, joining the police already there. More cars were arriving to the north, policemen spilling out.

"Sir," Nolte blurted, "he's coming out. On the front porch."

Dietrich lifted the binoculars to his eyes, saw nothing but black, hastily removed the lens covers, and tried again. Jack Cray was abruptly centered in Dietrich's field of vision, stepping between two potted plants down the steps to the front walkway.

Dietrich breathed. "It's him, all right."

Jack Cray must have had superb hearing, because just then his head jerked up. He cocked an ear. Dietrich heard nothing. For a moment. Then from the south came the low growl of an engine. Dietrich turned to see an armored scout car roaring down the street.

"Goddamn that idiot." Dietrich spun toward the house, in time to see Jack Cray rush back inside and close the door.

"Where'd the armor come from?" the policeman asked.

"On the orders of a Gestapo agent whom I'd murder if ] hadn't spent a career chasing murderers."

A black Horch rolled up next to Dietrich. Rudolf Koder and two other agents emerged from the car. At this stage in the struggle, Gestapo agents seldom traveled alone.

"That the von Tornitz house?" Koder demanded.

The armored car—a three-axle Mercedes-Benz with a 2-cm gun on a rear turret—came along the street, followed by two identical armored cars and three troop trucks. In the lead armored car a spotter wearing a tanker's black beret threw open the hatch and rose just enough to glance at Koder.

"You seen the American?" Koder yelled at Dietrich over the grind of the armored cars' engines.

Dietrich was silent, furious that the Gestapo agent had muscled into his police work.

Erwin Nolte replied, "He's in that house. Just went back through the front door."

Koder signaled to the spotter, who slipped back down into the Mercedes-Benz. The car lurched forward down the block, then rolled up the curb, plowed through three azalea bushes and knocked over a lamppost to park in front of the von Tornitz house, thirty feet from the massive oak front door.

Blackout curtains were drawn over all the windows, but power was on, and slits of light escaped from the bottoms of the curtains. The porch light was dark. The house was accented with heavy timbers on the first floor, and expanses of whitewash on the second, crisscrossed by more timbers. It
was
old and rambling, with dormers and gables, four chimneys, ornate cornices, and small oculus windows. The house was large and confused and comfortable.

SS storm troopers emerged from the trucks. When platoon leaders signaled, the troopers spread out around the house, joining the policemen. They carried Schmeissers and rifles, and moved with a confidence that indicated they were veterans of a front. A machine-gun team set up an MG-42 on a tripod on the west side of the house. The Berlin detectives watched gravely.

Anger clipped Otto Dietrich's words. "Who gave you authority to use the SS on this operation, Koder
?
"

"General Müller, of course."

"This is my goddamn job!"

"The American is in the house, and the house is surrounded. He cannot get out. Your job looks at an end, doesn't it
?
" Koder smiled at him. "So who knows what you might be doing tomorrow, or where you'll be."

When this mission was over, Dietrich would be once again of no worth to the Reich. He had not been promised a pardon were he to capture the American. Still, perhaps if he brought Jack Cray in, rather than allow the Blackshirts and the Gestapo to do his job, some fate other than a return to the cell might await him.

"I'm going in after the American," Dietrich said. "You are a policeman, not a soldier," Koder said with some satisfaction. "You don't have any idea what's waiting for you in that house." Dietrich walked toward the front porch. Pilasters were on both sides of the arched door. "Better Jack Cray than you and your guillotine."

"At least let me help you with the door." Koder gave an order to the armored car's spotter.

The spotter yelled down into his hatch. The 2-cm gun roared, yellow flashes dancing at the tip of the barrel. The sound was similar to a lightning storm: a sharp crack followed by a deep bellow. The door of the von Tornitz house and the pilasters and the frame blew inward, leaving a ragged, smoking hole at the top of the steps.

More armored equipment came noisily down the street. The gauleiter in a neighboring house pushed aside his blackout curtain to observe the scene.

Dietrich motioned for Hilfinger to join him. They slowly circled the house, beginning along a walkway between a laurel hedge and the house. Troopers held their weapons on the windows and a side door that exited to a garbage bin. A trooper was repeatedly plunging a bayonet into the garbage. He shook his head.

"The American's not under there," Dietrich told him. "He didn't have time to get outside. He's in the house."