Five Past Midnight (33 page)

"It was three dogs. The stitches are where they tore away the skin. I've got more on my buttocks, not that I'm likely to show you."

"Not that I'm likely to ask."

"You probably were going to ask," Cray said. "I've heard things about you countesses."

She giggled. "And I've heard things about you young Americans."

"They are all true."

After a moment she said, "You must despise dogs now."

"Not at all," he replied. "Those long little dogs you have around here, the ones that look like sausages."

"They are called
Tekels.
The British call them 'dachshunds.'"

"Little salt and pepper. They wouldn't be too bad. Served with some rice or potatoes."

"Oh, you." She slapped his shoulder

The small room was cluttered with mementos from her prior station and evidence of her new one. In one corner was a Louis Quinze armchair. On a fern stand near the chair was a bronze bust of the Roi Soleil. Four Dresden china parrots lined the top of a bookshelf, and on a pedestal table were two Augsburg silver candleholders and a candle- snuffer. These suggestions of the Grande Epoque were surrounded by the more common paraphernalia of the seamstress. A treadle sewing machine was under a framed portrait of Martin Luther hammering his ninety-five theses on the door of the Wittenberg church. Cloth scraps were scattered about the floor near the sewing machine. Colorful snips of fabric filled three woven baskets. A pincushion was on the armchair and another on the woman's lap and another on the table with the candlesticks. Bolts of cloth leaned here and there, some brightly dyed, but many were of the somber colors of the uniformed services. A sewing basket rested on the lady's lap, scissors handles showing above the rim. When she jerked the thread, thimbles in the basket clinked together, and Cray bared his teeth.

An ironing board was in front of the windows, which were hidden by blackout curtains. Under the board was an open box of spools of thread, arranged by color, light to dark. A pile of patterns lay on a chair. Beads of different sizes and shapes were displayed in two dozen small bottles. A headless wood mannequin stood at the end of the ironing board, a tape measure draped over a shoulder. KARSTADT'S DEFT. STORE was stenciled on the mannequin's belly.

Cray looked at a pole suspended horizontally from two wires. Perhaps twenty outfits including Wehrmacht and SS uniforms hung from the bar on hangers.

She followed his gaze. "Senior officers come to me to tailor their uniforms. Sometimes they never come back to collect them. Killed in action, I suppose. I've got a nice collection. You are welcome to them."

"I might take you up on that. Nothing less than a captain, though. I have certain standards."

She laughed, pushing her needle through his skin again. "But most of my work is taking in women's dresses and men's pants. There's no food in Berlin, and so my customers are losing weight. Pleats in the skirts, darts in the pants. That's most of my business now." She guided the needle into his skin again. "Just a couple more stitches. This is going to leave a scar. You won't mind, judging from the looks of you."

"Ma'am..."

"I'm properly called 'Countess.' Countess Gabriella Hohenberg."

"Countess, how is it you know Katrin?"

"Her mother and I were friends since childhood. We used to ride together."

Cray said, "Katrin calls you 'Auntie.' "

"Just a nickname."

"You aren't related?"

"No, but Katrin has known me all her life." She reached for a pair of scissors. "It's unlikely anyone would make the connection between her and me, if that's what you are wondering."

"Are you still in touch with Katrin's mother?"

"She died several years ago. Didn't Katrin tell you?"

"She doesn't tell me much." Cray looked again at his shoulder. "I'm surprised you didn't use some fancy double stitch, make me suffer a little more."

She cackled, and clipped the thread. "You're a nice young man. I'm glad to see Katrin has found someone."

"She didn't find me. I found her. And I'm none to her liking." After a moment Cray added, "I don't know why."

"It's probably your looks."

He smiled. "That's it."

"Would you like some coffee?"

"What's it made of?" he asked.

"Acorns."

"I'll pass."

"I've got the cloth to make you a new shirt. Or, better yet, I'll alter one of the uniforms belonging to a dead customer. Won't take me longer. You can borrow another shirt from that pile."

Cray found a blue flannel shirt that had long sleeves. While he was buttoning it, the sound of footfalls came from the outside hallway. His hand touched the pistol in his belt.

A key sounded in the lock, then Katrin entered the apartment. Her coat was cinched tightly around her waist, and the shoulders were damp from rain. She was using both hands to carry a burlap bag, and was breathing quickly from hauling it up the stairs. She lowered the bag in front of Cray, brushed drops of rain from her shoulders, then pulled an envelope from under her coat. Katrin had received a coded message on her pack radio, an address on Kordt Street, where she was to find an envelope in a milk box, and a burlap sack near the box.

From the bag Cray pulled out three Tellermines, German antitank mines each containing twelve pounds of the explosive amatol. They were olive-green, about a foot in diameter, with carrying handles. On the underside of the mines were antilifting switches so they would explode when disturbed. Also in the burlap bag was a canvas pouch, which Cray opened to reveal three blasting caps, a roll of electrical wire, and a battery.

"Just what I ordered," he said.

Cray then used the countess's pinking shears to slit open the envelope. He pulled out the envelope's contents: three typed pages and several photographs. "It's coded. More work for you." He passed the typed pages back to her, retaining the photographs.

He sat back down on the floor to share the lamplight. He studied the photographs. One was an aerial shot of Berlin, taken from perhaps three thousand feet, showing the center of the city from the Spree River on the north to Tempelhof Airport on the south. The runway was cratered. The second photo, taken at a much lower altitude, was of the Reich Chancellery—some of it open to the sky—and the garden behind it. A square blockhouse with two guards standing at each side of its en- tryway was clearly visible. The remaining photographs were of POWs, three of them. Each of these photographs showed a prisoner standing next to a camp guard. The prisoners wore Wehrmacht uniforms stripped of insignia. Judging from the guards' uniforms, two of the photos were taken in an American POW camp while the third one was from a Soviet camp. All three POWs looked confused and vulnerable.

Katrin pulled off her coat. "Auntie, may I heat some water? I found a little tea at the market. I think it's real."

"I've got the water, but not the heat."

Katrin stepped around a basket of yarn and entered the small kitchen.

The countess didn't look up from her work. "You look like her husband. Did she tell you that?"

Cray lowered the photos to look fully at the old woman. "No. She didn't."

"He was more handsome than you, of course."

"Of course."

"But he had the same size, same hair color. Same wicked smile." She glanced hopefully at the American. "I'll bet you had a way with the ladies, over there in America."

"Not really." Cray ran his finger along his chin.

"I'd guess you've some stories to tell about the American ladies," she tried again. "A fairly handsome young man like you."

"I'll never tell. And don't try to break me. I'm too tough for that." Cray returned to the photographs. The one taken from the greatest height had numbers printed along the top and letters along one side.

Katrin came in from the kitchen with three glasses of cold water, each with a sprinkling of loose tea leaves floating in it. The pages were under her arm. She handed a glass to the countess and one to Cray, then pushed a hassock into the circle of light near the old lady. She dug into the scraps in a basket near the countess's feet and retrieved the one-time pad. She sipped the cold tea, then began the transcription.

"I visited Philadelphia once, over in America," the countess said. "Did Katrin tell you?"

He glanced at Katrin. "As I said, she doesn't tell me much."

"This was in 1912. I was younger back then. Had fewer wrinkles."

"I haven't seen a single wrinkle."

She playfully tapped his arm. "You do have a way with the ladies, just as I suspected." She reached for her scissors. "Your country does not have nobility, and so I was entirely uncomfortable there. No one with titles and, worse, no one who understood titles. I don't think I was called 'Countess' once in all the time I was there."

"How dreary." Cray smiled again.

"That's why I loathe that little man with his tidy little mustache who has taken over the Reich Chancellery. He is not sensible to Germany's thousand-year heritage. He doesn't understand the courtesy due to his betters."

"Some people think he's done worse things."

"I met him once. Did Katrin tell you that?"

"She didn't mention it."

Katrin was bent over the pad. She might not have been listening. Her pencil scratched at a piece of paper.

"This was back in 'thirty-four, when Hitler was still trying to present himself as respectable. It was at a garden reception for Princess Maria Metternich-Wittenburg on her return from a year in Cairo. I'm one of the few people ever to see Hitler in a suit and a homburg. He arrived in a Mercedes cabriolet. The Brownshirts who had followed him in a second car weren't allowed into the garden, but Hitler strolled right in, hat in hand. He was introduced to me."

Cray's eyes were now on the countess. "What's he like?"

She put the patches into a basket. "Nice voice. He could have been a singer, if he hadn't become a dictator."

"Anything else about him you remember?"

"He looks directly at you when you speak. He doesn't look over your shoulder or look away. And he seems to be listening to your every word. Weighing it. His eyes are peculiar. They are compelling, curiously so, unlike any other eyes I've ever looked into. In fact, as he looked at me, I stammered out my 'How do you do ?' and could hardly get out my question about how he kept his hat on in the open car."

"What else did he say?"

"Nothing to me. He moved along, the princess introducing him to other notables. I watched him for a while, though, standing near him. When a butler arrived and asked Hitler if he could take his hat, Hitler replied, 'Take it where?' I laughed, but hid it behind my hand. I think he noticed, though. He glared at me, but only for an instant. He was looking for Prince Metternich-Wittenberg, the hostess's husband. I think Hitler wanted something from him."

"What else do you recall about him?" Cray asked.

"Nothing, really."

Katrin passed Cray her completed transcription. "The Hand works fast."

Cray read to himself a moment, "It took Colonel Becker's list of Chancellery workers we sent it, and compared those names with records it procured from the American and English and Soviet POW administrations. It must have taken a roomful of intelligence agents, sitting at desks, churning through documents."

She leaned close to follow his finger on the page. "And the Russians helped?"

"The Hand somehow managed to get Soviet cooperation."

"What's your sleeve length?" the countess asked.

"Long."

"That doesn't help. Hold your arm up."

When Cray complied, she lay a tape measure along it. She nodded to herself.

Katrin's handwriting was large and looping, requiring a second page, which Cray turned to.

Cray summarized the message aloud, slowly, as if tasting the news. "The Hand has found a second bunker in Berlin, under the barracks of the SS honor guard, on Hermann Goring Street, at right angles to the Reich Chancellery." He looked at the photograph of the Chancellery. "It's here, several hundred yards across the garden from the main bunker. The Hand thinks this second bunker is a backup, and says Hitler would probably retreat to this SS bunker were the main one knocked out."

"How did it discover the second bunker?"

"POW interrogation, I suppose. Probably a German officer who has been inside the bunker earlier in the war. Or maybe somebody who helped construct it. It says here that the source does not think there is an underground tunnel connecting the two bunkers."

"What's your neck size?" the old woman asked.

"Thick."

"That doesn't help, either." She looped the tape measure around Cray's neck. He was still sitting on the floor, so she had to bend low to read the measurement. "You're right. It is thick."

The countess lifted herself from her chair with a dignified grunt, then crossed the room to the hangers. She searched for a uniform tunic of a certain size. She pulled one out. "Here's a colonel's. Why don't you just be a colonel?"

"I don't want a lot of people saluting me, noticing me."

"I'll put some other patches on it, then." The countess returned to her chair and began plucking at the stitching on a collar patch. "You are going after Hitler, aren't you?"

Cray stared at her. "I never said anything like that."

"A man whose photograph is plastered all over Berlin — the Vassy Chateau killer — appears at my apartment with a pistol in his belt, and he receives photos taken from an airplane of the Reich Chancellery. You didn't need to say anything, but I know."

"Well
…
"

"And I wish you luck. I don't like people glaring at me at garden parties. It's rude."

"Well, I'm not really..."

"And I remember one more thing about Hitler from that day, from when he was standing there in the garden, surrounded by admirers. He is shorter than photos of him lead you to believe." She added, "So be careful not to aim too high."

"Yes?"

6

CRAY LAY on the dirt, the scent of German loess rich and close. He was at the edge of a woods, and was concealed by juniper bushes. Ahead was a clearing, then a chain-link fence. A pathway of beaten-down grass, made by patrols, paralleled the fence. The night was still dense, but the first grainy light of dawn was coloring the eastern sky. Cray could hear Red Army guns in the east. To the south the clouds were a soft orange, reflecting the fires from that night's bombing raid on Berlin. Clouds also hid the moon, and Cray could see no further than the fence. He had left the countess's apartment at midnight and had pedaled a bicycle four hours north.