Five Past Midnight (49 page)

"What about the other one?" Cray asked. "The SS trooper?"

"I don't know him," Dietrich said. "Never seen him before."

Cray wagged his pistol at the trooper. "Lucky for you, eh?"

The American used a key to unlock the trooper's handcuffs from one hand. The trooper's eyes darted between Cray's hands, searching for the fabled knife. Cray attached one cuff to an exposed pipe, the trooper still sitting in the chair.

The American picked up his pack, then led Otto Dietrich through the wing's maze of ruin.

As they reached Sergeant Kahr in the lobby, the all clear sounded, and Cray looked at his wristwatch. "There'll be another air raid in thirty minutes. We'd better be there."

He didn't say where, and Dietrich and Kahr had to satisfy themselves by following him. They turned south to Leipziger Strasse, then onto the plaza, then past the Hotel Esplanade, heading for the Tiergarten.

Detective Dietrich could not help himself. "Look around. Your bombers did this."

They were walking through a sea of rubble, along a narrow path cleared to allow pedestrians to pass. On both sides of them fire-blackened building facades stood like tombstones. Wreckage filled the eye to the horizon without the relief of a single undamaged structure or bit of color or a standing tree. Gray and brown debris and nothing more.

Cray said, "Well, you did your part to stop it, back there, letting me go."

Dietrich stepped around a pile of books that had been tossed onto the street by a bomb's concussion. "Agent Koder was right. I'm a traitor to the Fatherland."

"Yeah, maybe so." He led them around a delivery truck lying on its side.

Dietrich raised his voice in exasperation. "Isn't it incumbent on you to argue that I'm a patriot and not a traitor?"

"It's incumbent on me to see that we don't die in the next few minutes. I'll worry about your feelings later." Cray narrowed his eyes, searching the next intersection. He had heard something.

Searching for deserters, an SS patrol rounded a mound of rubble, three storm troopers, two of them carrying submachine guns. One trooper signaled for Cray and Dietrich and Kahr to stop.

Cray shifted his pack to his other shoulder, then said under his breath, "Unless you have a better idea, Inspector, I'm going to kill all three of these fellows five seconds from right now."

"Wait."

The troopers surrounded the trio. The leader, an SS sergeant, ordered gruffly, "Show me your papers."

Moving his hand slowly, Dietrich pulled out Himmler's letter and showed it to the
Scharführer,
who rasped, "Sorry, sir. Thank you." He saluted either Dietrich or the letter and led his men away.

Cray and the others crossed Tiergartenstrasse and entered the park.

Bombs had turned the Tiergarten over as thoroughly as if it had been done with a giant plow. Little remained that was level — only holes and mounds of dirt. Acres and acres of craters and hillocks of blasted earth had replaced the lovely grass fields.

"Slow down," Dietrich said, panting. "My leg is killing me." His pants were bloodstained from the knee to his shoe.

Cray glanced at Dietrich's wound. "Hell, I've been hurt worse playing poker with my Ranger buddies."

As they passed the remnants of a pergola, Dietrich grabbed Cray's arm to stop him, perhaps too roughly. The knife was instantly in the American's hand, held politely, almost out of sight. The detective said, "You are the only person who will ever know my reason for turning my pistol on Koder and the SS guard and freeing you to go back into the bunker after trying desperately to stop you. I want you to listen to me a minute, without any of your ghastly American optimism or dumb wisecracks."

"I'll try."

The air-raid sirens began again, drifting over the Tiergarten, their tones shifting with the breeze.

"The Reich killed my wife. She died in front of my eyes. It didn't break my loyalty to the Fatherland. Not then. It took some time, working on me every day and night. And I could push it aside, chasing you, doing my job. That's all I had after she died, my job. And so I did my job, pushing away the senselessness of Maria's death."

Cray was looking around, moving his head right and left, searching for the SS or the Gestapo.

The detective grabbed his arm to get his attention. "Listen to me, goddamn it." He wet his lips. "But my rage worked like a worm inside me. And when I saw you dragged into the garden, I broke. Müller was going to toss me back into prison anyway, and I owed the Fatherland nothing, not anymore, not after they took my wife from me. I just broke, right then, just as Koder was about to shoot you. And I knew how to strike back. Through you. So I drew my pistol on Koder and the guard, and let you go back down into the bunker with Koder's pistol."

Cray reached for Dietrich's arm. "I'm touched, really. Now let's get to the airstrip."

Dietrich asked harshly, "Are all Americans as tough as you?"

"The tough ones are over fighting the Japs."

Dietrich hurried after Cray, Ulrich Kahr in the rear.

Cray pursed his lips, his eyes at an amused angle. "It had become personal between you and me, hadn't it. You weren't going to allow yourself to break until you had bested me."

Dietrich admitted solemnly, "Yes. It had become personal." After a few more steps he asked, "How'd you infiltrate the TeNo squad?"

"I knew exactly when Sergeant Kahr was going to fill the bunker with smoke and fire. And I knew the Mauerstrasse TeNo station responded to Chancellery and bunker emergencies. So I put detonators into several mines, and half blew up the TeNo squad headquarters just as the emergency call was coming in. In the resulting smoke and confusion at the TeNo station, I joined up."

"You joined up?"

"Some TeNo men were injured, most confused. I walked out of the smoke into their midst, wearing a gas mask like many of them. I crossed the plaza with them, covered by smoke from the bombing run. I wasn't given a second glance."

"Where's the plane?" Ulrich Kahr asked urgently. They were walking across sawdust, where Tiergarten trees had been sawed into fireplace-sized pieces. "I can't see anything. Too much smoke."

Cray led them to an area in the park west of Bellevue Allee, a road that cut diagonally across the Tiergarten. A short landing strip was wedged between craters. The strip had been cut into the park at the beginning of the war, and bulldozers immediately repaired the runway each time it was bombed. The Allies had guessed that this tiny field would be used by Hitler to flee Berlin. Cray and Dietrich and Kahr approached a copse of shattered trees, their trunks broken and split like trodden straw.

Katrin stepped from the trees. Her arms were across her chest. She was not carrying anything, didn't bring anything to take with her. Cray knew then he had failed to convince her to leave Berlin.

Cray said, "I'm glad you've come."

"To say good-bye. And to see what other strange things you'll say, to prolong my amusement a little more. Sort of an antidote to the war." She paused, then added, "And I have nothing else to do."

Cray slipped the pack off his shoulders and unbuttoned it. "Put on these shirts." He handed the Germans large white dress shirts, and began putting on one himself.

Kahr nervously looked over his shoulder, across the park to the row of ruined buildings on Tiergartenstrasse. "These white shirts will make us conspicuous."

"Anyone not wearing a bright white shirt or any vehicle which approaches our plane is going to have a world of trouble," Cray's shirt — from the Countess's closet of unclaimed tailoring — was much brighter than his Rescue Squad uniform. The tails hung out. Katrin declined to put on a shirt.

Dietrich asked, "This woman—Katrin von Tornitz—won't join your escape?"

"No."

Dietrich looked at her. "I heard reports from Danzig and Stettin. Terrible things have happened to German women. Russian soldiers won't treat you kindly. You'd better go with the American."

She shook her head.

Dietrich shrugged, then held out the white shirt. "I'm not going, either."

"The Gestapo is going to hunt you down if you remain here." Cray buttoned his shirt. "And then there'll be the Russians after the Gestapo is gone."

"I'm not going to England or the United States. I'm a German."

"You'll be a dead German in short order, if you don't come along."

"I have a few places I can hide."

Cray argued, "You can't hide from the Gestapo. You told me so yourself. There's no point martyring yourself when the end of the war is so near."

Dietrich shook his head. "I'm not going."

Cray said only "Suit yourself."

"There they are." Ulrich Kahr pointed north.

The wind had torn great windows in the smoke. A bomber wing was approaching the Spree from the north. The B-17s were escorted by a dozen or more fighters, looking like gnats hovering around the bombers. At the Spree the bombers veered west to do their business elsewhere, maybe Spandau. But most of the fighters maintained their southerly course, flying right at the Cray and the others in the Tier- garten. The fighters—P-51 Mustangs—grew quickly, the roar of their Rolls-Royce Merlin engines racing out ahead of them.

Otto Dietrich looked back at Tiergartenstrasse. "Cray, they've found us."

Two black automobiles were making their way along the street, winding around clusters of rubble.

An armored car emerged through a gap in the rubble and fell in line behind the cars.

"A bulletin must have gone out from the bunker." Dietrich pulled out his pistol, but it looked tiny and useless in his hand, so he returned it to the holster under his jacket. "Maybe a call from the bunker. That SS unit we came across probably reported our direction. Or maybe someone recognized you. Or maybe the Gestapo just figured we would head here, to this airstrip. But here they come."

"The Russians are within a couple of kilometers of here," Cray said. "You'd think the SS and Gestapo would clear out while they had the chance."

Dietrich looked at him. "You don't understand them. You're from America. You don't know anything."

"Where's our plane?" Kahr demanded.

He stared at the convoy, which had jumped a curb and was crossing the park. A side window came down in the lead car, a Horch, and out came a hand holding a pistol. The armored car took a new bearing, heading more westerly, to block an escape attempt. Their engines could not be heard over the rising and falling wails of the air-raid sirens and the increasingly louder bellowing of the Mustangs.

"Where's our plane, goddamn it?" Ulrich Kahr yelled. "Where's the plane you said would be here?"

It dropped out of the sky from a parting bank of smoke, smaller and more nimble than the usual hardware over Berlin. It fluttered down, resembling a leaf in autumn. A twin-engine transport made by Douglas and called the Skytrain, often used to ferry generals and their staffs around.

"That's a fine pilot," Cray said.

"Christ on his cross, Yank, the Gestapo is coming for us." Kahr's head jerked left and right, searching for an avenue of escape. "They're a hundred meters away. Eighty meters. We're going to end up on a meat hook."

"Don't worry about them."

"What?" Kahr exclaimed furiously. "Do something."

Cray smiled. "Those Gestapo agents aren't wearing white shirts."

The lead Horch was fifty meters from Cray when the ground near it began to bubble. Clots of dirt burst into the air. Then the projectiles found the car, and cut it in half, side to side, ripping through metal and glass and upholstery and flesh. The Mustang pilot lingered with the auto in his sights, letting .50-caliber bullets reduce the vehicle to scraps. Then the fighter soared overhead, the pilot wiggling his wings in glee.

Gestapo agents bailed out of the second car, but they were too late. The second Mustang in the strafing formation loosed long bursts at the car and all around it. Limbs and heads and trunks were pierced through and flicked into the air and dashed to the ground, and then the car was shredded. The gasoline tank burst and doused the car's remains in fire.

The armored car turned sharply, its driver trying to find cover behind a mound of dirt. Bullets ruptured the vehicle, turning it inside out, then dismantling it. The car sank on its axles. Not one of the SS troopers inside made it as far as the door latches.

The Skytrain miraculously pulled out of its dive and plopped down on the runway. A crewman opened the fuselage hatch as the plane was still rolling.

Katrin turned away from the smoking wreckage of the armored car. She stood there, her eyes glistening, until Cray held out his arms and she stepped into them. She tucked her chin into his neck and held him around his shoulders, and he held her tightly, but they were out of practice, and it was all a bit awkward.

She whispered into his ear, "Good-bye, Jack." Her tears were on his neck.

Cray's arm jerked. Katrin's head bounced forward, and she slumped into Cray's arms. In his hand was his pistol. He had just sent the butt into her temple.

"Help me," he ordered.

When Cray started dragging her, Ulrich Kahr lifted her legs. They carried her to the Skytrain, then handed her up to two crewmen.

Cray hollered over the roar of the plane's engines, "Buckle her into a seat."

Prop wash flattening his clothes against him, Cray returned to Dietrich.

The detective said, "You're doing her a favor, taking her out of here."

Cray said quietly, so that Dietrich had to lean forward to hear, "I'm not doing it for her. I'm doing it for me." Then he scratched his chin. "You know, I don't have a lot of friends."

"That's entirely understandable," Dietrich replied, a bit stiffly. Katyusha rockets rose into the eastern sky, as close together as piano strings.

"I'd hate to lose one." The pistol appeared again in Cray's hand, and he lashed out with it, slamming the butt against Dietrich's temple.

Cray caught the detective as he fell. He laughed and said to Kahr, "You Germans sure are slow learners."

Kahr lifted Dietrich's legs, and Cray had him under his arms, and they retraced their route across the ruined ground toward the Skytrain. Mustangs covered them, soaring low over the transport, then rising and banking north to come around in tight circles. The Skytrain's propellers were still turning.