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Authors: James Thayer

Tags: #Fiction, #General

Five Past Midnight (7 page)

BOOK: Five Past Midnight
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Cray surveyed the farm as he approached. To one side of the house stood a goat shed and an open machine shed in which there were a two- bladed plow and stacks of apple boxes. Leather rigging hung on pegs behind the plow. Grass along the stone wall was long, wooden planks had fallen from the goat shed, shingles were missing from the farmhouse's roof, and ivy had grown up and over the porch. The farm was in decline.

Cray neared the house. No automobile in the driveway. No one at a window looking at him. No farm animals. The house was made of clapboard, with a stone chimney. The porch creaked when he stepped onto it, then he leaned to his right to peer into a sitting room. Empty. He walked to the rear of the house, where a garden contained a row of bean stakes and a torn bird net that was hung over small pear trees. A potato patch had been turned over, perhaps again and again, though the potato harvest would have been last year. A shovel was still in the ground, planted rather feebly. He searched the goat and machine sheds.

Cray moved to the back door. The knob turned easily. When he stepped into the kitchen, he was met by the smell of fresh baking, a fruit pastry of some sort. Tendrils of scent wrapped around Cray, making him feel lightheaded. Shrunken and ill used, his stomach loudly rolled over at the prospect of being filled. A Strudel and several old newspapers were on a sideboard near a woodstove.

Cray gazed at the pastry. A flaky crust around apple halves. He wiped a corner of his mouth. A table and two chairs were in the kitchen. He looked into a pantry. Near it was an open cupboard containing pots and pans. A wooden box held a dozen small potatoes and two cabbages with brown leaves.

Cray stepped into the sitting room. An overstuffed chair, a wall clock. He opened a closet near the front door. Empty but for two coats and an umbrella. Then he walked across a hooked rug past a fireplace to the bedroom. A poster bed, a hat on a wooden rack, a dresser and a mirror. Leather boots were on the floor in a corner. A farmer's Spartan home. Cray was satisfied no one was home. The house was cold. Cray could still see his breath.

He rifled through the dresser. In one drawer he found a man's clothing. Cray peeled off his shirt and pants. He found a shirt with wooden buttons, too tight but wearable. Next were a pair of pants and a work coat.

He returned to the kitchen and opened a drawer for a fork. He lifted the Strudel reverentially. He sniffed the pastry, but only slightly, lest smelling it might somehow diminish it prematurely. He lowered the plate to the table, sat on a sturdy chair, and squared himself to this grand task. He carefully cut off a small piece of the pastry, monitoring where all the crumbs fell so he could return to them, and lifted it to his mouth.

The muzzle of a shotgun bit into the back of Cray's neck. His fork froze.

"This is my house," a voice behind Cray said. An old woman's voice. "And that's my Strudel."

Cray sat utterly still. His knife was under his belt.

The shotgun barrels lifted from his neck. The woman came into his view. She was wearing a long green coat, a crocheted shawl, and a frown.

The shotgun was held comfortably in her hands. She sidestepped to the end of the table opposite Cray, the barrel never wavering She sat on a chair, propping the bird gun on the table edge, its barrels pointed at Cray's throat.

"You are an escapee from that awful castle over in Colditz." It was not a question.

He answered in German. "Yes."

"So you must be dangerous." The woman wore her silver hair in a bun on top of her head. Her face had deep lines like dried and broken mud. Her eyebrows had grown together above her nose. She was thin, with her coat hanging loosely from narrow shoulders, and with wrists the width of broom handles. Her dark eyes were far back in her head. They were alert. Cray suspected they missed nothing.

"And you speak our language," she said. "I should shoot you now."

"Will you wait until I eat this Strudel before you shoot me?"

An eyebrow rose. Then a corner of her mouth lifted slightly. "If I wait until you eat the Strudel, then I'll have a dead body in my kitchen and no Strudel. But if I shoot you now, I'll have a dead body but I also have the Strudel. So it would be smarter to shoot you now."

Cray suggested, "How about if I eat half, then you shoot me?"

"All right," she said. "Cut the Strudel in half, then I'll choose which half you eat."

Cray visually measured the pastry, then cut it precisely in half with his fork. The old lady nodded at the piece to Cray's left. He instantly dug into it with the fork. The Strudel seemed to burst inside his mouth, filling him with flavor down to his feet.

He took three more bites, then said, "You are a good cook, ma'am. This would taste wonderful even if I weren't about to be killed."

"I didn't have fresh fruit, so I used apples I canned last fall. And I had to stretch the flour by adding some sawdust."

"I wondered about the piney taste."

"How did you learn German?" the woman asked.

He hesitated. "My parents came from Berlin."

"I have an unerring ear for the truth," she said. "And I didn't hear it just then. Maybe I should shoot you now, just so I don't have to listen to lies."

Cray chewed. "How's this then? After I received a degree in mechanical engineering in the United States, I did postgraduate work at Berlin Polytechnic. This was in 1936. I learned the language in Berlin." He lifted more Strudel on his fork. "And then in the army when I was training at a base in East Anglia, northeast of London, I often traveled to a POW camp near Stowmarket to practice German with Wehrmacht POWs."

"Why would good German soldiers teach you their language, even if they were in a POW camp?"

"I'd bring them candies and cakes, and I never asked them anything regarding the military. We just chatted." He looked down at his pastry. "I find that as I get near the end of my Strudel, I'm eating more slowly."

"You aren't a regular soldier, are you?" she asked.

"Why is it so cold in here?"

"I don't have any firewood."

Cray said, "But I saw a big stack of wood just outside your kitchen door."

"I have bad arthritis in my fingers and hands and shoulders. I can't swing an ax at all. So I sit in here all day, cold. I made that Strudel using only wood chips for heat. Those I can carry in."

Cray scratched his nose. "Why don't I cut some firewood for you. In exchange for the other half of the Strudel."

"Then when do I shoot you?"

"After I chop the wood, and after I eat the last half of the Strudel."

"The ax is out by the woodpile."

Cradling the shotgun in her arms, the old woman followed the American out the kitchen door. A maul, a wedge, and an ax were lined up against the house. She stayed by the door as he centered a log on a chopping block, then lifted the maul and the wedge. He tapped the wedge into the center of the log end, and then swung the maul in a large circle. It landed on the wedge with a flat crack. He swung again, then again, and the log split in half. He pushed the halves to one side and reached for another log.

Cray said, "May I ask your name, ma'am?"

"Helga Engelman."

"I searched the house, Frau Engelman. Where were you?"

"Outside. I saw you coming, and walked around the house in front of you, always keeping a corner between me and you."

"You walk pretty quietly, sneaking up on me like that, Frau Engelman."

She laughed sharply. "I'll bet it hasn't happened often to you, has it?"

He glanced at her. "No, it hasn't."

"I was in the kitchen when I heard the front-porch boards squeak. So I grabbed my dead husband's bird gun, which I keep in the kitchen to discourage refugees looking for food."

"Well, I was just looking for food, too."

"At least they knock," she chided. "You were concentrating on the Strudel and didn't hear me sneak up on you."

"I'll profit from that lesson, then."

"No point in profiting from a lesson you don't survive," she said. "What with me about to shoot you."

"Are you running your farm alone, Frau Engelman?"

"Two summers ago during the harvest my husband lay down between two apple trees and never got up again. A heart attack. You look better in his clothes than he did."

Cray worked the maul, pushing the halved wood to one side.

She added, "My husband used to split wood, just like you. I miss the firewood more than I miss him, I'm afraid."

Cray split another log, then another.

"You are a commando," Mrs. Engelman said. "Am I right?"

"Well, not really.. .."

"Remember." She wiggled the shotgun. "I have an ear for the lie."

"I'm a commando." Cray put the maul and wedge to one side, then lifted the ax.

"What is your group called?"

"Rangers, ma'am." Cray placed one of the split logs on the block. The ax whistled and the wood split in two.

"Have you done your commando work in Germany?"

"Some." Cray swung the ax again. He was breathing quickly from his efforts.

"What's the worst thing you've ever done to my homeland?"

Cray turned to her, the ax hanging at his side. "Why in the world would I reveal that to a German woman holding a shotgun on me?"

"Because I'm holding a shotgun on you."

He lifted another piece of wood. Again he worked the ax. "I sank a submarine once."

"You sank a submarine? By yourself?"

Cray nodded. "The submarine belonged to the Kriegsmarine's.

Tenth Flotilla, and was in a pen at Lorient, on France's west coast. The subpens were under twenty feet of concrete and had proven impervious to bombing raids."

"How did you do it?" Frau Engelman's face was expectant,
as
if she were about to hear tantalizing gossip.

"I was parachuted into Brittany, twenty-five miles inland, north of the base. Traveling at night and avoiding the roads, I made it to Lorient in three days."

"Don't we Germans defend submarine bases?"

"I got inside the base by burying myself in a locomotive's coal car. Then with a satchel charge in a rubberized bag, I swam to
U-495,
which was in the yard for fuel and provisions." "The
U-495?"

"Kapitan leutnant Rolf Strenka's boat that had sunk HMS
Valiant."

"So what did you do to our poor submarine?"

Cray bent a little to look at her hands. "You know, Frau Engelman, the safest way to hold a shotgun is to have your finger resting on the trigger guard, not around the trigger."

"I'm perfectly safe with my finger on the trigger." She smiled, revealing yellowed teeth. "So what did you do to my submarine?"

Cray began again with the ax. "I used blow ports for handholds, and climbed the hull, and dropped the satchel into the forward hatch. Then I slid back into the water. The blast tore
U-495
in two. The sub sank in the pen."

"I presume you survived."

"I swam three miles to sea and opened a dye pack. I was plucked out of the water by a float plane captured from the Luftwaffe's sea-rescue service. The plane still had its Luftwaffe markings."

The shotgun barrel lowered slightly. The old lady studied him as he worked. A line of sweat formed on Cray's forehead. The pile of split wood grew rapidly.

"I told you I have an ear for the lie."

"Yes, ma'am."

"That submarine isn't the worst thing you've done to my country, is it?"

Cray didn't stop his mechanical motion. "No, ma'am."

After another moment watching him, she asked, "I don't suppose I want to know the worst, do I?"

"No, ma'am."

She said, "You may be an enemy commando, but you aren't a bad man, are you?"

Cray stopped the ax. "Pardon, ma'am."

She put the shotgun down, leaning it against the wall, then brushing her hands together as if to fully rid herself of it. "You could have flicked me aside like a bug, shotgun or no. Isn't that so?"

Cray replied, "The thought never crossed my mind. Frau Engelman."

"But someone like you, it would have been an easy thing, less work than chopping wood. And you didn't, so you are a kind man, despite what your army orders you to do." She smiled again. "Will you help me put the firewood inside before you go?"

Cray filled his arms with wood, then carried the load into the house.

"To the kitchen stove," she instructed. "The wood will last longer if I only heat the kitchen."

Cray stacked the wood in the cradle near the stove. Then he made five more trips.

When the hopper was full, she said firmly, "It will be my duty as a German patriot to report that you were here."

"Can you wait three hours?"

"One hour."

"Ninety minutes?"

"All right. Ninety minutes."

Cray opened the grate to place several logs into the stove. He gathered a handful of chips from the hopper and shoved them under the logs. When Frau Engelman handed him several newspaper pages, Cray crumpled them and pushed them into the stove. He lifted a match from a ceramic cup and scraped it against the stove top. It flared, and he placed it under the newspaper, which quickly caught fire.

Frau Engelman held her hands out to the stove. "That's better."

"I'm off, then," Cray said.

She wrapped the rest of the Strudel in a sheet of newspaper and passed it to the American. "I've got more canned apples and sawdust, and can make another. You'd best hurry. Five of your ninety minutes are already gone."

Cray tucked the pastry under his coat. "Maybe I'll come back and visit you, Frau Engelman. After the war."

"If you survive, which you probably won't, you being a commando."

"I'll survive."

Cray was at the door when the old lady added, "It's going to be hard around here for a long time after the war, isn't it?"

"Yes."

"Bring coffee when you return. I won't have any, most likely."

Cray smiled again at Frau Engelman, then left her house.

He heard her call after him. "And cream. I take mine with cream."

 

 

9

 

THE REICH SECURITY SERVICE (RSD) office had been moved three times in as many weeks, the victim of fires caused by the Allied terror flyers: from a building on Wilhemstrasse near the Reich Press Office, to one east of the Brandenburg Gate on Unter den Linden, to the current one on Potsdamer Strasse near OKW's Cipher Branch. The structure had once been an apartment, but the RSD had evicted the tenants. The only heat was a fire on the grate. SS Lieutenant General Eugen Eberhardt sat at his desk with his uniform coat over his shoulders.

BOOK: Five Past Midnight
10.5Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

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