Ruins of War (30 page)

E
xcuse me, sir, but you’re crazy,” Corporal Manganella said. “A hot night with Betty Grable wouldn’t get me to go in there again.”

Mason sat in the passenger’s seat as Manganella steered the jeep into the courtyard of the meat-processing plant. He had convinced Manganella to drive him over despite his off-limits status.

Manganella stopped the jeep near the processing building. “What makes you think he’ll come back here? He hasn’t done that before.”

“Maybe I can pick up his trail.” When Manganella only returned a look of befuddlement, Mason said, “Look, Ramek had to move his stuff and find a safe place overnight. Right? That takes time. And he used a whole precious lot of that time tracking me down so he could kill me. Plus, he had to nurse that shoulder wound I gave him. I’m gambling he couldn’t have gone far.”

Manganella processed this a moment and smiled. “I still think you’re crazy going in there by yourself.”

Mason climbed out of the jeep. “Thanks for the lift. You’d better get back before they notice. And remember, don’t say a word to anyone.”

“What if you get caught by one of those booby traps?”

“I’ll be all right.”

“I’m not going anywhere, sir. I can’t leave you out here all alone. Screw regulations.”

Mason smiled. “All right, then.”

Armed with a flashlight, his personal .38 S&W Special pistol, and a Ka-Bar knife, Mason entered the processing building through a bombed-out portion of the wall. Nothing had changed, except for the invading snow transforming black rubble to white. The rats and pigeons had returned after the day’s intrusion. He crossed the expanse and descended the same staircase to the sublevel. The blackness closed in on him. He stopped and listened for any sounds of human activity among the creaks of metal and low moans of the wind. Finally he turned on his flashlight and surveyed the surroundings, but images of Wolski’s wounds kept flashing in his mind. Following the same bearing as the day before, he passed the rusting machinery and found the maintenance corridor.

The chances of Ramek returning to the plant were slim, but Mason felt his heart pound out a fast rhythm against the closed collar of his shirt all the same. Watching for potential traps and listening for any movement, he proceeded down the corridor. The path led him to the same narrower corridor off to the right. He followed it past the last room that Wolski and he had checked. Then, up ahead, the furnace room where the trap had been set. Just before entering, he examined the doorway with his flashlight. There, six inches from the flooring, lay the remnants of the trip wire. Then, just in front of him, Wolski’s blood. Mason’s chest tightened at seeing how much of Wolski’s blood had spilled out onto the concrete floor.

Mason took a few minutes to explore the furnace room. Like three rusting beasts, the hulking furnaces sat silently, spreading their tentacle-like pipes along the ceiling and extending out into each of the converging corridors. With a last scan, his flashlight glinted off polished metal behind one of the furnaces. He went around the furnace and came upon Ramek’s “operating room.” A butcher’s table similar to the one they’d found in Ramek’s workshop had served as the
operating table. The leather straps still hung from the sides, and a rumpled white sheet lay along its length. A rolling cart stood next to the table, void of any surgical instruments. The few shelves and a workbench contained nothing that would indicate Ramek had been there. Ramek had removed all his instruments of torture. Mason didn’t need proof, but now it was confirmed: Despite every setback, Ramek planned to continue his gruesome work.

Mason entered the maintenance tunnel where Ramek had escaped. In the alcove with the descending stairs, he sent his flashlight beam into the hole. Eight feet below, another tunnel. He climbed down the ladder, making as little noise as possible. As far as his flashlight showed, the tunnel continued arrow straight in both directions. A ceramic drainpipe, at least four feet in diameter, ran through the tunnel, leaving him barely enough room to face forward. A thick layer of sludge covered most of the floor. Multiple footprints led off in both directions.

He tried to picture the building plan. From the changes in his path’s direction, he estimated that behind him the tunnel led back to the main collection area in the processing plant. In front of him, it must lead to the storm drains or the Isar river.

In the dark underground maze, he quickly lost track of time. He looked at his watch: 9:50. Still three hours before Laura’s train left. Mason had spent the entire night awake and thinking. Near six that morning he’d come to a couple of conclusions: He was a damn fool, and Laura was the best thing to come along in his life. Nonetheless, it was still up in the air whether he would get on the train with her or not.

Mason moved forward, his shoulders scraping against the wall and the drainpipe. He’d never considered himself claustrophobic, but the journey through that tunnel tested his tolerance. The foul stench overwhelmed the still air. Rats scurried away from his flashlight beam. The roof and floor seemed to compress in on him as he went.

At about a hundred feet, he encountered several cracks in the floor, ceiling, and drainpipe. He figured he was under the canning plant,
which had suffered the worst of the bombardments. Even at this depth the impacts of one-thousand-pound bombs had ruptured the foundation. The threat of another collapse, burying him in this tomb, compounded this new sensation of claustrophobia.

A few yards farther and the cracks became fissures and breaks. A few minutes after that he had to stop. The ceiling of the tunnel had collapsed. There was no way to continue. He tested the chunks of concrete and jabbed at the earth, but all was firmly in place. This was the end of the line. No trapdoors. No secret passage.

How had Ramek escaped? There had to be another way out. The other direction led back to the processing plant. It was unlikely Ramek could have gotten out that way. There had been too many men converging on the processing plant by that time, plus the men as lookouts on each corner. He must have fashioned several means of escape, and perhaps one of them might be in the very direction Mason would not expect—beneath the processing plant.

When Mason turned to go back, he stumbled on a chunk of concrete. As he tried to regain his balance, his flashlight struck the drainpipe, creating a hollow sound that reverberated within the pipe. With the butt end of his flashlight, he banged on the ceramic pipe again and listened, a new thought coming to him. Mason retraced his steps, examining every inch of the drainpipe. It had many small cracks and breaks; occasionally he’d stop and tap in places that looked loose. Thirty feet farther on, he came to a section of the pipe that was riddled with a web of fissures. With one good tap, a manhole-sized portion fell into the pipe. Mason examined the edges of the break. The ceramic looked new, and at several places shards of the cut material had shredded away dark blue fibers. Ramek had cut through the shattered section of pipe and fashioned the piece so he could reset it upon his escape.

The opening was barely big enough for Mason to squeeze through. He didn’t know how Ramek had managed with his much greater bulk, but he was sure Ramek had figured that out long before being pursued.

Once inside, Mason had to bend forward to avoid banging his head. And there, in the sludge, was a set of footprints leading away from the plant. He moved forward, bent at the waist, flashlight up. He tried to close his mind to the suffocating darkness, but the pipe was worse than the tunnel. He’d never experienced true claustrophobia before, but now giant invisible hands squeezed air from his lungs and constricted his throat. Maybe it was the crushing events of the last few days; maybe it was the sheer exhaustion. Whatever caused it, sweat streamed down his face despite the cold. His lungs demanded more air. He quickened his pace, feeling like a desperate man climbing out of a grave. What felt like an hour had only been ten minutes when he saw faint daylight.

Finally he reached the end and saw that a falling bomb had blown off the drainpipe just before it terminated at the river. He dropped off the jagged edge onto the muddy bank of the Isar River and grabbed his knees. He gulped in fresh air and felt the cold grip of panic subside.

Mason surveyed his immediate surroundings and calculated approximately where he was in relation to the city. A narrow islet divided this part of the river. His side of the river flowed swiftly and had cut into the land, forming a high embankment.

He searched around the base of the drainpipe for footprints, but, except for the last foot before the water’s edge, snow covered the riverbank. He then headed south, away from the city, scanning the ground as he went. After a hundred yards, he ran into thick trees and brush growing on the steep embankment. It would have taken Ramek a great deal of effort to push through this natural barrier, and he definitely would have left evidence of the struggle. It had to be the other direction.

Mason backtracked and started the search north of the drainpipe. Here, the way narrowed, the high embankment encroaching on the water’s edge, with scrub brush and small trees growing from the sand and mud. The embankment would have forced Ramek to keep to the edge of the water, and Mason did the same. At thirty feet, he spotted
a large footprint in the mud where the water lapped the land. The same footprint as in the sludge of the drainpipe.

Industrial buildings lined this side of the river, any one of them an ideal place for Ramek to set up his torture chamber. He could be waiting close by or deep inside the dense ruins. Even if Mason found more footprints, there would be no way to track Ramek once he hit concrete and asphalt. Almost eighteen hours had passed since Ramek had fled into the plant’s maintenance tunnel. Eighteen hours to find a new lair. Mason cursed himself for being there, scrambling along the riverbank, hoping beyond reason that he would find a definitive clue of where Ramek had gone.

He wondered if he should go on and looked at his watch again: 10:25. He still had time to stumble around on a fool’s errand . . . something he was getting used to.

Mason walked on. Twenty yards later, he found another footprint just as the embankment flattened out to a gentle slope. Now he had a choice: continue along the riverbank or head inland. He could toss a coin or rely on instinct. He headed inland.

He moved through thick scrub and sparse saplings. Above the top of the rise, he could just see the upper section of a defunct cement factory. Scanning the area, he spied another footprint at the base of a tree, where its branches had blocked the snow. He was right: Ramek had gone this way. With a little luck . . .

At the top of the slope he came to a wide field bisected by train tracks. Beyond the field and to his left were flat-roofed warehouses, and a half mile to his right a blue-collar neighborhood on the fringes of the city.

About a hundred yards down the tracks, a bevy of men worked to repair the bomb-damaged tracks. Mason walked down to the spot and showed the men the sketch of Ramek. They all shook their heads, but one man suggested asking around at a homeless camp near an old hydroelectric plant built over the smaller branch of the river.

A five-minute walk along the riverbank brought him to a camp of
lean-tos and salvaged army tents. The occupants, all men, sat around fires or washed clothes in the icy river. They all were gaunt and bedraggled. Some still wore their ragged Wehrmacht uniforms. Not too long before, it had been Mason’s duty to try to kill these men, but now he only felt pity for them.

As Mason circulated the camp, showing the sketch of Ramek, the men eyed him with suspicion. Most of them gave the sketch only a cursory glance and seemed more concerned that a U.S. soldier had invaded their domain. Mason took a position at the water’s edge to face them and gave them the now oft-repeated speech about Ramek butchering innocent Germans and his job being to stop the killer.

The speech, well-worn as it was, seemed to garner their interest. The men started to talk among themselves. Finally a hollow-eyed man stood and limped toward Mason.

“I saw that man last night,” the hollow-eyed man said, then pointed south along the riverbank. “He was carrying two heavy duffel bags. I didn’t pay much attention. I assumed he was just another homeless veteran. He was snooping around that building, though the building’s boarded up.” The building he pointed to lay in an open field farther up the tracks to Mason’s right. “Even if he got in, he wouldn’t be able to stay. Every ten days or so the police come back and kick out anyone trying to use it as a shelter.”

Mason thanked them all and hurried away. A few minutes later, he came opposite of the building and stopped. The two-story building lay in the middle of the field near a defunct track, a turn-of-the-century relic that had probably been a maintenance and switching station for the railroad at one time. The brick had turned black with age and years of soot. Boards covered the windows of the first floor, but the broad observation windows on the second story were exposed and either broken or streaked with dirt.

Mason entered the field and crossed the train tracks. With nothing to provide cover, he tried to keep his line of approach to a blind corner, but nothing could prevent Ramek from spotting him if he
watched from the shadows of the second story. Bent low and gun out, Mason took quick strides and rushed up to a corner of the building, then stopped and listened. No sound but the wind and a transport plane flying overhead.

Then he saw them: on the ground where the eaves stopped the snow, a whole series of Ramek’s footprints.

He sneaked up to a window and tried to peer through the separation in the boards. Too dark inside. Ducking below the window, he moved around to the front and only door. A new padlock had been added to the door’s hasp. With every muscle tensed and his finger on the trigger, he kicked the door.

The old wooden frame gave way and the door exploded inward. He charged in with his gun up. He moved sideways, his ears alert to any sound. Sunlight poured through the gaps in the boards and made slashes of light in the billowing dust. Still, too many shadows. Mason turned on his flashlight and scanned the single room. To his left, a narrow desk sat under one window and was flanked by shelves of rotting boxes. To his right, one under each window, sat two tables with rags, rusting cans, and papers. Nothing in the space could conceal a big man like Ramek.