Gorner reached for the telephone.
"Before you do that, Otto," Castillo said, "tell me about weapons. Is there anything here? Hunting rifles, shotguns, anything? Or can we get some from the security people?"
"I very strongly suggest we go to the police," Gorner said. "They know how to deal with situations like this."
"Otto, right now I'm not asking for suggestions. I asked where we can get our hands on some goddamn weapons! Answer the question!"
"Cool, Charley, cool," Davidson said in Pashtu.
"Otto," Kocian said. "He may not look like it, but Little Karlchen is actually very good at what he does. If there are any guns, tell him."
Gorner's face, which had been flushed, now turned pale.
"The Herr Oberst's drilling is over the mantel in my living room. There are several shotguns. And the game wardens, of course, are armed."
"Bingo!" Castillo said. "We have just found a Heckler & Koch submachine gun. Otto, get Siggie Muller on the line for me, please."
"The guy on the road?" Delchamps asked.
"That was an MP7 under his coat," Castillo said. "Maybe he'll know where we can find something else we can use. I don't want to walk into church trying to hide a drilling under my coat."
"Siggie'll know," Kocian said as he reached impatiently for the telephone Gorner had just finished dialing.
Castillo looked at Kocian with curiosity but didn't say anything.
"What's a drilling?" Sparkman asked.
"A side-by-side shotgun," Castillo said. "Usually sixteen-gauge. With a rifle barrel, usually seven-millimeter, underneath."
"I never heard of anything like that."
"That's because you went to the Air Force Academy, Captain Sparkman," Castillo said. "At West Point, we learn all about guns."
"Screw you, Charley," Torine said loyally.
"Siggie, here is Eric Kocian," Billy said into the telephone. "I need to see you just as soon as you can get here. We're in the big room. Bring your weapon, preferably weapons."
[FOUR]
Muller appeared five minutes later. By then Gorner had spoken to the Bundeskriminalamt, and was just hanging up the phone after speaking with his security supervisor.
"You been in the attic lately, Siggie?" Kocian asked.
Muller looked uncomfortable. He nodded but didn't reply.
"What's in the attic?" Gorner asked.
"Something the Herr Oberst and I put there and didn't want you and Helena to worry about. Siggie did not like keeping it from you. I insisted."
"What the hell are you talking about?"
"When the Herr Oberst and I escaped from the Russians--"
"Escaped from the Russians?" Castillo asked. "I thought you were captured by the English?"
"That's the story the Herr Oberst told. He did not wish to further alarm his wife unnecessarily. We were captured by, and escaped from, the Red Army. We walked from near Stettin--now Szczecin, just inside Poland--to here. We saw the rape of Berlin. We saw the rape of every other place the Red Army went. It very much bothered the Herr Oberst."
"I don't think I understand," Castillo said.
"I know I don't," Gorner said.
"Let's show them what we have in the attic, Siggie," Kocian said.
"Jawohl, Herr Kocian."
Muller led them to a closet off the sitting room. He took a chair into the closet, stood on it, put his hands flat against a low ceiling, and pushed hard upward. There was a screeching sound and one side of the ceiling folded upward.
"Over the years, there have been improvements to what was originally here," Kocian said. "The ceiling--the door--is now hinged, for example. We used to have to prop it open. And there were no electric lights here in the old days."
As if it had been rehearsed, Siggie stretched an arm into the hole. There was a click and electric lights came on. Then he heaved and grunted, and let down from the attic a simple, sturdy ladder.
He looked to Kocian for direction.
"I'm really too old to be climbing ladders," Kocian said, then climbed nimbly up it.
Muller gestured for Castillo to go up the ladder. He did so and found himself in something he realized with chagrin he had never even suspected existed. The area was as large as the apartment beneath. The roof was so steeply pitched, however, that there was room for only three men standing abreast in the center.
Against each side of the room were six olive-drab oblong metal boxes on wooden horses, just far enough toward the center so that their lids could be raised.
On each box--on the top, the sides, and the front--was a stenciled legend, the paint a faded yellow. Castillo squatted to get a look.
STIELHANDGRANATE 24
20 STUCK
BOHMISCHE WAFFENFABRIK A. G. PRAG
It was a moment before he remembered that under the Nazis, Czechoslovakia had been the "Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" and that the "Bohemian Weapons Factory" in Prague was the Czech factory that the Germans had taken over.
Kocian saw him looking.
"Hand grenades aren't the first thing that comes to mind when you hear 'Bohemia, ' are they, Karlchen?"
"No," Castillo replied simply.
Delchamps came off the ladder, saw the boxes, read the labeling, and said, "I was really hoping for something a little less noisy than potato mashers."
Castillo and Kocian both chuckled.
Kocian went to one of the boxes and opened it with an ease that suggested this wasn't the first time he'd opened a crate of hand grenades.
What the hell. Why not? He was a corporal in Stalingrad when he was eighteen. He's probably opened several hundred ammo boxes like these.
Otto Gorner, wheezing a little, came off the ladder.
"Ach, mein Gott," he said softly when he saw the ammunition boxes.
Kocian took something wrapped in a cloth from the box and extended it to Castillo.
"I considered giving you this when you finished West Point. But I thought you would either lose it or shoot yourself in the foot with it."
Castillo unwrapped the small package. It held a well-worn Luger pistol, two magazines, and what looked like twenty-odd loose cartridges.
"You know what it is, presumably?" Kocian asked.
West Point--or maybe Camp Mackall--came on automatically. Castillo picked up the pistol with his thumb and index finger on the grip, worked the action to ensure it was unloaded, then examined it carefully before reciting in English: "Pistol 08, Parabellum. Often referred to as the Luger. This one--made by Deutsche Waffen und Munitionsfabriken, Berlin, in 1913--is 9 by 19 millimeters. Also called 9mm-NATO."
Castillo looked at Kocian.
"It was the Herr Oberst's," Kocian said. "He had that with him at Stalingrad. And before that, the Herr Oberst's father, your great-grandfather, carried it in France."
"Jesus!" Castillo said.
"It is now yours, Oberstleutnant Castillo," Kocian said with emotion in his voice, and not a hint of his usual sarcasm.
"How the hell did it survive the war?" Castillo asked.
By then, without thinking about it, he had stuck his finger in the action and was moving it so that light would be reflected off his fingernail and into the barrel for his inspection.
"It's been used, but there's no pitting."
"I have taken care of it, Karlchen," Muller said. "Herr Kocian told me it would one day come to you."
"I envisioned somewhat different circumstances from these today," Kocian said, and Castillo heard the sarcasm now was back in his voice.
Castillo looked at Muller and again asked, "How the hell did it survive the war?"
"When the Herr Oberst--after he was freed from the hospital--was given command of the Offizier POW Lager, he left it here. He told me the war was lost, and he didn't want his father's pistol to wind up in the hands of some Russian commissar."
"Here in the attic?"
"No. Actually, he had me bury it in a machine-gun ammo box under the manure pile behind the stable. It was afte
r the war that it--that all this material--was moved and placed up here."
"Tell me about that," Castillo said.
"Karl, we're pressed for time," Gorner said.
"Not that pressed," Castillo said.
"I don't know, Otto, if you've ever heard this story," Kocian said.
"I have no idea what story you're going to tell," Gorner replied.
"Well, by the time the Herr Oberst and I got here," Kocian went on, "this house was occupied by a company of American engineers. So we went to a farmer's house--Muller's father's house--on the farm. The Herr Oberst then became ex-Gefreite Gossinger, as he didn't want to be rearrested by the Americans as he would have been as an oberstleutnant. When I came back here from Vienna, he and Siggie's father were plowing the field with the one horse that had miraculously escaped both the German Army and hungry people.
"Two weeks after that, the Russians arrived. The border between the Russian and American Zones was then marked off, our horse stolen, and we were evicted on thirty minutes' notice from Muller's father's house.
"We came to the big house. The Herr Oberst planned to beg the American officer, a captain, for permission to live in the stable, and perhaps to work for food.
"As we walked across the field, a small convoy of Americans arrived at the big house. Two jeeps, an armored car, and a large, open Mercedes. On seeing this, we turned and tried to hide. No luck. We were spotted. A jeep with three MPs and a machine gun caught us before we'd made a hundred meters.
"We were then marched in front of the jeep up to the big house. As we got close to the Mercedes, we saw there was a senior officer in it. The Herr Oberst said, 'One star, Billy, a brigadier.'
"Then this brigadier general stood up and motioned for our captors to bring us close.
" 'I am General Withers, the Military Governor of Hesse-Kassel,' he said in perfect German. 'I came here today in what my staff told me was going to be a vain search for an old and dear friend. Hermann, the same bastards told me they had proof you had been murdered by the Gestapo!'
"The Herr Oberst . . ." Kocian went on, but then his voice broke. "The Herr Oberst . . . The Herr Oberst came to attention and saluted. General Withers got out of the car and they embraced, both of them crying."
"I had not heard that story," Gorner said. "I knew that he knew the military governor, but . . ."
"The Herr Oberst was a proud man. He was ashamed that that friendship got him, got us, special treatment."
"You mean," Delchamps asked, "permission to start up the newspapers again? Charley told us about that."
"That came later," Kocian said. "That day, that very day, we were fed American rations--unbelievable fare; we had considered one boiled potato a hearty meal--and the engineer captain was told that his unit would be moved, and until it was, Herr Gossinger would look after the property. Staying in the apartment on the third floor.
"The Americans were gone a week later. A sign was erected stating the property had been requisitioned for use by the military governor. American rations mysteriously appeared on the verandah. American gasoline mysteriously appeared in the stable, in which captured German vehicles suitable for adaptation to agricultural purposes had also mysteriously appeared. Getting the picture?"
"What about the weapons?" Castillo asked.
"There had been several ack-ack--antiaircraft--batteries on the property," Kocian explained. "We found some of the weapons, and all of the hand grenades in the magazine of one of them. And others turned up. The Herr Oberst believed--as did your General George S. Patton, by the way--that it would be only a matter of time before the Red Army came through the Fulda Gap. We had seen the raping of Berlin and elsewhere. The Herr Oberst decided many would prefer to die fighting than fall into the hands of the Reds. So we moved the weapons here. Fortunately, they weren't needed. Until now."
"What else is in the boxes, Billy?" Jack Davidson asked from behind Castillo.
Castillo looked at him in surprise; he hadn't seen or heard him coming up the ladder. And then he saw something else that surprised him. Without making a conscious decision to do so, Castillo had been feeding the loose cartridges into his pistol's magazine. One was already full, the other nearly so.
"A little bit of everything," Kocian replied. "One of the boxes is full of hand grenades. Several kinds of maschinenpistols--MP-40s, MP-43s--plus a number of pistols, mostly Walther P-38s, but some Lugers. There's even American .45s."
"You just said the magic words, Billy," Davidson said. "MP-43 and .45."
"Jack, you can't go anywhere near the church--you can't go anywhere--with a Schmeisser," Castillo said.
"I can, Karlchen," Muller said. "I am licensed to have a machine pistol."
"Which means," Davidson said, "we can have a couple of spares for Herr Muller on the floorboard of the car he's in."
"That's if Siggie is willing to involve himself in this," Castillo said.
"Ach, Karlchen!" Muller snorted, suggesting the question was stupid.
"See if you can find a P-38 for me in there, Billy," Delchamps said.
"And a couple of .45s for me and Sparkman," Torine said. "And for Charley, too. Charley is a real .45 fan."
"Not today, Jake," Castillo said, in the process of slipping the Luger into the small of his back as he approached the ladder.
[FIVE]
"The Castle Walk"
Philipps University
Marburg an der Lahn
Hesse, Germany
1040 27 December 2005
The castle of the Landgraves of Hesse-Kassel--now the signature building of Philipps Universitat--had been built at the peak of a steep hill. What had probably been a path hacked out of the granite had been broadened over the years--most likely centuries--into a two-lane cobblestone road against the castle wall. Sometime later, an area perhaps two hundred meters long and thirty-five meters wide had been somehow added to the steep sides of the hill. A neat little wall kept people and cars from going over the edge into the city below.
Castillo, the collar of his trench coat up and buttoned around his neck against the cold, sat with his feet dangling over the wall, clenching an unlit cigar between his teeth. Max, his natural coat clearly making him immune to the cold, lay contentedly by the wall. Siggie Muller, the drape of his Loden cloth cape revealing the outline of what had indeed turned out to be a Heckler & Koch MP7A1 submachine gun, leaned against the hood of Otto Gorner's Jaguar.
Castillo was trying to follow his own advice--and for once being successful--which was that as soon as you have decided what to do, and put the decision into action, stop thinking about it and think of something else. That way, your mind will be clearer if you have to revisit your decisions when something goes wrong.
What he had decided to do was send Jack Davidson to have a look at the church. Davidson was a recognized expert in being able to spot places where a sniper--or something else dangerous, such as an improvised explosive device, or IED--might be concealed.
That decision had been implemented without even discussion. Edgar Delchamps suggested that it might be a good idea if he, too, went to the church and looked around. So both Jack and Edgar were at the church.
It had been Castillo's intention to send Inspector Doherty and Two-Gun Yung to das Haus im Wald. Both had made it clear that anyone refusing the services of two FBI agents--one of them very senior and the other a distinguished veteran of the Battle of Shangri-La--in these circumstances was not playing with a full deck.
Doherty and Yung, now equipped with P-38s from the grenade cases in the attic, were melding themselves into the crowds of mourners and curious--mostly the latter, according to a telephoned report from Inspector Doherty--at Saint Elisabeth's.
So were Colonel Jacob Torine and Captain Richard Sparkman of the United States Air Force, both of whom had shot down Castillo's theory that it might be a good idea if they went to Flughafen Frankfurt am Main and readied the Gulfstream for flight, in case they had to go somewhere in a hurry.
"We'll
be ready to go wheels-up thirty minutes after we get to the airport," Colonel Torine had said. "That's presuming you can tell us where we're going. And while you're making up your mind about that, Captain Sparkman and I will pass the time in church."
Eric Kocian and Otto Gorner and his wife and children, surrounded by twice their number of security guards, had gone to Wetzlar so they could be part of the funeral procession. Castillo was more than a little uncomfortable that Willi and Hermann were involved, but that decision, too, had been taken from him. Otto had decided there was no way the boys could be left at home without telling Helena why, and he wasn't up to facing that.
Otto said Helena would decide that if there was a threat to her and the boys, then there also was a threat to her husband, and he would just have to miss the Friedler funeral, something he had no intention of doing.
What Castillo was thinking of, to divert his attention from those things now out of his control, was "the castle walk" itself.
He had been here more times than he could count, from the time he was a small boy. He thought it was about the nicest place in Marburg. But when he had "suggested" to Otto that he have the security people bring Yung and Doherty here from the Europaischer Hof, he couldn't think of its name. It hadn't been a problem. Otto, an alt Marburger, had of course known where and what Castillo meant by "the castle walk." But Castillo hadn't heard him when Otto talked to the security people, so he hadn't heard what name Otto had told them.
It had to have a name--Universitatstrasse, or Philippsweg, or even Universitatplatz--and not remembering--maybe not knowing--what it was annoyed Castillo. So as he drove Otto's Jaguar up the hill, and then onto it, he started looking for signs. He had found none by the time he'd brought the car to a stop and he and Siggie had gotten out.
The castle walk was as he had remembered it, and he thought it had probably looked just about the same when his grandfather had begun his first year at the university. Or his great-grandfather.
Castillo remembered sitting here with his mother, eating a wurstchen, and then, when his mother wasn't watching, throwing the sandwich over the edge and watching it fall. It was a long way down. Twice, he had managed to hit a streetcar. He had never been caught.
Black Ops (Presidential Agent) Page 12