The Wolf's Hour

by Robert R. McCammon

  “A Yank’s help. I don’t need it,” he repeated. “You are an American, aren’t you? It’s in your accent. The Germans around here must have lead ears not to hear it.”

  This seemed to touch a nerve. Echo said frostily, “For your information, Brit, the Germans know I was born in the United States. I’m a citizen of Berlin now. Does that satisfy you?”

  “It answers my question, but it hardly satisfies me.” Michael gave her a thin smile. “I imagine our mutual friend in London gave you some of my background.” Except the part about his affinity for running on all fours, he knew. “I’m good at what I do. As I say, if you refuse to help me, I’ll get the job done on my own—”

  “You’ll die trying,” Echo interrupted.

  “Maybe. But our mutual friend must have told you I can be trusted. I didn’t live through North Africa being stupid. If I say I’ll be responsible for Mouse, I mean it. I’ll take care of him.”

  “And who’ll take care of you?”

  “That’s a question I’ve never had to answer,” Michael said.

  “Wait a minute!” Mouse scowled, his eyes still swollen from tears. “Don’t I have anything to say about this? Maybe I don’t want you to take care of me! Who the hell asked you, anyway? I swear to God, I was better off in the loony bin! Those nuts made sense when they talked!”

  “Quiet!” Michael snapped; Mouse was a breath away from an executioner’s bullet. The little man cursed under his breath, and Michael returned his attention to the veiled woman. “Mouse has helped me before. He can help me again.” Echo grunted with derision. “I didn’t come to Berlin to murder a man who risked his life for me,” Michael plowed on.

  “Uh… murder?” Mouse gasped as he got the whole picture.

  “Mouse goes with me.” Michael stared into the veil. “I’ll take care of him. And when the mission’s over, you help us both get out of Germany.”

  Echo didn’t respond. Her fingers tapped on the black valise as the wheels went round in her mind.

  “Well?” Michael prompted.

  “If our mutual friend were here, he’d say you’re being very stupid,” she tried once more, but she could tell that the dirty, bearded green-eyed man standing before her had chosen his position and would not be moved. She sighed, shook her head, and returned the valise to the table.

  “What’s happening?” Mouse asked fearfully. “Am I going to be murdered?”

  “No,” Michael told him. “You’ve just joined the British Secret Service.”

  Mouse choked, as if he’d gotten a chicken bone stuck in his throat.

  “You have a new identity.” Echo unzipped the valise, reached into it, and brought out a dossier. She offered it to him, but when Michael stepped forward to take it, Echo held her other hand to her nose. “My God, what a smell!”

  Michael took the dossier and opened it. Inside were typewritten sheets of paper, in German, outlining the history of a Baron Frederick von Fange. Michael couldn’t help but smile. “Who suggested this?”

  “Our mutual friend.”

  Of course, he thought. This bore the rather wicked fingerprints of the man he’d last seen as a chauffeur named Mallory. “From a pig farmer to a baron in one day. That’s not bad, even for a country where money buys royal titles.”

  “The family is real enough. They’re in the German social registry. But even though you may have a title,” Echo said, “you still smell like a pig fanner. Here’s the other information you requested.” She gave him another dossier. Michael looked over the typewritten pages. Camille had radioed coded inquiries ahead to Echo, and Echo had done an excellent job in putting together background material on SS Colonel Jerek Blok, Dr. Gustav Hildebrand, and Hildebrand Industries. There were black-and-white photographs, blurred but serviceable, of the two men. She also provided a typewritten page on Harry Sandler, and a photograph of the big-game hunter sitting at a table surrounded by Nazi officers, a dark-haired woman on his lap. A hooded hawk gripped its talons to his forearm.

  “You’ve been very thorough,” Michael complimented her. Looking at Sandler’s cruel, smiling face made his gut clench. “Is Sandler still in Berlin?”

  She nodded.

  “Where?”

  “Our primary assignment,” she reminded him, “doesn’t involve Harry Sandler. It’s enough for you to know that Sandler won’t be leaving Berlin anytime soon.”

  Of course she was right: first Iron Fist, then Sandler. “What about Frankewitz?” he asked.

  That, too, had been among Camille’s inquiries. “I know his address. He lives near Victoria Park, on Katzbach-strasse.”

  “And you’ll take me to him?”

  “Tomorrow. Tonight I think you should read that information and do your homework.” She motioned toward the Von Fange biography. “And for God’s sake, get yourself shaved and cleaned up. There are no bohemian barons in the Reich.”

  “What about me?” Mouse looked stricken. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”

  “What, indeed?” Echo asked, and Michael could feel her staring at him.

  He quickly skimmed the biography of the Baron von Fange: land holdings in Austria and Italy, a family castle on the Saarbrucken River, a stable of thoroughbred horses, fast cars, expensively tailored clothes: the usual bounty of the privileged. Michael looked up from his reading. “I’ll need a valet,” he said.

  “A what?” Mouse squeaked.

  “A valet. Someone to hang up the expensive clothes I’m supposed to have.” He turned his attention to Echo. “Incidentally, where are these clothes? I’m sure you don’t expect me to play a baron’s role with pig shit on my shirt.”

  “They’ll take care of you here. And your ‘valet,’ too.” She might have offered a hint of a smile; the veil made it difficult to tell. “My car will be here for you at oh-nine-hundred. My driver’s name is Wilhelm.” She zippered the valise and held it close to her side. “I think that concludes our business for now. Yes?” Without waiting for an answer, she strode to the door on her long, elegant legs.

  “One minute,” Michael said. She paused. “How do you know Sandler’s planning on staying in Berlin?”

  “Knowing such things, Baron von Fange, is why I’m here. Jerek Blok’s also in Berlin. It’s no mystery: Blok and Sandler are both members of the Brimstone Club.”

  “The Brimstone Club? What’s that?”

  “Oh,” Echo said softly, “you’ll find out. Good night, gentlemen.” She opened the door and closed it behind her, and Michael listened to the sound of her footsteps as she descended the stairs.

  “A valet?” Mouse sputtered. “What the hell do I know about being a damned valet? I’ve only owned three suits in my life!”

  “Valets are seen and not heard. You do your part and we might get out of Berlin with our skins still on. I meant what I said about your joining the service. As long as you’re with me—and I’m protecting you—I expect you to do what I say. Understood?”

  “Hell, no! What do I have to do to get my ass out of this crack?”

  “Well, that’s simple enough.” Michael heard the Mercedes’s engine growl. He went to the window, pulled the curtain aside slightly, and watched the car move away into the night. “Echo wants to kill you. I imagine she could do it with one bullet.”

  Mouse was silent.

  “You think about it tonight,” Michael told him. “If you do as I say, you can get out of this corpse of a country before the Russians swarm in. If not…” He shrugged. “It’s your decision.”

  “Some choice! Either I get a bullet in my head or a Gestapo branding iron burning my balls off!”

  “I’ll try my best to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Michael said, knowing that if the Gestapo caught them, a red-hot iron to the testicles would be the least of the inflictions.

  The gray-haired woman came to the parlor and escorted Michael and Mouse down the stairs, through a door at the back of the building, and then down more steps into a cobwebbed basement. Oil lamps flickered in a rat’s nest o
f rooms, most of them empty or piled with broken furniture and other junk. They came to a wine cellar, where two other men waited; these two men moved aside a large rack of wine bottles, exposing a square hole cut in the bricks. Michael and Mouse followed the woman through a tunnel, into the basement of another row house—and there the rooms were well lit and clean, and held boxes of hand grenades, submachine gun and pistol ammunition, explosive detonator caps, fuses, and the like. The gray-haired woman led Michael and Mouse to a large chamber where several men and women were working at sewing machines. Racks of clothes—most of them German uniforms—stood around the room. Tape measures were produced, suits and shirts were chosen and marked for size, and a crate of shoes was brought out for the baron and his valet to go through. The women who took Mouse’s measurements clucked and fretted, knowing it was going to be a long night of shortening trousers, shirt and coat sleeves. A man with hair clippers and a razor appeared. Someone else brought in buckets of hot water and cakes of coarse white soap that could scrub the warts off a frog. Under the strokes of clippers, razor, and soap, Michael Gallatin—who was no stranger to transformation—began to merge with his new identity. But as he changed, he recalled the aromas of cinnamon and leather, and he found himself wondering whose face lay behind the veil.

  4

  The black Mercedes arrived promptly at nine in the morning. It was another moody day, the sun hidden behind the thick gray clouds. The Nazi high command rejoiced at such weather: the Allied bombers scrubbed their missions when the clouds closed in.

  The two men who emerged from the row house on the edge of the railroad tracks were vastly changed from those who’d entered it the evening before. The Baron von Fange was clean-shaven, his black hair neatly trimmed and the weariness slept out of his eyes; he wore a gray suit and vest, a pale blue shirt with a thin gray-striped tie and a silver stickpin. On his feet were polished black shoes, and a beige camel-hair topcoat was draped over his shoulders. Black kid gloves completed his attire. One might have guessed the clothes were tailor-made. His valet, a short stocky man, was similarly clean-shaven and had a fresh haircut that did nothing for his large, unsightly ears. Mouse wore a dark blue suit, and a plain black bow tie. He was utterly miserable; the shirt’s collar was starched to the point of strangulation, and his new, glossy black shoes pinched his feet like iron vises. He’d also learned one of the duties of a valet: manhandling the calf-skin luggage, full of clothes for both the baron and himself. But, as Mouse hefted the luggage from the row house to the trunk of the Mercedes, he had to give the tailors credit for their attention to detail: all the baron’s shirts were monogrammed, and even a scrolled FVF had been worked into the suitcases.

  Michael had already said his goodbyes to Gunther, Dietz, and the others. He settled himself into the backseat of the Mercedes. When Mouse started to climb into the back, Wilhelm—a big-shouldered man with a waxed gray mustache—said, “A servant rides in the front seat,” and firmly shut the rear passenger’s door in Mouse’s face. Mouse, grumbling under his breath, took his place in the front. Michael heard the Cross of Iron jingle in the little man’s pocket. Then Wilhelm started the engine, and the Mercedes slid smoothly away from the curb.

  A partition of glass separated the front and rear seats. Michael smelled Echo’s aroma in the car, a heady scent. The car was perfectly clean: no handkerchiefs, no pieces of paper, nothing to give a clue to Echo’s identity. Or so Michael thought, until he opened the shining metal ashtray on the back of the driver’s seat; in it there was not a trace of ashes, but instead a green ticket stub. Michael looked closely at the lettering on it: KinoElektra. The Cinema Elektra. He returned the stub to its resting place and closed the ashtray. Then he opened a little hinged rubber flap between himself and Wilhelm. “Where are we going?”

  “We have two destinations, sir. The first is to visit an artist.”

  “And the second?”

  “Your lodgings while you enjoy Berlin.”

  “Will the lady be joining us?”

  “A possibility, sir,” Wilhelm said, and that was all.

  Michael closed the flap. He glanced at Mouse, who was busy trying to stretch his shirt collar with a forefinger. Last night, while they’d slept in the same room, Michael had heard Mouse sobbing. Mouse had gotten out of his bed and stood at the window in the darkness for a long time. Michael listened to the soft clink of the Iron Cross as Mouse had turned it over and over in his hand. Then, sometime later, Mouse had sighed deeply, snuffled his nose on his sleeve, and crawled back into his bed. The tinkling noise of the Iron Cross had ceased, and Mouse slept with the medal clenched in his fist. For now, at least, his crisis of the soul had passed.

  Wilhelm was an expert driver, which was good because the streets of Berlin were nightmares of horse-drawn wagons, army trucks, tanks, and streetcars, not to mention the areas that were clogged with smoldering rubble. As they drove toward the address of Theo von Frankewitz and a light rain began to patter down on the windshield, Michael mentally reviewed what he’d learned from the dossiers.

  There was no new information about Jerek Blok; the man was a Hitler fanatic and a loyal Nazi party member whose activities since leaving his command of Falkenhausen concentration camp were shrouded in secrecy. Dr. Gustav Hildebrand, son of a German pioneer in the field of gas warfare, had a home near Bonn, where Hildebrand Industries was located. But there was a new item of interest: Hildebrand also maintained a residence and lab on the island of Skarpa, about thirty miles south of Bergen, Norway. As a summer home, that would be quite a journey from Bonn. And as a winter retreat… well, the winters were very long and very arctic that far north. So why did Hildebrand work in such an isolated place? Surely he could have found a more idyllic location. It was a point that merited looking into.

  Wilhelm drove slowly along Victoria Park, as rain slashed through the budding trees. It was another area of row houses and small shops, and pedestrians hurried along under umbrellas.

  Michael opened the flap once more. “Are we expected?”

  “No, sir. Herr von Frankewitz was home at midnight; we’ll find out if he’s still in.” Wilhelm was just creeping the Mercedes along the street. Looking for a signal, Michael thought. He saw a woman cutting roses in the window of a flower shop, and a man standing in a doorway trying to get an uncooperative umbrella open. The woman put her roses in a glass vase and set them in the window, and the man got his umbrella open and walked away. Wilhelm said, “Herr Frankewitz is in, sir. That’s his apartment building.” He motioned to a structure of gray bricks on the right. “It’s apartment five, on the second floor.” He braked the Mercedes. “I’ll be driving around the block. Good luck, sir.”

  Michael got out, his coat collar up against the rain. Mouse started to get out, too, but Wilhelm grasped his arm. “The baron goes alone,” he said, and Mouse started to pull angrily away but Michael told him, “It’s all right. Stay in the car,” and then he strode to the curb and into the building Wilhelm had indicated. The Mercedes drove on.

  The building’s interior smelled like a damp tomb. Nazi slogans and epithets had been painted on the walls. Michael saw something slink past in the gloom. Whether it was a cat or a very large rodent, he couldn’t tell for sure. He went up the staircase, and found the tarnished number “5.”

  He knocked on the door. Down the hallway, an infant squalled. Voices, a man and woman’s, raised and tangled in argument. He knocked again on the door, aware of the small two-shot derringer in its special pocket of his vest: a gift from his hosts. No answer. He balled his fist to knock a third time, beginning to wonder if Wilhelm had gotten his signals crossed.

  “Go away,” a man’s voice said from the other side of the door. “I don’t have any money.”

  It was a tired gasp of a voice. The voice of someone whose breathing wasn’t right. Michael said, “Herr von Frankewitz? I have to talk to you, please.”

  A silence. Then: “I can’t talk. Go away.”

  “It’s very important.”

&nbs
p; “I said I have no money. Please… don’t bother me. I’m a sick man.”

  Michael heard footsteps shuffling away. He said, “I’m a friend of your friend in Paris. The opera lover.”

  The footsteps stopped.

  Michael waited.

  “I don’t know who you’re talking about,” Frankewitz rasped, standing close to the door.

  “He told me you’d done some painting recently. Some metal work. I’d like to discuss it with you, if I may.”

  Another silence stretched. Von Frankewitz was either a very careful man or a very frightened one. And then Michael heard the clicking of locks disengaging. A bolt was thrown back, and the door opened about two inches. A slice of a white-fleshed face appeared in the crack, like the visage of a ghost emerging from a crypt. “Who are you?” Frankewitz whispered.

  “I’ve traveled a long way to see you,” Michael said. “May I come in?”

  Frankewitz hesitated, his pallid face hanging in the darkness like a quarter moon. Michael saw a gray eye, bloodshot, and a thicket of oily brown hair tumbling over a high, white forehead. The gray eye blinked. Frankewitz opened the door and stepped back, allowing Michael to enter.

  The apartment was a close, dark place with narrow windows filmed by the soot of Berlin’s factories. A threadbare black and gold Oriental carpet covered the wooden floor, which felt none too sturdy under Michael’s shoes. The furniture was heavy and ornate, the kind of things kept in dusty museum basements. Everywhere there were throw pillows, and the arms of a sea-green sofa were protected with lace coverlets. The apartment odors assailed Michael’s nostrils: the smoke of cheap cigarettes, a sweet floral cologne, oil paints and turpentine, and the bitter scent of sickness. In a corner of the room, near one of the slender windows, was a chair, an easel, and a canvas with a landscape in progress: a red sky above a city whose buildings were made of bones.

  “Sit here. It’s the most comfortable.” Frankewitz swept a pile of dirty clothes off the sea-green sofa, and Michael sat down. A spring stabbed his spine.