Five Past Midnight

by James Thayer

  "He is a member of your group?"

  "There is no group," he snapped. "The general and I have . . . have worked together on certain matters. He was arrested, and he may soon implicate me. He is in a cell somewhere, and I know they'll come for me if he starts to talk, and ... "

  Fear had loosened Becker's tongue. His words gushed forth like water from a broken pipe. Katrin sympathized with him. She knew fear. All Berliners did. She patted his arm, just as she'd patted Artur's.

  The gesture stopped Becker mid-sentence. He inhaled hugely. He

  turned on the bench and finally looked at her. "Why have you come to me?"

  "I need your help."

  He shook his head sorrowfully. "That is impossible, Mrs von Tornitz. I am no doubt under suspicion. Perhaps we are being watched right now, as we sit here."

  They were partly hidden by azaleas and lilacs, and could see only glimpses of trucks passing on Tiergarten Street.

  He went on, "I have ceased all activity in this regard I no longer… no longer have the courage or strength to do those things." Katrin removed a handkerchief from a pocket and passed it under her nose. She had had a cold for months. "Colonel, I'm in over my head."

  "Aren't we all?"

  "I need your help."

  "No longer," he said quietly, averting his eyes. "I can't… simply can't."

  "You work in the office of army administration. You can easily get what I want."

  He shook his head.

  "I need the roster for the soldiers and SS troopers assigned to the Chancellery."

  Judging from his reaction, she might as well have tried to set him on fire. Becker's eyes widened, his breath rattled in his throat, and he chopped the air with his hand, as if swatting away the absurd notion. Then he tried to rise, but she dug her fingernails into his arm and pulled him back down.

  "You can get the Chancellery roster, can't you?" "Impossible. I'm already a suspect."

  "You don't know that for sure."

  "They will break General Etzdorf and then they'll come for me, and then…" His tone carried an undignified pleading, and he clamped shut his jaw.

  Her voice was a study in reason. "Colonel Becker, you don't understand how important this is."

  He rapidly shook his head. "It doesn't matter. I'm through with all that."

  With histrionic embellishment, Katrin reached to scratch the top of her head. So apparent was this a signal that Becker leaped from the bench and started toward the street.

  He made only three steps. As if by sleight of hand, Jack Cray appeared in front of Becker, perhaps from the lilacs, and gently pushed him back to the bench.

  The colonel's face blanched. Cray was wearing a Wehrmacht captain's uniform taken from Katrin's closet. A bandage hid one of his cheeks. The cap's bill was almost on his nose, hiding his eyes. Under the bill was a row of butterfly bandages, covering the new gash on his forehead.

  He sat on the other side of Becker. The colonel's gaze pivoted back and forth between Cray and Katrin.

  She said, "Colonel, I don't have time to fool with you. You are going to obtain the Chancellery roster and bring it to me."

  His breath was in his throat. He moved his head slightly, a negative.

  "Take that bandage off," she ordered Cray.

  The American pulled off the wrap, wincing as the adhesive tugged at his skin.

  "Colonel, look at this man," she said.

  Becker turned again to Cray.

  She said, "This is the man on the posters all over the city. This is the Vassy Chateau killer."

  Becker's face whitened even more. His mouth pulled back in a grimace of fear.

  Katrin's voice was iron. "He is going to slit your throat right now, right on this bench, if you don't agree to bring me that roster."

  Becker lost control of himself, leaning slightly toward Katrin.

  Cray's face opened in astonishment. He blurted, "No, I'm not."

  She persisted. "Colonel, this American is a ruthless killer. His knife is in his sleeve, the same one he used at the chateau. And he is going to do what he does best, on you, right now, unless you agree."

  "No, I'm not." Cray held up his palms toward her. "I never said that."

  Katrin ignored him. "Make your decision, Colonel."

  Becker stared at Jack Cray, weighing the American's face, with its stony angles and pugilist's nose and draftee's haircut.

  Cray tried a smile. "She's just teasing."

  "Colonel, are you going to do what I say," she asked, "or are you living your last seconds?"

  Becker closed his eyes in surrender. His voice could be heard just above the rush of the wind. "I might be able to get a copy of the roster."

  Katrin stood. "Place it in the drop by tomorrow evening." She stared at him levelly. "If it is not there, I will anonymously telephone the Gestapo about your activities against the state. Then they will come for you, irrespective of what General Etzdorf tells them." She started back toward the street, making her way around mud-filled craters.

  Cray shook his head and said to Becker, "She's been through a lot."

  "You are planning to suborn someone on the Chancellery roster, hoping to get into the Führer's headquarters?"

  Cray said nothing.

  "You are too late," Becker said with some satisfaction. "The Führer is leaving Berlin tonight."

  The American demanded, "How do you know that?"

  "When the leader leaves the city, hundreds of orders are issued to accommodate the move. One of them is that the Chancellery guard is drastically reduced. It happens every time, a pattern. I know it because orders regarding the Chancellery contingent are distributed through my office."

  "How will he leave Berlin?"

  "Train or plane. Most rail bridges have been knocked out, so probably by plane."

  "Tempelhof isn't operating, is it? The runways have been dug up by bombers."

  "The Führer never leaves from Tempelhof. He uses an airstrip in the Tiergarten."

  "And you know this because you see the guard detachment rosters?"

  Becker nodded. He glanced tensely at Cray's hands.

  "Well, nuts." The American pulled at his chin. "Nothing's ever easy, is it?"

  "Pardon?"

  Cray smiled at Becker. "Don't forget the roster. Put it in the drop." He left the bench and ran after Katrin. At her elbow he asked, "Will you kindly not do that again?"

  "What?" she asked, all innocence.

  "Use my face to frighten someone."

  As she neared the street, her shoes sinking in the mud, she turned to him. "Don't you do whatever works? Isn't that what you commandos are trained to do?"

  "Well..."

  "That's just what I did." She turned west, walking briskly along the sidewalk.

  A convoy of Wehrmacht trucks passed, three of them still painted in the light swirling colors of desert camouflage, oddly cheery in drab Berlin.

  He followed her. "Well, you could hurt my feelings, doing that."

  She stopped cold. "I cannot possibly have heard you correctly."

  Cray lifted his shoulders. "I thought we were just going to talk to the colonel, not scare him to death. Just see what he could do for us. That's why we were meeting him in the Tiergarten."

  "Hurt your feelings?" She laughed brightly so foreign and forgotten a sound that it startled her.

  He smiled engagingly.

  She walked on. "It scares me, but with you here Germany may win this war yet."

  Cray kept pace with her. "I didn't tell you all of it last night."

  "All of what?"

  "About my wife, and what happened."

  "Maybe because I didn't want to hear it." She picked up her pace. "Maybe if I walk faster."

  "I've never told anybody else about it."

  His voice was suddenly devoid of his American boldness, and there was a touch of pleading to it. She slowed.

  Cray said softly, "I was the drunk."

  She stopped. "What?"

  "It was a
one-car accident." Cray forced his gaze up from the sidewalk. He looked into her eyes. "I was driving."

  "You were the drunk?"

  Only by force of will could Cray keep his eyes on Katrin. His voice was broken. "We'd been at a restaurant, celebrating our second wedding anniversary. This was in the summer of 1941, almost four years ago. We held hands all night, even while we ate. I don't think my gaze left her once during the entire dinner. Our marriage was so ..."

  He stopped and turned away, toward a bank of ruined apartment buildings across the street. Her hand came up, hesitated, then touched his arm.

  His voice was rough. "I loved my wife."

  "I know."

  "That night, I never laughed so hard or talked so much. I'd never been funnier or more romantic. I had already swept Merri Ann off her feet, she liked to say, but I was trying to do it all over again. We were celebrating the good fortune of loving each other. And I never drank so much in my life. Christ, I drank too much."

  "What happened?"

  "I drove us toward home, still laughing, her sitting so close to me in the car that I could hardly shift the gears. I was going too fast, not paying enough attention. I missed a turn on the country road above the Columbia River. Our car skidded off the road, then rolled down a ravine. It turned over and over." Black grief was written on Cray's face. "I was pinned behind the steering wheel, both my legs broken. Our car wasn't found for eighteen hours. I stared at my dead wife for those eighteen hours."

  "Were you prosecuted?"

  Cray shook his head. "The sheriff had been a friend of my father's. He didn't inquire into it."

  "So you ran away into the army?"

  "After my legs healed."

  "And you've been angry at yourself ever since."

  "It has worked away at me ever since. Not an hour, not a goddamn minute of any day ..." Cray's mournful voice trailed off.

  "And you've taken it out on my countrymen ever since."

  "Something like that."

  "Your plan is to have a German soldier end it for you, rather than do it yourself."

  Cray said noncommittally, "I don't know if I had thought it through that far." He ran a hand along his temple. "But I sure didn't expect to last this long in the war." He tried a laugh, but it was feeble.

  Katrin took him by the arm and continued walking. "Well, why don't you wait until you get back to Wenatchee to kill yourself. So I won't have to think about it."

  He grinned crookedly. "You can be quite a comfort, Katrin."

  She leaned into him as they walked. "Don't make me think about you, alive or dead. All right? Is that too much to ask?"

  "I don't know. You might end up thinking about me a lot. When I put my mind to it, I'm quite likable "

  "No, you aren't." But she squeezed his arm, and they made their way toward the Zoo Station. "Not in the least.".

  13

  HEINZ BURMASTER tramped along, close on the heels of the Home Guardsman in front of him. Burmaster's antitank weapon, a Panzerfaust, bounced on his shoulder with each step. He had found a woman's scarf — hand-knitted blue wool with a cross-eyed gray cat in the center — and had placed it on his shoulder as a pad, and now at least the Panzerfaust's metal stock was not banging against his collarbone. Burmaster wore an old Italian army overcoat, stripped of insignia, and the white Volkssturm armband. His long face was covered with gray stubble. He still had that winter's cold, and with every few steps he wiped his nose with his sleeve.

  Burmaster turned his head left. "Getting older with each passing day is the natural order of the universe, wouldn't you say, Rolf?"

  Rolf Quast walked beside Burmaster. He had become accustomed to Burmaster's jovial prattle, and only occasionally encouraged him with a grunt, which Quast did just then.

  "Well, then, I have reversed the natural order, because I appear to be getting younger with each day." Burmaster held up a hand to prevent Quast from interrupting, as if there were a chance of that. "You ask, 'How can that be, Heinz? Such cannot be the case, Heinz,' you protest."

  Quast also wore a four days' growth of beard. His eyes were heavily bagged, and his earlobes had sunk with age and the wattles under his chin swung with each step. Quast and Burmaster were bringing up the rear of a double-file column of Home Guards, a hundred reserve soldiers walking at a desultory pace, their captain in front, bent over a city map, trying to study it while walking along, the map tilted toward the orange light from a burning building they were passing. Red Army shells fluttered overhead, sounding like tearing cloth. The moon appeared briefly, but then high clouds and low smoke obscured it once more.

  The handle of Burmaster's entrenching tool was knocking his knee, so he yanked it along the belt where it hung next to his bread bag, which contained a fist-sized chunk of black bread. Before each time Burmaster bit into the bread, he tapped it against the side of his boot so the beetles would crawl out. Most of the bugs anyway, he hoped. Burmaster was usually too hungry to be particular about a few bread bugs. In the rucksack on his back was a blanket and a Bible and nothing more. The Pan- zerfaust was his only weapon.

  He said, "I was too old for the Great War, Rolf. I tried to enlist, but the army wouldn't take me. Nor the navy. I lied about my age, but the recruiting sergeants saw the wrinkles around my eyes and laughed me away. And this was thirty years ago."

  Rolf Quast cleared his throat, which Burmaster took as an invitation to continue. "But, as you can plainly see, I am not too old for this war. Hence, I must be getting younger."

  Quast harrumphed pleasantly.

  Burmaster added, "I don't doubt that Germany shall see yet another war in my lifetime, but by then I will be an infant, and too young to fight."

  Quast asked, "How old are you, Heinz?"

  "Sixty-six."

  "Two years older than me. We are both too old to be lugging antitank rockets around the city, I'd say. You ever fired one before?"

  Burmaster followed the column to one side of the street to avoid a crater. "We didn't have enough of them to waste them on training. So our instructor made us point them at a wood mock-up of a British Matilda, and pretend to pull the trigger, and yell out 'Shoosh' to imitate the sound of the launch. Then the instructor would call out 'Boom' to show I'd hit the tank. I'm a good shot, apparently." He tapped the Panzerfaust affectionately.

  The column of old men wound its way along Pleger Street, dodging some mounds of rubble, having to climb over others. British bombers had dropped fire canisters on the neighborhood, and they had landed haphazardly, igniting dozens of buildings along the street, sparing others. This was not the first time Pleger Street had been hit, and so some of the fires had to content themselves with devouring buildings that had already been tossed by high explosives while other fires worked away on apartments that had been inhabited until the air-raid sirens of two hours ago.

  The fires marked the Home Guard column's way, each blaze casting brilliant, dancing light out over the rubble and ruin, which then threw black shadows further on. The guardsmen marched from light to dark to light again. They lingered when they passed through each pool of warmth, and the column stretched and compressed, stretched and compressed, like a worm. And it had been doing so for ten nights, a crisscrossing of Berlin that to Burmaster and Quast and the others seemed chaotic, but was in response to the Berlin commandant's best estimate as to where the city's defenses needed shoring up, an estimate that changed with each new bombing run and each new report of enemy troop movement. Burmaster had blisters on his feet, water on his knees, and so many aches that even his hair hurt.

  He stepped over a bedspring and then pieces of a vase. The Panzer- faust was getting heavier with each step, as it did each night, and was biting into his shoulder, and when the sergeant blew the whistle to fall out for a break, Burmaster slid the damn thing off his shoulder and lay it against the trunk of a tree that had been blown out of the earth by a bomb, and whose roots now grasped at the air like gnarled hands. Quast placed his Panzerfaust next to Burmaster's, and t
hen levered himself down to the cobblestones and leaned back against the tree, sighing heavily.

  A few moments passed before Burmaster said, in a low voice, "I'm never going to fire that thing. My Panzerfaust."

  "What do you mean?"

  "I have lived too long to be blasted apart by a tank, which will surely happen should I engage in any impudent folly with the Panzer- faust. I'll miss my target, and the angry tank crew will turn its full attention on me."

  "So what are you going to do?" Quast rubbed his calves.

  "I'm going to wait for the first chance I get, then throw up my arms in surrender, and pray our captain doesn't shoot me, and pray the Russians don't shoot me. And I may survive this war yet."

  "Maybe the Americans and Canadians and British will get to Berlin first," Quast said. "I've heard the Anglos are nice people, once they calm down some."

  "That's the first line of my evening prayer every night. Please, God, I pray, don't let that bastard George Patton's tanks run out of fuel."

  The whistle blew, and the guardsmen struggled to their feet, groans and curses rolling up and down the line. Heinz Burmaster grimaced as he placed his weight once again on his farm of blisters.

  He turned for his Panzerfaust.

  It was gone.

  And so was Quast's. Nothing there, against the tree trunk.

  "Rolf?" Burmaster asked. He didn't need to say anything more because both guardsmen saw the problem at once: no Panzerfausts where two Panzerfausts should have been, right up against the fallen tree where the guardsmen had left them.

  Burmaster circled the tree. Nothing but shards of glass and fractured brick and bronze coffin handles. No Panzerfausts, and that was for sure. He looked over his shoulder at the dark ruins of a funeral home.

  Quast drew air through his teeth. "You don't have to worry about the Russians now, because the captain is going to shoot you and me, he sees us without our weapons."

  Burmaster picked up a board from the curb. It might have once been part of a coffin. He placed it over his shoulder as if it were his Pan- zerfaust, then he stepped into line, Quast at his elbow. They began again their endless march, following the troops in front of them.