Five Past Midnight

by James Thayer

  "Jack Cray is still out there," Koder said flatly.

  "But he can't evade me long. Not in Berlin. I have thousands and thousands of pairs of eyes looking for him."

  When the telephone sounded, Dietrich lifted the handset to his ear. "This is Dietrich... Yes, I remember you, Captain."

  The detective grabbed for a pencil and rose from his chair as he dashed off notes on the back of an envelope. "Von Tornitz ? I don't know that name..,. His widow? Are you sure?"

  Dietrich dipped his chin at Peter Hilfinger, who picked up an extension to listen in.

  "And the American?" Dietrich asked. "A bandage over his face?"

  Dietrich cupped his hand over the phone. He ordered Hilfinger, "Adam von Tornitz. A Wehrmacht captain, dead now. Lived in Berlin. Get his address."

  He turned his attention again to the telephone. "That's all?... Thank you, Captain. You'll hear from me again." Dietrich lowered the telephone. He grinned meanly at the Gestapo agent. "One of my pairs of eyes saw the widow of Adam von Tornitz walking with the American near the Tiergarten."

  Hilfinger ran his finger down a page of the city directory.

  "Von Tornitz?" Koder asked. "I know that name. He was involved in a plot against the Führer. He was hanged, as I recall. I might have witnessed his execution on Lehrterstrasse." He waived his hand airily. "But perhaps not. They are hard to remember, one from another, after a while."

  Hilfinger wrote down an address. "It's in the Nikolassee." He handed the address to Dietrich.

  Dietrich dialed, then barked orders into the telephone. Still grinning, waving the address like a prize, he sped past Koder on his way out of the office, a line of detectives following him.

  "HAVE YOU SEEN HIM?" Dietrich whispered, even though the house was sixty meters away. He had just gotten out of his car. Night was almost complete, with only faint purple left of the day in the western sky.

  The plainclothes policeman shook his head. "I've been here ten minutes. There's someone in the house. At least I think so. A shadow crossing a window is all I saw. My men have had the house surrounded for those ten minutes, so if he's in there, he can't get out."

  "You look silly, carrying that machine pistol," Dietrich chided easily. "Detectives and machine pistols don't mix well."

  "Then you dash into that house withjust your puny handgun, sir." The policeman's name was Erwin Nolte. He quickly added, "With all due respect." He wiggled the weapon. "I'm going to keep this damned thing right in front of me, with the trigger half pulled back. That American scares the crap out of me."

  "Me, too." Dietrich carried binoculars in one hand and a pack radio in the other. He sucked wind through his teeth as he watched three cars pull up along Kenner Street, a block west of the von Tornitz house. Peter Hilfinger and Egon Haushofer climbed out of the first car. Hilfinger gave directions to policemen who began to array themselves around the house, but at a distance, joining the police already there. More cars were arriving to the north, policemen spilling out.

  "Sir," Nolte blurted, "he's coming out. On the front porch."

  Dietrich lifted the binoculars to his eyes, saw nothing but black, hastily removed the lens covers, and tried again. Jack Cray was abruptly centered in Dietrich's field of vision, stepping between two potted plants down the steps to the front walkway.

  Dietrich breathed. "It's him, all right."

  Jack Cray must have had superb hearing, because just then his head jerked up. He cocked an ear. Dietrich heard nothing. For a moment. Then from the south came the low growl of an engine. Dietrich turned to see an armored scout car roaring down the street.

  "Goddamn that idiot." Dietrich spun toward the house, in time to see Jack Cray rush back inside and close the door.

  "Where'd the armor come from?" the policeman asked.

  "On the orders of a Gestapo agent whom I'd murder if ] hadn't spent a career chasing murderers."

  A black Horch rolled up next to Dietrich. Rudolf Koder and two other agents emerged from the car. At this stage in the struggle, Gestapo agents seldom traveled alone.

  "That the von Tornitz house?" Koder demanded.

  The armored car—a three-axle Mercedes-Benz with a 2-cm gun on a rear turret—came along the street, followed by two identical armored cars and three troop trucks. In the lead armored car a spotter wearing a tanker's black beret threw open the hatch and rose just enough to glance at Koder.

  "You seen the American?" Koder yelled at Dietrich over the grind of the armored cars' engines.

  Dietrich was silent, furious that the Gestapo agent had muscled into his police work.

  Erwin Nolte replied, "He's in that house. Just went back through the front door."

  Koder signaled to the spotter, who slipped back down into the Mercedes-Benz. The car lurched forward down the block, then rolled up the curb, plowed through three azalea bushes and knocked over a lamppost to park in front of the von Tornitz house, thirty feet from the massive oak front door.

  Blackout curtains were drawn over all the windows, but power was on, and slits of light escaped from the bottoms of the curtains. The porch light was dark. The house was accented with heavy timbers on the first floor, and expanses of whitewash on the second, crisscrossed by more timbers. It was old and rambling, with dormers and gables, four chimneys, ornate cornices, and small oculus windows. The house was large and confused and comfortable.

  SS storm troopers emerged from the trucks. When platoon leaders signaled, the troopers spread out around the house, joining the policemen. They carried Schmeissers and rifles, and moved with a confidence that indicated they were veterans of a front. A machine-gun team set up an MG-42 on a tripod on the west side of the house. The Berlin detectives watched gravely.

  Anger clipped Otto Dietrich's words. "Who gave you authority to use the SS on this operation, Koder?"

  "General Müller, of course."

  "This is my goddamn job!"

  "The American is in the house, and the house is surrounded. He cannot get out. Your job looks at an end, doesn't it?" Koder smiled at him. "So who knows what you might be doing tomorrow, or where you'll be."

  When this mission was over, Dietrich would be once again of no worth to the Reich. He had not been promised a pardon were he to capture the American. Still, perhaps if he brought Jack Cray in, rather than allow the Blackshirts and the Gestapo to do his job, some fate other than a return to the cell might await him.

  "I'm going in after the American," Dietrich said. "You are a policeman, not a soldier," Koder said with some satisfaction. "You don't have any idea what's waiting for you in that house." Dietrich walked toward the front porch. Pilasters were on both sides of the arched door. "Better Jack Cray than you and your guillotine."

  "At least let me help you with the door." Koder gave an order to the armored car's spotter.

  The spotter yelled down into his hatch. The 2-cm gun roared, yellow flashes dancing at the tip of the barrel. The sound was similar to a lightning storm: a sharp crack followed by a deep bellow. The door of the von Tornitz house and the pilasters and the frame blew inward, leaving a ragged, smoking hole at the top of the steps.

  More armored equipment came noisily down the street. The gauleiter in a neighboring house pushed aside his blackout curtain to observe the scene.

  Dietrich motioned for Hilfinger to join him. They slowly circled the house, beginning along a walkway between a laurel hedge and the house. Troopers held their weapons on the windows and a side door that exited to a garbage bin. A trooper was repeatedly plunging a bayonet into the garbage. He shook his head.

  "The American's not under there," Dietrich told him. "He didn't have time to get outside. He's in the house."

  The trooper stabbed the bayonet several more times, all the way up to the rifle barrel. "I was told to stab, so I stab."

  The house had been built on a slope, and the detectives stepped downhill along the walkway, passing basement windows and more of the SS troopers who had surrounded the house. The troopers kept their distance f
rom the house, posting themselves behind trees and bushes. Along the back of the house was a rose garden. A dog run was also in back, where a Gestapo agent was poking his pistol into a clapboard doghouse. Several more troopers stood under a trellis that was ensnared by rose vines. The troopers wore gray fatigues and coal-scuttle helmets. They were almost invisible in the darkness. Two Gestapo agents were standing near a greenhouse, which was made to look Gothic with wrought-iron curls along the corners and ridgeline. Dietrich stared at the greenhouse a moment, thinking it odd for a reason he could not immediately determine. Then he realized that in Berlin he seldom saw so many undamaged panes of glass in one place. The detectives passed the coal and ash gates—both too narrow for a man to squeeze through, but nevertheless guarded by a trooper pointing a Schmeisser at the gates. More troopers watched the back door. Their lieutenant was standing behind them, the red point of his cigarette rising and falling in the night. Other troopers surrounded the garage. Dietrich's detectives stood apart from the troopers and Gestapo agents.

  Dietrich and Hilfinger completed their circuit and paused at the front door. The armored car spotter asked from up on his machine, "Are you two waiting for me to make the hole bigger?"

  A second armored car drove onto the lawn Instead of a 2-cm cannon, this car had a blunt nozzle that Dietrich had not seen before. Rudolf Koder was giving directions to the second car's driver, who peered out from a rectangular slot. The car pulled up closer to the house.

  "Damn, I don't want to go into this house," Hilfinger said. "I thought being a cop meant I was exempt from this kind of Skorzeny stuff."

  Pistols in hand, Dietrich and Hilfinger slowly stepped through the door, ducking under shattered boards that hung down. The bitter smell was of spent explosives. The armored car's shell had done its work on the hallway, also, which was tossed and shattered and filled with rubble like a Berlin street. They stepped around an overturned Chinese chest and a gilt-framed mirror that had been blown off the wall. Shards of mirror lay all along the hall. The chest was too small for a man, but Dietrich looked into it anyway pushing aside a door that was off-kilter. The chest was filled with China dishes, now mostly fragments. Rudolf Koder and six storm troopers followed them, Koder in the rear, a pistol in his hand. Dietrich led them into the good room, then into the kitchen. They pulled open cabinets. On the counter near the sink was a bottle of wine that was half full, ten sausages on a string, and hard rolls.

  When a trooper came to the closed pantry door, rather than open it blindly he pulled back the bolt on the Schmeisser and loosed half a clip through the door, the weapon roaring and bucking, stitching the wood up one side and down the other.

  Then he kicked in the door and bulled his way inside to find nothing but a few empty jars and bins.

  "Learn that technique in Warsaw, did you?" Dietrich asked mildly. He led Hilfinger and the troopers up the stairs. The detectives peered into the bathroom. A trooper with a bayonet on a Mauser stepped by Dietrich, opened a towel cabinet, and jabbed the bayonet into the piles of neatly stacked towels. In the hallway, the Schmeisser- carrying trooper covered an armoire while Dietrich opened its door to reveal folded linen sheets and pillowcases. The bayonet was plunged into the linen. Rudolf Koder watched from the top of the stairs.

  Troopers and several detectives now crowded the hallway. Dietrich entered the front bedroom, checking the two armoires, looking under the bed, turning back the mattress. The trooper followed him, sticking his bayonet into the armoire and through the mattresses. Hilfinger and other troopers searched the three back bedrooms while Dietrich climbed to the servants' quarters in the garret. They opened closets and dressers. Armoires were opened and their contents pierced through with bayonets.

  The basement was next. Lightbulbs had been unavailable in Berlin for months, and they had apparently been purloined from this little- used basement for the sockets upstairs. Dietrich was passed a flashlight. He held it to one side, presenting a target away from his body as he descended the stairs, the pistol in his other hand. Koder followed. In the darkness only vague outlines were visible. Dietrich's eyes adjusted slowly. The basement was filled with boxes and bins, two bicycles>, a pedal sewing machine, a ringer washer, and a laundry hopper. Hilfinger and Koder had also obtained flashlights, and the thin, moving beams threw exaggerated shadows against the boxes and the walls.

  Dietrich moved toward the furnace room. He stuck his flashlight and gun into the room at the same time, sweeping the light left into the coal bin.

  "Nothing, not even coal," he whispered to himself.

  He brought the beam of light down to the ash bin below the furnace's iron lip. The ash was gray and fine and a film of it lay on the furnace room floor. A trooper squeezed by Dietrich and thrust his bayonet twice down into the ash box, the weapon sinking each time until the front sight was below the ash.

  Dietrich lowered himself to his knees to peer into the furnace's combustion chamber. He couldn't see up into the furnace, but nothing was on its floor. And he couldn't think of a way a man could get into it, anyway.

  The bass cracking of a Schmeisser filled the basement. Dietrich turned to see the water heater leaking from eight holes. When he stepped away from the furnace, the same trooper used his weapon to perforate the furnace, up and down, then back and forth.

  "Don't fire that again unless [ order you to," Dietrich said wearily. "I want to talk to this American first."

  "I take my orders from Kriminalrat Koder, sir," the trooper replied.

  "This is my goddamn investigation. I run it my way. I search a house my way."

  Koder stared at him.

  Dietrich detested the weakness in him that compelled him to explain further, "There might be evidence here we can collect. There's no sense destroying the house during this search."

  "Evidence?" Koder appeared genuinely at a loss.

  "And we don't know how involved this woman is."

  "We have learned her name is Katrin von Tornitz," Koder said. "She is the wife of an executed traitor."

  "But that doesn't mean she herself is a traitor. And so we shouldn't be in such a hurry to destroy her home. There's a less destructive way to search a house than to shoot up everything."

  Koder smiled. Then he snapped a finger at the troopers.

  Three of them turned their submachine guns on the cartons and bins. The roar pushed Dietrich back against a wall. Wood splinters leaped into the air. Masonry chips shot out from the walls. The boxes shattered inward, revealing old clothes and bric-a-brac from prior household moves. Bullets spun the bicycles and then threw them on the floor. The water heater and furnace were further perforated. A collection of bottles from the last century and three old vases blew apart. A glass-front bookcase ruptured. A duffel bag containing rags was shot through. The ringer washer was almost cut in half. A storage closet danced under the onslaught, and its door sagged open, revealing old clothes that were further punctured. Spent shells skittered across the floor. Gray gunsmoke gathered along the ceiling.

  Then the troopers picked through the debris and pulled aside the bullet-riddled clothes and kicked in the boxes.

  One of them said unnecessarily, "The American isn't here."

  Dietrich's ears were ringing. He crossed the basement and climbed the stairs. Three Gestapo agents were in the kitchen, and four more in the good room, all of them rooting around, pulling items off shelves, flipping through a stack of letters and examining a pen-and-ink set.

  Peter Hilfinger had been searching through back rooms, and he joined Dietrich at the door. He returned his pistol to his belt. "I feel like I've been run over by Blackshirts."

  "It's clear to me now," Dietrich said in a low voice, "that although I was given control of the search for Jack Cray, and even though I've got Himmler's letter in my pocket, the Gestapo has also been given their orders, and when they and I conflict, I'm expected to give way."

  Hilfinger followed Dietrich from the house and down the front steps. They walked between the two armored cars. The
crews had climbed out of their vehicles and were sitting on the hoods and turrets. More equipment had arrived, filling the street, including a light tank, a bulldozer, and more troop trucks. More than three hundred soldiers and policemen now surrounded the house.

  "So where is Jack Cray?" Hilfinger asked.

  Dietrich turned abruptly so that he could again look at the von Tor- nitz house. "Peter, I saw him come out, and go back into that house." "So did I."

  "He is still inside, goddamn it. But I don't know where."

  Rudolf Koder emerged from the house, leading a line of agents and troopers. His black coat was shiny in the night, looking wet. His mouth was a grim line. He marched to the second armored car and yelled an order Dietrich couldn't hear over the sound of its engine.

  The troopers and agents backed away from the house, giving the armored car a clear field of fire.

  Dietrich rushed up to Koder. "What in hell are you doing?"

  "The American is in that house." Koder did not bother looking at Dietrich. He walked away, hands casually in his coat pockets. "He won't let me find him, so he leaves me no alternative."

  The sudden blare was of a bellows, a loud windy howl. The night lit up, painting Dietrich and Hilfinger and all the others in orange light. A stream of fire gushed from the second armored car's nozzle. The flood of liquid flame surged across the lawn and coursed up the steps and into the house. The fire stream roared and popped, and it splashed against the house as the gunner swung the nozzle left and right. The force of the flood blew in the front room windows, which instantly filled with flame. The blazing spray climbed to the second story and poured into the windows. Fuel dropped in puddles onto the lawn under the fiery stream, and ignited, leaving a trail of fire to the house. The flamethrower was then directed at the base of the house, covering the porch and even the azaleas with flame. Dietrich shielded his eyes from the furious light. The armored car filled the hole where the door had been with fire.

  Within seconds, nothing of the front facade could be seen. Fire rose three stories and beyond, swirling in the air above the house, and sending sparks even higher. Black smoke churned up from the fire, but was quickly lost in the night. Everything—the dormers and parapets, the flues and chimneys, the cornices and shutters, the roof cresting and door casings—was lost behind the boiling curtain.