Five Past Midnight

by James Thayer

  "How dreary." Cray smiled again.

  "That's why I loathe that little man with his tidy little mustache who has taken over the Reich Chancellery. He is not sensible to Germany's thousand-year heritage. He doesn't understand the courtesy due to his betters."

  "Some people think he's done worse things."

  "I met him once. Did Katrin tell you that?"

  "She didn't mention it."

  Katrin was bent over the pad. She might not have been listening. Her pencil scratched at a piece of paper.

  "This was back in 'thirty-four, when Hitler was still trying to present himself as respectable. It was at a garden reception for Princess Maria Metternich-Wittenburg on her return from a year in Cairo. I'm one of the few people ever to see Hitler in a suit and a homburg. He arrived in a Mercedes cabriolet. The Brownshirts who had followed him in a second car weren't allowed into the garden, but Hitler strolled right in, hat in hand. He was introduced to me."

  Cray's eyes were now on the countess. "What's he like?"

  She put the patches into a basket. "Nice voice. He could have been a singer, if he hadn't become a dictator."

  "Anything else about him you remember?"

  "He looks directly at you when you speak. He doesn't look over your shoulder or look away. And he seems to be listening to your every word. Weighing it. His eyes are peculiar. They are compelling, curiously so, unlike any other eyes I've ever looked into. In fact, as he looked at me, I stammered out my 'How do you do ?' and could hardly get out my question about how he kept his hat on in the open car."

  "What else did he say?"

  "Nothing to me. He moved along, the princess introducing him to other notables. I watched him for a while, though, standing near him. When a butler arrived and asked Hitler if he could take his hat, Hitler replied, 'Take it where?' I laughed, but hid it behind my hand. I think he noticed, though. He glared at me, but only for an instant. He was looking for Prince Metternich-Wittenberg, the hostess's husband. I think Hitler wanted something from him."

  "What else do you recall about him?" Cray asked.

  "Nothing, really."

  Katrin passed Cray her completed transcription. "The Hand works fast."

  Cray read to himself a moment, "It took Colonel Becker's list of Chancellery workers we sent it, and compared those names with records it procured from the American and English and Soviet POW administrations. It must have taken a roomful of intelligence agents, sitting at desks, churning through documents."

  She leaned close to follow his finger on the page. "And the Russians helped?"

  "The Hand somehow managed to get Soviet cooperation."

  "What's your sleeve length?" the countess asked.

  "Long."

  "That doesn't help. Hold your arm up."

  When Cray complied, she lay a tape measure along it. She nodded to herself.

  Katrin's handwriting was large and looping, requiring a second page, which Cray turned to.

  Cray summarized the message aloud, slowly, as if tasting the news. "The Hand has found a second bunker in Berlin, under the barracks of the SS honor guard, on Hermann Goring Street, at right angles to the Reich Chancellery." He looked at the photograph of the Chancellery. "It's here, several hundred yards across the garden from the main bunker. The Hand thinks this second bunker is a backup, and says Hitler would probably retreat to this SS bunker were the main one knocked out."

  "How did it discover the second bunker?"

  "POW interrogation, I suppose. Probably a German officer who has been inside the bunker earlier in the war. Or maybe somebody who helped construct it. It says here that the source does not think there is an underground tunnel connecting the two bunkers."

  "What's your neck size?" the old woman asked.

  "Thick."

  "That doesn't help, either." She looped the tape measure around Cray's neck. He was still sitting on the floor, so she had to bend low to read the measurement. "You're right. It is thick."

  The countess lifted herself from her chair with a dignified grunt, then crossed the room to the hangers. She searched for a uniform tunic of a certain size. She pulled one out. "Here's a colonel's. Why don't you just be a colonel?"

  "I don't want a lot of people saluting me, noticing me."

  "I'll put some other patches on it, then." The countess returned to her chair and began plucking at the stitching on a collar patch. "You are going after Hitler, aren't you?"

  Cray stared at her. "I never said anything like that."

  "A man whose photograph is plastered all over Berlin — the Vassy Chateau killer — appears at my apartment with a pistol in his belt, and he receives photos taken from an airplane of the Reich Chancellery. You didn't need to say anything, but I know."

  "Well…"

  "And I wish you luck. I don't like people glaring at me at garden parties. It's rude."

  "Well, I'm not really..."

  "And I remember one more thing about Hitler from that day, from when he was standing there in the garden, surrounded by admirers. He is shorter than photos of him lead you to believe." She added, "So be careful not to aim too high."

  "Yes?"

  6

  CRAY LAY on the dirt, the scent of German loess rich and close. He was at the edge of a woods, and was concealed by juniper bushes. Ahead was a clearing, then a chain-link fence. A pathway of beaten-down grass, made by patrols, paralleled the fence. The night was still dense, but the first grainy light of dawn was coloring the eastern sky. Cray could hear Red Army guns in the east. To the south the clouds were a soft orange, reflecting the fires from that night's bombing raid on Berlin. Clouds also hid the moon, and Cray could see no further than the fence. He had left the countess's apartment at midnight and had pedaled a bicycle four hours north.

  He cupped an ear and closed his eyes to concentrate on the sounds of the night. Cray knew that sentries patrolling a secured area are usually noisy. He heard nothing. He opened his eyes. Gossamer strands of concertina wire topped the fence, glittering in the starlight.

  With another look to the left and right, Cray rose from the brush and sprinted across the clearing. The links were too small for footholds, so he gripped the fence and pulled himself up, hand over hand, willing his arm to work and ignoring the pain. Cray had experience with razor wire, and knew if there was no time to cut it, it could only be ignored. But he had expected the wire and had not come unprepared. Using pliers to draw the needle, the countess had sewn heavy oilcloth onto the palms of a pair of black gloves. Cray was also wearing a black pea coat and black dungarees.

  He reached the top of the fence and gripped the razor wire, his feet scrambling against the chain link. The wire was in loose coils, offering no support, so Cray spilled onto it, toppling forward, cartwheeling over and down, the wires' sharp edges slicing into his arms and legs. He plummeted down, the wire slashing at him. His right arm caught in the snare of two crossed wires. He was jerked back toward the top of the fence. He braced himself with his legs jackknifed horizontally against the fence. With his free hand he pried apart the wires, then fell to the ground, the wire raking him.

  Cray sat there a moment, taking inventory. His dungarees were wicking blood from slashes on his thighs. The back of his right wrist was gashed, and both ankles were bleeding. He'd been hurt worse, he decided.

  Cray rose and hurried on, bent low like an infantryman. When he crossed thirty yards of soft earth, he encountered a second fence, this one with no razor wire atop it.

  He had bantered with the countess about dogs. But since his attempted escape from Colditz, where the guards' dogs had set upon him, Rottweilers and Doberman pinschers had become his nightly companions, and in those dreams Cray never got the best of them. He would awake, shaking and damp. Jack Cray feared dogs, as much when awake as in his dreams.

  And parallel fences at a military base often meant a dog run.

  The sound came at him from the north, a huffing and hissing, and a low rasp, louder in an instant. A churning, rushing ru
mble, closer and yet closer.

  Cray leaped wildly, his fingers snaring the links. He yanked himself higher, swinging his legs to the side to get them away from the ground. He was too late.

  A dog sank its fangs into his ankle and held on. Another dog leaped, its teeth slashing at Cray's calves, snagging the pant leg and his muscle, but then twisting and pulling away, falling back to the ground. Cray climbed hand over hand, the first dog attached to his foot like a bear trap. The dog bucked and arched, trying to bring down its prey.

  Cray's hand found the fence's top bar. He braved a look down. Doberman pinschers, two of them, one stuck to him like some ghastly new appendage. His foot was a flare of pain. The dog's eyes were eerily red, as if lit from within. Foam flew from its mouth as it jerked and scrambled with its legs, trying to topple Cray. The other Doberman leaped and leaped again, attempting to find purchase somewhere on the trespasser's body, maniacally barking and howling and growling.

  Cray kicked at the attached dog with his free foot, first in the head, to no visible effect, then to its lungs. The Doberman grunted, but held on. Cray kicked again, viciously, using the heel of his boot, and it sank into the animal. Again and again he kicked. The dog loosened its grip, and Cray lashed into it again. The animal slipped off, crashing to the ground near its partner. The Doberman instantly leaped again. Both dogs lunged upward, snapping their jaws, Cray's blood dripping down on them.

  Pulling himself up, Cray lifted a leg over the bar, then slid down the inside of the fence. The dogs—inches from him but separated by steel strands—pressed against the links on their back legs, their fangs working furiously. One of the dogs had blood on its dewlaps, Cray's blood.

  Cray drew his pistol and put it at that dog's head, aiming through the fence. Then he thought better of it and glanced up and down the dog run. Still no sentries.

  Shuddering, he glared at the dogs. He whispered, "You two need a little work on your manners."

  When he limped away from the fence, his ankle felt as if it were a bag of broken bones, pumping pain up his leg with each step.

  He lowered himself to the ground fifty yards from the fence, in tall damp grass behind a tree. The wind was blowing idly from the direction of the dogs, so his scent would not continue to rile them. The Dober- mans barked and paced, staring in Cray's direction with their villainous eyes. Cray suspected the dogs had not been on guards' leads, and that no sentries were approaching. But he waited, his pistol in front of him. The dogs simmered and barked.

  The night began to lift, pale blue light seeping across the land from the east. Cray gingerly touched his ankle. The sock was wet and warm. Puncture wounds. Cray didn't know how many. He rotated his foot. The pain was sharp, as if the dog was still latched onto him, but the ankle worked well enough. The Dobermans glared one last time, then drifted away, back the way they had come. Still no sentries.

  Cray rose from the ground and started north again, traveling between fir and oak trees, and over damp ground made soft by moss and decomposing leaves. He pushed through banks of holly and juniper that dampened his pants. He was moving well, and the pain in his chewed foot settled to a low throb, hardly causing him to limp. His boots had absorbed most of the dog's fury, he decided.

  The woods ended abruptly. Cray stepped onto a field that had a double horizon. The lower one was grass, acres of it, surrounded on all sides by forest. A second horizon drifted above the first, this one white and geometric, forming perfect grids. They were crosses, ranging off in all directions, marking dead soldiers in the ground below. Cray walked between rows of grave markers, his damaged foot squishing in his boot. Flagpoles at the center of the military cemetery were bare.

  As he crossed the graveyard, the carefully arranged wooden crosses and stone markers gave way to rows of unpainted crosses, many leaning in the soft ground, and many with crude lettering. These were the more recently dead. Then Cray passed several long berms, where dead soldiers had been buried together in shallow rows, without coffins or ceremony. Sacks of quicklime were piled nearby, several broken open, coloring the morbid ground with patches of shocking white. A horse cart contained a load of picks and shovels. The rot of corroded flesh percolated up from the ground.

  Cray left the cemetery to enter the woods again, paralleling a service road. He came to the base's motor pool, four buildings that had been blown apart. Nothing remained but concrete foundations covered with blistered truck parts. Poles were at each corner of the foundations, and fragments of failed camouflage netting hung from them, idly swaying in the soft wind. The strike had been precise—perhaps dive-bombers—be- cause the nearby ground was craterless and neighboring trees were standing and green.

  For a hundred yards he followed the gravel road away from the motor pool, passing what had once been a gasoline and diesel dump, but which was now a hole in the earth. Here the blasts of exploding fuel had pushed trees back as with a giant hand. The concussions had stripped the trees of limbs and leaves and left them resembling a flight of arrows. Dawn filled the woods with fragile blue light.

  Through the trees came a sharp yell, then another, followed by a volley of curses and then a shouted order. Cray recognized the voice. They were the same the world around. A drill instructor. Cray pushed aside laurel branches.

  The parade ground was a flat expanse of gravel. On the western edge of the grounds had been rows of barracks, perhaps forty clapboard buildings, every one of them flattened by bombs. The recruits lived in tents concealed in nearby trees. Reveille had been sounded. Hundreds of recruits were forming up in lines and were being harangued by four instructors who ranged back and forth in front of them. The recruits were boys, maybe fourteen and fifteen years old. Their uniforms were odd-lot castoffs. Some pants trailed on the ground. The hands of many of the boys were hidden by overlength sleeves. Only a few wore caps. Some of the boys had red stripes down their seams—dress trousers reclaimed from some prior war. This was a new class, and the morning light was reflected by tears on some of the boys' cheeks.

  Cray skirted the parade ground, staying in the forested area, stopping to study the map Colonel Becker had drawn for him. The base, near Schellenberg just north of Berlin, was the home of the Wehrmacht's Third Army. Through the bush Cray could see the camp hospital, its white wall painted with an enormous red cross. Ambulance trucks were parked to one side, each with a red cross on its roof. Beyond it were the ruins of an administration building. Planes had caught automobiles in front of the building, and their blackened hulks had been pushed onto a nearby field. A soldier was raising the national flag on a pole in front of the building,

  Cray moved north through the brush and trees. Early in his commando training he learned that he was safer when traveling. At first he thought it was only because a moving target is harder to hit, but then he determined his reactions were better and his decisions more sound when he was moving. Cray was more comfortable and capable passing through the world than when anchored to one spot. Traveling seemed to give him an advantage, and he had never figured out precisely why. Maybe it was just momentum.

  He jumped a creek, then the rotted remnants of a pole fence, indicating the land had been a farm before being appropriated by the army. Birch trees grew where wheat and oats once did. Though it looked deserted, Cray gave wide berth to a tumbledown farmhouse. He passed a one-blade plow, rusting away and sinking into the ground. High in the trees a flock of starlings clicked and trilled.

  The forest opened to a long rectangle of pasture. Cray stayed inside the cover of the brush, but edged close to the field. The area was about a mile long and four hundred yards wide. Bombers had mistaken it for an airfield, and it was cratered from one end to the other. So many explosives had fallen on the field that the remaining grass was in narrow strips resembling walkways between the craters. The bomb pits had gathered the rain and were filled with mud. Trees lining the ruined field swayed slowly in a light wind. A footpath of beaten grass lined the field on Cray's side.

  The sound might have bee
n a hummingbird. Sailing overhead, a soft buzz, east to west, and gone quickly. Then, chasing the sound from the east, came a flat and muted clap, the echo rattling in the trees before fading away.

  Cray settled to his haunches behind an oak tree, a few feet from the edge of the cratered field. And then he began to disappear. Jack Cray did not believe in the mystical. His universe was well contained within the horizon of his senses. He was impatient with the inexplicable and only amused by the occult. So he could not explain how he could almost vanish. He was so silent and still that the trees and brush and damp ground seemed to soak him up, and he became part of his surroundings, more foliage than flesh. As he waited, he was invisible to anyone more than five feet away.

  The low drone soared overhead again, a murmur so swift that it was gone almost before it registered on Cray. Then another dull report that filtered down the field.

  The flyaway sounds told him he had found the right place on the army base. Cray waited, invisible in the bush.

  7

  CORPORAL EWALD HEGEL lay on his belly on the straw mat, his chin against the rifle's checkered stock, his eye at the telescope's ocular lens.

  "Don't let your face drift close to the scope, Corporal." The instructor stood above the shooter, his hands around a pair of binoculars. "The scope will kick back and cut your cheek and forehead to the bone."

  "Yes, Sergeant."

  "And can you feel the pulse in your finger? Look for the pulse."

  "I think so."

  "Wait until you do. Pull the trigger between pulses. Otherwise the pumping of your heart will draw you off the target."

  The corporal squinted into the scope. "Yes, Sergeant."

  The instructor moved to a second shooter, who was also prone on a mat, a rifle in front of him. The sergeant bent low to correct the position of the second shooter's finger on the trigger. "The side of your finger shouldn't touch the trigger at all. It'll nudge the rifle sideways as you pull it back."