by James Thayer
Dietrich moved his jaw, his face impassive.
Hitler read it anyway. "I've just made your task easier. Yes?"
The inspector nodded.
"This American . . . what is his name again?" Hitler asked.
"Jack Cray," the detective replied.
The blond woman crossed the room to sit in the blue davenport. She picked up a magazine. She was either entirely bored with this business or superb at hiding her interest.
"Jack Cray won't have a target." The Führer's blue eyes were as flat as paint. "He'll be out there, with his new rifle, waiting and waiting, and he'll never have anything to shoot at. And so all you need do, Inspector, is catch him. You don't need to concern yourself about me."
The barber lifted the chair with one hand and the table in the other. He crisply bowed to the Führer and left the room.
Thinking himself dismissed, Dietrich moved to followed the barber.
Hitler's hand on his arm brought him up. "Tell me, Inspector. Are the Bolsheviks in mortar distance of Berlin?"
Dietrich again was startled. How could the Führer not know this? "Soviet shells are landing on the city, all day and night."
Hitler nodded.
Again, Dietrich found reserves of courage he did not know he possessed. "Don't your generals tell you?"
"Some do and some don't," the Führer replied tonelessly. "It's a matter of who to believe. That's how I've come this far, Inspector. Knowing who to believe."
Dietrich sensed he was witnessing the tide turn, the waning of reason and the waxing of something more dangerous. He had heard rumors of these sea changes. He hastily turned to go, Eberhardt at his heels.
"And amid all the traitors, I can trust you, Inspector." Hitler's voice gained half an octave, and inklings of hysteria were at the edges of his words. A flood was coming.
"They have never told me the truth. They lie to me. And worse, they conspire with each other to lie to me." Hitler's face was turning red in splotches. Spittle formed at the corner of his mouth. His voice rose like a stormy wind. "That's all I hear down here. Lies and more lies."
The Führer caught himself. He shuddered with the effort to control his passion. He breathed quickly, air rattling in his throat. He turned to the blue sofa like a jerking marionette, his ruined body not cooperating in even this small motion.
He said over his shoulder, "Send another one of them in as you leave, Inspector Dietrich. Any one of them, outside the door there, waiting for an audience, sniveling in fear, hoping I haven't discovered their treachery, but of course I have."
OTTO DIETRICH held two corners of the map laid over the car's hood, and Eugen Eberhardt pinned down the other two corners. They were near the Food and Agriculture Ministry's building on Wilhelmstrasse. A company of Eberhardt's RSD troops were cordoning off the intersection and two hundred meters of Behrenstrasse, setting up wooden traffic barricades and giving gruff responses to the few passersby who asked anything. Most pedestrians on the sidewalks hurried along without even a glance at the operation. Camouflage nets hung from lamp poles made Wilhelmstrasse seem like a tunnel.
"It's all a matter of angles, really." General Eberhardt raised a hand to ward off the sunlight, made white and blinding by the high smoke. He stared down Behrenstrasse toward the church. "We'll give Jack Cray a few, and we'll take away a few."
"And you're sure the Führer would exit the bunker only by these routes?" Dietrich was bent over the hood, studying the map.
Also on the car hood, pressed under his left palm, was an aerial photo of the middle of Berlin, from Gestapo headquarters on Prinz Albrecht Strasse north ten blocks to the Brandenburg Gate, showing the neighborhood that was the Reich's administrative heart.
"He has told us he is not leaving the bunker. I take him at his word. I have overseen his departure from the Chancellery hundreds of times, and these would be his routes were he to leave. He usually gets into the limousine in the Honor Courtyard, and the limousine then exits the complex east through the automobile gate onto Wilhelmstrasse. But occasionally the limousine pulls up in front of the building, where he leaves from the Great Marble Gallery, nearer his office."
"And that exit is on Vossstrasse, to the south of the Chancellery?"
"You aren't familiar with the New Chancellery? Have you ever been inside it?"
"Never been invited." Dietrich smiled ruefully. "And I avoid the government quarter when I can."
"The Marble Gallery is a hundred fifty meters long, twice as long as the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, the Führer told me. Boasting a bit, you see."
"General, are you certain you know of all the secondary bunkers, those places the Führer would go if the Chancellery bunker were rendered uninhabitable? Himmler or Goring wouldn't have a bunker you don't know about, would they? A bunker Hitler could flee to in an emergency?"
Eberhardt stiffened, lifting his hands from the map so that it flapped in the breeze. "It's my duty to know these things. The SS bunker across the Chancellery garden would be the first refuge. And the Wehrmacht command bunker in Zossen would be the second."
"How would the Führer travel to them? Could he walk to the SS bunker?"
"Of course. It's just across the garden."
"Would he drive there?"
"It would take longer to drive, especially if it were an emergency and the driver and bodyguards hadn't been given advance notice, hadn't brought the cars up from the garage."
"Can the Führer get from the bunker where he is now—the garden bunker—to the SS bunker through an underground corridor?" Dietrich asked.
"At one time the SS was planning on connecting the two with a fortified tunnel, but it was never completed." Eberhardt repinned the map with his hands.
Dietrich continued, "And to get to the Zossen bunker, he would have to drive, of course. It's quite a distance."
"My men have practiced such an evacuation many times. But the roadways are always a surprise these days. Each day I send a driver to survey the escape route to Zossen. And he never fails to report that he had to take a new route because of new rubble or a new crater."
Cray traced a route with his finger. "So if Jack Cray can force the Führer out of the garden bunker, the only place Cray can count on the Führer being in the open will be as the Führer walks across the garden toward the SS bunker, or when he is at the motor gate or the Marble Gallery entrance. Is that right?"
"Yes, but you are supposing Jack Cray knows these things, that Cray has learned of the bunkers and the Chancellery entrances the Führer uses, knows the Führer's escape routes."
Dietrich said, "We speak of Cray as if he were one person, as if just one commando were closing in on the Führer. But we must presume that the Americans and English have put a vast intelligence machine at Cray's disposal. And so we must assume Cray knows the Führer's escape routes." Dietrich's face creased into a grin. "And you have told me you always anticipate the worst."
The RSD general nodded. Every part of this conversation had been spoken before by these two men over the last two days, and more than once. They acted as each other's cross-examiner, searching for Cray through the power of their intellects, sifting through the meager clues Cray had left behind. And Dietrich and Eberhardt talked to buck each other up. They were working on little sleep and no encouragement and the prospects of a bleak future should they fail.
"And another thing, Otto." Eberhardt had begun using the inspector's first name and the familiar du. "These three places where Hitler might emerge—should Cray somehow force him up from underground—are several hundred meters apart. The garden, the Wilhelm- strasse gate, and the Marble Gallery exit. Cray can't know where Hitler will come out, and Cray can't cover them all, not even with the long- range rifle, because it can't shoot around corners."
Dietrich began folding the map. "There's a chance the sniper rifle is a ruse, Eugen." The detective began folding the map.
Eberhardt drew in a quick breath.
"Maybe Jack Cray stole that rifle as a smoke sc
reen. And his plan is something else entirely."
"We can only work with what we've got." The general pursed his lips. "If we assume it's a ruse, what do we do then, Otto? Go home and make a fire in the grate? We simply don't have anything else to work on. And Cray went to a lot of trouble to get that rifle, and was injured in the process. I don't think it's a ruse."
An RSD man blew his whistle twice, then yelled a final warning through a bullhorn. Down Behrenstrasse other whistles sounded, indicating nearby buildings and roads were clear of people. Another RSD man pulled a last sandbag from the back of a truck, and added it to a low wall of them.
The man with the bullhorn called, "Ready when you are, General Eberhardt."
Dietrich pulled at his chin, letting the map flutter. "I'm stumped by that, too, Eugen. Even if Cray knows of the three exits, he can only cover one of them with his rifle."
"So is Cray accepting a thirty-three percent chance of getting the Führer in his crosshairs? Is the American just hoping to get lucky? Or maybe he has accomplices. We know he's working with the woman, Ka- trin von Tornitz. I've got a lot of my men looking for her."
"Nothing in her background indicates she can use a rifle."
"Other people then. Maybe the Allies sent three Jack Grays, and each will cover a bunker exit."
Dietrich shook his head. "We'd have crossed their trails by now. There's just one commando, I'm convinced."
"And, Otto, how—just how—is Cray going to make the Führer flee the bunker? A massive bombing? That doesn't seem likely. It's not sure enough."
"I don't know how Cray will do it. I just trust that he will."
The detective followed General Eberhardt toward the sandbags. An RSD man waited there, one hand on the plunger of a detonator and the other around a pair of binoculars.
As he walked, Dietrich said in a low voice, "You saw him down there, the Führer."
"I see the Führer rather frequently," Eberhardt replied, a touch of the bureaucrat in his voice. "It's my duty."
"It's insane up here, on the streets of Berlin, Eugen. Look at these streets, look at every street in this city. Fires and craters and smoke. Satan's hell will be just like this."
"What's your point, Inspector?" At the whiff of defeatism, Eberhardt reverted to using Dietrich's title.
"It's also insane down in that bunker."
"You shouldn't speculate…"
"For God's sake, you heard him down there, Eugen. Talking of traitors and cowards, talking of his loyal soldiers like that, soldiers who've given their lives and families and homes to Germany. And their leader is raving and rolling his eyes, spit flying from his mouth."
"Otto, these are dangerous things you are saying. Said to the wrong people…"
"I always wondered about the Führer's war aims, Eugen. Wondered about almost everything he did. It all seemed insane. Now I know why."
"Otto…"
"It's because he's crazy, down in that bunker." Dietrich found his voice rising, just as Hitler's had. "He's a certifiable lunatic. You saw it yourself. You must see it every time you meet with him. I never knew it until now, and…"
The RSD general gripped Dietrich's arm with more force than required. With an effort that strained his every muscle from toe to temple, Dietrich shut off the flow of words.
"Otto, listen to yourself. If the wrong ears hear you, you'll be back in that dungeon before the hour is out. Get hold of yourself."
Prickly sweat had formed on Dietrich's back. His view of General Eberhardt and the street was through the fine red mist of suffused anger. Eberhardt counseled, "Let's do our jobs, Otto. The rest of it is beyond us. Let it be."
Dietrich was having trouble breathing.
"Are you going to help me now?" Eberhardt asked quietly, the priest inquiring of the penitent.
"Yes." Dietrich wiped his mouth with the back of a hand. "Yes, of course."
They stepped behind the sandbag wall. Eberhardt held his hand out for the field glasses, then peered through them down Behrenstrasse, to the century-old church with its high steeple, high enough so that a man could stand on the bell platform and see over the Old Chancellery into the garden, to the walkway in front of the blockhouse entrance to the bunker. Many other buildings along the street were in ruin, but the church had so far escaped the explosives. Not this day.
Eberhardt nodded at the RSD man, who pushed the plunger handle. The grind of the small generator inside the box was immediately followed by the roar of dynamite from the church's roof. Smoke and splinters erupted from the base of the bell tower, and the tower sank, then toppled forward. The church's roof line snagged the spire, flipping it so it fell top-first. The tower landed on the cobblestones, crashing and falling in on itself, trailing smoke and bits of debris and raising dust, quickly obscuring itself, its bell tolling a last mournful note. The bell tower had become a trifling scrap of rubble in a city that was little else.
Dietrich and Eberhardt rose from behind the sandbags, splinters of the tower still landing all around. Eberhardt said, "I wish we could have just posted a squadron of my men at that church, and so spared the bell tower."
The detective replied, "Cray might have gotten by them, killing some, maybe."
Eberhardt sighed wearily.
"We can't cover every single firing site Cray might use."
"Of course."
A gleam entered Dietrich's faded blue eyes. "But we can cover two or three."
The RSD general nodded.
And Dietrich added with relish, "And then maybe once—just once— Jack Cray will appear where we want him and when we want him."
15
"You EVER HEARD of her, Egon?" Dietrich asked, his hand on the dashboard, bracing himself. "A Countess Hohenberg?"
"Not that I recall," Detective Haushofer replied. "She's not related to Katrin von Tornitz, then?"
"Not that we can find. I suspect the countess was a friend of Katrin von Tornitz's mother, but that's a guess."
The Mercedes lurched and sank, then bounced up and dipped again as it rolled over rubble on Heuwingstrasse. Dietrich's hat flattened against the car's roof and slid off his head to the seat.
Dietrich's men had started watching the homes of all Katrin von Tornitz's relatives days ago, figuring she and the American might be staying with one of them. They found she had several cousins in Berlin, and some north of the city in Mecklenburg, where the family once owned an estate. The decades had dispersed the family so Berlin detectives had been watching sixteen homes With no luck at any of them.
Heuwingstrasse was a narrow ravine between inclines of rubble, all that remained of the three- and four-story apartment buildings and shops that had once lined the street. It had also been a neighborhood of breweries, and the scent of malt still lingered. This street had been newly ruined, and the scree was still precarious, falling into the street when prompted by gusts of wind. A bulldozer had pushed aside the debris like snow, so smaller hillocks of bricks and boards lined the sidewalk.
Dietrich commented, "We got a break on this."
Haushofer nodded. "We needed a break."
A woman who lived on the floor below the countess happened to be peeking out her door when Katrin von Tornitz was walking up the stairs. She had recognized Katrin from the posters along the street.
"One of those old ladies who monitors the morals of her fellow tenants, I suppose," Haushofer added. He pulled on the steering wheel, and the Mercedes wound around a file cabinet and sofa in the road. A drumroll of rain sounded on the Mercedes's roof. Haushofer leaned forward to wipe his hand against the window. Haushofer's skin had a cloistered pallor. His eyes were red-lined from lack of sleep. His chin was large and uncompromising. The wiper blades beat back and forth.
"Are Cray and Katrin von Tornitz still there, you think?" Haushofer asked.
"The snoop said she hadn't seen them today, so probably not. But I want to talk with the countess." Dietrich stopped himself from rocking back and forth to encourage the car to go faster. "Hurry up,
will you?"
Haushofer grinned and pressed the accelerator. The car bounced over a clot of rubble, sending Dietrich against the roof. He held up his hand like a traffic cop, and Haushofer eased the pressure from the gas pedal. The canyon ended at an intersection, and the car drove between low apartment buildings. This portion of Heuwingstrasse had been spared.
Dietrich squinted through the rain. "There's her building. Pull over."
The clouds suddenly parted, revealing the sun. The road began to steam. Dietrich left the car and ran to the door to check for her name on the mailbox. HOHENBERG. He pushed open the door, ran past an empty glass vase on a lamp stand, and began ascending the stairs. He drew his pistol. On the third floor a narrow crack between the door and the frame revealed the snoop's wide eyes. Breathing in gulps, Dietrich climbed to the fourth floor.
The countess's door was open. Dietrich could see into her apartment. Saw a hat stand and an umbrella holder. He stepped nearer, his
Walther up and ready. The old woman was in a chair against the window. Knitting needles were on her lap, and a ball of yarn and a sewing basket at her feet. Scraps of cloth were all around. She was staring through the door at Dietrich, and her mouth was pulled back in a curl of fear.
Dietrich thought she must be afraid of his pistol, so he moved it behind his leg. He stepped to the door's threshold and leaned forward to peer inside. Nothing but old furniture and pieces of fabric, and uniforms and coats and dresses hanging across a bar. The old woman was a seamstress.
"Countess Hohenberg?"
She croaked piteously, "Please don't hit me."
Dietrich allowed himself a smile, a friendly one, he hoped. "I wouldn't think of it. I'm Detective Inspector Dietrich. I just want a few words with you. May I come in?"
Her face was white. Her eyes were old and leaking, and mirrored a wild fear.
Dietrich stepped inside the apartment. The place smelled of perfume and ironing. "Countess, I'm just a police officer here to have a few words with you. There's no reason to be afraid of me."