THE HOUR WAS LATE, the music hauntingly mellow. A few couples still clung to one another on the postage-stamp dance floor. Tobacco smoke hung in the air, and the talk, as if by mutual consent, was sporadic and muted.
Cecile Verheyden made her way among the tables of her all but empty club. When she came to Richard’s table, she reached out to touch the evening shadow. “Why not come upstairs and tell me? Sometimes it helps.”
“There’s nothing to tell.”
“Look, I read about the drowning in the papers. Would it do any good to say I’m sorry? Arlette was lucky, you know. So lucky.”
“Why? They killed her.”
Her slender throat constricted. As she sat down opposite him, Cecile ran an uncertain caress over the table. Von Ribbentrop had been shuttling back and forth to Moscow at an alarming rate. Molotov had gone to Berlin. If the two of them should make an accord, there’d be war.
“Cecile, I could use a little help.”
“Are you asking me to take sides? If so, then I … What a stupid thing for me to say. Of course, I must choose, mustn’t I?”
There was no warmth in Richard’s gaze, no memory of the good times they’d had together.
“Let’s go upstairs then, to the office. We can talk better there.”
Hagen shook his head. “I was followed, as I am everywhere I let them. When you close up, leave the lock off the back door.”
When he returned, Cecile was waiting in the darkness of the kitchens. Hagen could hear the gentle swish of her nightgown as she led him through to the club and up the stairs. On the landing, she paused and felt the breath of him on her shoulder.
“I don’t like what’s happening to you, Richard. You act as if you were in the jungle and it was your father speaking to you.”
“He is, and I am.”
She opened the door to the office, felt for the light switch, only to feel his hand close over hers. “What is it you want?” she asked.
He moved away, and when she heard him opening a drawer, she understood.
The gun had been her husband’s, a Browning FN 9 mm Parabellum pistol with a thirteen-shot magazine. Richard slid the breech back, removed the clip and made certain the thing was loaded.
“Can I use your telephone?”
“Richard, what the hell is this? Some kind of death wish?”
He moved to her and she felt the chill of the gun in his hand. “Only that I don’t want you hurt. You’ve done enough already.”
They sat in the darkness, and when he got through to England, she heard him saying, “Mother, this is Richard. I’m sorry to be so late but could you …”
When decoded, the message would read:
TO THE CARPENTER FROM ALICE
CONTACT MADE ANTWERP SD CELL DAMAS KARL CHRISTIAN SCHOOLMASTER ÉCOLE DE MAAGDENHUIS ANTWERP / DAMAS USES ALIAS FATHER LANNAY ADRIAN / HAS LOCATIONS SIZE ALL ANTWERP DIAMOND STOCKS QUESTIONS MEGADAN ROUTE RELAYS DIRECTLY TO KRANTZ THROUGH BRUSSELS EMBASSY ASKS DETAILS FINAL PLAN / REQUEST PERMISSION BRING KRANTZ OUT SILENCE ALL BEFORE TOO LATE / ALICE
“So, what was that all about? Since when did you ever talk to that mother of yours about ‘oysters,’ Richard, and ‘quantities of sand’? My God, are you crazy? The Nazis—”
“Cecile, I met one of the men who caused Arlette to drown herself. London can help me put an end to them.”
“London … Is Duncan involved in this, too?”
“Yes.”
“Then I don’t think I’d better hear anymore. Would you like a drink before you go? Oh, I’m not tossing you out, Richard. We’re like lost lovers, you and I, cast adrift at a time of what could well be war.”
They’d have that drink. Hagen followed her and when they were in the sitting room, he found the whisky and let her drink from his glass. “Get out now, Cecile. Run while there’s still time. Go to the States. You’d make a fortune. New York, Chicago …”
“Not Antwerp and Chez Vous? No, I couldn’t do that. For me, each day I’m getting a little older. Besides, a man has come back into my life and I would like to seduce him for old times’ sake but know he would only think of the love he has lost.”
She took the glass from him and finished the whisky.
“Cecile …”
“Come to bed. Just lie there with me. Nothing more. Look, I don’t expect anything. We’ve had all that and it was finished for us. But you need to be with someone, Richard, and I think I need to be with you.”
He let her lead him by the hand. She lay down beside him. “Tell me about Dieter Karl.”
Tell me, Richard. Tell me.
They were choosing sides. Denmark, of course, had agreed to a nonaggression treaty with the Nazis. Danish eggs, butter and cheese in exchange for Hitler’s smiles. Norway, Finland and Sweden had turned the bastards down flat. Latvia, of course, and Estonia hated the Communists, so what could you expect but that they’d sweetheart Hitler.
The Russians, though, were such a problem. If they agreed to an alliance with the democracies of the West there still might be some hope.
“Ascher, it is like watching a traffic accident develop. One knows people will be maimed and killed. One sees it, ah, with such clarity, and yet one is powerless to stop it.”
Lev squeezed the last of the lemon into his tea. Normally he didn’t take sugar but today … just the pleasure of being able to choose was enough.
He set down the spoon and left the sugar untouched.
Wunsch lit up, took in a drag and nodded grimly. “Yes, yes, I know what you’re going to say. Ship the stocks to London. Give those Belgians the letters of guarantee they want. Bah! You’d think the British would have the sense to agree. You’d think the king would insist we move the diamonds. But what do we find? They distrust each other and the king still tries to appease the Nazis. We’ll be caught with our trousers down, Lev. I know we will.”
Lev asked the question they’d both avoided. “When will Richard go back?”
Wunsch loosened his tie and tugged at the elastic bands that held his shirtsleeves up. Cigarette ash was all over the place. “Arlette … we miss her, Lev.”
“I asked—”
“Yes, yes, I know, but I am still the director here, and I have said he is not to go.”
“Then I can drink my tea with pleasure, Bernard, and offer you a slice of my Rachel’s honey cake.”
Wunsch tossed his head. “I’m getting to think your daughter can’t bake anything else! Ah, Ascher, forgive me. I just don’t know what the hell to do with our diamonds if the Nazis come. Toss them in the sea, I suppose.”
He snatched up the latest batch of orders. The August Thyssen Hütte in Duisburg was Germany’s largest steel mill. Hamburg, Bremen, Kiel held the major shipbuilding firms. All up and down the Ruhr and the Rhine, the industrial heartland of the Third Reich poured out its smoke. Siemens-Martin steel, ball bearings—Lorenz and Heliawatt, mammoth engineering works.
Where hadn’t Richard been?
“They are raising a hue and cry for him, Lev, and the Nazis are beginning to think he won’t be coming back.”
“If I were him I’d go fishing in Scotland.”
Bernard’s eyebrows lifted.
Lev gave a brief smile. “Arlette … she had never been there before. Did she tell you that? We used to talk a little. That girl, Bernard. In many ways she was so like my Rachel.”
“Lev, listen to me. If the worst should come, we will take the diamonds we have here and leave.”
“The Belgian police would only impound them at the border. We’re trapped, Bernard. Why not just walk out the door and leave everything?”
When Hagen joined them, Lev had just finished making a fresh pot of tea and Bernard had switched to coffee. The wireless set was on and Hitler was screaming invective at the Poles.
“It’s his lungs,” said Lev. “I think he’s got a cold.”
The moths seemed not to care about themselves. If on the first fall they didn’t hit the water in the fish pond, they would struggle back up through the air to scurry madly about the glowing paper lantern. It was as though, in seeking the light, they had become drunk with its power and would throw their lives away.
Irmgard watched them for a while. No telephone calls could get through to Antwerp. No civilian cables were being allowed out. In the warmth of June 1939, the Wehrmacht had closed all the filling stations in Munich even though there were tourists everywhere. Poland was very much on everyone’s mind. Daily there were great flights of fighter planes and bombers, and at night they had heard them, too.
She couldn’t warn Richard not to come back, not to try to save them.
Dipping a hand into the fish pond, she rescued a moth and took it toward the house where she set it in the branches of a cedar.
She could, of course, extinguish the paper lanterns—there was no reason why she couldn’t do so. The party was over for them. Soon there’d be no light at all.
When Irmgard went upstairs, Dee Dee heard her scream. Naked and shivering in the bathroom at the far end of the hall, she was staring at the tub.
Rushing past her, Dee Dee turned off the tap.
Irmgard couldn’t look at her. Aware of what had happened, she hung her head in shame, and when Dee Dee threw a towel over her shoulders and hugged her tightly, Irmgard’s voice was empty. “Don’t let Richard tell me anything. Don’t ever let him trust me again. They will ask me what he’s said, and I will have to tell them everything. They’ll drown me if I don’t.”
She had gone upstairs to have a bath—such a simple thing—but had filled the tub with ice-cold water.
“Will you come with me to the mountains?”
“Heydrich has said I can’t.”
They were above the tree line now, and as they threaded their way along the crest of the moraine, Dee Dee no longer had any doubts as to what Heydrich intended.
At Bludenz, just before the border with tiny Liechtenstein, they had turned off onto a side road to leave the car and begin to climb. Three Wehrmacht corporals, with rucksacks and slung rifles, were ahead of her, then the sergeant and the colonel. The men carried her suitcases and Erika, the Feldwebel a Schmeisser and rucksack, the Oberst his pistol in its holster. All of them were from the army. There hadn’t been a sign of the SS, but who could tell where loyalties lay?
High above the valley, caught in a small amphitheater, they stood out against sky and earth. To the east, at their backs, an ice-capped crag gave veils of meltwater that dropped some three hundred meters to angular talus. Then the water disappeared among the rocks and issued far down the slope as a rushing brook.
All around the shelf the moraine curved in a steep horseshoe-shaped embankment. Somehow she would have to warn Richard. Somehow she would have to stop him from trying to save them.
Beyond the moraine a scree slope rose to a tiny patch of alpine meadow, which culminated in a naked spur and ridge. The Feldwebel, an experienced mountain guide, indicated that they were to go over the ridge. From time to time the colonel looked back at her. Impatiently he pointed to the clouds and shouted, “We must have time to return to base before dark,” as if it was the only important thing and he was as fearful of the place as she.
The echo of his voice rang in the silence. A boulder clattered away, and when the sound of it had finally faded to nothing, Dee Dee started up the final slope. Richard would try to bring the rocks down on the men. He’d take a look at that talus and think, It wants to fall.
But he wouldn’t know Irmgard wasn’t with her.
The moment passed. She began to climb again. The ache in her chest was now making her pause every second step. Hooking her thumbs into the straps of her rucksack, she tried to get her breath.
The scree was too steep. Behind them it fell away to the ledge on which the moraine huddled. From there, the valley’s amphitheater opened outward to drop down into the forest far below.
At last she reached the crest of the ridge. Now the land before her fell away in a meadow bright with sky-blue lupines, cotton grass, the tiny yellow flowers of the mountain avens and the soft pink bells of the heath.
With its steeply pitched roof and darkly timbered eaves, the alpine hut clung to the shores of a tiny ice-fed tarn. From the hut, a trail wound past the woodshed and down the mountainside.
Switzerland lay before her, and Dee Dee knew she would have to look at freedom each day knowing she would never be allowed to reach it.
“Mijnheer Lietermann, it’s kind of you to see us.”
“Not at all, Richard. Please come in. Bernard, it’s good to see you. Ascher, you should come to work for me. How many times must I ask? Loyalty, Bernard. Such loyalty.”
They went upstairs to the main drawing room. “The walls, gentlemen. I apologize but I’ve taken Richard’s advice and leased a modest country house in the Lake District of England.”
The place looked positively barren. An uncomfortable silence settled on them. Lietermann offered coffee, which was politely refused.
“So, we will sit the four of us and talk. And you, Lev, will not think, There I told you so, Bernard. The brass always save their own asses first.”
Lev’s eyes were watering. He had difficulty swallowing.
“Ascher, I’m not—I repeat—not pulling out on you or anyone else. My wife and I will stay to see it through. The paintings … My God, they are priceless. Now, please, what have you come to tell me? Is it about Isaac and his secret plan to use the trucks of the Mercantile Company?”
Wunsch reached for his cigarettes, then thought better of it. “Jacob, Richard is …”
Hagen took over. “What Bernard wants to say, Mijnheer Lietermann, is that although I’m not guilty of it, the SS are blackmailing me over the death of de Heer Klees. I’ve had to tell them certain things but not the plan you and I agreed to. What is essential is that we stick to the Megadan and that you tell me exactly what de Heer Hond has in mind for those trucks. Believe me, mijnheer, the SS know everything about it, but if I’m to mislead them, then I must know everything, too.”
A sadness came to Lietermann’s dark eyes. “Is it that you intend to go back into the Reich in spite of everything?” This could not be.
It was Lev who said, “What else has he to lose but his life?”
Lietermann acknowledged the loss of Arlette and briefly sketched the plan for him. Hagen told him about Irmgard and Dee Dee. Though the risk was there, he had no other choice.
“Will you try to save them?”
“If I can, though not at the expense of the diamonds. What I need is your absolute guarantee we’ll use the Megadan. Mr. Churchill will take care of things from his end. The dummy strongboxes must be placed in those trucks, and I’d go so far as to suggest some of them be filled with diamonds. Sacrifice if we must, for the greater objective of keeping the stocks out of their hands.”
“There are collaborators, Belgians who will help the Nazis seize those trucks,” said Bernard gruffly. “For me, I wish we could mine them somehow, Richard. A simple switch—the ignition perhaps—explosives in among the boxes.”
“Bernard, Bernard, these new American films …” began Lev. “Gone with the Wind … Gone with the Blast! It sounds as if you want to go to war.”
“It sounds as if I am angry, Lev.”
“Then leave the thinking to Richard. He’s the spy.”
The tension in Berlin was everywhere—in the news vendors around the Potsdamer Platz, in the man who had sold Irmgard a handful of roasted chestnuts, which she had bought not to eat but to feel the warmth of them.
All the headlines were the same: Berlin-Moscow Nonaggression Pact Signed.
For days—weeks—the crisis over Poland had intensified. Every wireless broadcast had poured out the invective. Every newspaper had shrieked the same. The Poles would not listen. They would not peacefully settle their differences with the Reich. Peace could only be bought at the price of blood.
As the car pulled in to the curb in front of the Hotel Adlon, Irmgard looked down at the newspaper packet of chestnuts. Their warmth had all but gone.
Leaving the bag on the seat of the car, she took a moment to compose herself, then got out and walked steadily up the steps and into the hotel.
Here, too, especially, there was tension. The bar was crowded with foreign correspondents who clamored for news.
She stood alone before the lift.
Richard was waiting for her in his room. Suddenly nothing else mattered but that she be held by him.
He felt her tears, felt her lips pressed against his cheek.
Shaking, she clung to him and bit a knuckle to stop herself from breaking down completely. They’d drown her if she didn’t tell him what they wanted. “Richard … Richard, you must get us out! Please! Before they kill us. Dieter won’t do anything! Dee Dee’s got tuberculosis. Heydrich’s sent her to the mountains. I’m to go there, too.”
He held her from him and dried her eyes. He took her out into the hall and closed the door behind them. “You know it’s a trap.”
Irmgard shook her head. “No … no, it isn’t!”
In fragments, she came apart, couldn’t stop herself, saw the water in the tub, felt their hands on her body. Panicked! Cried out and felt him cover her mouth, fought for air … rolled up her eyes.
Hagen slapped her gently. “Irmgard … Irmgard, it’s me.”
She shut her eyes and tried to get her breath. “Richard, please! I … I can’t take it any longer. Get us out!”
“Where will you be? The mountains, Irmgard? Where?”
She pressed her forehead against his chest. He wrapped his arms about her. “It’s a trap. A trap! Don’t … don’t even try.”
“What’s Heydrich really after? Irmgard, he could have me arrested now.”
She shook her head, was so afraid. “The Wehrmacht—Dieter says they’re guarding Dee Dee. Heydrich … Heydrich must want to use you to show them up and reinforce his demands for more of the SS to be in fighting units. You’re an American, too. Perhaps it’s better if an American spy does something like that. Then he really can arrest you and embarrass Mr. Roosevelt and his government into remaining neutral.”
God only knew what Heydrich really wanted. So many things, the diamonds, Arlette, himself … Dee Dee and Irmgard.
Hagen gently lifted her chin and kissed her tenderly on the lips. “Now tell me where you’ll be.”
Dawn on August 25 was gray and cold. Across the skies of Berlin squadrons of Stukas and Heinkel 111 bombers headed east to chase the last wings of peace.
Richard wouldn’t know the date of the invasion. There would be no news of it on the mountain.
Like others in the city, Irmgard made her way through the streets to slip silently into the cathedral.
Only a scattering of the faithful remained—the Nazis had purged that sort of thing just as they had everything else. But those who came, came every day.
When Dieter found her, the razor was in her hand. Gently he shook it from her and it clattered at her feet. “The invasion has been canceled. Mussolini has sent a directive to the Führer saying the Italians cannot possibly go along with things. They aren’t ready for war on such a scale.
“Irmgard, listen to me. For my sake, and that of our family, I hope you do not think of trying to kill yourself again.”
She would concentrate on the altar. “There’ll be a trial, won’t there? The sister who once loved you and her country, the man she still must love in her own way.”
“Forget about Dee Dee and the child. Forget about everything else. Offer to come forward to testify.”
“You speak as if Richard was already a prisoner.”
“Irmgard, forget about him! He doesn’t love you.”
“Was she pretty, this Belgian girl?”
“Very.”
The noise of the water filled the narrow gorge. Mist rose from the plunge pool. At a place just above the falls, where two ledges jutted out, a covered bridge with shingled roof and open timbers spanned the frontier.
Hagen lowered the glasses, was lost in thought. Lev quietly chewed on a stem of meadow grass. “There are four of them, Ascher.”
Guards. There were always guards. Since when would anyone want to get into the Reich? And at a place like this? Shepherds! Smugglers! “Why not climb higher? Perhaps there are boulders across the bed.”
All around them the mountains soared. They had left the bottomlands, the valley of the Rhine long ago. Schloss Vaduz had clung to its forested slopes. Beyond the castle there had been the rising peaks of the Austrian Alps. The road had seemed to lead nowhere, had dwindled into a stony track. Then they had heard the waterfall against the tinkling of sheep bells and had climbed through the forest to an eagle’s nest above the bridge.
One of the guards dried off the barrel of his rifle. Another was sitting on a stump, methodically slicing bread with a bayonet. They looked like decent types. “Ascher, I’ll have to wait until nightfall. Then I’ll go across underneath the bridge.”
Lev bit off the end of the piece of grass and spit it to one side. “That’s a hundred-meter drop over the falls. Are you crazy or something?”
Hagen gave his arm a friendly jab. “This is where we part, old friend. Wait three days and if I don’t show up, go back to Switzerland and home as fast as you can.”
Never mind the diamonds, never mind the British, who had refused to help him.
The French and Swiss frontiers had not been so bad for Richard, who had carried the guns across, but here … “I will wait five days, maybe six in case there are complications.”
“If you do, you’ll be dead by then.”
Always they had had this argument. It had seemed far too hasty a plan—Richard supposedly into a private clinic because of a severe attack of malaria. Out of sight, of course, but … One used diamond cutter and a salesman whose worth in the eyes of the Reich must be fast dwindling.
“Richard, I’m not doing this to pay you back for saving Rachel. I’ll stay in a different pension every night and make a big thing of having a quiet holiday in Liechtenstein. But when you reach that bridge I’ll be here with the car to help you get back across it. You can watch for me from that spur. I’ll shoot as many of them as I can and draw their fire.”
There was no use arguing with him anymore. “All right. Shalom.”
Lev reached out to grip him by the hand. Would they ever see each other again? “Shalom aleichem.”
The moon broke through the drifting clouds to wash its light across the valley floor. The dog barked, and somewhere up on the mountain an answer was given.
They would go at it now, those two, until one or the other was clubbed into silence.
Out of the darkness, the farmhouse and barns grew steadily until he could see them quite clearly. Down over the fields, in the hollows, the gray gossamer of frost hung low.
Rubbing his hands together, Hagen started out on the trail. In the early morning the woman would expect one of the soldiers to come down for the milk and eggs. He would have to be near their hut well before dawn. The killing, if killing there must be, could not start until after the guard had come back. Otherwise the woman or her husband would sound the alarm. Then, too, there was bound to be radio communication with headquarters in Bludenz or Feldkirch—twice a day perhaps, morning and evening. Damn!
Alpine troops were stationed at both places.
There’d been no sign of the Daimler or of a staff car—just one of the Wehrmacht’s trucks with a canvas tarp over the back and half a tank of gasoline.
It would be enough to give them the head start they needed. It would have to do, but what if the guards received three radio checks a day? What if there was a transmission schedule he couldn’t determine?
The warning would be out, and then what? Lev would have to drive home alone.
The sound of the stream came to him as the trail entered the forest. The smell of the pines was sweet and close and the air cold. Only now and then did the moon break free. The slope steepened, then steepened again and again until the trees provided handholds and resting places, and footbridges crossed and recrossed the stream.
The water was never silent. The air seeped down from the mountainside, bringing the faint trace of wood smoke. Rain was in the offing and if not rain, then snow on the upper slopes to make their descent all the more obvious and hazardous.
Two women and a child who could cry out from fear perhaps to give them all away.
When he came to the hut, he came upon it suddenly. One minute his legs were aching from the climb, the next he had stopped on a ledge not a stone’s throw from the guard post. The back of the hut lay against a rocky cliff beyond which the crown of the roof rose slightly.
The dog was chained to a tree, and for a moment neither of them moved or made a sound. Then Hagen drew the pistol and the dog heard him cock it.
The night awoke, shattered by the barking that echoed in the cirque above and rolled down the mountainside to irritate the guardian of the farm. Back and forth the two dogs barked. Splashing among the boulders, Hagen crossed the stream and scrambled up the slope to climb out onto the roof of the hut and lie along its crown.
The dog’s barking increased. Tugging at its chain, it lunged this way and that. The moon came out to bathe the place in an eerie light. The guards came stumbling into the night to stand there hunting the darkness, then shouted at the dog in anger.
There were three of them. Would there be one, two or three others inside the hut?
A spill of lantern light gave echo to his thoughts. It broke from one of the windows below him. It flooded from the porch.
“Heini, what the hell is it this time?”
“One of the sheep perhaps, Herr Hauptmann.”
“Take the lights and have a look about. Don’t let the dog run loose. Keep the bastard on his chain or he’ll bugger off on us again. That bitch must be in heat.”
“Jawohl, Herr Hauptmann.”
As the sound of them faded, that of the radio transmitter beneath him grew. Regardless of the cause of the disturbance, the alert was being sent. Only if he waited now would he hear if the all clear would be given.
Stretching a little more, he flattened himself against the roof. The moon came out, then disappeared as the rain began to fall.
Two of them brought the milk at eleven o’clock and climbed to the ridge beyond the hut to stand in the rain high above the tarn.
Scanning the slopes through binoculars, they took no chances. When they returned to the hut to collect the empty canister, Dee Dee brought them coffee in tin mugs, and they thanked her.
There was no sign of Irmgard.
Both men shared a cigarette on the porch, leaning their rifles against the wall. Every now and then they would look down the trail toward the guard post. Like soldiers everywhere, they took what few luxuries they could get, but did so on stolen time.
When the coffee was done, one of them left the porch and came toward the woodshed. Hagen waited for him.
The smell of saddle soap and wet leather, the sour odor of sweat, wet clothing and stale cigarette smoke were mingled with the resin of split pine logs. The man was no more than a boy of twenty with flaxen hair and sky-blue eyes.
His arms were full of firewood when Hagen pressed the pistol to the back of his closely shaved head. “Don’t move. Don’t even think of crying out. How many are there of you?”
The boy tensed. The sound of the shot would bring the others. Hagen said, “Why die for two women and a child?”
Two women … It would be best not to tell him, to talk, though, and stall for time. “There are six of us. Four in the hut—the Hauptmann, the radio operator and two others. Munk and I are the only ones up here, but if I do not come back with the wood he will know something is wrong, and if we don’t report back to the Hauptmann, the others will soon be here. So, you are stuck. There is nothing you can do.”
“Except shoot you.”
Hagen let that sink in. He stood back a little. “How many times a day do you fellows have to check in with base?”
“Only the Hauptmann knows that. Sometimes it is three times, sometimes five. The schedule varies. We patrol. We do as we’re told. Twice a day the Oberst Steiner brings a bunch in from the other way to sweep that valley clean.”
His right hand edged toward a piece of firewood. Hagen wished he would try something because then it would be so much easier to kill him. “Walk in front of me. Don’t try anything.”
The boy snorted. “Munk will only shoot me and then you. If you should manage to get away, he has orders to kill them.”
“Then I’m sorry for you.”
Prepared for the blow of the pistol butt, the boy turned swiftly aside only to feel the knife plunge into him.
Stunned by it, he choked in confusion and staggered back as the firewood showered down around him.
He was staring up in disbelief when Hagen hit him between the eyes.
By his dialect, the kid had been from the north, from around Bremen or Oldenburg. “Hey, Munk, come here. Look what I’ve found.”
Munk was older, taller, tougher, smarter. As Hagen watched him through a crack between the boards, the corporal picked up the rifles and slung one of them over a shoulder. With the other rifle, he rammed a shell into the breech and took the safety catch off.
When he reached the woodshed, he used the muzzle of the rifle to give the door a nudge. Then he kicked the door open and stepped back a pace.
The rain fell steadily. It ran from the slicker, streamed down the field-gray oilcloth to puddle on the ground beside his boots. The door swung back and he nudged it open again.
“Stefan … Stefan, what the hell are you after? You know the Hauptmann won’t like it if we’re late.”
As he stepped cautiously into the woodshed, Hagen gently teased the rifle from his hands. “Now the other one. Lean it against the wall or you’ll join your friend.”
Munk smelled of the Limberger and sausage he kept in his pockets.
The guard post was quiet. The dog lay curled in the sun, drying out and catching a bit of sleep. Warm air from the valley below lifted up the slopes, and all around Hagen now there was only the sound of the stream.
Then he saw the Feldwebel—the one called Heini. Heavy-set, with an all but shaved head, he was sitting on a board, leaning back against the trunk of a tree not far from the dog.
There was a Schmeisser across his lap. The dog would sound the alarm.
One of the others came out of the hut—kitchen duty. Above the boots and drab olive-gray dungarees, he wore an undershirt that exposed the dark curly hairs on the backs of his shoulders and arms. Heini took no notice of him. The man went over to a line of washing to feel the socks and shirts.
The distance to the sergeant was about 100 meters, that to the cook, a little more. Shoot the one, the other, and then put the rest into the hut.
Hagen wished he could have the Schmeisser.
When the reports of the shots came, they rang like cannon on the mountain. The sergeant toppled over. The cook threw up his arms and took the line of washing down. The dog barked but Hagen didn’t run, didn’t listen.
Methodically he cut an arc across the hut, splintering the boards at waist level with first one of the Mausers and then the other.
Inside the hut the Hauptmann lay badly wounded on the floor, trying desperately to reach the shattered radio, whose operator had been flung against the wall.
The transmission key was up. Cursing their luck, Hagen pushed the Hauptmann’s arm away and shot him with the pistol. Then he silenced the dog.
He was racing now—leaving the hut with a Schmeisser, three stick grenades and a satchel of ammunition—when Dee Dee came running into the clearing to stop and stand there in shock.
Erika was in her arms. For perhaps five seconds they looked at each other. No sign of Irmgard …
When the cry came, it was torn from her. “Richard, no! No! She isn’t here!”
Hagen shouted to stop her from screaming. “The truck. Come on. Run!”
The roots, the stones, the rocks came up fast. Down, down they pitched, sliding, falling, crying out, then running blindly.
When they missed a bridge, they stumbled across the stream and he dragged them up the slippery bank.
No time … No time … “Dee Dee, try. Please.”
“Heydrich knows you’re going to do this. Please leave us …” She slid and gave a gasp, then dragged herself up and ran on again.
Throwing her words over her shoulder, she shouted at him in anger, “He wants you to do this! The more you kill the better. Escape … escape while you can.”
The fields were empty. Cattle grazed. The rooster crowed, and from the barn he heard the sound of the farmer forking dung. The woman was working in her garden and half rose among the dill to pause and stare at them.
As they ran to the truck, she went back to her weeding. Better not to see. Better not to watch.
Hagen tried the ignition, then tried it again and again before scrambling out to open the hood.
The fields were empty. From the farm, the dirt road ran down into the valley to gravel flats, gray-white in the sun. There were puddles in the ruts, silence … It was so silent and peaceful. Woods lay on either side. The woods … the stream …
At a point some one thousand five hundred meters from them to the south, the land rose out of the fields a little. From there it climbed into the forest. There would be height. Perhaps …
The truck started. He slammed down the hood and shouted, “Hang on!”
They made it to the main road and bumped up onto it. Jostled, Dee Dee cried out in panic and clung to Erika, clung to the door, the dash—anything to stop herself from being thrown about.
Richard put his foot down to the floor. Faster, faster … They were heading down a long incline now, crossing the valley flats, coming to a bridge, another road … trucks … trucks … men leaping out … men throwing themselves on the ground … the shattering of glass … a scream … her own … her own …
Krantz watched in dismay as Hagen drove like the damned. The truck reached the hills and began to climb.
He tore a rifle from the nearest man and threw himself on the ground. Kill …kill … kill …
The truck came to the first of the bends. Krantz lined up the sights and fired.
Glass shattered at Dee Dee’s shoulder. Blood, scraps of skin and fair, fair hair spattered over the windshield.
She screamed again and flung the baby from her, went crazy then. Hagen tried to stop her, tried to control the truck.
Krantz hit the front right tire, and they pitched off the road.
Trees … trees … try … try …
The truck rolled over. Dazed and bleeding badly, Hagen fought to drag Dee Dee out. “Run … got to run!”
Stumbling, they started for the woods, only to find themselves hemmed in by the river.
They ran back toward the road. The wheels of the truck were still turning.
As they scrambled up over the rocks, Krantz waited, held himself. The woman reached the road and he shot her first. She threw up her hands—wouldn’t even have cried out or anything.
Just died as so many had. The fields of Flanders, the last advance on Ypres, and never mind the diamonds, never mind what Heydrich wanted. Just kill or be killed.
Hagen held the woman in his arms and waited for it. Krantz lowered the rifle and buried his face in the earth. All his energy had suddenly left him. Drained, he lay there, knowing he should have killed Hagen while he’d had the chance.