Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [114]
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