Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [128]
Katrin and Cray walked their bicycles away from Sergeant Kahr. When Cray glanced back, Kahr was lifting the SS captain into the back of the Kübelwagen.
"You know your question?" Cray asked. "Whether Sergeant Kahr will have the courage."
She replied, "Forget I asked."
11
"THEY MATCH?" Eugen Eberhardt bent over the table. "I don't see it."
With a pencil Dietrich pointed at a portion of the photograph. The pencil trembled. "Half a centimeter in from the edge of the heel imprint, right at the back of the heel. It's the trace of a nailhead. A piece of the nailhead is missing, so the imprint looks like a half moon. The cobbler probably used the damaged nail because he was short of nails."
"And you see it on this photo, too?" Eberhardt adjusted the gooseneck lamp, centering it over the second photograph. He didn't wait for the detective's answer. "Now I see it. Looks like the same imprint, same nail print. Just like you say."
"The first photograph was taken near Katrin von Tornitz's destroyed home, near the spot Jack Cray had his little chat with me. The second photograph was taken at the rifle range, where those two snipers were attacked."
"And you're sure that the rifle is missing?" Eberhardt lowered himself to a folding chair. The truck was cramped, and his knees were pressed against a metal cabinet.
"On my instructions, Third Army military police turned the camp upside down. That boy's rifle is gone. And so are his three grenades. Two of them were TNT, and one was a smoke grenade." Next to Dietrich was a leather rifle case.
"We almost missed this, Inspector." Eberhardt pinched the bridge of his nose.
Dietrich nodded. He grabbed the table edge with both hands. Since witnessing Peter Hilfinger's murder, he had been unable to keep his hands from shaking. His old fear—his constant companion in his prison cell—had returned with such force that it was overwhelming the grief he should have felt after losing Peter. Sorrow could not surface through Dietrich's fear, and he was again ashamed of his weakness. Eberhardt had expressed his sympathy, and was now doing Dietrich the service of being briskly professional to keep Dietrich's mind on the job at hand.
"You know, there was a time when hardly a bullet could disappear in Germany without my learning of it." Eberhardt said. "It was my job to make sure that the tools of assassination were accounted for. My office knew where everything was, and when weapons or ammunition or explosives disappeared under mysterious circumstances, I learned of it immediately."
"The war has changed that, I suppose." Dietrich leaned against a bank of radio equipment.
Eberhardt and Dietrich were inside a Funkwagen, a mobile command post built for the military services by Volkswagen. The vehicle was twelve feet long, and squat, with two rod antennas and a bedstead aerial attached to its roof. An RSD radio operator was also in the cargo bay, hovering over an array of dials and switches, his face reflecting the green light from the instruments. A faint cackle came from a radio speaker. Behind him a fire extinguisher was hung above a gas-mask case. Eberhardt sat at the metal table, where a rim prevented documents or other items from sliding off when the vehicle turned tight corners. On one wall was a converted wrought-iron wine rack filled with rolled maps. Near Eberhardt's elbow was a microphone on a hook, connected to loudspeakers on the roof. A sawed-off shotgun was mounted on the back door near the handle. On another wall was a clipboard containing a cordoning-off order. Like an armored car, the Funkwagen had rifle slits cut into its sides and rear door. Behind the radio operator was a bulletproof window through which the driver's head could be seen.
Eberhardt's office on Potsdamer Platz had been destroyed the night before, and he had been promised a new one—somewhere—by noon. Until then the RSD director would conduct his business