Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [129]
"With the war going the way it is, rifles disappear all the time," he said. "So do machine guns. Even explosives, trucks of them. There's no way to track it all anymore. And so I'm not protecting the Führer as well as I once did. So the Third Army's General Epp telephoning me was just luck. And I contacted you immediately."
"There's something else we found out from Jack Cray's prints at the firing range," Dietrich said. "He was limping as he crossed the base, from the fence to the firing range. He had been hurt."
"How do you know?"
"We found some blood—quite a lot of blood—where Cray climbed the base's second fence. Paw prints showed that the patrol dogs were in a frenzy there. From Cray's boot prints, my tracker determined that after Cray was inside the second fence he was favoring his right foot. So one of the dogs must have gotten hold of the American's foot or leg as he was going over the fence. But that's not the point I find interesting."
"No?"
"My tracker found Cray's prints again as Cray was leaving the base, by then carrying the sniper rifle, we believe."
"Who is your tracker?"
"Senior Hunting Master Werner Eismann, who is in charge of the Schleswig-Holstein forest preserve north of Hamburg, near the village of Volsemenhusen. He is employed by the Office of the Forest Master."
"One of Goring's subordinates?" Eberhardt asked skeptically.
"But competent. I've worked with Eismann for years. He could track a man across pavement three days after it happened. Eismann thinks Cray was injured by one of the Dobermans. He was limping badly. Then, a while later, when he's leaving the base, he's not limping at all."
"You sure those were Cray's prints leaving the base?"
"Same boots with the odd nail. And everybody walks a little differently, Eismann tells me. These tracks had the same distance between steps. Same gait, rolling a certain way. Eismann swears it's the same man. But Cray's limp goes away as he walks."
"So what do you make of it?"
Dietrich chewed on his lower lip a moment. "I saw the wound on Cray's arm."
"When he was giving you that affectionate bear hug?" Eberhardt laughed.
"You laugh because it wasn't you," Dietrich said bitterly. "The chateau killer's knife under your chin, him casually deciding whether you are going to meet God today."
Eberhardt flicked his fingers by way of apology. "So what about the wound in his arm?"
"It was a bad one, a gaping hole put there by a bayonet. It would've meant time in a hospital for any soldier. And I'd bet his foot was hurt just as badly by those Dobermans." Dietrich leaned against a panel that contained dials and switches for the generator. "And we know from interviewing the Colditz commandant that Cray was severely injured trying to escape. Dogs got him there, too. And Cray refused a stay in the castle's hospital. After he was cleaned out and sewn up, he went straight to the isolation cell."
"So you have concluded that Cray is tough. I already knew that."
"It is more than being tough. I believe the American is indifferent to pain."
"How is that possible?"
"I don't know," Dietrich replied. "But I've met one or two people like that. Criminals. They don't allow pain to affect them. Nor bad weather, nor being tired, nor being under the pressure of being hunted. All they care about is reaching their goal."
General Eberhardt ran his hand along the metal table, flicking away unseen dust, his expression hard with thought. "That's bad news for us, Otto."
"And here's more bad news." Dietrich unbuttoned the rifle case to bring out a rifle with a scope mounted on it. "The base commander loaned me this Mauser. It's identical to the one Jack Cray took off the young sniper." He passed the rifle to General Eberhardt, then said, "I don't know whether Jack Cray is a trained marksman. But even an average shooter has a range of five hundred meters with this weapon, and with any training at all, his range would be seven or eight hundred meters."
Eberhardt's expression suggested that perhaps his boots were too tight. "Do you realize how vastly more complicated