Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [131]
Dietrich rubbed his hands together. The station was colder than the Berlin streets. He said softly, "I'm afraid of Müller."
"So am I," Eberhardt admitted after a moment. "You met with the Führer. Talked with him personally. You've got Hitler's ear, sort of. Doesn't that make Müller hesitate?"
"Not that I've seen." Dietrich searched for a handkerchief in a pocket, but found none. He sniffed loudly. "Hitler thanked me, sure. But maybe he also wants me to still be terrified of the Gestapo."
The walls abruptly shifted, then shivered. Bombs were falling. The station fell silent, except for a distant rumble that was fed into the station from the subway tubes. Berlin was built on alluvial sand, and so bombs had a rippling side effect through the earth. These explosives might be falling a kilometer away. The platform bucked, and people grabbed bunks and signposts and walls for support. Mortar dust fell from ceiling cracks, and in a few places water began seeping down the walls. Women hugged their children. Some Berliners stared at the ceiling, holding their hands up against the dust. Others closed their eyes, grimacing. The sounds coming from the subway tunnels eerily changed pitch and timbre. The smell of cordite drifted from the tunnels into the station, mixing with the scents of concrete dust and oiled railroad ties.
Eberhardt asked, "Did you know that in America underarm deodorant is advertised on the radio?"
The detective looked at him. "Really?" He pondered that a moment, then said, "Well, they sure make good bombs."
The long moments passed, Dietrich with his hands jammed into his pants pockets, staring at the back of a bench, watching it tremble. Finally the quivering stopped, and a few minutes later the all clear sounded from speakers on the wall. Berliners rose from the floor and the benches and cots and surged toward the exits. Dietrich again followed General Eberhardt, swept along by people desperate to leave the tomb of the subway and return to whatever was left aboveground.
Dietrich and Eberhardt stepped through the doors into a cloud of smoke and ash that hid buildings fifty meters away. The government quarter had not been hit — no new debris or fires — but it was downwind of today's target. The smoke was harsh in the detective's throat. He walked toward the Funkwagen, squinting to keep the drifting ash out of his eyes, almost running into a fire hydrant that emerged from the smoke. The sky was so low he could not see the tops of lampposts. Ash the size of envelopes curled out of the sky. The sharp scents of high explosives and ruptured sewage lines carried in the breeze.
From the haze came the sound of an automobile's worn brakes, metal on metal, or so it sounded to Dietrich. Then it came again, an agonized wail, more a bleating, and so out of place among the rums that the detective could not identify it. A vast patch of the haze shifted, and then was pushed aside by a mammoth presence. A trunk and tusks formed out of the smoke, then the rest of the elephant, moving fast, throwing one enormous foot out in front of the other.
Even though the animal was more than fifty meters from them, Dietrich and Eberhardt jumped back. Wisps of smoke trailed behind the animal like wake from a boat. The elephant bleated again, at once fierce and pitiful.
"It's Fritzi, from the Tiergarten Zoo," Dietrich said. "He's gotten out of his pen."
"Goddamn it, he's been hurt." Eberhardt stepped toward the elephant, as if he could help him, but the creature continued to run, first one way, then the next, perhaps looking for his tormentor, or looking for help.
A gash the size of a door was open on the elephant's side, running diagonally from the shoulder behind his ear down to his hind leg. White ribs were visible, and torn muscles, and blood was gushing from the elephant, leaving a wide trail. Fritzi bleated again and again.
"My boy and I used to feed Fritzi peanuts," Dietrich said emptily. "Damn it to hell."
"My children and I did the same thing," Eberhardt said. "Everyone in the city did."
The same bomb that