Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [152]
Dietrich followed at Eberhardt's elbow. His anger bubbled up. "I'm going to kill that son of a bitch Rudolf Koder when I get the chance." He was instantly abashed.
Eberhardt turned to grip the detective's arm and gave him a corrosive look. "The Russians will be here any day, and they'll surely do that work for you." After a few more steps he added, "Koder and his boss Müller are too dangerous for us to fool with. So don't do anything to get yourself hung, Otto."
18
"WILL I BE SEEING you again?" Cray looked up from the blanket he was about to roll. In the center of the blanket were the clothes the countess had made for him. Near the blanket was the burlap bag containing the antitank mines and the stick grenades. "After I leave here in a few minutes . . ." His voice trailed away.
"I can't go with you." She wrapped her arms around herself. "I've already told you so."
Cray threw onto the blanket a roll of cheese, a loaf of bread, a canteen, and a gas-mask container. The masks were issued to Berliners early in the war. This one had belonged to the countess, and she had never taken it out of the box. Cray gathered up the blanket's corners to form a bundle. He was wearing refugee clothing, two pistols in his belt under his coat, and the knife tucked into a sleeve. Once again the left side of his face was covered with a smudged bandage, and his hair and eyebrows were dark. On his head was a filthy workman's cap that covered the bandaged gash on his forehead. He would be indistinguishable from thousands upon thousands of other refugees fleeing west through Berlin's tortured streets, everything they owned on their backs.
"Where's the rifle you went to so much trouble to get?" she asked. "It's already where it should be." He was always vague. An air-raid siren down the street began a shrill piping, joined after a few seconds by another.
Cray brought up his wristwatch. "Right on time." She shivered. "Do you know the one thing I'm going to miss about you?"
"My looks?"
She didn't even smile. In the smoke-filtered morning light, her face was as pale as candle wax. "The sense of invulnerability you give me When you first showed up, I was frightened beyond my wits. I knew I was in immense danger every second I was with you. But your brainless bravura is infectious. You've convinced me you will live forever, and are no more vulnerable to the German war machine than those American bombers on their way here now. I've come to feel safe around you. As safe as I've felt since my husband died and I started working for the Hand. I'm going to miss that."
"Not my looks? You sure?"
"Can you be serious one second?"
He looked away a moment, out the window. They were in the second floor of a burned-out clothing store. Most of the roof had been ripped off by an HE blast, and the fire that followed had charred everything else. Rolled in blankets, they had slept that night in the one corner of the room that still had a roof. Puddles of rainwater filled sagging points in the floor. Scavengers had stripped the store of everything but coat hangers, and they lay about the floor and stairs where Cray had placed them to prevent anyone stealing up on them as they slept. They were on Kellner Street, nine blocks from the Reich Chancellery.
He said quietly, "I tried to be serious with you. It didn't work."
"You were serious? About what?"
"About what is going to happen to Berlin in a few days, a week. What might happen to you if you stay here. You didn't give me any reason to hope I could change your mind. So now I'm back to my good- natured self."
She stared at him, her expression softening Suddenly. She laughed. "Can I predict your future?"
"Sure."
She looked through a gap in the ceiling. The sun was pale, silver instead of gold. Her eyes found him again. "Someday back in the United States you'll trick some woman into marrying you, Jack. Some young lady who'll have no more idea who you really are than you do."
He smiled, then rose to his feet, lifting the blanket pack and the burlap bag to his back.
"What a terrible trick