Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [27]
Dietrich had smelled nothing but mold and rot and his own fear for months, and the limousine's odor of leather and cigars was intoxicating. He still could not open his eyes. He was thrown against the seat back when the car pulled away from the prison.
He blinked rapidly, his eyes slowly adjusting. He saw the black cap of an SS driver. The detective turned to the window. The car was passing through a valley of rubble that rose steeply on both sides. Dietrich could see nothing but debris, hills high enough to cast the street in shadows. At an intersection the car slowed for a tram pulled by a horse.
When he was sure the driver was not examining him in the rearview mirror, Dietrich spit out the pill and put it into his pants pocket. Then he asked, "What's that new trolley?"
"With all the wreckage many streets are too narrow for cars and trucks. So we've brought narrow-gauge locomotives and cars from the Ruhr mining valleys, and laid the tracks for them." The SS driver spoke pleasantly, almost in a rehearsed manner, as if he frequently gave tours to visiting dignitaries. "If all the rubble in Berlin were put in one pile, it would be taller than the tallest of the Harz Mountains, the Brocken, eleven hundred forty meters."
Dietrich craned his neck left and right, taking in Berlin's wilderness of devastation. Some of the mountains of waste were new, others had weeds growing from them. The debris consisted of concrete, mortar, brick, glass, plumbing, limestone, sandstone, and shattered furniture. Above many mounds were solitary chimneys, still standing.
They passed a line of decrepit nags pulling carts. Dietrich saw almost no automobiles or trucks. He still had to squint against the bright light. The sky was dust-laden, and the sun was an outsized fiery red orb like a biblical omen. The Mercedes came to a rubble peak blocking the street.
The driver put the car into reverse. He turned to look through the back window. He had a long face with a flared nose. His dimples were at odds with the SS tabs on his collar. "Can't go anywhere directly these days. I know some detours, but they change every day."
The Mercedes veered around a crater, then tried another street. The car bumped over abandoned fire hoses. They passed sandbagged storefronts and the Mitte Cinema, still in operation. The epic Kolberg was playing. The marquee also advertised that a Fritz the Cat cartoon opened the show. Dietrich rolled down a window. The air smelled of sewage, cordite, and escaping gas. When he coughed against the dust, he cranked the window up.
A line of fallen telephone poles blocked the road. The driver again backed up, then turned onto another street, but here high-tension cables lying across the pavement were marked with a warning sign. Again he put the car into reverse, this time going two entire blocks backward before finding a clear roadway, but one that had not been swept. It was a river of glittering glass, sparkling gaily from curb to curb and crackling under the Mercedes's tires. At the next intersection they passed a field kitchen with a long line of haggard women and blank-faced children waiting with tin bowls in their hands.
The Mercedes turned onto Berliner Strasse, then came to the Tier- garten. The two massive flak towers at the zoo had so often been strafed that their concrete walls were scabrous. Piles of concrete chips lined the bases of the towers.
Dietrich's mouth turned down at his first view of the Tiergarten's lawns. They were a moonscape of room-sized craters. Many of the chestnut and lilac trees had been blasted down. Others had been cut down for firewood. The park reminded Dietrich of no-man's-land at the Somme, where he had spent much of the Great War. Once the Tiergarten's ponds had been blue gems but now were filled with rubble pushed there by bulldozers clearing nearby streets. Because the trees were gone, the park's statues were plainly visible. Without their usual camouflage of leaves and branches, they seemed naked and embarrassed. Goethe stared moodily at the victory garden that had been planted at his