Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [29]
Dietrich's immediate superior, Erwin Golz, said with feeling, "Good to see you, Otto."
Golz was the senior Berlin criminal police officer. His background was as a homicide investigator, and he still wore the clothes of a civil servant: striped pants and a jacket. Golz had not allowed the hardships in Berlin to cause him to miss meals. His small features were almost lost in the moon of his face. The bulk of his stomach kept him a good distance from the table. Strangers often mistook him for a jovial incompetent, a mistake. Golz had tried in vain during the first weeks of Dietrich's incarceration to free him. But the Berlin police's long arms did not reach into Gestapo prisons.
Displaced from his chair at the head of the conference table by Himmler, Gestapo Müller sat stonily to the ReichsFührer's left. Müller was as barbarous as he was anonymous to most citizens of the Reich. He had been too long inside Gestapo headquarters, and his skin had faded to a leprous white and was marred by pockmarks near his ears. His nose was flat as if it were pressed against a window, and his mirthless brown eyes were set deep in his skull. His dark hair was combed straight back and kept in place with gleaming pomade. He wore plain clothes; a white shirt and emerald tie under a herringbone jacket. Müller stared at Dietrich with undisguised hatred.
Gestapo Müller was Dietrich's great nemesis, the ever-present threat and the constant danger. Ten years before, in 1935, Dietrich had arrested Müller for the murder of Müller's mistress, a teenager from the Bavarian mountains who arrived in Berlin on a train with twenty marks, a beguiling innocence, and an angelic face. Müller made her his, set her up in a flatjust off the Kurfürstendamm, and purchased or stole for her everything the country girl desired. Dietrich had never determined what had driven Müller to his murderous fury, but the girl's body had been punctured with a knife eight times. Based on the report of a neighbor in the building who had seen Müller leave the premises with a bloodstained overcoat, Dietrich arrested Müller, who spent two months in the Lerhterstrasse Prison awaiting trial before the Nazi Parry could effect his freedom. Despite Dietrich's pressing the issue, Mullei was never re- arrested or tried. And Müller had been after Dietrich for ten years, trying to waylay him, trying to catch him in a mistake, trying to find him in an exposed and vulnerable position. Finally the Stauffenberg plot had been enough. Müller himself had signed the warrant that had taken Dietrich to the same cell where Müller had spent those two months.
Although Dietrich did not have the slightest idea what was occurring, it was clear to him that his release from Lehrterstrasse Prison represented a victory of the criminal police over the political police, over Gestapo Müller.
RSD General Eugen Eberhardt was also at the table. Dietrich had worked with Eberhardt before and knew him to be highly competent.
Müller's office contained a Regency desk, a Louis Seize long-case clock, and the conference table. Because the windows had been boarded, several lamps with radiant orange and red leaded glass had been placed around the room, adding to the illumination provided by the electrified crystal chandelier hanging over the table.
"I have flooded the Reich with copies of this photograph," General Eberhardt said.
Dietrich was finally able to remove his eyes from the lofty gathering. He followed Eberhardt's gaze to the white wall, where the image of a man's head was projected.
"His name is Jack Cray," Eberhardt continued. "He is an American."
Himmler said, "He may be the most dangerous man in Europe."
"There is no question that this American was the guerrilla