Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [3]
From the door came the scrape of a key, followed by the shriek of metal on rusted hinges. Dietrich's fear welled up again. The executioner stepped into the cell.
In a land besotted with uniforms, even executioners had their own colors. Sergeant Oscar Winge's uniform was police green with yellow insignia and carmine-red piping. He had a drinker's face, blotched and purple, with red capillaries showing on his nose. His razor had missed spots below his mouth and under an ear.
A Gestapo case officer followed him into the cell. The agent had a pinched face, with deep lines like a cracked window. He wore street clothes and the ubiquitous Gestapo accessory, a black leather coat belted at the waist. The agent's name was Rudolf Koder, of the Gestapo's Amt IV 3a (counterintelligence.) He was a senior-grade civil servant, a deceptively bland title.
The agent said, "Let's see what today brings, shall we, Inspector?"
Winge brought Dietrich's arms behind his back to secure them with handcuffs. He prodded the prisoner through the door into the hallway. A line of dim overhead bulbs marked the way to the death chamber. When Dietrich's legs sagged, the executioner gently pulled on one of his arms to right him. Their footsteps echoed along the hall. They passed a dozen cell doors, behind which huddled the condemned.
Dietrich had always avoided cases that involved political controversies. He shunned the Drossier case in 1932 when it was clear the National Socialists had framed Drossier. And in 1939 he told his superior, Director Friedrichs, that he would not investigate crimes referred to him by the Gestapo. Only Dietrich's brilliant successes and his city-wide reputation allowed Friedrichs to resist the Gestapo's pressure to dismiss the inspector. When Director Friedrichs retired in 1940, Dietrich was passed over for the directorship because of his failure to join the Nazi Party.
There was more to it than that. Dietrich and the chief of the Gestapo, Heinrich Müller, had engaged in a ten-year feud, a running battle in which only Dietrich's skill and notoriety had allowed him to escape Muller's wrath. This time, skill and notoriety had not been enough.
And now Dietrich was an inmate in the very prison to which he had sent so many convicted criminals. His crime was as insignificant as it was damning. His brother Joachim had stolen from the Gettels Munitions Works in Hamburg the "L" relay and detonator used in Colonel Stauffenberg's briefcase bomb. The Gestapo had taken only three weeks to discover Joachim's complicity in the plot, and he had been executed within twelve hours of his arrest. Otto Dietrich had known nothing of Joachim's involvement with Stauffenberg and was entirely unaware of the plot. But Dietrich's blood relationship to Joachim was an adequate indictment. His well-known anti-Party behavior over the years sealed his conviction.
The executioner and the Gestapo agent led Dietrich down three steps to the lowest room in the prison. Above the door was a crude keystone that jutted an inch into the hall. The ancient wood door hung on broad black iron hinges. Rudolf Koder opened the chamber door.
It is little known that the guillotine is the German execution device. Dissimilarities in the German and French guillotines may reflect their differences as people. Whereas the uprights on the French guillotine in the courtyard of the Fort d'lvry in Paris rise to the heavens, the German machine is short and thickset, its purpose more readily evident. In France, the severed head drops into a woven basket, and while perhaps not a tender invention, the basket compares