Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [41]
The compass needle pointed north, and Cray headed that direction. North, toward Berlin.
PART TWO
1
OTTO DIETRICH stared between the blast tape crisscrossing the bay window out onto Kammler Street. Fractured and charred pieces of his neighbors' homes had been pushed into piles at even intervals along the sidewalk. Across the street, old Frau Fodor tended an iron pot hung over a fire, stirring it with a wooden spoon. Passersby stopped to stare into the pot and nod, enjoying the steam that wafted across their faces. Turnips and a potato were in the pot. Frau Fodor's home resembled a pile of kindling, and she was living in a tool- shed in the back, but did her cooking on the sidewalk so she could share the scents and steam with her neighbors.
Dr. Scheller asked, "They said they'd bring her here?"
"Two o'clock. They are three minutes late." The detective rocked back and forth on his heels, his eyes still at the window. His knuckles gripping the window frame were white. "Those people are never late."
The detective had pushed aside a lamp table so he could stand at the window. The doctor sat on an overstuffed sofa. Fabric on the sofa's corner was ragged where Maria's cat had sharpened its claws over the years. The cat had disappeared, Dietrich suspected into Frau Fodor's pot. The telephone rang, but Dietrich stayed at the window. His hands abruptly began to tremble, so violently that he grabbed his pant legs. Since his release from prison, his hands would begin shaking, for no reason and at any time.
"Are you prepared to see her?" Scheller asked.
"Prepared?" Dietrich wiped away his breath from the window so he could continue to peer through it.
"Maria won't look the same, Otto. I've treated a few of my patients lucky enough to have been released from that place outside Dachau. I hardly recognized them. You should prepare yourself."
Dietrich nodded absently His new clothes—obtained at the haberdashery with Himmler's letter—were scratchy and stiff. His Walther was in his belt and his ID card in his pocket. Mounted on the wall were gas lamps that Maria had insisted remain because the flues were made of pink glass resembling flames. A winged draft chair, designed to keep drafts from the sitter, was next to a drawing table on which was a chess set and Dr. Scheller's black bag.
"Mister, do you have anything to eat?" The voice came from the doorway to the kitchen, a child's voice.
Dietrich turned to the boy, who was about five years old.
"A loaf of bread and strawberry preserves. Would you like some?"
The boy nodded shyly.
Dietrich opened a net bag he had placed on the floor near the door. He pulled out a knobby loaf of black bread, then tore a chunk from it. He twisted open a jar of preserves. The boy drew near. Dietrich poured jam onto the bread, spread it with his finger, then passed the bread to the boy, who gripped it with both hands and jammed it against his face to chew frantically.
"What's your name?" Dietrich asked.
The boy mumbled something around the wad in his mouth. He might have said "Rolf."
The boy's mother appeared at the kitchen door. She wore a green knitted scarf around her neck and a blue coat ragged at the seams. Dark patches were under her eyes. With wide blue eyes, she might have once been lovely, but deprivations and grief and weariness had worn it away. She was scarlet with embarrassment. She spun her son by his shoulders and gently pushed him toward the kitchen door.
When Dietrich said "Ma'am," and held out the bread and jam, she hesitated, then accepted them with a nervous smile. She led Rolf from the room.
The doctor asked, "Who are they, Otto?"
"I found them here when I arrived a while ago. She and her son have been living here a month. After their Dahlem home was destroyed in a bombing raid, she found my place, all the windows dark. So she broke open a glass pane in the back door and let herself and her son in."
"Squatters ? They have no right to take over your home. Why don't you call the police?"
Dietrich smiled. "I am the police."
"Where is her husband?" the