Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [73]
Cray kept his hat between him and the SS officer, and rose to push aside the concrete basin. The baby had cried himself to sleep. His mother squeezed Cray's arm in thanks. Others opened their mouths to crack their jaws, trying to clear their ears. They dusted their shoulders.
"You." The SS officer stabbed his hand toward the Wehrmacht private. "Your ID and orders, quickly."
The private, no more than seventeen years old, whitened and stammered, and it was instantly apparent he was a deserter. The civilians in the cellar hurried up the stairs, anxious to get away from the SS colonel and his young prey. Except Cray.
The colonel reached inside his greatcoat for his service pistol. The young soldier backed into the wall, his hands out. His mouth formed a word, an entreaty, but no sound came. A civilian looked back, hesitated, but hurried toward the stairs.
"You are a deserter," the colonel exclaimed, leveling his Walther on the soldier. The war had put him behind a desk, and perhaps he saw this as his moment of glory, a chance to use the weapon he had carried on his hip for a decade. "A disgrace to the Fatherland and the Führer." The colonel held the pistol at full arm's length, and hesitated, maybe wondering whether to arrest the young soldier or to shoot him straightaway.
Cray saved him the trouble of making the decision. He quickly stepped to the colonel, and put his arm around the man's waist. The colonel stiffened.
Cray said, "Let's give the lad a break. What do you say?"
The SS officer's mouth moved silently. His head turned to Cray, but still he said nothing. His white face turned ashen, and his knees wavered. Cray held him tight, a friendly embrace, except for the knife deep inside the colonel's chest cavity. Blood bubbled at the SS officer's lips. The pistol lowered, then dropped to the floor. Cray held the colonel up, the blade hooked in his ribs. The officer's head nodded forward. Blood seeped from under his coat down his leg.
"Beat it, private," Cray ordered.
The soldier rushed away, stumbling over paint cans and chicken wire that littered the basement floor.
Cray yelled after him, "And find a helmet and a rifle, for God's sake. You look like just what you are."
The private hesitated, nodded at Cray, then climbed the stairs two at a time. Cray could hear the soldier's footfalls on the planking above his head. The American let the SS officer sink to the floor. The greatcoat wicked up blood.
Cray searched for the man's identification and found it in the inside breast pocket of his service tunic. He studied the gray linen card for a moment The documents identified the colonel as Kurt Schwenninger, an SS liaison officer to the Chancellery.
Jack Cray understood the benefit a commando operation might glean from confusion. Shake things up, see what happens, move when others are frozen, exploit any weaknesses Bedlam cracked open barriers. It waylaid the best-planned defenses. It threw up targets that had been well concealed. And, as here, it presented tools for the commando's trade. Even if his mission were a feint — as Cray increasingly suspected — undertaken to consume German manpower and materiel, he still needed the tools.
Cray had called in the bombing run so that he might study the government quarter, so that he might see the fire and rescue services in action, learn the guards' emergency routines, and obseive evacuation plans, searching for a flaw in the Chancellery's defenses But when the SS colonel found himself too far from a bomb shelter and had to seek refuge in the cellar of a ruined building, Cray had been offered more than an opportunity to study.
He emerged from the cellar ten minutes later wearing the colonel's uniform, with its black belt and shoulder strap. A rose of blood was around a gash in the greatcoat. The American still wore the bandage on his face. Cray stepped with purpose into the daylight, no longer shuffling