Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [97]
Koder signaled to the spotter, who slipped back down into the Mercedes-Benz. The car lurched forward down the block, then rolled up the curb, plowed through three azalea bushes and knocked over a lamppost to park in front of the von Tornitz house, thirty feet from the massive oak front door.
Blackout curtains were drawn over all the windows, but power was on, and slits of light escaped from the bottoms of the curtains. The porch light was dark. The house was accented with heavy timbers on the first floor, and expanses of whitewash on the second, crisscrossed by more timbers. It was old and rambling, with dormers and gables, four chimneys, ornate cornices, and small oculus windows. The house was large and confused and comfortable.
SS storm troopers emerged from the trucks. When platoon leaders signaled, the troopers spread out around the house, joining the policemen. They carried Schmeissers and rifles, and moved with a confidence that indicated they were veterans of a front. A machine-gun team set up an MG-42 on a tripod on the west side of the house. The Berlin detectives watched gravely.
Anger clipped Otto Dietrich's words. "Who gave you authority to use the SS on this operation, Koder?"
"General Müller, of course."
"This is my goddamn job!"
"The American is in the house, and the house is surrounded. He cannot get out. Your job looks at an end, doesn't it?" Koder smiled at him. "So who knows what you might be doing tomorrow, or where you'll be."
When this mission was over, Dietrich would be once again of no worth to the Reich. He had not been promised a pardon were he to capture the American. Still, perhaps if he brought Jack Cray in, rather than allow the Blackshirts and the Gestapo to do his job, some fate other than a return to the cell might await him.
"I'm going in after the American," Dietrich said. "You are a policeman, not a soldier," Koder said with some satisfaction. "You don't have any idea what's waiting for you in that house." Dietrich walked toward the front porch. Pilasters were on both sides of the arched door. "Better Jack Cray than you and your guillotine."
"At least let me help you with the door." Koder gave an order to the armored car's spotter.
The spotter yelled down into his hatch. The 2-cm gun roared, yellow flashes dancing at the tip of the barrel. The sound was similar to a lightning storm: a sharp crack followed by a deep bellow. The door of the von Tornitz house and the pilasters and the frame blew inward, leaving a ragged, smoking hole at the top of the steps.
More armored equipment came noisily down the street. The gauleiter in a neighboring house pushed aside his blackout curtain to observe the scene.
Dietrich motioned for Hilfinger to join him. They slowly circled the house, beginning along a walkway between a laurel hedge and the house. Troopers held their weapons on the windows and a side door that exited to a garbage bin. A trooper was repeatedly plunging a bayonet into the garbage. He shook his head.
"The American's not under there," Dietrich told him. "He didn't have time to get outside. He's in the house."
The trooper stabbed the bayonet several more times, all the way up to the rifle barrel. "I was told to stab, so I stab."
The house had been built on a slope, and the detectives stepped downhill along the walkway, passing basement windows and more of the SS troopers who had surrounded the house. The troopers kept their distance from the house, posting themselves behind trees and bushes. Along the back of the house was a rose garden. A dog run was also in back, where a Gestapo agent was poking his pistol into a clapboard doghouse. Several more troopers stood under a trellis that was ensnared by rose vines. The troopers wore gray fatigues and coal-scuttle helmets. They were almost invisible in the darkness. Two Gestapo agents were standing near a greenhouse, which was made to look Gothic with wrought-iron curls along the corners and ridgeline. Dietrich stared at the greenhouse a moment, thinking it odd for