Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [98]
Dietrich and Hilfinger completed their circuit and paused at the front door. The armored car spotter asked from up on his machine, "Are you two waiting for me to make the hole bigger?"
A second armored car drove onto the lawn Instead of a 2-cm cannon, this car had a blunt nozzle that Dietrich had not seen before. Rudolf Koder was giving directions to the second car's driver, who peered out from a rectangular slot. The car pulled up closer to the house.
"Damn, I don't want to go into this house," Hilfinger said. "I thought being a cop meant I was exempt from this kind of Skorzeny stuff."
Pistols in hand, Dietrich and Hilfinger slowly stepped through the door, ducking under shattered boards that hung down. The bitter smell was of spent explosives. The armored car's shell had done its work on the hallway, also, which was tossed and shattered and filled with rubble like a Berlin street. They stepped around an overturned Chinese chest and a gilt-framed mirror that had been blown off the wall. Shards of mirror lay all along the hall. The chest was too small for a man, but Dietrich looked into it anyway pushing aside a door that was off-kilter. The chest was filled with China dishes, now mostly fragments. Rudolf Koder and six storm troopers followed them, Koder in the rear, a pistol in his hand. Dietrich led them into the good room, then into the kitchen. They pulled open cabinets. On the counter near the sink was a bottle of wine that was half full, ten sausages on a string, and hard rolls.
When a trooper came to the closed pantry door, rather than open it blindly he pulled back the bolt on the Schmeisser and loosed half a clip through the door, the weapon roaring and bucking, stitching the wood up one side and down the other.
Then he kicked in the door and bulled his way inside to find nothing but a few empty jars and bins.
"Learn that technique in Warsaw, did you?" Dietrich asked mildly. He led Hilfinger and the troopers up the stairs. The detectives peered into the bathroom. A trooper with a bayonet on a Mauser stepped by Dietrich, opened a towel cabinet, and jabbed the bayonet into the piles of neatly stacked towels. In the hallway, the Schmeisser- carrying trooper covered an armoire while Dietrich opened its door to reveal folded linen sheets and pillowcases. The bayonet was plunged into the linen. Rudolf Koder watched from the top of the stairs.
Troopers and several detectives now crowded the hallway. Dietrich entered the front bedroom, checking the two armoires, looking under the bed, turning back the mattress. The trooper followed him, sticking his bayonet into the armoire and through the mattresses. Hilfinger and other troopers searched the three back bedrooms while Dietrich climbed to the servants' quarters in the garret. They opened closets and dressers. Armoires were opened and their contents pierced through with bayonets.
The basement was next. Lightbulbs had been unavailable in Berlin for months, and they had apparently been purloined from this little- used basement for the sockets upstairs. Dietrich was passed a flashlight. He held it to one side, presenting a target away from his body as he descended the stairs, the pistol in his other hand. Koder followed. In the darkness only vague outlines were visible. Dietrich's eyes adjusted slowly. The basement was filled with boxes and bins, two bicycles>, a pedal sewing machine, a ringer washer, and a laundry hopper. Hilfinger and Koder had also obtained flashlights, and the thin, moving beams threw exaggerated shadows