He laid the Mauser on the ground, pulled the .45 and moved deeper into the woods, crouching, using a big tree for cover. Cordell heard him before he saw him, motherfucker walked by the tree, Cordell spun to his right, shot him through the middle of his body, the .45 loud like an explosion. The man went down, finger on the trigger of the machine gun, firing a wild burst.
Another machine-gun burst came from the opposite direction, rounds chewing up everything close to him, Cordell on the ground, down as low as he could. The second Blackshirt came toward him, ejected a magazine, popped in a fresh one and that’s when Cordell shot him. After the ringing in his ears stopped he stood still, listening, didn’t hear anything. Walked over and squatted next to the second Blackshirt, touched his neck, felt for a pulse the way they’d showed him in the army. Dude was all the way gone.
Cordell picked up the machine gun. Ejected the magazine, got a fresh one out of the man’s knapsack, jammed it home, and racked it. Want to even the odds? This was the way to do it. Cordell came out of the woods behind the garage, moved along the far side wall, peeked around lookin’ at the house. The car was still in the driveway, motor runnin’.
When the shooting started Hess told Stigler to put Harry and Colette in the cellar. He would take out the Negro and then deal with them. Stigler led them to the kitchen, opened a trap door in the floor and told them to climb down. Harry went first, then helped Colette, lifting her to the dirt floor. He put his arms around her and held her close. “I’ve got my money on Cordell. But maybe we can find a way out of here.”
When his eyes adjusted he could see shelves against the far wall and cured meats hanging from the ceiling. Across the room there were double doors that led to the outside, and a workbench in the corner. It reminded him of being in the farmhouse cellar the morning after he’d escaped from the pit when Hess and his men were on the Jew hunt.
Harry heard footsteps and voices above them, and the distant report of a gun followed by sporadic machine-gun fire. He moved to the workbench, ran his hands over the tools, feeling the familiar shapes of a sledgehammer and a crowbar. He picked up the crowbar and wedged the sharp end between the cellar doors and pulled as hard as he could. The wood creaked and groaned.
Cordell crossed the yard to the house, crouched along the side to the front and looked in the window. It was dark, he couldn’t see anything. Holding the machine gun with his right hand he opened the front door with his left. Stepped over the threshold and two Blackshirts came at him, firing. Cordell squeezed the trigger, spraying them with a long automatic burst until the magazine was empty and they were on the floor. Cordell reloaded and walked into the dining room. The car that had been sitting on the driveway near the garage was speeding away.
He went upstairs, checked the bedrooms, nobody there. Looked out a front window, saw the car disappear in the woods.
He went back to the kitchen. “Yo, Harry, where you at?”
“Down here,” said a faint voice. And he heard some banging under the floor.
He opened the trap door, looked down, saw Harry lookin’ up at him.
“Where are they?”
“All dead or gone.”
Colette came up the ladder first and Cordell took her hands and lifted her up to the floor, Harry right behind her.
“You okay?” He handed Harry the .38. “You may need this.”
“What about Hess?”
“I think he was in the car, took off in a hurry.”
Harry, looking through the doorway that led to the living room, said, “You hear that?”
Yeah, Cordell heard it — some kind of rumbling sound. He went in the living room, looked out, saw cars, lights off, spread out across the lawn coming toward the house. “Police.”
They went out the back door and disappeared in the woods, Cordell leading the way, moving just inside the tree line. He could see armed cops in fatigues surrounding the house, and Detective Huber with a megaphone telling Hess to come out with his hands up.
They made their way down the hill to the dirt road, found Harry’s rental car, moved a few branches out of the way and got in, Harry behind the wheel, Colette next to him, Cordell in back. Harry drove out of the woods onto the dirt road. They were almost at the highway when Cordell saw the police car. “See him, Harry?”
“Yeah, I see him. Take it easy.”
“What you think I’m gonna do?”
“I don’t know, but don’t shoot him.”
Cordell popped the plastic cover off and unscrewed the dome light. He saw the cop get out of the car as they approached. “Be cool, Harry. I’ll handle it.”
When they were rolling to a stop Cordell opened the right passenger door and slid out, crouching next to the car. Moved around, squatting at the rear bumper, saw the cop, gun drawn, standing at the driver’s door, window down, yellin’ somethin’ in German.
The cop opened the door, Harry got out, leaned against the side of the car, palms on the edge of the roof. The cop kicked Harry’s feet apart, holstered his weapon, and brought Harry’s wrists together, tryin’ to handcuff him. Cordell moved toward the cop, aiming the .45, took his gun and keys, led him to his car and cuffed him to the steering wheel.
Stigler turned onto the highway and had gone maybe one hundred meters when they passed six police cars, lights flashing, coming the other way. Hess looked in the side mirror and saw them slowing down, turning into the woods where they had just driven out. “Who told the police?”
“I have no idea,” Stigler said.
Hess studied his face, believing that you could read an expression, see when a man was lying, his face giving him away with a nervous twitch or blink. But Stigler’s face was like granite in the dim light. Who else could it have been? The men Stigler commanded were low-IQ laborers. They were brawn, good at carrying out orders but not at making decisions. Hess was sure it was Stigler, the electrician, looking for a way to better his life, and he was also sure Fraulein Rizik had given him the idea. She had been causing trouble, that was obvious, but interesting how prescient her accusation turned out to be.
A few kilometers down the road Hess said, “Franz, pull over, I have to take a leak.”
Stigler slowed down and stopped the car on the side of the road. “Do you mind if I join you? My bladder feels like it is going to explode.”
Inside the tree line, Hess pulled the Walther and shot Stigler while he was relieving himself.
Hess changed into a dark green electrician’s uniform he had taken earlier from Stigler’s van, hiding it in the trunk of the sedan. The shirt was too small and the trousers were too long. The cap fit well. He drove to a gaststatte on the outskirts of the city for a beer and something to eat, sat at a table in the loud crowded room, men lining the bar, hoisting mugs, smoke from cigarettes swirling up to the wood beams, the scene so comfortable and familiar, so quintessentially Bavarian. No one gave him a second look in his new disguise. He ate weisswurst and a pretzel, drank his beer, paid the bill and walked out to the parking lot.
Thirty-four
“They’re gonna be lookin’ for us and we’re gonna be easy to spot,” Cordell said. “Police know what we look like, know what kinda car we’re drivin’. Probably sent our pictures to immigration. Where we goin’?”
“France,” Harry said, holding the Mercedes steady on the dark highway, heading west to Baden-Württemburg.
“What about Austria, isn’t it a lot closer?”
“We think Hess might be going to Nice,” Colette said. “He has a friend who owns a villa outside the city.”
“You’re not wanted in France, are you, Harry?”