The sergeant got out his binoculars and swung them slowly from left to right. Everything was the same as it had been before, only closer. He could see the break in the bramble-covered stone wall and the post and a few splintered pieces of wood that had once been the gate into the place. There was a guard just visible on the left side, looking miserable in a canvas rain cape even though it had stopped raining hours ago. The sergeant could see the glow of a cigarette moving in an arc from the man’s hand to his mouth. It would have been an easy shot, payback for Hayes, but who the fuck cared about Hayes anyway? If the sniper was still in the tower of the abbey he’d pick up the muzzle flash and take him out easy as one two three. No, this was a look-see, no more.
The sergeant could also see that getting over the stone wall was going to be a bitch. Too high and covered with brambles. They’d get hung up like birds in a fucking net. As far as he could see they’d have to go through the front gate if they were going to go in at all. On the other hand, if he told that to Cornwall or either of the other two phony officers, they’d probably do it and wind up getting them all killed. Like somebody told him back before France, to know more was to have more. He told Teitelbaum and Reid to park it, gave them the evening password and told them he’d be back in a while. If they smoked and got themselves picked off by the sniper in the abbey ruins, that was their lookout.
He slipped back into the trees and moved north. He’d seen the big topo map that Cornwall carried and he knew there was the vague possibility of one of those monster King Tigers coming down the road and blowing them all to hell with its 88mm, but he hadn’t seen one yet and he didn’t think he was likely to. The worst he’d seen was a burned-out old Panzer I that looked like it dated back to the Spanish civil war lying half in the ditch at the top of the hill. He’d been sidetracked with the OSS dudes and as long as they didn’t do anything stupid that was fine with him. He was no hero-that was for sure. At this point all he wanted was to do his time and then go back to Canarsie.
He moved through the trees, his eyes automatically scanning the ground for deadfalls or trip wires, his ears cocked by long practice to the sounds around him, his mind in some kind of automatic autonomic state that was more animal than human, ready to react at any moment to any sight or sound that was out of the natural order of things. Eventually he reached another drainage ditch, this one leading to a culvert that ran under the road to the field on the other side. If there was going to be any kind of warning mechanism, mines or trips he knew it would be here, but there was nothing. The plates on the trucks said SS but this was no crack unit. Those pricks, hell, even the straight army types would know better than to leave their flank open like this. He checked the ground carefully; no cigarette butts, no matches or food waste, no stink of piss that would give away a perimeter guard. Nothing. He smiled to himself, glad he’d left the others behind. Something was going on here, something as squirrelly as Cornwall and his two so-called lieutenants.
The sergeant squatted by the culvert, staring at the ground. He’d been with the little band for more than six months now, him and the others taken out of Antwerp just after Holland was liberated and attached to G2 by orders of God knows who. Since then they’d been working their way across Europe, mostly talking to people without the slightest sign of combat. Two weeks ago they’d been sitting around fifty miles from Koblenz waiting for the Brits to make up their minds and Cornwall had found out something that had them pushing south and east like a coon dog with a bitch’s scent up his schnoz. Maybe what he was sniffing was this: a phony SS unit out in the middle of the fucking Bavarian nowhere and six Opel Blitzes.
At this stage of the war a gas guzzler like the Blitz-capable of at least thirty miles an hour, or even more with a good enough road-was worth its weight in gold, and that had the sergeant thinking quick. The trucks had to have some kind of special designation and documents to get this far south, and from here they could head for Switzerland, Italy or Austria. The Russkies were to the east, the Allies were to the west and they were being squeezed like a pimple. Odds were they were heading for Switzerland, since Italy had already surrendered and Austria wasn’t far behind. That meant Lake Constance, no more than sixty miles away.
The sergeant looked through the culvert, wondering how much trouble his curiosity could get him into. Say the shipment in those six Opels really was valuable, and say that Cornwall meant to take it. But the real question was, what did he intend doing with it after that. His job was to recover the stuff then get it through proper channels back to its owners, but he was beginning to wonder. Maybe now they were past war, and playing finders keepers. Maybe it was every man for himself. Maybe it was time for the boy from Canarsie to cut himself a big slab of that pie. Maybe.
The sergeant let his hand drop to the butt of the firearm holstered on his hip. Three phony officers who weren’t really army at all, who all had soft jobs stateside, who were probably true-blue as all get-out. It would be easy enough, but then what would he do with the six trucks? It was all in the paperwork.
He stood up. The dawn was coming on pretty quick and the ground fog was running through the trees like so many torn rags. Six trucks and close enough to the Swiss border to make it in a day, maybe two. It was worth thinking about. He peered through the patchy fog at the distant entrance to the farm. For a moment he was almost sure he saw a figure moving across the gated opening. He lifted his binoculars. Not a guard. A man in uniform. A general, right down to the red stripe on his fucking jodhpurs. But he was way too young-hawk-faced, pointy chin, young side of forty. Some kind of disguise, maybe. He stopped at the edge of the gate and a second figure appeared. A woman in a sweater and a head-scarf. The guy in uniform lit her cigarette. They were laughing about something. A young woman; now that was interesting. The farmer’s wife or daughter, someone along for the ride? Six Opel trucks, a phony general and a woman. What was that all about?
21
Gatty’s residence was a six-story house on West Seventy-second that looked as though it had been transported away from beside a canal in Amsterdam a few hundred years ago. To the left was a brownstone, to the right there was a fair-sized apartment building. The front door was in the basement and they had to walk down into a little well surrounded by a wrought iron fence. The door knocker was huge: a black hand on a hinge holding something that looked like a small cannonball. In the middle of the cannonball was an unblinking eye. Valentine tapped the knocker twice against the heavy oak door. They could hear it echoing inside and then they heard the sound of footsteps on stone.
“Spooky,” said Finn.
Valentine smiled. “The kind of money that can afford a house like this on the West Side usually is,” he answered. A light went on over their heads. There was a short pause and then a man in a plain black suit answered the door. He was in his seventies and the little hair he had on his head was silver-white. He had dark eyes that had seen too much and a thin mouth. A scar pulled his upper lip upward, revealing a piece of yellow tooth. He’d been born before operations for split lips and cleft pallets were commonplace.
“We’d like to speak to the colonel, if you don’t mind,” said Valentine. “It’s to do with Greyfriars Academy. He was just visiting there, I believe.”
“Wait,” said the man. There was a slight snuffle to his voice but it was clear enough. He closed the door on them and the light went off, leaving the two standing in the darkness.
“The butler did it,” said Finn. “He’s really spooky.”