It was expected, and yet Kieffer felt a quick surge of panic. He suppressed it angrily.
Automatically Marshall slowed down.
“Keep going,” Kieffer snapped. “And keep your trap shut!”
He resisted the instant impulse to grab his gun.
The jeep edged onto the highway.
The Germans stirred at the sight of the American vehicle. Guns in hand, a couple of them, one a Feldwebel, warily started across the highway toward the jeep.
Kieffer leaned out.
“Hallo! Am Kraftwagen!” he called. “Hey! At the truck! — Wie weit noch bis Mayen? — How far to Mayen?”
“Fufzehn Kilometer,” the Feldwebel answered in typical Berliner dialect.
Kieffer beat his arms around him elaborately.
“Kreuz-Donnerwetter-Papenheim-Herrgott-Sakrament-Zum-Teufel-Nocha'mal!” he swore. “It's cold in this damned Ami Klamotte!” He prayed his thick Bavarian oath would allay any budding suspicions the Berliner might have about his accent. He knew his German was good, though it wasn't good enough for him to be taken for a nextdoor neighbor. But for someone from a different part of Germany. He hoped.
Irrelevantly he had a flash vision of his mother's scandalized face as he'd pronounced that oath the first time. He'd been twelve. Blasphemous, she'd cried, white-faced with shock. It was a little strong — especially to Catholic ears. Crucifix-Thunder-Home of Popes-Lord God-Sacrament, to the Devil, Twice Said! For days she refused to speak to her brother, who was visiting the States from Bavaria and who'd taught the boy the curse.
He turned to Marshall.
“Los, Fritz,” he said. He pulled his wool cap even farther down over his ears. “Before I freeze my balls off!”
The Berliner grinned.
“Mensch!” he said. “You are warming the wrong end!”
They started down the highway.
No one stopped them.
It was 2237 hours when Kieffer and Marshall brought their oddball jeep to a halt at the Mayen railroad yards in back of the main station. The sprawling yards were utterly deserted and dark, yet not dark enough to hide the sweeping devastation. Mayen, a town of some 16,000, was an important junction on the Andernach-Gerolstein Railroad, vital to the rail traffic in the Rhineland-Palatinate, and as such the town had been the target of heavy Allied bombing raids. The railroad marshaling yards were a mass of corkscrew iron rails, shrapnel-shattered rolling stock and jagged mounds of masonry rubble.
Though it had been late when the two Americans drove into town, there was still considerable traffic abroad, both military and civilian. The streets were only dimly lit, a fact they welcomed; electricity obviously was scarce, but even in the dimness the old town, which had begun as a Roman settlement, clearly showed what the bombers had done.
Driving through the center of town, Kieffer and Marshall had passed only one large building which miraculously showed no damage except for a few boarded-up windows — the huge, castlelike hospital, shored up with massive concrete buttresses. They had steered clear of the area. The hospital was obviously in the process of being evacuated, and there was too much activity for comfort. The Germans, anticipating the impending occupation of the town, were transporting their wounded soldiers to the rear — so they might be patched up to fight another day.
They had found a spot next to a mangled tie-tamper between two badly shot-up boxcars and stashed their jeep in the black shadows. Kieffer had decided to track down Decker on foot. It would eliminate the risk of having to park the jeep on the street. Marshall threw a couple of loose boards against the vehicle as camouflage. He opened the hood and removed a small object. He threw it to Kieffer.
“Hold on to that,” he said, closing the hood. “It's our ticket back home.”
“The rotor?” Kieffer asked, pocketing the little object.
“Right.” Marshall patted the jeep. “Nobody's going to start this baby without it.” He looked at the jeep. “You know,” he said, “I never really thought we'd pull it off. But I'll be damned if the Krauts didn't act as if they saw a US Army jeep driving through their burg every day….”
“That's just fine with me,” Kieffer said. “Let's keep it that way.”
He turned toward the town.
“Okay. We've gotta start someplace,” he said, keeping his voice low. He was annoyed to note that he couldn't keep his tension from showing. “We have to find Ostbahnhofstrasse first. Then Decker's house number.”
He looked toward the looming hulk of the main railroad station.
“Probably not too far from here,” he said. “Bahnhofstrasse means Railroad Station Street.” He nodded toward the building. “That's where we'll start. The railroad station. There'll probably be a street map of the town somewhere.”
He turned to Marshall.
“You stay glued to me,” he said. “And don't open your mouth. If there's any trouble, let me do the talking. You pretend to be a — a foreign worker. A Pole. French. Anything but US.”
Marshall nodded vigorously.
“Got you. Mum's the word.”
The station complex itself had sustained heavy damage. The place was only sparsely lighted. But through the shattered glass high above, a feeble moon stabbed at the gloom below and made the twisted iron framework look like an enormous, sooty spiderweb suspended over the passenger rotunda and track platforms. Under this giant web a mass of people seemed to be imprisoned. The railroad station was the only hope of escape for the many who feared the imminent onslaught of the enemy, and the dimness was filled with the whispered voices and shuffling feet of refugees waiting for a place on one of the few trains still able to run.
Kieffer and Marshall made their way through the milling crowd as unobtrusively as possible, looking for a street map. The walls still standing and the makeshift partitions hastily thrown up around bomb-damaged areas were covered with proclamations, bills, slogans and posters.
Nearly all the cheerful advertising and travel posters that adorn every railroad station were gone. In their places were Nazi political placards and old recruiting posters — all torn and soiled….
A stirring scene of gallant battleships steaming forward against a background of a huge Navy flag: “EINSATZ der Deutsche Kriegsmarine—CONTRIBUTION of the Germany Navy,” it proclaimed…. The noble Aryan profile of an airman superimposed on a Luftwaffe emblem: “Unsere LUFTWAFFE — Our AIR FORCE.”… Grim, attacking soldiers: “INFANTRIE Königin Aller Waffen—INFANTRY, Queen of All Arms.”… Even “HER ZU UNS,” a proud Hitler Youth holding a swastika banner: “Hinein in die Hitler-Jugend—Into the Hitler Youth.”… And, of course, a picture of a stern, imposing Adolf Hitler and the drumbeat slogan “EIN VOLK, EIN REICH, EIN FÜHRER — One People, One Country, One Leader.”…
Finally, next to the ominous admonition “FEIND HÖRT MIT!
— The Enemy Listens,” they found a town map.
Ostbahnhofstrasse began close to the station. It was not a long street. One building on it was marked with a red circle. Jäger-hof. Apparently a notable tourist hotel in happier times.
Kieffer was suddenly aware of a commotion nearby that was coming closer. A small group of tired-looking Waffen SS soldiers headed by an Unterscharführer came marching toward him. The people scrambled out of their way. Kieffer found himself pressed up against the wall. He turned his face to it, earnestly studying the street map.
The palms of his hands were suddenly clammy. Were they headed for him? Had he and Marshall been noticed? Had someone turned in the alarm?