“Yeah,” answered Rossi, “we’re fellow members of the Harvard club, can’t you tell?”
“Actually,” Ingrid pointed out, “he attended Yale.”
Rossi flushed as his colleagues pounded him with acerbic laughter. The man next to him — slim, gray hair and a ghost’s tan — chimed in. “Excuse me, ma’am, but we saw you talking to the concierge. We couldn’t help but overhearing you speaking kraut. I didn’t know Carroll DeHaven had any German relations.”
Ingrid damned herself for her carelessness. Judge had told her to only speak English but the journey to the hotel had left her too flustered to remember. She considered denying the fact but wanted no more made of her nationality. “Carroll DeHavenis my cousin,” she said evenly, “on my mother’s side, if you must know, and I’m anxious to reach him. Would any of you be going out to Potsdam this afternoon. I’ve a letter that I’d like delivered to him.”
The lot of them shook their heads. Then Rossi jumped in, “Tell you what, sister. Come on upstairs, we can sprechen-sie a little, then you can tell me all about you and Chippie boy and Yale. You want him to get a letter, mail it!”
More laughter.
Ingrid shook her head, fed up with Mr Rossi’s coarse behavior. She’d spent enough time chatting with the GIs guarding Papa at Sonnenbrucke to pick up some of their lingo. Finally, she’d been given an occasion to use it. Circling the table, she knelt close beside the obnoxious lout and brushed her most seductive finger along the underside of his bristly chin.
“Mr Rossi, is it?”
“Hal.”
Ingrid flashed her eyes. “Hal… If I thought for a second that you knew the first thing about pleasing a woman, you know — how to really make her hum and purr — I just might consider it. But I can spot a limp-dicked paddywacker when I see one and I don’t care to waste my time with you. Terribly sorry Hal.”
The table erupted in a gale of laughter. And to his credit, so did Rossi. When the commotion died down, he said, “Okay, okay, I apologize. Listen, lady, there are over two hundred of us reporters in town for the big show. Only two are allowed to attend the conference each day. The rest of us are stuck here twiddling our thumbs. I’m sorry, but if you want to talk to your cousin, you should go see Colonel Howley. He runs things in the American part of town. Frank Howley. Maybe he can help.”
Ingrid thanked the table and stood to go.
“And if he can’t, schatzi,” Rossi shouted after her, “don’t forget my offer.”
The table burst out all over again in boisterous laughter.
Ingrid was passing the front desk when Rossi caught up with her.
“Hey, sister, you want that letter to get to DeHaven, maybe I can help.”
She kept walking. “I doubt that.”
“A few of the guys are heading out to the Little White House tonight for a small shindig. Strictly on the QT. A little poker, some booze, anything to get out of Berlin. Maybe we’ll see old Chippie.”
Ingrid realized she had no choice but to take the offer seriously. Stopping, she turned to face him. “Are you asking me to come with you?”
“If you can stand an hour’s car ride with a classy guy like me, why not? We’re leaving from the Excelsior around seven. Come by for a drink first.”
“The Excelsior at seven. Deal.”
Suddenly Rossi frowned, stroking his whiskers. “There’s just one thing I gotta ask you.”
Ingrid eyed him dubiously. “What?”
“Serious now. This letter, it’s not gonna get me into any trouble?”
Ingrid smiled. “Mr Rossi, if you can get me to Potsdam, this letter of mine just might make for the biggest story of your career.”
Rossi shrugged, unimpressed. “Lady, if a dame like you goes out to a party with me, that’s the biggest story of my career.”
Chapter 49
“The flag that we are to raise today over the capital of a defeated Germany has been raised in Rome, North Africa and Paris,” declared President Harry S. Truman from the steps of the Air Defense building. “It is the same flag that was flying over the White House when Pearl Harbor was bombed nearly four years ago, and one day, soon, it will fly over Tokyo. This flag symbolizes our nation’s hopes for a better world, a peaceful world, a world in which all people will have an opportunity to enjoy the good things in life and not just a few at the top.”
Seyss was only half-listening to the words. It was bad enough having to stomach your own country’s propaganda; just plain nauseating trying to swallow someone else’s. Inching forward through the crowd of American soldiers, he was more concerned with the men on the stairs than what they had to say. Truman was a particularly unimposing figure. Standing before the microphone, straw hat in hand, he wore a light summer suit, wire-rimmed spectacles and two-tone shoes that would do a salesman proud. Behind him and to his right stood Dwight Eisenhower, Omar Bradley, and, finally, George Patton.A true friend of Germany, Egon had said. A regimental band was off to the left, brass horns held at the ready.
Seyss kept his chin raised, his eyes glazed over with that proper mix of rapture, respect, and naiveté that the Americans reserved for their President. A few hundred soldiers had assembled for the flag raising and together with Seyss they had bunched themselves into the modest courtyard. Look at their faces. Such hope. Such faith. Such trust. How was it that their war had taught them the opposite of his?
Step by step, ever so slowly, Seyss neared the President. He was careful not to jostle. Never did he push. If the men around him were aware of his movement, they didn’t mind it. A bead of sweat fell from the brim of his cap, stinging his eye. He glanced up. The sun was at its highest, not a cloud to deflect its powerful rays, the day hot and sticky. Still, it was more than the heat causing him to perspire.
Pulling a handkerchief from his pocket, he lifted his cap and wiped his brow. He had the itchy neck, the twitching muscles, the flighty stomach, that came with the proximity to action. Twenty feet away, Truman droned on and on. Standing on his tiptoes, Seyss sighted a clear line of fire. The .45 rode high against his hip. The Browning he’d taken from Egon scratched the small of his back. Were he to draw his pistol and fire, he’d get off three shots, four at most. He’d kill the President, and if he were lucky, Eisenhower. But then what? The Horsch was parked three blocks away. A cordon of military police surrounding the gathering and a dozen heroes-in-waiting tugged at his elbow. He wouldn’t get far.
“We are not fighting for conquest,” Truman was saying. “There is not one piece of territory or one thing of a monetary nature that we want out of this war. We want peace and prosperity for the world as a whole. We want to see the time come when we can do the things in peace that we have been able to do in war.”
Truman stepped from the microphone and the crowd of soldiers broke into an enthusiastic cheer. Behind them, a hundred Berliners had gathered. With dismay, Seyss noted that the locals were as fervent in their applause as the Americans. They’d clapped the same way when Hitler announced the re-taking of the Rhineland and the Anschluss with Austria. When Paris fell, they’d gone absolutely crazy.
The cheering grew and grew, causing Seyss to wince with discomfort. Now was the time to act. The noise of gunfire would be swallowed by the boisterous harangue. He’d have a second more to get off an extra shot or two. In the ensuring confusion, he might even escape.
Still, there remained the bigger question: would killing Truman, or even Eisenhower, “make the cauldron boil”, as Egon demanded? Would it spark a war between the Ivans and the Yanks — a conflict grave enough to bring in Germany on the allied side? Of course not. Egon had been right all along. A Russian must be seen to kill the President. A Russian must kill Churchill, too. A Principal for modern times; Berlin had replaced the Balkans as the powder keg of Europe.