The figure came into focus, his face turned away. A middle-aged man wearing an American officer’s cap, walking with a slight limp.
Grannit sprinted to the end of the diagonal pathway, where it reached the canal, saw the line of footprints continuing to the north, then spotted a leather case in the snow beside them twenty yards to his right. He hurried to it, opened the case, glanced inside, and knew who had brought it here. Movement against the white snowfield drew his eyes farther to the right.
A soldier in an overcoat kneeling in a nearby thicket held a rifle, pointed at the northern terrace.
The officer on the terrace turned, and Von Leinsdorf glimpsed Eisenhower’s face. As he squeezed the trigger and heard the muffled snort of the silencer, he felt a sharp slap on the back of his left thigh and a jolt of searing pain rocked him forward. His bullet fired off-line, kicking snow off a branch above and to the right of the general. In that frozen moment, as a gunshot cracked the clear cold air, Von Leinsdorf realized he’d been shot from behind. He spun around onto his back, saw a man advancing toward him, pistol in hand, and fired the rifle at him. The shot caught the man between the neck and right shoulder and punched him off his feet.
Bernie had nearly reached the end of the path to the Trianon Palace, the barbed wire and defensive gun emplacements around the building in his sight, when he heard the single shot ring out through the trees in the distance to his left. He stopped and looked both ways, then turned to his left, the direction Grannit had gone, and kept running.
When Von Leinsdorf looked back up at the terrace, the general was out of sight behind the line of hedges. Von Leinsdorf limped out of the trees toward the staircases and fountains beyond the canal. By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, he could hear shouts coming from the terrace above. Looking to his left, he noticed a gap in the back of the empty fountain complex and remembered something pleasing from his study of the maps.
Grannit pulled himself to his feet. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, the collarbone shattered, pain exploding along the arm, through the shoulder, and up into his neck. He bent down awkwardly to pick up his gun with his left hand and staggered after Von Leinsdorf, following a trail of blood and footprints in the snow. At the base of the stairs, the trail veered to the left into some empty fountains at the foot of the slope and toward a narrow three-foot gap at the bottom of the back wall, where it met the base of the hill. Grannit advanced to the opening, bent down to look inside, and saw smooth concrete walls below. He stuck the gun in his belt and lowered himself with one hand toward the edge, inched himself back over the lip, and then let go and dropped about four feet, stifling a cry of pain as he landed on a smooth concrete floor.
He had landed in an ancient reservoir below the fountains and terraces, emptied of water. A series of low keystoned arches branched up to form the ceiling from rows of square pillared foundations, stained by ageless watermarks. A distant light source illuminated the symmetrical edges of the pillars as they marched away in both directions. The air felt glacial and stagnant, as if it hadn’t been disturbed in a hundred years. Grannit pulled his gun and stood up, nearly to his full height under the center point of the arches. He listened and heard nothing but a distant, steady drip of water. He saw no movement or shadows in either direction. He set down his gun, switched on the small flashlight and held it between his teeth, then picked up the gun again.
The trail of blood continued ahead of him on the smooth stone floor. The reservoir seemed to have no end, extending into infinite darkness. He advanced slowly, following the blood from pillar to pillar with the light. His right arm felt dead, hanging as if by a string, its every involuntary movement shooting pain out through his upper body that took his breath away. He crept forward, half a step at a time, cautiously approaching the edge of each pillar before inching into the open again.
He heard footsteps moving ahead of him in the dark, then the sound of a scuffle, followed closely by two booming gunshots and a groan. He heard something heavy hit the ground.
“I got him!” he heard an American voice yell. “I got the son of a bitch!”
The fragile beam of the flashlight caught the edge of something moving two pillars ahead. Grannit leaned out, took the light into his good hand, focused it along the trail of blood, and followed it. His eyes blurred, refusing to focus, and he knew he was going into shock.
“Can I get some fucking help down here! He’s still alive, I got him!”
Grannit saw the soles of a man’s boots around the corner of the pillar. He took another step forward and saw the man in the overcoat moaning in pain, writhing on the ground in a spreading pool of blood. An MP stood over Von Leinsdorf, holding his gun pointed down at the body with both hands.
“Anybody there, god damn it! I need help!”
Grannit rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes, trying to will them to work. He took the gun back into his left hand, held it along with the light, and stepped forward with the barrel raised. It looked as if Von Leinsdorf had been shot in the face; he was covered in blood, his hands reaching up frantically to his head as he moaned in pain.
“Don’t fucking move again!” said the MP, lowering the gun at him.
“Where’d you hit him?” asked Grannit.
“Head and neck, I think. I had patrol down here,” said the MP. He pointed deeper into the darkness. “There’s a door connects to the basement inside. I heard the shot outside so I came through. He jumped out at me; I was lucky I got some shots off.”
“Is the general all right?” asked Grannit.
“I think he is, I think they got him back inside. Who the fuck is this guy? One of those Germans?”
“That’s right,” said Grannit, staggering as he leaned toward one of the columns.
“Jesus, you’re hit, too. Cover him, I’ll get help. Where the hell is everybody?”
Grannit rubbed his eyes again. He thought he saw a bloodstain on the back of the MP’s left leg as he took a step toward the door in the darkness.
“Hold up,” said Grannit.
“Come on, man, you’re hurt-”
“Who plays center field for the Dodgers?” asked Grannit.
“What, are you fucking kidding me?”
“Just answer the question.”
“Joe DiMaggio.”
Grannit pulled the trigger. Von Leinsdorf spun around and dove to the ground, squeezing off three shots from his.45, deafening in the enclosed space. The first bullet caught Grannit just above the hip and drove him to the ground. His good arm braced to break the fall, his elbow cracked as it hit the concrete, and his gun and flashlight skittered a few feet away from his hand.
Von Leinsdorf stepped forward into the light, holding the Colt in both hands. Grannit’s shot had grazed his ribs. He touched the blood, assessing his injury as he advanced slowly toward Grannit, staring at him with a mix of rage and curiosity. Grannit tried to inch his left hand toward his gun, but his legs wouldn’t work properly and the area under his hip grew slick with blood, preventing any traction. Von Leinsdorf stopped three feet away.
“What do you want?” he asked. “What do you want?”
Grannit didn’t answer, but didn’t look away.
Von Leinsdorf raised the gun to fire point-blank at him when the reservoir exploded with a series of deafening shots that merged into one long, continuous blast.
Bernie advanced steadily toward Von Leinsdorf as he emptied the clip, and every shot caught him square in the back. The German jerked forward, spun to his left as he dropped the gun, tried to grab a pillar to hold himself up, then slid to the ground and onto his side. He looked up at Bernie in disbelief. Bernie stood over him, held his look without flinching, pointed the gun at his forehead, and the trigger clicked again, the clip empty. And in that instant the dark light in Von Leinsdorf’s eyes finally went out.