“Be careful with the wine, Sergeant,” Frade ordered. “It’s nectar of the gods.”
[FOUR]
Tiny’s men quickly got one of the generators up and running. Lightbulbs glowed and then came to full brightness. The refrigerator came to life with a screech and several loud thumps.
“Now that we have juice,” Mattingly said as he walked out of the kitchen, “Stein will have the Collins up and running, and I will be able to tell David Bruce that we done good.” He paused and added, “Don’t drink all the wine before I get back.”
Tiny pulled the cork from a bottle of the Cabernet with what looked like the corkscrew accessory on a Boy Scout knife. Clete put his hand out and after a moment Tiny took his meaning. He laid a knife with the Boy Scout insignia on it.
“‘Be Prepared’!” Tiny said. “You never heard that, Colonel?”
“You’re speaking to Eagle Scout Clete Frade, Troop 36, Midland, Texas,” he said with a knowing grin, then flashed the Scout sign with his right hand.
Frade’s grin faded quickly when von Wachtstein walked into the kitchen followed by Max, who had his hands on the shoulders of two gaunt, pale-faced boys wearing tattered, ill-fitting remnants of German army uniforms.
Jesus H. Christ!
The little one has to be Heinrich.
The one who killed a T-34 with a Panzerfaust, then pissed his pants.
“Hello,” Frade said. “You’re Heinrich, right?”
The boy came to attention.
“The war is over, Heinrich,” Frade said. “You don’t have to do that anymore.”
Max walked to a corner of the kitchen and picked up two waxpaper-wrapped cartons labeled CRATION.
“With your permission, Herr Dunwiddie?”
“You don’t have to ask, for Christ’s sake,” Tiny snapped.
He pulled chairs out from the kitchen table and motioned for the boys to sit in them. When they had done so, he used his Boy Scout knife to open the Crations.
He took a Bar, Chocolate, Single, Hershey’s, from each and tore the corners off and handed them to the boys.
“It’s all right,” Max said in German. “It’s chocolate.”
Both boys took a small bite, then smiled shyly.
“Is that the best we can do for them, Crations?” Frade asked. He realized his voice sounded strange.
“In just a minute, Colonel, I’m going to open that”—he pointed to one of the insulated containers that had fallen off the Constellation—“and see if I can find them an orange.”
“They’re also going to need a bath and some clothes,” Frade said. “What can we do about that?”
“Now that we have electricity, Herr Oberst,” Egon said, “there will be hot water in half an hour.”
“And can we buy them something to wear? Have we got any German money?”
“German money is useless, Colonel,” Tiny said. “So, for that matter, is American. But I think Max can get them some clothing by trading a couple of Crations and packs of Lucky Strikes. I also have Nescafé.”
He pulled open a kitchen cabinet door. The cabinet was stuffed with cartons of cigarettes and Nescafé.
“Like I said, Colonel—‘Be Prepared.’”
He walked back to the table, where he showed the boys how to open small, olive-drab tin cans labeled STEW, BEEF, W/POTATOES.
Clete saw that tears were running down Heinrich’s and Gerhard’s cheeks.
Frade took a swallow of the Don Guillermo Cabernet Sauvignon 1944. It didn’t taste as good as he expected it to.
Then he looked at Lieutenant Colonel Archer W. Dooley Jr. and saw that tears were running down his cheeks, too. Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodríguez, Retired, wasn’t crying, but he looked as if he was about to.
“You going to drink all that wine by yourself, hotshot, or do I get some?” Dooley asked.
Mattingly came into the kitchen.
“Pay attention,” he said. “There is a message from the Supreme Commander. Quote. Pass to all OSS and Air Forces personnel involved. Well done. Eisenhower. General of the Army. Close quote.”
“You’re welcome, Ike,” Frade said. “We’re always happy to do what we can.”
“The significant part of the Supreme Commander’s message, Colonel Frade, is that Ike is grateful to the OSS. That just may buy us some time.”
“Point taken,” Frade said.
“And then, when David Bruce had finished delivering Ike’s thank-you, he dropped the other shoe. ‘Get the Argentine diplomats and their airplane out of Berlin as soon as possible.’ He was more than a little disappointed that we couldn’t leave this afternoon. But first thing in the morning . . .”
[FIVE]
357 Roonstrasse, Zehlendorf Berlin, Germany 0715 21 May 1945
Breakfast was prepared by the two women Max had brought to the house late the previous afternoon, when he returned from his bartering expedition to get the boys clothing.
The women were neither old nor ugly.
Clete saw that their eyes, however, were empty. They were sexless.
Neuter, Clete thought. Zombies in skirts.
It was hard to guess even how old they were. Somewhere, Clete gauged, between his own age and fifty.
Both wore wedding rings, but Clete suspected their husbands were no longer part of their lives.
Frade, when able to do so quietly, gave in to the temptation to ask Egon if he thought they had been raped.
“They told me, with great hesitation,” Egon reported, “that the Asiatics had Giesela for most of a week. And Inge for four days. That meant Giesela had been repeatedly raped for most of a week, but Inge for ‘only’ four days.”
“Jesus H. Christ!”
“It happened all over, Herr Oberst,” Egon said. “Women. Young girls. Grandmothers. Boys. It would have happened to Gerhard and Heinrich, too. Except that when the Asiatics finished with boys from the Volkssturm, they killed them. That’s why Max and I took Heinrich and Gerhard with us.”
Von Wachtstein came into the kitchen. His officer equivalent civilian employee uniform had been replaced by clothing that looked only a little cleaner and less tattered than what the boys had been wearing.
Frade knew immediately what that meant, but had a hard time accepting the reality of it.
Shit!
“Have a nice flight, Clete,” von Wachtstein said. “I’ll see you when you come back with the money.”
“Didn’t you hear what Gehlen said, you goddamn fool? The Russians are going to crucify you upside down, because you’ll be easier to skin that way.”
“That presumes the Russians catch me. I’m going to try very hard to see that doesn’t happen.”
“Well, you’re not going, so get rid of those clothes and put on your uniform. We’re about to leave for Tempelhof.”
As if to make the point that it was time to go to the airport, Peralta came into the kitchen, followed by Stein, Mattingly, and Boltitz.
Mattingly’s, Boltitz’s, and Stein’s faces showed that they also knew the meaning of the clothing and didn’t like it either.
Peralta’s face showed complete disbelief.
“Hansel,” Frade went on, “you’re going back with us if I have to have Tiny and his guys tie you up and throw you on the airplane.”
“You could of course do that, Clete. But all that would do is delay my departure for Pomerania and increase the chances I’ll be caught by the Russians.”
“You’re out of your fucking mind!” Clete said.