If only they knew the truth. As he walked, Hess studied his surroundings with the sharp eye of a sniper. Washington was a city, but it was not in the European sense. It was no Berlin; it was not even a Stalingrad. The city was too neatly laid out and yet, at the same time, Washington had a sprawling look about it, more like a Roman idea of a city than Stalingrad’s tightly packed squalor. Trees grew along Pennsylvania Avenue, though they were too small to offer cover to a sniper, especially now that they were barren skeletons in winter. In Stalingrad, there had not been a stick of a tree anywhere; Russians and Germans alike had cut them down to build fires so that they wouldn’t freeze to death. Shops sold everything imaginable — books, magazines, records, clothes. Wartime shortages had forced most German shops to close. He passed a diner with a large sign advertising “Navy Bean Soup 5¢” and another sign, “Soup & Sandwich 10¢.” The place was crowded with soldiers and office girls. The people of Washington, with their clean clothes, plentiful food and trees untouched by scavengers were innocent babes compared to the war-hardened citizens of Stalingrad — or Berlin, for that matter.
Hess had just two pieces of information about General Dwight Eisenhower’s visit to Washington. The first was that Eisenhower would fly in from Europe and arrive in the city in two days, late on New Year’s Day. The second bit of intelligence was that Eisenhower and his immediate staff would make use of the best accommodations in the city, at the Metropolitan Hotel, located on Pennsylvania Avenue roughly midway between the White House and the United States Capitol.
Hess stood now on the street in front of the doors leading to the hotel lobby. He glanced at the liveried doorman and the well-dressed Washingtonians coming and going. Hess started toward the doors, then hesitated. His clothes were certainly fine and he looked presentable enough, but the truth was that he would rather walk through a field of machine gun fire than those lobby doors. The thought of being discovered was horrifying. He had a nightmare vision of being surrounded indoors as people pointed fingers and shouted, “He’s the one, he’s the assassin!” Hess reminded himself that he was as anonymous as the next man and marched briskly through the doors.
Hess had still half-expected shouts to go up, but no one paid any attention to his arrival. The lobby was busy with the usual comings and goings on a busy morning. He blinked until his eyes adjusted to the indoor lighting and the reflections from the gleaming marble floors and pillars. Uniformed men were everywhere. Bellhops rushed past under the weight of suitcases, trailing in the wake of well-dressed women whose furs whispered in the winter breeze coming through the doors. To Hess, these rich women looked like the wolves he had hunted as a boy.
Every good hotel had a bar, and Hess soon found the Metropolitan’s. The air was already thick with cigar smoke at this early hour and a few drinkers huddled on bar stools. A black man stood behind the bar, polishing glasses between serving drinks. He let his eyes float over Hess in the curious way the German had noticed black people on the street looking at whites here, taking their measure without the whites even knowing they were looking. Perhaps one had to be an outsider to pick up on that. Hess left before the bartender noticed him.
The hotel lobby would be of no use to him. Too crowded. Even if he rushed the general with a pistol or a knife, he might never get close enough.
He emerged back out on the street, stopping to light a cigarette and get his bearings. He felt relieved to be back outside. Taxis came and went at the curb. Hess studied the buildings across the street and considered his options.
No, Washington was not what he expected, but Hess’s experience in street fighting would serve him well nonetheless. Hess paused to look at the buildings lining the avenue. Most appeared to have been built in the previous century, and though substantial, they had not benefited much from Washington’s wartime boom. He saw no structures more than four or five stories tall, but from their upper windows they commanded an excellent view of the street below. The multitude of windows and buildings standing shoulder to shoulder was good in another way, too, in that it offered camouflage to a sniper. From the street, it would be nearly impossible to tell from which window the shot had been fired.
That brought Hess to another question, the matter of escape. He had seen more than one sniper trapped inside a building. Once a tank or even a heavy caliber machine gun was brought to bear on the sniper’s nest, without a way out, the building was as good as a death trap. To Hess’s mind, planning an avenue of escape was just as important as setting up a field of fire. When the Russians killed a sniper, it was a triumph for them. When a sniper slipped away, there was always the fear that he would soon be on the hunt again. Fear could be as useful as a bullet on the battlefield.
These Americans would not have tanks or machine guns at hand, but they did have plenty of men and the freedom to comb the city. There were no lines for him to retreat behind. Hess wanted to be gone before a real search for him began. Whichever building he chose needed to have a way out. He knew that Himmler might have considered this to be a suicide mission, but Hess intended to disappoint the reichsfuhrer.
Several of the buildings had metal fire escapes crisscrossing their facades, but that would not do him much good. At the end of the block, he turned the corner and walked to the alley behind the row of buildings fronting on Pennsylvania Avenue. He found tacked-on additions and garages, old cars, rows of garbage cans topped by sooty snow. He couldn’t have hoped for anything better.
Hess crossed Pennsylvania Avenue to walk the block opposite the Metropolitan. He passed several more businesses on the street level Sterling Optical, Dewey’s Wines, Miller’s Restaurant. However, Hess had his eye out for something other than spectacles and wine. The next block down was more residential, and it was here that he found what he was seeking. Throughout the city he had noticed numerous “Rooms” signs and this street had its share. Some notices were hand-lettered on cardboard and placed in a window, while others advertising “Men’s Rooming House” or “Women’s Rooming House” were neatly painted on more substantial wooden signs.
He paused to press a buzzer. Down the street he could still see the sidewalk in front of the Metropolitan, though the view was partially obscured by the trees lining Pennsylvania Avenue. He was now at the outer range for a moving shot, nearly three hundred meters, and if no one answered the door he would try to find something closer.
“May I help you?”
“Hello,” Hess said, taking off his hat. “I came to ask about the room.”
“Well. I see.” Or, she was trying to, Hess thought. The woman was middle-aged and snowy haired, with thick eyeglasses that looked as if they pinched her nose. But the eyes behind the lenses were shrewd enough. She observed Hess’s suit and coat, as well as the fact that his shoes were shined. “I do have a room available. Please come in out of that cold! I’m Mrs. Gilpatrick.”
“Rob Brinker,” he said.
The front door opened directly into the living room. Hess had an immediate impression of neatness and comfort. He saw a sofa and two armchairs. A copy of that morning’s Washington Star was open on a side table next to a cup of tea. He must have interrupted Mrs. Gilpatrick while she was catching up on the war news.