He left Eva’s house that morning carrying the suitcase for the rifle and a bag of supplies. He approached from the alley instead of the front of the rooming house, keeping his eyes on the ground. He found what he was looking for — a heavy stick — and put it in the bag with the other supplies.
Hess was concerned that Mrs. Gilpatrick might suspect something. The old lady had all the appearances of a busybody, but she seemed content to leave him alone for now. In fact, she was out shopping — probably spending the rent money Hess had paid her up front. The other boarder was at work. The house was empty when Hess carried in the suitcase containing his sniper’s rifle.
Next came a large paper sack of birdseed that he had purchased in one of the shops nearby.
The door of his room had an old-fashioned lock, the kind that took a skeleton key. It would only slow down anyone determined to enter. From the window, he had a view that overlooked Pennsylvania Avenue and the hotel entrance. The trick would be to make sure that he could not be seen from the street below. But Stalingrad had taught him well.
He took the small bedside table and moved it to the center of the room, then placed the other chair in the room beside it. The sack of birdseed went atop the table. He sat down, bent over the table, and looked out the window. Not yet satisfied, he moved the chair and table closer to the window so that he had a better view of the street directly in front of the hotel. There was more risk that he might be seen, but the streets of Washington were hardly combat conditions. No one would be expecting a sniper. And no one would be shooting back.
Hess was beginning to think that operating under the very noses of the Americans was almost too easy. He knew that was a dangerous line of thinking — underestimating the enemy was a sure way to get killed — but so far, nothing in Washington had caused him to worry. Carrying out the same mission in Berlin would have been far, far more difficult, if not impossible. Germans were more suspicious by nature. The Nazi government rewarded spying upon and snitching out disloyal neighbors. A stranger in Berlin would be closely watched. Americans were so trusting that they were making this easy.
Hess crossed the room and opened the window. Cold air washed in. Not that he minded. The cold would keep him alert.
At the back of the room was another pair of windows that overlooked the alley behind the house. He opened one of the windows and took out the coil of rope Eva had been instructed to buy in preparation for his arrival. He tied one end of the rope to the heavy stick he had found in the alley, then leaned far out the window to toss the stick overhead onto the roof. It took him a couple of tries, but he finally got the rope looped around a vent pipe jutting from the roof. He fed out the rope until the stick was within reach, untied it, and fastened the free end to the rope with a slipknot. He pulled until the rope was secure around the vent pipe. From inside the room, he pulled hard as he could against the pipe. It did not budge. Satisfied that the rope would hold his weight, he coiled it up and placed it on the eave of the roof, just above the gutter. All he would have to do when the time came was to reach out the window for the rope, then slither down it to the roof of the kitchen addition below. From there, he could drop to the ground and escape down the alley.
He placed the suitcase on the bed and opened it, then took out the rifle and reassembled it. He could have put it back together with his eyes closed. It felt satisfying to feel the weight of the rifle in his hands again. The weapon had become such a part of him during the last few years of the war that he felt like a piece of him was missing when he went a long time without handling it. He put the rifle to his shoulder, then pressed his cheek to the stock, inhaling the familiar scent of wood mixed with linseed oil. The wood emitted a medley of other smells as well — the salty tang of old sweat, the sulfur of gunpowder, blood.
Hess sat down and placed the rifle on the sack of birdseed. He put his eye to the telescopic sight and the people in the street below sprang closer. He would have liked to make sure the sight was still properly sighted in, but the telescope had always been reliable despite hard use. He let the single-post sight drift over a group of men talking in front of the entrance to the Metropolitan Hotel. He picked out a tall officer and noted with satisfaction that at this distance he could even pick out the individual buttons of the uniform coat. He put the crosshairs on the man’s temple and slowly let his finger take up the tension in the trigger until the firing pin drove home with a dry snap.
Hess worked the bolt action and dry fired again. He smiled. The officer would have been a dead man if the rifle had been loaded. He also felt reassured that if the sight was off slightly, that he would have time for a second shot.
The room was too small and sparsely furnished to have many good hiding places. He settled on wrapping the rifle in a towel and then slipping it behind the dresser, which he then pushed tight against the wall. Old Mrs. Gilpatrick wouldn’t be able to move the dresser without some effort.
Hess shut the window, noticing that the shadows were growing long in the winter afternoon. General Eisenhower would be arriving in the city within a few hours. Hess would be waiting for him.
Chapter 11
The DC-3 took off from London in the late afternoon bound for Scotland, and then flew through the night across the Atlantic, stopping in Nova Scotia to refuel before continuing down the coast. Ty Walker watched the lights of New York glow more brightly, then fade into the night. He felt the nervous butterflies in his stomach grow more pronounced the closer they got to Washington.
He had flown at night before, but only in Europe, where the landscape was considerably darker. The blackout lights in the United States were not nearly as effective. The English had learned the hard way what happened when lights gave German bombers a clear target. So far, the East Coast of the United States had been safe from similar attacks. Thank God. The battle of Britain had left the English badly shaken, thought Ty. Seeing the devastation of war firsthand had convinced him that Americans should have joined the fight earlier.
His stomach did another nervous flip. It wasn’t that he minded flying. The lights so far below weren’t a source of worry as the plane skimmed above them at one hundred fifty miles per hour. Instead, thoughts of a blue-eyed, blond-haired former movie star were making his palms sweat. He wondered what sort of welcome he could expect from Eva. Not that they had parted on bad terms. That had been months ago. Ty wasn’t so naive as to think that a woman like Eva would be alone for long.
“First thing I’m going to do is walk into a decent restaurant and order a steak,” said Smithers, interrupting Ty’s thoughts.
“I’ve got something on my mind besides eating,” replied Henderson, sitting nearby. “My wife is going to be in town. I haven’t seen her in months. Let’s just say the second thing I’m going to do is take off my boots, if you know what I mean.”
The men in the seats around Ty — the few who were still awake — laughed knowingly. The steady drone of the turboprop engines had lulled all of them to sleep at one time or another. Even General Eisenhower had nodded off after spending several hours poring over a stack of paperwork. Ike sat alone — it was an almost unconscious deference to his rank — although Colonel Durham sat just two rows behind, ready to do anything the general asked. Durham may have been the only member of Ike’s staff who hadn’t fallen asleep during the long flight from England. Ty wondered what the middle-aged colonel was looking forward to in Washington. He realized that he didn’t even know if the colonel was married. Durham had an almost single-minded devotion to Ike. Instead of steak or a woman’s arms, the colonel was most likely mentally reviewing the general’s schedule for the next few days.