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.“Kann ich Ihnen behilflich sein? Can I help you?” The man was short and gray-haired with a clerk’s wispy mustache and a banker’s distrustful gaze.Seventy if a day, but none the weaker for it.At home on a warm summer’s day, he wore a three-piece suit of navy serge.“Special delivery.I have a letter for your guest.”“I beg your pardon?”“Personal, Herr Gessler,” said Judge, guessing.“For Herr Seyss.”Gessler stepped onto the front steps and shut the door behind him.“Who are you? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”“A message from the Americans,” Judge continued, his suspicions writing the script.“It is imperative I reach him.”Gessler’s eyes opened wide.“Herr General Patton?”Judge nodded.“Jawohl.”Gessler stepped closer, whispering in his ear.“Herr Egon has gone to meet the Sturmbannführer at Schmundt’s home.Grossen Wannsee twenty-four.” Schmundt, another of Ingrid’s friends!“Herr Bach is here in Berlin?”Gessler had gone red with excitement.“But you must hurry.He left an hour ago.”Judge ran to the motorcycle, kick started the engine, and rode like hell for the suburb of Wannsee.It was a fifteen-minute trek along the lake of the same name.Flicking his wrist, he checked his watch.Eleven o’clock.Seyss is here.Seyss is in Berlin.He repeated the words over and over, as if until now he hadn’t quite believed his own suppositions.He crossed the S-bahn tracks, and then a small bridge, slowing to read the street sign.Grossen Wannsee.The single-lane road wound right, then left, climbing and descending a series of rolling hills.Giant oaks lined the way, a centuries-old honor guard.Judge passed through their meandering shadows as if they were reminders of his own conscience.He’d had Seyss and let him escape.He wanted to believe he’d been frustrated by his adopted humanity, that his reflexes had been blunted by the certainty—or was it just a wish?—that reason must vanquish force.More likely, it was nerves.Either way, nine men and four women were dead as a result of a moment’s hesitation.And his brother’s killer left to run wild with no telling what devastation he might yet wreak.Judge eased up on the throttle, stealing glances at the august homes lining the road.Number 16.Number 18.The bike sped round a corner and suddenly, he was there.Number 24.A blue-and-white plaque screwed onto a moss-encrusted gatepost showed the numeral in a quaint curlicued script.A car was pulling out of the driveway.A sleek black roadster, and it braked as its front tires crept onto the main road.Judge caught only a glimpse of the driver.Khaki jacket, tanned face, dark hair.Wearing the uniform of an officer in the United States Army was Erich Siegfried Seyss.CHAPTER48THE LOBBY OF THE BRISTOL HOTEL was an oasis of shade and calm.Ivory linoleum floor, black marble counters, and a ceiling fan spinning fast enough to rustle the leaves of the Egyptian palms that stood in every corner.Ingrid presented herself to the concierge and asked if any of the reporters covering the conference in Potsdam were guests of the hotel, and if so, where she might find them.The question was hardly a shot in the dark.Only two hotels were open for business in the American sector, the Bristol and the Excelsior.Judge had promised her the reporters would be at one of them.The concierge directed a hand toward the dining room.“A few are presently lunching, madam.”Ingrid thanked him and walked in the direction he had pointed.Instead of entering the dining room, however, she continued to the women’s loo.Her hair was mussed, her face sweaty, her shoes speckled with dust.Standing in front of the mirror, she tried to repair the damage, but her palsied hand only made it worse.Sit down, she ordered herself.Relax.She smiled, and the smile was like the first crack in a pane of glass.She could feel the fissure splintering inside of her, its veins shooting off in every direction.It was only a matter of time until she shattered.The trip to the hotel had left her a wreck.She’d seen plenty of bombed-out houses, streets cratered from one end to the other, even entire city blocks razed to the ground.But nothing compared to the marsh of ruins through which she now walked.It was a bog of char and decay and rubble.Block after block blackened and leveled.Streets buckled open.Torn sewers spitting effluent.She’d felt as if she were descending into a nightmare one step at a time.And everywhere, people.Old men hauling wheelbarrows loaded with wood and pipe.Women carrying buckets of water.Mothers pushing perambulators crammed with their worldly possessions, leading their children by the hand.Other children—whole packs of them!—wandering on their own.All of them gaunt, dirty, and forlorn.A festival of the damned.Stranger still—what really drove her batty—was the quiet.Berlin was nothing if not noisy: an exuberant symphony of horns and bells and shouts and squawks.Where had it gone? The silence that accompanied the squalor was unnatural.Walking, she would lift herself onto the balls of her feet, as if straining to catch a remark.All she heard was the constant tap-tap-tap of the trümmerfrauen; forlorn women chipping away a lifetime of mortar from an eternity of brick.But all of it was bearable until she came upon the horse.It was on the Ku’damm, just past Kranzler’s.A bulldozer had been by to clear the boulevard, plowing drifts of mortar and stone onto the sidewalks.Every twenty meters someone had carved a passageway to cross the street and it was through one of these crumbling couloirs that she’d spotted it.The animal lay still on the ground, surrounded by a small crowd.A wagon loaded with brick rested a few feet behind.The horse was terribly thin, stained black by its own sweat.Its fetlocks were tapered yet muscular, more jumper than draft horse.A lovingly braided mane hung limply on its neck.Obviously, the beauty had dropped from exhaustion.Ingrid’s first instinct was to rush toward it, though she knew she could do little to aid the poor creature.Before she could reach the circle of onlookers, a man cried “Achtung!” and she heard a ghastly whinny as something heavy and not quite sharp struck the horse.Another blow cut short the animal’s cry.There followed another thwack, and another.And a moment later, the horse’s rear haunch was handed through the crowd, passing from one person to the next, before being laid atop the wagon.A stream of blood curled between her feet, beckoning to her like an accusing finger.“Saw!” cried the brusque voice, and she’d fled.Brushing an errant strand of hair from her face, Ingrid leaned close to the mirror as if proximity to her reflection would help her sort out her feelings.She decided she’d been foolish to accompany Devlin Judge to Berlin.To abandon her child to join in another man’s crusade.Already she’d forgotten why she’d come.Was it to redeem her inaction during the war? Or to satisfy her long-simmering and silently fought feud with Erich Seyss? No one left Ingrid Bach until she said so! Was it this, then—her desire to be loved, to be attended to, to be found attractive—that had hastened her departure? Or robbed of a man’s presence for so long, had she mistaken Judge’s attention for something more lasting?The arrival of Judge onto her mental stage softened her damning tirade and for a few moments she comforted herself with memories of their night together.But soon, her unsated guilt demanded that Judge, too, be accounted for and dismissed [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]