Five Past Midnight (20 page)

She decoded the last line and stared at the page. The message made little sense to her, and it was not meant to. It was addressed to the Horseman. She fumbled with the sulfur match, her hands so cold she had difficulty grasping it. She scratched the match head, then put the flame to the pages she had torn off the one-time pad. After they had curled and turned dark, she blew out the flame and used the bottom of an ink bottle to crush the embers.

Katrin's head snapped up at the scent of meat. She had not had any kind of meat in six weeks, maybe longer, she could not remember. The heady smell was almost foreign to her. Tendrils of the odor seemed to lift her from the chair and pull her from the room. She carried the message with her as she descended the stairs. Her head throbbed with each step, and her ears were still buzzing from the Gestapo agent's blow.

The American was in the kitchen. She held out the message. "It's for you."

He looked up from the frying pan. He must have been more interested in the meal, because he put the message on the counter without looking at it. He salted the meat. She shuddered at the sight of the American, and found herself taking a step back. But the scent of the meat — it looked like flank steak, sizzling and browning, the juice gathering at the bottom of the pan — held her in the kitchen.

"I don't bite," he said, shuffling the meat in the pan.

She glanced at the flyer on the counter. It had been delivered to every door in the neighborhood by a Pimpf—a member of the Jungvolk—that afternoon. This man's face was on the flyer.

"I had no idea.. . ." Her voice faded.

"You had no idea the Horseman would be the man on the posters all over the city, the Vassy Chateau soldier?"

She shook her head.

He smiled. "I had no idea I was the Horseman either, until a few days ago. Somebody gave me the name. I'd like that job. Sitting in a room, dreaming up code names."

He took another pinch of salt from a bowl and sprinkled it over the pan. He concentrated on the steak and seemed to exclude all else in the room. Also on the stove were potatoes and carrots in boiling water. On the counter and table was a vast treasure of food. The kitchen seemed to be bursting with jars ofjam, cheeses, potatoes, three dressed-out chickens, dozens of sausages, tins of butter, loaves of bread, and bottles of wine. And pastries. French eclairs, an apple tart, Bismarcks, and a blackberry Strudel.

She moved toward the pastry. She knew she should show some restraint. Her finger dipped into the icing on an eclair. She brought it to her mouth. She tested it with her tongue, then like a child licked it off her finger. The sweetness of that small taste made her giddy, overwhelmed the pain in her head. Her finger went back for more.

"Don't spoil your dinner," the American said lightly. His German was gnarled by an accent but fast and understandable.

Katrin picked up a cloth bag from the counter and held it to her nose. She closed her eyes. "Coffee. Real coffee." She glanced at him. "Is the gauleiter still alive?"

He looked up, wearing a startled expression, perhaps for her benefit. "Of course he's still alive."

"Then how did you get all this food?"

In the Opel, after the American had told her he was the Horseman, and with blood still pouring all around, he had asked where the nearest food was. In a daze, she had pointed at the gauleiter's home. He had told her to go into her house, and that he would be along in a few minutes, all the while speaking with a bank clerk's dispassion. He had returned while she was upstairs decoding the message.

The American said, "The gauleiter was upstairs, drunkenly bawling out some beer hall song. And a lady was up there too, giggling and singing. I went in the unlocked back door into the kitchen. They didn't hear a thing, and so much food was in his larder he won't miss the little I took. I made three trips, my arms full of food each time."

"Where did you put the car, the car with the bodies?"

"I left it in a park a kilometer from here. From there I walked to the gauleiter's,"

She nodded at the stove. "And the wood?"

He grinned again. "It's coal, not wood."

"I've been out of coal for months."

"Do you know anything about your furnace?" he asked.

"Only that it doesn't have any coal, like I said."

"This is a large house, and you have a huge furnace. A coal bin with a feed into the furnace usually has a few pieces of stray coal that the feed screw couldn't collect. And I found a few more chunks that had fallen into the ash bin below the furnace."

The scent of the meat was powerful, was making her act strangely and inappropriately. She was talking with a cutthroat, a merciless killer, chatting away and making small gestures, all as an excuse to monitor the progress of the steaks in their pan.

She had heard a few things about America and Americans, mostly on the radio. They were naive and full of energy, children really. They were easily swayed and easily distracted. Churchill had duped the entire country. American women shaved their armpits and New York City lay in ruin after Luftwaffe bombings. That was all she knew about them. She had never before met one.

Now an American was making a meal in her kitchen. If Americans all looked like him, the war was certainly lost. His smile was there and gone, there and gone. A killer, yet he had a veneer of urbanity and good cheer. In fact, she thought, he looked rather German. At least, he looked like the exaggerated caricatures of German soldiers on the propaganda posters Goebbels had placed all over the country. Big-framed and blond and agate-eyed. Except this one looked like he'd been run over by a truck once or twice.

"Are you German?" she asked abruptly.

"I'm an American. I thought you knew that."

"What I mean is, is your heritage German? You look German. Were your grandparents from Germany, maybe?"

He pulled at an earlobe. "I had an uncle who was German. He came to America to work in a baby carriage factory."

"Yes?"

Cray said, "He was fired after two weeks."

"Why?"

"Because every time he tried to build a baby carriage, it turned out to be a machine gun."

It took her a moment. Then she said, "You are a child."

"Looks like the steaks are done." He slid them onto two plates, then fished out the carrots and potatoes. He broke the potatoes open and spread butter on them. He tore off large chunks of bread. He buttered hers, but with his he scraped the meat pan, letting the grease soak into the bread. When Katrin pointed at the pan, he did the same with her bread, cleaning the pan with it. He handed her a plate. So much time had passed since her last full meal, she was startled with the plate's weight. He gave her a knife and fork.

She followed him into the adjacent room, where a fire was on the grate. The coal was of a poor quality, and it gave off more smoke than heat. Even so, it warmed the entire room. He had placed a bucket containing a few more pieces of coal to one side. He lifted two pillows from a sofa and tossed them in front of the fireplace. He lowered himself to the pillow, his feet out to the flames. She followed him down to a pillow.

The fire was the only light in the room, which Germans call the good room. This good room still looked as it had since the turn of the century, everything in its place in a rigid geometry. In the middle of the room was a carpet, and centered on that carpet was a table, in the middle of the table was a crocheted mat, and in the center of the mat was a flower vase. Around the table were six chairs with plaited cane seats and red plush backs. Dark curtains hung over the windows. In one corner was a wicker flower stand for a miniature rubber tree. A small portrait of the German patron saint, St Boniface, occupied one wall and a copy of Brehm's
Animal Life
was on a pedestal table under a lamp with a silk shade. Katrin could not imagine anyone ever laughing in the room Except her and Adam. They had laughed here a lot, rolling and groping crazily in front of the fireplace on these very pillows. Then Adam had been taken away.

"Aren't you going to read the message?" she asked.

"Until I eat this steak, I don't care what's in that message." He cut off a large portion of meat and shoved it into his mouth.

She bit into the grease-soaked bread, then said around the wad in her mouth, "I've never tasted anything better than this."

They ate in silence, the only sound the rush and pop of the fire. She could not take her eyes off him. He ate with a singular dedication, his hand moving mechanically between plate and mouth. She thought she was repelled by him, but no emotions and few thoughts could compete with the flavors of the meal. She ate quickly, as if the American might decide to take away her food. She had also heard they were volatile.

He cleaned his plate with the bread, and only when the last of it was gone did he go to the kitchen for the message. When he returned, he was also carrying an open bottle of wine and two glasses. He sat next to the fire and used its light to read. Then he read it again. He brought his head up slowly and stared at the Brehm print, not appearing to be seeing it. Then he returned his gaze to the message.

He asked, "Do you know what this asks me to do?" She shook her head. "It's in English. I transposed the letters without understanding it."

The American poured wine into the glasses and passed one to her. "What's your name?"

"Katrin von Tornitz."

"Why was I sent here to you? Because you have the radio?" She shook her head. "That's the only reason I can think of."

"Your hand is shaking." His mouth turned up. "You're splashing wine out of the glass."

She dabbed at the drops of wine on the floor. "I'm afraid of you."

He seemed genuinely puzzled. "Why?"

"I just saw you kill three men with a knife. Three hard men, all of them armed."

He grinned. "Oh, that."

"Then you use your same knife to cut the steaks. Then you eat a huge meal, and now you're having a glass of wine and sitting cozily in front of this fire as if nothing happened at all, your charm on display."

He shrugged. "I'm a soldier."

"And you are frightening to look at."

He scratched his nose.

"Look in a mirror someday," she insisted. "Your face is as lough as you are. You'd frighten any child and most adults."

"We'll get along better if you don't try to flatter me." He grinned again.

"And your smile won't work with me. It's a tool for you, like your knife."

"I'm not the tough one." He leaned back on his elbows. "You are."

She looked away, into the fire.

After a moment the American said, "I need to visit the Reich Chancellery."

She turned to the fire and brought her knees up under her chin. "The Hand has ordered you to kill the Führer, hasn't it? That's the only reason someone like you would be sent to Berlin."

He drank from the glass. "Are you going to help me?

She was silent.

He said, "The Hand must think it will help win the war."

Her gaze swept back to him. "Winning the war? I'm not going to help you Americans win the war."

"Your radio transmissions are ..."

She cut him off. "I'm going to help stop the war, not help you win the war. I would never do anything to harm Germany and my people,"

"Well.. ."

She pointed angrily at him. "And before you tell me how good I am at rationalizations, let me tell you—"

"I wasn't—"

"—that you fat and happy Americans — up in your big comfortable bombers and... and strolling through your Yosemite Park — don't know anything about anything." Again she looked away, in time to hide her tears from him. After a moment she said, "I just want it all stopped."

He watched her for a while. "Is your husband dead?"

"All our husbands are dead."

"How did it happen?"

Her voice lost its anger, but her tones were full and bitter, "He was a German and he believed Germany should have a future. That's how it happened."

"Was he my size?"

For a moment the American's question did not register on her. Then her head came around like a hydraulic tank turret. "You are asking if you can have his clothes?"

"Sure."

She stared at him, trying to dampen her anger. Then he grinned again at her.

So preposterous was his request, and so preposterous was he, that she finally laughed. "No, you can't have his clothes. You can't have anything. I don't like relentless people. That's what you are, and that's all you are. I'll be glad when you leave my house."

"I like this wine. How about you?"

Baffled, she stared at him. Then she said emptily, "Utterly relentless. No wonder the Hand is using you."

The fire filled the room with beautiful heat. She was warm all the way through, not just on one side, not just a part of her. She watched the fire. The amber and red and gold colors, flickering across the furniture and walls, almost made this room bearable, and almost brought Adam back. Her husband was almost sitting here with her, instead of this American stranger.

"I've lost my loved one, too," Cray said, his voice just above a whisper.

"Please don't share anything with me," she said. "I already have enough of whatever you are going to tell me."

He might not have heard her. "Wenatchee is a little town in the state of Washington in the United States. And although I've not been to all the small towns in America, Wenatchee is probably the loveliest, right there on the Columbia River. We grow apples there, and in May the valley is covered with apple blossoms. I was raised there, and so was my wife. My memory doesn't run back to a time when I didn't know her."

She didn't want to know any of this, but the American was now staring into the fire and speaking in a low voice, and she found she could not stop him. She took a sip of wine. She thought it safe to look at him. The wine, even these few swallows, had begun to play with her mind. The American seemed softer, his eyebrows less prominent, his mouth not so wintry, and his eyes less cruel.

"My wife—her name was Merri Ann—once told me that she knew from first grade that we would be married someday. I suppose I knew it, too."