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“Why is this . . .” Clete wondered aloud.
“. . . not bombed into rubble?” Mattingly picked up. “I suppose for the same reason the I.G. Farben building still stands in Frankfurt. Somebody decided we were going to need it and told the Eighth Air Force to leave it alone.”
On a side street, they came to a very nice two-story house—as opposed to the preponderance of large, even huge, villas in the area—and stopped. An American flag was hanging limply from a flagpole over the door, and a jeep with two GIs and a pedestal-mounted .50-caliber Browning in it was sitting at the curb.
On the right side of the house, a gaunt man in his sixties was pushing a lawn mower over the small patch of grass that separated Admiral Canaris’s house from its much more impressive neighbor.
“That’s surreal,” Frade said, pointing at him. “That’s absolutely surreal!”
As everybody looked, the old man pushed the lawn mower out of sight around the rear of the house.
Tiny Dunwiddie came out the front door of the house and, sounding more like a master sergeant than an officer-equivalent civilian employee, bellowed the suggestion to his men that getting their asses out of goddamned armored cars and helping unload the three-quarter-ton trucks might be a wise thing to do.
Enrico Rodríguez, who had ridden in the third jeep, smiled approvingly as more than a half dozen Second Armored Division troopers erupted from the M-8s and began to carry cartons and crates from the trucks into the house.
“Come on, Siggie,” Boltitz said. “I’ll show you where to set up the 7.2 before Mattingly starts screaming like that at you.”
Stein looked at him, then said, “That’s right. You worked for Canaris, didn’t you? You’ve been here before?”
“Yes, I’ve been here before. The last time just before I became the naval attaché in Buenos Aires.”
When Clete, trailed by Enrico, went in the house, he smelled coffee and followed his nose into the kitchen. There Clete found another elderly German man, this one setting out cups and saucers to go with the coffee.
They nodded at each other.
When Dunwiddie walked into the kitchen a minute or so later, Frade saw him take a quick, if thorough, look at Enrico, and then smile at him.
Jesus, how do these guys recognize each other on sight?
“Master Sergeant Dunwiddie, Sergeant Major Rodríguez, retired,” Clete said.
Dunwiddie offered his hand.
“Y
ou always carry a riot gun, Sergeant Major?”
“Only when I think I may have to shoot somebody,” Enrico replied.
“Welcome to Berlin.”
“I have been here before, when my colonel was at the Kriegsschule,” Enrico said.
“No shit? Small world, isn’t it, Sergeant Major?”
“My name is Enrico.”
“Tiny,” Dunwiddie said, offering his hand again. “Nice to meet you, Enrico.”
“I hate to interrupt the mutual admiration society,” Clete said, “but who are these guys? This one and the one cutting the grass?”
Dunwiddie looked a little uncomfortable.
“Colonel, they knocked on the door just about as soon as I got here. They said they used to work here and would do anything that needed to be done in exchange for food.”
“So you put them to work?”
“I never minded shooting the bastards, but watching them starve to death is something else.”
