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“Like I said, Colonel—‘Be Prepared.’”
He walked back to the table, where he showed the boys how to open small, olive-drab tin cans labeled STEW, BEEF, W/POTATOES.
Clete saw that tears were running down Heinrich’s and Gerhard’s cheeks.
Frade took a swallow of the Don Guillermo Cabernet Sauvignon 1944. It didn’t taste as good as he expected it to.
Then he looked at Lieutenant Colonel Archer W. Dooley Jr. and saw that tears were running down his cheeks, too. Suboficial Mayor Enrico Rodríguez, Retired, wasn’t crying, but he looked as if he was about to.
“You going to drink all that wine by yourself, hotshot, or do I get some?” Dooley asked.
Mattingly came into the kitchen.
“Pay attention,” he said. “There is a message from the Supreme Commander. Quote. Pass to all OSS and Air Forces personnel involved. Well done. Eisenhower. General of the Army. Close quote.”
“You’re welcome, Ike,” Frade said. “We’re always happy to do what we can.”
“The significant part of the Supreme Commander’s message, Colonel Frade, is that Ike is grateful to the OSS. That just may buy us some time.”
“Point taken,” Frade said.
“And then, when David Bruce had finished delivering Ike’s thank-you, he dropped the other shoe. ‘Get the Argentine diplomats and their airplane out of Berlin as soon as possible.’ He was more than a little disappointed that we couldn’t leave this afternoon. But first thing in the morning . . .”
[FIVE]
357 Roonstrasse, Zehlendorf Berlin, Germany 0715 21 May 1945
Breakfast was prepared by the two women Max had brought to the house late the previous afternoon, when he returned from his bartering expedition to get the boys clothing.
The women were neither old nor ugly.
Clete saw that their eyes, however, were empty. They were sexless.
Neuter, Clete thought. Zombies in skirts.
It was hard to guess even how old they were. Somewhere, Clete gauged, between his own age and fifty.
Both wore wedding rings, but Clete suspected their husbands were no longer part of their lives.
Frade, when able to do so quietly, gave in to the temptation to ask Egon if he thought they had been raped.
“They told me, with great hesitation,” Egon reported, “that the Asiatics had Giesela for most of a week. And Inge for four days. That meant Giesela had been repeatedly raped for most of a week, but Inge for ‘only’ four days.”
“Jesus H. Christ!”
“It happened all over, Herr Oberst,” Egon said. “Women. Young girls. Grandmothers. Boys. It would have happened to Gerhard and Heinrich, too. Except that when the Asiatics finished with boys from the Volkssturm, they killed them. That’s why Max and I took Heinrich and Gerhard with us.”
Von Wachtstein came into the kitchen. His officer equivalent civilian employee unifor
m had been replaced by clothing that looked only a little cleaner and less tattered than what the boys had been wearing.
Frade knew immediately what that meant, but had a hard time accepting the reality of it.
Shit!
“Have a nice flight, Clete,” von Wachtstein said. “I’ll see you when you come back with the money.”
“Didn’t you hear what Gehlen said, you goddamn fool? The Russians are going to crucify you upside down, because you’ll be easier to skin that way.”
