“Can’t you do that?”
“Everything’s in confusion.”
They’ve completely lost the Abwehr man, Reiss decided. They—the local SD—were told by someone on Heydrich’s staff to watch him, and they missed a connection. And now they want me to bail them out.
“If he comes in here,” Reiss said, “I’ll have somebody stay on him. You can rely on that.” Of course, there was little or no chance that the man would come in. And they both knew that.
“He undoubtedly uses a cover name,” Kreuz vom Meere plodded on. “We don’t know it, naturally. He’s an aristocratic-looking fellow. About forty. A captain. Actual name Rudolf Wegener. One of those old monarchist families from East Prussia. Probably supported von Papen in the Systemzeit.” Reiss made himself comfortable at his desk as Kreuz vom Meere droned away. “The only answer as I see it to these monarchist hangers-on is to cut the budget of the Navy so they can’t afford …”
Finally Reiss managed to get off the phone. When he returned to his breakfast he found the roll cold. The coffee however was still hot; he drank it and resumed reading the newspaper.
No end to it, he thought. Those SD people keep a shift on duty all night. Call you at three in the morning.
His secretary, Pferdehuf, stuck his head into the office, saw that he was off the phone, and said, “Sacramento called just now in great agitation. They claim there’s a Jew running around the streets of San Francisco.” Both he and Reiss laughed.
“All right,” Reiss said. “Tell them to calm down and send us the regular papers. Anything else?”
“You read the messages of condolence.”
“Are there more?”
“A few. I’ll keep them on my desk, if you want them. I’ve already sent out answers.”
“I have to address that meeting today,” Reiss said. “At one this afternoon. Those businessmen.”
“I won’t let you forget,” Pferdehuf said.
Reiss leaned back in his chair. “Care to make a bet?”
“Not on the Partei deliberatons. If that’s what you mean.”
“It’ll be The Hangman.”
Lingering, Pferdehuf said, “Heydrich has gone as far as he can. Those people never pass over to direct Partei control because everyone is scared of them. The Partei bigwigs would have a fit even at the idea. You’d get a coalition in twenty-five minutes, as soon as the first SS car took off from Prinzalbrechtstrasse. They’d have all those economic big shots like Krupp and Thyssen—” He broke off. One of the cryptographers had come up to him with an envelope.
Reiss held out his hand. His secretary brought the envelope to him.
It was the urgent coded radiogram, decoded and typed out.
When he finished reading it he saw that Pferdehuf was waiting to hear. Reiss crumpled up the message in the big ceramic ashtray on his desk, lit it with his lighter. “There’s a Japanese general supposed to be traveling here incognito. Tedeki. You better go down to the public library and get one of those official Japanese military magazines that would have his picture. Do it discreetly, of course. I don’t think we’d have anything on him here.” He started toward the locked filing cabinet, then changed his mind. “Get what information you can. The statistics. They should all be available at the library.” He added, “This General Tedeki was a chief of staff a few years ago. Do you recall anything about him?”
“Just a little,” Pferdehuf said. “Quite a fire-eater. He should be about eighty, now. Seems to me he advocated some sort of crash program to get Japan into space.”
“On that he failed,” Reiss said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s coming here for medical purposes,” Pferdehuf said. “There’ve been a number of old Japanese military men here to use the big U. C. Hospital. That way they can make use of German surgical techniques they can’t get at home. Naturally they keep it quiet. Patriotic reasons, you know. So perhaps we should have somebody at the U.C. Hospital watching, if Berlin wants to keep their eye on him.”
Reiss nodded. Or the old general might be involved in commercial speculations, a good deal of which went on in San Francisco. Connections he had made while in service would be of use to him now that he was retired. Or was he retired? The message called him General, not Retired General.
“As soon as you have the picture.” Reiss said, “pass copies right on to our people at the airport and down at the harbor. He may have already come in. You know how long it takes them to get this sort of thing to us.” And of course if the general had already reached San Francisco, Berlin would be angry at the PSA consulate. The consulate should have been able to intercept him—before the order from Berlin had even been sent.
Pferdehuf said, “I’ll stamp-date the coded radiogram from Berlin, so if any question comes up later on, we can show exactly when we received it. Right to the hour.”
“Thank you,” Reiss said. The people in Berlin were past masters at transferring responsibility, and he was weary of being stuck. It had happened too many times. “Just to be on the safe side,” he said, “I think I’d better have you answer that message. Say, ‘Your instructions abysmally tardy. Person already reported in area. Possibility of successful intercept remote at this stage.’ Put something along those lines into shape and send it. Keep it good and vague. You understand.”
Pferdehuf nodded. “I’ll send it right off. And keep a record of the exact date and moment it was sent.” He shut the door after him.
You have to watch out, Reiss reflected, or all at once you find yourself consul to a bunch of niggers on an island off the coast of South Africa. And the next you know, you have a black mammy for a mistress, and ten or eleven little pickaninnies calling you daddy.
Reseating himself at his breakfast table he lit an Egyptian Simon Arzt Cigarette Number 70, carefully reclosing the metal tin.
It did not appear that he would be interrupted for a little while now, so from his briefcase he took the book he had been reading, opened to his placemark, made himself comfortable, and resumed where he had last been forced to stop.
…Had he actually walked streets of quiet cars, Sunday morning peace of the Tiergarten, so far away? Another life. Ice cream, a taste that could never have existed. Now they boiled nettles and were glad to get them. God, he cried out. Won’t they stop? The huge British tanks came on. Another building, it might have been an apartment house or a store, a school or office; he could not tell—the ruins toppled, slid into fragments. Below in the rubble another handful of survivors buried, without even the sound of death. Death had spread out everywhere equally, over the living, the hurt, the corpses layer after layer that already had begun to smell. The stinking, quivering corpse of Berlin, the eyeless turrets still upraised, disappearing without protest like this one, this nameless edifice that man had once put up with pride.
His arms, the boy noticed, were covered with the film of gray, the ash, partly inorganic, partly the burned sifting final produce of life. All mixed now, the boy knew, and wiped it from him. He did not think much further; he had another thought that captured his mind if there was thinking to be done over the screams and the hump hump of the shells. Hunger. For six days he had eaten nothing but the nettles, and now they were gone. The pasture of weeds had disappeared into a single vast crater of earth. Other dim, gaunt figures had appeared at the rim, like the boy, had stood silent and then drifted away. An old mother with a babushka tied about her gray head, basket—empty—under her arm. A one-armed man, his eyes empty as the basket. A girl. Faded now back into the litter of slashed trees in which the boy Eric hid.
And still the snake came on.
Would it ever end? the boy asked, addressing no one. And if it did, what then? Would they fill their bellies, these—