Here came the streetcar, clanging its bell. She got on. So did Drucker. He didn’t know the right fare, and had to fumble in a pocket-not the one that held the pistol-for change. The trolley driver gave him a severe look. Feeling absurdly sheepish, he went back and sat down beside the young woman. She nodded politely and then ignored him. He marveled that she couldn’t hear his heart pounding in his chest.
The streetcar rattled along for several blocks, heading into as seedy apart of town as Weimar had. When it stopped, the woman murmured, “Excuse me,” and walked past Drucker and out. He didn’t get out with her. That would have been giving himself away. Instead, he stared out the window, hoping to see where she headed.
He got lucky. A lorry on the cross street blocked the intersection for fifteen seconds or so. No matter how angrily the motorman clanged, the truck didn’t-likely couldn’t-move. That let Drucker see the woman go into a block of flats whose brick front was streaked with coal soot.
He got out at the next stop and hurried back to the apartment building. In the lobby, as he’d expected, he found a brass bank of mailboxes. None said Gunther Grillparzer. None said Maxim Kipphardt, either. Before he started knocking on doors at random-a desperation ploy if ever there was one-Drucker noticed that the one for 4E did say Martin Krafft. In detective novels, people often used aliases whose initials matched their real names. Martin Krafft wasn’t Grillparzer’s real name, but he’d said he’d been using a false one for a while. Without any better ideas-without any better hopes-Drucker started up the stairs.
Panting a little, wishing the place had a lift, he stood in the fourth-floor hallway, which smelled of cabbage and spilled beer. There was 4E, opposite the stairway. Drucker slipped his right hand into the pocket with the pistol. He thought fast as he advanced on the doorway and used his left hand to knock.
“Who is it?” The woman’s voice. His knees sagged with relief: one right guess.
Drucker grimaced. Now he had to take another chance. “Telegram for Herr Krafft,” he said. If Grillparzer wasn’t there, life would get more difficult still. But, a moment later, the door opened and there stood the ex-panzer gunner, middle-aged and podgy fat and looking more than a little bottle-weary. He needed a couple of seconds to recognize Drucker, and that was a couple of seconds too long: by then, the pistol was aimed at his face. “Let me in, Gunther,” Drucker said. “Don’t do anything stupid, or you’ll never do anything at all ever again. Keep your hands where I can see them.”
“You won’t get away with this,” Grillparzer said as he backed away. Drucker came in and kicked the door shut behind him. His former comrade went on, “I thought you’d be a smart boy and pay me off. When I denounce you-”
Drucker laughed in his face. He tapped one of the buttons on his coat. “You fool-the SS is listening to you run your mouth now, thanks to my transmitter here.” Grillparzer looked horrified. Drucker was horrified-at the bluff he was running. But, as Hitler had said, the bigger the lie, the better. “I am the SS, and you, my friend, have cooked your own goose-and your girlfriend’s, too.”
If the woman standing in back of Grillparzer had been his wife or his kid sister, Drucker wouldn’t have looked infallible, and he might have had to start shooting. But the ex-gunner only grimaced. “Christ, what a pack of lies you must have told to get yourself into the SS, you murdering bastard.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, and you can’t prove I do-it’s your word against mine,” Drucker answered. “I do know, and I have evidence”-he tapped the button again-“that you’ve tried to blackmail me. Cough up the cash. You can’t use it, anyhow. The banks have the serial numbers of all the notes on their watch list. As soon as you spent one, it’d just be another nail in your coffin.”
He sounded convincing as hell. He would have believed himself. And Grillparzer believed him-or believed the pistol. Turning his head, he said, “Hand it over, Friedli. The son of a bitch has got us, dammit.”
The woman had only to reach onto the cheap pine table behind her to retrieve the envelope. Drucker took it by one corner with his left hand. “Both your fingerprints are on this now, of course,” he said cheerfully. The envelope had been opened, but still weighed about what it had when he’d posted it. Grillparzer and-Friedli? — hadn’t had the chance to do much plundering. “Remember, if you even think of giving me grief again, you’ll be sorrier than you can imagine.”
“Christ, why didn’t you just tell me over the phone you were a blackshirt along with being a spaceman?” Grillparzer asked. By the look in Friedli’s eyes, he was going to be sorrier than he could imagine even if Drucker had nothing to do with it.
Cheerful still, Drucker answered, “You’ll remember the lesson longer this way. Auf wiedersehen.” And out the door he went.
5
Sam Yeager sighed. He’d drafted his son to feed Mickey and Donald breakfast, and Jonathan often gave the Lizard hatchlings supper, too. For their lunch, though, the kid was at school. That meant Sam needed to do the job himself.
Well, he could have given it to Barbara, but his pride prevented that. President Warren had assigned him the job of raising the baby Lizards, so he couldn’t very well palm all of it off on his family. Besides, the critters were interesting. “I’ve been in the Army too long, he said as he stood in the kitchen slicing ham. “Even if it’s fun, I don’t want to do anything I have to.”
“What did you say, honey?” Barbara called from their bedroom, which was at the other end of the house.
“Nothing, really-just grousing,” he answered, a little embarrassed that she’d heard him. He looked at how much meat he’d cut. Just after the Lizards hatched, it would have kept them going for a couple of days. Now it was just one meal, or would be after he put a couple of more slices on the plate. Donald and Mickey were almost five months old now, and a lot bigger than when they’d fought their way out of their eggshells.
He took the plate piled high with ham down the hail to the Lizards’ room. They still liked to bolt whenever they got the chance, so he shut the door at the end of the hall before opening theirs. These days, they didn’t quite make the mad dash for freedom they had when they were smaller. It seemed more a game of the sort puppies or kittens might play. No matter what it was, though, he didn’t feel like running after them, not at his age he didn’t.
When he did open the door to their room, he found them rolling on the floor clawing and snapping at each other. They rarely did any damage: again, they could have been a couple of squabbling puppies. From what he’d learned on the Race’s computer network, these brawls were normal for hatchlings of their age. He didn’t give his leather gauntlets a workout by pulling them apart, the way he had the first few times he’d caught them tangling.
Even though he didn’t try to separate them, they sprang apart when he stepped inside. “You know I don’t like you doing that, don’t you?” he said to them. He talked to them whenever he fed them-whenever he had anything to do with them at all. They didn’t pick up language and meaning as readily as human babies did. But he’d already seen they were a lot smarter than dogs or cats. That did make sense. By the time they grew up, they’d be at least as smart as he was, maybe smarter.
For the time being, they were more interested in him as the dinner wagon than in him as a person. Their eye turrets focused on the plate of sliced ham to the exclusion of everything else. They let out little excited hisses and snorts. Maybe it was Sam’s imagination, but he thought he caught some humanlike sounds among their noises. Were they trying to imitate him and his family? He supposed he would have to listen to a comparison recording of the noises of Lizard-raised hatchlings to be certain.