There came a knock at the door.
Clete opened it.
Rodolfo Nulder stood there.
“If you don’t mind,” Nulder said, more than a little arrogantly, “I’ve got some questions for Colonel Hammerstein. Several, as a matter of fact.”
Mattingly said: “And you are, senor?”
“Rodolfo Nulder. I am, so to speak, the person in charge.”
“No, Senor Nulder. I am the person in charge, and I just told you to debark. Please do so.”
“I protest!”
“Duly noted. Now either stop delaying the movement or sit down and make yourself comfortable. You can spend the night on this aircraft.”
“You haven’t heard the last of this, Colonel Hammerstein!”
“It’s Hammersmith, Felix Hammersmith. I suggest you submit any complaints you might have in writing to SHAEF, after we—
Nulder looked around the cabin. “You all were witnesses to this!” he said, primarily to Delgano, then turned and walked quickly down the aisle to the line of passengers at the door.
Delgano pulled the door closed and said, “Well, at least they’ll have something to talk about at the embassy tonight.”
“What I really think will happen at the embassy tonight is that your people who were here are going to give a detailed report of the rape of Berlin. Believe me, that will take everybody’s mind off Colonel Hammerstein, or Hammersmith, whatever name I used.”
“What happens to us now?” Delgado said.
Mattingly looked at Siggie Stein.
“I realized about thirty seconds ago, Siggie, that I should have asked this question yesterday. It is alleged by Mr. Dulles that you are one of the rare people who know how to make a Collins 7.2 work. True?”
“I know the 7.2 pretty well, Colonel.”
“Good. We brought one on the C-54. It is now in Admiral Canaris’s house in Zehlendorf. Just as soon as the diplomats have driven away and everybody can change into their officer equivalent civilian employee uniforms, we’ll go there and you can set it up.
“I suspect everybody from Ike down at SHAEF is wondering how things went this morning, and I don’t want to make that report in the clear—the Russians might be listening—over General White’s somewhat limited radio network.”
“Everybody goes?” Delgano asked.
“Good question, Colonel,” Mattingly said. “As I was saying a moment ago, there is a hotel here in the terminal building. Not very damaged. Adequate. It has a mess, which we have also put into operation. They don’t serve Argentine beef, of course, but the mess is adequate, too. What I would like to do is put the crew in it overnight, except for one of your officers, your choice, who I suggest should come with us to keep everybody in the loop.”
“Mario,” Delgano said. “You go. I’ll stay here with the others. I’d like to keep an eye on the airplane.”
“Colonel Delgano,” Mattingly said, “as you climb down that wobbling ladder, you may notice two half-tracks, each mounting four .50-caliber Browning machine guns. They will help you keep an eye on the
[TWO]
357 Roonstrasse, Zehlendorf Berlin, Germany 1335 20 May 1945
The convoy—a M-8 armored car, three jeeps, two three-quarter-ton trucks, and a trailing M-8—had been wending its way slowly through rubble when it suddenly came into a residential area that appeared just about unscathed.
Here and there, some of the large villas and apartment houses showed signs of damage, but most of the buildings were intact.
“Welcome to Zehlendorf,” Mattingly announced.
He was driving the first jeep, with Frade sitting beside him and Boltitz and von Wachtstein in the backseat.
“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 Rodriguez, 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 attache 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.
“Master Sergeant Dunwiddie, Sergeant Major Rodriguez, retired,” Clete said.
Dunwiddie offered his hand.
“You 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.”
