are the pictures? Where are the pictures?”
Michael knelt down a few feet away from him. “You can’t stay here.”
“This is my home!” Mouse shouted, with a force that made the empty window frames shake. His eyes were bloodshot and sunken into his head. “This is where I live,” he said, but this time it was a whisper from his raw throat.
“No one lives here.” Michael stood up. “Gunther’s waiting. It’s time to go.”
“Go? Go where?” He was echoing the Russian prisoner who’d seen no purpose in flight. “You’re a British spy, and I’m a citizen of Germany. My God… why I let you talk me into this; my soul’s burning. Oh Christ, forgive me!”
“Hitler brought down the bombs that killed your family,” Michael said. “You think no one grieved over the dead when Nazi planes bombed London? You think your wife and children were the only bodies ever taken out of a blasted building? If you do, you’re a fool.” He spoke calmly and quietly, but his green gaze pierced Mouse. “Warsaw, Narvik, Rotterdam, Sedan, Dunkirk, Crete, Leningrad, Stalingrad: Hitler strewed corpses as far north, south, east, and west as he could reach. Hundreds of thousands to grieve over, and you cry in the wreckage of a single room.” He shook his head, feeling a mixture of pity and disgust. “Your country is dying. Hitler’s killing it, but before he finishes the job he’s going to destroy as many as he can. Your son, wife, and daughters: what are they to Hitler? Did they matter? I don’t think so.”
“You shut your mouth!” Tears glittered, false diamonds, in Mouse’s beard.
“I’m sorry the bombs fell here,” Michael continued. “I’m sorry they fell in London. But when the Nazis took power, and Hitler started this war, the bombs had to fall somewhere.”
Mouse didn’t reply. He couldn’t find any photographs in the debris, and he sat on the burned floor rocking himself.
“Do you have relatives here?” Michael asked.
Mouse hesitated; then he shook his head.
“Anywhere you can go?”
Another shake of the head. Mouse sniffled and wiped his oozing nose.
“I have to finish my mission. You can go to the safe house with me, if you like. From there Gunther might be able to get you out of the country.”
“This is my home,” Mouse said.
“Is it?” Michael let the question hang; there was no answer. “If you want to live in a cemetery, that’s up to you. If you want to stand up and go with me, come on. I’m leaving.” Michael turned his back on Mouse, went through the flame-scarred rooms to the stairway, and descended to the street. Gunther and Dietz were drinking from the bottle of schnapps; the wind had grown bitter. Michael waited, near the row house’s scorched entrance. He would give Mouse two minutes, he decided. If the man didn’t come out, then Michael would decide what to do next. It was an unhappy situation; Mouse knew too much.
A minute passed. Michael watched two children digging through a pile of blackened bricks. They discovered a pair of boots, and one of the children chased the other from them. Then Michael heard the staircase creak, and he felt his muscles relax. Mouse walked out of the building, into the somber gray light. He looked up at the sky, and around at the other buildings, as if seeing things for the first time. “All right,” he said, his voice weary and emotionless. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. “I’ll go with you.”
Once Michael and Mouse were back in the wagon, Gunther snapped the reins and the spavined farm horse started off. Dietz offered Michael the schnapps, and Michael drank from it, then held the bottle out for Mouse. The little man shook his head; he stared at his open right palm. In it was the Cross of Iron.
Michael didn’t know what he would’ve done if Mouse hadn’t come out. Kill him? Possibly. He didn’t care to think about that. He was a professional, in a dirty business, and first and foremost was the mission at hand. Iron Fist. Frankewitz. Blok. Dr. Hildebrand, and gas warfare. And, of course, Harry Sandler. How did they all fit together, and what was the meaning of painted bullet holes on green metal?
He would have to find out. If he failed, so might the Allied invasion of Europe.
He settled back, against the wagon’s side, and felt the outline of a submachine gun in the hay next to him. Mouse stared at the Iron Cross, mesmerized that such a small cold thing should be the last item that held any meaning in his life. And then he closed his hand around the medal and slipped it into his pocket.
3
The safe house was in the Neukolln district of Berlin, an area of grimy factories and row houses crowded along the railroad tracks. Gunther knocked at the door of a row house, and it was opened by a thin young man with close-cropped brown hair and a long-jawed face that looked as if it had never worn a smile. Dietz and Gunther escorted their charges into the building and up a staircase to the second floor, where Michael and Mouse were taken to a parlor and left alone. A middle-aged woman with curly gray hair came in about ten minutes later, bearing a tray of two cups of tea and slices of rye bread. She asked no questions, and Michael asked none of her. He and Mouse wolfed down the tea and bread.
The parlor windows were covered with blackout curtains. Perhaps half an hour after the tea and bread had been served, Michael heard the sound of a car stopping outside. He went to the window, pushed the curtain aside, and peered out. Night was falling, and there were no lamps along the street. The buildings were dark against the darkness. But Michael saw a black Mercedes parked at the curb, and he watched as the driver got out, walked around, and opened the door for the passenger. A woman’s shapely leg came out first, then the rest of her. She glanced up at the crack of yellow lamplight that spilled around the blackout curtain’s edge. She had no face. And then the driver closed the door, and Michael let the curtain fall back into place.
He heard voices from downstairs: Gunther’s, and a woman’s. An elegant German accent, very refined. There was aristocracy in its syllables, but it held a strangeness, too, something that Michael couldn’t quite define. He heard someone ascending the stairs, heard the woman reach the closed parlor door.
The knob turned, the door opened, and the woman without a face walked in.
She wore a black hat, and a veil that obscured her features. She carried a black valise in her ebony-gloved hands, and she wore a black velvet cloak over a dark gray pinstriped dress. But golden curls escaped the hat, the thick blond hair falling in ringlets around her shoulders. She was a slim, tall woman, perhaps five feet ten, and Michael could see the glint of her eyes behind the veil as her gaze fixed on him, went to Mouse, then returned to him again. She closed the door behind her. Michael smelled her perfume: the faint aromas of cinnamon and leather.
“You’re the man,” she said in blue-blooded German. It was a statement, directed at Michael.
He nodded. Something strange about her accent. What was it?
“I’m Echo,” she said. She put the black valise on a table and unzipped it. “Your companion is a German soldier. What’s to be done with him?”
“I’m not a soldier!” Mouse protested. “I’m a cook! Was a cook, I mean.”
Echo stared at Michael, her features impassive behind the veil. “What’s to be done with him?” she repeated.
Michael knew what she was asking. “He can be trusted.”
“The last man who believed anyone can be trusted is dead. You’ve brought along a dangerous liability.”
“Mouse… my friend… wants to get out of the country. Can that be arran-”
“No,” Echo interrupted. “I won’t risk any of my friends to help yours. This…” She glanced quickly at the little man, and Michael could almost feel her cringe. “This Mouse is your responsibility. Will you take care of him, or shall I?”
It was a polite way of asking if Michael would kill Mouse, or if one of her agents should do the job. “You’re right,” Michael agreed. “Mouse is my responsibility, and I’ll take care of him.” The woman nodded. “He goes with me,” Michael said.
She was silent for a moment: an icy silence. Then: “Impossible.”
“No, it’s not. Back in Paris I depended on Mouse and he came through for me. As far as I’m concerned, he’s proven himself.”
“Not to me. And for that matter, neither have you. If you refuse to do your duty, I refuse to work with you.”
