She zipped up the valise and started toward the door.
“I’ll work without you, then,” Michael said. And then the answer to her accent’s mystery came to him: “I don’t need a Yank’s help, anyway.”
She stopped, her black gloved hand on the doorknob. “What?”
“A Yank’s help. I don’t need it,” he repeated. “You are an American, aren’t you? It’s in your accent. The Germans around here must have lead ears not to hear it.”
This seemed to touch a nerve. Echo said frostily, “For your information, Brit, the Germans know I was born in the United States. I’m a citizen of Berlin now. Does that satisfy you?”
“It answers my question, but it hardly satisfies me.” Michael gave her a thin smile. “I imagine our mutual friend in London gave you some of my background.” Except the part about his affinity for running on all fours, he knew. “I’m good at what I do. As I say, if you refuse to help me, I’ll get the job done on my own-”
“You’ll die trying,” Echo interrupted.
“Maybe. But our mutual friend must have told you I can be trusted. I didn’t live through North Africa being stupid. If I say I’ll be responsible for Mouse, I mean it. I’ll take care of him.”
“And who’ll take care of you?”
“That’s a question I’ve never had to answer,” Michael said.
“Wait a minute!” Mouse scowled, his eyes still swollen from tears. “Don’t I have anything to say about this? Maybe I don’t want you to take care of me! Who the hell asked you, anyway? I swear to God, I was better off in the loony bin! Those nuts made sense when they talked!”
“Quiet!” Michael snapped; Mouse was a breath away from an executioner’s bullet. The little man cursed under his breath, and Michael returned his attention to the veiled woman. “Mouse has helped me before. He can help me again.” Echo grunted with derision. “I didn’t come to Berlin to murder a man who risked his life for me,” Michael plowed on.
“Uh… murder?” Mouse gasped as he got the whole picture.
“Mouse goes with me.” Michael stared into the veil. “I’ll take care of him. And when the mission’s over, you help us both get out of Germany.”
Echo didn’t respond. Her fingers tapped on the black valise as the wheels went round in her mind.
“Well?” Michael prompted.
“If our mutual friend were here, he’d say you’re being very stupid,” she tried once more, but she could tell that the dirty, bearded green-eyed man standing before her had chosen his position and would not be moved. She sighed, shook her head, and returned the valise to the table.
“What’s happening?” Mouse asked fearfully. “Am I going to be murdered?”
“No,” Michael told him. “You’ve just joined the British Secret Service.”
Mouse choked, as if he’d gotten a chicken bone stuck in his throat.
“You have a new identity.” Echo unzipped the valise, reached into it, and brought out a dossier. She offered it to him, but when Michael stepped forward to take it, Echo held her other hand to her nose. “My God, what a smell!”
Michael took the dossier and opened it. Inside were typewritten sheets of paper, in German, outlining the history of a Baron Frederick von Fange. Michael couldn’t help but smile. “Who suggested this?”
“Our mutual friend.”
Of course, he thought. This bore the rather wicked fingerprints of the man he’d last seen as a chauffeur named Mallory. “From a pig farmer to a baron in one day. That’s not bad, even for a country where money buys royal titles.”
“The family is real enough. They’re in the German social registry. But even though you may have a title,” Echo said, “you still smell like a pig fanner. Here’s the other information you requested.” She gave him another dossier. Michael looked over the typewritten pages. Camille had radioed coded inquiries ahead to Echo, and Echo had done an excellent job in putting together background material on SS Colonel Jerek Blok, Dr. Gustav Hildebrand, and Hildebrand Industries. There were black-and-white photographs, blurred but serviceable, of the two men. She also provided a typewritten page on Harry Sandler, and a photograph of the big-game hunter sitting at a table surrounded by Nazi officers, a dark-haired woman on his lap. A hooded hawk gripped its talons to his forearm.
“You’ve been very thorough,” Michael complimented her. Looking at Sandler’s cruel, smiling face made his gut clench. “Is Sandler still in Berlin?”
She nodded.
“Where?”
“Our primary assignment,” she reminded him, “doesn’t involve Harry Sandler. It’s enough for you to know that Sandler won’t be leaving Berlin anytime soon.”
Of course she was right: first Iron Fist, then Sandler. “What about Frankewitz?” he asked.
That, too, had been among Camille’s inquiries. “I know his address. He lives near Victoria Park, on Katzbach- strasse.”
“And you’ll take me to him?”
“Tomorrow. Tonight I think you should read that information and do your homework.” She motioned toward the Von Fange biography. “And for God’s sake, get yourself shaved and cleaned up. There are no bohemian barons in the Reich.”
“What about me?” Mouse looked stricken. “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“What, indeed?” Echo asked, and Michael could feel her staring at him.
He quickly skimmed the biography of the Baron von Fange: land holdings in Austria and Italy, a family castle on the Saarbrucken River, a stable of thoroughbred horses, fast cars, expensively tailored clothes: the usual bounty of the privileged. Michael looked up from his reading. “I’ll need a valet,” he said.
“A what?” Mouse squeaked.
“A valet. Someone to hang up the expensive clothes I’m supposed to have.” He turned his attention to Echo. “Incidentally, where are these clothes? I’m sure you don’t expect me to play a baron’s role with pig shit on my shirt.”
“They’ll take care of you here. And your ‘valet,’ too.” She might have offered a hint of a smile; the veil made it difficult to tell. “My car will be here for you at oh-nine-hundred. My driver’s name is Wilhelm.” She zippered the valise and held it close to her side. “I think that concludes our business for now. Yes?” Without waiting for an answer, she strode to the door on her long, elegant legs.
“One minute,” Michael said. She paused. “How do you know Sandler’s planning on staying in Berlin?”
“Knowing such things, Baron von Fange, is why I’m here. Jerek Blok’s also in Berlin. It’s no mystery: Blok and Sandler are both members of the Brimstone Club.”
“The Brimstone Club? What’s that?”
“Oh,” Echo said softly, “you’ll find out. Good night, gentlemen.” She opened the door and closed it behind her, and Michael listened to the sound of her footsteps as she descended the stairs.
“A valet?” Mouse sputtered. “What the hell do I know about being a damned valet? I’ve only owned three suits in my life!”
“Valets are seen and not heard. You do your part and we might get out of Berlin with our skins still on. I meant what I said about your joining the service. As long as you’re with me-and I’m protecting you-I expect you to do what I say. Understood?”
“Hell, no! What do I have to do to get my ass out of this crack?”
“Well, that’s simple enough.” Michael heard the Mercedes’s engine growl. He went to the window, pulled the curtain aside slightly, and watched the car move away into the night. “Echo wants to kill you. I imagine she could do it with one bullet.”
Mouse was silent.
“You think about it tonight,” Michael told him. “If you do as I say, you can get out of this corpse of a country before the Russians swarm in. If not…” He shrugged. “It’s your decision.”
“Some choice! Either I get a bullet in my head or a Gestapo branding iron burning my balls off!”
“I’ll try my best to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Michael said, knowing that if the Gestapo caught them, a red-hot iron to the testicles would be the least of the inflictions.
The gray-haired woman came to the parlor and escorted Michael and Mouse down the stairs, through a door at the back of the building, and then down more steps into a cobwebbed basement. Oil lamps flickered in a rat’s
