chill. The convoys would pick up still more soldiers from the local garrisons before continuing to Berlin.
The high concentrations of military personnel made Marsh nervous. His hands trembled on the steering wheel. Exhaustion, cold, and nerves took their toll on him.
But, after thinking about it, Marsh decided to view the convoys as an opportunity. Protective camouflage. None of these men could peer through the fogged-up windows of his automobile and discern the spy within. No. His best course of action was to attach himself to one of the convoys as brazenly as possible. Which he did, sliding the Mercedes in a safe distance behind the final truck.
It took longer to traverse the city, following the convoy, but it vaulted him above suspicion.
Marsh was feeling a glimmer of optimism—
Stuck inching along behind the convoy, he had no choice but to stop. He pulled the parking brake with one hand as he loosened the holster of his Walther pistol with the other. Sweat trickled beneath his undershirt, defying the chill as it ran under his arms and down his ribs.
Marsh rolled down the window. The man in the road approached the driver-side door and saluted. “Heil Hitler.”
It took a moment for Marsh's brain, running on a cocktail of fear and adrenaline, to process the rank insignia on his coat: SS-Obersturmfuhrer. A lieutenant. Marsh outranked him. He returned the salute, relaxing.
The lieutenant said, “
“Be quick. I'm in a hurry,” said Marsh.
“Apologies, sir. But the standartenfuhrer”—the frostbitten lieutenant indicated his companion—”requires your vehicle.”
Standartenfuhrer. Colonel.
Marsh fought to keep his voice steady. “I've been ordered to return to Berlin at once.”
“Berlin? Excellent! So has the standartenfuhrer.”
“But—I must—”
The lieutenant called to his senior officer.
Marsh was trapped. It was too late to don the wires and attempt to talk his way out of this. There was nothing he could do except wait for the officer to climb inside, and then drive the man to Berlin.
Or, actually, no.
Marsh stepped out of the car and saluted the approaching officer. “Heil Hitler!” He played the moment for everything he was worth. “
The colonel returned his salute with a halfhearted wave. “Devil take these backstabbing Communists,” he muttered. “Straight to hell. Every one of them.” His breath smelled of a stomach made sour by too much strong coffee and not enough food.
“Trust it to them to find their spine just now,” said Marsh. The col o -nel ignored him.
Marsh turned to the lieutenant once the colonel had settled inside. “Take us to Berlin, Obersturmfuhrer.”
By the time the lieutenant had settled into the driver's seat and Marsh had settled into the front passenger seat, the convoy was on the move again. Loud snoring emanated from the backseat soon after the lieutenant had the car in gear.
They followed the convoy through the outskirts of the city. The streets were clear of all but military traffic and those vehicles, like his own, on Reich business. It was impossible to tell how much of this was by virtue of people opting to stay home, and how much by virtue of the fact that many of the civilians had frozen to death.
The flow of traffic slowed to little better than a brisk walk in several places; burst water mains transformed entire intersections, even major traffic circles, into skating rinks. They passed a house gutted by fire. A fire probably set by the residents themselves in a bid to stay alive. A truck from the local fire brigade blocked part of the road. The hoses had ruptured. The resulting geyser had coated the road and the truck itself in the instants before the water froze. One side of the truck was coated in inches of ice. So were the bodies of the fire brigade men, frozen in midscream.
They picked up the Elbe outside Hamburg, and followed the valley southeast toward Berlin. The river had become a glacier. It was frozen solid, from the surface all the way down to the riverbed. And the water had expanded as it froze, rising above its banks and ripping down bridges. The only way to cross the river was on the few temporary bridges the engineering detachments had erected.
Marsh closed his eyes. “Wake me when we enter Berlin,” he told the lieutenant.
Marsh jerked awake.
The glare of sunlight on snow stabbed at his eyes; he squeezed them shut and then opened them slowly. They were still moving, though they no longer followed a convoy. They were driving through a large city.
“Hauptsturmfuhrer?” The lieutenant took his eyes off the road for a moment. “We've entered Berlin.”
Marsh's gut impression was of a venerable lady, a grande dame, never beautiful but handsome in a stern way, now ruined by illness and racked with tumors. If a city could contract cancer, this place was terminal. In some places the wounds were relatively small, embodied in the swastikas and Prussian eagles adorning everything. And in other places the Reich's philosophical malignancy had engendered severe art deco monstrosities like the Olympic Stadium. There were reminders of a healthier, more aesthetic time, and hints of old Europe, such as on the Potsdamer Platz, but even that was scarred with ea gles and broken crosses.
The weather had changed while Marsh was napping. The ice caked to the edges of the windshield had begun to melt. And the roads were slushy. Compared with the rest of the countryside Marsh had witnessed, the capital of the Third Reich was balmy. Perhaps as warm as ten degrees Celsius. He could breathe without his nose freezing shut.
It meant the warlocks had completed their corridor to Berlin. Now the question was, where were the Soviets?
The lieutenant woke the napping colonel as they entered the central administrative district of the Reich. They passed the air ministry, which was a hulking square gray building with square black windows. Profoundly utilitarian.
The colonel's errand took him to the Reich Chancellery building, which occupied an entire city block on the Voss Strasse. It connected to the Foreign Office building, which stood around the corner on Kaiser Wilhelm Strasse,
