the Barkers. Jock and Susan. They’re from Cleveland. He was America’s ambassador to Canada during the Reagan years. I told Su-Su I was coming to New York and—”
“Yes?”
“Well, I was wondering if you might not like to come along?”
“Come along.”
“Yes. They’ve a lovely old place on Gin Lane. Right on the ocean. I’m sure they’d be delighted if you came. Men of your brilliant attractions are rather at a premium at house parties in Southampton. I promise you shan’t have to play croquet or swim or do anything that might bring on physical prostration.”
“I don’t object to physical exertion. I play golf. I just don’t swim well.”
“Well. They’ve got oodles of room.”
“Oodles.”
“Please say yes. Jock has sent his car for me. I could have the driver stop at the Carlyle and pick you up.”
“What time?”
“Oh. Shall we say eleven?”
“It sounds wonderful.”
“See you then. What fun!”
“Oh, Diana, before you go—thank you very much indeed for the lovely flowers. I’m looking at them now.”
“Well, I thought they’d be cheery.”
“They certainly are. Well. Good-bye.”
“Bye.”
Ambrose hung up and sat down for a moment on the edge of the bed, a rather large smile on his face. The whisky clouds had lifted, the gin mists had cleared, and the old brain was ticking over quite nicely, thank you. Life was good again. He kicked off his slippers, scrunched his toes into the soft carpet, and clicked his bare heels together. Time to get moving if he was going to be packed and checked out by eleven. What to wear?
He stood and saw the small blue envelope on the floor, peeking out from beneath the dust ruffle. It was Diana’s card. He’d intended to read her note at the bar at “21” and then again just before dropping off to sleep. It must have slipped unread from his hand. Now, he bent down, picked it up, and read her words:
My dearest Ambrose,
I never, till now, had a friend who could give me repose; all have disturbed me, and, whether for pleasure or pain, it was still disturbance.
But peace overflows from your heart into mine.
Diana
Chapter Forty-seven
Berlin
THE SMELL OF SMOKE. SOMEONE WAS IN THE HALL WITH him. Stoke froze, stopped breathing. Where? Somebody smoking cigarettes. Maybe ten, fifteen yards ahead. Stoke had the big leather satchel full of purloined documents in one hand and the Schmeisser machine pistol in the other. He raised the gun and listened. Just around the bend in the hallway, two men, guards most probably. He could hear them talking now, smell the smoke drifting back from their cigarettes. They must have just entered the hallway from one of the other elevator banks he’d passed on his way to Schatzi’s office.
Clearly no hidden alarms had been sounded. The two Germans were laughing at something one of them had said. At least they were headed in the right direction, namely, away from him. He put the satchel down carefully and walked rapidly toward them on the balls of his feet, making no sound at all. There were two of them, all right, miniature versions of the Arnolds, wearing black uniforms identical to the one Stokely wore. Machine guns slung on their backs.
“Halt!” Stoke barked loudly when he was just ten feet behind them. “Nicht rauchen!”
The two guards stopped dead in their tracks.
“Nicht rauchen?” one of them said with a grin in his voice, apparently finding it funny. He started to turn around.
“Yeah, you heard me,” Stoke said in English, jamming the muzzle of the Schmeisser between the guy’s shoulder blades. “No smoking. New rule.”
While they were thinking about that, he slung the machine pistol on his back, reached out with both hands, and slammed the two guards together, head-first. There was a sickening thud and the two men dropped to the floor, arms and legs akimbo, out cold.
“See what I’m saying?” Stoke said to the two unconscious guards at his feet. “Smoking is very bad for your ass.”
He took their weapons, H&K MP 5 machine guns, and added them to the collection slung on his back. Then he went back and got the satchel. On the way, he saw the elevator he and Jet had used to come up from the Unterwelt. Clearly, Tempelhof was coming to life. It was time to get while the getting was good.
He took the elevator to the bottom level and passed quickly through the dismal rooms of the bunker. A minute or two later he was back in the tunnel. Left was the underground parking garage. Right had to be the trams. He turned right. The tunnel went from dark and dingy to bright and white up ahead. The tram station. He crept forward and took a peek.
There was a three-car train in the station. The cars were open, round and shiny white, and seemed to hover about a foot above the tracks. The station itself was all white tile, shiny and new. Two guards, helmeted and wearing full body armor, stood on the platform talking. Behind them, two sets of escalator stairs rose through the ceiling. Just like the A train, only much cleaner and without all that old-fashioned gravity shit to worry about.
“Morning, boys, how’s it hanging?” Stoke said, striding right up to the platform, the Schmeisser flat down at his side.
“Was ist das?” the nearest one said, swinging around with his H&K coming up. When he saw Stoke’s SDI uniform, he hesitated a beat too long, just like Stoke figured he would.
“Das ist the new guy,” Stoke said, and squeezed the trigger.
He blew the guy off his feet with an accurate burst from the Schmeisser. The other guard must have said something very negative about Stoke into his headset because all of a sudden all the lights were flashing and alarms were sounding, including an electronic oogah horn that sounded like something from a U-boat during a crash dive.
Yeah, and here comes the cavalry to the rescue. They’d reversed the up escalator so all stairs were coming down. Guards on both sides, plus a bunch sliding down the wide stainless-steel middle part on their butts, firing in his general direction like kindergarten kids gone crazy. What saved him was, he was up against the platform edge now, only his bobbing head and shoulders visible from above. And he was moving. He was ducking and sprinting toward the train, pausing and firing a quick burst every few feet.
He’d strapped the satchel to his back. He had the Alpenkorps machine pistol in his right hand and an H&K in his left. He fired a second Schmeisser burst at the guard who’d sounded the alarm, putting him on the ground in a puddle of bright blood. With his left hand, he got off a long staccato riff, spraying the guys just coming off the escalator. It seemed to diminish their sense of urgency. Then he heard a new and disturbing noise above all the shooting and the shouting and alarms: the piercing sound of howling, growling Dobermans. Crazy animals, unlike Schatzi’s storm troopers, who didn’t flinch in the face of a little unfriendly machine-gun fire.
Shit.
Rounds were ripping up the tile around his head. Sharp chunks of ceramic stung his face. The dogs were bounding down the escalators behind the guards, even knocking some to the floor in their mad dash to chew Stokely
