Astronomy(27)
“You did lock me in a cell in the sewers beneath Berlin.” She felt like a spoilsport pointing this out.
“The Russians were preparing to flatten every building on the surface. The entire Volksstürm was down there with you.”
“I might have been eaten alive by the undead.”
“I made sure you were not.”
Susan had to force her hand away from the butt of her pistol. “Have I neglected to thank you?”
They held each other’s gaze a moment. Somewhere in the dark, she could hear her partners shuffling their feet in an embarrassed way. Shrieve coughed into his fist. Malmagden chuckled and looked away.
“Rotekopfen,” he chortled. “Redheads!”
* * *
Shrieve led off with a pack of cigarettes. This was the Allies’ standard interrogation tool.
Krzysztof Malmagden was not one of your steely-nerved Nazis, smelling of disinfectant and sanctimony. He eyed the American cigarettes enviously. It was all he could do to keep his hands on the table while Shrieve tapped one out for him.
Shrieve took his time. He blunted the end on the table, he smiled, he lit it for him, blew a puff of smoke his way.
“We want to know about a weapons laboratory in the Franconian Forest. You play straight with us, maybe we can help you out of the jam you’re in.”
Malmagden laughed. “Why would we put anything in the Franconian Wald? Do you know what’s there? Nothing! Someone has sold you a fish story, yes?”
“You were there, weren’t you? Just before it was destroyed? I hear you might even have played some part in that.”
Malmagden studied Susan briefly. He couldn’t lie in front of her as he could to Charley Shrieve. She was the witness to all of his crimes.
Malmagden waved his hand in a dismissive gesture. “Sure, I worked for Zentralbund der Geheimlehre. But I was polizei. I was a policeman. I cannot help you with anything of a technical nature.”
“What were you doing at Faulkenberg Reservoir,” she asked him. “Directing traffic?”
Malmagden winced at her tone. “Your brief encounter with the unknown has made you paranoid, Fräulein Berne.”
“Gilbert,” she corrected him. “Susan Gilbert.”
“Are you the one responsible for confiscating every writing implement in my cell?”
“You have access to a typewriter.”
“The keyboard is unfamiliar to me. I cannot use it.”
“Come on, Krzysztof. Even I can type.”
Malmagden gave her a disingenuous expression. “You will not allow me a writing implement so that I can compose my thoughts like a gentleman?”
“No pens, no pencils, nothing you can draw with.”
“I betrayed my brothers to spare you and your associates,” he said. “Yet you would make me work for my freedom like some indentured servant.”
Susan leaned forward to speak with him in a confidential tone. “Arbeit Macht Frei.”
Malmagden looked away. That was dirty pool, wasn’t it?
He puffed on his cigarette till blue smoke fanned through the ceiling lights. “You should thank me for what I have done, both in Berlin, and . . .” he gestured at the ceiling, “elsewhere. You have no idea how close you all came to the Apocalypse.”
Shrieve sighed. He looked to Susan. “Is this the guy you were going to testify for at the war crimes tribunal?”
Susan wasn’t sure what her role was supposed to be here. Instinct told her to keep her mouth shut and stare at Malmagden like he was a piece of meat. That was easy to do. She thought of Hope and Crosby begging their commanding officer to save them.
Shrieve held up the pictures taken at Faulkenberg Reservoir. Susan nodded—show him. He set it on the table. Malmagden tried to claim it was faked. Susan turned it over to reveal the date and the signature of Conrad Hartmann.
Malmagden chuckled to himself. “That swine.”
“You worked together,” Shrieve said. “Hartmann once worked in your perimeter guard up at Faulkenberg Reservoir.”
Malmagden laughed. “Did he tell you that? He flatters himself.”
“Not anymore,” Susan said. “Conrad Hartmann is dead.”
This had a gratifying impact on Malmagden’s nerve. He looked as if he’d been hit by a penny thrown off the Empire State Building.
“ ‘Dead’? Please. That is too much dramatic. We are not children here. Hartmann is in this very prison somewhere. He is laughing at me right now, yes?”
“Somebody smothered him in mercury,” Shrieve said. “There’s some question whether he died before or after his intestines burst. Whatever, it must have been a horrible way to die.”
“And then one of your ghouls came by to check up on him.”