Astronomy(7)

Middle of all this, Susan’s bodyguard announced rather breathlessly, “I’ve got to go.” He pointed at the only row of buildings within running distance. “Those look decent,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

She looked at him. “What?”

“You want to come with me?”

This row of buildings looked fairly intact, considering they hung out over a bomb crater the size of the New York Polo Grounds.

“You’re going to leave me here?”

Max held out his hands, he had to go. Now.

“Wait,” she said, somewhere between panic and exasperation. “Look—” How to say this like a lady? “You’re the guy. You’re the one who just stands there. I mean, can’t you just find a wall?” Susan couldn’t believe this—her bodyguard was going to get himself killed taking a leak, and she would end up entertaining half the Russian army.

Max was real sorry. He knew how this must seem. But he worried about people watching.

“I hope,” she said coolly, “you don’t mean me.”

He shook his head, oh no. He glanced toward what was left of the Berlin skyline. He was worried about Russian artillery spotters. “You remember you went over behind that wall, all the rocket fire in this sector stopped till you were finished? Don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

“That’s crazy,” she said, sincerely hoping it was.

“Be fair,” he pleaded. “You got to go. Now I do.” Susan made a mental note for her next parachute drop: Leave the coffee thermos at home. If her bodyguard needed entertaining, she’d tell him dirty stories.

“I’ll be a minute,” he promised her. “I’ll be a second.” He was bouncing up and down by this time.

“You’re supposed to be my bodyguard!” she cried.

“What are you worried about? Obviously, they like you.”

Did she detect a note of jealousy?

“Give me the Thompson,” she said.

“Don’t worry about the Thompson. I’ll be right back.”

Of course, Susan never saw him again.

A rocket barrage scoured the street just as he stepped inside the nearest doorway. Oddly, the building he was in remained untouched. Max—Mr. House—simply failed to reappear.

She started after him, got maybe twenty yards before a couple of snipers forced her into the doorway of a bombed-out dance academy.

By the time a couple of Volksstürm soldiers came up from the sewers to see who was wandering around up there, she had already been nicked twice—once by gunfire, once by shrapnel from a Russian rocket.

Her bodyguard was a fond memory.

At least Foley was right about the German army. Her two escorts were a couple of kids, and scared stupid.

They hustled her down a storm drain just as another artillery barrage zeroed in on them, apologizing for the smell of the sewer as if it were somehow their fault.

But that was about as good as the news got. The bad news? This Galileo, who was supposed to be pacing the floors awaiting rescue, was nowhere to be found. She was afraid that he’d discovered another way out, and she had risked her life for nothing. But no, the two Volksstürm kids who had brought her underground assured her that she was here to meet their boss, Stürmbannführer Malmagden. They didn’t know this Malmagden as Galileo, but he was something of a hero to them. They just naturally assumed that anybody parachuting into Berlin would be here to meet him. They assured her that Stürmbannführer Malmagden had not fled Berlin. He was tending to some secret project away to the south in the Franconian Wald, but he fully intended to return.

And as for the nonexistent Gestapo . . .

* * *

She didn’t realize who he was at first, this spectacled gentleman with the valise. She had spent a week in a tiny cell off the main sewer. It was boring and gut-wrenchingly putrid, but she hadn’t been bothered by anyone. She had sort of forgotten about the Gestapo. She thought maybe they had forgotten about her.

The owlish gentleman introduced himself as Alexander Schoenberg as he awaited admission to her cell. She looked to her young captors—Hope and Crosby, she’d come to call them—for some explanation as to who he was. They seemed frightened and embarrassed. They wouldn’t look at her.

That’s when she knew.

She’d survived four covert operations in the past two years. One or two trips were a lifetime for most OSS agents. Maybe she’d grown cocky? Maybe she’d simply used up her luck.

“I am here to find out who you are,” Herr Schoenberg said. “Who you are, what your mission to Berlin is, and so forth.”

“You look like an accountant,” she said. Christ, she thought, I’m going to be tortured by a CPA.