Astronomy(8)

Schoenberg set his little medical valise on the floor between them. He opened it carefully. Susan shrank back a bit. Just, please, no knives, she prayed to whoever listened to American agents in trouble. Came the reply in her head—knives as opposed to what? She had no answer for that.

Schoenberg withdrew a ream of paperwork. Susan risked a quick glance into the briefcase. Nothing down there but more files. She was so relieved she found herself laughing.

Schoenberg frowned at her, What? And then he realized how her thoughts had gone.

“No,” he said, a little embarrassed. “All the, eh, special investigators have already left Berlin. It was thought safer for their families.”

“Who are you?”

“Financial Crimes. Black market, war profiteering, things of that nature.”

Susan must have been staring in fascination. “You really are a CPA.”

Schoenberg seemed offended at her light regard. “I can break legs,” he said. “They sent me to a special school, you know. Beginning and Applied Leg Breaking. Hurrah.”

Maybe so. Maybe this guy had been Torquemada in the good times. Whatever, the war was over and his heart wasn’t in it. He lit a pair of cigarettes and handed one across to her, just like Paul Henreid had done for Bette Davis. Susan hesitated just a moment. She seemed to remember a lot of really awful stories started out this way.

Schoenberg sighed, embarrassed. “Just take the cigarette,” he said. A Russian rocket landed somewhere nearby. A roar filled the tunnel, thicker than the stench of churned-up sewage.

“It doesn’t matter,” he whispered. “We shall all die down here anyway.”

He no doubt wanted to sound fatalistic and European, but his voice cracked. Susan noticed the cigarette waver in the darkness.

He asked if she had come for Stürmbannführer Malmagden. Malmagden, she decided, had to be her boy Galileo. He was the name on every Nazi’s lips. Susan said no, she was here to map out a route for Eisenhower’s victory ride through Berlin.

“You know,” he said, “Herr Malmagden is already in trouble for embezzlement in connection with a certain project he is in charge of. Whether you cooperate or not, his neck is already in the noose.”

She still didn’t know what this Malmagden was working on with all these dead soldiers. Was there a lot of free cash floating around his project? Especially now?

“That strikes me as a little unlikely,” she said. She was getting over her initial wave of terror. She could afford to think beyond her immediate survival.

Schoenberg had not examined Herr Malmagden’s file closely, but he assured her that his superiors knew all about him.

“How’s he doing this?” she asked him. “He’s taking it out of the country in gold bullion? Gem-quality stones?”

“As you might imagine, gold has become a very valuable commodity in Europe. Stürmbannführer Malmagden entered the market rather late . . .” Schoenberg flipped through his documents a moment. He frowned. “It appears his ill-gotten gain remains in Reichsmarks.” He pressed his lips together in an expression of dissatisfaction. That seemed somewhat unlikely, even to him. “Still, it’s possible he has some plan to convert them; he simply hasn’t done it yet.”

“It seems odd to me that you’re here because he’s supposed to be stealing money from his research project,” she said. “I’m here because he’s supposed to be defecting.”

Schoenberg stared at her. “You are?”

Susan was starting to get a bad feeling about this whole adventure. “Herr Malmagden seems like a busy man,” she said.

A moan came up from the far end of the sewer. A dull trudging of hundreds of feet. Schoenberg did his best to ignore the sound. He pretended to study Malmagden’s financial records, looking for his gold certificates.

She asked him, “Is that Malmagden’s research project?”

Schoenberg wagged his finger at her: Who is the interrogator here? He piled his reports back into his valise and promised to be back tomorrow. “It seems we have an anomaly here,” he admitted. “I will study the matter, and we will talk further. Hurrah.”

The two Volksstürm soldiers looked wide-eyed as Schoenberg departed for the night. They asked her if she were all right, if Schoenberg had hurt her.

“He’s an accountant,” she said.

“We were supposed to watch out for you,” the tall one wailed in anguish. “Sturmbannführer Malmagden will be furious with us when he returns from the south.”

“Don’t worry about it. He’s an accountant.”

The shorter one nodded solemnly. “You don’t want to talk about it.” He understood.