Winner Lose All Page 19

  For Scanlon, however, the real surprise was in the far corner of the room. It was Hanni Steiner sitting on a large couch — no prison uniform, no handcuffs, and no blood or bruises. Their eyes met for the first time since that tearful farewell two months before on the dock in Denmark, and he could only stare in disbelief as his stomach leaped into his throat. There was no longer any need to search the basement interrogation cells for her, since she was sitting comfortably right in front of him. Her radiant blonde hair was freshly combed, her clothes were clean, and the only pain he saw was in the expression on her face. His eyes burned holes in her, until she could not take it any longer. She looked away without saying a word. She did not need to. She was not Otto Dietrich’s prisoner; she worked for him now. In that instant of cruel recognition, Scanlon did not know whether to shoot Dietrich, shoot her, or shoot himself.

  “What a marvelous scene!” The Chief Inspector broke the spell as he clapped his hands together, loudly and sarcastically. “It is the look of love scorned. Cut and print, Scanlon. Cut and print. That is a wrap.”

  The American’s white-hot rage did not need much to flash over. In two long strides, he was at the desk. His bad hand grabbed the grinning Gestapo officer by the throat as best it could, while the other swung the heavy Luger and backhanded it across the side of his face, raking the pistol barrel across his cheek, and knocking him to the floor. Dietrich’s eyes rolled up in his head as he lay there stunned, but Scanlon was not finished. He went down after him and hit him again. He probably would have beat Dietrich to death right there, had not Paul Von Lindemann stepped in and caught his arm with the crook of his cane.

  “Enough, Captain,” the Major warned. “Do not become one of them, not like this.”

  “Easy for you to say, Paul,” Scanlon answered with a murderous edge on his voice. The two blows had left a gash and two big bruises on the left side of Dietrich’s face, and he was bleeding on the rug. “That isn’t half of what I owe him.”

  “His time will come; but we need him if we want to get out of here. Besides, saving him for the hangman is the worst punishment you can give.”

  Scanlon looked down and saw the chief bastard’s eyes blink and begin to open. Von Lindemann was right, he realized, as he saw fear on Dietrich’s face for the first time. There were small beads of sweat on the bridge of that grand nose, and this time he was smart enough to keep his mouth shut.

  “What’s wrong, Otto?” Scanlon taunted him. “No clever comments now?” he asked as he ransacked the Chief Inspector’s pockets, pulling out his wallet, his identification papers, his car keys, and a small automatic pistol. “Well, what do we have here? A Mauser, a 6.5-millimeter Mauser,” he said as he tossed it to Von Lindemann. “Does that ring a bell, Paul?”

  The Major’s eyes narrowed as he caught the pistol and examined it. “He truly is a shit. Now I am sorry I stopped you from beating him even more.”

  “You haven’t even scratched the surface,” Scanlon said as he got to his feet, storm flags flying. “You’re right, though, killing him here is too easy. He’s coming with us.”

  “No, he is mine!” Hanni called out to him from the far corner. “You have no right to take him anywhere.”

  “No right?” Scanlon turned and challenged her. “You’ve got a lot of nerve to tell me I have no right, Hanni.”

  “Not compared to what he did to me, to what he did to us!” She stood and jammed her fingers into her chest over and over again. “He belongs to the people of Leipzig, and he belongs to me. We are the ones who suffered the most at his hands and we are the only ones who have the right to judge him.”

  “Oh, get in line, Liebchen,” Scanlon answered bitterly. “You can all get in line. I’m taking him with me, and I’m taking you, too.”

  “Like hell you are!”

  “Like hell I’m not,” he countered, feeling angry and betrayed.

  They stood glaring at each other, neither backing down until Dietrich himself broke the spell. He sat up slowly, like a heavyweight fighter who had been dropped for the count and wasn’t so sure he wanted another go at it. Scanlon raised his Luger, pointed it at the bridge of Otto Dietrich’s nose, and let his finger tighten on the trigger. “Ding, dong, Otto," Scanlon said as the Chief Inspector cringed and leaned away from the muzzle of the gun. “Ding, dong, the Wicked Witch really is dead.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?” Dietrich’s voice faded to a hoarse whisper.

  “It means the Munchkins have taken over Oz, Otto, that’s what it means.” Scanlon looked at him with pure hatred. “What? No cute little song today? None of your movie quotes?” He saw Dietrich’s hand make a subtle move toward his jacket pocket. “Don’t bother looking for the Mauser. The bulge was ruining the lines of that lovely Italian suit, and you know how a gentleman should never look poorly dressed,” Scanlon said, his cold gray eyes devoid of any humor. He reached down and pulled the puffed silk handkerchief from Dietrich’s breast pocket, blew his nose in it, and stuffed it back in the Chief Inspector’s pocket. “There,” Scanlon said with a smile, “I’ve been waiting for months to do that. You have no idea how good it feels.”

  With that one meaningless gesture, the once-terrifying figure of Otto Dietrich shrank before Scanlon’s eyes like a balloon with a large leak. He shook his head at the disgusting sight sitting on the floor in front of him, which was probably the unkindest cut of all. Straightening up, Scanlon paused to look around at the Chief Inspector’s office. “So this is it, huh? The seat of your little empire. How pathetic.” It seemed so ordinary, small, and drab. The furniture was old, scratched and chipped. The walls were painted a sad, institutional green like a bookkeeper’s office. In the corner stood a rickety wooden file cabinet with an ancient hot plate and a chipped teapot sitting on top. Typical cop, Scanlon thought, a little man with a gun and a big badge.

  One demon was down, but that still left the big one. Scanlon looked at Hanni and wanted desperately to understand. He felt angry, betrayed, and badly used; yet as much as he wanted to hate her, he could not. “I’d ask why, Hanni, but it wouldn’t make any difference, would it?”

  She looked away and said nothing.

  “Talk to me, damnit!” he screamed, pointing the Luger at her.

  “No, because you are right. It would not make any difference," she screamed back. "So, shoot me, if you want. It could not be any worse than living with your scorn.”

  “I have a right to know.”

  “You would not understand, Liebchen.”

  “Wouldn’t understand,” he fumed. “I gave up everything for you, for God’s sake. Why do you think I came back?”

  “I truly do not know,” she answered as she buried her face in her hands.

  “You set me up at the bookshop, didn’t you?” he said as the awful truth caved in on him. “That’s it, isn’t it? Horstmann told you I was waiting there for you, so you sold me out to Dietrich, didn’t you? Why? Was it orders from Moscow again, or did you do it on your own this time?”

  She looked up, her eyes rimmed with red, but she refused to respond to the taunts.

  “Answer me, damn you!”

  “I had to do it. I had no choice, I never did, and you should understand that better than anyone. It had nothing to do with you, Liebchen, or with us. It never did.”

  “Nothing to do with us? I loved you.”

  “I never asked you for love, did I? And I warned you.”

  “Yes, you did,” he admitted as he lowered the gun. “They are lying to you, Hanni. All of them, Beria, Stalin, even this bastard Otto Dietrich, they’re all lying.”

  “And so are you. You all are, all of you.”

  “How touching,” the Chief Inspector sneered. “The two innocent victims tossing clods of guilt at each other to see who comes out the dirtiest.” He took his silk handkerchief from his jacket pocket, intending to press it against the side of his face to stop the bleeding. He looked at it, remembered what Scanlon had done to it, and tossed it in the corner.


  Scanlon pointed the Luger at Dietrich again. “Don’t push your luck, Otto,” he said.

  “We must go.” Von Lindemann reached out and laid another gentle hand on Scanlon’s shoulder.

  “You are right, Paul. We’re taking them with us, all of them,” Scanlon said with a look of angry determination as he helped the dazed sentry to his feet and motioned them all toward the door.

  “I am not going anywhere,” Wolfe Raeder puffed indignantly. “The countryside is entirely too dangerous to expect me to go traipsing about with a couple of malcontents like you two. My daughter and I are civilians. We choose to stay here.”

  Scanlon raised his pistol very off-handedly and pulled the trigger. In the small, closed room, the 9-millimeter handgun sounded like a howitzer, as the bullet smacked into the wall two inches from Raeder’s ear. His chin dropped and his face turned white as he found himself staring into the smoking black hole of the Luger’s barrel.

  “You are coming with us, Herr Doktor. After all, you are the guest of honor. And if you argue with me again, I’ll start shooting off body parts.”

  The chief engineer took a step backward and pulled his daughter in front of him, using her as a shield as Scanlon’s pistol tracked along after him.

  “Papa?” Christina asked in a confused, frightened voice, looking back over her shoulder at him; but her father made no reply.

  “That’s right,” Scanlon told him. “Hide behind your daughter, and don’t come out until I tell you.”

  Hanni stepped toward him and pleaded, “Liebchen, please, you cannot take me with you. You might as well kill me now. Can you not see that? You must leave me here, and you must leave me with something," she begged.

  She could read her reply in Scanlon’s cold, steel-gray eyes.

  “You do not need Raeder,” she said. “You have all the others and the blueprints. Share the wealth, Edward. Please let me have him for old time’s sake?”

  “For old time’s sake?” he repeated in disbelief. “You made your choice, Hanni. Now live with it.”

  “Please,” she cried. “Try to understand.”

  “I can’t, and I don’t have to. I’m taking Raeder, I’m taking Dietrich, I’m taking the blueprints, and I’m taking everything else I can get my hands on, including you.”

  “At least leave me Raeder. If you do not, you will be signing my death warrant.”

  “That’s right, isn’t it? If I leave you nothing, you will not be able to return to Moscow, will you? You’ll be forced to come with me.”

  “Greed does not become you, Edward.”

  “We’ll see,“ Scanlon said as he pushed Dietrich and the young sentry toward the office door. “You too, Hanni, you stay right here next to me where I can keep an eye on you.”

  “We cannot all fit in my little car, you know,” Von Lindemann warned.

  “No, we’re traveling in style this time, Paul,” Scanlon answered as he dug his hand in Dietrich’s coat pocket and tossed the keys to the Maybach to Von Lindemann. “Otto, if you do anything stupid, the Major will be sure to side-swipe a tree and ruin that pretty paint job.”

  Scanlon turned and looked through the shattered door into the hallway. It was still empty, so Scanlon herded them all to the top of the stairs. He took the lead, holding the German sentry by his collar as they took the first flight down. Hanni, the Raeders, and Dietrich followed behind in a tight little group, while Paul Von Lindemann brought up the rear. Bunched together, when the group made the turn on the final landing, Hanni leaned back and shoved Raeder and Otto Dietrich into Von Lindemann. She then pushed Scanlon into the sentry, knocking them both off balance long enough for her to jump over the banister and take off running down the first floor corridor.

  Scanlon regained his balance and ran down the last stairs to the first floor hallway. “Hanni, stop!” he shouted as he raised his pistol and took aim. For the briefest of moments, he had the Luger centered on her back before she turned a corner and disappeared, but he did not pull the trigger. Despite everything that had happened, he could not bring himself to do that.

  “Damn!” he swore as he reached back and grabbed Otto Dietrich by the collar. “Get outside,” Scanlon ordered as he shoved the Chief Inspector through the rear door and toward the long, black Maybach.

  “What shall we do with that one?” Paul Von Lindemann pointed toward the young sentry.

  “Bring him along,” Scanlon replied as they piled Raeder, his daughter, the sentry, and Otto Dietrich into the back seat of the car. “We’ll dump him once we get out in the country.”

  Otto Dietrich turned toward them and laughed. “Out in the country? You will never make it out of the city, my young friend.”

  “You’d better pray we do, Otto.” Scanlon pointed his pistol at the Chief Inspector’s nose again, its barrel unwavering. “If we don’t, you’ll be the first to die. Trust me.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  London

  Colonel George Bromley finally realized it was the ringing of the telephone on the nightstand next to his bed that had wrenched him out of a dark, fitful sleep. He was having that dream again, standing behind the counter of a small, provincial grocer’s shop in a badly stained clerk’s apron. The shop’s shelves were empty, picked clean by a crowd of angry housewives who now surrounded him like a band of harpies with their claws out. They pressed forward, hectoring him as if it was his fault. They leaned over the counter and shook their fists in his face, poking and picking at him, and waving their empty shopping bags in the air. They could all see that there was not a crumb to be found in the entire shop, but they refused to hear his excuses. In the far corner, his decrepit old father sat hunched over in a wheelchair, pointing a long, bony finger at him. “I told you so,” the old man giggled. “I told you so!”

  That was when Bromley realized the ringing was the telephone. He hated the damned impersonal things and swore he would never again have one in his bedroom after this infernal war ended. The clock on the end table showed 1:00 a.m. adding to his anxiety. Few people knew his home phone number, much less him or the small joint-operations section he ran for the American OSS; fewer still would dare call him at this hour. Worried, he raised the receiver to his ear. “Bromley here,” he said tentatively.

  “Good evening, Colonel.” He heard the distinctive, gravelly voice at the other end and suddenly found himself sitting upright in bed at rigid attention. There was not an Englishman alive who would not recognize that voice. “Is there any word on the progress of our continental venture?” Winston Churchill asked.

  “No, Prime Minister, nothing… yet." Damn, he swore to himself. It was the business with that American Scanlon again. Like a meat pie gone bad, it had not smelled right from the very beginning, leaving Bromley with a bad case of indigestion. "As best I can tell, the subject did manage to exit the aircraft and depart for the continent, roughly on schedule.”

  “Harrumph!” he heard, followed by a long, painful pause. “Well, then… can we at least assume he was subsequently apprehended by the opposition?”

  “I’m afraid it is too early to tell, Sir. We dropped hints in the appropriate ears in Lisbon, of course. The Abwehr intelligence people are reasonably efficient down there, and our people said that should suffice, without leaving any of our own fingerprints.”

  There was dead silence on the line until Churchill said, “It was my profound hope that this problem would be resolved more definitively by now, Colonel.”

  “Unfortunately that did not happen yet, Sir, almost, but not quite. Scanlon is a most resourceful fellow, but in his condition, both mental and physical, it is only a matter of time before he self-destructs. After all, that is why we chose the drunken sod in the first place.”

  There was another pause at the other end of the line and Bromley heard the strike of a match and the puffs of a cigar. “Almost, but not quite, you said, Colonel. You may not be aware, but my great-uncle Edward once had an antiquated mare named Bucolic Rose. The old gentleman entered her in the Ir
ish Derby one year, purely as a lark, mind you, after he had lost some sort of wager with her trainer.” Bromley heard him pause for another long puff on the cigar. “Well, the starting gun went off, the rope was dropped, and the old nag promptly bolted out to a two-length lead! She left the rest of the field in the dust over the first quarter, and then extended her most improbable lead through the backstretch. Finally, in the far turn, the old mare began to visibly slow and the pack closed in on her. Still, she pressed forward as they entered the straightaway. Unfortunately, the poor old mare must have run her little heart out, because she collapsed and dropped as dead as a stone in the center of the track, just shy of the finish line. Poor Bucolic Rose, she lost the Derby by a neck, if you can believe it. ‘Almost, but not quite’ were my great-uncle’s very words. ‘Almost, but not quite.’ As for the poor old man, you ask? Well, they say his heart barely survived the strain.”

  The silence at the other end of the phone was deafening. “I — uh, I see your point, Prime Minister,” a badly chastised Bromley whispered.

  “Do you, Colonel? Do you, truly?”

  This time, it was his turn to pause. “Yes, absolutely, Prime Minister, you want me to assume that he just might succeed.”

  “Precisely, Colonel. What if the chap did manage to land in one piece after all? What if by God’s good grace he actually avoided the Gestapo dragnets and reached Volkenrode? You said he was resourceful. Despite the SS, the Gestapo, and all the rest of the perils he faced, what if he actually scoops up those aircraft designers and their blueprints, finds a truck, some petrol, a map, and every other blasted thing he might need, and what if your Bucolic Rose is rumbling south toward Bavaria at this very moment? What do we do then, Colonel?”

  “I take it you want this business terminated with finality, Prime Minister.”

  “I think you are finally beginning to understand.”

  Bromley swallowed hard. “If I may be so bold, Prime Minister, there is a Colonel Geoffrey Maitland, a classmate, who commands a Spitfire squadron in eastern France. If someone in a position of very high authority could place a very confidential phone call to him and tell him to expect a most important call from a certain SOE Colonel in London, I could then direct him to task those Spitfires to look for trucks heading south into Bavaria over the next few days — German trucks, with two white circles painted on the tops of their cabs — and destroy them.”