“I do not know what this means,” Landgraf said, “but you and I are going to visit the magazines.”
They marched from his office then, not through Kupfer’s, but directly into the hallway, downstairs into the cellar corridor, and down the corridor to the magazines. A corporal unlocked the first magazine door and opened it. To Landgraf’s eyes, everything seemed all right.
“Search it!” he ordered, and the three enlisted men entered, all of them for the first time. A minute later the corporal looked apologetically at the commanding officer.
“Sir, I firui nothing out of order/’Good. Let us look at the other.” They moved to the next room. It too passed.
Landgraf stood frowning. Are there ways into the cellar from outside?
“Yes sir, colonel,” Lipanov said. “At the end is a back en=, with a door that is kept barred. And the coal bunker of en=, with room has a small door for a coal chute, that a man could crawl through.”
“Have them both checked immediately. And Lieutenant, I want two men on guard here at themagazines. At all times. Also one in the furnace room, and double the guards at the front entrance. This finding may have nothing at all to do with us, but we must take no chances.”
Then he turned and left the cellar, muttering about phoning Munich. He’d tell them once again that they really needed to remove this high explosive. Since the aliens could not use it, it served no purpose here.
Munich. And after all, he did wear the Iron Cross, the old one that really meant something. At some time in his life he’d been a warrior and a hero.
Meanwhile, Lipanov told himself, I’ll set lookouts on balconies during the day. And guards outside at night, in pairs, with orders to shoot anything that moves. American paratroops are all criminals-rapists an murderers released from prisons to fight us-everyone knows that. They scruple at nothing.
Lipanov watched him leave. Was that all? he wondered Three guards in the cellar and two more at the entrance? Who had dropped that parachute? Americans, obviously. And to whom? A demolitions team, of course. As for why. This was the only military installation for many kilometers, so obviously the schloss was the target, the schloss or perhaps the aliens. Yet the colonel was treating the affair as if they were dealing with ordinary criminals. What should do was request a battalion be sent to hunt them down.
Well. Perhaps he intended to, he’d mumbled something about
36
Crescendo
Macurdy’s collapse was cut short by a realization: Kurqosz would have noticed when the gate opening cut short, and be concerned. Guardsmen might be sent. Grunting, he got to his feet and started down the truck trail, still cloaked, though he’d hear any vehicle grinding its way up the steep grade.
He reached the foot of the ridge without seem g or hearing anyone. Meanwhile his legs and buttocks were stiffening from his furious exertions of the morning, and the ends of his toes were sore from his downhill runs. Out of shape again, he thought, and headed back to the schloss, not by the county road, but through the woods, pausing at the edge of the lawn till a cloud obscured the sun.
The cellar’s rear entryway was locked, which disappointed but didn’t surprise him. Slipping around the comer into the shadow of the north wing , he leaned against the wall and thought for a bit, reviewing plans. He was stiff, seriously now-thighs, buttocks, calves, even tibialis. By noon he’d have trouble walking, let alone running if necessary, unless he did some thing about it. And before long, the shortage of sleep would dull him.
Macurdy, old horse, he told himself, it’s time to take care of yourself for a change. With that he crossed the lawn again and hiked back into the woods. Feeling thirsty, he reached for his canteen. Empty. He must, he thought, have drunk it all that morning, and in the intensity of his focus, never noticed; only now did he realize his clothes were wet with sweat. So he continued to the lake, where he refilled his canteen, drank deeply from it, and topped it off again.