An stopped. A guard now stood at the door to the cellar stairway, and another on the second floor landing, overlooking the foyer. Then it struck him: this evening they had submachine guns. Before, they’d had bolt-action Mausers, varnished and polished–fire one shot, then work the bolt–much more accurate at a distance, but close up, far less dangerous. Deciding, Macurdy walked toward the guard at the cellar stairway. The man’s aura reflected boredom, resentment, inattentiveness. Heart in throat, Macurdy slipped past him and down the stairs, then turned toward the north wing. At the hell he saw theguards at the magazine doors. Now he had no doubt: His thefts had been discovered.
That left the question of his south wing stash, so he started for it. Peering around the south hell, he saw no one, so he continued to the room he’d made a bomb of. Was it boobytrapped? Wired to an alarm? He turned its knob and pushed; it made hardly a sound. Stepping inside, he closed it behind him and turned on the light. Things weren’t as bad as he’d feared. The stack of TNT, and the musette bag on top of it, still were cloaked. Again he folded the towel against the bottom of the door, then ate a K ration and drank some water.
Now, he thought, to find the SS ordnance room and steal some grenades. Intent and somehow confident again, he retraced his way up the cellar stairs and past the guard, who, like the others, held his weapon at port arms, ready for quick use.
Macurdy, he told himself, the guards aren’t your main problem. Just find their damned ordnance room.
There might, he thought, be a building diagram in Landgraf’s office. Slipping past the staircase, he entered the corridor, stopped in front of the colonel’s door, and put an hear to the panel. And heard the colonel’s voice, apparently on the phone.
Macurdy straightened. He’d planned to warn Edouard Schurz before he dew the place; he might as well do it now. Warning Schurz was one of the details he’d deliberately omitted from his mission plan. He was confident the professor wouldn’t expose him, but even Von Lutzow might object to warning the man: The reaction would be, why take the chance? So rather than disobey an order, Macurdy had said nothing about it.
Going to the staircase, he slipped past the guard and up to the second floor. Normally Edouard would be in the recreation room in mid-evening, so he peered in. Something new had been added-a radio, a large floor model, from which music issued-from Lohengrin, though he didn’t know it. The only woman there was Berta, playing cards with a girl about 10 years old. Macurdy had never seen the child before. Otto was absent; Philipp sat turning cards as always, aimlessly it seemed; Manfred Eich sat in the broken-down easy chair by the window, reading. Edouard dozed with a magazine in his lap.
On an impulse, Macurdy tried to project a thought into Edouard’s mind, but got no response, so he walked softly into the room and leaned near his ear from behind.
“Edouard,” he whispered, “I am in the men’s quarters. Come to me. Pretend that nothing unusual is happening. There is something urgent you must know.”
Edouard opened his eyes, and for a long moment stared straight ahead, then got to his feet, lay the magazine on a shelf, and left. By that time Macurdy had backed out the door and moved quickly to the room, where he stood by the open latrine door. Edouard entered, looked around, and still failed to see him.
“In the latrine,” Macurdy murmured, “in case anyone looks in,” and watched a frowning Edouard walk past him not five feet away. Following him inside, Macurdy dropped his cloak and closed the door. “Here,” he said quietly. Turning, Edouard stared first at the strange uniform, then at Macurdy’s face. “Lieber Gott!” he breathed.
“Where is Otto?”
“Sent away. Back to the farm; he is too old even for the Volkssturm. And Marie is gone; the old woman. And Sofia, the red-haired gypsy, God knows where. What has become of Anna?”
“As soon as we reached England, she turned us in. She is working for the Americans now. As I have been, all along, investigating the aliens, though she didn’t know it.”