The Germans were fanning out to block them. Pistols were being drawn and someone began screaming. The squeeze of the crowd was like being mired in quicksand.
Then Otto whirled, turning in a circle like a dervish with one hand thrown out. Paper spouted from his fingertips and the crowd erupted into frenzy.
It was money! Some of the Reichsmarks that Kohl had collected! "Run!" the German shouted. The SS leader savagely struck Greta's father across the face and he went down in the tumult. "Run!"
The couple bulldozed toward the edge of the platform. The air was filled with fluttering bills, confused oaths, and people springing to catch the notes. The police were shoved this way and that like boats in a storm, their leader howling in frustration.
The platform ended at a brink of darkness that hid even the tracks.
"Always with you it is some cave," Greta said wryly.
"Only because I enjoyed the last one."
"Halt!" There was a bang and something hot and angry buzzed near their heads, whining off tile on the far side of the tunnel. They crouched.
"Do you have a gun?"
"Yes." He glanced backward. "In France."
She gripped his hand and launched them into the blackness. When they sprawled on the cinders something squealed and Greta lurched up and kicked out. A tunnel rat scuttled away. A German mark fluttered down past them.
There was another shot and again a bullet bounced off the tunnel.
"Greta, come on!"
"Wait." She stooped, picked up a handful of rock cinders, cocked her arm, and threw. The aim was imperfect but the effect was like hitting a wasp's nest. Several people yelped and a fight broke out. The platform crowd became even more agitated with shoving people. The police were stuck in greed and anger as if gripped in tar.
"You throw like a girl," Hart judged. "Perfectly."
They began trotting past the stunned faces of Berliners peering down at them, uncertain what to make of the excitement. The rumble of bombs overhead added to the confusion; none of the shouts could be clearly heard above the background thunder. Then they were in the tunnel and it was black. She kicked out again.
"Are you all right?"
"Except for the damned rats. They've gotten fat and bold with the war. Don't stop." She pulled at his hand, her palm slick.
The air was dusty. In the lulls between explosions they heard hurrying boot steps and the confused shouts of their pursuers. Jutting his arm out blindly like a football player to avoid a collision with an unexpected wall, Hart broke into a trot, Greta following.
Suddenly there was a series of pistol shots and the pair fell flat for a moment. A riot of bullets pinged around them.
"Stop it, you fool!" someone yelled, the sound echoing. "You'll hit the police coming from the other end!"
"Are you hit?" Hart asked anxiously.
"No, but I'm scared."
"Me too."
They got up again and staggered on. The pilot looked for an emergency exit but could see nothing. Slowly he noticed light glowing from the next station ahead and saw blocking figures on the track, silhouetted against the illumination. "Damn." The pair of fugitives were still hidden by the dark but appeared to be trapped. Hart let go of Greta's hand for a moment to grope in the gloom. "We've got to find another way out," he said desperately, feeling along the ribs of the wall. "A door, a ladder."
As if in response there was a roar and the tunnel air cuffed them, knocking them down. Hart managed to roll on top of Greta as a blast of heat pulsed by, followed by a spray of rocks and dirt. Smoke choked the air and yet the blackness had given way to a brighter light. The pilot blinked. An American bomb had hit a weak point and punched into the tunnel where it joined the next station, replacing the waiting police with an avalanche slope of new rubble. The escarpment led upward toward a smoky sky.
"Come on!" Greta grunted, shoving Owen off herself and getting to her knees. "We can get out that way!" They both were shrouded in dust, her fine coat torn, her strand of pearls spilled like tears along the tracks. A trickle of blood ran down his forehead.
"God, I love you," he breathed.
"I love you too."
They began clambering up the collapsed tunnel ceiling toward the light, her hand in his. The noise of the air raid was much louder with the ceiling gone, an arrhythmic pounding that seemed to reverberate in their bones. As they emerged he saw the sky far above was freckled with black puffs of flak. There was an unnerving rattle as spent bits of metal from antiaircraft fire rained down on the city like hail.
They clambered out, the crater separating them from the shelter they'd nearly been trapped in. They just needed to run the other way. An apartment building adjacent to the gaping bomb crater had caught fire, its smoke serving as a screen.
"My ankle," Greta gasped. She was limping. Hart draped one arm across her shoulder and they began staggering, passing by two bodies sprawled on the cobblestones. He soon decided she was too slow and scooped her up in his arms to begin a stumbling run. He could see little and was terrified that all he was going to accomplish by coming to Berlin was getting Greta killed. Was the frequency of explosions lessening? He emerged from the smoke…
And slowed, then came to a stop. "Hell." Striding from the entrance of the next station was Jürgen Drexler, holding a pistol. Greta saw him and then clutched Owen's neck and buried her face in his chest.
Hart turned to go back the other way but SS men were emerging from the crater, smoke blowing through their blond hair. They had guns too.
It was over.
Drexler stopped a dozen feet away and lowered his automatic a moment, staring at Hart in amazement. "You're alive …" He blinked twice, as if not believing his senses. "But how?" A moment passed, then: "Ah, now I'm beginning to understand at least part of this."
Hart gently put Greta down. He didn't want her to get hurt.
"Jürgen, please," she entreated, still leaning on Owen. "Just let us go."
"You lied to me, Greta. You lied about the locket. You lied about running away."
"You told me Owen was dead," she countered. "Said his plane was missing."
"I truly thought he didn't make it, and was quietly glad. But it appears the joke is on me. How long have you known he was alive?"
"A day."
"And that quickly you decide to leave me?"
She looked at him unhappily. "I never had you, Jürgen. That's been the problem. You never let anyone have you. You never let anyone get inside… your spore coat."
He started at her choice of words and examined Hart more curiously then. "You knew what I was like," he objected, obviously thinking about more than that. Clearly, the wheels were turning. He looked Hart up and down. "How did you survive the disease?"
"The antibiotic worked," Owen said, shrugging. "Greta was right. You should have had more faith, Jürgen. You might have saved all of us a lot of pain."
Jürgen nodded thoughtfully. That calculation again. "Perhaps I can learn from my mistakes." He looked at Greta. "That slime was effective then?"
"Evidently," Greta said, impatient with the discussion. What did any of that matter now?
"And this organism. Could it have been reproduced? Manufactured?"
Greta seemed puzzled by his intensity. "We'll never know."
Hart glanced about. The bombing had stopped and the sirens were sounding an all-clear. Emergency workers were spraying water into the burning apartment building and Berliners were emerging from the underground stations. "Look at this mess, Jürgen," he said. "Berlin is a charnel house. Why don't you just put that pistol down and come with us? I'll fly you out too. It's time for everyone to start over."