Drexler looked at him with amazement. "Fly away with the adulterers?"
"We're not adulterers!" Greta protested. "We just— "
"Shut up!" Drexler roared. "Shut up, shut up, shut up!"
Greta looked like she had been slapped.
"Do you think I'm an idiot?" he hissed, struggling to control the volume of his voice so his men could not hear. "Do you think I don't know your dreams have been filled with this ghost come back to life? And now I'm to go with you? Abandon my country and my career, shake hands and let this man steal my wife?" He shook his head. "Listen to me, Greta. You've betrayed me. Betrayed me. If not physically then mentally: many, many times. As a result, the days of my being the proper husband are over. Over! Understand? From this moment we have a new relationship, a relationship defined by the needs of the state. Both of you are in my power now. The Reich's power. Your only chance— your only chance— is to obey every command I give you."
There was a momentary silence while Hart shot Greta a look. It said: stay calm.
Drexler drew a few steps closer to the couple. "So… now that we understand each other, I have a question for you, Hart."
"Only one?"
"If you were well," the SS colonel said, scowling, "why didn't you fly back to the Schwabenland ? Why didn't you come off the island?"
"I was trapped in the damn cave. By a cave-in probably caused by your erasure of the Bergen. By the time I got out, you'd left. I flew, and stumbled on the Norwegians."
Drexler looked at him with genuine surprise. "You were in the cave when that avalanche occurred?"
"And so was Fritz. He died. And if you triggered the collapse, then you killed him."
"That's absurd. I had no idea anyone was in the cave to begin with. You can't blame that on me. And what the devil were you doing there?"
"Getting out of the storm."
"My God." Drexler shook his head. "The ironies of history. And now the cave is sealed, cutting off the source of the wonder drug. Pity." Suddenly his eyes narrowed. "But there's a problem with your story, Hart. You're here, after the avalanche. How did you get out of the cave?"
The pilot started to answer and then stopped. Now it was his turn to calculate. "Indeed. How did I get out, Jürgen?"
Drexler studied the pair speculatively. More police were arriving. With them was a bleeding and wincing Otto Kohl. His complexion was gray.
"Ah, the man who betrayed his daughter," Drexler greeted. His gaze swung to the agents. "We're discussing a matter of state security," he addressed them. "Leave him here a moment. I'll be with you shortly." Reluctantly, the men backed away.
Kohl looked at the ground. "I'm sorry, Greta. They made me tell them where you'd be." His voice was subdued. "They went to the farm and found the plane."
"It's all right, Papa." A tear ran down her cheek. "Jürgen learned that you were in Berlin from me. You did your best in the shelter."
"Throwing away money." A wry grin. "That was hard, for me."
"How touching," Drexler interrupted. "Otto, we were just discussing the fate of your family. The question, it seems, is whether I should put all of you up against that wall, hand you over to the Gestapo, or find a use for you."
"You'll do what you wish. We all know that."
"Exactly. That's why you've always been useful, Otto. You're a man who grasps reality."
"And the reality is that the war is lost. Everyone knows that. So take me if you must but let those two go. Let someone salvage something."
"That's where you're wrong, Otto. Victory can still be ours, I'm beginning to think. If you help."
He looked suspicious. "What do you mean?"
"You remain, I believe, a close personal associate of Reichsmarschall Göring, isn't that correct?" The title reflected Göring's military promotion.
"Our formal relationship has been in abeyance…"
"And your informal one?"
Kohl bit his lip.
"Don't think I'm unaware my father-in-law was a key facilitator in Göring's shopping expeditions in Occupied France. Two patriots, united by greed. And because of that, Otto, you may still be of some use to me. Because I need your help to see the Reichsmarschall again. Now. An emergency. He'll listen to you?"
"Possibly."
"You can get me to him?"
"I don't know. You remember he was less than satisfied with our expedition. But that was a long time ago. Why should he see you now?"
"Because the expedition he was disappointed in may turn out to have held promise after all. Promise at a critical juncture of the war."
Kohl looked skeptical. "And what do I get for this help?"
"Your life."
He barked a bitter laugh. "My life? Here? To do what, learn Russian?"
Drexler gave a thin smile. "And an exit. You can leave as you wished."
"With my savings, of course."
"No, that part is gone. Your property is now the property of the state."
"What! That money is mine! I'm an honest German businessman— "
"Nonsense!"
"That's my life's work, Jürgen. My life's work! I'm not going to surrender that now. I'd rather be shot."
"You may not have the luxury of being shot!"
"You may not have the luxury of getting to Hermann Göring."
They stared at each other, Drexler heated, Kohl implacable. Finally Jürgen grimaced. "All right. You can have back what we seized. If everyone cooperates. Including your daughter."
"Cooperates with what?"
"That's what we're going to talk to Göring about." He raised his voice to speak to the nearby soldiers. "Johann! A holding cell for each of these!" He pointed to Owen and Greta. "And Abel!" The man came over quietly and Drexler bent to whisper to him. "Get me in touch with Maximilian Schmidt."
Hart looked at him curiously. "What are you up to now, Jürgen?"
"Why, Owen! Didn't I tell you once that from crisis comes opportunity?"
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Karinhall seemed to have crawled under a blanket, hiding from the sky. Its gingerbread rooftops were tented by camouflage netting, the disguise supported by stripped firs and a spiderweb of cables like the rigging of a circus tent. Hermann Göring's aerial armada had been dissipated in a thousand far-flung battles and now the onetime lord of the air had to pretend his castle had sunk into the ground, lest Allied warplanes find it. The lawns around the great house had been torn up by the treads of military vehicles and its trees shaded a protective camp. Antiaircraft guns nested in sandbag emplacements, barrels jutting upward. With this humiliation had come the evaporation of much of the Reichsmarschall's influence in Nazi Germany. Hitler's designated successor was only rarely summoned to councils of war.
As Germany's fortunes worsened, Göring's mind had escaped to a habit of mindless acquisition as distracting as drugs. Accordingly, it wasn't that difficult for one of his mercantile agents, Otto Kohl, to get through to the Reichsmarschall once again. Otto, back from oblivion! The reminder of heady plundering in France! And so the German facilitator once more came to the estate at dusk, Karinhall's lights hidden now behind blackout paper. Drexler and Schmidt shared the rear of the staff car attired in full-dress SS uniforms. Kohl was in a business suit retrieved from his farm outside Berlin, his forehead still bandaged from the scuffle in the air raid shelter. The promise of his eventual escape from Germany was shadowed by fear that Drexler would somehow betray him once they saw Göring. He was trying desperately to guess Jürgen's game, displaying a bluff heartiness he didn't feel.