“If I had to guess, I’d say he’s looking for me,” said Bennings.
“Why is that?”
“Don’t really have time for that story right now.”
Music blared from the auditorium and the house lights started to dim. Von Leinsdorf saw Sharper head into the theater, unaware of either his or the Allied police’s presence. On the side of the lobby nearest to them, he saw one of the uniformed MPs enter the men’s room.
“Go to the bathroom,” said Von Leinsdorf. “Wait in one of the stalls.”
“What for?”
“I think I know him, too. Scratch my back, Eddie, I’ll scratch yours.”
Eddie headed toward the bathroom, turning his face away from the lobby doors.
Outside, out of breath, Bernie Oster ran up and joined the line at the box office window.
Ole Carlson came out of the auditorium to meet Grannit just after he entered the lobby.
“Think any of ’em showed?” he asked.
Grannit looked around. “We’ll find out. You see your guy about the passes?”
“Yeah, got one here. Still doesn’t add up, let me show you-”
Grannit looked at his watch. “Talk about it later. Everyone in place?”
Carlson picked up a walkie-talkie. “I’ll double-check in back.”
He moved into the auditorium just as the music started inside and the last GIs headed for their seats.
Von Leinsdorf entered the men’s room, used the urinal, and then walked to a row of sinks to wash his hands. The MP was washing his hands in the next sink over. A muted swell of music reached into the room.
“Sounds like the show’s starting,” said Von Leinsdorf.
The only other soldier in the room finished drying his hands and exited. As the MP reached for a towel, Von Leinsdorf slid behind him and slipped a piano wire garrote around the man’s throat. Yanking hard with both hands, he lifted the man off the ground, then walked him back into one of the stalls. The MP’s heels kicked and dragged as he clawed at his throat. His helmet fell off and hit the ground. The stall door banged shut behind them. Von Leinsdorf could anticipate the letting go down to the second. He counted in his head, and as he reached ten, the man went slack.
When the door swung slowly open, Eddie Bennings stood there staring wide-eyed at Von Leinsdorf. The MP’s dead body slumped onto the toilet as Von Leinsdorf slipped off the garrote and dropped it into his pocket. He’d pulled so hard the wire had sliced the dead man’s throat, a line of blood trickling down his neck.
“Holy shit,” said Bennings.
Von Leinsdorf grabbed Bennings and pulled him into the stall. “If you want to get out of here alive, you need to do exactly as I tell you, Eddie. Do you have a problem following orders?”
“Not to night.”
Bernie Oster handed his ticket to the usher at the door and entered the lobby, one of the last men through the doors before they closed. The auditorium doors were still open; he could see the show had started and a newsreel was playing. As he hurried across the lobby, he noticed a number of MPs moving toward the doors behind him from outside, not quite in a line but organized, grouped around a tall officer in the middle of the lobby.
I know that guy, thought Bernie, trying to place him.
He moved to the concession stand and ordered a soda, keeping his back to the tall man. The line of MPs moved in to cover every door out of the lobby.
They found my note. They set a trap.
His eye caught two men walking out of the bathroom to his right toward the auditorium. A soldier followed by an MP in helmet and armbands, nudging the shorter man ahead of him with the butt of his nightstick.
“Let’s go, pal, back to your seat,” he said.
Von Leinsdorf.
The two men moved into the auditorium. Bernie followed. Entering the darkness, he was momentarily blinded by the illuminated screen, black-and-white war time footage: destroyers at sea, fighters streaming overhead. Framed against the moving images, two men’s silhouettes stood out as they walked down the aisle toward the front of the theater. Bernie waited for his eyes to adjust to the light. His fingers found the syringe in his pocket.
Get close to him. Use the syringe. Slip out in the confusion. MPs are here, they’ll take care of the rest.
William Sharper, sitting on the right aisle near the middle of the theater, noticed Erich Von Leinsdorf walk past him. A few moments later he whispered to one of his men to stay in their seats, and got up to follow him.
Grannit waited in the lobby for his MPs to reach their positions at the doors. He looked at his watch again. Three minutes until they stopped the film. His men should be in place by now. He picked up his walkie-talkie to check with Carlson when he overheard a nearby conversation.
“Where the hell’s Whitey?” one of the MPs asked another.
“Still in the can,” said another, glancing at his watch.
“What’s taking him so long?”
Grannit looked toward the bathroom door. Sudden instinct propelled him through the door. The room was empty. He bent down and saw legs in one of the toilet stalls, a man’s pants bunched around the ankles. He drew his gun and moved closer. The stall door swung open on a rusty hinge.
Ole Carlson reached the back of the theater stage, directly behind the screen, and put the beam of his gooseneck flashlight on the wall. A small rear door there had been left unlocked and unguarded, inside and out.
“Doggone it. What the heck are they thinking?”
He was about to call the lobby on his walkie-talkie and yell at them to get a body back here covering this door pronto. He turned and looked up at the huge moving images towering above him. He’d never realized you could see movies from the back side of the screen before, a reverse image, like you’d gone through the looking glass. The newsreel was still running. There was Hitler, and that runt Himmler and the fat one, what was his name, he got Göring and Bormann mixed up sometimes. The crowd booed them. The jeers turned to cheers when the newsreel ended, the MGM lion gave a roar, and the movie began rolling lush Technicolor credits for the Judy Garland picture. He hadn’t seen it before. He liked old-time pictures like this, a window back into the simple Midwestern world his parents had grown up in.
Two figures appeared from the left, black outlines against the screen, walking diagonally toward him. His hand went toward his sidearm; then he saw the MP’s helmet on the second of the men and relaxed. The MP pushed a GI along in front of him, a shorter guy in a raincoat. He couldn’t make out their faces and raised his flashlight.
“This joker was trying to sell hooch in the mezzanine,” said the MP.
Carlson pointed the flashlight in the shorter man’s face, and he raised a hand to shield his eyes.
“Well, if it ain’t Corporal Eddie Bennings,” said Carlson. “Seven-twenty-fourth Railway Battalion. Look what the cat dragged in.”
Bennings shielded his eyes against the light and didn’t answer. Another figure rose up behind the two men, ten paces away, framed against the movie screen.
“Lieutenant Miller, is that you?” asked William Sharper, moving closer. “Lieutenant Miller?”
Carlson’s walkie-talkie crackled to life. Grannit’s voice. “Ole, he’s here. Miller’s in the theater.”
Carlson reached for his sidearm, but first had to transfer the flashlight to his left hand. In that moment the MP took a quick step toward him. Carlson saw something flash in the man’s hand, moving toward him.
Grannit burst out of the restroom and through the doors into the auditorium, pulling his sidearm and shouting at the MPs in the lobby.
“Lock it down! Lock it down!”