“I want to die,” Mouse whispered. “I want to die, I want to die, oh God please let me…”
“Stand up,” Michael told him. “Come on, stand up.”
Mouse’s legs had no bones. He wanted to fall to this floor and lie there until Thor’s hammer destroyed the earth. He smelled gunsmoke on the other man’s clothes, and that bitter aroma brought back every horrifying second of the battle in the pine forest. Mouse wrenched away from Michael, and staggered back. “You stay away from me!” he shouted. “Damn you to hell, stay away!”
Michael said nothing. The storm was coming, and it would have to whirl its course.
“You’re a killer!” Mouse shrieked. “A beast! I saw your face, there in the woods. I saw it, as you killed those men! Germans! My people! You shot that boy to pieces, and you never even flinched!”
“There wasn’t time for flinching,” Michael said.
“You enjoyed it!” Mouse raged on. “You liked the killing, didn’t you?”
“No. I didn’t.”
“Oh God… Jesus… you’ve made me into a killer, too.” Mouse’s face contorted. He felt as if he were being wrenched apart by inner tides. “That young man… I murdered him. I killed him. Killed a German. Oh my God.” He looked around the decimated room, and he thought he could hear the screams of his wife and two daughters as the bombs blew them to heaven. Where had he been, he wondered, when the Allied bombers had dropped death onto his loved ones? He didn’t even have a picture of them; all his papers, his wallet, and photographs had been taken from him in Paris. This was the cruelty that drove him to his knees. He scrabbled onto a pile of burned rubble and began to search desperately for a picture of Louisa and the children.
Michael wiped the blood from his lower lip with the back of his hand. Mouse flung bits of wreckage to either side, but he kept the Iron Cross in his fist. “What are you going to do?” Michael asked.
“You did this. You. The Allies. Their bombers. Their hatred of Germany. Hitler was right. The world fears and hates Germany. I thought he was mad, but he was right.” Mouse dug deeper into the debris; there were no pictures, only ashes. He scrambled to burned books and searched for the photographs that used to be on the shelves. “I’ll turn you in. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll turn you in, and then I’ll go to church and beg forgiveness. My God… I murdered a German. I murdered a German, with my own hands.” He sobbed and tears ran down his face. “Where are the pictures? Where are the pictures?”
Michael knelt down a few feet away from him. “You can’t stay here.”
“This is my home!” Mouse shouted, with a force that made the empty window frames shake. His eyes were bloodshot and sunken into his head. “This is where I live,” he said, but this time it was a whisper from his raw throat.
“No one lives here.” Michael stood up. “Gunther’s waiting. It’s time to go.”
“Go? Go where?” He was echoing the Russian prisoner who’d seen no purpose in flight. “You’re a British spy, and I’m a citizen of Germany. My God… why I let you talk me into this; my soul’s burning. Oh Christ, forgive me!”
“Hitler brought down the bombs that killed your family,” Michael said. “You think no one grieved over the dead when Nazi planes bombed London? You think your wife and children were the only bodies ever taken out of a blasted building? If you do, you’re a fool.” He spoke calmly and quietly, but his green gaze pierced Mouse. “Warsaw, Narvik, Rotterdam, Sedan, Dunkirk, Crete, Leningrad, Stalingrad: Hitler strewed corpses as far north, south, east, and west as he could reach. Hundreds of thousands to grieve over, and you cry in the wreckage of a single room.” He shook his head, feeling a mixture of pity and disgust. “Your country is dying. Hitler’s killing it, but before he finishes the job he’s going to destroy as many as he can. Your son, wife, and daughters: what are they to Hitler? Did they matter? I don’t think so.”
“You shut your mouth!” Tears glittered, false diamonds, in Mouse’s beard.
“I’m sorry the bombs fell here,” Michael continued. “I’m sorry they fell in London. But when the Nazis took power, and Hitler started this war, the bombs had to fall somewhere.”
Mouse didn’t reply. He couldn’t find any photographs in the debris, and he sat on the burned floor rocking himself.
“Do you have relatives here?” Michael asked.
Mouse hesitated; then he shook his head.
“Anywhere you can go?”
Another shake of the head. Mouse sniffled and wiped his oozing nose.
“I have to finish my mission. You can go to the safe house with me, if you like. From there Gunther might be able to get you out of the country.”
“This is my home,” Mouse said.
“Is it?” Michael let the question hang; there was no answer. “If you want to live in a cemetery, that’s up to you. If you want to stand up and go with me, come on. I’m leaving.” Michael turned his back on Mouse, went through the flame-scarred rooms to the stairway, and descended to the street. Gunther and Dietz were drinking from the bottle of schnapps; the wind had grown bitter. Michael waited, near the row house’s scorched entrance. He would give Mouse two minutes, he decided. If the man didn’t come out, then Michael would decide what to do next. It was an unhappy situation; Mouse knew too much.
A minute passed. Michael watched two children digging through a pile of blackened bricks. They discovered a pair of boots, and one of the children chased the other from them. Then Michael heard the staircase creak, and he felt his muscles relax. Mouse walked out of the building, into the somber gray light. He looked up at the sky, and around at the other buildings, as if seeing things for the first time. “All right,” he said, his voice weary and emotionless. His eyes were red-rimmed and swollen. “I’ll go with you.”
Once Michael and Mouse were back in the wagon, Gunther snapped the reins and the spavined farm horse started off. Dietz offered Michael the schnapps, and Michael drank from it, then held the bottle out for Mouse. The little man shook his head; he stared at his open right palm. In it was the Cross of Iron.
Michael didn’t know what he would’ve done if Mouse hadn’t come out. Kill him? Possibly. He didn’t care to think about that. He was a professional, in a dirty business, and first and foremost was the mission at hand. Iron Fist. Frankewitz. Blok. Dr. Hildebrand, and gas warfare. And, of course, Harry Sandler. How did they all fit together, and what was the meaning of painted bullet holes on green metal?
He would have to find out. If he failed, so might the Allied invasion of Europe.
He settled back, against the wagon’s side, and felt the outline of a submachine gun in the hay next to him. Mouse stared at the Iron Cross, mesmerized that such a small cold thing should be the last item that held any meaning in his life. And then he closed his hand around the medal and slipped it into his pocket.
3
The safe house was in the Neukolln district of Berlin, an area of grimy factories and row houses crowded along the railroad tracks. Gunther knocked at the door of a row house, and it was opened by a thin young man with close-cropped brown hair and a long-jawed face that looked as if it had never worn a smile. Dietz and Gunther escorted their charges into the building and up a staircase to the second floor, where Michael and Mouse were taken to a parlor and left alone. A middle-aged woman with curly gray hair came in about ten minutes later, bearing a tray of two cups of tea and slices of rye bread. She asked no questions, and Michael asked none of her. He and Mouse wolfed down the tea and bread.