the banister, his gun on rapid-fire, spraying the opening. The second guard spun around in circles, finally collapsing on the flare itself. Swirling black smoke was everywhere as Dietz grabbed the young girl by the legs, carrying her up the steps cradle-fashion.
"Bring that son of a bitch up here!" he ordered Etranger Two in French.
-II est mort, mon capitaine."
"I don't give a damn about his future, I just want his hand, and not too cold either!"
In the fourth-floor corridor, the backstairs detail raced to their left, Dietz throwing Adrienne over his shoulder, the French commando dragging the Nazi at his side. Six seconds later they came to the central archway that broke the wall. Latham, Witkowski, and Etranger One were waiting. Dietz gently lowered the girl to the floor; mercifully, she was unconscious.
I "It's nasty," said the colonel, examining the wound, "but the blood's not gushing." He yanked out his garrote, and swiftly wrapped it around the girl's leg and tightened the straps.
"That'll hold for a while."
I Etranger One and Two had pinned the dead Nazi aide against the inner wall to the left of what had to be the electronic print-scan release, a dimly lit space large, enough for a hand to be inserted, the palm pressed downward. If the imprint matched a computerized previous entry, the huge steel door would presumably open.
However, if a mismatched imprint were made, an alarm would go off in the thick-walled, vaultlike quarters beyond.
"Ready, monsieur?" asked E-Two, gripping the neo Nazi lifeless right wrist.
"Wait a minute!" said Latham.
"Suppose he's lefthanded?"
"So?"
"The photoelectric cells would reject it and the alarm would go off. That's the way these things work."
"We can't wake him up to ask him, monsieur."
"That cigarette holder-it was in his left hand.. .. Let's look in his pockets." The search of the dead man proceeded.
"Coins and money clip-left trouser pocket," continued Drew, "pack of cigarettes, left jacket pocket; two ballpoint pens, right inside jacket pocket, and the suit's custom-made, not off the rack."
"I don't understand-" -"Left-handed people prefer to reach for pencils and pens on their right side, just as someone like me, who's right-handed, reaches over to the left. It's easier, that's all."
"Your decision, monsieur?"
"I've got to go with my gut on this," said Latham, breathing deeply.
"Move him over to the other side and I'll stick his left hand in there."
The Frenchmen slid the corpse along the wall to the right side of the space. Drew grabbed the left wrist, and, as though he were dismantling a complicated bomb, he inserted the hand and slowly, cautiously, pressed the palm down on the inside surface. No one breathed until the large steel door silently opened. The dead Nazi fell to the floor and the four men walked inside. The chamber they entered was more a horrifying nightmare than someone's living quarters.
The massive room was octagonal in shape with a glass dome that let the moonlight stream through. The courtesan, Elyse, had called it a pharaoh's tomb, an inhabited grave, and in several ways she was correct. It was eerily silent, no sound permitted from the outside, and instead of a pharaoh's 'possessions to see him across the river of death, there was a wall of medical equipment to prevent him from entering those waters. There were eight doors, one for each immense panel of the octagon. Elyse had told them that General Monluc's aides had their rooms within the tomb; five door shad to belong to the dark suits, leaving three unknown, one presumably a bathroom, two .. question marks.
All this registered upon second and third glances, but what first assaulted the eyes of a stranger were the grotesquely enlarged photographs on the walls everywhere, all bathed in bloodred light that shone up from the baseboards. The were a record of Nazi atrocities; it was like a
I y , dark corridor in a Holocaust museum-the horrors visited upon the Jews and "undesirables" by the madmen of Hitler's messianic hordes, with photographs of dead naked bodies piled in heaps.
Next to them were pictures of blond men and women-presumably traitors-hanging by their necks from ropes, the faces contorted in agony, reminders that all dissent, no matter how minor, was prohibited. Only the sick est of minds could wake up in the night and be instantly gratified by the obscene panoply.
The most mesmerizing sight, however, was the night shirted figure on the bed. It was bathed in dull white light." in contrast to the magenta-red wash illuminating the walls. A very, very old man reclined on