The Magicians of Night - By Barbara Hambly Page 0,114

well to the northeast of Berlin’s sea of industrial slums, but it was more heavily built up than the Jungfern Heide. During the day, listening against the slant of the attic ceiling, he’d been able to make out occasional sounds of traffic on Teglerstrasse itself. He wondered why von Rath had wanted separate establishments. As part of this “demonstration” of theirs?

The place was smaller than von Rath’s headquarters, having, Saltwood guessed, four rooms downstairs and four, maybe six, up. His guards now escorted him to what had been an upstairs parlor, rugless, cold, and containing a plain wooden table and three more hard kitchen chairs of the pattern already familiar to him. Evidently all the better pieces of furniture had found their way into some Party official’s residence. Its window wasn’t covered, but it was barred; as soon as the guards had recuffed his hands in front of him and locked the door, leaving him alone, he strode over and looked out. Treetops were visible over a buff sandstone wall more decorative than functional, and the roofs of neighboring “villas.” On the gravel drive below were parked two large Mercedes staff cars, a three-ton Benz LG.-3000 transport with a tie-down canvas cover, and a number of motorcycles. Storm Troopers and two minor officers in the uniforms of the Luftwaffe stood by them, smoking. Beyond, he could see iron gates, backed with sheet metal, as were those of the house in the Jungfern Heide on the other side of town. It was broad daylight, by the angle of the cloud-filtered sun shortly after noon.

Escaping over the wall with six-guns blazing didn’t look like a real promising bet.

Nevertheless Tom began a meticulous examination of the room.

There were two doors—one into the hallway, the other, presumably, into another room. Both were locked—new locks, as in the Jungfern Heide house, set in the old oak of the doors. At a guess, he thought, looking at the scratches on the bare floorboards beneath the three chairs and the way they were grouped around the table, prisoners were interviewed here. A Gestapo safe house? God knew how many of those there were around the outskirts of Berlin. Easy enough for the Gestapo, or the SS, to acquire from those “enemies of the Reich” who disappeared into concentration camps. Real nice property, his mind framed an advertisement, comfortable, detached, suburban villa; privacy, security, all the modern conveniences, and a place to put the kiddies when they’re bad...

He thought, as he had many times during last night’s interminable incarceration in the attic cell, about poor Professor Sligo, locked in his windowless room and completely at the mercy of a fruitcake like von Rath. No improvement over whatever insane asylum they’d gotten him from.

But he’d sure as hell come up with something. Possibly not of his own free will, but SOMETHING.

He shivered again and rubbed his arm. Hallucinogenic gas? Never spend your hard-earned cash on liquor again, folks—skip all that time-consuming drinking and go straight to the D.T.s! As he never had before, he pitied old Charlie the wino who’d hung around the West Virginia mines, screaming as he tore imaginary snakes from his clothing. Christ, if that’s what it’s like I’m going teetotal.

And he grinned mirthlessly. Right—you’ll turn down the glass of brandy von Rath’s going to offer you before he shoots you as a spy.

He had to get out. If he’d been shocked enough, panicked enough, to shove his own arm into what he thought was a fire to get rid of that thing eating its way up toward his face, God knew what havoc Sligo’s invention would work in the forces defending the roads up from the English beaches against the first Panzer divisions, the RAF boys going against the Luftwaffe in the Sussex skies.

No wonder Mayfair wanted Sligo destroyed—and no wonder Intelligence wouldn’t believe the rumors they’d heard.

Having made a circuit of the room, he went back to the second, inner door. Hinges on the other side, dammit—in any case he didn’t have so much as a belt buckle to pry them out with. He didn’t have a cigarette, either, and was feeling the need of one badly. As he knelt to examine the lock he became aware of voices in the other room, the faint creak of footsteps, and the dim, protesting groan of an overburdened chair.

“Damn it, Captain, it’s unbelievable!” came a booming voice he recognized as Goering’s. “I wrote out those instructions myself! Even Himmler didn’t know what they were going to