Garden of Beasts

silently into the bedroom. Schumann was not here, though his suitcase was. Taggert stood in the middle of the room, debating. Schumann was sentimental perhaps in his concern for the woman but he was a thorough professional. Before he entered he would look through the windows in the front and back to see if anybody was here.
    Taggert decided to lie in wait. He settled on the only realistic option: the closet. He’d leave the door open an inch or two so he could hear Schumann enter. When the button man was in the midst of packing his bag, Taggertwould slip out of the closet and kill him. If he was lucky Käthe Richter would be with him and he could murder her as well. If not, he’d wait in her room. She might arrive first, of course, in which case he could kill her then or wait until Schumann returned. He’d have to consider which was best. He’d then scour the rooms to make certain that there was no trace of Schumann’s real identity and call the SS and Gestapo to let them know that the Russian had been stopped.
    Taggert stepped inside the large closet, swung the door nearly shut and undid his top several shirt buttons to alleviate the terrible heat. He breathed deeply, sucking air into his aching lungs. Sweat dotted his forehead and prickled the skin in the pits of his arms. But that mattered not one iota. Robert Taggert was wholly sustained, no, intoxicated, by an element far better than damp oxygen: the euphoria of power. The boy from low, gray Hartford, the boy beaten simply because he was a sharper thinker but a slower runner than the others in his low, gray neighborhood had just met Adolf Hitler himself, the most savvy politician on the face of the earth. He had seen the man’s searing blue eyes regard him with admiration and respect, a respect that would soon be echoed in America when he returned home and reported about the success of his mission.
    Ambassador to England, to Spain. Yes, even here eventually, the country he loved. He could go anywhere he wished.
    Wiping his face again, he wondered how long he would have to wait for Schumann to return.
    The answer to that question came just a moment later. Taggert heard the front door of the boardinghouse open and heavy footsteps in the hall. They continued past this room. There was a knocking.
    “Käthe?” came the distant voice.
    It was Paul Schumann speaking.
    Would he go inside her apartment to wait?
    No . . . The footsteps returned in this direction.
    Taggert heard the jangle of the key, the squeak of old hinges and then a click as the door closed. Paul Schumann had walked into the room where he would die.

Chapter Twenty-Eight
    Heart pounding like any hunter close to his prey, Robert Taggert listened carefully.
    “Käthe?” Schumann’s voice called.
    Morgan heard the creak of boards, the sound of water running in the sink. The gulp of a man drinking thirstily.
    Taggert lifted his pistol. It would be better to shoot him in the chest, front on, as if he’d been attacking. The SS would want him alive, of course, to interrogate him and wouldn’t be happy if Taggert shot the man in the back. Still, he could take no chances. Schumann was too large and too dangerous to confront face-to-face. He’d tell Himmler that he’d had no choice; the assassin had tried to escape or grab a knife. Taggert had been forced to shoot him.
    He heard the man walk to the bedroom. And a moment later, the sounds of rummaging through drawers as he filled his suitcase.
    Now, he thought.
    Taggert pushed one of the two closet doors open further. This gave him a view of the bedroom. He raised the pistol.
    But Schumann wasn’t visible. Taggert could see only the suitcase on the bed. And scattered around it were some books, and other objects. Then he frowned, looking at a pair of shoes sitting in the bedroom doorway. They hadn’t been there before.
    Oh, no . . .
    Taggert realized that Schumann had walked to the bedroom but had then slipped off his shoes and eased back into the living room in stocking feet. He’d been pitching books through the doorway onto the bed to make Taggert think he was still there! That meant—
    The huge fist crashed through the closet door as if it were spun sugar. The knuckles struck Taggert in the neck and jaw and he saw searing red in his vision as he staggered into the living room. He dropped the pistol and grabbed his throat, pressing the agonized flesh.
    Schumann gripped Taggert by the lapels and flung him across the room. He crashed