Garden of Beasts

that plane?”
    “Yes, sir. You have my absolute word on that. I’ll contact my men in Amsterdam myself. We’ll have it there in about three and a half hours.”
    “No, I’ll need it later than that. About ten tonight.”
    “We can’t land in the dark. The strip we’re using’s abandoned. It doesn’t have lights. But there should be enough daylight left to set down around eight-thirty. How’s that?”
    “No. Then make it dawn tomorrow.”
    “Why?”
    There was a pause. “I’m going to get him this time.”
    “Going to . . . ?”
    “Do what I came here for,” Schumann growled.
    “No, no . . . You can’t. It’s too dangerous now. Come on home. Get that job you were talking about. You earned it. You—”
    “Commander . . . you listening?”
    “Go on.”
    “See, I’m here and you’re there, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me, so all of this jawing now’s just a waste of time. Make sure that plane’s at the field at dawn tomorrow.”
    Yeoman Ruth Willets appeared in the doorway. “Hold on,” Gordon said into the phone.
    “Nothing on Taggert yet, sir. Records’ll call as soon as they find something.”
    “Where’s the Senator?”
    “In New York.”
    “Get me on any plane you can going up there now. Army, private. Whatever it takes.”
    “Yessir.”
    Gordon turned back to the phone. “Paul, we’ll get you your lift out of there. But please listen to reason. Everything’s changed now—you have any idea what the risks are?”
    The noise on the line rose and swallowed most of Schumann’s words but it seemed to Bull Gordon that heheard what might’ve been laughter and then the button man’s voice again. Part of the phrase was something like “six to five against.”
    Then he was listening to a silence that was far louder than the static had ever been.
    •   •   •
    In a warehouse in eastern Berlin (which Otto Webber called “his” despite the fact they had to break a window to get inside) they found racks of National Labor Service uniforms. Webber pulled a fancy one off a hanger. “Ach, yes, as I said, the blue-gray becomes you.”
    Maybe it did, but the color was also conspicuous, especially since his shooting blind at Waltham College would be an open field or forest, as Webber had described the landscape there. The uniform was also close-fitting, bulky and hot. It would get him close to the school but he took another set of more practical clothing as well, dungarees, a dark shirt and a pair of boots, to wear for the touch-off itself.
    One of Webber’s business associates had access to a motor pool of government trucks and, with the assurance that Webber would return the vehicle within one day (and not try to sell it back to the government when he did so), the key was handed over, in exchange for some Cuban cigars that had been made in Romania.
    Now they needed only the rifle.
    Paul had considered the pawnbroker near November 1923 Square, the one who’d supplied the Mauser. But he couldn’t be sure whether the man had been part of Taggert’s deceit or, even if not, whether the Kripo or Gestapo had traced the gun back to the shop and arrested him.
    But Webber told him there were often rifles stored in asmall warehouse on the Spree River, where he sometimes made deliveries of military supplies.
    They drove north and, just after crossing the river at Wullenweber Street, turned west and headed through an area of low manufacturing and commercial buildings. Webber tapped Paul’s arm and he pointed to a dark building to their left.
    “That’s it, my friend.”
    The place appeared deserted, which they’d expected, today being Sunday. (“Even godless dung-shirts insist on a day of rest,” Webber explained.) But unfortunately the warehouse was set back behind a tall barbed-wire fence and had a spacious, now empty parking area in the front, which made it very visible from the well-traveled street.
    “How do we—?”
    “Relax, Mr. John Dillinger,” Webber said. “I know what I’m doing. There’s a waterside entrance for boats and barges. It’s impossible to see from the street and you can’t tell it’s a National Socialist warehouse from that side—no eagles or hooked crosses on the dock—so no one will think twice about our visit.”
    They parked a half block past the warehouse and Webber led him through an alley, south, toward the water. The men stepped out onto a stone wall above the brown river, where the air was pungent with the