He inched down the rubble on his back, as if he were sliding down a sand dune, but the bricks rolled with him, a small avalanche, not sand. In a few seconds they’d hear the clattering over their engine. He crouched, then took a breath and started running down the slope, pitched forward by gravity, flying, so that he thought he’d reach the pavement face first. He staggered from the jolt of hitting flat ground, then hurled himself down the street. How long before they turned? His shoes smacking the pavement now, in shadow and racing south, putting space between him and the wrecked ministry. Getting away with it. Until the air exploded again with a spray of bullets. The Behrenstrasse car, catching his shirt in its lights. He ducked but kept running, looking frantically for another open space in the wall of rubble. Shouts behind him, more boots-probably Sikorsky and his men responding to the gunfire, back in the street.
One long dark stretch, the other Soviet car visible now at the end, standing in the middle of the Voss Strasse intersection, by the Chancellery. Head right somewhere, behind the buildings, the wasteland near Hitler’s bunker. But the rubble ran in an unbroken line here. Shouts in the dark. There would be guards at the bunker, even at night, watching for looters. Who would they think he was, running away from guns? The street would end any second now, with the roadblock, and someone had started firing again, maybe at random, maybe at the pale glow of his shirt.
He swerved right off the pavement into a dark space in the rubble. A cul-de-sac, like a moon crater, one of its rims backing onto the Chancellery itself. He thought of Liz snapping pictures. The long gallery and then the smashed office opening out to the back. No one would be collecting souvenirs now. He clambered up another apron of rubble to the ground-floor window and vaulted through, finally out of the street. He stayed down for a minute, his eyes adjusting to the dark, and started across the room, hitting his shin against an overturned chair, then retreated back to the wall, feeling his way toward the next window. More light here, just faint enough to see that the long gallery was still a mess, a minefield of broken furniture and fallen chandeliers. He moved farther along the wall, avoiding the booby traps of debris in the center. Shouts outside again. They would have reached the roadblock, would be doubling back now to pick their way through the ruins, a rat hunt. Get to the end of the room somehow, toward the bunker. Maybe the guards hadn’t been alerted yet. The element of surprise.
He had reached another chair, stuffing spilling out of the ripped upholstery, when the tall doors banged open, flung back in a hurry. He dived behind the chair, holding his breath, as if even a slight rasp would give him away. Sikorsky with a few men, one of them a Mongol guard from outside. Machine guns and flashlights waving around the still hall. Sikorsky motioned with his hands for them to spread out. For another second no one moved, letting the noisy echo of their entrance die down, then Sikorsky took a step toward the wall with the chair and Jake froze, the back of his neck tingling. Not fear; a trickle of blood running down, soaking into the shirt. How much had he lost?
“Geismar!” Sikorsky shouted into the air, another echo, looking now toward the end of the gallery, where the office and garden windows were. “You cannot leave here.” Not through the garden anyway, and not back into the street either. “No more shooting. You have my word.” All the while motioning to the others to begin their sweep, guns ready. In Stalingrad they’d fought building by building, a war of snipers. “We have Brandt,” he said, cocking his head to hear a reply. Jake let out a breath, half expecting it to echo. But did they? No, they’d raced around the Adlon too fast, not stopping for anything. A poor chess player.
Sikorsky nodded and his men began to move with their flashlights, only one of them left stationed by the door. But armed. Jake followed the lights. They’d sweep to the end, then back, until they were sure. No way to get to the garden. He raised his head a little, glancing out the window. Distract the Mongol, make a break for it across Voss Strasse. But the open car was there at the corner, ready to fire, maybe a second Mongol still posted on the steps. Back the way he had come, to the moon crater? Every step echoing in the giant room, no weapon except a splintered armrest. Endgame.
