Yost saw the Oberleutnant standing at the end of the porch, his Luger raised; he saw Morgen round the corner toward the door. Yost ran toward the Oberleutnant, the jagged bloody shard of glass raised over his head like a dagger. The SS officer aimed his Luger carefully at Morgen’s head. Morgen froze, his face a mask of weary resignation.

“I heard the shot just instants before the point of the glass dug into the Oberleutnant’s back.” Yost shook his head sadly as he spoke. “Just another second, perhaps half a second, and the Oberleutnant would never have been able to fire.”

Yost pulled the glass from the Nazi’s neck and stabbed him again and again. The officer went down, spurting blood from severed arteries shining bright crimson in the snow.

“I don’t remember much after that,” Yost said, “except that after the Nazi was down, I went to look at Hans.” A pained look washed over Yost’s face. “He had been horribly wounded in the head. I could see parts of the gray matter through the hole in his skull.

“I must have gone crazy then, because my memory is blacked out. I don’t remember anything until an American soldier pulled me off the Oberleutnant’s body. He had to slap me and knock the mirror fragment from my hand.” Yost looked Ridgeway Directly in the eyes. “The American soldier told me later that when he’d first seen me, I was straddling the Oberleutnant’s chest with my knees and was stabbing at his eyes.” Yost’s voice grew faint. “He… the Oberleutnant… was still alive. The American soldier told me he could hear the screams as I continued stabbing.”

Yost shook his head. “Insanity. I suppose the only thing a sane person can do in wartime is go insane.”

He fell silent for a long moment. Only the sounds of popping knots in the fireplace logs and the rumbles of the crane at the construction site next door broke the silence. They did not hear the whir of the elevator motor as it leaped to life, carrying the car to its summons in the lobby, where four men in expensively tailored business suits waited.

TWENTY-FIVE

The ceiling panels of Yost’s private elevator car littered its floor. Inside were four men. Two of them attached shaped explosive charges to the closed door.

“Carefully,” said the man who had been sitting next to the driver in the black sedan. He was clearly the man in charge. “After the disaster at the warehouse, this must go perfectly.”

One of the men had crawled on top of the elevator car and crouched there, watching the activity below. The disconnected wires of the closed-circuit television camera dangled beside its blind electronic eye.

“Make sure the charges are attached firmly, and then pack the modeling clay around it, just as firmly,” said the man in charge. “We want to make sure it explodes outward. Otherwise…” His voice trailed off, his meaning clear. The charges could as easily kill them as blow in the doors. Setting shaped charges was an art, not a science.