Black Ops (Presidential Agent 5)

Gorner's face, which had been flushed, now turned pale.

"The Herr Oberst's drilling is over the mantel in my living room. There are several shotguns. And the game wardens, of course, are armed."

"Bingo!" Castillo said. "We have just found a Heckler & Koch submachine gun. Otto, get Siggie Muller on the line for me, please."

"The guy on the road?" Delchamps asked.

"That was an MP7 under his coat," Castillo said. "Maybe he'll know where we can find something else we can use. I don't want to walk into church trying to hide a drilling under my coat."

"Siggie'll know," Kocian said as he reached impatiently for the telephone Gorner had just finished dialing.

Castillo looked at Kocian with curiosity but didn't say anything.

"What's a drilling?" Sparkman asked.

"A side-by-side shotgun," Castillo said. "Usually sixteen-gauge. With a rifle barrel, usually seven-millimeter, underneath."

"I never heard of anything like that."

"That's because you went to the Air Force Academy, Captain Sparkman," Castillo said. "At West Point, we learn all about guns."

"Screw you, Charley," Torine said loyally.

"Siggie, here is Eric Kocian," Billy said into the telephone. "I need to see you just as soon as you can get here. We're in the big room. Bring your weapon, preferably weapons."

[FOUR]

Muller appeared five minutes later. By then Gorner had spoken to the Bundeskriminalamt, and was just hanging up the phone after speaking with his security supervisor.

"You been in the attic lately, Siggie?" Kocian asked.

Muller looked uncomfortable. He nodded but didn't reply.

"What's in the attic?" Gorner asked.

"Something the Herr Oberst and I put there and didn't want you and Helena to worry about. Siggie did not like keeping it from you. I insisted."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"When the Herr Oberst and I escaped from the Russians--"

"Escaped from the Russians?" Castillo asked. "I thought you were captured by the English?"

"That's the story the Herr Oberst told. He did not wish to further alarm his wife unnecessarily. We were captured by, and escaped from, the Red Army. We walked from near Stettin--now Szczecin, just inside Poland--to here. We saw the rape of Berlin. We saw the rape of every other place the Red Army went. It very much bothered the Herr Oberst."

"I don't think I understand," Castillo said.

"I know I don't," Gorner said.

"Let's show them what we have in the attic, Siggie," Kocian said.

"Jawohl, Herr Kocian."

Muller led them to a closet off the sitting room. He took a chair into the closet, stood on it, put his hands flat against a low ceiling, and pushed hard upward. There was a screeching sound and one side of the ceiling folded upward.

"Over the years, there have been improvements to what was originally here," Kocian said. "The ceiling--the door--is now hinged, for example. We used to have to prop it open. And there were no electric lights here in the old days."

As if it had been rehearsed, Siggie stretched an arm into the hole. There was a click and electric lights came on. Then he heaved and grunted, and let down from the attic a simple, sturdy ladder.