Private Berlin (Private 5)

“That’s a human femur,” Gabriel said in her ear.

Mattie swallowed hard and swung her lights deeper into the subbasement, seeing more bones.

And then a human skull. And then two more.

And then more bones and skulls, scattered like seashells everywhere.

CHAPTER 26

“IT’S A BONEYARD,” Mattie whispered.

“We see them,” Burkhart said in her ear. “Dietrich wants you out of there.”

Mattie had no argument. She’d never been in a more frightening place in her life, and she wanted out before everything went claustrophobic.

But as she pivoted to leave, her beams played across something twenty meters away. Mattie rocked back on her heels as if hit on the chin.

Two fresher corpses lay there, both almost devoid of skin.

A woman. A man.

Clothes hung in tatters from them.

Though she absolutely did not want to, she moved to within several feet of the bodies. She recognized a black ribbed turtleneck that hung off the larger of the two, and felt her whole world cave in.

Mattie fell to her knees and stared, her breath coming hard and fast, echoing in the respirator and making her feel like a zombie, the living dead.

“Mattie?” Gabriel’s voice came in her ear.

“Do you see them?” she asked numbly.

“Mattie, we do. Please, come up out of there.”

“The bigger one is Chris,” she said.

“My God, no,” Gabriel said.

Mattie swooned and thought she was fainting.

She rocked her head back, gasping and feeling drunk, when through the spots dancing before her eyes she spotted the first package. It was strapped to the ceiling support about four feet in front of her.

It was about the size of a paperback book and wrapped in green wax paper that had Russian Cyrillic writing on it, and a fuzzy stamp in German.

For several seconds nothing about the situation seemed real, and what she was seeing did not compute.

But then she lolled her head over, seeing similar green paper packages strapped to the ceiling supports, scores of them.

They were all connected with electrical wire.

“Engel!” Burkhart yelled. “Those are bombs! Get the hell out of there!”

CHAPTER 27

ALL THINGS MUST pass. Isn’t that what they say, my friends?

It’s certainly what my mother said the last time I saw her, traitorous bitch.

All things must pass. As if that explains anything to a boy of eight. As if that justified what she’d done to herself, to my father, and to me.