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He went to one of the files standing along one wall. He pulled it open and started to look for the blacklist. If Colonel Gerhardt Wilke was listed, he could be crossed off.
    Murphy stuck his head in the door.
    “Ready for another one? We’ve got ’em stacked up out here like shit on shingles!”
    Erik grinned. “Okay,” he said. “Next!”
    Next. Another one. And another one. And . . .
    The war was in its final weeks. Had to be. The German fronts were collapsing all over. Berlin itself was threatened. But the CIC work was really just beginning. And a lot could happen in a few weeks. A hell of a lot. Especially in a few weeks of war . . .
    He rubbed his hand. That damned stubble had made his skin itch.
    It was 0928 hrs—almost nine-thirty in the morning. In Dachau, 183 miles to the south, two Waffen SS officers were just being checked through the main gate of the concentration camp. . . .
Dachau
    1634 hrs
    Untersturmführer Wilhelm Richter squinted up at the smoke that belched from the tall brick chimneys. It was oily gray as it billowed into the clean blue Bavarian sky. The ovens of Dachau were roaring around the clock. There was only a little time left in which to carry out the final solution to the Jewish problem.
    The young Waffen SS lieutenant leaned against the squat building hiding the infernal roots of the towering smokestacks. The bricks were warm, and discolored with greasy soot, and Willi had carefully sought out a clean spot. A dozen inmates of the concentration camp were loading a military truck parked nearby. Willi was watching them.
    The men had a cadaverous look. Their threadbare striped KL uniforms hung loosely on their emaciated bodies. Across the back of each man’s pajamalike jacket a large S had been painted—S for Sonderkommando, the special details of camp inmates who’d volunteered to do the most loathsome of the crematorium jobs in return for a few weeks of life.
    Just a few weeks, Willi thought. And what kind of life? Anyway, sooner or later they all end up the same way. Up in smoke!
    He started to whistle softly as he watched the men work.
Du kleine Fliege,
Wenn ich dich kriege —
    It was an old German nursery rhyme he remembered from his childhood, though he was not aware of that.
    The prisoners labored wearily. The wooden boxes they were manhandling were heavy and the men were weak. It took four of them to lift each box and struggle it into place on the truck. They toiled in dull, leaden silence, and the half dozen black-uniformed SS Totenkopfverband guards ringing the pitiful work party, lazily cradling Schmeisser machine pistols in their arms, hardly seemed necessary. But Sturmbannführer Kratzer had insisted.
    Kratzer himself, standing at the rear of the truck, followed the loading intently.
    A small man, wearing steel-rimmed glasses, with closely cropped hair and an imitation Hitler mustache, the SS major was not an imposing figure.
    But there was something intense, something compelling about him, which gave even Willi an uneasy feeling.
    The last box was placed on the truck. The Sonderkommando inmates were herded together in a small group. With the unerring perception of the hopeless, they knew that they had done their final job. Their sallow, sunken eyes stared at the ground; only a few of the still defiant dared lift their eyes and watch their future billowing darkly from the chimneys.
    Sturmbannführer Kratzer beckoned to the Totenkopfverband noncom in charge of the guards. Almost absentmindedly he nodded toward the group of inmates.
    “You know what to do,” he said flatly, in the same tone of voice he might have used giving instructions to a file clerk.
    The noncom nodded. “ Jawohl, Herr Sturmbannführer.”
    Kratzer turned toward Willi.
    “Richter!” he called. “Let’s go!”
    While two SS guards jumped into the rear of the truck, Willi walked to the cab. He kept his eyes averted from the waiting camp inmates. There was suddenly an unpleasant stench in the air. He’d