The Black Gate Read Online Free PDF Page A

a checkup. He had to restrain himself from covering up his groin with his hands.
    “He’s mine first.” Getting up, the woman smoothed her skirt before walking toward a curtained area, gesturing for Peter to follow.  
    Bob was clearly trying to suppress a grin and was failing miserably.  
    “Come on,” the woman snapped. “We’re on a tight schedule.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Peter said before following her behind the curtain.
    “Here’s your uniform,” she told him, pointing to a rack beside a chair. The uniform was black, with glossy boots that came halfway up the calf, along with a visored round wheel cap. The insignia sent a chill down Peter’s spine: twin silver lightning bolts adorned the right collar tab of the tunic, while the hat bore a death’s head below an eagle clutching a swastika. Those were the trademarks of the Schutzstaffel , Hitler’s SS. The left collar tab bore the three diamonds and two twin stripes of a Hauptsturmführer , the rank equivalent of a captain.
    The only bit of color adorning the otherwise ominous uniform was a red armband that bore a black swastika on a white circle background. Peter ran his fingers along the sleeve, then lifted it up to see what was on the silver-trimmed cloth band around the cuff. “ Totenkopf ,” he murmured. “Skull.”
    “That’s the honorific of the 3 rd SS Panzer Division, the unit in which you were serving when your right knee was torn apart by shrapnel, Hauptsturmführer Müller.”  
    Peter turned to look at her. She had spoken the words in perfect German with a strong Berlinerisch accent.
    “ Ja, natürlich ,” he answered, dropping into his parents’ native tongue automatically, just as he had done at home when he was a boy. Bob, whose many talents also included speaking fluent German, had drilled Peter remorselessly on the details of his new identity. “A T-34 destroyed my tank in the Demjansk Pocket in October 1941. A nasty business, that was.” He shrugged. “Since then, I’ve been pushing paper at SS Headquarters on Prinz-Albrecht-Straße in Berlin until I received orders to report to Arnsberg.”
    She scrutinized him for a moment, then slowly nodded. “Passable. Now get out of those American rags before you’re shot as a spy.”
    After she’d disappeared behind the curtain, he stripped naked. Bob had made it clear to him that he could take nothing with him, not even his underwear, if it didn’t come from Germany. He even had to leave his leg brace behind. Instead, the OSS had provided him with one crafted in Germany that didn’t have the awkward metal struts that ran down to his shoe. It felt strange after he strapped it on and gingerly put his weight on his right leg, but seemed to serve its purpose.  
    As he shed his American clothing and donned the SS uniform, he couldn’t help but sense a deeper process of transformation. Looking in the mirror after he’d dressed, he found that what Connelly had told him, that Peter would have looked right at home on an SS recruiting poster, was true. Adorned in black, with close cropped blond hair and sparkling blue eyes set in a ruggedly handsome face, he was the spitting image of one of Hitler’s Aryan supermen. He was at once thrilled, because the uniform gave him a sense of élan , a veneer of callous superiority, and at the same time appalled that it appealed to his ego. You have to play the role , he told himself. Otherwise, you’re going to wind up as dead as Mannie . Shying away from the memory of his brother, he strapped a Wittnauer watch on his right wrist and looked at the time for the first time in four days. It was two-thirty in the morning.
    The last element of his disguise was a single medal, the Ritterkreuz , or Iron Cross. Made in the shape of the cross pattée , it was black and trimmed in silver, with a swastika in the center and the year 1939 on the bottom stem of the cross. It hung from a ribbon that was red in the center, bounded by white and black on both top