I

Berlin was falling, falling in ruin, falling in fire, falling in blood. Back when the war was new, Goring said you could call him Meyer if a single bomb ever fell on the capital of the Reich. Had anyone held the Reichsmarschall to his promise, he would have changed his name a million times by now.

Goring never said a word about shells or machine – gun bullets. Back in those triumphant days, who could have imagined Germany would go to war with Russia? Not needing to worry about Russia helped make the destruction of France as easy as it was.

And who could have imagined that, if Germany did go to war with Russia, she wouldn’t knock down the Slavic Untermenschen in six weeks or so? Who could have imagined that those Red subhumans would fight their way back from the gates of Moscow, back across their own country, across Poland, across eastern Germany, and into Berlin? Who could have imagined the war was over except for the last orgy of killing, and all the Fuhrer’s promised secret weapons hadn’t done a thing to hold off Germany’s inevitable and total defeat?

Captain Hasso Pemsel and what was left of his company crouched in the ruins of the Old Museum. The space between the Spree and the Kupfergraben was Berlin’s museum district. These days, the finest antiquities were in G Tower, next to the Tiergarten. People said the massive reinforced – concrete antiaircraft tower could hold out for a year after the rest of Berlin was lost. Maybe soon they would get the chance to find out if they were right.

A Russian submachine gun burped bullets. Behind Hasso, something shattered with a crash. It might have come through two or three thousand years, but a curator had decided it wasn’t worth taking to G Tower. Nobody would study it any more – that was for sure.

Where was the Ivan with the burp gun? Pemsel spotted motion behind a pile of rubble. He squeezed off a short burst with his Schmeisser, then ducked away to find fresh cover. A wild scream came from the direction of the heap of bricks and paving stones. It didn’t lure him into looking. The Russians were past masters at making you pay if you fell for one of their games.

Like it matters, Hasso thought. You’re going to die here any which way. Sooner or later? What difference does it make? But discipline held. So did a perverse pride.

He refused to do less than his best, even now – maybe especially now. If the Russians wanted his carcass, they’d have to pay the butcher’s bill for it.

A few meters away, his top sergeant was rolling a cigarette with weeds that might have been tobacco and a strip of paper torn from Der Panzerbar. The Armored Bear was the last German newspaper going in Berlin; even the Nazi Party’s Volkischer Beobachter had shut down.

Karl Edelsheim was good at making do. Like Hasso, he’d been in the Wehrmacht since before the war, and he was still here after almost four years on the Eastern Front. How much longer he or any of the German defenders would be here was a question Hasso declined to dwell on.

Instead, he said, “Got any more fixings? I’m out.” If you paid attention to what was right in front of you, you could forget about the bigger stuff… till you couldn’t any more.

“Sure, Captain.” Edelsheim passed him the tobacco pouch and another strip of newspaper. Hasso rolled his own, then leaned close to the Feldwebel for a light. Edelsheim blew out smoke and said, “We’re fucked, aren’t we?” He might have been talking about the weather for all the excitement or worry he showed.

“Well, now that you mention it, yes.” Hasso didn’t wail and beat his breast, either. What was the point? What was the use? “Where are we going to go? You want to throw down your Mauser and surrender to the Ivans?”

“I’d sooner make ‘em kill me clean,” Edelsheim said at once. The Russians were not in a forgiving mood. After some of the things Hasso had seen and done in the east, he knew they had their reasons. Edelsheim had fought there longer. Chances were he knew more.

Another burst of submachine – gun fire made them both flatten out. They might have been ready to die, but neither one was eager. Hasso had seen a few Waffen-SS officers, realizing Germany could not prevail, go out against the Russians looking for death, almost like Japanese suicide pilots. He didn’t feel that way. He wanted to live. He just thought his chances were lousy.

Most of the bullets thudded into the wall in back of him. One spanged off something instead. The sound made Hasso turn around.

The Wehrmacht captain saw… a stone. It was perhaps a meter across, of brownish – gray granite, and looked as if it were dumped there at random. But, like the other exhibits in the museum, it had a sign above it explaining what it was. OMPHALOS, it said, and then, in Greek letters, what was presumably the same thing: OM?A?O?.

“What the devil’s an omphalos?” he asked Edelsheim. A couple of Russians scrambled out to drag off a wounded man. He didn’t fire. A minute’s worth of truce wouldn’t matter.

“Beats me,” the sergeant answered. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”

“Mineral.” Hasso jerked a thumb over his shoulder.

Edelsheim looked, then shrugged. “I’d say that honking big rock is. What the hell is it?”

“It’s Greek to me,” Hasso said. But he was curious enough to crawl over to read the smaller print under the heading. When the world was falling to pieces around you, why not indulge yourself in small ways if you could? He wouldn’t get the chance for anything bigger – that seemed much too clear.

“Well?” the Feldwebel asked.

‘“The Omphalos Stone, from Zeus’ temple at Delphi, was reputed to be the navel of the world,’” Hasso read. ‘“It was the center and the beginning, according to the ancient Greeks, and also a joining place between this world and others. Brought to Berlin in 1893 by Herr Doktor Professor Maximilian Eugen von Heydekampf, it has rested here ever since. Professor von Heydekampf’s unfortunate disappearance during an imperial reception here two years later has never been completely explained.’”

“Ha!” Edelsheim said. “What do you want to bet some pretty girl disappeared about the same time?”

“Wouldn’t be surprised.” But Hasso’s eyes went back to the card. “‘And also a joining place between this world and others.’ I’ll tell you, Karl, this world doesn’t look so good right now.”

“So plunk your ass down on the rock and see what happens,” the sergeant advised. “How could you be worse off, no matter where you end up?”

The shooting picked up again. Someone not far away started screaming on a high, shrill note, like a saw biting into a nail. The shriek went on and on. That was no sham. That was a desperately hurt man, one who would die soon – but not soon enough to suit him.

“Good question,” Hasso said. “Another world or this same old fucked – up place? Here goes nothing.” The patched seat of his field – gray pants came down on the navelstone.

Sergeant Edelsheim turned his head to jeer at the captain while he was on the rock. The whole goddamn country was on the rocks now. That was pretty funny, when you –

“What the – ?”

One instant, Captain Pemsel was there. The next, he was gone, as if by trick photography in the movies. He might never have been in the museum with Edelsheim.

“Der Herr Gott im Himmel” Sudden mad hope surged through the sergeant. If there was a way out, any way out… What he’d told Pemsel was true for himself, too. Wherever he went, how could he be worse off?