Michael Avallone: The Saint Magazine. January 1967. Volume 24, No. 5.

“Jews, gypsies, madmen — does it matter? They’re looking for me. I suppose they’ll kill me if I’m found.”

“You should be in the Zoo Bunker.”

“No. Out here is fine.”

A shell landed nearby, shaking the building and sending the great elephant into new spasms of terror. “The Russians will be here in another day or two,” she told him. “This afternoon we could see their tanks coming up the Lutzowstrasse. The city is being defended by boys and old men. There is no one else.”

“The women?”

“Many are killing themselves. They fear what the Russians will do to them. I think we were all hoping the Americans would get here first.”

Outside there were voices, shouting something in a language he couldn’t understand. “Russians!” he whispered. “An advance patrol! Come on.”

They ran from the elephant house, and he pulled her along by the hand as he had so many years ago, when they were both so close to being children. He had a flashing memory of a sunny summer’s day when they’d left the animals to eat their lunch by the banks of the Landwehr Canal. That was long before the war, in the days when people still laughed at Hitler.

They’d followed the path toward the demolished aquarium, but now suddenly a soldier blocked their path, his machine gun outlined against the glow of distant flames. He shouted in Russian, and Bohg threw Lotta to the ground. He went down on one knee and fired a quick burst from his machine pistol before the Russian could aim. As the man toppled backward in death, he ran forward to grab the fallen weapon. He knew there would be others nearby.

“Rudolph!” Lotta shouted. “To your left!”

He turned, firing as he did so, and saw two more figures topple before his bullets. “They’re all around us,” Lotta sobbed.

“I don’t think so. The main firing is still a good half-mile away.”

There seemed to be no others, and he rose slowly to his feet. “Take the pistol,” he told her. “I’ll keep the machine gun.”

“I wouldn’t know how to use it.”

“You’ll learn quickly enough. You may want it — after I’m gone.”

“I know,” she said, close to his ear. “You want to die, don’t you? Rather than be arrested as a war criminal. But what could you have done that was so terrible? How could you have changed in six years?”

“I didn’t change. The world changed. Come on.”

They’d almost reached the hippopotamus pen when an artillery shell hit it dead center, throwing them backward to the ground and ripping through the hide of the tough old animal. “Rudolph! Are you all right?”

“I think so. Cut my arm a little.”

“The hippo! It’s...”

“Don’t look.”

“What kind of a war is this, where the animals must die?”

He helped her to her feet, and they made their way past the great dead beast. “The people die, why not the animals? Most of them are just as innocent.”

“Will there be nothing left for tomorrow?”

He couldn’t answer, because he did not know. He thought that something — the city — would remain, but he could not be certain. They came at last to a monkey cage where a wounded chimp screamed and chattered in pain. Bohg shot the animal, and that was the only sort of answer he could give.

“We used to cure them,” she said.

“Yes.”

“And feed them. Remember the crowds on a Sunday in the spring?”

“It was a good life.”

“I wish I had a cigarette.”

He gave her one, and they stopped by the canal to smoke. The shells bad stopped, but not far off they could hear the rumble and squeak of tanks in the darkness.

“We heard about you once,” she said finally. “We heard you were on Hitler’s personal staff.”

“Yes.”

“Whatever you did, he made you do it. That will be a defense.”

There was fire from the direction of the flak tower now, as the German defenders caught sight of the enemy tanks moving across the park. At moments the entire night seemed alive with the blinding brightness of flares and tracers. “This must be what hell is like,” Lotta said.

“I’ve got to get you out of it, to someplace safe.”

“Don’t be foolish,” she told him. “I’m only glad you came back tonight, before...” She left it unfinished.

“I had to see the place once more, even like this.”

Across the canal, a Russian tank exploded and burst into flame. The others turned, uncertain now that the defenders had their range. But then, in the fire’s glow, a machine-gunner spotted Bohg and Lotta. The second tank’s turret revolved slowly, spraying a thin line of bullets toward them across the water. Bohg stepped in front of her, trying to fire back, but the bullets staggered him as they hit.

“Rudolph!” She was on her knees beside him, screaming his name. “Rudolph!”

He rolled over in the damp grass, feeling suddenly warm but without pain. “Don’t cry, Lotta. I came back here to die. Run and hide yourself. Keep the pistol with you.”

“Rudolph!”

The tanks were pulling back, but he knew it would not be for long. The zoo — his zoo — would fall to them soon. “I have to tell you something,” he whispered. “About this afternoon.”

“What? What are you saying, Rudolph?”

“You’re the only one that will ever know it.” He was suddenly very tired and he tried to hurry on. “I wasn’t running from the Russians. It was the Germans I feared.”

“What?”

“I was in that bunker with them all,” he said, pointing across the park. “I went into the room and she was dead already, but he was alive and he had a gun. I don’t know why I did it.”

“What, Rudolph?”

He coughed, and the blood began to fill his mouth. He stared up at her in the darkness, wondering if she would ever understand. “This afternoon I killed Hitler.”

Dossier on INTREX

International Trade Experts is an organization formed by a group of wealthy philanthropists (anonymous) who make yearly grants to sustain their pet project. The purpose of the organization is simple; it copes with any problem or difficulty that may crop up in world affairs. All allied and disparate hazards of civilization can be dealt with by this body of extremely professional people who number scientists and skilled technicians among their colleagues. The unwritten motto of International Trade Experts is clearly stated in the credo: Men Must Live In Peace.

Yet...

International Trade Experts is in reality INTREX.

That underground army of agents that has become the most highly feared arm of espionage in the world.

Espionage in the name of Peace.