Stephen Hunter - Sniper's Honor

Familiar somehow. Why did he get a buzz? His deep brain was aligning points, drawing associations, making connections. “Does this—” he started to ask, but then it leaped into his mind. The netting was a rope-and-spar bridge over the River Prut at the waterfall, producing the clouds of mist, in old Yaremche. The three figures were the targets on the bridge. Bob shifted his eyes back to the sniper, saw what looked to be a cascade of brightness at the head, and realized in that second it was her blond hair.

“It’s Mili,” he said. “Jesus Christ, she got her shot.”

The Hotel Berlin

Stanislav

JULY 1944

“And do I understand, young Captain, that although you are renowned for your discriminating knowledge of wine, you yourself have never tasted it?”

“Yes, Herr General,” Salid said to 12th SS Lieutenant General Muntz, “it is so. In my faith, one does not drink alcohol. It interferes with one’s absolute fealty to the will of Allah. But it is also true that to an Arab, there is no more profound responsibility than to be a fine host. How does one reconcile these seeming contradictions? My father, who was a man of power and prominence in Palestine, had a brilliant idea: he assigned a son to learn all that could be learned of wine and thus be able to welcome sophisticated Europeans to our household in a style to which they were accustomed and in which they would feel the warmth of Palestinian hospitality. It was a responsibility I cherished. And when I came to Germany in my teens for training and to further cement the bonds between our two peoples, I was able to find enough time to continue my passion.”

The young officer was quite the hit. Even Nazis were drawn to stars, and he was fully a star. Slim, handsome, elegant in his jet-black uniform, his epaulets and flashing SS runes on his tunic collar opposite his 13th SS Mountain Division scimitar insignia, his shiny boots under his sharply pressed riding breeches, his gloves immaculately white, his ceremonial dagger glittering in the candlelight of the garden of the Hotel Berlin, Stanislav’s finest, he was a picture of masculine beauty and exoticism; but it was his fez that made him seem so special. Bloodred, with the national emblem of the art moderne eagle grasping the twisted cross over the chill explicitness of the SS death’s head in bone white on the forehead, it had a red tassel hanging raffishly off it, and it made him seem like an exotic exemplar of Eastern royalty, a warrior prince from the land of the great white desert. The fact that he’d killed a lot of Jews was a definite social plus.

“And so you chose the wines tonight? And this was after or before you destroyed the Bak bandit group in the mountains?”

“It was actually after. We returned from that mission, and I came to the hotel and discovered a wine cellar as yet undisturbed by the fortunes of war. I would not say it was an extraordinary accumulation, strong on the French reds, a little weaker on the German whites, but not without a few items of interest. I think you will find the sensations to your palates quite amusing.”

“Hans, Hans,” the lieutenant general squealed at Dr. Groedl, “where did you find this lad? He is such a delight!”

All the glitterati of the Kommissariat were present, dressed to the nines in the latest Nazi high style. These were the men of power, drawn from the administrative and military lords of what remained of the Reich’s Ukraine empire. Besides the slashing black of the SS dress uniform, the others wore immaculately tailored evening attire, white-jacketed, as it was broad summer.

“The man has the most educated nose in Europe,” someone said, and Sturmbannführer Salid modestly accepted the compliment.

“Especially for sniffing out Jews!” someone else said, to much laughter and a little melancholy, for all understood that the days when the Reich’s most sacralized mission could be talked about openly were coming to an end.

“More so than you realize,” boasted Senior Group Leader–SS Groedl, now sporting a monocle, as well as an elegant ivory cigarette holder for his Effekt. “He was one of the most enthusiastic and aggressive advocates of our policies in Einsatzgruppe D. His work was tireless and self-sacrificial. Onward and onward he pressed. It was truly the spirit of his Allah that moved him to such energies.”

Applause, which the young man demurely accepted.

It was like the last night on the Titanic. All knew the cold black ocean was their destiny. In a day or a week, the 2nd Ukrainian Guards Army would unleash a million Katyusha rockets—they sounded like banshees under the torturer’s whip and were called by the Germans “Stalin’s Organ”—followed up by the grinding inevitability of a thousand thirty-six-ton T-34s, against which poor Muntz and his operational commander Generalleutnant Von Bink of 14th Panzergrenadier had but four hundred Panzer IVs and a few StuG III anti-tank hunters. The Russians could not be stopped, denied, distracted. They were inevitable. And all this gloomy sense of predestination hung like a cloud over the dark balmy garden lit by candlelight and assuaged by four violinists playing Rachmaninoff with extraordinary sensitivity. Those gathered knew that in a very short time, they would scramble desperately to get across the Carpathians and into Hungary, to live to fight another day. Or to die at their posts, as circumstance decreed.

“So, Captain,” proclaimed the unusually expansive Groedl, “tell us what you have planned.”

“Of course, Dr. Groedl. Gentleman, I begin you with a palate-pleasing Laphroaig 1899, bottled by Mackie and Company. One of the finest of our English enemies’ malt Scotch whiskeys. How it ended up here, I have no idea. Sip it, perhaps over ice. Note the peat-bog intensity, the sense of smoke and fog, the somehow ‘brown’ sense of flavor. Use it only to sharpen the palate and to absorb the tiniest of blurs from the vividness of its impact. When we win the war, it is my dream to violate my religious discipline for one night and drown myself in its glories, preferably in my new castle in Glasgow, but until then it must be savored at the micro level.”

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” said Panzer Muntz, “but by God, I like his spirit.”

“Next, with the Ukraine wheat-fed filet de boeuf, I offer a superb 1929 Château-Chalon. That was a wonderful year, with a cold winter and a beautiful spring and summer. It is by far the queen of the evening’s selections, and I hate to spend it so early in the ritual, but the chef informs me that beef must precede fowl and fish, by ancient tradition.”

“It is so wrong, ” said Panzer Muntz, “when fowl precedes beef!” It was meant as jest, so everybody laughed, including Salid, including the Ukrainian mistresses.

“Then with the fowl,” said Salid, “I am delighted to announce a Gustav Adolf Schmitt Niersteiner Heiligenbaum 1937. It does not stand up to the other two, but if you regard it, chilled, as mild comic relief, you will find it acceptable. I mean this as no comment on the great tradition of German wine making, only as a comment on what was available.”

“At least he’s not trying to stick us with any Ivan pisswater,” said Group Leader Schultz, perhaps enabled by too much Laphroaig. There was some laughter but not much.

“The birds, by the way,” said Salid, “are Hungarian chukker, flown in fresh. Dr. Groedl found room on the plane, God bless him.”

Applause, and in the flickering candlelight, Dr. Groedl took his bows.

“Then, for the fish course,” said Salid, “which would be cold Latvian sturgeon, again fresh, supplied courtesy of General Muntz from 3rd SS Panzer attached to Army Group North,” to more sincere rounds of applause, “a Château d’Yquem 1921, the amber vintage so storied in wine legend. I regret I could not find a Loire, since 1937 is widely heralded as the greatest year for that superb vintage. But alas, as we have all found, one must work with what one has.”