Stephen Hunter - Sniper's Honor

“Yes, yes,” said Groedl. “He was able to give IV-B4 invaluable information that informed our operations. It may have been the biggest intelligence operation in history, because this man realized that his obligations to his race transcended his obligations to his country. As he rose and acquired power—helped by gifts of intelligence from our own people—he got us more and more. Under the guise of a ‘survey,’ he was able to provide us with names and numbers in the thousands. A whole Soviet department actually worked for IV-B4! Can you imagine? And when he learned that this woman had been sent to kill me at the personal order of Josef Stalin, he took action to save my life at great risk to his own. That is why he must be saved and the information of his true loyalty controlled. We must find out if this woman has any suspicions, if she has figured out his identity, and if she has communicated her thoughts to anyone. Do you see now why I risk my life? Not only to protect a hero but to protect our cause!”

The slightly drunk SS captain nodded.

“Not only that, she cannot hit me.”

“She cannot hit you?”

“Not with a Soviet rifle, and that is the only rifle she could have. I had the master sniper Repp, Lieutenant Colonel Repp, hero of Demansk—”

Salid was mightily impressed. “Repp! Repp of SS–Death’s Head Division! He killed a hundred Russians in one day and lived to laugh about it.” Repp had even been on a postcard.

“Yes, that Repp. He is a friend of mine. At my request, he ran tests using a captured Russian rifle with its sights. Even the great Repp could not hit a target beyond five hundred yards with that rifle. Repp, the Reich’s greatest marksman!”

“That is very good news.”

“So let us go over it one more time.”

“Yes sir.” Salid took another sniff. Explosions and thunder and lightning. Craziness. Clarity when the noise had ceased.

“You will arrive by military convoy, in a staff Horch car from SS-12 Panzer and two panzerwagens. It should be obvious to anyone in the mountains who is paying attention that the senior group leader is arriving. Nevertheless, you will halt at our command position outside the village for an hour or so, giving her ample time to move into a position. But she cannot get within five hundred yards, because that burned space is open and being patrolled by Police Battalion personnel. She’ll have to shoot from somewhere in the forest at five hundred yards. We have noted all the spots in that cone of territory that yield a vantage point on your activities in the zone. We will infiltrate two-man teams in heavy camouflage to monitor each one. If and when she approaches, they will let her settle in, let her concentrate on her job, then take her alive. Upon the sound of shots, if shots are necessary, the other two-man teams will converge rapidly on the site. In case, a half mile out of the zone, we have two dog teams. If she should evade immediate capture, the dog teams will close on the locality in a matter of a few minutes and pick up her trail. The dogs will run her down. The dogs are very good. At the very worst, the very worst, they will drive her toward Natasha’s Womb, where the parachutists of Battlegroup Von Drehle will intercept her.”

“The flaw in the plan is the parachutists. I had nasty words with their oberfeldwebel over the issue of the execution of Von Bink.”

“They will do their duty, I will see to that. I will have Muntz call and explain things to them very clearly. They will obey or they will be dead. That is the only option they have. And if they hinder you, then it will mean nothing to me or to the Reich if you execute them. I am not ordering you to do so; I am telling you that is your prerogative if circumstances warrant. You have wide latitude.”

“Yes sir.”

“Then you take the Yaremche road through the mountain to the airbase at Uzhgorod, where that FW 200 awaits you and the White Witch. Then you go straight to Berlin.”

“Sir, I’ll hold the plane for you if the Soviets have started their offensive.”

“No, no. You must leave with her instantly. The woman is everything. She is everything .”

There was one last thing to do, and Groedl did it the next day. He spoke at length to Muntz, Brigadeführer of SS 12th Panzer and now, upon the death of Von Bink, commander as well of 14th Panzer and all the units under its umbrella. Muntz, later that afternoon, went to his communications unit and had the men reach Oskar, as the Green Devil position was code-named, and ordered the signals NCO to reset to a different, much less used channel. Once that was accomplished, he ordered Oskar Signals to locate Oskar Leader, Von Drehle himself. It took a few minutes, but then Von Drehle took up the microphone.

The general explained that he had great faith in Von Drehle, even if he believed several of his men were subversive. He mentioned a particularly impertinent NCO under Von Drehle’s command. He would hate to order executions and would be far less inclined to do so if Von Drehle’s men performed their duty at Natasha’s Womb, especially in the matter of the woman sniper called the White Witch.

He went on: “If you are successful, once she is turned over to Police Battalion, I will forget all about Bober’s intransigence. Moreover, I will personally intercede with the general staff and see you and your men given two weeks of leave, then a transfer to the Western Front, where you can rejoin Second Fallschirmjäger. Then, Von Drehle, find a nice American patrol to surrender to, tell them how you loathe the hated SS, and survive the war. Are you reading this, Major?”

“I am, sir.”

“Excellent. Do we have an understanding? You help me, I help you, we both help the Reich, and everything turns out for the better. The bandit woman is to be taken alive.”

Certain things worked, certain things didn’t. It turned out that platinum as a catalyst was so widely used in the world that its name alone implied thousands of possibilities, some of them potentially lethal or at least weaponizable, some of them not so much. To plow through them and test them against a potential act-of-terror template would be a colossal waste of time. You needed two points to draw a line, establish a direction, a destination. One point indicated nothing except the universe around it.

Routine low-level exchanges with other friendly intelligence agencies—and even some not so friendly ones, surprisingly cooperative with the institute—yielded nothing, either. That meant Nordyne GmbH was either harmless or so far below the radar that it had been expertly buried by the best pros in the business, but there was no other indication of professional involvement. The mere presence of armed guards, even if some were Islamic extremists who’d been to war against Russia, meant nothing. Whoever owned Nordyne GmbH may have been manufacturing lawn-mower engines with catalytic converters for the American market and wanted to protect his investment.

All right, smart guy, Gershon argued with himself, why would he go to such lengths to camouflage his operation? Why would he locate it in a spot conspicuously close to Israel’s greatest enemy, an enemy that hungered for destruction and death, and yet at the same time, why would he seem to have—no independent penetration had yielded it—no connection with Iranian intelligence or Hezbollah, Hamas, or any of the world’s too many professional Jew-haters?

On top of that, the report from Lausanne was that the “address” for Nordyne GmbH was a fraud, just a post office box of a franchise operation in a mall. There was no headquarters per se, yet somehow, from a certain Swiss bank, payments were regularly sent by wire to receiving entities.