Stephen Hunter - Sniper's Honor

“Any verification?”

“He said Ukraine, July 1944. I didn’t tell that to Michael, that’s independently from the interviewee, circa 1976, recounting what he’d been told in 1954. Because someone guessed it was Groedl, a copy of this part of the interview went into the Groedl file, which is why Michael’s people found it.”

“That’s the first outside verification that Mili wasted Groedl.”

“There’s more to the story.”

“You better hurry and tell me.”

“He knew what happened to Mili.”

The Carpathians

Ginger’s Womb

JULY 1944

Von Drehle walked over and examined the captives. They were scrawny, filthy, exhausted, shiny with sweat.

The two men were uninteresting. A fellow in glasses, mid-thirties, with perhaps too much intelligence in his eyes that he tried to mask. A Jew, possibly. The other, big, one of those hearty Ukrainian peasant types.

“Karl, the skinny one had this,” Deneker said, handing over a small Hungarian pistol.

Karl dumped the magazine, which was full, then pulled back the slide, so the chambered cartridge popped out. “Sir,” he said in Russian, “this could get you into a lot of trouble.” He tossed the magazine one way, the pistol the other, into the trees. “Okay, I want to talk to the legendary White Witch now,” he said.

The men led the two males off to the trenches for some food. Karl gestured the woman to the grass margin by the road and indicated for her to sit. Yes, goddammit, she was a beauty. From somewhere in his forgotten education—Flaubert: “Beauty can cut like a knife.”

She had cheekbones like doorknobs, which pulled her cheeks taut, almost concave. The lips, however, were full, if grim. The nose had an aquiline perfection, but nothing matched her eyes, which were as blue as summer lakes and as big as winter oceans. They, too, were grim, but somehow calm and capable of holding a stare without revealing a thing. But one knew that the irises could dilate into expressiveness, even warmth, in split seconds. Her eyebrows were dark in contrast to her tanned but still-soft skin; the tawny-dark tendrils of hair hanging down across her forehead achieved not messiness but perfection. Whatever happened to this woman’s hair, it would always seem perfect.

“Cigarette?” he said, holding out a Merkur for her.

She took it, watching him carefully. Beauties were usually calm, because they understood bad things would not happen to them. That extended to the White Witch in German captivity. Even though she understood, at least abstractly, that very bad things were about to happen to her.

He lit her cigarette and one for himself.

A new barrage opened up, preceded by the howl of the Katyushas.

“As you can see, your people are on their way,” he said in Russian. “I would advise you against false hopes. They’re not going to get to this position until nightfall, several hours away. Our business will be concluded by that time, and you will be on your way.”

Her eyes settled on far distance, focusing on nothing. Then she said, “My name is Ludmilla Petrova. I am a Sergeant, Sixty-fourth Guards Army, currently on detached duty. I forgot my serial number. That is all I am going to tell you.”

“I’m not asking anything, Sergeant Petrova. The SS is on the way, and they’ll have plenty of questions. They want you very badly. I’ll see that you’re fed. I’ll give you some cigarettes. Nobody will rape or molest you. We’re not that kind of German. My advice is, give the SS what they demand. What does it matter, this late in the war, which you’ve basically already won? They get very unpleasant when they are defied. Maybe that will earn you a swift execution, which is all you can reasonably expect from them. After all, you killed one of their heroes.”

“I would do it all over again, knowing that it would turn out this way. My death means nothing.”

“You’re vastly superior to me. My death means everything, particularly to me, and I don’t care to have it occur today. When I turn you over to them, my men and I get out of your lovely country for good. We may even survive.”

“Congratulations,” she said. “By the way, I’ve never seen that funny helmet. What are you supposed to be, a mushroom?”

“It’s a parachutist’s helmet. We’re the famous Battlegroup Von Drehle, on detached duty with Fourteenth Panzergrenadier, Army Group North Ukraine, Major Karl Von Drehle at your service. You know, we jump out of airplanes. A daredevil like you would enjoy it. I’d take you along if you weren’t otherwise occupied.”

“What does ‘Kreta’ mean?” She pointed to the embroidered strip around the cuff of his bonebag. “Is it a kind of cheese?”

“That’s ‘feta.’ Kreta is a Greek island in the Mediterranean. We jumped into it in 1941. They fired at us all the way down.”

“Perhaps if you hadn’t been invading their island, they wouldn’t have been shooting.”

“I understood their point of view and the military necessity involved. I didn’t take it personally.”

“My husband, Dimitri, was a pilot. He didn’t jump out of his airplane, he burned alive in it. German incendiary bullets.”

“That was nothing personal, either, even if you and Dimitri take it personally. I have many comrades buried under wheat and snow, so I may know something of grief. Who are these men with you?”

He gestured, and both looked across the road to the two captives ravenously devouring German rations.

“These are simple men, a schoolteacher and a peasant. Subtleties are beyond them. They are ignorant.”

“I can’t let them go. The SS wants them, too.”

She said nothing. The sun lit her face, which was fair and calm. She took another puff of her cigarette, inhaled, exhaled, utterly impervious to self and circumstance.

“The SS is on its way to pick you up. Yet you remain calm. Quite impressive.”

“I never expected to survive. I’ve accepted my own death. I killed Groedl and nothing else matters. No one is left in my family, so I will join them in heaven, if there is a heaven. Look, Major, you appear to be a civilized man. May I ask you—may I beg you? Please. I accept that I am your trophy and will earn you some prizes. But let those two men go. They’re nothing but refugees. I’m your ticket to survival. They’re harmless. Ask yourself the same question. What difference does it make?”

“I really hate you noble, heroic types. See that fellow over there feeding your friends? He’s even got them laughing? That guy’s noble, too. It’s sickening. He has six wound stripes and a seventy-five-engagement badge. Seventy-five! That covers him to about 1942, but they don’t make bigger badges. For political reasons, the SS would kill him if they could. They know his subversive tendencies. I’d like to get him home; he’s earned it. My other fellows, too. They’ve earned it. And if I don’t give your friends to the SS, Wili doesn’t go home, and this little group of boys who are pretty much my family, they don’t go home. They die here on some godforsaken mountain. For nothing. So that does matter, and that is why I can’t help you, much as I might want to. If I have to weigh your friends’ lives against Wili’s, and it appears I do, then I’ll choose Wili’s every time. I tell you this so you know my motives aren’t malign, even if they have, from your point of view, malign results.”

“It’s nothing personal.”

“To be honest, it feels personal, and I don’t like the feeling. But duty is duty.”

“I appreciate that the young officer listened to me and treated me civilly.”

“I appreciate that the sniper sergeant behaved well. It’s a mark of good breeding.”