Stephen Hunter - The Master Sniper

“They did,” Repp confirmed. “You’ve got the documents?”

“Of course. Everything. You needn’t fear. Tickets to Switzerland.”

They walked down a short hall into the bathroom. The tub stood on claws like a beast. The plaster peeled off gray walls and the plumbing smelled. Also, the mirror was flaking off and there were water spots on the ceiling.

“Not the Grand, is it?” he said.

But she seemed not to remember. “No.”

She had been ahead of him all this time and now, in the gray bathroom, she turned and faced him fully.

She searched his eyes for shock.

He kept them clear of it.

“So?” he finally said. “Do you expect me to say something?”

“My face isn’t like it was, is it?” she asked.

“No, but nothing is.”

The scar ran vividly from the inside corner of her eye down around her mouth to her chin, a red furrow of tissue.

“I’ve seen far worse in the East,” he said. “They’ll fix you up after the war. Make you pretty again. Make you prettier, I should say. You’re still quite attractive.”

“You’re trying to be kind, aren’t you?”

Yet to Repp she was still a great beauty. She was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Her blond hair was short now, but her body had that same suppleness and grace to it; she was thin, rather unlike the ideal Aryan woman, her hips too narrow for easy childbirth, but Repp had never been interested in children anyhow. She wore a pinstriped gray skirt and a flower-print blouse and had dark stockings on, which must have been very old, and high-heeled shoes. Her neck was long and blue veins pulsed visibly under her fair skin and her face seemed porcelain or some equally delicate thing, yet fragile though it appeared her eyes were strong and rather hard.

“I think there’s hot water,” she said. “And civilian clothes are in the bureau in the bedroom.”

“I must say, Margareta, you don’t seem terribly happy about all this.”

“I’ll go fix some supper. You must be very hungry.”

They ate in awkward silence in the dim, small kitchen, though the food she fixed was very good—eggs, black bread, cheese—and he felt much better after the bath.

“That’s the best meal I’ve had in a long time.”

“They gave me so much money. Your people. The black market is extensive here.”

“Yes, it certainly must be. So close to Switzerland.”

“Sometimes you can get pork and even beef and veal. And sausage of course.”

“Almost as if there’s no war.”

“Almost. But you always know there’s a war. Not from all the soldiers around, but because there’s no music. No real music. On the radio sometimes they play Wagner and that terrible fellow Korngold. But no Chopin, no Hindemith, no Mahler. I wonder what they have against Mahler. Of all our composers, his work sounds the most like battles. That’s what they like, isn’t it? Do you know? Why won’t they allow Mahler?”

Repp said he didn’t know. But he was glad to see her talking so animatedly, even if he didn’t know anything about music.

“I like Chopin so much,” she said.

“He’s very good,” Repp agreed.

“I should have brought my Gramophone down. Or my piano. But it was all so rushed. There was no time, even for a Gramophone. The piano, of course, was out of the question. Even I realized that.”

He said nothing.

Then she said, “Whom have you seen recently? Have you seen General Baum at all? He always made me laugh.”

“Dead, I think. In Hungary.”

“Oh. A shame. And Colonel Prince von Kühl? A delightful man.”

“Disappeared. In Russia. Dead, I suppose, perhaps taken prisoner.”

“And—but I suppose it’s useless. Most of them are dead, aren’t they?”

“Many, I suppose. The sacrifice was gigantic.”

“Sometimes I feel like a ghost. The only one left. Do you ever think about it that way?”

“No.”

“It’s so sad. All those young men. So handsome. Do you remember the celebration of the Julfest in 1938? I first saw you there. I’m sure you don’t remember. I’d just given up the piano. Anyway, the room was full of beautiful young people. We sang and danced. It was such a happy time. But of all those people, almost all are dead, aren’t they?”

“Yes, I suppose.”

“But you haven’t thought of it?”

“I’ve been rather busy.”

“Yes, of course. But at that party, do you know what I sensed in you? Spirituality. You have a spiritual dimension. To be a great killer must take spirituality.”

Killer: the word struck him like a blow.

“Did you know how attractive that is? At that party, you were like a young priest, celibate and beautiful. You were very attractive. You had a special quality. Repp, Repp was different. I heard others speak of it too. Some of the women were wild for you. Did you know that?”

“One can sense such things.”

“Oh, Repp, we’re two peculiar birds, aren’t we? I always knew you’d be one of the survivors. You had that too, even way back then.”

“I prefer to think of nicer times we had.”

“Berlin, the ’42 season? When you were the hero of the hour.”

“A pleasant time.”

“I suppose you’ll want to sleep with me now.”

“Yes. Are you turning into a nun? You used to be quite eager, I recall. Dirty, even. At the restaurant on the Lutherstrasse.”

“Horcher’s. Yes. I was very evil.” She had touched him under the table, and whispered a suggestion into his ear. They had gone back to the Grand and done exactly as she had suggested. It was their first time. It was also before the terror raids had come and Berlin turned into a ruin, and her face along with it.

“It won’t be the way it was though,” she said. “I just know it won’t. I don’t know why, but I can tell that it won’t be very good. But I suppose it’s my duty.”

“It’s not your duty. It has nothing to do with duty.” Point of honor: she had to want him.

“It’s not out of pity though. You can assure me of that?”

“Of course not. I don’t need a woman. I need shelter. I need to rest. I’ve got important things ahead. But I want you. Do you see?”

“I suppose. Then, come, let’s go.”

They went up to the bedroom. Repp made love to her with great energy and after a while she began to respond. For a while it was as good as it had been. Repp did most things well, and this was no exception. He could feel her open to and accept him and his own ache surprised him, seeming to spring from outside, from far away.

Afterward, he put on some wool flannel trousers and a white shirt and some blunt-tipped brown shoes—whose? he wondered—and took his private’s uniform and equipment into the garden out back. There, working quickly, he buried it all: tunic, boots, trousers, coat, rifle even. He stood back when he was finished and looked down at the rectangle of disturbed earth under which his soldier’s identity lay. He felt quite odd. He was out of uniform for the first time since—how long? years and years, since ’36 at least, that first year in the Totenkopfverbände at Dachau.

“You should have let your hair grow. It’s cropped too closely around your ears,” she said in the kitchen, matter-of-factly, “though since you’ve the proper papers, I suppose you could look like the Führer and the Swiss wouldn’t care.”

“What time is the broadcast?”

“At six. Nearly that now. There used to be music on all the time. Now there’s only announcements.”

“There will be music again soon. Don’t worry. The Jews will put music on again.”

“Do you know, someone said there were camps out East where we murdered them. Men, women and children. That we murdered them in the millions with a kind of gas or something. Then burned the bodies. Can you imagine that?”