Stephen Hunter - The Master Sniper

“Stop it,” he said. “I don’t want to hear this.”

He wished she hadn’t brought it up; but she had. Now he wished she’d drop it; but she wouldn’t.

“You’ll die out there. They’ll kill you. For nothing,” she said.

“Not for nothing. For everything.”

“Repp, God knows I’m not much. But I’ve survived. So have you. We can begin with that. I don’t expect you to love me as you loved the pretty idiot in Berlin. But I won’t love you the way I loved the handsome, thick-skulled young officer. It’ll be fine. It’ll be fine.”

“Margareta—”

“Nobody cares anymore. I could see it on their faces. Our boys’ faces. They didn’t care. They were glad it was over. They went willingly, happily. To die now is pointless. My brother and father are dead. All the men I’ve loved are dead. To join them would be insane. And you did more than all of them put together. You’ve earned your holiday.”

“Stop it.”

“These French seem all right. They’re not evil men, I could tell. Not Jews, or working for Jews. Just men, just soldiers. They got along quite well with our boys. It was a touching scene.”

“You sound like you’re describing some kind of medieval pageant.”

“There’s no disgrace in having lost a war.”

How could he tell her? What words could there be? That he was part of a crusade, even if no one remembered or would admit it. He was all that was left of it. If he had to give his life, he’d give it. That he was a hard man, totally ruthless, and proud. He’d killed a thousand men in a hundred wrecked towns and snowy forests and trenches full of lice and shit.

“We lost more than a war,” he said. “We lost a moment in history.”

“Forget what’s been or what might have been,” she said. “Yes, wonderful, but forget it, it’s over. Get ready for the future, it’s here, today.”

“There’s not even any choice in it. There’s no choice at all.”

“Repp, I could go to the French. I could explain to their officer. I could say Repp, of Demyansk, the great hero, is at my house, he’d like to come in. I could get him to guarantee that—”

“He can only guarantee a rope. They’d hang me. Don’t you see it yet, why I can’t turn back? I killed Jews.”

He sat down by the table and looked off into the corner of the kitchen.

“Oh, Repp,” she finally said. “I had no idea.” She stepped back from him. “Oh, Christ, I didn’t know. God, what terrible work. You must have suffered so. It must have been so hard on you.”

She came beside him and touched him gently, put her fingertips against his lips and looked into his eyes.

“Oh, Repp,” she said, and then was crying against him. “It must have been so hard on you.”

At last it was a simple proposition.

“To get Repp,” Leets told them, “we have to find this Eichmann.”

“Yeah, but, Captain, if we can’t find one Obersturmbannführer in the SS, how the hell are we going to find another?” Roger wanted to know.

And Tony said, “The possibilities must be endless. The man may be dead. He may have made it out of the country. He may be hiding as a private in a Luftwaffe anti-aircraft battalion. He may have been captured by the Russians. He may be in Buenos Aires.”

“And if he’s any of those things, we’re out of luck. But if he’s been captured, then maybe we can find him. Just maybe.”

“So I guess we have to go on the assumption he’s been taken,” said Roger. “But still…”

“We’ve got no other choice.”

“And if we get him, then we gotta make him talk,” Roger said.

“I’ll make him talk,” said Leets. “Don’t you worry about that.”

But Roger did worry; for he did not like the look that crossed the captain’s face when he spoke.

If this Eichmann was a prisoner, then he’d be property of the Army Counter-intelligence Corps, for interrogation intelligence was a CIC initiative. So early the next day they took off for Augsburg, where Seventh Army CIC had decamped at Army Headquarters on an old estate just beyond the ruined city. Army took up the main house and the CIC unit one of several hunting bungalows spread over the rolling hills.

It took them quite some time to see a Major Miller, the CIC exec officer, and Leets found this wait the hardest thing yet, worse even than rushing into the German fire at Anlage Elf or watching the doctor open up the week-dead kid at Alfeld, for at least in those episodes he’d been able to do something. Now he simply sat. The minutes ticked by and suddenly it turned into nighttime. Darkness came and sealed off the windows.

“What’s the German word for night?” Leets asked Tony.

“Come on, chum. You know it.”

“Yeah, Nacht . Sounds like a rifle being cocked.”

Presently Miller showed up, dead tired, in his GI overcoat, a pale, freckled man in his late thirties.

“Jesus, sorry I’m late. How long you guys been waiting?” he asked by way of introduction.

“Hours, sir,” said Leets. “Look, we need some help, that’s why we’re here.”

“Sure, sure. Listen, if I’d of known—”

“German prisoners. SS prisoners, especially. Over the rank of major. Specifically, the rank of Obersturmbannführer Eichmann, out of a department called Amt Four-B-four.”

“That’s Gestapo.”

“Gestapo?” said Leets.

“Under the RSHA. Central Security Department. Eichmann, huh?”

“You know him?”

“No. But we’re beginning to see how RSHA was set up.”

“Well, where would he be? I mean, if you had him. Where would we look for him?”

“Long way off. A castle. Sorry, classified location.” Leets felt his mouth drop open in stupefaction. “Is it access you want?” the major continued. “Oh, sure. It can be arranged. Get OSS upstairs to write a fancy letter to Seventh Army CIC. It’ll reach me in a week or two with twenty-six different qualifications attached from the brass and then—”

“Major,” Leets interrupted. “We need to see this guy tonight. Tomorrow might be too late.”

“Look, fellows, if I could help, believe me I would. But I’m powerless. Look.” He held up his hands from underneath his desk, wrists joined in a pantomime of bondage. He smiled weakly and said, “They’re tied. See, those officers are an intelligence source of the first magnitude. We’ve got ’em at an interrogation center, a castle, like I said. Later, there’s some talk of establishing a Joint Services interrogation center. But for now, we’ve got ’em. See, a lot of them operated against the Russians. Look, let’s face it, this war’s over and the next one’s about to begin. And those guys fought its first battle. They’ve got all kinds of dope on the Russians, on Communist cells in Europe in Resistance groups, on hundreds of intelligence operations. They’re a treasure. They’re worth their weight in gold. I mean, they are—”

“Major,” Leets spoke very quietly, “there’s a German operation that’s still hot. So hot it smokes. Now. Today. There’s an officer named Repp, Waffen SS, top man with a rifle. He’s going to put a bullet into someone. Someone important. This is the last will and testament of the Third Reich. He’s the executor.”

“So who?”

“That’s the hard part. We don’t know. But we believe this Eichmann must, for we found his name on a crucial file down at the Dachau admin center.”

“I’m sorry. I’d like to help. I just can’t. There are channels. It’d be my ass. You just have to go through channels.”

“Look, Major, we may not have time to go through channels. Someone could be on the fucking bull’s-eye while we’re filling out forms.”