Stephen Hunter - The Master Sniper

“But imagine our dismay and surprise,” and here the German allowed himself a prim, wicked smile, “when our accountants discovered in an audit of the Bank Hirsczowicz that his fortune had disappeared. Disappeared! Vanished! A billion zlotys. Five hundred million Reichsmarks.”

One hundred million bucks, thought Leets.

“Discreet inquiries were made. Naturally so large a sum cannot simply become invisible. A hundred rumors were tracked, a thousand interrogations launched. Obergruppenführer Pohl made it his special project. He was experienced in financial matters and saw the power of the fortune. He scoured Europe, when he was not busy running his concentration camp empire. And finally, he had success. In the middle of 1944, a source in Zurich was able to prove that the Jew had actually gotten his funds into the country, to the Schweizerschaft Banksellschaft. And that he had gotten something else out.”

“The boy. The heir,” said Tony.

“Yes and no. Again the Jew had been clever, very clever. The boy was not the heir. The boy was to be provided for, of course, but the fortune would not be his.”

“Who would get it?” Leets asked.

“The Jews,” said Eichmann.

“The Jews?”

“Yes. I told you the man was a Zionist. He had decided that his people’s only salvation lay in a Jewish state, an Israel. Privately, I agree with him. Thus the money was held in escrow for several groups. Zionist groups. Refugee groups. Propaganda outlets. All dedicated to this idea of a new country.”

“I see.”

“But he was too clever, this Jew. Too clever by half. He of course worried about the son.”

“Any father would.”

“And so he made an arrangement with one of the fiery young Zionists. That the boy should be raised as one of them, as a first-generation Israelite. And know nothing of the fortune. But the father was terrified for the boy. And so he had written into the document for the transfer of the money a special complication. He did it on the last day, in an emotional state. We believe it to be a reenactment of one of their rituals. Pidyon Haben . The redemption of the firstborn son. May I have another cigarette, please? Thank you. What does that say? A Lucky Strike? Finding me has indeed been a lucky strike for you, hasn’t it?”

“Get on with it.”

“The arrangement holds that the boy must survive the war. He is to be delivered to the bank and identified by fingerprints. It made sense, because the boy would be raised in Palestine, far from any battles. It was only to make sure the boy didn’t get somehow lost in a shuffle.”

“But the war broke out,” Leets added. In his mind he could see the Zionists stuck in the middle of Switzerland, in the middle of Nazi territory, with the boy who was the key to their future. “And so they left him there.”

“You have grasped the essence.”

“Kill him and there’s no money for the Jews.”

“No. And this is how I was brought into it. I was considered an expert in finding Jews.”

“I see.”

“I supervised the search team. It was not easy. It was very difficult. An agent of ours, one Felix, operated under my direct control. Painstakingly we tracked the rumors, the lies, the missing trails.”

“And again, success.”

“He heard of a place, a convent, the Order of Saint Teresa, in the canton of Appenzell in the foothills of the Alps, in northeastern Switzerland. There were said to be Jews there, Jew children, whose parents had somehow gotten them out. But the nuns were very frightened. Very secretive. It took us more weeks until… until this.”

He held up the draydel .

“Felix got it from the caretaker, an alcoholic old man. In exchange for a small sum of money. It’s very old, unique. It had been passed down in their family for generations, father to son. It was identified by an inmate in the concentration establishment Auschwitz, a former member of the Hirsczowicz household. It proved to us the child was there. It made our operations feasible. Both of them.”

“Both?” said Leets, feeling his stomach begin to grow cold. Was there some aspect they had no idea of, some part of it they’d not come across, that was this very second beginning?

“There is another man, a German agent in Spain. A long-term chap. He has wonderful papers. Authentic papers, in fact, and neighbors to vouch for him and a whole set of references, a most impressive documentation. All identifying him as Stepan Hirsczowicz. A cousin. Long lost. The papers are quite real; they were taken from a real Stepan Hirsczowicz, who died at Mauthausen.”

Leets saw it now: the final twist.

“And so you get the money.”

“Yes. Early on, the plan was to bring it straight into the Reich, a matter of simple transfer, no difficulties. But then we began to see how the war would turn out. It was the Reichsführer ’s idea, quite brilliant. All that money, clean, untouched, money that had never been in the Reich, never been associated with it. And he knew that after the war it could have its uses. All kinds of uses. It would be for the SS men who had gotten out, or were in hiding, or for this, or for that. It was a wonderful opportunity. It was really wonderful.”

And Leets understood how important it was to them: he saw now how a modern state, as it died, could totally invest its resources into the murder of one child. It wasn’t astounding at all, really; he felt no sense of anticlimax, of being let down.

He fingered the draydel: what a route it had traveled, what a long, sad journey. From the father, Josef, to the boy, Michael: a symbol of a father’s love. It’s all I can give you. I have no other, here. I would give anything, everything, to save you, but I have only this. Then it had gone to the caretaker, and then to the killers. To Felix and then to this smarmy creep here in the room with them and then to the big cheese Himmler, and Pohl’s greasy little fingers had probably gotten onto it. Then, finally, to Repp’s cold hands. A great miracle has happened.

“A bomb would be chancy, I suppose,” said Outhwaithe. “Any kind of elaborate commando mission difficult to mount in a neutral country. Thus it’s got to be one man, one good man.”

“And there was a special problem that made Repp the inevitable selection,” Eichmann explained bloodlessly. “The nuns keep the children in the cellar all the time.”

“They must bring them out at night.”

“For half an hour in the courtyard at midnight…. It’s behind a wall. But a man with a rifle could reach it from the mountain.

“There would be twenty-six of them, right? In all?”

“Yes, Captain.”

“So he doesn’t have to worry about hitting the right one.”

“No, Major. That’s the beauty of it. He doesn’t have to know. He’ll kill them all.”

“What do they call it? The gun, I mean.”

“Vampir.”

“Vampire,” Leets said in English.

“They had great trouble with the weight. Vollmerhausen worked very hard on the weight. It had to be light, because Repp had to carry it around the mountain. There were no roads.”

“How did they solve it?”

“The technical aspects I’m not sure of. It has to do with the sun. He exposes a plate to sunlight, and it makes the light-sensitive elements more potent. Thus he needs less power, and can carry a smaller battery. It’s very ingenious.”

“How much money will Repp get?” Tony asked.

“How did you know?” Eichmann said.

“Come now, we’re not that stupid. If there’s all that money at stake, he’s not going to be the only chap risking his neck and do it for the pure ideological pleasure.”

“He was coy. He pretended not to be interested. He said it was his bequest to the fallen. The German fallen. And so the Reichsführer pressed him. He did not have to press hard.”