Mark Frost - The Second Objective

“That it means nothing.” Von Leinsdorf screwed the silencer onto the end of his pistol. “You value your sorry little life so highly. Tell me why, because of what? What have you ever done with it? What makes your life worth saving?”

“I don’t know, I’m just me.”

“How you could possibly know who that is? I grew up in two countries, too, but I never forgot. You’ve been too busy hiding all your life, making yourself invisible, a nobody so they wouldn’t notice you. Because you’re ashamed of what you are.”

Bernie had no answer. He couldn’t even mount an argument, his face burning at the painful truths the man had seen in him.

“None of it matters. That’s what you don’t know. You have no idea how cheap life really is. You have no idea. What you find when you get to the bottom of it. There’s no honor, no dignity, no morality, no spirit. There’s just blood and meat. Life is shit. It’s shit. ”

Von Leinsdorf leaned forward, inches from Bernie’s face, looking haunted and skeletal under his handsome features. Bernie went down to his knees on the charnel house ground, beside a scattering of bones.

“This so-called gift you think is worth saving, that’s just a reflex, a bug flinching at a boot. There’s no majesty to it. You can take apart a human being as easily as a clock. I worked with a doctor in our camp at Dachau, Dr. Rasher, you know that name?”

Bernie shook his head.

“He organized our research. Identified what we could learn from these subjects. How they react to heat, cold, pressure and pain, wounds and bleeding. It’s amazing how little fight they put up. They just hand it to you, that’s what we learned: Killing’s the easiest thing in the world.”

He flicked Bernie’s ear with the pistol, and he flinched.

“And the Jews were grateful for it. Because at some level they’re aware of this disease they carry. The Jew is an infection. A genetic virus. Once it enters the bloodstream of a society, or an individual, the only remedy is eradication. That’s our lasting contribution to science. We found the cure.”

Von Leinsdorf knelt down beside Bernie and grabbed his chin.

“You think your hands are clean? Your father works for IG Farben. They make the gas we use to kill them. All of them, Bernie. We’re killing all of them.”

Bernie felt paralyzed. He couldn’t catch his breath.

“I’m no different. I’ve just had the benefit of a closer look at death. You think I value my own life?”

Von Leinsdorf pointed the gun to his own head.

“This endless series of humiliations and miseries? I’d end it right now if I didn’t have this mission. And if I die in its service, at least I’ll know it counted for something greater than myself. Can you say the same?”

“Believe whatever you want,” said Bernie, shaking so hard he could barely speak. “It’s none of my business.”

“If you didn’t learn the lesson in that basement back there, I don’t know when you ever will. What you saw down there was child’s play. Open your eyes, man. Declare yourself. This is as real as life is ever going to get. You won’t last another day without deciding who you are or what is worth dying for.”

“Why make it your problem?”

Von Leinsdorf touched the barrel to Bernie’s chest. “Because I’m stuck with you. What am I going to do with you? If I kill you right now no one would mourn. No one would even know. Animals clean your bones, some peasant comes along one day and tosses them into these graves. All trace of you, all memory gone. Even your family will forget. As if you’d never existed.”

Bernie saw a stark blackness in his eyes. He tried to steady his voice and ease him back to reality. “You said you needed me. To complete the mission.”

“The next time you have a chance to shoot me, take it. If you can ever bring yourself to kill anybody.”

Von Leinsdorf slumped, weary, as if he’d lost interest in what he’d intended to do. Then, a change. Businesslike again. He unscrewed the silencer and dropped it in his pocket. He picked Bernie up off the ground, slung an arm around him, and walked him back toward the jeep. Now he took the affectionate tone of a confidant chiding a wayward friend.

“I don’t think you’re a physical coward, Brooklyn. Just a moral one. But if you do find it in your heart to kill me, you’ll kill yourself as well. They’ll catch you sooner or later, your American friends. To die in battle is one thing; execution is worse. I tell you from experience. It’s not the dying, it’s knowing when and where and how. That’s the hell of it.”

Bernie said nothing, the numbness in his body turning cold. Von Leinsdorf climbed back into the jeep. “Keep driving.”

Bernie backed out and steered them onto the main road. They drove in silence for a while.

He’s right about one thing, Bernie thought, glancing over at Von Leinsdorf. I’ve gone too long thinking about myself, worried about my own life. Not anymore.

Figure out what he’s doing, a piece at a time. And then even if it kills me, I’ll find some way to stop him.

Supreme Allied Headquarters, Versailles

DECEMBER 18, 1:00 P.M.

The news from Karl Schmidt’s interrogation finally arrived by telex as General Eisenhower finished his strategy meeting in the Map Room. His chief of Counter Intelligence hurried in the dispatch after confirming the contents twice with First Army. Eisenhower scanned the report, that as many as eighty German commandos in American uniform targeting him for assassination might be in Paris, with characteristic calm.

“Just another crazy-ass rumor,” he said, handing the pages back.

He was the only officer at Allied Headquarters who reacted that way. Over Eisenhower’s protests, his chief of security ordered that the general’s quarters be relocated immediately from a comfortable nearby villa into the Grand Trianon Palace in the Versailles compound. Ike relished what little privacy he had, and when he was off the clock, wanted to be left alone. His staff believed the reason for that was Ike’s ongoing affair with his British aide-de-camp, a WAC lieutenant and former fashion model named Kay Summersby. When Eisenhower refused to make the move, his chief of staff told him that when his safety was involved, he had to follow orders like any other soldier. By the end of the day, America’s only five-star general, commander of the entire Allied theater of war in Europe, had become, in effect, a prisoner of his own forces.

Within twenty-four hours, the Trianon Palace was transformed into a fortress. Two walls of thick barbed wire went up around the perimeter. Tanks and machine gun emplacements were installed at hundred-yard intervals around the compound. Roadblocks were set up for miles in every direction, and an elaborate new pass system was installed overnight. A platoon of MPs was added to the general’s personal security detail, and he would be driven in an armored sedan with tinted windows, never using the same route twice. Accustomed to taking long, solitary walks through the gardens of Versailles, Eisenhower was confined to the building with the drapes closed, in case snipers had worked their way within range, while soldiers patrolled the grounds. Ike’s protests that these men could better serve the war effort on the front lines were ignored.

“This must be what it feels like to be president,” grumbled Eisenhower to a member of his staff.

By nightfall plainclothes Army Counter Intelligence officers in Paris had staked out the Café de le Paix, the restaurant Schmidt had identified as the assassins’ rallying point. Machine guns were nested in nearby alleys. Otto Skorzeny’s photograph was plastered to walls and lampposts throughout the city. Neighborhood watches organized patrols looking for disguised German agents. Any suspicious-looking GI who wandered into the area was detained and questioned.