David Healey - Winter Sniper

“There’s shooting and then there’s being a sniper,” Grantham said. “You’re talking skill with a rifle and tactics. The Germans and the Russians are so far ahead of us, you wouldn’t believe it. They’ve got experienced snipers with hundreds of kills to their credit.”

“A few hundred kills. That must take a lot of snipers.”

At the other end of the line, Ty heard something that sounded like a snort. “That’s a few hundred kills each .”

Ty felt sick to his stomach and his head hurt all over again. “I need somebody like that. Put him on a plane and make sure he gets to the resort at White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia.”

His old friend didn’t question the request. He knew who Ty worked for. “Anything else?”

“Send me anything you have about snipers,” Ty said. He thought about the spent brass cartridge they had found. “Who the best Russians and Germans are.”

“You got it. Just one more thing. If you’re dealing with an enemy sniper, keep in mind that most of these guys can reliably take out a target from a thousand yards away. In other words, keep your head down, pardner.”

Eva woke to the sound of steam radiators popping and wheezing against the cold. It was a losing battle in the cold snap. The plaster walls and rattling windows of the old house breathed winter’s chill into every room. Eva forced herself to stir. Her head ached and she felt like it was the middle of the night, even though the pale light of a January morning leaked around the drapes. It had not been a good night for sleeping. Colonel Fleischmann and his men had stayed to guard the house until nearly two o’clock in the morning, and Eva had been forced to play the damsel in distress, never one of her favorite roles.

Fleischmann had helped himself to her liquor cart as he directed his men from an easy chair by the big fireplace in the drawing room. Eva had dreaded that he might want to go upstairs with her, but fortunately, the presence of the soldiers seemed to cramp his style. When Eva finally did go to bed it was alone, leaving Fleischmann in the easy chair where he had nodded off after consuming half a bottle of her black label scotch.

It was a good thing for Fleischmann that Hess had not returned to the house because the man had been in no shape to walk across the room, let alone capture assassins. Not that she had expected Hess to reappear. His assassination attempt on General Eisenhower had the same effect as poking a stick into a nest of hornets — he would have been a fool to come running back to Eva. She would not have been able to help. She was practically under house arrest, even if the soldiers were supposed to be protecting her. In any case, she ordered Petra to make them all breakfast in the middle of the night. The men were far more easygoing once they had full stomachs.

Eva got out of bed, sliding her feet into slippers and pulling on a heavy robe. She went to the window and peered out at the gray landscape. A storm front was moving in as promised on the radio news and she watched as a few snowflakes drifted down. Not so different from Berlin, really. It was the summers that truly set Washington apart, she thought. Hot, steamy, sweltering — she had used some of her precious funds to have ceiling fans installed.

Funny to think about that on a cold winter’s morning — some of that summer heat would have been welcome now.

She heard noises downstairs and thought with a sense of dread that more soldiers had arrived. But these were kitchen noises clattering pans, a spoon rattling in a tea cup, the sound of the oven door.

She felt all the anger that had been bottled up the night before come rushing out. Eva had no doubt that it was Petra who had sent the note to Colonel Fleischmann, warning him about the attempt on Eisenhower. That silly girl had ruined months of planning. The thought that Petra had stolen her personal stationery and even gone so far as to forge her signature enraged Eva. Who did that Polish tart think she was?

Eva paced the room, the cold forgotten. She was working herself up into a rage and she tried to calm down, but it was a bit like trying to hold back a sail caught in a gust of wind.

Worse yet, the girl had discovered what Hess was doing in the city when Eva was still trying to figure it out. How had Petra managed to learn that? It stung Eva’s pride to know that her servant had found out what she herself could not.

What angered Eva most of all was that Fleischmann had given her credit for preventing General Dwight D. Eisenhower from being assassinated. Since coming to the United States it had served Eva’s purposes to appear patriotic and pro-American. Because she had once been famous in a minor way, Washington society welcomed her as a German who had made the right choice and come over to their side. No one would have guessed that she kept a radio in the attic and supplied a constant flow of military gossip to Berlin. To hear Fleischmann actually praise Eva for saving Eisenhower’s life was really too much. It was salt in the wound. She had Petra to thank for all that.

Petra .

Eva did not bother to dress but walked out of the bedroom and downstairs, stopping in the parlor to retrieve a fireplace poker. She hefted the poker in her right hand and smacked it against her left palm, relishing the sting it made. How easy it would be to bash in someone’s skull with it. She paused for a moment in front of the fireplace, amazed that it had only been yesterday evening that she and Ty had made love there. Poor Ty. He would be hiding out with his general today, keeping their heads down.

She whirled on her heels and padded in slippered feet down the hallway to the kitchen. Petra, her back to the doorway, was busy chopping carrots for a stew and did not hear Eva until she spoke.

“Are all the soldiers gone?”

Petra gave a start, bumping the cutting board so that sliced carrots bounced and rolled down the countertop.

“Frau Von Stahl!”

“Do I make you nervous, Petra?”

“It was a long night. I am tired.”

“Did they leave any guards here?” Eva asked.

“There is still one soldier here,” the girl said, lapsing into German. Eva did not bother to warn her against it — by now there was no point in trying to seem as un-German as possible. Besides, unless the soldier left behind happened to speak the language, it was the perfect way to speak privately. “I think he is asleep in a chair by the front door.”

“So much for our protection,” Eva said. She smacked the fire poker into her palm again. Petra’s eyes grew wide.

“Frau Von Stahl —”

“You brought these soldiers here, Petra. Why did you send that note to Colonel Fleischmann?”

“What note?”

“Petra.” Eva let her tone sum up her doubts. “You should not meddle in affairs that do not concern you.”

Petra maneuvered so that the kitchen table stood between them. “I saw what he was going to do. I knew because I had seen such things in Poland when the fighting started there. The snipers, hidden away in an upstairs window, could kill so many. Yesterday I took that message to Captain Walker just as you told me to do, but on my way there I saw Herr Hess come out of a boarding house across the street from the captain’s hotel. I don’t know what made me do it, but I knocked on the door and the landlady brought me up to his room.”

“Why in heaven’s name would she do that?”

“She was under the assumption that I worked with Herr Hess and had gone there to run an errand.”

“Yet you did nothing to dissuade her of that notion,” Eva said, impressed in spite of herself at Petra’s gumption. Perhaps she had underestimated the girl.

“He was going to shoot General Eisenhower,” Petra said. “If that had happened and they knew that we had helped him when he first came to the city, what do you think would happen to us?”