David Healey - Winter Sniper

Quickly, Eva made up her mind. She lifted the quilt and retrieved the pistol. Her hands shook but she forced herself to steady them. She wrapped the dead fingers of the colonel’s outstretched hand around the Walter, then screamed for all she was worth in her best stage voice. Petra flicked on the overhead light and stormed up the attic stairs.

When the girl saw the body she did not cry out, but only put a hand to her mouth and made a soft noise that sounded like oh . She had learned during the war in Poland to react quietly to death in case the killers were still nearby.

The single bulb overhead barely dissipated the shadows in the cluttered attic, but it was enough to light up the grisly scene. Fleischmann’s clean white T-shirt and underwear seemed to glow against the age-darkened floorboards.

“Is he dead?” Petra asked in German.

Eva nodded. “ Ja . I think so. Yes.”

The girl made the sign of the cross and mumbled something that might have been a prayer. “What happened?”

“Can’t you see the gun in his hand? He shot himself.”

Petra glanced at Eva, a brief questioning look. Then she nodded. If you say so .

Actress though she was, Eva could not bring herself to shed a single tear or say so much as the poor man , even if it was for Petra’s benefit. Fleischmann was dead. “Good riddance,” the Americans liked to say.

Eva was fairly certain that if the second bullet had not done the job, she would have been happy to shoot him a third time. Now, the problem was what to do with the body. She doubted the American authorities would be as quick as Petra to accept that the colonel had committed suicide — by shooting himself twice, no less.

“Should I call the police?” Petra asked.

“No,” Eva said. “We cannot call the police or bring soldiers here again.”

“But Frau Von Stahl, surely we must tell someone what happened.”

“If this had happened in Warsaw in nineteen thirty-nine, would you have called the police?” Eva asked.

“This is America,” the girl said, as if that explained everything. “The rules here are different.”

“Not for us,” Eva said. “Colonel Fleischmann worked for the OSS. They are spies, Petra. He was using us, don’t you see? Our house has already been under guard. If we report that the colonel is dead in our attic, what do you think they will do to us then? They will arrest us or send us back to Germany.”

The girl looked up, fear plain in her eyes. Eva truly began to understand now that Petra had sent the note warning of the assassination attempt not to save Eisenhower but to protect her mistress and herself. If their involvement with the assassin became known, their lives as they knew them would be over. Better to go to the authorities and look like one was doing the right thing than keep quiet only to be discovered later. However, if Petra had been willing before to accept that her mistress was naive to the ways of the world and thus became entangled with assassins, standing here in the attic the mist had lifted from her eyes. Colonel Fleischmann had no more committed suicide than a pig might.

But Petra nodded in agreement. Having survived the Nazi occupation of Poland, she understood a thing or two about not involving the authorities.

“Why did he kill himself?” she finally asked.

“He knew too much,” Eva said. “That can be dangerous for anyone.”

Eva looked around the attic. They could not call the police, but at the same time they could not leave the body where it lay. If someone was to come looking for Fleischmann — and someone would — they would be at risk. Hiding him in the attic was a possibility, at least while it was bitterly cold. But Eva wanted him out of the house. Think , she told herself. How could the two of them get the body out of there?

Her eyes settled on an old rug rolled up and set to one side. “Help me,” she said to Petra.

Together, they unrolled the rug with the edge next to the body. The Oriental rug was old and worn — too shabby for the parlor — but Eva prayed it wasn’t some valuable antique. The ultimate irony would be for the colonel’s blood to ruin one of the few items of value she owned.

Eva took the head, Petra took the feet. They shifted the body enough to get the carpet under him and began to roll it up. The weight was much easier to manage inside the rug and working together they soon had him wrapped up tight as a Cuban cigar. They slid the carpet down the attic steps and then down the hall and the stairs to the first floor. The head, being heavier, bumped on every step, a fact that almost made Eva regret that Fleischmann was dead. It would have served him right to suffer a bit of pain — he had certainly caused her enough.

Then they managed to drag their grisly baggage through the kitchen to the back door. Both of them were now panting with the effort, though Eva had to admit that she was impressed by Petra’s strength. She was very strong for such a skinny girl.

“Now what?” Petra wondered aloud as they stood by the back door.

Eva had never disposed of a body, but she surprised herself by seeming to know just what to do. She fought down the giddy sensation that she was acting in a detective film. “I will get the keys to the Cadillac,” she said.

Eva backed the vehicle as close to the back door as she could. Her driver, Mr. Dorsey, stopped by the house daily and also came over if she called his house, but it was too late at night to summon him. Besides, she did not want to involve anyone else at this point.Eva set the brake and then walked around to open the trunk.

In the kitchen, Petra eyed the distance to the car with apprehension. “It’s so far,” she said in a faint voice.

“You must help me,” Eva said. “I cannot carry him to the car alone.”

Resigned, Petra bent down to shift her end of the rug. With much struggling, they were able to get the bundled rug across the few feet of snowy yard and into the back of the car. Fortunately, the old Cadillac’s trunk was quite spacious.

“Get our coats,” Eva said. “We are going for a drive.”

Late on any January night, with the temperature in the teens and fresh snow covering the sidewalks and side streets, there would not have been much traffic. With the wartime gas restrictions on top of the weather and the late hour, almost nothing else moved. The Cadillac’s tires were not the best — she recalled that old Dorsey had warned her to get new ones — and she drove at a snail’s pace down the slippery streets. When they reached one of the rougher neighborhoods — another warning from Mr. Dorsey about this place — Eva backed the Cadillac into the darkest alley she could find.

Beside her, she heard Petra’s sharp intake of breath. “Where are we going?”

“Right here,” Eva said, stopping the car. Eva was a good driver, but her arms trembled with tension from wrestling the big car through the snowy city. But the drive had been worth it. The alley was dark as a tiger’s maw and deserted. Eva left the engine running. The two women got out and opened the trunk, and then with a final effort they tumbled the heavy bundle into the snow.

Alone in his suite, General Dwight Eisenhower studied a map of the French coastline. He was half-reclined on the sofa, feet on the coffee table where a cigarette in the ashtray curled a trail of smoke upward, a small glass of bourbon next to the ashtray. Mamie was asleep — or pretending to be asleep, at least — behind the closed bedroom door. After calling his wife “Kay” by mistake, Ike wasn’t all that sure he would be welcome in there tonight, so he had taken up residence on the couch. That slip of the tongue had been what his younger staffers would have called “a bonehead move.”