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David Healey: Winter Sniper

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David Healey Winter Sniper

Winter Sniper: краткое содержание, описание и аннотация

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During World War II, a legendary German sniper is sent to assassinate General Eisenhower when Ike makes a top-secret trip to Washington as planning begins for the D-Day invasion.

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They had another glass of champagne as Eva asked Ty all about himself. She found it was the favorite subject of most men. They smoked a cigarette on the patio. Later that night, Eva took him to bed.

That was the beginning of their affair and it lasted all through the fall. Ty must have thought it had the intensity of any wartime romance. Eva felt a little guilty because she had a soft spot for Ty and he fell hard for her. He was an earnest young man like many she had known in Germany. And he had a youthful enthusiasm for sex. They made love at night before they went to sleep and first thing in the morning when they woke up. Sometimes they spent an afternoon under the covers or else she was awakened deep in the night by Ty’s touch between her legs. Half asleep, she would take him into her as if in a dream. They always slept naked, even though winter was coming on. She liked going to sleep feeling his hard belly pressed into the small of her back, one of Ty’s hands cupped around her breast.

Since then, Eva had welcomed many men into her bed. Most did not spend the night. But unlike most of the men she saw, Ty was not cheating on a wife safely at home in Pittsburgh or Boston. Those men seemed to see Eva as nothing more than a wartime diversion. They still talked too much and told her information they shouldn’t have, usually to make themselves seem important. Ty had no secrets. But he would be on Eisenhower’s staff in London, and talk was that the general was the man who would be running the show in Europe.

A few years ago, if anyone had suggested to Eva that she would soon be a spy and a whore, she would have laughed — and, on further reflection, would likely have slapped his face. But war had changed everything, including her own destiny. She was still Eva Von Stahl — skin the color of milk, blue eyes, platinum hair — who had caught the eye of Albert Speer and then of Adolf Hitler himself. The same Eva Von Stahl who had been an actress appearing on the silver screen with Marlene Dietrich. But Eva also wasn’t one to fool herself. She’d never had any leading roles, and the bigger the movie, the smaller her part had been. That was one reason why, when the Abwehr had approached her in the late autumn of 1939, that she had agreed to play the greatest role of her life.

How well she remembered those heady months of the previous summer. They were like a golden time. All through Europe, it was the best weather than anyone could remember. Sunny blue skies, just enough rain. It was as if winter would never return.

That had been the summer of the big Nuremberg rallies. Thousands of men, rank upon rank, and presiding over it all was the Fuhrer on the marble dais. Seeing the massed power of Germany and the strength of its people, it was easy then to believe in the Third Reich and Hitler’s dream of a German empire that would last a thousand years. That was the summer that she had met Kurt Von Stahl.

The young Wehrmacht captain was from an aristocratic family near Munich. His grandfather was a baron, a proud old man who had helped command the Kaiser’s armies to disaster in the Great War. Eva had wondered at the time if the baron had helped lead to her own father’s ruin, but she was too caught up in a summer romance to worry much about that. Eva wasn’t making any films that summer and so they did what a thousand other couples did on the brink of war — they lived as if there was no tomorrow. Those months were a blur of champagne and music, sunshine and dancing. They were married in August. Someday, Eva would be a baroness.

And then the war came. Blitzkreig. The very sound of the word made sense when you thought of the German legions rolling across Poland, Belgium and France. How Eva had come to hate the sound of that word and her own naiveté about war — and Kurt’s as well.

On September 1, 1939, one of the most symbolic incidents of the war had taken place when Polish cavalry attacked German tanks leading the blitz at a town called Krojanty. Kurt’s own Panzer was among them. The Poles on horseback were no match for tanks and machine guns. They were cut down mercilessly. Eva imagined sometimes how it must have been — horses screaming in pain as they were torn apart, men out of another century brandishing lances and revolvers as they died under the machine guns. It helped her understand what Kurt had done. Taking pity on a wounded Polish officer whose leg was pinned beneath his dead horse, Kurt ordered his tank to stop and climbed down to help the man. According to the tank crew, Captain Von Stahl had walked up to the wounded man unarmed. The Polish officer had then shot him dead at point blank range.

When the Abwehr sought her out a few weeks later, Eva said yes.

Her thoughts were interrupted as Petra entered the parlor to bring coffee. Eva set the letter aside as Petra put the tray on the table next to her: pot, cup and saucer, cream, sugar and plate of cookies. Eva sighed. “Take the cookies away,” she said in German. “You’re always wanting to fatten me up.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

It was the girl who could have done with a little fattening up, Eva thought. She was too thin, her bony shoulders like coat hangers holding up her dress. Blond and blue-eyed, Petra might have passed for a poor country girl from the farms around Frankfurt until she spoke and mangled perfectly good German with her Polish accent. Petra claimed that her grandparents were ethnic Germans, part of the wave that had settled in Poland in the nineteenth century for the rich farmland there. She had come with Eva from Germany, a refugee of the blitz.

Even now, Eva felt as if she hardly knew the girl. Petra would only let her go so far into her personal life; talking to her was like walking into a house full of locked rooms. Eva understood now how war could do that to someone. Petra never had much to say to anyone. She was plain-looking and tended to break out in red splotches of embarrassment around men. Nonetheless, Eva knew for a fact that two or three of the delivery boys who came to the kitchen had taken Petra out to the movies or on picnics. How far they had gotten with their Polish date was hard to say. Her English was rudimentary at best, but you didn’t need to speak the language to know what the boys were after.

Petra glided silently out of the parlor, bearing the cookies away. Eva took a sip of coffee, annoyed at the interruption and with herself for speaking in German. They were alone in the house but speaking German was a bad habit to get into. No one would be surprised — everyone knew she was German — but Eva had made every effort to give the outward appearance of having embraced all things American. That included refraining from snapping at the servant in Deutsch. No good would come from reminding everyone that she was still German at heart.

She went back to Ty’s letter. I will be coming back to Washington on New Year’s Day. I know I can’t presume for us to pick up where we left off. Too many months have gone by for that. But perhaps we could still spend some time together. I would like that. Of course, I will have to work around the general’s schedule while he is in Washington. He is supposed to be on vacation but a man like Ike won’t sit still for long and I’m sure he will be busy at the War Department…

Eva’s hands shook. The coffee sat forgotten, growing cold as the winter shadows lengthened in the room. Eisenhower was coming to Washington.

For some weeks now, she had been told to be alert for any such news. This was the opportunity that Eva had awaited. Finally, she could be useful to Berlin. She would radio the information to the Abwehr tonight.

Eva heard the doorbell ring. A man’s voice echoed in the hallway. Alarmed, she thought for a moment that it might be Colonel Fleischmann. He was the last person she wanted to see right now. Eva jumped up from the chair and put Ty’s letter in the fire. The thin military stationery turned to ash almost instantly. She wished she had time to scatter them with the poker. Fleischmann was the type who only had to sniff the ashes to know what the letter said. Then, with a certain amount of relief, she recognized General Caulfield’s voice. He slipped away from the War Department whenever he could, reminding Eva of some stray dog, gray around the muzzle, that kept turning up at one’s door.

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