Jeffery Deaver - Garden Of Beasts

“Oh, no,” Willi Kohl whispered aloud. “Good God…”

He suddenly understood exactly what the security alerts were all about, what the relationship between Morgan and Taggert and Schumann were, and what the American’s mission in this country was.

Gripping his pistol, the inspector began jogging through the woods toward the clearing, cursing the Gestapo and the SS and Peter Krauss for not telling him what they knew. Cursing too the twenty years and twenty-five kilos that life had added to his body since he’d become a policeman. As for his feet, so urgent was his desire to prevent Ernst’s death that he forgot about the pain completely.

All lies!

Everything they’d said was a lie. To get us to come willingly to their death chamber! Kurt had taken what he thought was the cowardly choice, agreeing to join the service, and he was now about to die for that decision – while if he and Hans had gone to the concentration camp they might very well have survived.

Listless and dizzy, Kurt Fischer sat in the corner of Academic Building 5, beside his brother. No less frightened than anyone else, no less desperate, he was not, however, trying to rip the iron desks from the floor or batter the door with his shoulder like the others. He knew Ernst and Keitel had thought this out ahead of time and had constructed an impregnable, airtight building to be their coffin. The National Socialists were as efficient as they were demonic.

Rather, he was wielding a different tool. With the stub of pencil from the back of the room, he was jotting unsteady words onto a page of blank paper ripped from the back of a book. Ironically, considering that it was pacifism that had brought them to this terrible place, the volume’s title was Cavalry Tactics During the War Between France and Prussia, 1870-1871.

Whimpers of fear, shouts of anger around him, sobs.

Kurt hardly heard them. “Don’t be afraid,” he told his brother.

“No,” the terrified younger man said, his voice cracking. “I’m not.”

Rather than the letter of reassurance that he’d planned on writing to their parents that night, which Ernst had promised they could send, he now wrote a very different note.

Albrecht and Lotte Fischer

Prince George Street, No. 14

Swiss Cottage,

London, England

If by some miracle this reaches you, please know that you are in our thoughts now, at these last minutes of our lives. The circumstances of our deaths are as pointless as those of the ten thousand who have died before us here. We pray that you continue your work, with us in your thoughts, so that perhaps this madness can end. Tell everyone who will listen that the evil here is worse than the worst they can imagine and it will not end until somebody has the courage to stop it.

Know that we love you.

– Your sons

Around him the screams abated as the young men dropped to their knees or bellies and began kissing the scuffed oak floor and baseboards to suck whatever air they might from beneath the floors. Some simply prayed peacefully.

Kurt Fischer looked over his writing once more. He actually gave a soft laugh. For he’d realized suddenly that this was the essential purpose he’d been hoping for: delivering the message to his parents and ultimately, he prayed, the world. This is how he would fight the Party. His weapon was his death.

And, now at the end, he felt a curious optimism that this note would be found and delivered and perhaps, through his parents or others, it would be the final root that cracked the wall of the jail imprisoning his country.

The pencil fell from his hand.

Using his last morsels of thought and strength, Kurt folded the paper and put it into his wallet, which had the most chance of being removed from his body by a local mortician or doctor, who, God willing, might find the words he’d written and have the courage to send them on.

Then he took his brother’s hand and closed his eyes.

Still, Paul Schumann had no target.

Reinhard Ernst was pacing erratically beside the Mercedes as he spoke into the microphone attached by a wire to the dashboard in the front seat. The man’s tall bodyguard also blocked Paul’s view.

He kept the gun steady, finger on the trigger, waiting for the man to stop.

Touching the ice…

Controlling his breathing, ignoring the flies buzzing into his face, ignoring the heat. Silently screaming to Reinhard Ernst: Stop moving, for Christ’s sake! Let me do this thing and get away, back to my country, back to my printing plant, my brother… the family that I’ve had, the family that I may yet have.

An image of Käthe Richter came quickly into his head and he saw her eyes, felt her tears, heard the echo of her voice.

I’d rather share my country with ten thousand killers than my bed with one…

His finger caressed the trigger of the Mauser, and her face and words vanished in a spray of ice.

And just at that moment Ernst stopped pacing, clipped the microphone back onto the dashboard of the Mercedes and stepped away from the car. He stood with arms folded, chatting amiably to his bodyguard, who nodded slowly, as they gazed at the classroom.

Paul rested the sights on the colonel’s chest.

Approaching the clearing, Willi Kohl heard a loud gunshot.

It echoed off the buildings and the landscape and was swallowed in the tall grass and juniper around him. The inspector ducked instinctively. He saw, across the clearing, the tall form of Reinhard Ernst drop to the ground beside the Mercedes.

No… The man is dead! It’s my fault! Through my oversight, my stupidity, a man has been killed, a man vital to the fatherland.

The minister’s SS bodyguard, crouching, looked for the assailant.

What have I done? the inspector thought.

But then another shot rang out.

Easing to the protective trunk of a thick oak at the edge of the clearing, Kohl saw one of the regular army soldiers slump to the ground. Kohl looked just beyond him and saw another soldier lying on the grass, blood on his chest. Nearby a balding man in a brown jacket scrabbled to safety under the bus.

The inspector then looked back to the Mercedes. What was this? He’d been wrong. The minister was unhurt! Ernst had dived to the ground for cover when he’d heard the first shot but was now rising cautiously, a pistol in his hand. His guard had unslung a machine pistol and he too was looking for a target.

Schumann hadn’t killed Ernst.

Then a third shot rang through the clearing. It hit Ernst’s Mercedes, shattering a window. A fourth, too, hitting the car’s tire and inner tube. Then Kohl saw motion on the grassy field. It was Schumann, yes! He was running from the Opel toward the school, firing occasionally toward the Mercedes with a long rifle, forcing Ernst and his guard to remain low. He reached the front door of the classroom as Ernst’s SS man rose and fired several times. The bus, however, protected the American from the shots.

But he was not protected from Willi Kohl.

The inspector wiped his hand on his slacks and aimed his revolver at Schumann. It was a long-range shot but not impossible and at least he could pin the man down until other troops arrived.

But just as Kohl began to squeeze the trigger, Schumann ripped the front door of the building open. He stepped inside and emerged a moment later, dragging out a young man. Several others followed, staggering, holding their chests, coughing, some vomiting. Another one, then three more.

God in Heaven! Kohl was stunned. It was they who’d been gassed, not rats or mice.

Schumann motioned the men toward the woods and, before Kohl could recover from the shock of what he’d seen and aim once more, the American was firing toward the Mercedes again, giving the young men cover with the rifle as they made for the safety of the dense forest.