The Master Sniper (36 page)

Whatever, Obersturmbannführer Repp allowed himself a smile. He had quite a distance still to go, but downhill, through the virgin pine, and he knew he’d make a shooting position well before dark.

“H
e’s already there,” said Tony. “On the mountain. Over the convent. With Vampir.”

“Yeah,” said Leets, tiredly. He sat back, put his feet up on the table and with two fingers pinched the bridge of his nose. “Christ, I’ve got a headache,” he said.

Beyond, music lifted, American, popular, from off the Armed Forces net. He could hear laughter, the sound of women’s voices. Women? Here? Laying it on a bit thick, weren’t they?

“We could call the Swiss police,” said Roger brightly. “They could get some people out there and warn the—”

“No lines,” said Tony, “not in the middle of a war. End of a war. Whatever. You can’t just ring up the operator, eh?”

“Okay, okay,” said Roger quickly, “here’s what, I got it, I got it, we’ll radio OSS in Bern or Zurich. They could get in contact with the Swiss police. There’s just a chance that—”

“There’s no chance at all,” said Leets. “We are now in the middle of the biggest celebration in three thousand-odd years of European history. They knew all along.”

“I suppose we can rationalize our failure,” said Tony.
“We could argue that it’s really none of our business: one lone German criminal and some stateless Jews in neutral territory. We did give it a very good effort. Nobody can say we didn’t try.”

“Anybody got any aspirin?” Leets asked grumpily. “Jesus, it sounds like a goddamned
party
out there. I keep hearing women. Are there women out there, Roger?”

“Some Red Cross girls,” Roger said. “Look, another thing we could try is the legation. There’s bound to be a night duty officer. Now he could—”

“I sure could stand to get laid,” Leets said. “I haven’t gotten laid since—” he trailed off.

“And of course there’s a political dimension to be considered too,” said Tony. “All that money going to Zionists. It seems quite possible that some of those funds might be diverted into ends other than those best for King and country, eh? Let’s fold up here and go find ourselves a pint, and enjoy the celebration.”

“Captain, we—”

“All right, Roger.”

“Captain, we can’t just—”

“All right, Roger,” he said. “Boy, do I have a headache. I always knew this would happen. Right from the start. I could feel it, I
knew
it was in the cards. Goddamn it.”

“I suppose I did too,” said Tony, rising wearily. “It certainly has got dark fast, hasn’t it?”

“What’re you guys talking about?” Roger asked, fearing the answer.

“Roger, go get the Jeep,” said Tony. “And tell me please where the bloody phone is in this mausoleum.”

“Hey, what—”

“Roger,” Leets finally explained, “it’s come down to us. You, me, Tony. Only way. Go get the Jeep.”

“We can never
drive
there,” said Roger. “We’re hundreds of miles away. It’s almost eight. Not that far in so short—”

“We can probably make it to Nuremberg in two hours. Then, if we’re lucky, real lucky, we can promote an airplane. Then—”

“Jesus, what is this, dreamland? We’d have to get landing clearances, visas, stuff like that. Permission from the Swiss. Find another car on the ground. Drive to, what was it, Applewell or whatever,
then
find this place. Before midnight. That’s the craziest thing I—”

“No,” Leets said, “no cars, no visas, no maps. We jump in. Like Normandy, like Varsity, like Anlage Elf.”

“Where
is
that damned telephone?” said Tony.

Tony found his phone—a whole abandoned switchboard full of them, in fact—in the great monumental stairwell around which Schloss Pommersfelden was built. But the space began to fill with people, drawn out of offices and billets, or drawn off the road by the blazing lights. It was one of those rare nights when no one wanted to be alone; no one was moody or unhappy. A future had just opened up for them.

Women began to appear. From where? Wasn’t this place really a kind of prison? Red Cross girls, newspaper correspondents, WAC’s, a few British nurses, some German women even. The stairwell jammed up with flesh. Everybody was rubbing, grinding, bumping, stroking. Liquor, looted from somewhere in the castle, began
to appear in heroic quantities. Nobody had time for glasses; one-hundred-year-old Rhine wines in black dusty bottles were sucked down like Cokes by GI’s. A radio provided music. Dog-faces and generals rubbed shoulders in crowded orbits around the girls. Leets thought he heard the German officers singing in the detention wing—something schmaltzy and sentimental in counterpoint to the Big Band jangle from the radio.

A girl kissed Leets. He could feel her tits squash flat against his chest. She put a boozy tongue in his ear and whispered something specific and began to tug at him, and then someone ripped her away.

Meanwhile, Tony worked the phone. Leets could not help but hear.

“I
say.”
Tony especially the stage Englishman, David Niven, for Christ’s sake. “Major Outhwaithe here, his Majesty’s Royal Fusiliers, hello, hello, is this Nuremberg, Signal Corps, could you talk up, please, yes, much better, I’m told a British Mosquito squadron is about, at the airfield of course, can you possibly buzz me through, old fellow, must be an Air Officer Commanding about, no, no, English chap, funny talker like me, right, Limey, at least a group captain, what you chaps would call a colonel, yes, it sounds like a lovely party, we’re having quite a one at this end ourselves, but
do
you think you could arouse Group Captain Manville? I see, yes, pity, then is it possible you could patch me through to that bunch then, yes, RAF, yes, hello, hello, are you there, Group Captain Manville? Yes, another Brit, Outhwaithe, of Mi-six, or SOE actually, you’re not Sara Finchley’s cousin, ah, yes, thought so, believe I laid eyes on you in ’37 at Henley, the regatta, you were the coxswain
in the number-two boat, yes, bit of a hero, weren’t you, Magdalen man, eh? and didn’t you football as well, thought so, no, not Magdalen, Christ Church, ’30, languages, got me into this spy business, yes, cushy, I agree, a few times, France, scratches though, yes, wonderful it’s over, but I’ve heard Labour will win the next general, boot poor Winston out on his arse, yes, drinks awfully, heard the same myself, stay
in?
Good God,
now?
done my bit, time to get back though it’ll be all different, every little thing’ll have changed for the worse though I fancy in a year or so or ten or twenty, we’ll look back on all this and think it great fun, highlight of our days, though right now it seems bleak enough, yes, sad in a way that it’s over, they
were
mighty days, weren’t they? and how is dear Sara, really, that common little Welshman Jones, Ives,
Ives
, both legs, she’s marrying him anyway? why, how splendid, sounds like a novel, Arnhem, heard it was a throw of the dice all the way, Red Devil, those were brave lads, those were, make the rest of us look like sodders, quite a show, quite a show, Frost’s adjutant? and how is Johnny? glad to be free, I’ll bet, now, by the way, Group Captain, Tom, Tom is it? Tony here, yes, Antony, a major, they weren’t so generous with the rank in our backwash department of the war, hope it doesn’t hold me back after I’m demobbed, no telling how the records will count, yes, anyway, now, Tom, dear fellow, I’m in a bit of a pinch, yes, not a real bother, but time-consuming nevertheless, need an airplane, a Mosquito actually, yes, good ship, the Mossie—” Tony looked up at Leets, covered the speaker and said, “The beggar’s completely sozzled,” and returned without missing a beat. “—all wood, I know, I
always wondered how they stood up to Jerry flak, flew
between
it, ho ho ho ho,
very
good, Tom, now, Tom, we’ve got to get to Switzerland in rather a dash, I know it’s the best party since Kitchener reached Khartoum and God knows we’ve all earned it, and it’s rather a
chunk
of a favor I’m asking, but it seems to be on the urgent side, a loose Jerry end we need to tie down, time’s a-wasting and I haven’t got time to call the right people upstairs, and of course the Yanks,
as usual
, would rather play rub-my-bum with the Russians than listen to us, but as I say, it would be awfully nice if I could hitch a ride to, well, I’m glad you realize the importance, yes, Tom, yes, yes, about two hours, yes, I understand, yes, quite, quite, of course, best to Sara, best to her fellow Jones,
Ives
, sorry, Ives, wonderful girl, so brave, tally-ho,” and at last he laid the phone down in its cradle.

“He said No?”

“He said Yes. I think. So drunk he could hardly speak, the music was quite loud. But there’ll be a Mosquito on the field at ten at Grossreuth Flughafen. God.” He stood.

Leets and Outhwaithe pushed their way through the celebrants, and out into the night, where Roger waited with the Jeep and the Thompson submachine guns.

Repp, at 400 meters out, had an angle of about 30 degrees to the target zone. It was his best compromise, close enough to put his rounds in with authority, yet high enough to clear the wall. He half crouched now behind an outcrop of rock. The Vampir rifle lay before him on the stone, on its bipod, the bulky optics skewing
it to one side. Repp had removed the pack and set it next to the rifle so that its weight wouldn’t pull his shooting off.

Enough light lingered to let him examine the buildings beneath and beyond him. Built five hundred years ago by fierce Jesuits, the buildings had been walled and somewhat modernized early in the century when the order of Mother Teresa took them over as a convent. It looked like a prison. The chapel, the oldest building, was not impressive, certainly nothing on the scale of the Frauenkirche in Munich, a true monument to papism; it was a utilitarian stone thing with a steeply pitched roof, two domed steeples with grim little crosses atop them. But Repp steadied his binoculars against the other, larger edifice, the living quarters of the order that fronted on a courtyard. Patiently in the fading light he explored it until he found, not far from the main entrance with stairway and imposing arches, an obscure wooden door, heavily bolted. The children would spring from there.

There would be twenty-six of them, and he had to take them all: twenty-four, twenty-five even, simply wasn’t good enough. The SD report said they came out every night at midnight and played in the yard for about forty minutes. Repp calculated that they’d be bunched in the killing zone, that is, outside the door but not yet dispersed enough to prevent a clean sweep of the job, for about five seconds. He’d take them when the last one had stepped out the door. Fantastic shooting, to be sure, but well within his—and Vampir’s—capabilities.

And what if twenty-seven targets came out, or twenty-eight, or twenty-nine, meaning a nun or a novitiate or
two had come along to watch and help? It was entirely possible, even probable. In Berlin they’d been vague and half-apologetic. Perhaps even the
Reichsführer
, who’d sent millions East, felt queasy about ordering him to shoot a Swiss nun. Yet they chose Repp for his strength as well as his skill and he’d resolved to make the difficult decisions. If a nun had to die in the cause of making the world
Judenrein
, clean of Jews, then so be it. He’d kill everything on the scope.

Repp laid down the binoculars as the last of the light died. He clapped his hands, and pulled his jacket tighter. He was cold and afraid of fatigue, which could take his edge. And he was strangely uneasy about all this: so simple, everything had whirred into place. He knew enough to distrust such ease. He shifted an arm and looked at his watch. Almost nine.

Three more hours.

It was almost nine. The drunken lieutenant was explaining but his words kept dissolving into giggles. He was under the impression Roger was an officer and he seemed to think the more he giggled the more trouble he was in, which meant that he giggled even harder.

“The tank carrier, sir, uh, he stripped his gears trying to get her outta the mud, uh, or he
thought
he would, uh, sir, he put her in reverse and she jumped the road and—” The remainder of the communiqué was lost in a seethe of giggles. The lieutenant was trying to explain why the flatbed truck, designed to transport tanks, lay angled across the road ahead, garish in the light of a dozen purple flares. Around it clustered a group of Americans—they’d drawn duty on VE night and someone
had a bottle and whatever they were supposed to do just wasn’t going to get done.

It had been like this most of the way since Schloss Pommersfelden. Nuremberg still lay somewhere in the distance, mythical like Camelot, and to get there they’d have to pass through more of what they’d already seen: drunken joyous men of all nationalities, accidents, honking horns, flares, small-arms fire. And women. In the small town of Forchheim—“Fuck-him,” in GI argot—through which they’d just pushed their way, the nonfraternization law had broken down totally, and young officers were the most audacious offenders. College boys mostly, with no real military careers on the line, they’d turned the town into a fraternity party or prom night. The Jeep had been laid up at a corner behind a column of stalled vehicles before Leets, in a frenzy of rage, had gone forward to find two staff cars hung up on each other in a minor crash, and in the back seat of each a couple necking hotly while around them MP’s argued and screamed. Leets went back and they’d pulled out of line to try an alternate route, but almost ended up in the Regnitz River and did in fact become lost until a studiously inebriated British major of the Guards, elaborately polite, had pointed them back in the right direction.

“Well, Jesus, how long, Lieutenant?” Leets demanded, leaning across Roger. Something in his voice must have startled the youngster. He stepped back abruptly and began to speak in an oppressive imitation of sobriety. “There’s a maintenance vehicle from the motor pool in Nuremberg on the way, uh, sir.”

“Christ,” said Leets in disgust.

He climbed out of the Jeep and pushed by the lieutenant to the truck. The fucking thing was hopelessly locked in, its double-axled set of rear tires having slipped off the roadway into a culvert, hooking there, and as the driver had pulled to free himself, he’d actually twisted the huge flatbed up and out into the air; it looked like a drawbridge stuck halfway, blocking the road completely. It would take a heavy tow truck or perhaps a crane to move the thing.