The Master Sniper (7 page)

“Hemingway.”

“You could at least empty the wastebaskets once in a while.”

“Hemingway. The writer. Over from Paris, from the Ritz. Met him at a party.”

“The writer?”

“Himself. In the flesh. Big guy, mustache, steel glasses. You should have seen him pour the booze down.”

“You travel in flashy circles.”

“Only the best. I go to all the good parties. Don’t let my stripes keep me out of anything. After Bill Fielding, he’s about the most famous man in the world.”

The door flew open; Tony Outhwaithe swirled in as if the star of the play.

“Captain Leets, send this boy out to hit balls against a wall or something,” he commanded.

“Roger, out.”

Roger was off in a flash. “I’ll be at the squash club, you need me.”

Tony turned to Leets. “The news is bad. Bad for you. Rather good for me.” He smiled with great satisfaction.

“You love to top me, don’t you?” Leets said.

“Yes, but there are tops and tops, and this is a true top.”

Leets braced; was he being shipped to Burma to hunt Japs in jungles?

“Are you still banging away on that assassin matter?”

“Sort of. Not getting any—”

“Excellent. I can now prove you wrong. New data.”

“What?” Leets sat up, his heart beginning to excite a bit.

“My, interested so soon.”

“What?”

“All right. Last night I happened to run into a donnish sort from PWE. Know what that is?”

“Your Political Warfare Executive. Sort of like—”

“Yes. Anyway, it seems he can identify your phantom acronym. WVHA.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” Tony was richly satisfied. He was enjoying every minute of all this. “It has nothing to do with us. It doesn’t even concern the war. It’s not related to intelligence or espionage or the racket at all. You’re out of luck, I’m afraid.”

“What is it?” Leets demanded. Why was his heart going, why did he have so much trouble breathing?

“It’s a part of the administrative section of dear old SS.
Wirtschafts- und Verwaltungshauptamt
Obscure, easy to miss among the more flamboyant organizations in Twelveland.”

Leets translated prosaically. “Economic and Administrative Department,” he said glumly, “that’s all. They do the payrolls. Clerks.”

“Yes. Not the sort of lads to go gunning after generals, eh?”

“No, no, suppose not.”

“They’ve got other concerns at the moment. Those clerks run one of the more interesting phenomena of the Third Reich, old bun,” Tony said, smiling brightly. “They run the concentration camps.”

V
ollmerhausen not only knew that it wasn’t his fault the prisoner had escaped, he knew whose fault it was. It was Captain Schaeffer’s fault. The man was incompetent. Schaeffer was involved in most things that went wrong at Anlage Elf. He’d seen the type before, a real SS fanatic, sullen and stupid, a brutal, suspicious Nazi peasant. Vollmerhausen had explained this very carefully to anybody who cared to listen, though not many of them did.

Now he was going to explain it to Repp.

“If,” he began, “if Captain Schaeffer’s men had been adequately trained, had reacted quickly, had treated this whole enterprise as something other than a holiday rest camp, then the prisoner could never have escaped. Instead they blunder about like comedians in a farce, shooting at each other, screaming, turning on lights, hooting and tooting. A disaster. I thought the Waffen SS, especially the famed
Totenkopfdivision
, had a reputation for efficiency. Why, the most inept conscriptees—old men and youngsters—could have performed better.” He sat back smugly. He’d really told them. He’d really let them have it.

Repp sat, toying with something at his desk. He did
not appear particularly impressed. He certainly could be a cold chap.

But Schaeffer, there too, rose to his own defense.

“If,” he replied, talking straight to Repp, “there had been no”—he pronounced the next words with special precision, knowing how they hurt—
“machine failure
, if Herr Ingenieur-Doktor had been able to get his gadget to do its job—”

Gadget?

“Slander! Slander! I will not be slandered! I will not be slandered.” He rose, red-faced, from the chair.

Repp waved him down.

“So that the
Obersturmbannführer
had been able to take out his targets as the mission specifications call for—”

“There was no machine failure,” screamed Vollmerhausen hysterically. He was always being slandered, lied about. He knew people called him a kike behind his back. “I deny, deny, deny. We checked the equipment until we were blue in the face. It had integrity. Integrity. Yes, problems, we work around the clock, the Waffen SS should work half so hard, problems with weight, but the machine works. Vampir works.”

“The fact remains,” insisted the young captain—some men just could not accept defeat gracefully—“the fact remains, and no Yid argument is going to change it, that Vampir displayed twenty-five targets and there were twenty-six subhumans out there.”

It was obvious. “He slipped away before, don’t you see?” said Vollmerhausen. “He slipped out on your men before. I’m told he was a Jew, an educated fellow. He
must have realized something was up and in the moments—”

“He was seen leaving the field, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor,” Repp said quietly. “And fired upon.”

“Yes, well,” Vollmerhausen sputtered, “he’d obviously, well, it’s clear that he separated himself before and so he wasn’t within the range of the mechanism.”

“Herr Obersturmbannführer, the men swear he was standing
among
the corpses.”

“The main question must be,” Vollmerhausen bellowed, cork-screwing insanely out of his seat, “why wasn’t the area fenced? My people slave into the night over Vampir, yet the Waffen SS is unable to construct a simple fence to hold a Jew in.”

“All right, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor,” said Repp.

“A simple fence to stop a Jew who—”

Repp said, “Please.”

Vollmerhausen had several points yet to make and he’d just thought of five or six of them when Repp’s stare fell across him. Something quite frosty in it. Extraordinary. The eyes cool, almost blank. The demeanor so perfectly calm, almost unnaturally calm. Repp had an incredible talent for stillness.

“I was simply—but no matter,” Vollmerhausen said.

“Thank you,” said Repp.

Another silence. Repp was masterful with silences, and he let this one drag on for several seconds. The air in the room was dead. Vollmerhausen shifted in his chair uneasily. Repp kept it so hot in here; in the corner the stove blazed away merrily. Repp, in faded camouflages, made them wait while he took out and, with elaborate
ceremony, lit one of those Russian cigarettes he smoked.

Then finally he said, “Of the Jew, I have decided to let the matter drop. He’s somewhere in the forest, dead. They are not a hearty, physical race. They have no will to survive. Doom is their natural fate, and in the forest he’ll locate his own quickly. Therefore, I’m recalling the patrols.”

“Yes, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” said Captain Schaeffer. “Immediately.”

“Good. Now as for Vampir.” He turned to Vollmerhausen.

Vollmerhausen licked his lips. They were dry. His mouth was dry. He returned to a familiar, discomfiting litany: What am I doing here, locked up in a wild forest with SS lunatics? It was a long way from the
WaPrüf 2
testing ground outside Berlin.

“As for Vampir, I’m afraid I must require another test, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor.”

Vollmerhausen swallowed. So that was it, then. Another load of Jews would be brought in, fattened up, shot down.

“More prisoners, Herr Obersturmbannführer?” he asked.

“That’s all finished, I’m afraid,” said Repp. “Which I’m sure makes you happy, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor.”

“It was unpleasant, yes, killing—”

“You must have a hard heart for these hard times,” said Repp. “You’d lose your uneasiness around death in a day in the East. But the
Reichsführer
informs me that the camps are no longer in the disposal business.”

“Animals, then,” said Vollmerhausen. “Pigs would do it. Or cows. About the—”

“I think not. Vampir must locate people, not animals, at four hundred meters’ range. And it must not weigh more than forty kilos. Those are the limits.”

Vollmerhausen moaned. Back to weight again. “I don’t know where I’m going to get ten more kilos. We’ve taken off all the insulation, we’ve got the lead sulfide down to a minimum without sacrificing resolution.” He looked desperate. “It’s that damn battery.”

“I’m sure you’ll find a way. After all, you’ve got the best men and equipment in the Reich. Far better than up at Kummersdorf.” As he spoke he’d begun to tinker again with a piece of metal or something on his desk, an innocent, entirely reflexive habit.

“We’ve tried everything. A smaller battery won’t put out the necessary current. A—”

“I’m sure a great miracle will happen here,” Repp said, taking great pleasure in the phrase.

Vollmerhausen, fascinated, could see the thing he worked in his fingers. It was a small black cube, metallic, with a spindle through it. But that’s all.

“Miracles cannot be requisitioned like machine pistols, Herr Obersturmbannführer.”

“You’ll do your best, I’m certain.”

“Of course, sir. But forty kilos is so little.”

“I just want to explain the importance here. I want to emphasize it. Our actions are only part of a larger campaign, involving agents in other countries even. Still, we are the most important; we are the
fulcrum
. Do you understand? Great and heavy responsibilities have descended
upon us. This is a privilege rarely given soldiers. Think about it.”

He paused, to let the grave information sink in.

“And so for the test,” he said.

“Yes, Herr Obersturmbannführer,” Vollmerhausen said.

“I think I’ve found an unlimited supply of targets for you. A whole world full of targets. I’ve just had word from Berlin. One hundred miles north of here, the Americans have crossed the Rhine. They’re on our soil, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor. It seems that I must demand that you quickly find a way to knock those ten kilos off Vampir. And then you and I are going hunting.”

The asshead Schaeffer snickered.

Repp was smiling.

After they were gone, Repp reached into his desk and removed a silver flask. He was not a drinking fellow by habit but this night he felt a need. He unscrewed the cap and poured a few ounces of schnapps into a glass, and sipped it. He savored the fiery fluid.

The hour was late, time was slipping away, time, time, time the real enemy. Pressures from Berlin were mounting, that crazy goose the
Reichsführer
himself calling twice a day, babbling of what his astrologer and his masseur and his secretary and the little birdies in the sky were telling him. What had General Haussner said? “He has both feet planted firmly three feet above the ground.” Something like that.

Repp first met the
Reichsführer
in the 1942 season in Berlin, shortly after Demyansk, when he was the hero of the hour. Himmler had worn cologne that smelled like
mashed plums and wanted to know about Repp’s ancestors.

Repp knew what to say.

“Common people, Reichsführer.”

“Very good. Our strength, the common people. Our mystic bond with the soil, the earth.” These words were delivered with unblinking sincerity in the middle of an opulent party in an industrialist’s mansion. Beautiful women swirled about—Margareta was one, he remembered. The room was filled with warmth and light. Sex was in the air and wealth and power and not seventy-two hours earlier Repp had been in the tower.

“Yes, the people,” the
Reichsführer
had said. He looked like an eggplant wearing glasses.

But Repp didn’t want to think about the
Reichsführer
right now. He took another sip of the schnapps and called Margareta up into his mind.

She’d been so beautiful that year. He was not moved by many things but he’d allowed himself to be moved by her. How had she ended up there? Oh, yes, she’d come with some theatrical people. He’d seen her before, back when he was a young lieutenant and too frightened to speak. But this time he walked up boldly and took her hand. He saw her eyes go to the Iron Cross he now wore.

“I’m Repp,” he said, bowing slightly.

“At least you didn’t snap your heels together like so many of them.”

He smiled. “I’ve been told anything in the city is mine. I choose you.”

“They meant hotel rooms. Restaurant tables. Seats at the opera. Invitations to parties.”

“But I don’t want those things. I want you.”

“You’re very forward. You’re the fellow in the tower, is that it? It seems I read something.”

“Three days ago I killed three hundred and forty-five Russians in the span of eight hours. Now doesn’t that make me rather special?”

“Yes, I suppose it does.”

“May I present you to the
Reichsführer?
He’s now a patron of mine, I believe.”

“I know him. He’s dreadful.”

“A little pig. But a powerful patron. Come, let’s leave. I was in a very pleasant restaurant last night. I believe they’ll treat me nicely if I return. I even have a car and driver.”

“My first lover was killed in Poland. My next died in an air fight over London. Another was captured in the Western Desert.”

“Nothing will happen to me. I promise. Come, let’s go.”

She looked at him narrowly. “I came with a fellow, you know.”

“A general in the Waffen SS?”

“No, an actor.”

“Then he’s nothing. Please. I insist.”

She’d paused just a second, then said, “All right. But, please. No talk of war, Captain Repp.”

Pleasant. Yes, pleasant.

Repp finished the schnapps. He was tempted to take another, but a principle of his was to never yield to temptations.

He knew the
Reichsführer
could call at any moment; and he knew he needed his strength for what lay ahead.

He sealed the bottle.

S
usan and Leets were wedged tight against the Claridge bar. It was late on a Friday night in mid-March, wall-to-wall uniforms, no V-2’s had fallen for a couple of days, and after a lot of trying he’d finally talked her into an actual date. They’d had dinner at the Hungaria and, on Roger’s recommendation, had dropped by this bright spot, where all the London beauties and big shots were said to camp out. So far Susan had seen two movie stars and a famous radio broadcaster. Leets had noticed instead other OSS officers in the smoky crowd and had fancied himself already slighted a couple of times, and once had even made a move toward one snide aristocratic profile, but Susan had tugged him back.