The Master Sniper by Stephen Hunter
“Outhwaithe I can handle. I just know something and I can’t get anyone to believe me. But don’t let my troubles wreck your party. Really, Susan. I’m very happy for you. Please, tell me all about it.”
“We have one. Finally. One got out. A miracle.”
“Have one what? What are you—”
“A witness.”
“I don’t—”
“From the camps. An incredible story. But finally, now, in March of 1945, a man has reached the West who was in a place called Auschwitz. In Poland. A murder camp.”
“Susan, you hear all kinds of—”
“No. He was there. He identified pictures. He described the locations, the plants, the processes. It all jibes with reports we’ve been getting. It’s all true. And now we can prove it. He’s all they have. The Jews of the East. He’s their testament, their witness. Their voice, finally. It’s very moving. I find it—”
“Now just a minute. You say this camp was in Poland? Now, how the hell did this guy make it across Poland and Germany to us? Really, that’s a little hard to believe. It all sounds to me like some kind of story.”
“The Germans moved him to some special camp in a forest in Germany. It’s a funny story. It makes no sense at all. They moved him there with a bunch of other people, and fed them—fattened them up, almost like pigs. Then one night they took him to a field and …”
“It was some kind of execution?”
“A test. He said it was a test.”
And Susan told Leets the story of Shmuel.
And after a while Leets began to listen with great intensity.
7
Vampir would work; of that Vollmerhausen had little doubt. He had been there, after all, at the beginning, at the University of Berlin lab in 1933 when Herr Doktor Edgar Kutzcher, working under the considerable latitude of a large Heereswaffenamt contract, had made the breakthrough discovery that lead sulfide was photoconductive and had a useful response to about three microns, putting him years ahead of the Americans and the British, who were still tinkering with thallous sulfide. The equation, chalked across a university blackboard, which expressed the breakthrough Herr Doktor had achieved, realized its final practical form in the instrument on which Vollmerhausen now labored in the research shed at Anlage Elf, under increasing pressure and difficulty.
It was a business of sorting out dozens of details, of burrowing through the thickets of technical confusions that each tiny decision led them to. But this is what Vollmerhausen, a failed physicist, liked about engineering: making things work. Function was all. Vampir would work.
But would Vampir work at forty kilos?
That was another question altogether, and although his position officially demanded optimism, privately his doubts were deep and painful.
Under forty kilos?
Insane. Not without radically compromising on performance. But of course one didn’t argue with the SS. One smiled and did one’s best and hoped for luck.
But forty kilos? Why? Did they plan on dropping it from a plane? It would shatter anyway, and shock absorption hadn’t been tied into the specifications. He’d gone to Repp privately:
“Surely, Herr Obersturmbannführer, if you could just give me some reason for this arbitrary weight limit.”
Repp, frosty, had replied, “Sorry, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor. Tactical requirements, that’s all. Someone’s going to have to carry the damned thing.”
“But certainly there are vehicles that—”
“Herr Ingenieur-Doktor: forty kilos.”
Lately Hans the Kike had been having nightmares. His food bubbled and heaved in his stomach. He worked obsessively, driving his staff like a tyrant, demanding the impossible.
“Hans the Kike,” he heard one of them joke, “rather more like Attila the Hun.”
But he had come so far since 1933, and the journey was so complex, so full of wrong starts, missed signs, betrayals, disappointments, unfair accusations, plots against him, credit due him going to others. More than ever now, 1933 came to haunt him. The last year I was ever truly happy, he told himself, before all this.
A year of beginnings—for Vampir, for Kutzcher, for Germany. But also one of endings. It had been Vollmerhausen’s last year with physics, and he’d loved physics, had a great brain for physics. But by the next year, ’34, physics was officially regarded as a Jewish science, a demi-religion like Freudianism, full of kabala and ritual and pentagram, and bright young Aryans like Vollmerhausen were pressured into other areas. Many left Germany, and not just Jews either; they were the lucky ones. For the ones who stayed, like Vollmerhausen, only melancholy choices remained. Dietzl went into aerodynamics, Stossel back to chemistry; Lange gave up science altogether and became a party intellectual. Vollmerhausen too felt himself pressed into an extraordinary career shift, a daring, uncharacteristically bold one—and one he hated. He returned to the Technological Institute and became a ballistics engineer, rather than an exalted Doktor of Science. It hadn’t the challenge of physics, the sense of unlocking the universe, but everybody knew there’d be a war sooner or later, and wars meant guns and guns meant jobs. He threw himself into it with a terror, succeeding on sheer determination where once there’d been talent. It began to look as though he’d made the right decision when he was invited to join Berthold Giepel’s ERMA design team. ERMA, the acronym for Erfurter Maschinenfabrik B. Giepel GmbH, Erfurt, was at that moment in history the most fertile spot in the world in arms design, and from all over the world acolytes swarmed, young engineers out of the technical institutes, or off apprenticeships at the Waffenfabrik Mauser at Oberndorf, or for Walther AG in Munich, even a Swiss lad from SIG and an American from Winchester. All were turned down. For the brilliant team that Giepel had assembled was up to nothing less than revolutionizing automatic weapons theory by building a Maschinenpistole off the radical open-bolt straight-blowback principle, which made for greater manufacturing simplicity, lightness and reliability, yet at the same time permitted air circulation through breech and barrel between rounds with subsequent temperature reduction, jacking the rate of fire up to about 540 per minute cyclical. They were inventing, in short, the best submachine gun in the world, the MP-40, until it became better known under a different name.
These should have been extraordinary days for Vollmerhausen, and in a way they were. But his physics background, like a whiff of the Yid, clung to him. He could never shake it; the others gossiped behind his back, played small pranks, teased him unmercifully. They hated him because he’d once aspired to be a scientist; what scientists he now came in contact with hated him because he was an engineer. He grew into a somewhat twisted personality, with a tendency toward surliness, bitterness, self-pity. He was grumpy, gloomy, a great self-justifier and blamer of others. His head was full of imaginary compliments that he felt he deserved but that he never received, because of course the others were jealous of his brilliance. Out of all this was born the name Hans the Kike.
So when in 1943 he was offered a position at the WaPrüf 2 testing facility at Kummersdorf, he jumped at it. A new project was under way. The army had learned in Russia of the terrors of the night and had let a contract for Vampir 1229 Zeilgerät, the Vampire sighting device, Model 1229, based on the data that Herr Doktor Kutzcher, now dead, had developed back in ’33. Vollmerhausen had an extraordinary background for the undertaking: he knew both the physics of the project and the ballistics. It was a job made for him.
In its wisdom, Waffenamt had decided that the weapon best suited to mount Vampir was none other than the prototype Strumgwehr on which Hugo Schmeisser was so furiously laboring, then designated the MP-43. Thus Ingenieur-Doktor Vollmerhausen and Herr Schmeisser (for old Hugo had no degrees) found themselves uneasily collaborating on the project at the dictates of the Army bureaucracy.
From the start, Hugo was undercutting him.
“Too bulky,” the old fool claimed. “Too sensitive. Too complicated.”
“Herr Schmeisser,” Hans began, suffering the imme
With Schmeisser against him, he was doomed. The STG modifications were never approved, funds began to vanish, technicians were siphoned off to other projects, the Opticotechna people had difficulty with the lenses—Schmeisser’s influence?—and much gossip and vicious humor raged behind Hans the Kike’s back. He had no connections, nothing to match the might of the adroit Schmeisser, who didn’t want his assault rifle associated with some strange “wish-machine” invented by an obscure scientist and supervised by a disreputable ERMA veteran.
Vollmerhausen, under pressure, felt himself becoming more repellent. Whatever chances he had as an advocate for Vampir disappeared when he ceased shaving and bathing regularly, when he began denouncing the secret cabal that conspired behind his back. Vampir never went beyond prototype, despite some promising initial test results. It failed to meet certain specifications in its field trial, though Vollmerhausen asserted that “the cabal” had stacked the test against him. In May of ’44 the Waffenamt contract was canceled, and Vollmerhausen was ordered sharply back to Kummersdorf to a meaningless job. He was let go shortly afterward.
They let him dangle for a bit, nudging him closer and closer to despair. Worries on top of worries. His career in total collapse. Questions were asked. People began to avoid him. Nobody would look him in the eye. He thought he was being watched. The Army called him up for a physical exam and pronounced him fit for combat duty, despite fallen arches, a bronchial infection, bad ears and severe nearsightedness. He was advised to get his affairs in order, for the notice would arrive any day. It appeared his final fate might be to carry a “Schmeisser” on the Ostfront.
One day he happened to run into a friend in a disreputable café where he’d taken to spending his days.
“Have you heard, is Haenel still taking on people? I’d do anything. Draftsmanship, apprentice work, modeling.”
“Hans, I don’t think so. Old Hugo, you know. He’d stand in your way.”
“That old fool.”
“But, Hans, I did hear of something.” The friend was extremely nervous. It was the first time Vollmerhausen had seen him since he’d been fired. Hans had in fact been startled to see him in this place.
“Eh, what?” Vollmerhausen squinted, rubbed his hands through his hair and across his face, noticing for the first time that he hadn’t shaved in quite some time.
“Well, they say some fellows in the SS are going to let a big contract soon. For Vampir. They may revive Vampir.”
“The SS. What do they care about—”
“Hans, I didn’t ask. I-I just didn’t ask. But I hear it has to do with …” He trailed off.
“What? Come on now, Dieter. What on earth? I’ve never seen you quite so—”
“Hans. It’s just another job. Perhaps the Waffen SS wants to put Vampir into production. I don’t—”
“What did you hear?”
“It’s a special thing. A special mission. A special most secret, most important effort. That’s all. It’s said to originate from—from high quarters.”
Vollmerhausen pursed his lips disgustingly, puzzled.
“I think they’re interested in you. I think they’re quite interested in you. Would you be willing? Hans, think about it. Please.”
The SS filled him with dread. You heard so much. But a job was a job, especially when the alternative was the Ostfront.
“Yes. Yes, I suppose I—”
A day or so later he found himself in conversation with a pale officer at Unter den Eichen, the underground headquarters of the SS administrative and economic section, in Berlin.
“The Reichsführer is anxious to let a contract on an engineering project, sited down in the Schwarzwald. Actually, I may as well be frank with you, he believes this Vampir thing you worked on might have applications with regard to the duties of the SS and he’s anxious to pursue them.”
“Interesting,” said Vollmerhausen.
The man then proceeded to discuss with surprising precision the history and technology of Vampir, especially as linked to the STG-44. Vollmerhausen was stunned to realize how carefully the project had been examined by—what was it?—WVHA, of which up until a day or so ago he’d not even heard.
“There’s no question of funding,” the man explained, “we have access to adequate monies. A subsidiary called Ostindustrie GmbH produces quite a lot of income. Cheap labor from the East.”
“Well, the budget would certainly be a factor in such a project,” said Vollmerhausen noncommittally.
“Do you know this fellow Repp?”
“The great Waffen SS hero?”
“Yes, him. He’s a part of it too. He’ll be joining the project shortly. We’ve given it a code name, Nibelungen. Operation Nibelungen.”
“What on earth—”
“The Reichsführer’s idea. He likes those little touches. It’s a joke, actually. Surely you can see that?”
But Vollmerhausen was baffled. Joke?
The officer continued. “Now, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor, here”—he shuffled some papers—“Vampir’s chief liability, according to the field results—”
“The test was planned for failure. They treated it like a piece of cookware. It’s a sophisticated—”
“Yes, yes. Well, from our point of view, the problem is weight.”
“With batteries, insulation, wiring, precision equipment, a lens system, energy conversion facilities, what do you expect?”
“What does the Vampir weigh?”
Vollmerhausen was silent. The answer was an embarrassment.
“Seventy kilos.” The man answered his own question. “At the very limits of movability.”
“A strong man—”
“A man at the front, in the rain, the cold, hungry, exhausted, is not strong.”
Vollmerhausen was again silent. He glared off into space. It was not safe to show anger toward the SS; yet he felt himself scowling.
“Herr Doktor, our specifications call for forty kilos.”
Vollmerhausen thought he had misheard. “Eh? I’m not sure I—”
“Forty kilos.”
“That’s insane! Is this a joke? That’s preposterous!”
“It can’t be done?”
“Not without compromising Vampir out of existence. This is no toy. Perhaps in the future, when new miniaturization technologies become available. But not now, not—”
“In three months. Perhaps four, even five, difficult to say at this point.”
Vollmerhausen almost leaped from his chair again; but he saw the man fixing him with a cool, steady glare.
“I—I don’t know,” he stammered.
“You’ll have the best facilities, the top people, the absolute green light from all cooperating agencies. You’ll have the total resources of the SS at your disposal, from the Reichsführer on down. I think you know the kind of weight that carries these days.”
“Well, I—”
“We’re prepared to go all the way on this. We believe it to be of the utmost importance to our Führer, our Fatherland and our Racial Peoples. I don’t see how you can say No to the Reichsführer It’s an honor to be chosen for
Vollmerhausen deciphered the threat in this, more vivid for remaining unspecified.
“Of course,” he finally ventured, with a weak kike smile, “it would be an honor,” thinking all the time, What am I doing? Forty kilos?
* * *
The forty kilos now, months later, were within ten kilos; they’d picked and peeled and compromised and teased and improvised their way down, gram by painful gram. Vollmerhausen could almost measure the past days in terms of grams trimmed here and there, but these last ten kilos seemed impossible to find. After steady progress, the staff had stalled badly and another of Vollmerhausen’s concerns was whether or not Repp had noticed this.
It was a typical career development for him, he thought. He’d done so much good work, so much brilliant work, and never gotten any real credit for it. Meanwhile, once again, everything was coming unraveled over some nonsense that he had no control over.
Tears of black bitterness welled up in his eyes. Bad luck, unfair persecution, unlucky coincidences seemed to haunt him.
For example, for example, what thanks, what respect, had he gotten for his modifications thus far to the STG-44? He’d taken a clever, sound production rifle, albeit one with a hand-tooled breech and barrel, but still just another automatic gun, and turned it into a first-class sniper’s weapon. He solved the two most pressing problems—noise and accuracy at long range—in one stroke, devising a whole new concept of ballistics. The mission specs called for thirty rounds to be delivered silently and devastatingly to a target 400 meters out. So be it: now Repp had his thirty chances, where before he had nothing.
And what had been the response?
Repp had merely fixed those cold eyes on him and inquired, “But, Ingenieur-Doktor, how much does it weigh?”
Today’s meeting was not going well: a bitter squabble between the optics group, most of them from the Munich Technological Institute, and the power group, the battery people: natural antagonists in the weight business. Meanwhile, the people from Energy Conversion remained silent, sullen.