The Master Sniper by Stephen Hunter
All at once the complexities seemed overwhelming. An incredible restlessness stirred through his limbs, as the eyes of his staff pressed into him, demanding answers, guidance, adjudication. Beyond them, more threatening, he could see Repp. His misery was intense, fiery.
“Gentlemen, please. I believe—” He halted, absolutely no idea what he’d meant to say when he began to speak. That had been happening often too, sentences that began in confidence, then somewhere in the middle veered out of control and trailed off into silence, the ideas they had sought to express vanishing. He felt the impulse to flee mounting in him; it fluttered in his chest like a live thing.
“I believe,” he continued, and was as amazed as they at the finish, “that I’m going to go for a walk.”
They looked at him in bafflement. He’d always been so driven, trying to beat the problem down by sheer intensity of will, flatten it with his energy, his doggedness. He read in several sets of eyes the suspicion that Hans the Kike was finally cracking on them.
“It’ll do us all some good,” he argued. “Get away from the problem for a few hours, get a fresh perspective on it. We’ll meet again at one.”
He rushed from them into the out-of-doors and felt a burst of clean spring air and the heat of the sun. It’s spring, he thought with surprise. He’d lost all sense of time and season, shut off in his exotic world of microns and heat curves and power sequences. Then he noticed how the installation had changed, having become now almost a fortification. He nearly stumbled into a trench that ran between cement blockhouses that were surely new since the last time he’d come this way. He picked out a path around sand-bagged gun emplacements and maneuvered through trellises of barbed wire. Were the Americans close by? It frightened him suddenly. Must remember to ask Repp.
But he wanted green silence, blue sky, the touch of the sun; not this vista of war, which merely stressed his problems. He rushed through the gate and headed down the road to the range a mile or so away; it was the only available openness in the surrounding woods. The journey wasn’t pleasing; the trees loomed in on him darkly, sealing off the sky, and there were spots after an initial turn where he felt completely isolated in the forest as the road wound through it. Not another living creature seemed to stir; no breeze nudged the dense overhead branches, which sliced the sun into splashes at his feet. But then a patch of yellow appeared at the end of the corridor after another turn. He almost ran the remaining distance.
The range was empty, a yellow field banked on four sides by the trees. He walked to the center of it, felt the sun’s warmth again build on his neck. It was March, after all, April next, then May, and May was said to be especially nice in these parts, on a clear day one could make out the Alps one hundred kilometers or so away to the south. He twisted suddenly in that direction, seeking them as one would seek a hope. Above the trees was only haze and blur. He looked about for symbols of life reviving, for buds or birds or bees, and shortly picked out a flower, a yellow thing.
He bent to it. An early fellow, eh? It was a spiky, not too healthy-looking creature, stained faintly brown. Vollmerhausen had never felt much for such displays, had never had the time for them, but now he thought he had a glimmer into the simple pleasures so many of his countrymen had crooned about over the years. He plucked the flower from the soil and held it close to study it: an interesting design, the petals really slivers of a disk sectioned to facilitate easy opening and closing, a clever notion for capturing maximum sunlight, yet not sacrificing protection from the night cold. A little sun machine composed of concentric circles, efficient, elegant, precise. Now there was engineering! As if to confirm this judgment, the sun seemed to beat harder on the back of his neck.
He felt extraordinarily pleasant. He really felt as though he’d discovered something. He must remember to find a book on flowers. He knew nothing about them but was filled with a sudden overwhelming curiosity.
These soothing thoughts deserted him abruptly when he realized he stood in the middle of the killing ground.
A memory of that night came quickly over him. When had he known they were going to shoot them? He couldn’t remember exactly, the knowledge evolved slowly, over the first few months. He could not identify an actual moment of awareness. It just seemed they all knew and didn’t find it remarkable. Nobody was upset. Repp seemed to think it quite unexceptional. He had no involvement in it in any way; it would simply happen, that’s all, when the prototype Vampir reached a certain stage. But the whole business left Vollmerhausen queasy, uncomfortable.
He remembered the beginning best, the double line of men standing listlessly in the dark cold. He could hear them breathing. They seemed so alive. He was wildly excited, nervous, his stomach so agitated that it actually hurt. The Jews stood in their ranks, waiting to die. He could see no faces; but he noticed at this penultimate moment a curious thing.
They were so small.
They were all small. Some mere boys, even the older men wiry and short.
After that, it moved clinically. The Jews were marched away and when he could not see them he no longer thought of them.
The preparations were laconic, calm. Repp fussed with the weapon, then dropped behind it and drew it to him, arranging himself into a strained pose, all bone beneath the rifle, no flesh, no muscle, nothing but a structure of bone to hold the weight.
“You have power, sir,” someone said.
“Ah, yes,” said Repp, his voice somewhat muffled in the gunstock, “quite nice, quite nice.”
“Sir, the guards are clear,” somebody called. “The targets are at four fifty.”
“Yes, yes,” said Repp, and then his words vanished in the thumping of the burst, one fast, slithering drum roll, the individual reports fusing in their rush.
It was just seconds later they realized a man had survived, and just seconds after that that all hell broke loose, the lights flashed on, two American fighter-bombers roaring down into the bright zone, spitting bullets into the field, running their earth-splitting hemstitches across the field, and the lights flashed out.
“Fuckers,” somebody said, “where the hell did they come from?”
Vollmerhausen shuddered. He stood now in the grass where the mangled bodies had lain. The Vampir rifle’s slugs had torn huge chunks in the flesh. Blood had soaked the earth that night, but now there was only grass, and sun, blue sky, a little breeze.
Vollmerhausen began to walk toward the trees. He realized the sun was behind a cloud. No wonder it felt cool all of a sudden.
The sun came out; he felt its heat across his neck again.
Yes, warm me.
Soothe me.
Clean me.
Yes, purify me.
Forgive me.
Then he knew where his ten kilos were coming from.
8
They made an odd pair: Susan in her dumpy civilian dress, and Dr. Fischelson, dressed in the fashion of the last century, fussy and ancient in wing collar, spats, a striped suit, goatee and pince-nez. We look like a picture of my grandparents, she thought.
She had him calmer now, but still was uncertain. He could go off dottily at any moment, ranting in an odd mixture of Polish, Yiddish, German and English, his eyes watering, licking his dry lips, talking crazily of obscure events and people. He was not an effective man, she knew; but when it came to one thing, his will was iron: the fate of the Jews. He seemed to carry it around with him, an imaginary weight, bending him closer to earth each day, making him more insane.
But now he was calmer. She’d soothed him, listening, nodding, cajoling, whispering. They sat on two uncomfortable chairs in an antiseptic corridor of a private clinic in Kilburn, a London suburb, outside the door behind which the Man from the East—Fischelson’s portentous phrase—rested.
The crisis of the evening was now over. It seemed that late in the afternoon some investigators had shown up at the clinic and asked rude questions. Fischelson had panicked. A rough scene had ensued. In frenzy, he’d called her. She’d begged off
“Now, now,” she calmed. “I’m sure it was nothing. Emigration people probably, or security. That’s all. They have to check these things.”
“Rude. So rude they was. No respect.” How could she make this man see how armies—modern nations, for that matter—worked?
“It’s nothing, Dr. Fischelson. Nothing at all. They have to check these things.” She stole a glance at her watch. Christ, it was getting late: near midnight. She’d been here with the old bird since eight. She was due in at six tomorrow. “Perhaps we ought to leave. Everything’s quiet now.”
“Sure, leave. You leave. Me, an old man, I’ll stay here.” The old Jews; they were all alike. Now he sounded like her mother. Manipulation with guilt. Most effective. Jesus, how long would this go on?
“All right. We’ll stay a little longer.” How could you get rough with Fischelson? He wasn’t some jerk who was pawing at you. But she was exhausted. They had the witness, curious man in the back room—an incredible story. A story that would be told now, at last. Even if it was too late. No, it wasn’t too late. In the camps were still many, near death. If the authorities could at last be convinced, who knew what was possible? Armored attacks driving toward the KZ’s, with doctors and medicine: thousands could be saved. If only the proper people could be convinced.
The doctor sat with hands folded, breathing heavily.
Then he took off his pince-nez and began to polish the lenses in his lapel. He had long, bony fingers. In the yellow light of the corridor, he looked as if he were made of old paper, parchment. Our Jewish general, she thought: half insane, half senile, furiously indignant. It would be funny if it weren’t so sad.
Fischelson had been here since ’39. When the philanthropist Hirsczowicz had converted to Zionism late in that year, his first act had been to establish a voice in the West. He was very shrewd, Hirsczowicz: he knew the fate of the Jews rested in the hands of the West. He’d sent Fischelson over first, a kind of advance guard, to set things up. But Fischelson became the whole show when the war broke out and Hirsczowicz disappeared in a Nazi execution operation. The old man proved to be horribly unsuited to the task: he was not delicate, he had no tact, no political sensibility; he could only whine and rant.
“His papers is good,” Dr. Fischelson said, in his heavy accent.
“Pardon?” she said.
“His papers is good. I guarantee. I guarantee. He has release from prison war camp. Our peoples find him in DP hospital. Sick, very sick. They get him visa. Jews help Jews. Across France he comes by train. Then the last by ship. Lawyers draw up papers. All good, all legal. This I tell you. So why investigators? So why now investigators?”
“Please, please,” she said, for the old man had begun to rise and declaim. A vein pulsed beneath the dry skin of his throat. “It’s some kind of mistake, I’m sure. Or a part of the routine. That’s all. Look, I have a friend in the intelligence service, a captain.”
“A Jew?”
“No. But a good man, basically. A decent man. I’ll call him and—”
She heard the doors at the end of the corridor swing open and at first could not recognize them. They were not particularly impressive men: just big, burly, a little embarrassed. Susan’s sentence stopped in her mouth. Who were they? Dr. Fischelson, following the confusion in her eyes, looked over.
They came silently, without talking, four of them, and the fifth, a leader, a way back. They passed Susan and Fischelson and stepped into Shmuel’s room.
My God, she thought.
“What’s this, what’s going on?” shouted Fischelson.
Susan felt her heart begin to accelerate and her hands begin to tremble. She had trouble breathing.
“Easy,” said the leader, not brutally at all.
“Miss Susan, what’s going on?” Fischelson demanded.
Say something, you idiot, Susan thought.
“Hey, what are you guys doing?” she said, her voice breaking.
“Special Branch, miss. Sorry. Just be a moment.”
“Miss Susan, Miss Susan,” the old man stood, panic wild in his eyes. He began to lapse into Yiddish.
“What’s going on?” she shouted. “Goddamn you, what’s going on?”
“Easy, miss,” he said. He was not a brutal man. “Nothing to concern yourself with. Special Branch.”
The first four came out of the room. On a stretcher was the swaddled form of the survivor. He looked around dazedly.
“I’m an American officer,” she said, fumbling for identification. “For God’s sake, that man is ill. What is going on? Where are you taking that man?”
“Now, now, miss,” the leader soothed. It would have been easier to hate him if he hadn’t been quite so mild.
“He’s ill.”
The doctor was denouncing them in Polish. “Please don’t get excited,” the man said.
“Where is your authority?” she shouted, because it was the only thing she could think of.
“Sorry, miss. You’re a Yank, wouldn’t know, would you? Of course not. Special Branch. Don’t need an authority. Special Branch. That’s all.”
“He’s gone, mein Gott, is gone, is gone.” The doctor sat down.
Susan stared down the hall at the swinging doors through which they’d taken the Jew.
The leader turned to go, and Susan grabbed him.
“What is happening? My God, this is a nightmare. What are you doing, what is going on?” Her eyes felt big and she was terrified. They had merely come in and taken him and nothing on earth could stop them. There was nothing she could do. She and an old man alone in a corridor.
“Miss,” the leader said, “please. You are supposed to be in uniform. The regulations. Now I haven’t taken any names. We’ve been quite pleasant. Best advice is to go away, take the old man, get him some tea, and put him to bed. Forget all this. It’s a government matter. Now I haven’t taken any names. Please, miss, let go. I don’t want to take any names.”
He stood back. He was ill at ease, a big, strong type, with police or military written all over him. He was trying to be kind. It was a distasteful business for him.
“Who can I see?” she said. “Jesus, tell me who I can see?”
The man took a nervous look around. Outside, a horn honked. Quickly, his hand dipped into his coat, came out with a paper. He unfolded it, looked it over.
“See a Captain Leets,” he said. “American, like you. Or a Major Outhwaithe. They’re behind it all.” And he was gone.
“The Jews,” Dr. Fischelson was saying, over on the chair, looking bleakly at nothing, “who’ll tell about the Jews? Who’ll witness the fate of the Jews?”
But Susan knew nobody cared about the Jews.
Leets, alone in the office, waited for her. He knew she’d come. He felt nervous. He smoked. His leg ached. He’d sent Roger out on errands, for now there was much to do; and once Tony had called, urgent with a dozen ideas, with several subsidiary leads from the first great windfall. But Leets had pushed him off.
“I have to get through the business with Susan.”
Tony’s voice turned cold. “There is no business with Susan. You owe her nothing. You owe the Jews nothing. You owe the operation everything.”
“I have to try and explain it,” he said, knowing this would never do for a man of Tony’s hardness.
“Then get it over with quick, chum, and be ready for business tomorrow. It’s first day on the new job, all right?”
Leets envied the major: war was simple for the Brits—they waged it flat out, and counted costs later.
He heard something in the hall. Susan? No, something in this ancient building settling with a groan.
But presently the door opened, and she came in.
He could see her in the shadows.
“I thought you’d be out celebrating,” she said.
“It’s not a triumph. It’s a beginning.”
He snapped on his desk lamp, a brass fixture with an opaque green cowl.
Because he knew he was dead to her, she seemed very beautiful. He could feel his cock tighten and grow. He felt a desperate need to return to the past: before all this business, when the Jews were little people in the background whom she went to see occasionally, and his job was simple, meaningless, and London a party. For just a second he felt he’d do anything to have all that back, but mainly what he wanted back was her. Just her. He wanted to know her again, all of her—skin, her hands and legs. Her mouth. Her laugh. Her breasts, cunt.
She wore full uniform, as if at a review. Army brown, which turned most women shapeless and sexless, made Susan wonderful. Her brass buttons shone in the flickery English light. A few ribbons were pinned across the left breast of her jacket. A bar glittered on her lapels, and a SHAEF patch, a sword, upthrust, stood out on her shoulder. One of those little caps tilted across her hair. She was carrying a purse or something.
“I tried to stop you, you know,” she said. “I tried. I went to see people. People I know. Officers I’d met in the wards. Generals even. I even tried to see Hemingway, but he’s gone. That’s how desperate I was.”
“But you didn’t get anywhere?”
“No. Of course not.”
“It’s very big. Or, we think it’s big. You can’t stop it. Ike himself couldn’t stop it.”
“You bastard.”
“Do you want a cigarette?”
“No.”
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
“I was there when they came and took him. ‘Special Branch.’ There was nothing we could do.”
“I know. I read the report. Sorry. I didn’t know it would work out that way.”
“Would it have made any difference?”
“No,” Leets said. “No, it wouldn’t have, Susan.”
“You filthy bastard.”
She seemed almost about to break down. But her eyes, which had for just a flash welled with tears, returned quickly to their hard brilliance.