The Master Sniper by Stephen Hunter
“Susan—”
“Where is he?”
“In another hospital. A British one. He’ll be fine there. He’ll be all right. If it’s a matter of worrying about him, then please don’t. We’ll take good care of him. He’s quite important.”
“You have no idea what that man’s been through.”
“I think perhaps I do. It’s been very rough on him, sure, we realize—”
“You have no idea, Jim. You can’t possibly begin to imagine. If you think you can, then you’re fooling yourself. Believe me.”
Leets said nothing.
“Why? For Christ’s sakes, why? You kidnap a poor Jew. Like Cossacks, you come in and just take him. Why?”
“He’s an intelligence source. An extraordinary one. We believe he’s the key to a high-priority German operation. We believe we can work backward from the information he gives us and track it down. And stop it.”
“You bastard. You have no idea of the stakes involved, of what he means to those people.”
“Susan, believe me: I had no choice. I was walking down a London street a few nights ago with a woman I love. All of a sudden she unreels a story that struck right at the heart of something I’d been working on since January. You needed a witness? Well, I needed one too. I had no way of knowing they’d turn out to be the same man.”
“You and that bastard Englishman. You were the officers that came by the clinic yesterday. I should have known. Dr. Fischelson said investigators. I thought of cops. But no, it was you and that Oxford creep. You’d do anything for them, won’t you, Jim? Anything! To get in with the Oxford boys, the Harvard boys. You’ve come a long way from Northwestern, goddamn you.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t send the Jew to Anlage Elf in the Schwarzwald. I didn’t set him among the Waffen SS and the Man of Oak and Obersturmbannführer Repp. The Germans did that. I’ve got to find out why.”
“You bastard.”
“Please. Be reasonable.”
“That’s what you people always say. That’s what we’ve been hearing since 1939. Be reasonable. Don’t exaggerate. Stay calm. Keep your voice down.”
“Yell then, if it makes you feel better.”
“You’re all the same. You and the Germans. You’re all—”
“Shut up, Susan. You’ve got no call to say that.”
She stared at him in black fury. He’d never seen so much rage on a human face. He swallowed uncomfortably, lit a cigarette. His hands were shaking.
“Here, I brought you something.” She reached into her purse. “Go ahead. Look. Go ahead, you’re brave. I insist.”
It was a selection of photographs. Blurry, pornographic things. Naked women in fields, standing among German soldiers. Pits jammed with corpses. One, particularly horrible, showed a German soldier in full combat gear, holding a rifle up against the head of a woman who held a child.
“It’s awful,” he said. “Jesus, of course it’s awful. What do you expect me to say? It’s awful, all of it. All right? Goddamn it, what do you want? I had a fucking job to do. I didn’t ask for it, it just came along. So get off my back, goddamn it.”
“Dr. Fischelson has an interesting theory. Would you like to hear it? It’s that the Gentiles are still punishing us for inventing the conscience five thousand years ago. But what they don’t realize is that when they kill us, they kill themselves.”
“Is that a theory or a curse?”
“If it’s a curse, Jim, I extend it to you. From the bottom of my heart, I hope this thing kills you. I hope it does. I hope it kills you.”
“I think you’d better go now. I’ve still got work to do.”
She left him, alone in the office. The pictures lay before him on the desk. After a while, he ripped them up and threw them into the wastebasket.
Early the next morning, before the interrogations began, Leets composed the following request and with Outhwaithe’s considerable juice got it priority circulation as an addendum to the weekly Intelligence Sitrep, which bucked it down as far as battalion-level G-2’s and their British counterparts ETO-wide.
JOINT ANGLO-AMERICAN TECHNICAL INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE PRIORITY ONE
REQUEST ALL-LEVEL G-2/CIC STAFFS FORWARD THIS HDQ ANY INFO IN RE FOLLOWING FASTEST REPEAT FASTEST FASTEST
1. UNUSUAL ENEMY SMALL ARMS PROFICIENCY, ESP INVOLVING WAFFEN SS UNITS
2. HEAVILY DEFENDED TEST INSTALLATIONS ENCOMPASSING FIRING RANGE FACILITIES
3. RUMORS, UNCONFIRMED STORIES, INVOLVING SAME
4. PW INTERROGATION REPORTS INVOLVING SAME
“Jesus, the crap we’re going to get out of that,” complained Roger.
9
It was clear the Jew was trying to accommodate them. He answered patiently their many questions, though he thought them stupid. They kept asking him the same ones again and again and each time he answered. But he could only tell them what he knew. He knew that Repp had killed twenty-five men at long distance—400 meters Leets had figured—in pitch dark, without sound. He knew that a mysterious Man of Oak had come to visit the project at one point or other during his time there. He knew that he’d been picked up near Karlsruhe, which meant he’d traveled the length of the Black Forest massif, a distance of one hundred or so kilometers, which would put the location of Anlage Elf at somewhere in that massive forest’s southern quadrant.
Beyond that, only details emerged. One day he identified the collar patches of the SS soldiers at the installation: they were from III Waffen SS Panzergrenadierdivision Totenkopf, the Death’s Head division, a group of men originally drawn from the pre-war concentration camp guard personnel that had since 1939 fought in Poland, France, Russia and was now thought to be in Hungary. Another day he identified the kind of automobile the mysterious Man of Oak had arrived in: a Mercedes-Benz twelve-cylinder limousine, thought to be issued only to Amt leaders, or department heads, in the SS bureaucracy. But as to the meaning or identity of this strange phantom, he had no idea. He did not even have much curiosity.
“He was a German. That’s all. A German big shot,” he said laconically in his oddly accented English.
Another day he correctly identified the STG-44 as the basic weapon of the Totenkopf complement. Another day he discussed the installation layout, fortifications and so forth. Another day he created to the best of his ability a word-picture of the unfortunate civilian called Hans the Kike, whose chemicals he’d tried to move.
Leets smiled at how far they’d come and how fast. From that first meeting in the hospital to now, no more than a week had passed. Yet a whole counter-espionage operation had been mounted. SWET effectively no longer existed; it had been given over entirely to the business of catching Repp … and he, Leets, would run the show, reporting only to Tony. He would have first priority in all matters of technical support: he could go anywhere anytime, spend any amount of money, as long as Tony didn’t scream too loud, and Tony wouldn’t scream at all. He had the highest security clearance. More people in this town knew of him than ever before, and he’d been asked to three parties. He had a car, though only Rog as driver. There was talk of a Majority. He knew he could get on the phone and call up anybody short of Ike; and maybe even Ike.
Yes, it was quite a lot.
But it was also very little.
“He can only get us so far. We are helpless until we find this place,” Tony said.
But Leets pressed ahead. It was his hope that somewhere in the Jew’s testimony a hidden clue would be uncovered, yielding up the secrets of Repp and his operation.
Black Forest? Then consult with botanists, hikers, foresters, geographers, vacationers. Look at recon photos. Check out library books—Tramping the German Forests, by Maj. H. W. O. Stovall (Ret.), D.F.C., Faber and Faber; The Shadowy World of the Deciduous Forest, by Dr. William Blinkall-Apney. And do not forget that trove of intelligence: Baedeker.
Man of Oak? Scan the British Intelligence files for German officers with wooden arms or legs or even jaws—it had happened to Freud, had it not? Check out
“It’s rather ridiculous,” Tony said. “It sounds like something out of one of your Red Indian movies.”
Leets grunted. Man-of-Oak? Jesus Christ, he moaned in disgust.
And what about equipment?
Hitting twenty-five targets dead center from 400 meters in the dark? Impossible. Yet here was the crucial element that had convinced Tony to call upstairs and make noise. For in a mob of dead Jews he could easily see dead generals or dead ministers or dead kings.
But ballistics people said it was impossible. No man could shoot so well without being able to see. There must have been some kind of secret illumination. Radar? Unlikely, for radar, though still primitive, worked best in the air, where it could see only airplanes and space. There was some kind of sound business the Navy had—sonar, someone said. Perhaps the Germans had worked out a way to hear the targets. Supersensitive microphones.
“Maybe the guy can just see in the dark,” Rog suggested.
“Thanks, Rog. You’re a big help,” Leets said.
But even if he could see, how could he hit? Four hundred meters was a long way. If he was going to hit at that range, he had to be putting out a high-velocity round. And when it sliced through the sound barrier, krak! Leets could himself remember. And he knew the guy was firing a very quick 7.92-millimeter round. Could they silence it? Sure, silence the gun, no problem; but not the bullet! The bullet made the noise.
How the hell were they doing it?
It terrified him.
Who was the target?
Now there was the big one. With the who, everything else would come unraveled. Leets’s guesses went only to one conclusion: it had to be a group. Else why would this Repp practice up on a group, and why would he use a weapon like the thirty-shot STG-44, as opposed to a nice five-shot Kar ’98 rifle, the bolt-action, long-range instrument the Germans had been building in the millions since the last century?
Yet killing anyone would not seem to gain them much, except some hollow vengeance. Sure, kill Churchill, kill Stalin. But it wouldn’t change the outcome of the war. Kill the two houses of Parliament, the Congress and the Senate, the Presidium and the Politburo: it wouldn’t change a thing. Germany would be squashed at the same rate. The big shots still rode the rope.
Yet, goddamn it, not only were they going to kill someone, the SS was going to an immense effort, an effort that must have strained every resource in these desperate days, to kill a few more.
What could it matter? Millions were already dead, already wasted. Who did they hate enough to kill even as they were dying?
Who were they trying to reach out of the grave to get?
And that is where Shmuel’s information left them. Except for one thing.
Leets was alone in the office, working late into the night. That day’s work with the Jew had not gone well. He was beginning to balk. He did not seem to care for his new allies. He was a grim little mutt, grumpy, short of temper, looking absurd in new American clothes. He’d been returned to the hospital now, and Tony was off in conference and Rog was hitting balls against a wall and Leets sat there, nursing the ache in his leg amid crumpled-up balls of paper, books, junk, photos, maps, and tried not to think of Susan. He knew one thing that could drive Susan from his mind.
Leets opened the drawer and drew out a file. It was marked “REPP, first name ?, German SS officer, Le Paradis suspect,” and though its contents were necessarily sketchy, it did contain one bona fide treasure. Leets opened it and there, staring back at him through lightless eyes, was this Repp. It was a blow-up of a 1936 newspaper photo: a long young face, not in any way extraordinary, hair dark and close-cropped, cheekbones high.
The Master Sniper, the Jew had called him.
Leets rationed himself in looking at the picture. He didn’t want to stare it into banality, become overfamiliar with it. He wanted to feel a rush of breath every time he saw it, never take it for granted. To take this guy for granted, Leets knew, would be to make a big mistake.
They’d showed the picture to Shmuel.
He’d looked at it, given it back.
“Yes. It’s him.”
“Repp?”
“Yes. Younger, of course.”
“We think he was involved in a war-crimes action against British prisoners in 1940 in France,” explained Outhwaithe, who’d brought the file by. “A wounded survivor gave two names. Repp was one of them. A researcher then went through the British Museum’s back files and came up with this. It’s from the sporting-news section of Illustrierter Beobachter, the pre-war Nazi picture rag. It seems this young fellow was a member of the German small-bore rifle team. The survivor identified him from it. So we’ve a long-standing interest in Herr Repp.”
“I hope you arrest him, or whatever,” Shmuel had said. He had to be pressed into pursuing the topic of Repp, but finally said only, “A soldier. Rather calm man, quite in control of himself and others. I have no insights into him. Jews have never understood that sort. I can’t begin to imagine what he’s like, how his mind works, how he sees the world. He frightens me. Then. And now, in this room. He has no grief.”
Though Shmuel had no interest in knowing Repp, that was now Leets’s job. He stared hard at the photo. Its caption simply said, “Kadett Repp, one of our exemplary German sportsmen, has a fine future in shooting competitions.”
Another day passed, another interrogation spun itself listlessly out. Leets felt especially sluggish, having spent so much time the night previous with the picture of the German. Another researcher had been dispatched at Tony’s behest through the back issues of all German periodicals at the British Museum; perhaps something new would surface there. Whatever, that aspect had passed momentarily out of Leets’s hands; before him now, instead, sat the Jew, looking even worse than usual. He had rallied in his first days among the Allies, bloated with bland food, treated with unctuous enthusiasm; perhaps he’d even been flattered. But as the time wore on, Leets felt they were losing him. Lately he’d been a clam, talking in grunts, groans. Leets had heard he sometimes had nightmares and would scream in the night—“Ost! Ost!” east, east; and from this the American concluded things had been rough for him. But what the hell, he’d made it, hadn’t he? Leets hadn’t been raised to appreciate what he took to be moodiness. He had no patience for a tragic view of life and when he himself got to feeling low, it was with an intense accompanying sense of self-loathing.
Anyway, not only was the Jew somewhat hostile, he was sick. With a cold, no less.
“You look pretty awful,” said Rog, in a rare display of human sympathy, though on the subject of another man’s misfortune he was hardly convincing.
“The English keep their rooms so chilly,” the man said.
“Roger, stoke the heater,” Leets said irritably, anxious to return to the matter at hand, which this day was another runaround on the topic of the Man of Oak.
Roger muttered something and moped over to the heater, giving it a rattle.
“A hundred and two in here,” he said to nobody.
Shmuel sniffled again, emptied his sinuses through enflamed nostrils into a tissue, and tossed it into a wastebasket.
“I wish I had my coat. The German thing. They make them warm at least. The wind gets through this.” He yanked on his American jacket.
“That old thing? Smelled like a chem lab,” Roger said.
“Now,” Leets said, “could there be some double meaning in this Oak business? A pun, a symbol, something out of Teutonic mythology—”
Leets halted.
“Hey,” he said, turning rudely, “what did you mean, chem lab?”
“Uh.” Roger looked up in surprise.
“I said, what did you mean—”
“I heard what you said. I meant, it smelled like a chem lab.” It was as close as he could get. “I had a year of organ
“Where is it?”
“Um,” Roger grunted. “It was just an old Kraut coat. How was I to know it was anything special? I uh … I threw it out.”
“Oh, Jesus,” said Leets. “Where?”
“Hey, Captain, it was just this crappy old—”
“Where, Sergeant, where?”
Leets usually didn’t use that tone with him, and Rog didn’t like it a bit.
“In the can, for Christ’s sake. Behind the hospital. After we got him his new clothes. I mean I—”
“All right,” said Leets, trying to remain calm. “When?”
“About a week ago.”
“Oh, hell.” He tried to think. “We’ve got to get that thing back.” And he picked up the phone and began to search for whoever was in charge of garbage pickup from American installations in London.
The coat was found in a pit near St. Saviour’s Dock on the far side of the Thames from the Tower of London. It was found by Roger and it did smell—of paint, toast, used rubbers, burnt papers, paste, rust, oil, wood shavings and a dozen other substances with which it had lain intimately.
“And lead sulfide,” Leets said, reading the report from the OSS Research and Development office the next day.
“What the hell is that?” Roger wanted to know. Shmuel did not appear to care.
“It’s a stuff out of which infrared components are built. It’s how they could see, how Repp could see. I find out now we’re working hard on it in ultra secrecy, and the English as well. But this would tend to suggest the Germans are at the head of the class. They’ve got a field model ready, which means they’re years ahead of us. See, the thing converts heat energy to light energy: it sees heat. A man is a certain temperature. Repp’s gadget was set in that range. He could see the heat and shoot into it. He could see them all. Except—” he paused—“for him.”
He turned to Shmuel.
“You were right,” he said. “God did not save you. It was no miracle at all. The stuff absorbs heat: that’s why it’s photo-conductive. And that’s why it’s such a great insulator. It’s why the thing kept you so warm, got you through the Schwarzwald. And why Repp couldn’t see you. You were just enough different in temperature from the others. You were invisible.”