He was well aware that Leo might never be returning home. He was equally aware that while Lisette would never forgive him for whoring her out to old Hohenfeldt, she would hate him with all her being for kidnapping her nephew. He pushed any thoughts of guilt or remorse from his mind. This was war. One did what one must.
All that mattered now was that he had the new rifle. And he had the bait.
Now, he needed the quarry.
To trap a lion, one needed a goat.
Rohde's fitful sleep was not helped by the fact that he could hear artillery that was getting too close for comfort as the Allies closed in on Perle des Champs. The whole world as he had known it these last few months was about to end.
He just needed a day or two to enact his plan. Once the American hillbilly sniper was dead, he could escape with the other German forces across the Rhine, to make their last stand in the Fatherland.
Rohde did finally nod off, but it seemed like only a few minutes later that he awoke in the pre-dawn darkness. Time to get up and get going. It was going to be a busy day.
He glanced down at Leo and saw that the boy was still sleeping deeply. Rohde debated for a moment, and then decided to leave him there for now. Chances were that the boy would not wake until Rohde roused him.
Rohde dressed quickly, then picked up his old sniper rifle, the Mauser K98. He had debated whether to bother returning it to the armory, but decided that it was better if that fat bastard Hohenfeldt had no reason to make trouble for him.
With the rifle in hand, he made his way to the armory.
To his surprise, the Stabsfeldwebel was not there. Instead, he found a sleepy-eyed Soldat on duty, one of the same ones who had been shifting boxes yesterday. Rohde considered himself to be young, but he felt positively geriatric compared to this skinny Soldat. Lately, young boys of no more than fifteen or sixteen years old were being sent to fill the ranks.
"Where is the Staber?" Rohde asked.
"He is not here," the Soldat explained. When Rohde's glare told him that he had stated the obvious, the boy added, "Gone to take a shit, most likely."
That was no surprise. Hohenfeldt liked to brag about the regularity of his bowels in the morning. He seemed to feel that it was a good quality in a soldier.
Rohde hefted the Mauser. "He told me to leave him this. I will just put it on his desk."
The Soldat shrugged. Rohde made his way over to Hohenfeldt's desk. He did not have a separate office, but had partially screened his desk area by arranging stacks of crates around it.
Rohde propped the rifle against the desk, looking up to note that the Soldat on duty could not see him. He took the opportunity to snoop, taking some small measure of satisfaction from invading the Hohenfedlt’s workspace.
Not that there was much to see. The desk was orderly, with neat stacks of requisition forms, a black Bakelite phone connected to the Wehrmacht telephone grid, and three neatly sharpened pencils set out side by side.
Also on the desk was a locket that he had seen Lisette wear. Surely, she would not have given it to Hohenfeldt. The Staber must have taken it as a kind of prize. For some reason, the sight of the stolen locket made Rohde see red. It was nothing more than a cheap drugstore locket, but must have been one of the few pieces of jewelry that the girl owned. Hadn't the Staber already taken enough, just so that Rohde could get his hands on that damn rifle? To Rohde, taking the locket just seemed greedy. He left the locket where it lay.
There was still no sign of Hohenfeldt or of the Soldat, so Rohde opened the desk drawers. The large side drawers contained nothing more than blank forms. A bottle of schnapps shared space with the forms in the bottom drawer.
The top desk drawer proved more interesting. He found a mostly full pack of fancy gold-tipped French cigarettes and pocketed that. That would annoy Hohenfeldt later, no doubt. But what caught his attention was a small double-barreled derringer.
Rohde picked it up and examined the derringer. The entire pistol fit neatly into his hand. Finely made with a polished wooden stock and filigreed scrollwork, it was just the sort of weapon that a gentleman might keep in a drawer of his study or in a bedside table, as protection against nighttime burglars. Who knew where the Staber had come across it. Though useless as a military weapon, Rohde could understand why the Staber had kept it in his desk as a kind of novelty piece. It was a beautiful little weapon from another era.
He slid the catch and opened the action. Two fresh shell casings winked back at him, like brass eyes. The derringer was novel, but deadly.
Rohde slipped the derringer into his pocket.
The Soldat barely noticed him go out.
Rohde had intended to head back to the barrack to collect the boy and head out into the field, but he found that his feet carried him towards the latrine area. He wasn't even sure what he had in mind, other than the fact that his right hand was thrust into his trouser pocket, wrapped around the derringer.
It was early, and the latrine area was still dark, but easily identifiable by its smell. A bench seat had been constructed over the ditch for some level of comfort. The figure squatting on it had to be Hohenfeldt.
Rohde walked over to him, and the Staber looked up at him in surprise.
"Rohde? What are you doing here? Don't tell me that you tracked me down to complain about the Gewehr. If you want more bullets, you'll have to arrange another visit for me with your girlfriend."
"That's not going to happen, you fat piece of shit. I should have done this a long time ago."
Rohde took the derringer out of his pocket and leveled it at Hohenfeldt's face. Even in the dim light, he could see the Staber's eyes get very big. The gun went off with a pop, sending a few grams of lead crashing into the Staber's forehead and turning his brain to sausage. The big man made an "Oh" sound like all the air going out of a tire, and slumped over on the bench. Rohde felt such a wave of hatred for Hohenfeldt that it was only with an effort that he refrained from shooting him with the second barrel. Instead, he wrapped the Staber's right hand around the derringer.
With any luck, the Staber's death would be seen as a suicide. More than one depressed soldier had chosen a bullet as a form of escape, but ending one's life in the company latrine had to be a first. The question was, would anyone believe it?
One thing Rohde did know for certain was that the fat old bastard would not be missed.
The pop of the derringer had not gone unnoticed. Rohde heard a shout and the sound of running footsteps. But he was long gone before anyone arrived.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Once the fat sergeant had finished with her, Lisette scrubbed herself in the basin of water in the corner of the bedroom. The cottage had no running water, so this was the age-old method of cleaning up. Wherever the German had touched her, she rubbed until her skin was raw. The pain of it felt good, almost as if she was punishing herself, although she had done nothing wrong.
Out in the yard, she heard a motorcycle start up, and then motor off. That would be that bastard, Dieter, driving off with that sack of meat he had brought along tonight. The sound of the motorcycle faded, but the noise of artillery seemed to have grown louder and had not abated much by nightfall.
Dieter. The name tasted sour in her mouth. She had not been fond of him, well aware that he was a German, but they'd had an agreeable business arrangement. He was a young man far from home, and she was a young woman with mouths to feed. It was one thing to trade her body for food. Whoring her out to another man had gone too far. If she ever saw him again, she would take the ancient shotgun in the kitchen and shoot him. She did not care if he was a sniper.