“Good afternoon, Sergeant Bober,” he said. “How nice to see you. I would rise, but you know, it’s difficult under the circumstances.”
“Sir, I — What is going on?”
“Evidently these gentlemen have arranged transport to my next duty assignment, which appears to be in hell.” He smiled.
“This officer is to be hanged by piano wire,” said Salid, who had followed Wili to the spot. “He has been found guilty in absentia in Berlin. We are following orders. His execution is to be filmed and forwarded to Berlin. Now get out of here, Sergeant. You have your duty.”
Wili turned. “Are you mad? Or a fool? This officer has six wound stripes. He’s fought in three wars. He’s been in the front line of every tank offensive since 1939. He’s a survivor of Kursk and Stalingrad, Sebastopol, the entire Ukraine going and coming. He has the Knight’s Cross with oak leaves and every other goddamned bit of ribbon and tin there is. He is a great man, a hero of the nation. He is no traitor. You cannot treat him like this.”
“Sergeant, you grow wearisome. Don’t force me to have my men discipline you.”
“You crazy Arab bastard, you have no right to—”
“Sergeant, watch your mouth. You have already committed insubordination and are dangerously close to treason.”
Salid was suddenly surrounded by three of his men, including the muscular carpenters and one of the door guards with the MP-40. At the same time, Deneker had gotten around to Wili’s shoulder and was whispering quietly, “Wili, Wili, Wili, let’s not lose our heads.”
“You’re the fucking traitor, Arab. If you harm one hair on this man’s head, I’ll see you burn in hell. Who the fuck—”
“Sergeant,” barked Von Bink, “disengage now. Sturmbannführer Salid, the man is simply a blowhard, he meant no harm. Please excuse him.”
“You cannot hang this man on piano wire in a desecrated Ukraine church,” said Wili. “It is a sacrilege. It is against all that the German military stands for. It mocks the sacrifices of millions of men who gave their lives here in the East.”
“The Reich considers him a traitor, and I have very explicit orders.”
“Sergeant Bober,” the general said, “I am ordering you as commanding general of the Fourteenth Panzergrenadier Division to cease and desist. You do no one any good this way, and you rob me of what little dignity I have left. Please leave at once and return to your duty post. This is a direct order, and I expect it to be obeyed.”
Wili had a mind to draw his P38, shoot Salid, then turn and shoot Von Bink between the eyes. Better that than strangulation at the end of a piano wire loop lifting him six inches off the ground for the pornographic pleasure of Berlin perverts watching the film a week later. If the Serbs shot Wili, so what? He wasn’t going to survive the war anyhow, what difference did it make? Best die for something he believed in instead of holding open a pass so that SS motherfuckers like the Arab pimp here and his crew of Serb Jew-killers could make their getaway.
“Wili,” whispered Deneker, “think of the mess. You’ll get Karl and the fellows all fucked up, the politics will be a nightmare, they’ll go off to Dachau. After all the shit we’ve been through, they’ll end up hanging on piano wire.”
“Listen to your friend, Bober,” said the general. “He speaks wisely.”
Wili turned. He snapped to attention. He saluted the general with his right hand snapped sharply to his brow in the classic old style.
“Herr Generalleutnant Von Bink, my compliments and compliments of Second Parachute Infantry, Regiment Twenty-one, Battlegroup Von Drehle. You, sir, are a hero, an inspiration, and a gentleman. We were lucky to serve under you, and we will never forget you.”
He turned and stomped out.
CHAPTER 41
You sound like you’re running,” said Jimmy, two thousand miles away, presumably sitting on a sofa before a fire, sipping fine whiskey from a decanter.
“The same long story. Do you have anything?”
“Actually, yes.”
“You talk, I’ll walk. Pardon the heavy breathing.”
“We had very good chaps in radio intelligence and coding,” said Jimmy from his sofa, “and it seems we were aware that by 1944, Stalin was cutting off partisan units he didn’t trust in their pro-Soviet enthusiasm. He knew he’d won this war; he was trying to win the next one. So our people saw our own opportunity for some mischief-making. SOE sent a ‘black’ Halifax bomber to Alexandria. The SOE used its genius for code-breaking and was able to talk to a number of partisan groups. We offered the supply on which Stalin was reneging. This bomber went forth every night and flew from Alex into the underbelly of Europe and Russia, dropping C-containers of arms and ammunition to designated groups. I’m sure some were Russian ruses, but I’m also certain many were legit. The C-container load was exactly what one would need to run a guerrilla war, a revolution, a coup d’arms: one No. 4 T for sniper and assassination duty, five Stens, two thousand rounds of 9mm, fifty of .303, twenty-five Mills bombs, and five Webley revolvers. According to the records, the Bak Brigade of the Ukraine People’s Front received their loads — three C’s — on February 9, 1944. So to answer the question, that is exactly how a No. 4 T could be and in fact should have been available to your sniper in July 1944.”
“One last question. Any info or insight on how the T was zeroed?”
“Ah, nothing there, but the normal kit sent to infantry units was a T in a pine chest, some tools and gizmos for maintenance, a guidebook, as it were, and the rifle combat zeroed to a hundred yards. Of course, the individual sniper would alter that to his needs.”
“So if she had to make a hit at a thousand, she’d have to zero it?”
“Absolutely.”
“Got it,” he said. “You’re the best, old man.”
“See you in October, then?”
“Yep,” Swagger said, but his mind was elsewhere, racing through certain possibilities.
“Good news?” asked Reilly.
“Yep,” said Swagger. “Mili got her gun.” He explained briefly.
“Ah,” Reilly said, “well, I suppose that’s—”
“You’re missing it, Reilly,” said Swagger, oddly still and concentrated. “Don’t you get it yet?”
“Get what?” she asked.
“If she had that rifle, and it sure looks like she did, the thousand-yard cold-bore shot wasn’t impossible. If she could find a way to zero it at a thousand yards, it was makeable.”
“So that she… you’re saying… I’m still not quite with you.”
“I’m telling you why the American army and the British army and the Russian army and the Israeli intelligence service could never find Groedl after the war.”
He paused.
“She killed him. She killed the son of a bitch.”
CHAPTER 42
So what are you doing with a British container of guns and bombs?” she asked as they shambled along.
The Teacher told her. He finished with: “We received three C-containers full of weapons and sabotage explosives, dropped nearby from a low-flying bomber during the night. Bak did not want any one man to know where all three were hidden. I took one team, he another, and one of his lieutenants the other.”
They’d come to an illuminated section of the path where an unblocked sun shone more brightly, as on either side of the path, no giant pines sealed off the sky, no juniper or snowball clotted the pathways between the trees. On the upward slope, some force had torn down a swath of forest, revealing a strip of barren ground — small trees had begun to reassert themselves but were not tall enough to be counted as trees — littered with boulders and scrub. This gash climbed the severe slope of the mountain until the raw stone broke from the swaddling of green earth a thousand yards or so up, then rose, raw and barren, even higher, to snowcaps.