More than likely, it was a young schütze. In spite of his confidence, the commander wasn't blind to the way some of the soldiers looked at him. It took guts to be a commander of men. It was not a job for the ordinary, but then, the Schutzstaffel was not an ordinary division of soldiers. The Führer had great plans for Germany — for all of Europe — and ordinary soldiers would not get the job done. Richter's transfer from the regular army had been one of the great honors of his life, and it was not done without envy from his peers. Envy, and to some extent, fear. The Schutzstaffel were the elite. They were the ones who would stand at the front lines when The Führer unleashed his plans to the world. And it is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both, he thought, quoting Machiavelli. The Führer understood this, and it was one of the reasons why Richter loved him so dearly.
So was it possible that a lesser man had come to spy on him? To harm him? The commander intended to find out. If there was one thing he was good at, it was finding the truth. He enjoyed finding it in one of the myriad texts he studied each night before bed, but he enjoyed finding it more in men. Opening them up and reading them was so much more gratifying than what he found in books.
He approached the door like a hunter and thrust it open, but the hallway greeted him with stillness. Then, he looked up and saw the bunker exit door was also ajar. Whomever had slipped away had retraced his steps right out the front. There was supposed to be a sentry standing outside, but he saw no one.
The smells of cold earth and stale concrete wafted into his nostrils, but he could also smell something pungent beneath, something like old flowers. His jaw tensed. Cornelius Richter feared no man, but this… this was fear of the unknown. The oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown. Lovecraft, wasn't it? What would such an ass of an American writer have known about real fear?
Brazenly, the commander stepped into the cold, his pistol raised. The expanse of the base opened before him, as quiet and docile as he had ever seen it. The sentries stood in their towers. The generators hummed pleasantly behind the barracks.
Perhaps the the stress was getting to him. Perhaps, in his foolishness, he had left the door to his room unlocked, or even open. It was not often he admitted to himself that his job was taxing in the extreme, that it took a heavy toll on his psyche, but in the deep recesses of his mind, Richter knew these things.
When he looked at the ground, however, he saw a spatter of black. It was not much, barely more than what you'd see from the start of a nosebleed, but it was enough. The guard to the front door of the barracks was missing, and now, there was blood.
Feeling his eyes drawn, the commander looked towards the gate. In the dying light of the sun, he saw a face. The wrinkled visage stared back at him through eyes as gray and dead as the sky. Then, just like that, the face was gone. The form slipped out beyond the gate and into the wilderness, vanishing into the dusk.
Richter looked up at the guard towers. “Alarm!” he shouted. “Alarm! Alarm!”
4
“The commander says it was Kriege,” Metzger said, walking beside the lieutenant.
“He's sure about what he saw?”
“Can you imagine the commander being unsure of anything?”
Harald could not, and so decided to keep his mouth shut from then on. He trudged to the gate overlooking the chasm, and he could see bedlam below. Pockets of orange light danced around the perimeter, men searching the area with torches. Not electric flashlights or lanterns, but torches. The commander had his men searching the grounds like witch hunters from the dark ages.
“He's here somewhere,” he heard Richter yell. “He's here! Find him! I want every nook searched. Unless he dropped into the pit, he's hiding in the rocks.”
Harald could see most of the staff about, including Jan and Seiler. The Gestapo agent, in particular, looked even more displeased about the affair than Harald was himself. He was standing by an outcropping with Hans, the two of them talking amongst themselves.
The lieutenant broke off from Metzger's trail. “Boris! What the hell is going on?”
“They have not found him yet,” Seiler said moodily. “But the commander is certain he is here.”
“I hope they catch him,” Hans said.
“Do you think he's here?”
Seiler shrugged and ignored the question. “I do not like this. I have a bad feeling.”
Before he could say anything else, Richter spied the group and made to join them. “Lieutenant! I'm glad you're here.”
Walking stiffly up the path, the man looked at Harald's brow as he came to a halt. The lieutenant realized it was because he was wearing a new hat. It was indistinguishable from any other officer's hat, though Harald had been told this particular model had belonged to his island predecessor.
“Any luck?”
Richter shook his head. “Not yet, but we have the perimeter covered. It won't be long.”
“Commander,” Harald said, at once unsure why he had begun to speak. Then, “Are you sure about what you saw? The men say he is like Smit.”
“I am sure. Until he is found, we're on high alert. This is why it is so imperative we act quickly. Surely you understand that?”
“Of course.” Harald looked around at the men, saw how efficiently they were sweeping the grounds. If the doctor was here, they'd find him. “I hear Kaminski has made a discovery,” he ventured, changing the subject. “If so, it will help prevent these kinds of incidents, I would hope.” And this was true: the lab was positively beaming with the news. Even Thomas Frece, one of the most curmudgeonly men Harald had ever met, seemed upbeat. Of course, this was all hearsay. Harald had been meaning to talk to Kriege to find out the details. Now, that might never happen. He'd have to get the word from Kaminski himself.
“Even if it's true, it would have been nice to have an answer a little sooner, yes?” Richter said. “Kriege was one of us. I hate to lose him.”
“We haven't lost him yet.”
Richter's gaze was all that was needed to prevent the lieutenant from offering any more opinions. Before he could respond to defend himself, he heard a shout from one of the men. It came from Fähnrich Immanuel Zimmer, the ensign just beneath Harald in rank.
“Commander! We've found something!”
Richter walked to meet the man, his coat billowing behind him. The other men followed, climbing down the path a few paces at the rear.
“What is it?”
“It looks like he's been here. We found a cave, of sorts.”
“But he's not here now?”
“No, Commander. But the inside… well, you have to see this for yourself. If he's sick, then… well, I'd say he's beyond recovery.”
“What do you mean? Explain yourself.”
“There are things inside,” Zimmer said. He looked ashen. “There are bodies. Animal bodies. They're mutilated.”