“Heil Hitler!”
Heinrich Himmler looked up from the paperwork on his massive desk. The original Reichstag had burned in 1933, so Himmler and other party operatives had moved across the street to the Krolloper Opera House. The room smelled of boot polish. “You must be Hess.”
“Yes sir.”
“I have heard a great deal about you, Hess. You have served the Fatherland and the Fuhrer well.”
“Thank you, Herr Reichsfuhrer.” Hess wondered what the reichsfuhrer could have heard, or what the second-most powerful man in all of Germany could possibly want with him. He kept his questions to himself, knowing that he would find out soon enough.
Himmler took a moment to study the man before him. He knew Hess only by reputation. Hess was tall and lean with a square-jawed Aryan face; he might have stepped out of an SS recruiting poster. Then again, thousands upon thousands of men like Hess were now in uniform. Himmler didn’t notice anything special about Hess until he looked into the sniper’s face.
Behind round eyeglasses, the reichsfuhrer’s own eyes were dark and fathomless as two pits reaching into the earth. He had found that his eyes disturbed some people, and often he used that cold stare to his advantage. But the sniper had such clear blue eyes that they might have been cut from glass. It was hard to read any emotion in them; it was a little like being stared at by a lion at the Berlin zoo. Himmler was not surprised that these eyes had been the last to see more than three hundred Russians alive. Most men flinched from Himmler’s steady gaze, but it was the reichsfuhrer who looked away first. While Hess made him uneasy, Himmler was a sufficient judge of character to know that this was the right man.
Hess stood at attention as the reichsfuhrer looked him over. Himmler’s eyes felt like snakes crawling over him but there was nothing he could do except return the man’s stare. He felt some satisfaction when the reichsfuhrer looked away. But Hess held himself very still as Himmler continued his scrutiny. He was aware that Colonel Brock had followed him in and stood now trying to warm himself at the stingy fire in an oversize stone hearth.
Hess found it hard to believe that just two days ago he had been crawling on his belly through the snow, shooting Russians. He had been surprised when Colonel Brock singled him out on that battlefield, then amazed as a Luftwaffe plane lifted off for Berlin with the two of them on board. A few anti-aircraft shells reached up for them and burst like dirty fireworks, rocking the plane. From the air, Stalingrad had looked more like an ash heap surrounded by snow than a city worth fighting over.
“Do a good job, Hess, and you won’t ever have to come back to this place,” Colonel Brock had said, although to Hess’s ears it was the colonel who sounded relieved at not having to come back.
“What’s this all about, Herr Obersturmbannführer?”
“You’ll find out soon enough, Hess.”
He had spent the long flight to Berlin wondering if he had done something wrong to deserve the reichsfuhrer’s attention. He might have slept as they crossed over the winter landscape of Russia and Poland and finally Germany itself. But sleep did not take him. Seeing Stalingrad from the air had given him a new perspective. At the back of his mind there was a nagging thought that his killing of Russian sons and fathers and even women-turned-soldiers was little more than murder. But now, as he watched Himmler settle into the chair behind his desk, he realized that the reichsfuhrer did not appear to be a man who would be troubled that Hess had shot a few hundred Russians. Quite the opposite.
“They say you are a good shot,” Himmler said. “In fact, Colonel Brock tells me that less than two weeks ago you killed a Russian officer from a range of nearly one thousand meters. That’s very impressive, Hess. Not even our best instructors at the sniper school at Einbeck are that good.”
“I have a Mosin-Nagant, sir. It’s a good rifle. Very reliable.”
“A good Russian rifle,” Himmler said with a flicker of annoyance. “Do you know what is happening at Stalingrad, Hess? Our troops have been surrounded by Russians. There are to be no reinforcements for our men. A few planes can still get in and out but we cannot effectively get supplies to them because they are cut off. The Russians won’t let them surrender. They must fight to the finish. These are the same men who came within sight of the gates of Moscow. We have lost Stalingrad, Hess, and yet you insist on using a Russian rifle. What is wrong with the Mauser issued to you by the Fuhrer?”
Hess felt a bit dizzy. Had he been flown all the way to Berlin to be reprimanded for using a rifle that was not standard issue? Himmler stared at him as if expecting an answer. “The Mosin-Nagant has certain advantages in the cold weather, Herr Reichsfuhrer. It is a very sturdy weapon. I took it from a Russian sniper. We had been dueling for several days.”
Hess thought back to that day. The Russian sniper had been particularly cruel, shooting men not to kill but to leave them horribly wounded. He and the Russian had played their game of gunpowder chess for days across the no-man’s land at Stalingrad. One by one, Hess had tried all his tricks and even invented some new ones. Once, the Russian had just missed him. Hess recalled how dust had puffed up just inches from his head as he crawled back to the German lines at dusk. This was only a few days after he had been wounded when a bullet cut a furrow down his side and he was convinced it was the same Russian sniper, trying to finish him off. He slithered into a hole and waited for full darkness, his heart hammering in his chest. Not from fear, but from anger.
He had finally shot the Russian. The enemy sniper thought he was hidden, but Hess had crawled far to the right of their particular killing field, almost to the Russian lines. Hess might have killed the other sniper instantly, but he aimed lower and let the slug rip a hole in the Russian’s belly. Gut shot. The worst kind of wound to have. Hess shot the three soldiers who, one by one, had tried to bring their comrade water. Hess finally went to him after dark. He had been amazed to discover that the Russian was a woman, and not bad looking. She had bright, frightened eyes in the starlight, like a doe. He stuffed a rag in her mouth so no one would hear dying scream and then deftly finished her with his knife. And he took the enemy’s Mosin-Nagant that he had used ever since. Looking back, understanding what he had become, Hess realized that he was like a cracked mirror now, something broken that could never be made whole again.
“Hess?”
“Yes, Herr Reichsfuhrer.” Hess felt his face redden and he forced himself to stand straighter as he stood at attention. He had missed something Himmler had said.
The reichsfuhrer look at him doubtfully for a moment before continuing. “I suppose a tradesman must choose the tools he thinks are best.”
“That is very wise, Herr Reichsfuhrer.” Hess finally understood why he had been plucked from the battlefield. Deep down, he had known it from the moment Colonel Brock had materialized before him in his immaculate uniform, like some avenging angel.
“These are difficult times for the Fatherland,” Himmler said. He stood up and began to pace the room. Hess noticed that the reichsfuhrer wore gleaming jackboots. “I don’t have to tell you anything more about Stalingrad. But do you think the Russians will stop there once the city falls? We shall have to fight the Red Army in Poland and perhaps even at the borders of Germany itself. But I’m not worried about the Russians, Hess. Ultimately we will send the bear home licking its wounds. It is the Americans that I am worried about. They are in England right now planning a major invasion of Europe. We don’t know where or when, but it’s coming. To be frank, Hess, we cannot fight effectively on two fronts. The Russians and the Americans at the same time is too much until we can rebuild our army.”