Winter Sniper: A World War II Novel

Chapter 10

On December 31, Hess went looking for a garage not far from where he had rented his room overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. He found what he was looking for a few blocks away. It was a garage that had seen better days, but the cars looked tidy enough. Two gas pumps stood outside, and a teenager in an oil-stained Esso uniform was busy pumping gas into a Chevrolet sedan. As Hess watched, the boy opened the hood and checked the oil.

“You have cars for rent?” Hess asked. His accent sounded thick even to his own ears — you haff — but he was discovering that most people did not pay much attention to that. Washington was a city of accents. Certainly, no one suspected that he was a German assassin. The thought made Hess smile.

The boy looked up, smiled back. “Yeah, but you’ll have to ask my boss inside.”

The owner wore an Esso uniform like the boy’s, only more stained. He smoked a cigarette as he listened to Hess explain what he needed.

“Let me get this straight,” the man said. “You want a car Friday? That’s short notice. There’s a war on, you know. Officers are always wanting cars to take their girls out. Husbands want them to take the family for a drive on the weekend. Lots of demand.”

Hess looked pointedly at the three cars sitting in the garage. “I can see you are very busy,” he said.

“These are reserved.”

“How much?” Hess said. “I can pay extra.”

“I suppose I could make an exception for you, Dutchy,” the garage owner said.

Hess spoke English well enough that he sensed the garage owner was patronizing him. Dutchy. But if the garage owner thought he was Dutch, Hess was not going to correct him. He picked out what looked to be the fastest of the cars, a 1938 Dodge, and paid the owner in advance. “Make sure the tank is full. I will come early for the car, before dawn.”

“No problem, Dutchy. I live in back. Knock loud if you don’t see me in the office.”

The garage owner watched Hess walk away, then called to the kid working the gas pumps. “Hey, Jimmy! C’mere a minute.”

“Yeah, boss?”

“That guy who just left is going to take the Dodge first thing Friday. I want you to fill the tank half-full, okay? Just like we talked about.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Good boy. Now get back to work. And when you wash people’s windows, don’t just wipe at them with a dirty rag.”

The garage owner lit another cigarette and watched the kid gas up a car that had just pulled in. Gas rationing because of the war had really cut into business, but there were ways to get around it and still make a buck or two. He had found that he could monkey with the gas gauges on the cars he let so that they showed the tank was full. If anybody complained that they hadn’t gotten far on a tank, he told them they were driving too fast. “Lay off the pedal, buddy.” Ol’ Dutchy was gettin’ a deal, all right.

Hess spent the next few hours settling into the rooming house on Pennsylvania Avenue. It was New Year’s Eve, but the city was relatively quiet. The war made for a subdued celebration of the arrival of 1944.

He had spent the previous night in Eva Von Stahl’s bed, but she had scarcely stirred in her sleep when he slipped from under the covers at first light. Hess had always been an early riser — he had been a hunter before he was a soldier.

While lazing in Eva’s warm bed had a certain appeal, he had not forgotten what had brought him to Washington. He had his duty to fulfill. And while he could have cared less about Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler, or even about his Knight’s Cross, he was not about to forget the men of U-351 who given their lives to bring him to this point. They would never return to their wives or lovers, but slept now in lonely graves on the cold floor of the Atlantic.

He left Eva’s house that morning carrying the suitcase for the rifle and a bag of supplies. He approached from the alley instead of the front of the rooming house, keeping his eyes on the ground. He found what he was looking for — a heavy stick — and put it in the bag with the other supplies.

Hess was concerned that Mrs. Gilpatrick might suspect something. The old lady had all the appearances of a busybody, but she seemed content to leave him alone for now. In fact, she was out shopping — probably spending the rent money Hess had paid her up front. The other boarder was at work. The house was empty when Hess carried in the suitcase containing his sniper’s rifle.

Next came a large paper sack of birdseed that he had purchased in one of the shops nearby.

The door of his room had an old-fashioned lock, the kind that took a skeleton key. It would only slow down anyone determined to enter. From the window, he had a view that overlooked Pennsylvania Avenue and the hotel entrance. The trick would be to make sure that he could not be seen from the street below. But Stalingrad had taught him well.

He took the small bedside table and moved it to the center of the room, then placed the other chair in the room beside it. The sack of birdseed went atop the table. He sat down, bent over the table, and looked out the window. Not yet satisfied, he moved the chair and table closer to the window so that he had a better view of the street directly in front of the hotel. There was more risk that he might be seen, but the streets of Washington were hardly combat conditions. No one would be expecting a sniper. And no one would be shooting back.

Hess was beginning to think that operating under the very noses of the Americans was almost too easy. He knew that was a dangerous line of thinking — underestimating the enemy was a sure way to get killed — but so far, nothing in Washington had caused him to worry. Carrying out the same mission in Berlin would have been far, far more difficult, if not impossible. Germans were more suspicious by nature. The Nazi government rewarded spying upon and snitching out disloyal neighbors. A stranger in Berlin would be closely watched. Americans were so trusting that they were making this easy.

Hess crossed the room and opened the window. Cold air washed in. Not that he minded. The cold would keep him alert.

At the back of the room was another pair of windows that overlooked the alley behind the house. He opened one of the windows and took out the coil of rope Eva had been instructed to buy in preparation for his arrival. He tied one end of the rope to the heavy stick he had found in the alley, then leaned far out the window to toss the stick overhead onto the roof. It took him a couple of tries, but he finally got the rope looped around a vent pipe jutting from the roof. He fed out the rope until the stick was within reach, untied it, and fastened the free end to the rope with a slipknot. He pulled until the rope was secure around the vent pipe. From inside the room, he pulled hard as he could against the pipe. It did not budge. Satisfied that the rope would hold his weight, he coiled it up and placed it on the eave of the roof, just above the gutter. All he would have to do when the time came was to reach out the window for the rope, then slither down it to the roof of the kitchen addition below. From there, he could drop to the ground and escape down the alley.

He placed the suitcase on the bed and opened it, then took out the rifle and reassembled it. He could have put it back together with his eyes closed. It felt satisfying to feel the weight of the rifle in his hands again. The weapon had become such a part of him during the last few years of the war that he felt like a piece of him was missing when he went a long time without handling it. He put the rifle to his shoulder, then pressed his cheek to the stock, inhaling the familiar scent of wood mixed with linseed oil. The wood emitted a medley of other smells as well — the salty tang of old sweat, the sulfur of gunpowder, blood.

Hess sat down and placed the rifle on the sack of birdseed. He put his eye to the telescopic sight and the people in the street below sprang closer. He would have liked to make sure the sight was still properly sighted in, but the telescope had always been reliable despite hard use. He let the single-post sight drift over a group of men talking in front of the entrance to the Metropolitan Hotel. He picked out a tall officer and noted with satisfaction that at this distance he could even pick out the individual buttons of the uniform coat. He put the crosshairs on the man’s temple and slowly let his finger take up the tension in the trigger until the firing pin drove home with a dry snap.

Hess worked the bolt action and dry fired again. He smiled. The officer would have been a dead man if the rifle had been loaded. He also felt reassured that if the sight was off slightly, that he would have time for a second shot.

The room was too small and sparsely furnished to have many good hiding places. He settled on wrapping the rifle in a towel and then slipping it behind the dresser, which he then pushed tight against the wall. Old Mrs. Gilpatrick wouldn’t be able to move the dresser without some effort.

Hess shut the window, noticing that the shadows were growing long in the winter afternoon. General Eisenhower would be arriving in the city within a few hours. Hess would be waiting for him.