Winter Sniper: A World War II Novel

Chapter 17

Hess flicked his eyes at the rear view mirror as he drove out of Washington into the Maryland countryside. His ankle ached from the fall he had taken on the rooftops. He ignored the pain and kept driving. He had no particular destination in mind, other than wanting to put as much distance as possible between him and the manhunt that must certainly be taking place in the city. Would the Americans believe he had given up and fled — or that he was only awaiting another opportunity to assassinate General Eisenhower?

Silently, he cursed the officer who leapt to save Eisenhower at the very instant Hess had fired. Another fraction of a second and the general would have died, Hess’s mission accomplished. Now everything was a mess and he might have lost his only chance.

He was not sure how the American captain had known he was about to shoot General Eisenhower. There was no way the captain could have seen Hess taking aim from across the street. Something — or more likely, someone — had given him away. He wondered about the soldiers at Eva Von Stahl’s house. Had Eva alerted the Americans about the assassination and then set a trap for him — or had she been found out as well?

He went back over the events of the last few days, mentally retracing each step and word he had spoken in Washington. He could not remember giving Eva any real clue as to his purpose, though she might have guessed easily enough. However, it did not make sense to Hess that if Eva had known what he was about that she would have let the plot progress so far as to risk Eisenhower being shot. She could have had American agents arrest him as soon as he arrived in Washington.

The possibilities filled his head like a swarm of bees until he could almost hear his mind buzzing. He pushed away all thoughts of espionage and intrigue, focusing on the country road ahead. He was not a spy. He was a German soldier. A sniper. Give him a target and he would shoot it. And if he missed he would try again. He’d had a setback, but he would figure out what to do next.

Something caught his eye. In the rearview mirror, he spotted headlights coming up fast. The road had been empty otherwise. He fought the urge to push the accelerator to the floor — speeding might only attract attention to himself. Instead, he kept one hand on the steering wheel and curled his right hand around the grip of his pistol.

The pursuing car roared up behind him, running up on his bumper, then falling back. A horn sounded. Hess glanced in the mirror but could only see blinding headlights. Then they reached a straightaway in the road and the car roared around him. He caught the blare of a radio and laughter. Something landed on the road and exploded into a thousand glittering shards. A beer bottle. Hess relaxed as the other car sped off into the night, the taillights winking at him.

Hess knew that escape was impossible. If war had taught him anything, it was that sometimes there was no going back, only forward. If you ran, the enemy might bayonet you in the back or some bastard of a sergeant would shoot you down as a deserter. If you went forward, you might be killed — or you might defy all odds to win victory and survival.

Too much thinking. He realized the buzzing in his head might not be from the thoughts pinging around inside his skull so much as from exhaustion. Dawn could not be far off.

Hess pulled over at a wide place in the road, then eased himself out of the car. Shooting pains ran up his leg when he put weight on it, but as he hobbled around the car, his leg began to feel better. Nothing he could not live with. He looked up at the sky. A cold front had moved in, leaving the night clear, and the stars burned brightly overhead. Hunting weather. All those stars made a man not only feel tiny, but also that he was part of something much larger than he was. All a man could do was try his best. Time took care of itself.

He got back in the car and lay down on the seat, keeping his pistol within reach. It was cold, but not the sort of winter night Hess had known in Russia, where to fall asleep meant you might never wake up again. He would decide what to do in the morning. Hess shut his eyes and slept.

“I need an aspirin,” Ty said, sitting upright with a groan and rubbing his head. He was still on the couch in Ike’s suite at the Metropolitan, though now morning light peaked around the edges of the heavy drapes. The brightness made his eyes sizzle like two strips of bacon laid on a hot skillet. The sniper’s rifle butt had rung his head like a gong, but it was nothing compared to the fun that the dregs of Maker’s Mark bourbon were having inside his skull this morning. Starbursts of color went off behind his eyelids whenever he blinked and his mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton. He groaned.

Kit Henderson sat in an easy chair reading the Washington Star and drinking a cup of coffee. He put down the paper and bent close to inspect the gash that the doctor had sewn up on Ty’s cheekbone. To Ty’s annoyance, Kit looked amused by his own condition.

“You look like shit,” Henderson informed him with a note of amusement.

“Go to hell,” Ty rasped. “But get me that aspirin first.”

Kit laughed, got up to rummage in the bathroom, then returned to pop two tablets from a flat tin into Ty’s palm. He poured Ty a hefty shot of Maker’s Mark from the bottle on the coffee table. The smell of bourbon made Ty’s stomach roil.

He shook his head, but Kit pressed it on him. “Hair of the dog that bit you. Best thing there is.”

Ty had never thought much about that phrase, but it seemed aptly put as he washed down the tablets. The bourbon did, in fact, taste and feel like a scratchy handful of dog’s hair going down — a particularly mangy dog.

“Ugh. Anything happen that I should know about?”

“No sign of the sniper. Maybe if we could turn the city upside down — but all we’ve been able to do is put out a quiet word to be on the lookout for him.”

“How is Ike taking it?”

Henderson shrugged. “You know Ike. He won’t let something like this change his plans. Full steam ahead. He was out the door first thing this morning, going to meetings.”

“Someone on the other side knew,” Ty said, the realization coming to him through his foggy brain. “They knew in advance that Ike would be here, where he would be staying —”

“Of course they knew,” Henderson said, looking amused all over again at Ty’s apparent surprise. “They have their spies, same as we do. It doesn’t help that headquarters leaks like a sieve.”

“But why the Russians?” Ty wondered. He was thinking of the shell casing from the Mosin-Nagant rifle that they had found at the boarding house. The sniper hadn’t had a chance to clean up after himself.

“If you’re Joe Stalin, and the map is wiped clean of those pesky Germans, you see opportunity to grab as much land as you can. Poland, maybe even Germany itself. Who is going to stop you? The English? No, it’s the Americans who stand in your way. You’d want to weaken them somehow.”

“Jesus Christ.”

“Stalin doesn’t believe in Jesus, remember? But he knows the Americans are led by one General Dwight D. Eisenhower.”

Ty thought about that. The aspirin tablets — and maybe the bourbon too — were starting to work and he was beginning to feel better. He was even starting a feel a righteous anger build at the thought that a bunch of goddamn Godless communists thought they could get away with trying to shoot Ike. He shoved himself up off the couch. Dizzy, he reached for the back of Kit’s chair to steady himself.

“What time does the train leave?”

“In an hour. You’re not seriously coming with us?”

“The hell I’m not,” Ty said. He really did feel awful, like he’d been hit by a truck — or a rifle butt, he reminded himself — but he tried to hide it from Henderson, who was watching him skeptically.

“I don’t know, Ty.”

“I’ll be on that train. If that sniper knew Ike was going to be in Washington, he’ll know about White Sulphur Springs.”

Zumwald was on an adventure. He was hitch-hiking to the land of cowboys and Indians and horses — or what was left of the Old West he had read about in his Western novels. He tugged at his coat, wishing he had worn another sweater under it. It had grown colder during the night and the wind had a bite this morning that found its way inside his collar. Despite the cold, he did not regret his decision to hitch rides rather than take the bus, although he had enough money for a ticket to California — and then some. Zumwald wanted to see the country up close.

He had found that Americans were a friendly bunch, more than willing to give a ride to a young man they assumed was a soldier home on leave. Zumwald’s English was good enough that no one suspected the truth. If anyone noticed his accent and asked about it, they seemed satisfied when Zumwald told them he was Pennsylvania Dutch. Nobody seemed to hate the Germans — it was Hitler and the Third Reich they didn’t like. He could almost forget that he had ever been one of the Reich’s soldiers. He had noticed that Americans weren’t so easy on the Japs — they were still sneaky bastards in most eyes.

By noontime he had followed Georgia Avenue out of the city to a Maryland crossroads town called Cooksville, according to the sign above the post office. It wasn’t much — just a collection of clapboard buildings that included the post office, a petrol station and a combination bar and lunch counter. He caught a whiff of frying meat and onions — certainly a hamburger, Americans were crazy about them. His stomach growled. He noted the sign above the door that stated “Whites Only,” and then eyed the old cars and pickup trucks parked out front with some misgiving. They were rusty and beat-up — country vehicles. In his experience, country people were suspicious of strangers. His stomach rumbled again and he pushed his concerns aside. A couple of hamburgers — he was suddenly ravenous — a Coca-Cola, and he would be on his way again.

Zumwald stepped through the door and immediately regretted his decision. The air inside the dark bar was thick with cigarette smoke. Half a dozen men in flannel shirts and blue jeans sat at the bar. One or two had plates in front of them, but the others appeared to be drinking their lunches. They all looked up at Zumwald’s arrival.

“Yeah?” said a woman behind the bar. She might have been anywhere from thirty to fifty. She smoked a cigarette, holding her elbow with her free hand, arm across her belly.

“Two burgers with onions and a Coca Cola,” he said. “Please.”

Zumwald realized his mistake when one of the men at the bar snickered. “Soda pop, huh? No wonder we’re losin’ this goddamn war if the soldiers order soda pop.”

“Leave him alone, Bill,” the woman said, starting to cook a burger on a griddle one-handed. The other hand still held the cigarette. She flicked ash into a tine can on the counter.

“It ain’t me he’s got to worry about,” Bill said. “It’s the Japs and the Krauts. Ain’t that right?” Too late, Zumwald realized the question was addressed to him. “What, you think you’re too good to talk to me? Is that it?”

“No, I just —”

“All that soda pop done rot his brain,” said another man. He was younger than the first, with a lumpy forehead and scars under his eyes. The man reminded Zumwald of the instructor he’d had in basic training. A brutal man, a brawler. The man tried to project a relaxed air, as if he didn’t have a care in the world, but he was staring intently at Zumwald, who noticed that the man’s eyes were too close together. “What you’re left with is a walkin’, talkin’ idjut. He ain’t no soldier. Where you serve, boy?”

Zumwald glanced at the griddle, willing the burger to cook faster. The woman had just dumped a handful of sliced onions into the bubbling grease.

“I’m a clerk,” he said. “Mostly I type reports. I’m on leave for a few days.”

He had known it would only be natural to be asked about his military service, so before leaving Washington he had decided to tell people he had been an office clerk at the War Department. It seemed a safe-enough cover story. Nobody pressed an office clerk for tales of war and adventure. But he could see at once it was the wrong thing to say to these men. Now he had the attention even of the other four men who had been keeping out of it. Zumwald sensed that the mood had shifted. The men were now like a pack of dogs that had a whiff of blood. It was so quiet he could hear the meat and onions sizzling on the griddle.

“Clerk, huh?” said the one with the lumpy forehead. He got off his bar stool and came around to where Zumwald was standing. Zumwald was not tall — there was no such thing as a tall U-boat crewman — but the man was an inch or two shorter. However, he was much thicker and wider in the shoulders. Not fat — Zumwald judged that the baggy flannel shirt hid a lot of muscle — and he guessed the man did some physical work like throwing hay bales or cutting wood.

“Just a clerk,” Zumwald said.

“I heard most of them clerks in the army is homosexuals,” the man said. “Is that right?”

Zumwald started backing toward the door. If he had been a hero from one of his Westerns, he would have drawn his six-shooter and plugged the man full of holes. But there was no revolver on his hip. His fists felt curiously weightless — he was sure if he hit the man that they would have no effect.

“I asked you a question,” said the man with the lumpy forehead said.

“I wouldn’t know.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the woman had put a hamburger bun face down on the griddle, letting it toast in the grease.

“Oh, I think you know,” the man said.

“You want ketchup?” the woman said, slipping her spatula under a beef patty and putting it on the bun. She scooped onions on top and then bundled the sandwich in butcher’s paper.

“With the Coca Cola that comes to fifty-five cents,” she said. Zumwald gave her two quarters and took the paper sack of hamburgers in return. Grease leaked through and stained the paper. He started for the door.

The other man followed him out. Three or four others trailed out after him, expecting to see a fight. “You think you can just walk away, soldier boy?”

Zumwald was thinking about swinging at the man, hoping to get a least one punch in — hit first and hit hard — when a Chevrolet sedan came up the road and pulled over in front of the bar. A man got out and stood next to the driver’s side of the car. Zumwald was astonished to see that it was Bruno Hess. He looked exhausted, and when he moved, a pained expression clouded his face. Hess didn’t say anything, but looked at Zumwald, and then nodded at the car.

Lumpy forehead looked Hess up and down. A shadow of doubt seemed to pass over his face, but he wasn’t about to let Zumwald go so easily. “Friend of yours, huh?” he questioned, coming down from the porch to stand close to the car so that Zumwald wouldn’t be able to get the door open without moving the man first. “Why ain’t I surprised?”

The woman came out on the porch. “You forgot your soda pop,” she said.

Zumwald felt rooted in place.

“Best go get it,” lumpy forehead said. Zumwald had no doubt that if he turned his back on the man that he would try something.

To Zumwald’s surprise, Hess came around from the driver’s side of the car and took the Coca Cola from the woman. He appeared to be limping. The other man moved to block his path as he returned to the car. Without warning, Hess swung the bottle and brought it down on the man’s head with such force that it seemed to explode. Soda went everywhere. As the man staggered under the blow, Hess pressed the jagged neck of the bottle to his throat. Hess’s face was blank, as if he wasn’t even thinking much about the fact that one flick of the sharp glass would spill the other man’s blood. The others did not move to help their friend. Hess used the bottle like a chef uses a fork to turn meat, guiding the other man out of his way. And then he got back in the car. Zumwald slid into the passenger seat and they drove away. Only then did Hess toss the broken bottle out the window.

“You just saved me from what the Americans call an ass-kicking,” Zumwald said in German.

“Real tough guys, these Americans. Six against one.” Something like a smile crossed his lips. “You know, it’s becoming a habit, saving you.”

Zumwald shrugged. “It isn’t that I’m not glad to see you, Hess, but what the hell are you doing out here?”

“I’m lost and I’m just about out of gas,” Hess said. He glanced in the rearview mirror, but no one from the bar had gotten into one of their rusty vehicles to follow them.

Zumwald opened the greasy paper bag. A delicious aroma filled the car. “In that case, how about a hamburger?”