Winter Sniper: A World War II Novel

Chapter 32

When Hess came to, he almost wished he hadn’t. His head throbbed and his shoulder felt like it was on fire. He touched his shoulder and felt bandages. A big wad of gauze was taped to his forehead as well and he could feel dried blood soaked into the cotton, hard now as tree bark. Someone had patched him up. When he moved, however, he realized that they hadn’t bothered with morphine. The last time he had been shot, in Stalingrad, the drug had provided a few blissful days of relief from the pain. Apparently, the Americans didn’t want to waste morphine on him.

He would have been happy enough if they hadn’t even wasted bandages. One quick bullet would have ended things to Hess’s satisfaction. Even the Russians would have had the decency just to shoot him outright. A soldier couldn’t ask for much more. These Americans thought they were better than that. They didn’t shoot prisoners. But now they would want to question him, parade him in front of various intelligence officers like a trophy. See what we’ve caught! A genuine German sniper!

Hess groaned at the thought. He propped himself up on his elbow to get his bearings. The Americans had left him a glass of water, which was something, when one thought about it. He had not counted how many had died on that field today. Gratefully, he took a drink.

He was lying on a cot in a Spartan room. There were windows, but they had been boarded over to create a makeshift cell. He didn’t seem to be inside the hotel or the hospital on the resort grounds. He guessed that he was in one of the cottages he had noticed. In all likelihood a guard was posted at the door.

Hess forced himself to sit up. His body protested as, inch by inch, he managed to get himself upright. He counted to three and lurched to his feet. The room spun. Hess had nothing to hold onto, but he managed not to fall over. After a minute the dizziness passed and he began to explore his makeshift cell with an eye toward escape. The boards over the windows were nailed tight. The floor was concrete. Quietly, he tried the doorknob. Locked. Disappointed, he made his way back to the cot, exhausted from his feeble effort.

He heard voices outside and the doorknob rattled. Hess considered trying to overpower the guards, but then almost laughed at himself for even considering it. It was all he could do to sit up again.

Two men came into the room. He recognized the young officer as being the same one who had flung himself at Eisenhower in Washington, thus saving the general from a bullet. This captain still wore a jaunty white scarf. The second man, a sergeant, was older; Hess could tell at once that he and the sergeant practiced the same trade. Whereas the officer marched into the room, all business, the older man glided in quietly as a dancer and slouched against the wall. He had brown eyes that seemed to take a long time to blink and a hungry look about him, like a farm dog that never got enough to eat. He watched Hess quietly, content to let the young officer do the talking.

He launched right in. “First, I have to tell you that you are being considered as a spy, not a military —

“You are the one who shot me,” Hess said to the sergeant, struggling to make his dry mouth form around the English words. “If you had aimed a little more to the left, you would have saved us all a lot of trouble.”

“I reckon I hit you right where I wanted to,” the American sniper said. He grinned as if he had just said something very wise.

The officer cleared his throat. “As I was saying, being out of uniform, technically that means a different set of rules —”

“Not easy shooting in those woods,” Hess said, addressing the sniper. He knew the man was lying. A sniper who did not go for the killing shot was a fool. “The glare off the snow, the tree limbs.”

“Took some doing,” the American sniper agreed too quickly. “Cold as a witch’s tit too, lying out in them woods since daybreak.”

Hess shrugged, then winced at the pain that caused. “The cold here is nothing.”

“Stalingrad,” the American said, nodding. “We got a file on you. Bruno Hess.” He waited for Hess to deny the name. When he didn’t, the American continued. “Says here you killed a lot of Russians. One of the best. And I got you. How many Russians have you shot?”

Hess was about to shrug again but thought better of it. “A man doesn’t keep count of something like that. Not after the first few.”

“Your file says two hundred and seventy. You really shot that many?”

Hess thought about it. “More. Before Russia there was Poland and then Spain before that. I have shot soldiers, old men, women, children, dogs. You start out with rules and then after a while it is all the same. How many for you?”

“Enough.” The American sniper looked away.

Hess smiled. “Maybe someday I will shoot you.”

The captain cleared his throat pointedly. “The purpose of us being here is to let you know you are being treated as a criminal, not as a soldier,” he said, trying to get back on track.

“May I have a cigarette?”

The officer hesitated, but then offered him a pack of Lucky Strikes and held the lighter for Hess. He sucked the smoke deep into his lungs and felt better.

“You didn’t shoot the general, you know,” said the American sergeant, a comment that earned him a sharp look from the officer. “But you sure as shit killed his driver.”

“That will be all, Sergeant Yancey,” the officer said. “In other words, you can get the hell out.”

The sniper pushed away from the wall, casting a final, knowing glance at Hess before he went out the door.

“Thank you,” Hess said once Yancey was gone. “He can — how do you Americans say it? Get on your nerves.”

The American did not reply but only shuffled some papers, which Hess understood as a sign of agreement. While the man was busy with the papers, Hess studied the officer’s face. The remains of a nasty bruise covered his cheekbone, turning an ugly yellow as it faded. Nonetheless, the captain had boyish good looks and a solid build through the shoulders that hinted at a past playing football or baseball. The girls would like this one. Older women would mother him. When the war was over, he would take off his uniform and put on a suit. And yet he had that look of American earnestness about him. Determined, but curiously innocent. The captain stared back, two adversaries sizing each other up.

Hess took another deep inhalation of smoke, thought it over, and then slowly exhaled. “You set a trap for me,” he said. “You dressed the driver to look like Eisenhower, thinking I would shoot at him or make some move. Then the real general roared up on his snow mobile. Lucky for you I shot the wrong one. In any case it was very clever. You knew I was out there all along. How did you manage that?”

“The farmer wondered why one of his hands spoke English with a German accent and was so interested in target practice.”

“Ah.” Hess nodded to himself. He should have killed the farmer. Zumwald wouldn’t have liked that, but they could have lived out there for days without anyone knowing.

“Tell me about your involvement with Eva Von Stahl.”

“Who?”

“Come on, don’t play stupid. The woman who was the other decoy in the field. She helped you in Washington.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” Hess exhaled smoke. “Where did you get the bruise?”

“I’m the one asking the questions here.”

Hess exhaled a lungful of smoke. “That was foolish coming after me in the alley,” he said. “Shooting you would have made too much noise, so I hit you with the rifle butt instead. A little harder and your sweet mother would get no more letters home from her son.”

“Leave my mother out of this,” the captain said, anger creeping into his voice.

Hess tried not to chuckle, thinking about some of the SS officers he had known. They would have had the job of interrogation that the captain was doing now. He doubted very much that any of them had mothers. They certainly would have denied it. Then again, some of the SS officers Hess had known would have eaten this American for a snack. If they had been in the captain’s shoes, Hess was well aware that he would not be smugly smoking a Lucky Strike and having something like a conversation with his interrogator. He would be naked in a windowless cellar, strapped to a chair and doused with buckets of icy water, with wires running from sensitive body parts to an electrical outlet.

“Captain, you seem like a good man,” the sniper said. “I am sorry, but I cannot tell you more than you already know. I am a German soldier and I was sent here to shoot your General Eisenhower.”

“All right.” The captain stood. He reached for his cigarettes. “You’re still being treated as a spy. You’ll probably be sent to the gas chamber.”

“There is a more honorable way,” Hess said. “A soldier’s way. You could leave your pistol behind with one bullet in the chamber. Or you could keep the door unlocked when you go, and when I try to escape you could have the guard shoot me.”

“I don’t think so.”

“Then how about the cigarettes?”

The captain hesitated, but then put the Lucky Strikes back in his pocket. “The men you killed today won’t be smoking any either,” he said, then walked out.

Hess listened to the sound of the lock turning. He shuddered at the ominous clicking of the mechanism. Hess had always preferred being outdoors and the idea of being confined caused a twinge of panic. He pushed the thought aside and exhaustion hit him like a wave. His shoulder ached. He sagged onto the cot and slept.

Eva looked out the window at the shadows lengthening across the snow and cursed the turn of events that had brought her here. There were no bars on the windows but her hotel room was a cell just the same, with a guard posted at the door. Even if she got past him or managed to crawl out the window, she knew there was no hope of escape. The roads were still not plowed and she had overheard that many of the cars would not start in the bitter cold that followed in the wake of the storm. No one had searched her room, so they had not discovered the radio she had brought from her attic in Washington. Then again, that was small comfort. What could she do, radio Berlin for help?

She got up and paced the room. She felt unrepentant and angry about what had happened. It was not Eva’s nature to give up. She had not gotten ahead in the film business by being someone who simply accepted what came her way. Nor had she become a successful spy by being complacent. One had to take hold of circumstances and shape them like a lump of clay. But even Eva had to admit to herself that perhaps this time her fate had been handed to her more like a lump of stone and she would sink under the weight of it.

Damn Petra and damn Ty Walker. Petra had given her up like a little Polish rat. Ty, out of bitterness, had made her serve as a decoy in the trap he had set for Bruno Hess. At the last instant, she had understood what was happening and stepped forward to take the real Eisenhower by the arm. She hoped it would be a signal to Hess. Shoot this one. But then the bullet had struck out of nowhere — killing the wrong man. Eva bit back angry tears at the thought of so much failure.

When the knock came at the door, Eva swiped at her eyes and went to stand by the fireplace. Striking a pose. She knew well enough who it was.

The door opened and Ty Walker came in. He did not enter like an avenging angel or even a jilted lover but slouched into the room more like someone who was guilty of something.

“Eva,” he said, then seemed at a loss to say anything else. “Are you comfortable? Do you have everything you need? I can have some dinner sent up.”

She gave him her haughty stare, the kind of smoldering look she was once known for on the screen. “You have a strange way of treating a woman, Captain. You send her out to be killed and then you ask to see if she would like something to eat.”

Ty actually blushed. “I was very angry. I shouldn’t have put you out in that field.”

“In Germany, at least SS officers have the decency to shoot spies themselves.”

“Well, I’m not going to shoot you. This damn snow has everybody socked in, but as soon as we can dig out you’ll be on a train back to Washington.”

“You should not make it sound like I am returning from holiday, darling. They are going to put me in prison. Maybe even send me to the gas chamber.”

Ty shifted from foot to foot. “Oh, Eva,” he finally said. “How could you? What happened between us must have meant something.”

“Darling, don’t you see? It meant everything.”

As what Eva had said slowly sank in, Ty just shook his head and left without another word.

Eva sat down by the fire. She had not told the truth to Ty about him not meaning anything to her. In a different time and place, who knew? But she had lied to Ty as a favor to him, to make what was to come easier for him. Then Eva would have cried, if that part of her had not already dried up.

Ty had one more person to see. He paused outside the door to straighten his uniform before he knocked.

“Come in, Captain Walker,” General Eisenhower called.

“Yes, sir.”

Ty had been dreading this moment. He knew it would be even more unpleasant than his visits to the captured sniper or even to Eva, if that was possible. He had thought the sniper’s eyes were cold, but Eva’s stare had been like winter itself.

“Joe, would you excuse us please?” Eisenhower said to his chief of staff. As he got up from the table covered with maps and paperwork, Colonel Durham flashed a look at Ty that might even have been sympathetic. But not in a good way. More like the look that the prisoner gets before he’s blindfolded in front of the firing squad.

“Sir, I just wanted to say —”

“Captain, you had better let me do the talking,” Eisenhower said. “I’ve got half a mind to put you in front of a court martial. But I’m not sure that you can bring somebody up on charges of stupidity.”

“Yes, sir.” Ty kept his back ramrod straight.

“I don’t care so much about myself. I’ll take my chances like any soldier. But it’s Mamie I’m concerned about. She could have been killed. Frankly, I don’t think she really understood what war was about until what happened this morning. She’s pretty shaken up.”

“Please give her my apologies, sir. I never meant —”

Ike waved him to silence the way another man might shoo a fly. “Captain, I am well aware that you saved my life in Washington. Putting yourself between me and a sniper’s bullet makes you three parts brave and one part stupid. What you did today was the other way around. I want you to see that Sergeant Crandall gets a proper burial at Arlington. He didn’t have a wife or children, so that much is a blessing. And the next time you intend to protect my life, let me know. My wife and I will be in a lot less danger. Now, dismissed.”

“Yes, sir.”

Ty found Joe Durham and Kit in the hallway. Durham disappeared back into Ike’s suite, but Kit lingered for a moment.

“You’re not wearing manacles, so it looks like Ike decided not to have you court martialed,” Kit said.

“Yeah.” Ty realized he was soaked through with sweat.

“You can thank Mamie for that.” Kit lowered his voice and whispered conspiratorially, “You know how rocky things have been between her and Ike. When you accidentally call your wife by your lover’s name you end up sleeping on the couch. Poor Mamie needed a lot of comforting after what happened today. The kind that happens with the bedroom door closed, if you know what I mean. Ike ought to give you a medal for saving his marriage.”