Winter Sniper: A World War II Novel

Chapter 4

Deep beneath the Atlantic Ocean, Albert Zumwald lay in his narrow cot and tried not to think about the crushing black water beyond the steel hull of U-351. He had become used to the claustrophobia of the submarine, the constant smell of dirty socks, the lack of privacy, the dampness that clung to his pillow and everything else. But even after months at sea, Zumwald did not consider himself to be a true submariner. He still got a sick feeling in his belly at the thought of being under the ocean in an oversize tin can.

His fingertips drifted up to touch the metal skin above his head and came away wet with condensation. The deep thrumming of the diesel engines now seemed to be as natural as his own breathing.

Such was the life of a submariner. Not that he had asked for this duty. Being assigned to submarines was just plain bad luck, like being dealt a bad hand in a card game. His chief qualifications for U-351 seemed to be that he spoke English fluently, knew the basics of radio operation — and that he was short. Not short enough, he thought ruefully as he tried to get comfortable in the bunk. His ankles were hooked uncomfortably over the rails at the end of the bunk; when that became too much to bear he had to bend his knees to fit in the bed. When he slept, it was an hours-long battle between his ankles and his knees, so that when he finally climbed down he could barely walk. At first, Zumwald had complained about the bunk, but then the warrant officer coming by one day had offered to shorten his legs for him. The man had meant it as a joke but there was a certain glint of madness in the warrant officer’s eye after months at sea, so Zumwald had decided to keep his mouth shut from then on.

Across the narrow aisle, he watched as Hans Hecht’s hand worked with a suspicious rhythm beneath his gray sheet. During the long voyage, Hecht wasn’t the only one who had given in to his urges, but from across the aisle Zumwald had observed the youth take matters in hand with annoying frequency. Hecht was from Bremmen, and barely a day over eighteen, so his enthusiasm was somewhat understandable. Then again, the warrant officer had noticed this transgression as well and offered to cut off the boy’s hand — or worse — but had not made good on the threat so far, either, but Zumwald suspected it might only be a matter of time.

Zumwald ignored the motion under the sheet and spoke instead to Peter Bueller, who was stretched out in his own bunk, attempting to put himself to sleep by reading a stale copy of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.

“How about a game of cards?”

Bueller groaned. “Haven’t you won enough off me already?”

“Suit yourself. But you’ve only been reading the same newspaper there for six weeks. I’ll give you a chance at winning a Zane Grey western I took off one of the engine room oilers yesterday. Knights of the Range.”

“Count me in.” Bueller sat up. His arms, pale from lack of sunshine, were white as mashed potatoes. Zumwald wondered if all the crew looked that bad, himself included. “Hecht, stop pulling at that nubbin and let’s play a game of cards.”

Zumwald smiled, though he was careful to hide it by keeping his face to the submarine bulkhead. He knew they could get the boy, Hecht, in on the game as well. Zumwald had become the most notorious card player on U-351. They might have refused to play at this point if it hadn’t been for sheer boredom. He was looking forward to winning a few more Reichsmarks off his bunkmates when the warrant officer came by and tapped him on the shoulder. “You’re wanted on the bridge, Zumwald,” he said. “The captain is about to shit a brick waiting for you. There’s a message coming in.”

“Damn.”

Zumwald rolled out of the bunk, his stiff knees almost sending him toppling to the deck. He cursed his bad fortune at having forgotten the scheduled radio contact because it fell outside his normal duty hours. The captain would give him hell.

He crossed the length of the submarine as quickly as he could, banging his head and then his elbow on a hatch. Space was so valuable on U-351 that nearly everything had a double function or had been squeezed between the pipes and fittings. Men pressed themselves against the walls to let him pass. He nodded at the other crew, most of them in T-shirts gone gray. The older men wore beards but some of the replacement crew was so young that they had only peach fuzz on their pale faces. Losses for the U-boat wolf pack in the Battle of the Atlantic were so great that Germany was practically robbing the cradle to crew its boats now.

Was it his imagination or did some of the crew look at him with the sort of pity reserved for a man on the way to the gallows? As he got closer to the bridge he understood why. He could hear the captain ranting about unreliable fools. The captain glared at him when he entered the bridge. The faces of the other officers looked anxious.

“Zumwald, you stupid bastard, I ought to have you shot out of the torpedo tubes,” the captain shouted at his radio operator. Zumwald gulped and drew himself to some semblance of attention. The commander of U-351 was a good Nazi, right down to the portrait of Der Fuhrer in his quarters. He was clean-shaven and insisted that his officers wear regulation uniforms while on duty, which was something of an exception compared to the dress standards on other U-boats. The captain scowled at Zumwald’s feet; in his rush to get to the bridge, Zumwald realized he had forgotten to put on shoes. He was forced to stand at attention in his stockings.

“I am sorry, Herr Kapitan.”

“Get those headphones on!”

As Zumwald scrambled to the radio alcove, the captain gave orders to bring the submarine to periscope depth. The periscope was raised, causing seawater to rain down into the bridge, and the captain spun in a circle, scanning the horizon. U-351 was most vulnerable when riding the ocean surface, especially this close to shore. Zumwald didn’t have to look through the periscope to know they must be in sight of land to receive the broadcast from the Abwehr agent in Washington. He suspected that they might actually be in Chesapeake Bay, if he remembered his geography lessons. No wonder the captain was shouting at him and the other officers looked so nervous. The waters this close to shore must be crawling with U.S. Navy anti-submarine patrols. Submarine killers, for short.

Working the radio took a light touch. Zumwald’s fingertips caressed the dial. In the headphones, he heard a crackle of static, then a jumble of sound snatches of jazz, a news broadcast, and chatter between two American Coast Guard patrols that sounded so clear they must be dangerously close.

Then he heard her. Even slightly distorted by the radio waves, it was a beautiful voice. Just faintly husky. Snowbird. Zumwald imagined that she had a face to match, this mysterious woman who spied for the Abwehr and risked all their lives to radio the information once each week. This is Snowbird, I repeat, Snowbird. Priority message. The Ironworker is coming. Repeat. The Ironworker arrives January first. Over.

Zumwald scribbled as fast as he could, taking down the message. The broadcast was made in English because it drew less attention to itself. Someone would have noticed a jumble of German words on the American airwaves. Nobody on the submarine knew the significance of the message, not even the captain. It would be Zumwald’s job to encrypt Snowbird’s words into code. Then U-351 would move far out into the Atlantic to transmit the message home. Fifty-two men risking their lives for a beautiful voice saying a few words in English. The Ironworker is coming. Zumwald slipped off the headphones and sighed. He ought to know by now that war didn’t make any sense.

“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.”

Hess was losing patience. “Who do you want me to shoot?”

The reichsfuhrer stopped pacing and stared at him. With his glasses, Himmler resembled an angry owl about to devour his prey. Behind Hess, the colonel seemed to be holding his breath. Both of Himmler’s soft hands had curled into hard fists at his side. Hess feared that he had forgotten his place and gone too far. At one word from Himmler, SS guards would come through the door and take him out to be shot. Another sniper would be found.

Himmler started pacing again. “General Dwight Eisenhower is the overall Allied commander. You must know, Hess, that to kill a snake you must cut off the head.”

Hess was amazed. Eisenhower. He had seen the man’s face in a newspaper once — bald head, jug ears, big smile. More politician than soldier. The name was synonymous with the presence of Americans in Europe. What Himmler said made sense. If any soldier was a target, then why not their leaders?

“Herr Reichsfuhrer, I believe what you are calling for is an assassination,” Hess said.

“Call it what you want, Hess. It is your duty to do this for the Fatherland.”

“It won’t be easy, but it could be done. Of course, if General Eisenhower can be killed, so can you. Or Stalin. Or the Fuhrer himself. You see what a mess you might be starting?”

“You do speak your mind, Hess. Be glad that I am in an indulgent mood today.”

Himmler went to stand by the fire. Reluctantly, Colonel Brock edged away from the warmth to make room for the reichsfuhrer. “It is true that assassination is no simple matter. There are repercussions. But it sends a powerful message to the enemy. This is why is must be done in a certain way, on their own precious soil.”

Hess was confused. Did the reichsfuhrer want Eisenhower drowned in his bathtub? Hess was a soldier and a marksman. It now sounded as if what Himmler needed was a thief and murderer. “Herr Reichsfuhrer, I don’t understand.”

“Colonel Brock tells me that you speak some English.”

“A little.”

“A little will be enough.” Himmler stepped away from the fire. “Tell him, Brock.”

The colonel took out a handkerchief and blew his nose, then cleared his throat. “I’ve come down with a cold from being in Stalingrad,” he complained. “I understand that Washington is much warmer, even in winter. For a soldier like you, Hess, it should be like a vacation.”

“Washington? The American capital?”

“In two weeks’ time, that’s where you are going to shoot — assassinate — General Eisenhower,” Brock said. “Every night, Allied bombers fill the skies over Germany. The Red Army will soon be at our gates. The Americans are planning their invasion from the safety of England. We must bring the war to them, Hess.” Brock smacked his fist into his open palm in a gesture that was surprising loud in the muffled quiet of Himmler’s office. “We must weaken their resolve.”

“Do you want me to kill their president while I’m at it?”

Brock and Himmler exchanged a look. Hess had meant it as a joke, but he had the impression that they had already discussed that possibility at some length. Himmler shook his head and Brock resumed speaking. “There is such a thing as going too far, Hess. You said it yourself. The American president is old and crippled. Eisenhower is a soldier.”

“Maybe you have the wrong man.”

“We know what you’ve done in Russia, Hess. Two hundred and fifty-seven confirmed kills and God knows how many others. You are skilled with a rifle. You are the man to carry out this Eisenhower assignment.”

Hess’s thoughts flashed back to Stalingrad, where men ran from one building to another as they dodged bullets, hoping to survive another day. Snow and ice everywhere. His blood turned cold just thinking about it. He didn’t want to go back. Even if Himmler would let him. He knew too much now, and a bullet was a better way of ensuring his silence than flying him back to Stalingrad.

“America,” he finally said. “It won’t be easy.”

“You will have help. We have already arranged for a U-boat to drop you at a beach on the Atlantic coast.”

“But how will I find the general?”

“The same way you found those Russian officers at Stalingrad,” Brock said. “You must create an opportunity. The Abwehr has an agent in the American capital who can help with details of your operation.”

Himmler sat down at his desk and began to shuffle papers. “A destroyer will take you to a rendezvous with a submarine,” the reichsfuhrer said. “You are not claustrophobic, I hope. Some men have trouble with submarines.”

“A coffin is claustrophobic, Herr Reichsfuhrer. I can manage a U-boat.”

“Very well. Colonel Brock will see to the details.”

Hess stood quietly. Himmler looked up at him. He said in a formal tone, “As a German soldier, you have accepted this mission on behalf of the Fatherland?”

Hess thought again of the coming Russian winter. He hoped Brock was right and that Washington was warmer. “I want something in return.”

Himmler looked deep into the sniper’s eyes. Hess had thought the reichsfuhrer would be angry, but what he saw in Himmler’s eyes was a knowing look that seemed to say: So. It always comes down to this. Nonetheless, Himmler could not keep the disdain out of his voice. He was blunt. “What do you want, Hess? Women? Money?”

“No, Herr Reichsfuhrer. I want a Knight’s Cross.”

“You already have the Iron Cross, Hess.”

“There’s a saying in Russia that it’s easier to get an Iron Cross than a new pair of socks.”

The barest of smiles touched Himmler’s lips. This was the sort of motivation he understood. The Knight’s Cross was the highest honor given to a soldier. “Shoot Eisenhower and you shall have it,” he said.

“Thank you, Herr Reichsfuhrer.” Hess snapped to attention. “Heil Hitler!”

He spun on his heels to go, but Himmler stopped him. “Hess, you were the best shot ever at the sniper school and yet you were not invited to stay as an instructor. You made them nervous. You see, we know all about you, Hess. You are a good shot, but you are also a killer. That is why you were chosen.”

Hess followed Colonel Brock out. When the oak doors clicked shut behind them, the hallway felt very cold.