The Master Sniper

“Meisterschutze: master shot. Literally.”

“Ah, see, chum, you haven’t entered it. You don’t feel it. However can you hope to track a man whose nickname you cannot fathom?”

“I wasn’t finished, goddamn it,” Leets snarled.

“Meisterschutze, yes, master shot, and since the context is clearly military, one may indeed say, as did the Jew, master sniper. A nice turn of phrase: the man has some talent. He is a writer though, is he not? At any rate, it’s a higher form of rhetoric, more formal, playing on the long Germanic tradition of guilds, apprentices and journeymen. It’s more, shall we say, resonant.”

His cold smile drove the heat from the room. Clever bastard: a Bloomsbury wag, only-my-genius-to-declare amusement smug on his face.

But the lesson was unfinished.

“It’s not hard to see why they made such a hero of him, is it?”

“It’s part of another war,” Leets explained. He was ready for this one. “Waffen SS against the Wehrmacht. Nazis against the old boys, the Prussians who run the army. Repp is perfect. No aristo, just a country boy who can kill anything he can see. The prize is first place in line — Hitler’s line — for the new-model Panzers coming out of the shops, the Tigers. They were in the market for heroes, right?”

“Right, indeed,” admitted Tony.

“But more to the point: from this we can see how important Repp will be to the SS. That is to say, from here on in, he’s not just one of them. He is them. That is to say, he becomes their official instrument, the embodiment of their will. He’s—” he struggled for language in which to make this concept felt, “— he’s an idea.”

Tony scowled. “You’re talking like a don. Dons don’t win wars.”

“You’ve got to see in this a higher reality. A symbolic reality.” Leets himself wasn’t sure what he was saying. A voice from inside was doing the talking; somewhere a part of his mind had made a leap, a breakthrough. “When we crack it, I can guarantee you this: it will be pure Nazi, pure SS. Their philosophy, given flesh, set to walking.”

“Wow, Frankenstein,” called Roger, across the room.

“You Americans have too much imagination for anybody’s good. You go to too many films.”

But Tony had more.

“I have found,” he announced, “the Man of Oak.”

Leets turned. He could not read the Englishman’s face. It was impassive, imperial.

“Who?” Leets demanded.

“It occurs to me that we knew all along. We knew, did we not, that our phantom WVHA has an address in eastern Berlin. A suburb called Lichtenfelde; but the place itself goes by an older, more traditional name. It is called Unter den Eichen.”

He paused, allowing the information its impact.

“Translate it literally,” he advised some seconds later when he saw the befuddlement on Leets’s face.

Leets worked it out into English.

“‘Under the Oaks,’” he said.

“Yes.”

“Goddamn it!” Leets said.

“Yes. And this Jewish chap presumably heard reference to a man from ‘Under the Oaks,’ as one would say ‘A Man from Washington,’ or ‘A Man from London,’ meaning a man of authority. But his knowledge of the language was imperfect, since his Yiddish only allowed him access to the most basic German. He garbled it, perhaps inflated it somewhat for rhetorical effect. Thus, Man of Oak, as Shmuel overheard him say.”

“Goddamn it,” Leets said again. “It must have been some officer, some supervisor. But it tells us nothing.”

“No, nothing: Another disappointment. It tells us only what we know.”

It was true. During the hot week with Shmuel, information had seemed to surge in on them. There had been so much to do. A powerful illusion of progress made itself felt. But in the very act of mounting, it had peaked. Leets saw this rather sooner than the others; now Tony had caught on: that, though all kinds of context and background were being assembled, the real nut of the problem had not yet been cracked. They knew Repp, and of his rifle, rudimentary facts, but compelling nonetheless. But they had no idea of more crucial matters. Who would the German shoot? When? Why?

“Your idea that somewhere in his testimony was a clue has gone up in smoke,” Tony said.

“We’ve got to find Anlage Elf, that’s all. Could we increase air recon of that area? Aren’t there French armored units closing in? Could they be directed to penetrate the forest, in hopes of—”

“No. Of course not. It’s huge, over and over we’ve remarked on how huge it is.”

“Goddamn it. We need something. A break.”

It arrived the next morning.

IN REF JAATIC REQUEST 11 MAR 45 THIS HQ ADVISES 3D SQD 2ND BN 45 INF DIV TOOK HEAVY CASUALTIES ON RECON PATROL 15 APRIL APPX 2200 HRS VICINITY ALFELD INTELL SUGGEST 11 ROUNDS 11 HITS IN DARK AND SILENCE ARMY GRP G-2 CONFIRMS WAFFEN SS UNIT HITLER-JUGEND THIS AREA PLS ADVISE

RYAN

MAJ INF

2ND BN G-2

“Well,” said Leets, ending the silence, “the fucking thing’s operational. They’ve worked out the bugs.”

“Rather,” said Tony.

“They can go anytime they want.”

Leets and Outhwaithe flew into the 45th Division’s sector early the next morning, landing in a Piper Cub not far from Alfeld, the divisional headquarters. Ryan’s shop, though, was farther toward the front. And here there was a front, in the classical sense: two armies facing each other warily across a bleak, crater-scaped gulf of no-man’s land, after the configuration of the last war. The Americans had gone across this raw gap many times, and each time, bitterly, they were driven back by the Panzergrenadiers of “Hitler-jugend.” So when Leets and Outhwaithe, in strange new combat gear they’d picked up for their trip to the line, approached the blown-out farmhouse in which Ryan’s G-2 outfit hung out, they were not surprised by the sullenness with which they were greeted. Outsiders, fresh, strange officers, one a foreigner, an exotic Brit, rear-echelon types: they expected to be hated, in the way locals always hate tourists; and they were.

“I never saw anything like it,” Major Ryan, a sandy-haired freckled man whose nose ran constantly, told them. “Center chest, one shot each. No blood. Patrol that found them thought they were sleeping.”

“And at night? Definitely at night?” Leets pushed.

“I said at night, didn’t I, Captain?”

“Yes, sir, it’s just that—”

“Goddamn it, if I say at night, I mean at night.”

“Yes, sir. Can we get up there?”

“This is a combat zone, Captain. I don’t have time to take people on trips.”

“Just point us in the right direction. We’ll find it.”

“Jesus, you guys are eager. All right, but goddamn it, get yourselves a helmet. It’s right smack in Kraut country.”

The Jeep could only get them so close; after that it was a walk in the sun. A sign in a shattered tree announced the sudden change in climate tersely and without fanfare: “YOU ARE UNDER OBSERVED ARTILLERY FIRE THE NEXT 500 YARDS” in standard GI stenciling, all the letters split neatly in two; but a wit had edited an improvement into the copy, replacing the word “artillery” with “sniper” in bold child’s scrawl. The war was everywhere up here, in the wary quick stares of the men who were fighting it, the hulks of burnt-out armor that