“Yes, of course. But at that party, do you know what I sensed in you? Spirituality. You have a spiritual dimension. To be a great killer must take spirituality.”
Killer: the word struck him like a blow.
“Did you know how attractive that is? At that party, you were like a young priest, celibate and beautiful. You were very attractive. You had a special quality. Repp, Repp was different. I heard others speak of it too. Some of the women were wild for you. Did you know that?”
“One can sense such things.”
“Oh, Repp, we’re two peculiar birds, aren’t we? I always knew you’d be one of the survivors. You had that too, even way back then.”
“I prefer to think of nicer times we had.”
“Berlin, the ’42 season? When you were the hero of the hour.”
“A pleasant time.”
“I suppose you’ll want to sleep with me now.”
“Yes. Are you turning into a nun? You used to be quite eager, I recall. Dirty, even. At the restaurant on the Lutherstrasse.”
“Horcher’s. Yes. I was very evil.” She had touched him under the table, and whispered a suggestion into his ear. They had gone back to the Grand and done exactly as she had suggested. It was their first time. It was also before the terror raids had come and Berlin turned into a ruin, and her face along with it.
“It won’t be the way it was though,” she said. “I just know it won’t. I don’t know why, but I can tell that it won’t be very good. But I suppose it’s my duty.”
“It’s not your duty. It has nothing to do with duty.” Point of honor: she had to want him.
“It’s not out of pity though. You can assure me of that?”
“Of course not. I don’t need a woman. I need shelter. I need to rest. I’ve got important things ahead. But I
“I suppose. Then, come, let’s go.”
They went up to the bedroom. Repp made love to her with great energy and after a while she began to respond. For a while it was as good as it had been. Repp did most things well, and this was no exception. He could feel her open to and accept him and his own ache surprised him, seeming to spring from outside, from far away.
Afterward, he put on some wool flannel trousers and a white shirt and some blunt-tipped brown shoes — whose? he wondered — and took his private’s uniform and equipment into the garden out back. There, working quickly, he buried it all: tunic, boots, trousers, coat, rifle even. He stood back when he was finished and looked down at the rectangle of disturbed earth under which his soldier’s identity lay. He felt quite odd. He was out of uniform for the first time since — how long? years and years, since ’36 at least, that first year in the
“You should have let your hair grow. It’s cropped too closely around your ears,” she said in the kitchen, matter-of-factly, “though since you’ve the proper papers, I suppose you could look like the Fuhrer and the Swiss wouldn’t care.”
“What time is the broadcast?”
“At six. Nearly that now. There used to be music on all the time. Now there’s only announcements.”
“There will be music again soon. Don’t worry. The Jews will put music on again.”
“Do you know, someone said there were camps out East where we murdered them. Men, women and children. That we murdered them in the millions with a kind of gas or something. Then burned the bodies. Can you imagine that?”
Repp said he couldn’t. “Though they deserve everything they get. They started the whole thing.”
“I hope we did it. I hope it’s true. Then we’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. We’ll have done some good for the world after all.”
“But there’s always more. No matter how many they got out East, there’s always more.”
“Attention. Berlin calling. Berlin calling,” a voice crackled through the radio. Repp fiddled with the dial to bring the signal in better, but it was never clear. “The heroic people of the Greater German Reich continue in their struggle against the monstrous forces of International Jewry which threaten on all sides. The Red armies have been driven back in flight to the Baltic by Army Group North. In Hungary, our loyal SS troops stand fast. Since the death of our leader, we have cont—”
Repp turned the radio off.
“He’s gone?”
“Yes. They announced it several days back. Where were you?”
Hiding in a barn. Shooting brave men dead. Murdering them. Blowing Willi Buchner up.
“I had a hectic time reaching here.”
“But it seems to go on. The war. It seems like it’s been here forever. Even now I can’t believe it’ll be over.”
He turned the radio up again. “—in the south, Munich is an inspiration to us all, while Vienna continues to —”
“Damn them!” he shouted angrily. “The Americans walked into Munich days ago. Why don’t they tell the truth?”
“The truth is dreadful,” Margareta said.
Another day passed. Repp stayed indoors, although he did go into the garden around noon. It was beautiful out, though still a bit chilly. May buds had begun to pop and the sun was bright. But he could take no joy in it. She’d told him the neighbors were harmless sorts, a retired grocer on one side and a widow on the other, but still he worried. Maybe one of them had seen the scruffy private come hobbling down the Neugasse to the Berlin lady’s. It was the sort of possibility that bothered him the most because he had absolutely no control over it. So many of the big problems had been mastered — begin with Vampir itself, but go on to the escape in the middle of the American attack, the dangerous hundred kilometers from Anlage Elf to Konstanz across a wild zone, the final linkup here, not half a kilometer from the Swiss border. It would be a crime now to fail on a tiny coincidence, the wagging tongue of a curious neighbor.
“You are like a tiger today,” she said. “You pace about as if caged. Can’t you relax?”
“It’s very difficult,” he said.
“Then let’s go out. We can go down to the Stadtgarten. It’s very pretty. They don’t rent boats anymore but the swans are back and so are the ducks. It’s May, it’s spring.”
“My pictures were in
“It’s unlikely.”
“I don’t care if it’s unlikely. I cannot take the chance. Stop bothering me about this, do you understand?”
“Sorry.”
He went up to the bedroom. She was right about one thing. The waiting was making him crazy. Locked up in a shabby little house on the outskirts of Konstanz, his whole world a glimpse down a street from an upper story or a stroll through a tiny garden out back, and the radio, dying Berlin squawking from its ashes.
Repp was not used to being frightened; it suddenly occurred to him that he was. In war, in battle, he was always concerned, but never particularly scared. Now, with the entire heritage of the Waffen SS on his shoulders, he knew fear. He would not let them down, but it seemed so far away, so helplessly futile. I will not let you down, he thought, I swear it. The oath began, however,
Repp knew it did not. He knew his thinking was bad for him. Doubts, worries, something other than the will to pure action began in self-indulgent thought. A man was what he did; a man was what he obeyed.
He went instead to the dresser, yanked open the drawer and pulled out the Swiss passport, painstakingly doctored, well worn, stamped a dozen times, identifying him as Dr. Erich Peters, of German-speaking Bern, a
