Swastika (4 page)

That did the trick.

The Ripper had not been told that the Congo Man was dead. Rudi sensed that something had brewed in the yard yesterday, so if the Ripper had tried to have the Mountie who put him here killed in the South Pacific—as the hospital’s rumor mill maintained—then wasn’t it likely that the Ripper would try again?

“What news?” the psycho asked.

“Come see,” said the nurse.

*    *    *

The two men coming down the hall were a study in contrasts. The athletic nurse was about as fit as a featherweight. Rudi sported his street clothes—plain, short-sleeved shirt, jeans, and loafers—with all the panache of a runway model. His bland attire was dictated by a strict dress code: no ties or anything else that might be seized, cinched, or converted into a noose; no logos or T-shirt prints that might set off the unstable.

The Ripper, too, wore unremarkable clothes. His jogging suit was standard issue for Ash 2 patients: a navy blue sweatshirt over matching sweatpants, with a pair of Velcro runners. But so anorexic and emaciated was the phantom cannibal that he resembled the walking skeletons who were freed from Nazi concentration camps at the close of the war. Rudi’s granddad had shown him in
Life
magazine photos snapped by army cameramen as Allied troops were pressing east into the Third Reich. Death-camp images from Nordhausen, Gardelegen, and other hellholes—showing gaunt slaves worked almost to death in secret tunnels that SS-General Ernst Streicher had bored into the Harz Mountains to protect Hitler’s
Vergeltungswaffe
from the RAF—were the first to shock the Allied nations. The way the baggy blue jogging suit hung on the patient’s skin-and-bones frame reminded Rudi of those starved wretches.

As they paused outside the door to the interview room in which the cops were waiting, Lucke’s obsessive-compulsive fixation on abnormal psychology made him stare deep into the black holes that were the windows to the Ripper’s soul, and for a moment he glimpsed a symbol that sent a chill down his spine.

Both pupils had blown their irises and dilated into fathomless tunnels to a hellish dimension. So intensely had the Ripper sunk into his internal weirdness that the skin of his fleshless face seemed to have been sucked into his skull, crinkling and creasing into the squint of all squints. If what he grasped in his bony fingers was all he would eat, it was no wonder the psycho’s body was cannibalizing itself for carbs. As he gnawed at the imaginary organ meat he’d harvested during his most recent trip back to 1888, he smacked his lips with relish and sucked the non-existent juice out of the phantom flesh that fed his soul.

“What do you
see?
” the Ripper snarled.

Startled, Rudi blinked.

What he saw—in the same way that he saw ghostly eyes gazing up from rivers—was a swastika that had been formed by the squinty furrows between the psychotic’s eyes.

“What do you see?”
the Ripper shrieked, lunging at Rudi with his long-nailed claws.

What Rudi saw—or thought he saw—was the last thing he would ever see.

*    *    *

There are screams, and there are
screams!
And Rudi Lucke’s was one of those
screams!

A scream to wake the dead.

Chandler, being the cop nearer the door, was first to rush into the hall. A second or two behind him, Winter was relegated to the role of backup. Never having seen the Ripper in the flesh—or lack of flesh, more aptly—he might as well have burst in on the filming of a horror movie. A wiry man was being pinned to the floor by what Dane would have described as a ghoul. An animate skeleton of a creature in humanoid form loomed over its thrashing prey, its bony arms outstretched so that it could drive the overgrown nails of its knob-knuckled index fingers deep into the eye sockets.

“What do you see?”
the ghoul repeated like a graveyard refrain an instant before Inspector Chandler locked that skull-face into the crook of one muscular arm and wrenched it around like the head of the possessed girl in
The Exorcist
.

Snap!

Crack!

Pop!

The ghoul dropped as limp as a doll.

A foul, metallic smell like rancid goat cheese permeated the hall—the same chemical sweat of insanity that earlier had oozed off the corpse of the Congo Man—and Winter realized that this corridor was now a blind alley in his investigation.

Help arrived as Chandler hauled the ghoul off the nurse. The staff worked frantically to try to save Rudi’s life. Had the inspector not done what he did, the nurse wouldn’t have had a chance, so Winter knew he would have no difficulty justifying this kill to all the investigators who would have to be called in.

“Problem solved,” Chandler said in a voice that Dane could barely hear.

Which problem? the sergeant wondered.

Berlin

April 3, 1945

Not every man gets to meet God on this side of the grave. Fifteen-year-old Fritz Streicher would hardly have qualified as a man if this were peacetime, but with Hitler embroiled in an all-out, total-war struggle for the survival of his Reich, both sons of SS-General Ernst Streicher had bypassed their teenage years. German boys were dying like men on the western front, and they stood ready to battle the Russians at the gates of Berlin. Fritz, like all the young Germans who had joined the Jungvolk at age ten, had sworn a lifelong oath on the Blutfahne—the Reich’s Blood Banner—a flag soaked in the gore of the Nazi martyrs who’d been killed in the failed Beer Hall Putsch of 1923: “In the presence of this Blood Banner, which represents our führer, I swear to devote all my energy and my strength to the savior of our Fatherland, Adolf Hitler. I am willing and ready to give up my life for him, so help me God!”

God in heaven.

God on earth.

Combined in one man.

“
Heil
Hitler!”

Fritz Streicher’s idol was Kurt Meyer, the buccaneering daredevil who had led the 12th SS-Panzer Hitlerjugend Division—the so-called baby milk division—on D-Day. “Panzermeyer” was everything that Fritz yearned to be. The youngest divisional commander in the Reich’s armed forces, that SS-Standartenführer was a Hitler Youth veteran of hell-raising tank battles in Poland, Greece, and Russia, where his unorthodox combat style had spearheaded him deep inside enemy lines. His followers—their imaginations filled since childhood with tales of valor, triumph, and sacrifice for führer and Fatherland—were all fanatical furies from the Hitlerjugend. The ferocity of their fighting had spawned the myth of the Hitler Youth: how young Nazis blitzkrieged as if possessed by that battle madness the Vikings called
beserkr
.

Fritz’s favorite fantasy cast him in the role of Kurt Meyer after D-Day in Normandy. Commanding the Hitlerjugend, Panzerfritz fought the Canadians, led by that bogus British hero, Montgomery of El Alamein, at the Battle for Caen. Monty and his Desert Rats—a fitting name, Fritz thought, for rats the British were—would never have forced the Desert Fox to retreat in North Africa had the Yanks not armed the Eighth Army with Sherman tanks, and had Rommel’s Afrika Korps not suffered rot in its ranks from swarthy Italian cowards. Fritz, however, gave Monty a cut with German steel at Caen, for that’s what the führer demanded from his Hitler Youth: “Be as slim and slender as greyhounds, as tough as leather, and as hard as Krupp steel.”

Bwam! Bwam! Bwam! …

In his mind, Fritz summarily executed twenty Canadian prisoners of war at Abbey Ardenne, like they said Panzermeyer had, dispatching each with the Walther PPK holstered on his hip.

A Walther identical to the one his father wore today.

Like Panzermeyer had, Fritz pitched his Hitlerjugend division of seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds into a blazing tank battle with Monty’s Canadians. As night fell, the cannon-fire raged on, and infantrymen shot each other at point-blank range or chased the enemy down into cellars to bayonet hand-to-hand. For thirty-three days, Fritz kept the smug victor of El Alamein from taking Caen. Monty was no match for a titan of Krupp steel with the Iron Cross first and second classes glinting on his heart and the Knight’s Cross at his throat.

A cross identical to the one his father wore today.

Hitler Youth not old enough for the 12th SS-Panzer, those who had yet to reach seventeen, were destined for the Volkssturm. Boys fourteen and older—though Fritz had seen some as young as eight—joined men over sixty and soldiers just out of hospital to form the People’s Militia, a last-ditch home guard to defend the Fatherland. Had they both not been the sons of an SS general, Fritz and Hans Streicher might have attacked the U.S. 9th Armored Division as it crossed the Rhine over the bridge at Remagen. A horde of Volkssturm Hitler Youth had hurled themselves at the rumbling tanks of the Yankee invaders, forcing shocked GIs to fight for their lives against armed children young enough to be their own.

But they
were
the sons of an SS general.

So Fritz and Hans were now Werewolves.

*    *    *

For as long as they could remember, the sons of Ernst Streicher had been raised to fight for Adolf Hitler. Fritz’s earliest memory was of a Hitler Youth rally staged before a medieval Nuremberg castle that had once been the headquarters of the Teutonic Order of German Knights, a Christian organization of warriors who’d participated in the Crusades of the twelfth century. The SS general had taken his son along at such a young age so the boy would be keen to join the Jungvolk at ten. That would graduate him into the Hitlerjugend at fourteen, and from there the Schutzstaffel—the SS—would recruit him into the Black Corps.

Like father, like son.

How the soaring ancient walls of that great castle had loomed up out of half darkness, lit only by flickering torches. How the thunderous overture of Wagner’s monumental opera,
Der Ring des Nibelungen
—so loved by the führer—had captured the boy’s heart, overwhelming Fritz with waves of melody and stirring orchestration, extolling the heights of heroism and sacrifice to which the assembled Hitler Youth must aspire. How the beat of drums and the fanfare of trumpets had heralded the torchlight parade of boys, most of whom had walked to the rally from Berlin and other far-off places in a display of physical endurance. Gazing up at that castle draped with swastika flags and Nazi icons, young Fritz had known instinctively that Hitler was his God, for no mere man could be as awesome as this führer.

“Here he comes!” his father shouted, lifting up his son.

Fifty thousand voices cheered in unison as if those gathered at Nuremberg had been forged into one. From where Fritz sat, high up on his father’s shoulders, he could see the shiny limousine as it crept into the stadium and the small standing figure that drove the crowd into fits of hysterical fervor. Bonfires were ignited and booming fireworks filled the night sky. As Hitler mounted the platform, the Reich youth leader read the Lord’s Prayer.

“Adolf Hitler,” he shouted, “you are our great führer! Thy name makes the enemy tremble. Thy Third Reich comes. Thy will alone is law upon this Earth. Let us hear daily thy voice. Order us by thy leadership, for we will obey to the end, and even with our lives. We praise thee.
Heil
Hitler!”

The responsive roar from the ralliers almost knocked Fritz from his perch.

“Loyalty is everything!” the youth leader yelled. “And everything is the love of Adolf Hitler!”

The throng went wild.

“The führer commands, and we follow! Everyone says, ‘Yes!’”

“Yes!”
clamored the mob.

From high above on the castle’s towers, trumpets blared to launch the trooping of banners. As fifty thousand voices sang “Holy Germany,” flags that had been flown during the Adolf Hitler March were slowly carried in. They had already been sanctified on the tomb of Frederick the Great, and now they brushed across the Blutfahne. The Hitler Youth had a martyr of their own. Twelve-year-old Herbert Norkus, stabbed to death by Communists in 1932, had died for his faith in Adolf Hitler. The flag dipped in Herbert’s blood led the parade.

The führer reviewed the banners as a hymn rang out:

“
Heil,
my youth!” Hitler, a tiny man flanked by gigantic swastikas, greeted the rally with fire in his voice. “These are exciting days!” he declared with a flourish. “We are accustomed to battle, and no attack can defeat us!” he seethed, shaking his fist. “You, my youth, will always stand at my side!” he assured one and all. “You will raise our flags on high!” Hitler bellowed. “Our enemies may attempt to assault us once more, but our flag will always win the day!” he yelled to the heavens. His right arm shot forward, straight as an arrow, angling up to God, hand flat, palm down, in the Nazi salute.

“Sieg heil!”
the Hitler Youth screamed in a frenzy, returning their führer’s salute with outstretched arms of their own. SS-General Ernst Streicher seized his son by the right wrist and shot his arm out too, father and son fused in parallel fealty.

“Sieg heil!

“Sieg heil!

“Sieg heil!”
Fritz shrieked, until his voice went hoarse.

*    *    *

The Jungvolk had expanded on that early experience.

“Aryan purity,” Fritz was told by his first leader, a multi-chinned fat man who taught the boys through class examples, “is the new religion of
our
Germany.”

For each lesson, he ordered one of the ten-year-olds to strip off his Young Folk uniform and stand naked before the class. Then, with a ruler and calipers, he took physical measurements to ensure that no subhuman features tainted the boy’s blood.

“Guido von List,” the fat man said the day that Fritz was assessed. “He’s the occult philosopher who proved that mystical Aryans were the sole founders of culture and civilization. We—the Nordic and Germanic people—are the most noble of all Aryans, so God’s will is that we keep our bloodline clean.”

The Nazi fingered Fritz’s hair as if it were spun gold.

“Consider this boy, the blondest in our pack. We know that he is Aryan from the purity of his features. Hair so blond that he blinds us out in the sunlight. Eyes so blue that they match the clearest sky. And as we measure his body …”

With intimate touches, the fat man applied his ruler and calipers to Fritz’s head, torso, limbs, and genitals.

“… we find appropriate shapes and dimensions.”

The teacher turned and pointed to a picture on the classroom wall, a Nazi rendition of the crucifixion of Christ. The Savior hanging on the cross had Nordic features, the portrait an icon of SS Christianity.

“Know the swarthy Jew for what he is, Young Folk. Jesus died an Aryan martyr to save the world from Jewish influence. That’s why dirty Jews killed him. Now the Jews are on the rise again. So God has sent us the führer as our new messiah to rescue Germany. Worship Hitler. Keep our race pure.”

To illustrate that point, the teacher had taken his Jungvolk on a field trip to a Nazi institution for Germans afflicted with physical or mental defects. Led by a limping doctor in a crisp white lab coat, Fritz’s pack had toured the wards. Hunchbacks, men with club feet, people who swore vociferously for no apparent reason … the cells were a virtual freak show of
Untermenschen
.

“Subhumans,” the doctor said, “disgrace our race. An able-bodied Reich must not be crippled by their burden. The way to protect ourselves from their inferiority is to nip it in the bud. Human dignity demands that they be sterilized.”

Gazing out the window at the pure white snow, ten-year-old Fritz had wondered if that was the answer to all subhumans.

To Jews …

To Gypsies …

To queers …

To Slavs …

There were so many
Untermenschen!

*    *    *

The Hitlerjugend built on what Fritz had learned in the Jungvolk.

Wearing a different uniform—the same one he wore today—Fritz had studied the difference between Jewish and German physics. Science held a special fascination for him because of his father’s role as the keeper of Nazi secrets at Dora-Mittelbau, the concentration camp that Streicher and his sons called home.

“Jewish physics,” his new instructor told him, using Hitler’s term for
Untermenschen
science, “has no place in the Third Reich. It is a plot by world Jewry to suppress our German physics of quantum mechanics. In the theory of relativity, by the Jew Einstein, we see the workings of an alien mind bent on world domination and the enslavement of the German race.

“That, you must fight,” snarled the instructor, glaring at the Hitler Youth through a pair of glasses so thick that his eyes resembled oversized fish in undersized glass bowls.

“Professor Johannes Stark! Honor that name. The Nobel Prize-winning head of the Nazi state organization for scientific research, Stark declared his allegiance to our führer as early as 1924. All Jewish physicists, Stark warned us, are egocentric liars interested solely in personal publicity and commercial gain. All Aryan physicists, Stark implored us, must focus on quantum mechanics aimed at technological breakthroughs that will win this war!”

Panzer had barked in agreement.

“Professor Pascual Jordan! Honor that name. The genius of theoretical physics at the University of Rostock. The founder of quantum mechanics and the
Führerprinzip
. The ‘leadership principle,’ Jordan has proved, is present in the molecular structure of all matter. The
Führerprinzip!
And who is your führer, boys?”

“Adolf Hitler!” Fritz and his classmates shouted in unison.

“Would you die for our führer?”

“Yes!”

“Would you kill for our führer?”

“Yes!”

“Without remorse, boys?”

“Yes!”

“Does your obedience to the
Führerprinzip
outweigh attachment to anyone or anything else?”

“Yes!”

“Prove it, boys. Draw your daggers!”

One and all, the Hitler Youths unsheathed the steel blades slung at their waists.

“Blut und Ehre!”

“Blood and honor!” they echoed.

“Now do it, boys.”

Each boy had been told to bring a favorite pet to study in Aryan science. The class was full of dogs and puppies, cats and kittens, and exotic birds. Panzer, the Alsatian pup that Streicher had given his sons at Christmas, wagged its tail between them. Fritz and Hans shared a dumbfounded look as the first shriek shrilled the room, then …

“Blut und Ehre …

“Blut und Ehre …