The Berkut (40 page)

Brumm shook his head. "There are more of them than us and they've gone inside. Come."

In the darkness it was impossible to tell whether the intruders had found the entrance, but when they crawled out of the tunnel into the valley they found a body mangled by an exploded mine, and muddy footprints told him that the intruders were inside. "Damn," he said. "They're here. The tracks are fresh and there's no smoke up the valley near the camp; they haven't found it yet, but they will. We've got to hurry." They stashed the meat in the cave and moved out at double time. His pace was hard, but she kept up with him as they kept low and moved silently. At the stream they paused, still hidden, and looked toward the pond. Within seconds they spotted the intruders hidden in the underbrush on the other side of the dam.

"Beard knows they're here," Brumm whispered with obvious relief.

"See how quiet the camp is? He's ready. Look at the bank. The mud has been swept clean."

"What do we do?"

"Get in behind them. Eventually they'll go across to look at the cave. We want to get as many of them as possible into the open. You stay here. When Beard fires, wait till they turn to run, then take them. Keep your shots waist-high; the idea is to knock them down. I'll cover the other end behind them. If you miss any of them, they'll come my way."

Eventually the intruders grew tired of their vigil and began to inch forward. Brumm knew what they were thinking: no tracks, no movement, an empty building. Still, they'd be nervous. They were untrained, but they were wily and armed. With luck, Brumm thought, they would all move at once. No scouts had been posted, and no rear guard; they were rank amateurs.

Within minutes all the intruders were working their way in the open toward the cliff wall. A regular army unit would have sent forward only one man to probe and attempt entry, a minimal expenditure of resources.

Beard's first shots came at exactly the moment Brumm would have chosen. He tensed as there was a blur of movement to his left. He ran to intercept and smashed a man hard in the head as he emerged stumbling from a thick tangle of brush. Brumm wanted at least one of them alive; he had to find out whether this was an isolated group of marauders.

There was more shooting from Gretchen's direction as Brumm jerked the man to his feet and kicked him forward. When they reached the cottage, Beard was already lining up bodies along the bank.

"Who the hell are they?" the sergeant major shouted.

The lone survivor crossed the brook and stood before the dead bodies. Stefanie knocked off the survivor's hat and took a step back. He was a she, with short hair like a man's.

"A Jew?" Beard asked.

Brumm sent Rau and two of the girls to fetch the sentry's body from the outer valley. "Get him in here; I want them all in the ground together. And block the entrance again." It had been a calculated risk to leave the entrance unblocked during their excursion. Now he was sorry he hadn't stuck to procedure. Beard's detail moved out at a fast pace and disappeared into the tree line.

Herr Wolf peeked from the doorway and stepped out tentatively, still clinging to the doorjamb. "What's going on? Who are these people?"

"Jews," one of the girls said.

"Impossible," he corrected her. "There are no more Jews in the Reich. I have that on good authority; you can take my word for it."

"Well, take my word for it," Brumm snapped back. "These are Jews, they are here and they have American weapons."

Herr Wolf lifted his head like an animal trying to see something at a distance and studied the bodies. "Then they are American Jews," he said. "Not German Jews. That explains it."

The survivor suddenly turned to face him. Herr Wolf gasped and backpedaled. "Jewess!" he shrieked, turning to the colonel. "Outrage! How did this happen?" he demanded. "You assured me that our security was adequate, yet here we are the victims of this pack of-" The veins stood out on his neck and his left arm slapped loudly against his side as he spoke.

While Wolf was talking the female survivor watched, studying him. Brumm ignored his leader and kept his eyes on the woman. As he watched, her eyes widened and her mouth opened, but no sound came forth. She pointed toward Herr Wolf, took a partial step forward and pitched onto her face.

Brumm had seen the recognition in her eyes.
In
that instant the woman's fate was sealed.

48 – June 16, 1945, 1:00 P.M.

When the woman emerged from her faint a few minutes later, she was given stream water from a tin cup.

"Tea," Brumm ordered. She watched the SS colonel, not knowing who he was, but instantly aware that he was someone with power. The hardness in his eyes clearly frightened her.

She sat up. "Outside, I saw-"

"Your eyes didn't betray you," Brumm said, cutting off her sentence. "You see your situation. I want you to answer some questions. I advise you to be cooperative." His voice was gentle, but she could feel the threat underneath. It wasn't what he said or how he said it; there was something more that made her want to please him and earn his approval. She'd been through this many times and had thought it was behind her, yet here it was again. She had met men like this before, sure of themselves, in control of their situations and willing to do anything to get their way.
In
the camps she'd learned the art of turning these men aside, being cooperative yet not cooperating. It was a skill honed under the threat of death, and she'd always felt some hope that if she performed well her life would be extended for another twentyfour hours. But this was different; this man would kill her.

"Your name," Brumm said. It was not a question. "Names are of no use to the dead," she answered. "You're quite alive, Fraulein, and your tongue is sharp." "Would that it were a dagger," she said, glaring.

"Your name," he said again. This time the threat had risen closer to the surface. He could be provoked, she noted. It might be something to work with.

"Why not?" she shrugged. "You have everything else. Why not my name, too? Complete your job. You've taken it all, my past, my future, every shred. Nothing remains for Razia Scheel." She stood and hiked her dress to show brown scars crisscrossing her abdomen. Shock was often effective with this type. Do the unexpected, she told herself. "See? All gone. You took my babies from inside, before they were ready."

Brumm drew back. The Valkyries pushed closer to see the woman's belly, but he shoved them back. This was not the kind of person he was used to dealing with. She was either a very clever woman or a crazy one-or both-and she was obviously trying to get the upper hand.

"Look at them. Go ahead. This isn't so bad. You've seen scars before. I had to watch the real horror. They made me pregnant three times, then opened me up, took my babies out and drowned them. There was nothing I could do. I didn't even pray. God wouldn't be there; I knew that. He didn't exist in the camps. Do you understand what I'm telling you?" she asked, pointing at the girls. "You're women. Do you see what's been done to me?"

"Shut her up," one of the girls said.

The woman laughed. "Shut her up. A million times over. Shut them all up. Listen to me, girl, they cut the babies out of me and drowned them. Do you understand what I'm telling you? For so-called science.
German
science. They explained it to me while they did it. Babies live in a liquid environment in the womb. How do they do this, they wanted to know? They used my babies to find out. If we can determine the mechanism of action-that's what they called itthen perhaps we can increase the survival rates for our submariners."

The woman paused and sat back. "Ah, they found nothing. My babies were as stubborn as me. They drowned without giving up their secrets. I was proud of them."

"Razia Scheel," Brumm said. He needed to regain control. Babies cut from the womb? Disgusting, he thought. But her woes were of the past; his mission was the future. He had to have information. He couldn't allow her to ramble on like this.

"Yes, Razia Scheel," the woman said defiantly. "Once a German and a Jew, now a mere subhuman with a number on my arm, an incubator for Nazi science. What will it be this time? The brothel? No, not with all these fine young girls. No need for extra help. Lesbian experiments? That fits, doesn't it? Not enough men to go around now. You're in luck; I have considerable experience in that field as well. You'll find my curriculum vitae quite complete."

"What was the nature of your unit?"

She stared at Brumm. "Listen to yourself. What you want to know is who you killed, isn't it? Can't you ask directly? They were Jews, of course. Who else would have anything to do with a Jewess with a number on her arm?"

"Which one was the leader?"

"That's better," she said. "Much more direct. See how easy it is?

Our leader was Pescht. He wasn't much of a leader, but he did the best he could. He led us out of Buchenwald. The Americans liberated us, if this miserable existence can be called liberation. We were avengers. Not very effective, but we were learning as we went."

"Avengers of what?"

The woman opened her mouth wide as if to laugh, but no sound came out. "Isn't it obvious? One could spend a life-or what's left of it-avenging. You'd never run dry."

Beard returned. Entering, he caught Brumm's attention and flicked his eyes toward the dark hall behind them; Herr Wolf was there in the shadows, listening. The woman caught the signal and felt her confidence lag. What lurked in the darkness was far more frightening than an SS colonel.

"When were you liberated?" Brumm asked. "A while ago. It's hard to remember."

"I assume you had a destination."

"German logic." She laughed bitterly. "There is no destination for Jews here. We're a lost tribe. We talked about Munich last night. Pescht thought there'd be lots of Nazis left in Munich."

"Nazis?"

"Of course. We kill them, just as they killed us. We had years to learn-an extended period of training, you could call it."

Herr Wolf floated silently forward from the shadows, his hands folded in front of his lap in an almost protective posture. "Condemnation rolls easily from your lips," he said. "It's so convenient to measure morality by lives and deaths. You go to the butcher, he slaughters the meat, your rabbi passes on it with a little hocus-pocus and a few magic words, and suddenly there's morality and acceptability. But somebody had to do the dirty work for you."

She avoided the dark eyes that beckoned her. "If only Pescht could have lived a few moments more."

"A perfect prototype of the Jewess," Herr Wolf announced to the others. "Here we see the insidiousness of the race, the most dangerous
of the species. Find another to do your bidding. The Jew always needs another instrument." He turned to face them, like a professor before his class. "Now you will understand. I will demonstrate for you. The Jewish race is parasitic, and like all parasites, it carries innumerable diseases. Consider the remora, a small and insignificant fish that attaches itself to the shark. The shark kills, and the remoras in turn feed off it. It provides no benefit to the shark; it only takes for itself. You see?"

His face was bright now, flushed with excitement. "As a young artist of some promise, I was forced to live in poverty in Vienna, and there I saw the Jews up close and how they manipulated and dined off the flesh of German culture. Roosevelt was a Jew; he kept it a secret; he was ashamed of it. Jews often hide the fact of their birth. Roosevelt opposed me; all Jews are against me. With good reason," he added with a demonic laugh. "They knew that I knew, and I let it be known that
I,
alone in the world, had the intestinal fortitude to act on my insight into their true natures."

He leaned toward the woman, who instinctively recoiled, his voice soft. "Understand, I've never
hated
Jews. That's never been the point. It would be wrong to make war because you hate someone. It was an intellectual decision, a matter of duty, my sacred trust to the German people, present and future. I realized early in my life-during my lonely years in Vienna, and certainly well before the Munich years-that the Jews were given to us as a device from God, a gift, if you will. How else can we explain the pogroms? How is it that in every culture in history the Jew has been a target for destruction? It cannot be coincidence that every civilized culture has identified the same threat. You see? If you study history, finally you have to come back to this, because it occurs over and over again. Pure races-there are very few left
can advance only so far before the impurities from racial mixing create genetic soup. I know this because we've put our best scientists on it. The Jew is no more than a subspecies mechanism for ensuring that periodically we look to the preservation of our own purity. This is fact, not speculation. I had no choice in the matter of eradication; the impurities had to be removed from German society, but I want you all to know that I took the action without rancor."