The Secret of Lions (30 page)

Quickly, he raised his gun, aiming down the
sight at my dark shadow. I shot first. The silenced bullets tore
through him before he could fire a single shot.

The hidden guard emerged from behind me. He
began firing round after round in my direction. Without thinking, I
leapt into an open door on my left. As I rose to my feet, I saw
another door leading to the hallway from that same room about ten
meters from me. I darted toward it at the same time I fired my gun
at the wall.

The guard, on the other side of the wall,
ran toward the opening that he’d watched me dart into only moments
ago. As my bullets pierced through the wall, barely missing him, he
returned fire from his side of the wall. His bullets just missed my
legs. Somehow, we both wound up at opposite ends of the hallway
from where we’d started. We stared at each other, our eyes caught
in a deadlock, our guns pointed directly at each other.

I squeezed the trigger on my gun first, but
the chamber clicked. It was empty. I had used all my bullets. The
guard laughed and slowly approached me, feeling victorious. He had
me cornered. I ejected the clip, letting it bounce on the
floor.

Calmly, I searched through my jacket pockets
for a backup clip. Gradually, the guard closed in. He was less than
three meters from me now. He toyed with me, allowing me ample time
to search for an extra clip. He planned to kill me before I could
insert it into the empty gun.

Remaining utterly composed, I finally found
a clip. He saw that I began to pull out an extra clip and slip it
into the gun. Now the guard was aiming his gun at my head from less
than a meter away. I raised my sidearm.

The guard pulled his trigger before my gun
was aimed properly, but his gun merely clicked. He had emptied it
at the same time I did. I smiled at him. I had counted and was sure
his weapon was empty. First I shot him in the chest, then again in
his stomach and head.

My attention turned toward Hitler’s room. I
walked to the open doorway and stopped over the dead guard lying on
the floor within the doorway. I looked down at him. The corpse’s
dark and hollow eyes stared back. Blood slid out the dead man’s
open mouth. It looked black and wet in the darkness, like oil
oozing from a hole in the ground.

I pointed my gun at the open doorway and
walked in, ready to fire. Hitler was seated in a chair that faced
the window.

I pulled my cap off, revealing my short,
blond hair. Over the last few years, I had aged. I was a young man
now.

I entered the room and threw the cap onto
his empty lap. Hitler picked it up and stared at it for the longest
time. He seemed spellbound by the street cap. His eyes studied it
intensely. I wondered what he was thinking.

“Turn around,” I said.

Hitler just sat there for a moment with no
reaction.

“I knew you would come. I’ve known for a
long time that someday death would come to me. The only thing I
have always been unsure of was the face it would wear,” Hitler
said.

“Turn around,” I commanded, “and you shall
see the face of death.”

Hitler turned his chair around slowly. His
eyes were glossy and filled with tears. He looked like a
heartbroken old man. The tears flowed down his pale, withered face
and dripped onto the floorboards. A Walther PPK rested on a small
table next to the chair. He displayed no intention of reaching for
it. He didn’t resist my commands. He wore the face of a man
defeated.

I lowered my gun. Hitler wasn’t going to
fight me. I knew it.

“I think of you, every day,” Hitler said.
His eyes clung to me, squinting, trying to recognize the boy he
once knew; only now I was a man who stood before him.

“I’m glad it’s you. It should be you. You
were my child. You were a good son. You were my son. And it should
be you."

He paused for a moment. Then he said, “Do
you ever think about me, Willem?”

“I think of you. I have thought about you
for many years,” I answered.

“Do you still paint?” Hitler asked, staring
at me. It was hard for him to believe I was almost twenty-one, a
man now.

“I use this now,” I said, holding up my
silenced pistol so he could see it. “This is my brush now.”

“That’s a shame. You were such a great
artist. I should have never taken that away from you. I used to be
an artist too, you know. I want to show you something.”

“Slowly,” I said, raising my gun again,
“Very slowly.”

“Follow me,” Hitler said.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To the bunker below this building,” Hitler
said.

“I don’t think that’s very smart of me,” I
said.

“It’s important. I promise. It’s something
you will want before you leave here tonight,” Hitler said.

“You lead the way. Try anything and I will
shoot you dead,” I threatened.

He only glanced at me.

“You’re going to do that anyway,” he
said.

Hitler stood up from his chair. We walked
out of the room. I made sure to stay close behind him in case a
guard shot at us. I followed him down the stairwell. We walked down
to the very bottom of the stairs.

Hitler opened the door and led me into a
dimly lit bunker. It seemed empty, no sign that it was a trap. We
walked into one room and then through the next until we came to a
study. Hitler led me through the study and into another dark
room.

I held my gun out. No one was around. The
bunker was deserted.

Hitler walked over to a kerosene lamp and
lit it. I could see a flicker of a shadow sitting behind him at an
angle when Hitler lit the lamp. I spun around and pointed my gun at
the figure. It was a woman’s lifeless body.

“She’s dead,” Hitler said.

“Eva?” I asked.

“That’s my wife. We were married today. She
drank a vial of poison earlier in the evening,” Hitler said.

“She killed herself?”

“Well that’s what we’re doing
here—committing suicide. We will not let the Russians capture us
alive. I was waiting for you. I’ve waited for you for years,”
Hitler said. “I believed you would come. I wanted to give you
enough time.”

He walked over to a large brass cabinet on
the opposite end of the room. I sidestepped so that the gun was
still pointed at the back of his head.

I watched from over Hitler’s shoulder as he
pulled a small, dust-covered safe out of the cabinet. It was
possibly fifteen centimeters wide and ten centimeters long.

Hitler took a pair of reading glasses from
his shirt pocket and slipped the rims over his face. He settled his
eyes on the combination lock on the front of the safe. He focused
on the numbers. He turned the knob five times around before the
lock clicked. The door on the front of the safe came open.

Hitler’s fat white hands reached into the
box. They scurried through some dark objects I could not make out.
My finger clenched the trigger of the gun tighter. I was ready for
Hitler to give me a reason to shoot.

The Führer pulled out a small, familiar
book. It was leather-bound. A crest of a lion was engraved on the
cover. I recognized the book immediately. Hitler had given it to me
when I was six years old. When he gave it to me the pages had been
blank. Now they were covered with illustrations.

Hitler opened it. Beautiful designs of
animals filled the pages. Each sketch was done with the skill of a
master artist; only it was really the labor of a small boy. I was
that boy. I had all but forgotten that particular sketchbook.

“This is my favorite,” Hitler said. He held
the book open with both hands. He showed me one I had not seen in
ten years. It was a sketch of a lion. It was standing over cliffs.
“It would have also been your mother’s favorite.”

I could feel the pain swell up somewhere
inside me. The memories forced their way to the surface of my
mind’s palette. All of those years, I’d lived a horrible and utter
lie. I was never Peter. I was never Hitler’s son. I had lived with
the wrong father. I had loved the wrong father. I had experienced
the wrong life.

“I remember,” I said, interrupting my
thoughts. “But you killed them. You and my father were friends. You
had just come into power. And you had him murdered. That is what my
mother told me. And then you killed her.”

My mind was no longer fueled, no longer
brainwashed by his lies.

Hitler set the book down and slowly rose to
his feet and turned toward me. He studied me for a moment. He could
see the tears swelling up in my green eyes. They were small tears.
One even slid down my face. Hitler watched as the tear became lost
in my half-grown stubble.

He looked at the floor.

“I...Your father saved my life. He was a
guard in a prison I was in years ago. Your father started talking
to me one day. He was the only one who talked to me after I had
sent everyone else away. I didn’t want to talk to any family or
friends.

Your father was the only person who talked
to me about things other than politics. He was already married to
your mother, Gracy. He died. Your mother was the only Jew and woman
I ever loved,” Hitler said.

I slugged him across the face with the gun,
“Shut up! Don’t ever talk about her. You killed her. You never
loved her. And you never loved me. You killed them both. I hate
you!”

Hitler fell to the ground, holding his
blood-covered face. From his knees he did not beg for his life.
Instead he said, “Willem, take the sketchbook. It is rightfully
yours. I want you to have it. I want you to paint again.”

“Fuck you! I don’t want your permission! And
I don’t want your sketchbook!” I shouted. Hastily, I unscrewed the
silencer, trembling as it came loose. I slipped it into my jacket
pocket. I held the gun out and put it against Hitler’s face.

“Open your mouth!” I commanded.

Hitler stared at me. Blood covered his jaw.
A gaping cut was left from when I’d struck him.

“Open your mouth!” I demanded.

Hitler still did not respond. I pointed the
gun at Hitler’s left leg and shot him. Then I glanced at the
doorway to make sure none of the guards had heard the gunshot.

Hitler grabbed his leg and groaned in agony.
As he opened his mouth, I shoved the gun into it, almost certainly
shattering his front teeth. Immediately, I pulled the trigger. The
sound of the gunshot was muffled because the barrel was so far into
Hitler’s throat.

The bullet exited through the back of his
brainstem. Smoke surfaced out of a large hole in the back of his
head. He exhaled one final time. Only smoke rose from his
mouth.

I looked down at him and began to cry.
Within moments tears covered my face as I stared at the figure on
the floor. Hitler’s body squirmed around. Brain fragments were
spread out across the floor behind his head. His hands convulsed
around searching for something to grab.

I took the silencer out and reattached it. I
pointed the gun at him again. I did not fire. I just watched. I
wiped my face of any remaining tears and tightened my jaw. My teeth
clenched together as tightly as they could. I tried to keep the
tears in the back of my eyes.

Even though I had never really known it; I
had waited most of my life for this moment. I had painted this
scene on the canvas of my mind for nearly a decade. It was the
revenge I’d dreamed of. I’d killed before, but for some strange
reason this was the first time I felt sadness from it. Out of all
the men I’d killed, it was Hitler who made me not recognize who I
had become.

I watched as he tried to stand up. I was
sorry and ashamed of it. The blood was already on my hands. I had
to finish the job.

I thought of my mother, Gracy. I pictured
the life she was forced to live for me. My mind swelled up with
blackness. I had lost the sadness and became enraged again. I
forgot the sketches and the art I’d spent so much time creating.
Now I wanted to destroy them.

I shot the dying man again, this time in the
stomach. Hitler lay still. The blood filled up in the wound. It was
black. The bullet had ripped through his liver. I watched as the
blood soaked his shirt.

I held the gun down by my side. I raised it
again. I still felt empty. The blackness had consumed me. The only
thought left on my mind was of my mother. I emptied the entire clip
into Hitler’s dead body. I kept shooting after the gun was empty.
It wasn’t until the fifth click that I finally stopped. The body
was completely unrecognizable. I stepped back from it. Blood
covered the entire floor and my shoes. I dropped to my knees.

Nothing remained of the man I was. I thought
for the first time in years that I didn’t want to kill anymore. I’d
always imagined I would kill Hitler, but I never planned or thought
about the moment after. My entire life existed for this moment. It
existed solely for revenge. And it was over.

I stayed in that room a little while
afterward, just reflecting. My thoughts traveled through my
memories at lightning speed. I walked back into the study. My eyes
wandered from the floor to the grand fireplace I had not noticed
when Hitler had walked me through the study earlier.

Suddenly, I was overcome with a feeling of
hope. Hanging above the fireplace was a painting. It was grand. It
was mine. I’d painted the canvas years before, and Hitler had taken
it from me. He swore he had burned it with the rest of the artworks
the Nazis had destroyed. But among his lies was that very one,
because the painting hung on that wall.

Seeing it made me realize I wanted a new
life. I had to keep on. I had to continue painting. I ran to the
fireplace, reached above it, and ripped the framed painting down.
With as much force as I could use without harming the canvas, I
cracked open the frame and slipped the canvas out.

I held it up high. This was who I truly was,
a painter. I had to find Willem again. I decided to cover the whole
thing up somehow. If I didn’t, then the survivors of the Reich
would hunt me down.