Absently, he ran a hand over his filthy jacket.
Standing at rigid attention next to him, the boy's father tugged on the front of his own jacket for what must have been the hundredth time. He was trying to flatten wrinkles that were stiffened by too much sweat and blood and grime ever to lay smooth again. With blown-out knees, unraveled stitching, and rumpled hat, the uniform was at odds with the man's proud posture. Only the Ritterkreuz—the cherished Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross that hung around his neck—gleamed in the lamplight.
Josef Litt was a man of exquisite refinement. If not for the triumph of knowing his life's work would continue through his son, he would find the humility of his current situation unbearable. He wore the uniform and title of an SS-Oberstgruppenfiihrer, a lofty military rank reflective of his authority, but certainly not of his duties. Although he had killed, he was no soldier. In the lab he had shown how men in white coats could turn men of muscle into pathetic drones. His experiments had earned him the attention of the Supreme Commander. Before long, he was head of a top secret research laboratory, with an SS regiment—and title—at his disposal.
Karl was proud of his intimate knowledge of his father, an otherwise guarded man. He turned to appraise the familiar, crisp profile of the man who was now entrusting the Aryan dream to him.
Approaching footfalls drew his attention to the wharf. One SS soldier had broken away from the other four. Three diamonds on his left collar marked him as an officer. His gray uniform looked disheveled and grubby, but it was a model of German aristocracy compared to Karl's clothes.
The soldier moved to within a handsbreadth of Josef Litt. He angled his head away from the boy and bent closer and whispered in his father's ear.
Josef nodded tersely, without hesitation.
The soldier glanced back at the workmen. Finished, they were talking quietly and waiting for their pay so they could go home and at long last fill their families' bellies. He pulled a Schmeisser submachine gun from a strap over his shoulder. He positioned the weapon so only the boy and his father could see him yank back its bolt, chambering the first round. He flicked his eyes toward Karl. The look surprised the boy; the man's face reflected doubt, even sorrow. Then
the soldier turned away, leaving Karl to wonder. With the gun hidden behind him, the soldier marched toward the workers.
Karl felt his father's hand on the back of his head. The elder Litt's voice was cold as an executioner's blade.
"Sei fleisig, mein Sohn." Learn well, my son.
The hard lessons had started six days before, when his
father had awakened him after midnight. "It's time, Karl," he had said breathlessly.
"I'm ready, Father."
In the anemic light of the foyer, there was a teary farewell with Karl's mother. Hair in curlers, she wore a thin beige nightgown that smelled vaguely of sweat. She alternately embraced him crushingly, kissed his face, and babbled about how much she loved him. He stood stoically unresponsive; her antics shamed him. She had known for more than half a year this day would come. Karl broke free of her arms and strode out the door without looking back.
Several trips along the rubble-strewn streets of Berlin filled the car with three other children—two boys, one of whom wept incessantly, and a cheery little girl who informed them that she was five. Travel was slow as they moved against a pounding tide of refugees heading into Berlin.
Two hours later, they lost their car to three German army officers determined to escape the wrath of both the Allied war machine and an increasingly unstable fuhrer. What followed was a blur of trudging through fields and swamps and dense forests.
The thought of missing the U-boat made his father nearly insane with panic. They caught an hour's sleep here, a couple more there. They rummaged through heaps of trash and the clothes of decaying corpses, looking for scraps of food. Josef feared all pedestrians, and vehicles even more so. He instructed the others to hit the ground and stay flat at his signal.
Once, Josef told the children to wait, and he loped off toward a farmhouse. Karl thought he looked like a wounded beast, bounding toward shelter under the glare of a hateful moon. He returned thirty minutes later with two loaves of bread and a small bag of carrots and potatoes. The bread was splattered with a dark, coppery-smelling liquid, impossible to identify in the night. The group ate it without question.
Sometime after that a fat man in tatters sprang out from behind a stone wall. He grabbed at the children, demanding food. Josef rushed to him and knocked him into the mud. In an instant, he was sitting on the man's fat belly. A huge knife appeared. Josef pressed the blade against the man's bulging neck. Karl saw muscles strain in his father's jaw and forearms and caught a flash of gritted teeth: the wounded beast cornered.
"Don't try me," his father said. "You won't survive to tell the tale."
They did not move for a long moment, then his father pushed off the man and started walking again. Always walking.
The downed man gasped for breath. Blood flowed from what looked to Karl like a small, smiling mouth etched into his neck. But the man pulled himself up, held a dirty handkerchief to his wound, and stumbled off in the other direction.
They staggered into Rostock on the Baltic Sea late the next afternoon. After three years of Royal Air Force bombings, the town was a crumbling mess. Tiny billows of dust danced like ghosts in the empty streets. Shutters clung to darkened windows. If the Brits had failed to completely destroy the place, they had succeeded in beating the spirit out of its people.
They rounded a ravaged brick building and faced the harbor—but no U-boat. The opaque water was smooth and undisturbed. The scorched pilings of shattered docks jutted from the water like rotten teeth. Only the nearest dock had barely survived, the huge sliding doors of its warehouse intact and drawn tight.
Karl turned to his father, who did not look devastated as Karl had expected, only worried. Josef held his hand up to Karl—Don't panic, it said—and walked on, his hand still raised, forgotten.
As they drew closer, one of the warehouse doors screeched open and SS soldiers stepped out. The SS commander explained that the U-boat was waiting thirty miles offshore. Josef's mood lifted; he laughed. "Call it in," he said.
Karl lumbered into the gutted warehouse. A ragtag bunch of children—most of them nowhere near puberty—sprawled in boredom and fatigue over mountains of crates. He discovered later that they numbered thirty-five, including himself. Among them were a half dozen men, unshaven, unbathed, and looking utterly miserable. The scientists and chaperones his father had told him about. Water from an early-afternoon rain shower dripped off exposed rafters, producing a light melody on the crates and concrete floor.
He located a boy about his size, sitting on a short stack of pallets, and hobbled over to him. Karl had lost a shoe in a treacherous ravine several days before and now wore only a bulky rag on that foot.
"What's your name?" Karl demanded.
"Gregor." His voice was weak, as though he had no energy for the task. His face was scratched and dirty. Karl knew his was the same.
"Your shoes—give them to me."
Gregor looked him up and down. "No."
Karl moved in quickly. One hand clenched Gregor's neck, the other caught the arm that had come up in defense. He touched his lips to the boy's ear. "Don't try me," he whispered harshly. "You won't survive to tell the tale."
He took a step back and smiled wickedly at Gregor's stunned expression. Then Gregor lowered his head and untied the shoes.
Six hours later, he watched as the SS officer with the submachine gun hidden behind him used subtle hand signals to organize his soldiers into a crescent around the dockworkers. The military men eyed the officer for a signal, as an orchestra would watch its conductor. Just as one of the workers tossed a cigarette aside and turned his head in suspicion, the officer nodded. He swung the gun around and started firing.