Hahn laughed. Giving a prisoner false hope and then snatching it away was a marvelous technique for extracting additional information.
Diehl continued. “We brought out the bathtub and filled it with water. We stuck her head underwater and waited to bring her up until she had half drowned. We did this a half dozen times; then we did it to her lover. I am extremely confident that she will cooperate.”
Hahn continued to probe her. Her eyes were open again and the look of terror excited him. She tried to twist her body away from him, which was quite impossible. “Sadly, Captain, we will not go after the OSS in Switzerland. An attack by us on Swiss soil would annoy the people who are providing us with so much in the way of food and medical supplies. Catching this pathetic little group in German territory was fair. Going into Switzerland would not be. Tell me, are there any women in the OSS group still in Arbon?”
Diehl quickly checked his notes. “One young woman named Winifred Tyler. She’s short and about in her mid-twenties.”
And doubtless the slut who’d tripped him and escaped from him. How nice it would be to have her in front of him instead of Marie Leroux. No, he could not fixate on the Tyler woman. The Americans in Arbon were doubtless scattering to the four winds. Even if he were to get permission to launch a raid, the Yanks were doubtless well away from this area of the world. No, Marie Leroux would have to take Winifred Tyler’s place.
Marie continued to stare at him through swollen and discolored eyelids. He again allowed his hands to roam her body, feeling her quiver. It delighted him. She had no further information that would be useful.
“Did you sodomize her, Captain?”
Diehl smiled. “Indeed, sir. She screamed when I entered her, and her lover howled just as much. It went as you ordered.”
He patted Marie on the cheek. “You are a lovely thing and you will be quite useful. Your lover is still alive and will remain so as long as you cooperate. Do you understand?”
The OSS had been fools to send lovers on the same journey. Along with pain from electrical currents, Diehl had told the boy that German soldiers would rape his girlfriend in front of him, which was one reason for sodomizing her. Another was that Diehl enjoyed it. Marie’s lover was told that the interrogators would mutilate her face and body. He had made much the same threat to Marie with the added proviso that she would watch while his manhood was slowly cut from his body. That had been the last straw. Both had collapsed.
Marie nodded and Hahn continued. “Diehl will be responsible for seeing to it that you are given medical care and that your wounds are healed. We will do the same for your boyfriend. As long as you are a good little girl, he will remain alive.”
CHAPTER 14
Lieutenant Pfister’s command now consisted of eight men and himself. Nine if you counted Schubert, who was led along by a rope tied around his waist. Pfister thought he looked like a dog that had been trained to walk upright for extended periods of time. It was a cruel comparison but war was cruel, and, if he thought too much about it, he wanted to weep.
Schubert had improved slightly. He now responded to basic orders and was able to feed and clothe himself. He was also able to take care of his personal hygiene, which was good. Not even Hummel looked forward to wiping Schubert’s ass. Hummel talked to him constantly; sometimes, Pfister thought, just to keep himself sane as their world crumbled around them. Constant artillery bombardments and their helplessness under bombing raids had sent most of his platoon either to the hospital or the grave. A couple of his men were simply “missing” and the SS had been justifiably suspicious that that they had deserted.
Having been so thoroughly shredded, the entire regiment had been withdrawn to the rear of Innsbruck and been replaced by thousands of insane anti-Stalin Russians. Neither Hummel nor Pfister had seen any turncoat Reds before, although they had heard of them. Both men thought the Russians were a scruffy, barbaric bunch. They were horrified at the thought of Red Army soldiers like them turned loose on German soil. Neither women nor property would be safe from those vandals, was their opinion. That German soldiers had committed atrocities on Polish and Russian women was unspoken.
All of them carried what they could of their equipment and supplies and left the rest. Hummel was now an infantryman. His machine gun had been bent into improbable angles in the air raid that had damaged Schubert’s mind. He had not been able to replace it. He now carried a simple bolt-action rifle and despised it. He loved the firepower and potential for devastating enemies of the Reich that his machine gun had given him. It had made him feel elite. Now he was nothing more than a humble soldier, and one with a very large pet named Schubert.
“We have orders, Sergeant,” Pfister said.
Hummel laughed sarcastically. “I’m a sergeant now?”
“Yes, and I’m a field marshal. Our orders are to retreat west along the valleys until we somehow reach an area near the capital of Germanica, some little town called Bregenz. I’ve never heard of it and it’s probably because it’s in what used to be Austria and I never gave a shit about Austria.”
Pfister pulled out a pack of cigarettes. They were German, which meant they’d be awful, but beggars can’t be choosers, they’d decided. He offered one to Hummel but not to Schuster, who was staring up at the sky.
Pfister breathed out the noxious weed. “Some days I almost envy Schuster. He is safe in his own little world.”
Hummel corrected his lieutenant. “Except when the Yanks are bombing and shelling us. Then he howls and screams and bites himself and shits himself.”
Pfister shook his head. “I’d tried to forget that part. We will travel at night, of course. It will be slow since there will be no trucks for us. Fortunately, it’s not all that far and the weather is fair. We will also hope for clouds and fog so we can move during the day and away from American planes.”
“And Bregenz is where we’ll make our last stand, isn’t it, Lieutenant?”
Pfister looked around nervously to see who else might be listening. No one was near them. “According to Minister Goebbels, it is where we will turn the tide of the war and emerge victorious, which is as unlikely as me fucking Marlene Dietrich.”
Hummel laughed. It felt good. Laughter had become a rare commodity. “Perhaps Herr Goebbels will unleash another one of Hitler’s super-weapons and save all our asses.”
“With our luck, Sergeant Hummel, the Yanks will unleash super-weapons of their own.”
* * *
On July 16, 1945, the night sky over Alamogordo, New Mexico, lit up with a degree of brightness described as coming from a thousand suns. Had anyone been looking directly at it, they would have been blinded. Instead, thick and heavily coated glasses, much like those used by welders, had been issued. Even with them, everyone was told to avoid direct contact for at least the initial explosion.
The blazing light quickly dissipated and the billowing, churning mushroom cloud could be watched by the naked eye as it boiled and roared thousands of feet into the sky. It grew like a living thing, terrifying some who watched.
Hundreds of scientists and hangers-on had cowered in trenches and bunkers to await the explosion that they all feared and hoped for. They simply did not know what to expect. A minority of the scientists thought that unleashing the power of the atom would result in the destruction of the earth, that the planet would simply fall apart and all mankind and mankind’s sometimes dubious achievements would cease to exist.
Others thought that it would merely be an enormous explosion and represent a weapon that would bring Japan to the peace table. How this would occur, they weren’t quite certain. When discussed, many were appalled at the thought of such a bomb being exploded over a Japanese city, incinerating tens of thousands of civilians. That firebombing of Japanese cities had been ongoing for months and had already caused many thousands of casualties was ignored. Others felt that the Japanese deserved what they would get for starting the war in the first place.