“I have studied your plan with the utmost care, Walter, and I have every hope of it succeeding. Of course,” he added, turning to face Schellenberg, “it is doubtful whether we shall need atomic bombs for this war, but a leader has a duty to think ahead, and science never stands still. No, what excites me about your operation is its psychological dimension.”
Hitler paused to pour himself a glass of distilled water from the decanter on the table. “Nations are wonderfully distinctive, and more and more I have been thinking about the resemblance each bears to a particular animal… yes, animals. It is no coincidence, Walter, that throughout history different nations have identified themselves, through flags, crests, emblems, whatever, with certain animals. The Russian bear, the English lion, the German eagle — these are only the most obvious examples. Note the differences — though each is a fine fighter, the bear is stupid, the lion lazy, the eagle perhaps overprone to flights of the imagination. Yet within these nations one rule prevails. The strongest lion, the strongest bear, the strongest eagle — each assumes the leadership. It is the law of history.”
Schellenberg restrained himself and merely nodded.
“Perhaps you are wondering what this has to do with the plan,” Hitler noted calmly. “Tell me, what animal do you associate with America?”
Schellenberg’s mind did not make the association.
“You see? You’ve confirmed it for yourself,” Hitler said. “America is not a true nation, that is the point. It is a herd of disparate animals, a few eagles, a few lions, a few bears, and a host of inferior species. Herds, Walter, herds always, always, respond to the instincts of their weakest members. The German stock, the English stock will forever be at the mercy of the Jews and the Negroes because that is the law of the herd. It may be more numerous, potentially far more powerful than a single predator, but it only requires one member of the herd to take fright and there is general panic. Insecurity is the herd’s strongest emotion. Now do you see the relevance?”
Schellenberg did. “This operation will create a panic that will far transcend the actual importance of the target.”
“Exactly. Exactly. You have understood perfectly. We will put two eagles in among the herd, and the panic will spread around the world.”
The sun disappeared, slice by orange slice, into the distant horizon, its rays reflected in a thousand puddles. Major Gerd Breitner sat astride a rickety wooden fence on the outskirts of Beresino and drank in the splendour. At first he’d hated the Russian landscape, found it flat and boring, but after eighteen months he’d come to love its subtleties, its infinite variations on the same theme. A small compensation perhaps, but better than none at all.
The last slice slid away. Breitner lit a cigarette, looked once more at the moth-eared photograph of his wife. It was more than a year now, and the pain had lost its sharpness; like everything else, it had been flattened by the war. Only the irony remained: while he had survived countless brushes with death in France, Africa, and the East, she had been buried in the rubble of their safe Stuttgart home during an Allied bombing raid.
He put the photograph away and tried to picture her face. It grew harder with each passing month. Breitner felt the tang of tears forming and jumped down from the fence, angry with himself.
He turned and stared into the east. It was quiet. It seemed to get quieter each day. Intelligence put the attack four days hence, and they weren’t often wrong these days. Four more days of sitting around, then all hell would break loose again. He wasn’t sure which was worse. “Fuck you, Adolf,” he muttered, “and all the other bastards.”
He found his friend Paul Russman sitting on the running board of the derelict staff car with Burdenski, practicing his wretched cigarette trick. Paul placed the cigarette on his palm, pointed it away from his body, and brought his other hand sharply down on the wrist. The cigarette cartwheeled through the air, missed the waiting mouth, hit him in the nose instead, and dropped into the mud.
Burdenski was unimpressed. “Where did you pick up that stupid habit?” he asked.
“Africa,” Paul replied, retrieving the sodden cigarette. “I watched an English prisoner practicing for hours in the compound at Mersa Brega. He said it helped to pass the time. He was right. And of course I couldn’t let the English prove their superiority in such a crucial field of combat.”
“I can see that,” Burdenski said wryly.
“But there’s more,” Paul said. “The Englishman promised me the war would be over before I mastered the technique, so I reckon that mastering it will probably end the war.”
“That’s why I encourage him to practice,” Breitner said.
“Clowns,” Burdenski grunted.
Paul looked up at Breitner. “I have some rather disturbing news, Gerd,” he said, lighting a dry cigarette. “We are shortly to receive an uninvited guest here at our summer residence — an SS colonel.”
“Soldier or policeman?”
“That’s the disturbing part.”
Breitner felt a slight surge of panic. Absurd. “What can they want with us?” he asked. “We do nothing but fight wars.”
“Perhaps it’s the fact that we’re losing this one,” Paul suggested with a straight face.
“Paul, I hope you don’t intend making jokes like that in his exalted presence,” Breitner said. “It’s possible that he may not share our sense of humor.”
“He certainly isn’t sharing our war,” Paul observed.
The SS colonel arrived at Beresino in the middle of the night, looking as shiny-smart as only an SS colonel could. A rather disheveled Russman and Breitner went out to greet him, and despite the lateness of the hour, Paul managed a “Heil Hitler” of such vigor that the black-uniformed officer was set back on his heels. Breitner concealed his laugh with a cough.
Sturmbannführer Rademacher was a man of few words. He declined schnapps, coffee, food, and small talk, all to the evident but unvoiced disgust of his escort. He simply withdrew two documents from his shiny briefcase and handed them to Breitner and announced that they should be on the funeral train leaving Baranovichi at ten that morning. The colonel then performed his own, more austere salute and climbed back into the motorcycle sidecar. His driver shrugged sympathetically at the two officers and opened the throttle.
“We must be neglecting our personal hygiene,” Paul said.
“It’s Russians he smells,” Breitner muttered, glancing through the documents. One was a release signed by Pan-zergruppe Command. The other was a summons to Berlin, to the office of Obergruppenführer Schellenberg, head of Amt VI, the external security section of the Reich Intelligence Services.
Paul was reading them over his shoulder. “How did nice girls like us get mixed up with a man like that?” he asked.
Breitner flung the empty vodka bottle out the train window and into the Polish night. “Goddamnit, Paul, there must be English-speaking apes in the Waffen SS.”
Paul shook his head vigorously. Both men were drunk, having chanced upon an enterprising Polish peasant selling homemade vodka in the middle of nowhere. Presumably the peasant had seen trains stop at the same place before, and the same type of train at that. He’d been disappointed but not surprised to learn that all his other potential customers were dead.
“There are no apes in the Waffen SS,” Paul enunciated carefully. “Their hair is the wrong color.” He pried the cork free from another bottle. “But to answer your question with the seriousness it deserves, I can only suggest our excellent record in the service of the Führer. Whatever they want done we’ll have already done it on some continent or other.”