Von Leinsdorf looked up from the dead man, saw the barrel pointing at him, and the uncertainty in Bernie’s eyes. He raised his hands as he stood up, unafraid, inviting him to take the shot.
Another shell screamed toward them. Bernie turned and ran the rest of the way to the road as Von Leinsdorf dove to the ground. The shell landed to the left of the bridge. Showered with dirt but unharmed, Von Leinsdorf picked up his knife, sliced the main fuse line, and sprinted up the path.
The column of panzers rumbled down the road from the west. The rest of the GIs had fallen back a quarter mile, shouting at the engineers to hurry. Bernie started their jeep, pointed the wheels away from the bridge. The pop of small-arms fire erupted. Bullets kicked up around the engineers as they hooked up their detonator.
“Forget about that! Get out of here!” Bernie shouted to them.
He saw Von Leinsdorf running out from under the bridge, his uniform covered in dust.
“Where’s the sarge?” one of the engineers shouted back.
Bernie stepped on the gas as Von Leinsdorf came alongside and jumped onto the running board. They skidded away as another shell exploded behind them on the road. The rest of the Americans scattered in every direction. In a quick look back, Bernie saw the last engineer push down the plunger on their detonator. When nothing happened to the bridge, and a second shell landed near them, the engineers followed the riflemen into the trees. Bernie skidded around the next turn and floored the jeep, desperate to leave the bridge behind them.
Von Leinsdorf fell into the passenger seat beside him. His whole body appeared to be shaking.
“What’s wrong, are you hit?” asked Bernie.
Von Leinsdorf turned toward him and Bernie realized he was laughing.
“What’s so fucking funny?” said Bernie.
“Why didn’t you shoot him when you had the chance?”
“What are you talking about? He had a gun on you the whole time.”
“I saved your life, the least you can do is return the favor-”
“I didn’t have a shot. Jesus Christ, what am I supposed to do? We shouldn’t have stopped in the first place.”
“Keeping that bridge open could be the difference for the entire offensive. Did that ever occur to you?” Von Leinsdorf pulled out a cigarette.
“Well, don’t mistake me for somebody who gives a shit.”
Von Leinsdorf glared at him, then pulled his pistol and pointed it at Bernie’s head. “Pull over. Pull off the road and stop right now.”
Bernie did as he was ordered, steering onto the first dirt side road, concealed from the main highway by a thick stand of evergreens. Von Leinsdorf told him to stop near the ruins of an old country church. Bernie kept both hands on the wheel, his eyes on the road.
“I’m sorry,” said Bernie. “I didn’t mean that.”
“Are you really that reluctant to shoot an American, Bernie? Before we go any further: You are a German soldier, aren’t you?”
“I could’ve just as easily shot you, too,” said Bernie, glancing sideways at the gun. “You think about that?”
“Oh yes. And what would you have done then? How long do you think you’d last after Counter Intelligence takes you for questioning? What sad story would you tell them, Brooklyn? This Nazi/GI took you hostage and forced you to drive all over Belgium? No credibility problem there. But tell us, Private, what about all these forged documents and German uniforms in the back of your jeep?”
“Okay, you made your point.”
“The point is they’d break you in an hour. You’d give up your mother. You haven’t the backbone for it.” Von Leinsdorf looked disgusted. “Get out of the car.”
“You said you needed my help, you couldn’t do this without me-”
“Get out now.”
“Look, put the gun down, all right?”
“Take your hands off the wheel.”
Bernie kept his head down, clinging to the wheel, white-knuckled. “Just because I didn’t kill that guy? Those other GIs would’ve heard the shot. What if they came after us? They had ten guys up there, there was no time, the panzers were on top of us. I did what I thought was best.”
Von Leinsdorf hesitated. They heard heavy firing behind them. The German advance had crossed the bridge.
“I didn’t ask to be here,” said Bernie. “I didn’t ask for any of this. I don’t even know what we’re doing.”
Bernie glanced over and hardly recognized the man. The shell of civilized personality was gone. What he saw in its place was cold, hard, and sneering.
“I’m sick of your excuses. Get out.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t want blood on my jeep.”
Bernie climbed down and backed away. Von Leinsdorf followed, pistol raised, into the church’s small graveyard. Shells had landed among the old headstones, cratering the field and scattering fragments of worm-eaten coffins and human remains.
“Try to appreciate the stunning degree of your own insignificance. You’re here because a politician made a speech, another one rattled his saber, and in this way small men like you are marched out to fight their wars-”
“It has nothing to do with me-”
Von Leinsdorf shoved him forward. “It doesn’t matter what you think about it, or what you think about anything. This is a business, and the business of war is killing. It’s a job, like baking bread or carpentry-”
“That what they teach you at Dachau?”
“They didn’t have to teach me. You learn on your own or you can’t go on. By now you should have figured it out for yourself. That’s the lesson.”
Bernie backpedaled as Von Leinsdorf advanced straight at him. “What lesson?”
“That it means nothing.” Von Leinsdorf screwed the silencer onto the end of his pistol. “You value your sorry little life so highly. Tell me why, because of what? What have you ever done with it? What makes your life worth saving?”
“I don’t know, I’m just me.”
“How you could possibly know who that is? I grew up in two countries, too, but I never forgot. You’ve been too busy hiding all your life, making yourself invisible, a nobody so they wouldn’t notice you. Because you’re ashamed of what you are.”
Bernie had no answer. He couldn’t even mount an argument, his face burning at the painful truths the man had seen in him.
“None of it matters. That’s what you don’t know. You have no idea how cheap life really is. You have no idea. What you find when you get to the bottom of it. There’s no honor, no dignity, no morality, no spirit. There’s just blood and meat. Life is shit. It’s shit.”
Von Leinsdorf leaned forward, inches from Bernie’s face, looking haunted and skeletal under his handsome features. Bernie went down to his knees on the charnel house ground, beside a scattering of bones.
“This so-called gift you think is worth saving, that’s just a reflex, a bug flinching at a boot. There’s no majesty to it. You can take apart a human being as easily as a clock. I worked with a doctor in our camp at Dachau, Dr. Rasher, you know that name?”
Bernie shook his head.
“He organized our research. Identified what we could learn from these subjects. How they react to heat, cold, pressure and pain, wounds and bleeding. It’s amazing how little fight they put up. They just hand it to you, that’s what we learned: Killing’s the easiest thing in the world.”
He flicked Bernie’s ear with the pistol, and he flinched.
“And the Jews were grateful for it. Because at some level they’re aware of this disease they carry. The Jew is an infection. A genetic virus. Once it enters the bloodstream of a society, or an individual, the only remedy is eradication. That’s our lasting contribution to science. We found the cure.”
Von Leinsdorf knelt down beside Bernie and grabbed his chin.