Three trucks came along the road from the direction of the gray stone building, and Michael was ordered to halt. He stood at the roadside, a rifle barrel against his skull, while the trucks approached. Krolle flagged them down and took Blok and Boots around to the back of the first truck. Michael watched them as Krolle spoke to Blok and the major’s ruddy face beamed with excitement. “The quality is excellent,” Michael heard Krolle say. “In the entire system Falkenhausen’s product stands out as the zenith.” Krolle ordered a soldier to remove one of the pinewood boxes stacked in the rear of the truck. The soldier began to pry its nails open with his knife. “You’ll see I’m continuing the standards of quality you so strongly demanded, Colonel,” Krolle went on, and Michael saw Blok nod and smile, pleased with the ass-kissing.
The box’s last nail was popped open, and Krolle reached in. “You see? I defy any other camp to match this quality.”
Krolle was holding a handful of long, reddish-brown hair. A woman’s hair, Michael realized. It was naturally curly. Krolle grinned at Blok, then reached deeper into the box. This time he came up with thick, pale blond locks. “Ah, isn’t this one lovely!” Krolle asked. “This will make a grand wig, worth its weight in gold. I’m pleased to tell you our production is up thirty-seven percent. Not a trace of lice in the whole lot. The new delousing spray is a godsend.”
“I’ll tell Dr. Hildebrand how well it works,” Blok said. He looked into the box, reached down, and brought out a handful of gleaming coppery-colored hair. “Oh, that’s just magnificent!”
Michael watched the hair fall from Blok’s fingers. It caught the sunlight, and its beauty almost broke Michael’s heart. The hair of a woman prisoner, he thought. Where was her body? He caught a hint of the burned smell, and his stomach lurched.
These men-these monsters-could not be allowed to live. He would be damned by God if he knew these things and did not tear the throats out of the men who stood before him, smiling and talking about wigs and production schedules. The cargo bays of all three trucks were loaded with pine-wood boxes; loaded with hair, shaved off skulls like fleece off slaughtered lambs.
He could not let these men live.
He took a step forward, brushing past the rifle barrel. “Halt!” the soldier shouted. Krolle, Blok, and Boots turned to look at him, hair still drifting down into the box. “Halt!” the soldier commanded, and drove the barrel into Michael’s rib cage.
Such pain was nothing. Michael kept going, his wrists manacled behind him. He stared into the colorless eyes of Major Krolle, and he saw the man flinch and step backward. He felt the fangs aching to slide from his jaws, his facial muscles rippling to give them room.
“Halt, damn you!” The soldier hit him on the back of the head with his rifle barrel, and Michael staggered but kept his balance. He was striding toward the three men, and Boots stepped between him and Colonel Blok. Another soldier, armed with a submachine gun, rushed at Michael and slammed him in the stomach with the gun butt. Michael doubled over and gasped in pain, and the soldier lifted his weapon to strike him across the skull.
The prisoner struck first, bringing his naked knee up into the man’s groin with a force that lifted him off his feet and sent him crashing to the ground. An arm locked around Michael’s throat from behind, squeezing his windpipe. Another man drove a fist into his chest, making his heart stutter. “Hold him! Hold the bastard!” Krolle barked as Michael kept thrashing wildly. Krolle lifted the baton and brought it down on Michael’s shoulder. A second blow dropped him, and a third left him lying in the dust, his lungs rasping as pain throbbed through his blackening shoulder and bruised stomach. He hung on the edge of unconsciousness, fighting against the change. Black hair was about to burst from his pores; he could smell the wildness in his skin, taste its musky power in his mouth. If he changed here, lying in the dust, he would be cut open and examined by German knives. Every part of him-from organs to teeth-would be tagged and immersed in bottles full of formaldehyde to be studied by Nazi doctors. He wanted to live, to kill these men, and so he battled against the change and forced it back down.
Perhaps a few black wolf hairs had emerged from his body-on his chest, the insides of his thighs, and his throat-but they rippled away so fast that no one noticed them, and even if one of the soldiers had seen, he would’ve thought his eyes were playing tricks. Michael lay on his belly, very close to passing out. He heard Blok say, “Baron, I think you’re in for a very rough visit with us.”
Soldiers grasped beneath Michael’s arms, pulled him up, and began to drag him through the dust as he fell into darkness.
6
“Can you hear me?”
Someone speaking, from the far end of a tunnel. Whose voice?
“Baron? Can you hear me?”
Darkness upon darkness. Don’t answer! he thought. If you don’t answer, whoever’s speaking will go away and let you rest!
A light switched on. The light was very bright; Michael could see it through his eyelids. “He’s awake,” he heard the voice say to someone else in the room. “You see how his pulse has increased? Oh, he knows we’re here, all right.” It was Blok’s voice, he realized. A hand grasped his chin and shook his face. “Come on, come on. Open your eyes, Baron.”
He wouldn’t. “Give him a drink of water,” Blok said, and immediately a bucket of cold water was flung into Michael’s face.
He sputtered, his body involuntarily shivering with the chill, and his eyes opened. The light-a spot lamp of brutal wattage, drawn up close to his face-made him squeeze his eyelids shut again.
“Baron?” Blok said. “If you refuse to open your eyes, we’ll cut your eyelids off.”
There was no doubt they would. He obeyed, squinting in the glare.
“Good! Now we can get some business done!” Blok pulled up a chair on casters beside the prisoner and sat down. Michael could make out others in the room: a tall man holding a dripping bucket, another figure-this one thick and fleshy-in a black SS uniform that bulged at the seams. Major Krolle, of course. “Before we begin,” Blok said quietly, “I’ll tell you that you are a man whom hope has abandoned. There is no escape from this room. Beyond these walls, there are more walls.” He leaned forward, into the light, and his silver teeth glittered. “You have no friends here, and no one is coming to save you. We are going to destroy you-either quickly, or slowly: that is the sole choice within your power to make. Do you understand? Nod, please.”
Michael was busy trying to figure out how he was bound. He was lying, stark naked, on a metal table that was shaped like an X, his arms outstretched over his head and his legs apart. Tight leather straps secured his wrists and ankles. The table was tilted up and forward, so that Michael was very close to an upright position. He tested the straps; they wouldn’t give even a quarter of an inch.