Gefreiter Peter Bretz, twenty-two years old and wearing a dirt-stained gray uniform of the Heer, the army of Nazi Germany, swore violently as the rear wheels of the lorry he was driving spun on the icy, snow-covered road. The vehicle slewed sideways, threatening to leave the road altogether. The gears crashed and ground together as he shifted down and fought the steering wheel to regain control.
“I said a lorry was no good to us in muck like this,” he growled. “I told them we needed a half-track. We’ll be lucky if we don’t end up going over a cliff.”
“Stop whining, Corporal,” snapped thirty-year-old Leutnant Konrad Schumacher, who sat in the passenger seat. “Keep your mind on your work, and your mouth shut.”
Schumacher brushed flecks of gray ash off the front of his trim, clean uniform, and immediately lit another cigarette.
“Just where are we going again, Herr Leutnant?” came the voice of Unteroffizier Manfred Hoven, from his place on a narrow jump seat squeezed into a cramped space behind the lorry’s front seat; a space made all the more uncomfortable by the presence of a tarpaulin-covered wooden crate wedged in next to where Hoven sat perched, his knees almost under his chin. He was barely twenty, and already a sergeant, but his uniform was as creased and grimy as Bretz’s. With the Thousand-Year Reich stumbling towards its chaotic and conflagrant death, the Wehrmacht barely had the resources to feed its men, let alone provide new uniforms for soldiers who could not afford to buy their own.
“Althaussee,” said Schumacher, adding, as he exhaled a cloud of slate-blue smoke into the lorry’s cab, “and I can tell you something else as well. These American cigarettes are a hell of a lot better than what we get from our commissariat, when we get any at all, that is. Made with dried horse manure, those, if you ask me. I have an uncle on Himmler’s staff, and he sends me the American ones. They’re the only decent thing about the goddamn allied invasion. Crazy name for them, though, Lucky Strike. What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“I’ve never heard of Althaussee,” grumbled Bretz, nursing the lorry around a sharp bend in the icy road which brought them to the side of a frozen lake, barely visible through the snow and fading light of late afternoon.
“All right,” said Schumacher, consulting his map, “we’re where we should be. The village is just ahead, but about halfway up that mountain in front of us.”
“You mean, we’re going up?” Bretz was incredulous. “In this snow, we’re going higher?”
“Just keep going,” said Schumacher, before lighting another cigarette.
The three soldiers had driven from northern Germany, escaping ahead of the advancing allied armies with barely a day to spare. Before leaving, however, Schumacher had ordered the lorry driven to a warehouse well outside Berlin used for storage by the Reich Museum where the crate now sitting next to Hoven was loaded into the cab.
“What’s that?” asked Hoven. “I don’t have much room now.”
“You’ll find out in due course,” Schumacher grunted, “and in the meantime, get in and shut up.”
Ordered by a senior member of Reichsmarschall, Hermann Goering’s personal staff, to carry out their orders or face a firing squad, they drove with all speed to Nuremburg, the spiritual heart of National Socialism and the site of Adolph Hitler’s most grandiose and extravagant party rallies, where they reported to an address Leutnant Schumacher had been told to memorize before they left Berlin. The address proved to be that of an ordinary-looking, if somewhat seedy, old beer hall on the southern outskirts of the city, but what they found there was anything but ordinary. The street was filled to capacity with lorries of every size, and there were heavily armed soldiers everywhere. After being billeted in the very draughty attic of a nearby house, Bretz and Hoven waited while Schumacher reported for orders.
“It’s chaos in there,” he told them when he returned six hours later. “There’s paperwork everywhere, and a lot of civilians getting in everybody’s way. There’s an SS Major General in overall command, I think. This is top priority. Anyway, I’ve got a list of the stuff we’re supposed to take, and once it’s loaded, we’ll be on our way.”
“It’ll be dark in less than an hour,” Bretz protested.
“That’s the idea,” Schumacher said, pulling out a pack of cigarettes.
It was past midnight and bitterly cold when they finally left Nuremburg. Under Leutnant Schumacher’s careful supervision, the lorry had been loaded with crates taken up from the vast network of tunnels beneath the ancient city. Many dating from medieval times, these abandoned watercourses, drains, and beer cellars were now being used for very different purposes as the allied air forces methodically and remorselessly pounded Nuremburg into shapeless heaps of rubble. While some underground caverns were serving as air raid shelters for a few lucky citizens, the rest were declared off-limits, guarded, and sealed behind bullet-proof doors installed well before the war began. For many years, those restricted, steel-reinforced tunnels had been used by high-ranking Nazis and the Berlin Reichsmuseum as safe storage depots for artworks, antiquities, and plundered treasure, but now, with Germany sinking to her knees, emptying them and saving their contents had become imperative.
After Nuremburg they kept off the main roads as much as possible and travelled only at night with masked headlights. They hid wherever they could in the countryside during daylight hours catching what sleep they could, until they got beyond the reach of American and British air patrols whose vengeful, swooping fighters attacked and harried anything that moved. Exhausted, they at last gained the region of southeastern Austria known as the Salzkammergut, a rich landscape of rugged mountains, shimmering crystal lakes, and small, centuries-old farming villages.
It was not, however, for what could be seen that the Nazi leadership valued the Salzkammergut, but for what could not. For many hundreds of years, the region had been a treasure-store of salt — vast deposits of it — left by the evaporation of primeval oceans untold eons ago. These thick salt beds were ultimately buried by the ceaseless action of erosion and deposition, only to be thrust upwards when the mountains of the Salzkammergut were born amid colossal tectonic convulsions as the earth’s crust fashioned itself anew.
An indispensable commodity for the preservation of food, salt mined from deep within the bowels of those mountains became a lucrative economic mainstay of the Hapsburg Empire throughout the many centuries of its hegemony in Europe. But since the 1930s the mines, by then long-disused, had become equally essential to Nazi Germany; not for what could be taken out of them this time, but for what could be put in.
“When we get to Altaussee, or whatever it’s called,” Bretz said, peering intently into the rapidly gathering darkness as he guided the lorry ever upwards, “what are we supposed to do there?”
“What do you think we’re supposed to do?” asked Hoven, sarcastically. “We unload the stuff in the back, then get the hell out of here. Correct, Herr Leutnant? Why else have we dragged it all the way from Germany to the arse-end of Austria?”
Ignoring their comments Schumacher blew out another billowing pall of smoke from his Lucky Strike and said, “There’s the village up ahead, I think. When we get there, look for a large house flying the German flag.”
A few minutes later, Bretz halted the lorry outside an edifice set against the side of a hill with a flight of wooden steps leading up to the front entrance. Built in the Austrian style, the house was square with a steeply pitched roof, its brown wood siding accentuated by white window trim. Picking his way up the snow-covered steps, Schumacher pounded on the door with his fist. As the other two soldiers watched from the lorry, the door was opened by a small man wearing a dark suit and waistcoat. Taking a long, ornately carved Tyrolean pipe from his mouth, he exchanged a few words with Schumacher, nodded, and closed the door. As Schumacher climbed back into the lorry, the man reappeared wearing a long overcoat and fur hat, still with his pipe clenched in his teeth. Descending the steps, he made his way along a narrow pathway dug out of the deep snow to a black Daimler parked under a wooden shelter at the side of the road.
“He won’t get far in that,” snorted Hoven, and then shut his mouth on a curt order from Schumacher.
“Follow him,” said Schumacher, pointing.
“I will if I can see him, Herr Leutnant,” muttered Bretz.
Schumacher barked, “Just do it, Corporal. That’s an order.”
“Jawohl, Herr Leutnant,” Bretz answered crisply, the word order having had the desired effect.
For twelve tense minutes Bretz followed the black car still further up the mountain through the steadily increasing wind-driven snowfall, the lorry’s wheels frequently spinning and sliding. All too aware of the danger of going off the road and down into God-knew-what below them, even Schumacher was silent. He sat next to Bretz, lighting each new cigarette with the butt of the old one, and holding his peace. The only words spoken came quietly from Hoven who held onto the back of Schumacher’s seat with a white-knuckled grip as Bretz wrestled the steering wheel to control a sickening slide which brought them perilously close to the abyss on their right-hand side.
“Dear Jesus.” It was a reverential request for salvation, not blasphemy.
Bretz breathed an audible sigh of relief when at last the black car, which appeared to have had no difficulty, drew up in front of a building solidly constructed of thick concrete with a flat roof, deeply domed with snow. The wall facing them was windowless, the only opening being a long horizontal machine-gun slit which gave the appearance of a malevolent grin. A gate in the form of a single wooden pole painted alternately red and white barred further progress, but it swung upwards to allow them through; the guard in his heavy overcoat presumably recognizing the driver of the lead vehicle.
The road wound up a gentle hill for some fifty meters more, and the two vehicles then drew up at another concrete blockhouse similar to the first but much larger, guarded by a squad of heavily armed soldiers of the Heer. Illuminated by the yellow glare of lights mounted atop tall concrete columns, four men stood before what appeared to be a heavily plated steel door set directly into the rock face which rose into the snow-filled darkness above. They came smartly to attention as soon as the driver of the car emerged and beckoned to the lorry.
“All right, you two,” snapped Schumacher, “listen carefully. The crate we brought from Berlin in the back here, the one labelled Antiquitäten, stays right where it is. It’s not to be unloaded with the other stuff from the back. Is that absolutely clear? Just leave it alone. Don’t talk about it to anyone, don’t mention it at all. I have special orders for it, and that’s all you need to know.”
“What’s —” Bretz began, as he opened the door of the cab, but Schumacher turned on him, angry-faced.
“Shut up, and do as you’re ordered, unless you want a boot up your backside.”
Bretz paused a moment, shrugged, and got down as Schumacher did the same. Then Hoven, with a good deal of cursing, wriggled his way into the front seat before joining the other two outside in the snow.
“It’s damn cramped in there.”
“Well, here’s your chance to work off the stiffness, Sergeant,” said Schumacher, clapping Hoven on the shoulder with mock joviality.
Bretz flung aside the heavy canvas flaps at the rear of the lorry, and the lights revealed the interior to be filled to the roof with wooden crates of all sizes, none of them more than half a meter deep.
The small man with the curly pipe hurried up. He was about fifty, with a narrow, sharp face and thinning, gray hair.
“Come along now,” he said, in an officious tone of voice. “We must have these crates inside as soon as possible. This cold and damp is dangerous for the paintings. I greatly wish better care could be taken when transporting them, but I suppose it’s the best we can do at the moment.”
“Paintings?” echoed Bretz, eyebrows raised. “We did all this for a load of paintings?”
“Of course, paintings,” said the small man with the weasel face, impatiently pulling the pipe from his mouth. “What did you think they were, you imbecile, grand pianos?”
Sticking the pipe back into his mouth, he hurried away, shouting to the guards to unlock the door, and as he went, Schumacher said, “His name is Herr Karl Zieber. He used to be a restorer of old paintings. He was more-or-less a nobody until he joined the Party. Then, in nineteen-forty-three, the Führer ordered this salt mine converted into a storage depot for works of art Germany wanted to save for future display. The Führer placed Zieber in charge of everything, and now he thinks he runs the Reich…pompous little clown.”
“And who decides what paintings to keep?” asked Bretz, handing down a large crate to Hoven and one of the soldiers who had come to help.
“I couldn’t tell you,” said Schumacher, “but somebody does, somewhere. Maybe Zieber himself, who knows? I was in Paris in the summer of forty-two when they burned a whole pile of paintings someone decided not to keep.”
“What were they?” grunted Hoven, passing a heavy crate to another soldier.
“God knows,” Schumacher snorted. “Idiotic stuff. You couldn’t tell what the hell they were supposed to be. People with square faces, and everything in crazy colors.”
“No wonder no one wanted them,” said Bretz from the depths of the lorry.
“Just keep moving,” said Schumacher, his communicative mood evidently evaporating. “They’ve unlocked the door and Herr Zieber wants this stuff inside. He’s got Party connections at the highest level and upsetting him could get us all a free ticket to the Russian front, so get going.”
With the aid of more soldiers, the wooden crates were carried into the mine and then sent down a lift into the heart of the mountain which, according to Zieber, was called the Teinberg. When the lift doors opened, the men found themselves in an enormous cavern carved out of the native salt. Electric lights with broad metal shades were strung down the middle of the roof, illuminating endless stacks of crates, boxes, and trunks of all sizes. It was a vast underground warehouse, its floor, roof, and walls of ancient salt from an immemorial sea. Here and there large pillars of salt, irreverently referred to as Lot’s wives, had been left by the miners as supports for the roof.
“I thought Lot had only one wife,” said Bretz, chuckling, as they began to unload the lift, but a sharp rebuke from Schumacher stifled any response.
“Don’t upset Herr Zieber,” he hissed. He wanted to get this job done as soon as he could and get away from this place with the crate left hidden in the lorry. He had no interest in anything else.
“Good God,” said Hoven, looking around him for a brief moment. “There must be hundreds of things down here.”
“Thousands, actually,” said Zieber, with expansive pride. “Tens of thousands. This place is huge, and more than seven hundred years old. I explored it myself several years ago, before the war began, when it was nothing more than a derelict old mine. Do you know there’s a painting down here that’s been in the miners’ chapel for three hundred years, and it looks as if it was finished only yesterday? Think of that. I told the Führer about it immediately, and he was very happy. He congratulated me and shook my hand. Yes, the Führer actually shook my hand. We’ve been storing art treasures here ever since then.” Zieber paused, and then, raising his eyes as though to heaven, he said, “I have the Führer’s complete trust.”
“Why store paintings in a place like this?” Bretz asked, handing one of the smaller crates off to Hoven.
“Safe from air raids, of course,” Hoven said.
“That’s not the reason at all,” said Zieber, impatiently. “It’s because of the salt.”
Bretz and Hoven looked at him blankly, while Schumacher, seemingly uninterested, put a cigarette between his lips and fished a box of matches out of his pocket.
“Stop!” shouted Zieber. “Don’t you dare light that cigarette.”
“Why not?” asked Schumacher, clearly irritated at receiving so peremptory an order from a civilian, even an important one.
“Do you want to start a fire?” snapped Zieber. “Are you completely ignorant? Put that cigarette away immediately. These masterpieces are beyond price. Smoking is strictly forbidden down here. Didn’t you go to school? Can’t you read the signs?”
Schumacher had not even noticed the signs, and he was feeling the need for nicotine. Not only did he resent Zieber’s attitude and tone, he was angry at being so openly criticized and insulted in front of his two subordinates. Grudgingly, he remembered his own advice about not upsetting Herr Zieber, and abandoned his cigarette. He snapped an order to Bretz and Hoven to hurry up. He was now even more impatient to see the last of this place and the bumptious Herr Zieber.
Stay calm, he told himself. Just stay calm. You’re going to be a lot richer than that little rat when all this is over. What’s one lousy cigarette compared to that?
“Herr Zieber,” said Hoven, seeing the fury in Schumacher’s eyes, “what were you about to say about the salt?”
Zieber turned to him. “What?”
“We were asking why the paintings are stored here.”
“Ah, yes,” said Zieber, his weasel-like features brightening a little. “The conditions we have here are unique, ideal for the preservation of paintings, because the air is absolutely dry. Totally desiccated. All the moisture, every scrap, has been absorbed by the salt. There is no mold, no mildew. Nothing. No rats, no mice, no ants, no worms. I told the Führer about it, and he shook my hand. Did I tell you that?”
“That was a great honor,” said Hoven, in a sarcastic tone Zieber missed entirely.
“It was indeed,” said Zieber, swelling with pride once again.
“What will happen to them all?” Bretz asked, carrying one of the last crates out of the lift and setting it down where Zieber indicated.
“Be careful,” he snapped. “That’s an Amstel.”
“A what?”
“Not a what, you troglodyte,” said Zieber, with exaggerated patience, “a who. Can’t you read the label? Jan van Amstel was an early sixteenth century Flemish Master. A leading figure of the renaissance in northern Europe. Didn’t they teach you anything in school? That painting is one of Amstel’s finest, and was a gift to Germany from a prominent family in Warsaw.”
“You were about to tell us what will happen to the paintings, Herr Zieber,” Hoven intervened, saving Bretz from further castigation for his apparently limitless ignorance of fine art.
“Yes,” said Zieber, in the tone of voice a child might use when about to reveal a secret. “Adolph Hitler intends to show the world the Third Reich is a nation of high culture, a place where great art is valued and appreciated by all citizens.”
“How is that to be done?” asked Bretz, as he and three other soldiers carefully set down the last crate, a large, heavy wooden box labelled simply Miscellaneous Seventeenth Century Italy, Netherlands.
“What number’s that one?” asked Zieber.
“Forty-three.”
Zieber consulted his list, checked off the number, then continued his story.
“Have you ever heard of something called the Special Operation Linz?”
Bretz and Hoven shook their heads.
“Well,” said Zieber, in his I’ve-got-a-secret voice, “it’s a stupendous idea. There’s to be a great museum and art gallery built in the city of Linz, the Führer’s birthplace. There will also be opera houses, theatres, and even a huge cinema. It has been planned since long before the war, and Albert Speer, the Reich’s greatest architect, is working closely with the Führer to design its buildings and grounds. It will be grand and glorious, the finest center of its kind in the world, containing the greatest art treasures known to man. What we are doing here is carrying forward the special operation by collecting items which, after proper adjudication, may be selected for display. People from throughout Greater Germany and far beyond, will come and marvel at its magnificence. When they see it, they will come to understand the grandeur of the Fatherland.”
“But we already have many museums and opera houses,” said Hoven, straightening his back after moving a small crate to where Zieber pointed with his pencil.
“But none like these will be,” said Zieber, after checking his list again. “You see, Germany is far more than a mere country, Germany is a civilization, and this museum complex will show that to the world. It is to open in nineteen-fifty, and,” he added, in a smugly supercilious tone, “I am to be its Director-General, reporting to no one but the Führer.”
“Nineteen-fifty?” Hoven echoed.
“Yes,” Zieber snapped. “Nineteen-fifty, when we have crushed the Slavs, the Zionists, the Allies, and everyone else who’s trying to destroy the Third Reich.”
The steel lift continued its up and down activity and was unloaded under Zieber’s vigilant eye. Each case, box, and crate, was checked off on his list until Bretz came down with a final load.
“That’s all of it, Herr Zieber. The shipment is unloaded.”
Zieber looked at his list, frowning, and muttering numbers under his breath.
“No,” he said, at length, in a decisive voice. “There’s one more. Number eighty-six. It hasn’t been brought down. It’s listed as Antiquities. The paintings all came from the Nuremburg storage depot, but number eighty-six is listed as coming directly from the Reich Museum. Do you men know anything about that?”
Schumacher gazed impassively as Hoven and Bretz shook their heads.
“This is everything, Herr Zieber,” Bretz repeated, lamely. It was not convincing.
My God, thought Schumacher, in a sudden panic, I’ve got to take over. I can’t rely on those two idiots.
He said to Zieber, “Let me go up and have a look.” His unusual animation and apparently cooperative manner made Zieber stare in surprise. Since being ordered not to smoke, the lieutenant had stood in morose silence.
Without waiting for an answer, he entered the lift, and pulled the metal gate shut. He shot Bretz and Hoven a narrow, meaningful glance as the lift began to move. Zieber looked up from his list in time to see Schumacher’s shiny leather boots disappearing upwards out of sight.
As they waited, the only sound came from Zieber, who read and re-read his list, muttering, “Yes, there’s definitely one missing. Definitely.”
The lift at last returned Schumacher, boots first this time, to the underground storage gallery. He pulled back the folding gate and emerged, shaking his head, and looking the very image of mystification.
“I’m very sorry, Herr Zieber, but Gefreiter Bretz is quite correct. The lorry is empty. Everything we brought has been unloaded. There must be some sort of clerical error. We were never given anything from the Reich Museum.”
He did not choose to add that he had arrived at ground level just in time to distract a young private about to investigate the lorry’s cab.
“Just a final check, Herr Leutnant,” the man had said, coming smartly to attention and saluting.
“Never mind, Gemeiner,” snapped Schumacher, “Herr Zieber has ordered me to do that, so I’ll take responsibility. Get back to your post.”
“Yes, Herr Leutnant.” The soldier, looking a trifle crestfallen, saluted again, and turned away, while Schumacher sighed quietly in vast relief. He didn’t give a damn about the paintings, but he wanted what was in that last crate, and that inquisitive private could have wrecked the entire plan.
He went through the motions of examining the lorry, looking into the cab, then into the back, before smoking a hurried cigarette to settle his nerves and re-entering the mine.
“I don’t understand it,” said Zieber, making a peevish, clicking noise with his tongue. “This has never happened before. I’m responsible for all the items listed. If something is missing, I must be able to explain it to Headquarters. What will they think of me now? There were several ancient artifacts in it, ceramics as well, according to the inventory. They are very valuable. It’s my duty to report that it didn’t arrive. There will have to be an investigation.”
I need to deflect this, thought Schumacher. I signed for that crate in Berlin, and the receipt was filed. The war’s going to be over very soon, but I don’t want this old goat making trouble for me before it does.
“Mein Herr,” said Schumacher, in a tone of earnest reassurance, “this is not your fault at all. The situation in the north is utterly chaotic. None of us here doubts Germany will ultimately triumph, but at this precise moment we’re fighting for our very lives. Berlin and Nuremburg are both nothing more than piles of bricks. I’m afraid a single crate of artworks is a small matter.”
“Not to me, Herr Leutnant,” said Zieber, stone-faced, as he stood, list and pencil in hand, amongst the piles of crates and boxes. “Not to me. There is no excuse for carelessness, no matter the circumstances. Laxity can never be tolerated.”
“Leutnant Schumacher is quite right, Herr Zieber,” said Hoven, in an attempt to mollify the agitated Director. “The fighting is monumental. Mistakes are regrettable, but at this time, understandable.”
Good for you, thought Schumacher. Maybe you’re not such an idiot after all.
“Ach!” was Zieber’s only retort.
“I’ve an idea,” said Schumacher, apparently eager to help. “You said the crate was labelled Antiquities, whereas everything in our consignment was labelled Paintings. Nothing was more than a few centuries old, I believe. I have a suspicion the missing box was actually part of a completely different shipment, bound for some other storage depot. Somewhere they’re keeping much older items. I’d be willing to bet it was never meant to be here at all. Some clerk in Berlin or Nuremburg or God-knows-where just didn’t know the difference and probably didn’t care.”
Zieber considered this possibility, a frown sharpening his features even further, clearly still most unhappy. Eventually, however, he sighed loudly, reluctantly drew a line through number eighty-six, and wrote Missing beside it.
He said, “I daresay you’re right, Herr Leutnant. Somebody probably did just make a stupid mistake in all this temporary upheaval. It’s unacceptable, all the same, and I don’t like it.”
“Of course, it is,” said Schumacher, firmly. “It’s reprehensible.”
After riding the lift to the surface and exchanging formal thanks and farewells with Zieber, Schumacher, Bretz, and Hoven emerged from the mine tunnel to find the air still and deathly cold. The sky was clear, save for some ragged clouds hanging close to the mountain-tops away to the south. The snow-mantled world around them was rendered a pale silver-blue by a full moon, and the surrounding peaks of the Salzkammergut rose into the deep purple of the night sky like shining, silent sentinels.
“Thank God it’s stopped snowing,” said Bretz, getting behind the lorry’s wheel. “I wasn’t looking forward to going back down that hill in the snow.”
Schumacher reflected that for his purposes, falling snow was preferable, but not actually vital. It will work either way, he said to himself as he climbed in beside Bretz.
“Pardon me, Herr Leutnant,” said Hoven, contorting himself with a grunt into his cramped place behind the front seat, “but what are we supposed to do with that crate you hid?”
“Do we take it somewhere else?” asked Bretz, steering the lorry onto the snow-covered, narrow road down the mountainside towards the village, “or are you keeping it, like the others we stored in the barracks for you?”
“I’ll let you know,” answered Schumacher, his mouth a thin line. “Damn, no more cigarettes.” He patted his pockets and snorted in disgust.
Without taking his eyes off the road, Bretz rummaged in a pocket of his crumpled uniform and tossed Schumacher a somewhat squashed half-empty pack.
“Here, these are French. See if you like them, Herr Leutnant.”
“I had a French whore in Paris once,” said Schumacher, leering, “I liked her.”
The lorry, restricted to its lowest gears, ground slowly downwards, Bretz ignoring Schumacher’s periodic demands he speed up.
“I’m doing my best, Herr Leutnant,” he muttered at one point as he negotiated a sharp bend.
“All right, all right,” snapped Schumacher. “Just get on with it.”
As he smoked cigarette after cigarette, Schumacher scanned the road ahead, grateful for the moonlight after all. They had passed a particular place on their way up; a perfect place for his purpose.
Where the hell is it? Ah…there. Good.
“See that spot up ahead, Gefreiter? There’s room to pull off the road. Stop there.”
“Sir?”
“You heard me. I said pull over.”
Bretz, frowning, steered the lorry off the road, pumping the brakes to avoid a skid, and nursed it to a stop.
“All right,” said Schumacher, “leave the engine running and get out. You, too, Hoven.”
As the two bewildered soldiers stood in the snow, Schumacher came around the front of the lorry, drawing his Luger. Without a word, he levelled the weapon at Bretz and fired, the bullet taking him squarely in the chest and killing him instantly. With an incredulous shout of Jesus Christ, Hoven dived for cover behind the lorry, slipping and stumbling as he went. His curse was cut short as Schumacher’s second shot found its mark and he fell, striking his head on the edge of the lorry’s rear bumper.
Schumacher, satisfying himself the two men were dead, dragged them to the opposite side of the road and rolled them into a gully well out of sight of any passing vehicle.
Okay, he thought, looking around. With any luck it’ll snow again soon, and they won’t be found until spring, if then, and no one will give a damn by that time anyway. Germany will be done for, kaput, but not Konrad Schumacher, oh no. He’s looking after himself, by God. Anyone who doesn’t take advantage of this war is a fool, and I’m no fool.
* * *
Sergeant Hoven opened his eyes and looked cautiously around in the moonlight before slowly sitting up. He was alone, he was freezing cold, and his head hurt like hell. He found himself in a snow-filled gully below the level of the road, and the weight he felt on his legs was the dead body of Corporal Bretz, whose eyes stared up at the night sky, as cold and sightless as pieces of glass. Hoven tried to push the corpse off, but as soon as he moved his left arm, a paralyzing pain ran down from his shoulder to his wrist like a river of liquid fire, and he yelled aloud at the unexpected shock. Gingerly, he felt his shoulder and found his uniform sticky with blood, much of it beginning to congeal and freeze. Gritting his teeth, he explored the wound and concluded there were no bones broken. Using only his right arm for leverage, he wriggled out from under Bretz’s body and staggered to his feet. He had no idea how long he had been unconscious, and his brain felt as thick as porridge as he tried to understand why he was there and how he had come to be wounded. He shook his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts, but that exercise only intensified the thunderous pain. He squeezed his eyes shut, but it made no difference. He had no choice but to stand still for a minute or two until the throbbing eased a trifle. He dug back into his reeling memory as best he could.
Were we attacked? What the hell happened? We were in the lorry, and the Leutnant told Bretz to pull over. We got out…and then…No, we weren’t attacked. It was Schumacher! He shot us both. Bretz is dead, and he must have thought I was, too.
“I’ll kill that bastard,” he muttered aloud. “I’ll kill him, by Christ, I will.”
The snow was deep, and it made the climb out of the gully difficult. Hoven slipped and stumbled several times, pain racking his left arm and shoulder. In spite of the bitter cold, he was sweating profusely, and the pounding in his head made him feel sick. The white world swam before his eyes as he fought his way up the slope, gritting his teeth against pain and exhaustion. Nearing the top at last, his breath rasping in his throat, he felt he was about to lose consciousness. His legs seemed unable to support him a moment longer.
No. Not far now. You can do it. If you don’t make it to the road, you’ll die out here, and that’s just what Schumacher wanted. Keep moving.
And then he was there, staggering onto the side of the road, gasping from weakness and utter exhaustion. The moonlit snow offered some pale light, but he could see no one anywhere. Then, as he stood swaying and fighting to catch his breath, he became dimly aware of a sound which grew slowly louder. He saw two narrow shafts of light appear around the bend in the road to his right. A car. Someone was coming.
Some remote part of Hoven’s swirling brain, numbed though it was by pain and cold, told him to get into the road and wave the vehicle down. Staggering forward, he put his foot squarely on a patch of ice and fell onto his left side, his full weight landing on his wounded shoulder. With a yell of agony, he passed out.