Sleeper Agent (4 page)

The young man didn’t even glance at the officer. His gun was still aimed straight at the SS colonel. He extended it slightly before him. It did not waver.

“For God’s sake, man!” It was the interrogator with the steel-rimmed glasses. His voice was a hoarse whisper.

The young man did not seem to hear him. His eyes bored into those of the SS colonel.

Then suddenly he whipped his gun aside—and fired his last remaining bullet into the big round face of the lighted clock on the wall! The explosion was thunderous in the confinement of the room. The clock shattered and went dark.

The four men stood in stunned shock.

The young man walked briskly to the Gestapo officer. Crisply he clicked his heels and handed him the gun. “
Zu befehl,
Herr Sturmbannführer!” he said. He stood at attention. Every fiber in his body ached. Every cell in his brain seethed with strain. But he was elated.

He had won.

The SS colonel turned to the Gestapo officer. “
Der Per-sonalbogen,”
he ordered.

The Gestapo man handed him the file folder from the table. “
Jawohl,
Herr Kommandant!”

The SS colonel took the file. He opened it. He addressed himself to the civilian. There was obvious respect in his voice. “His name is Rudolf Kessler. Obersturmführer. Waffen SS.”

He looked at the young man standing stiffly at attention before him. His eyes held undisguised approval. He turned back to the civilian. “As you have seen, Herr Gruppenführer, he has mastered his cover identity to perfection. His stamina—both mental and physical—is extraordinary” —he glanced toward the dead clock on the wall—"and his ability to function under stress obviously phenomenal!” He looked at the young Waffen SS lieutenant “Obersturmführer Kessler, you may sit down,” he said.

The young officer kept looking straight ahead. “
Danke,
Herr Kommandant,” he said. “I shall prefer to stand.” He’d be damned if he’d give his interrogators the satisfaction of knowing how close to collapse they’d brought him. He’d
stand,
dammit!

The civilian turned his full attention to the young man before them. He began to walk around him slowly, studying him. The commandant read from the dossier: “Rudolf Kessler. Born July seventeen, 1915, in Linz, Austria.”

The young Waffen SS lieutenant listened to the clipped, direct voice of his superior officer. It seemed to come from far away, but the officer himself was right there in front of him. He was mildly amused. He couldn’t understand how it could be. . . . Linz, Austria. Yes. He’d always been proud of being Austrian. Like Adolf Hitler. Like the Führer himself. Austrian.

The commandant went on reading from the dossier: “Father, Wilhelm, served as Feldwebel in the Imperial Austro-Hungarian Army during World War One. Wounded and taken prisoner of war by the Italians at Battle of Piave River, June, 1918. . . .”

. . . He remembered the scars. His father had shown them to him. The only war decorations I’m really proud of, he’d said. The bullet had gone right through the lung. The scar in the chest was small and round. The one on the back much larger and ragged. He remembered putting his finger on it in awe. It felt smooth and glossy—like the wax paper in which his favorite candy came wrapped. His father had told him about the battle. About crossing the river with General von Bojna’s army and beating the Italians back; about the downpour of rain that bogged down the advance and forced the Austrians to retreat, only to find that the flooded river had washed away the bridges they’d thrown across, trapping them; about the Italian counterattack, and the bullet that smashed through him. He’d fallen at the river’s edge. The rushing water kept washing over him, keeping him conscious. The . . . water. His eyes were drawn to the carafe of water on the table. It was still half full. The memory of his swollen bladder suddenly flooded his mind. He had a sharp urge to urinate and a flash of alarm before it left him as abruptly as it had come upon him.

The commandant’s voice was a distant drone to him: “. . . Mother, Erna, died August, 1920. . . .”

. . . Mutti. He hardly remembered her. He’d been not quite five years old when she died. He thought of her as a large round-faced woman, always warm, who would envelop him in soft arms and a moist, pungent odor, which came to mean protection and comfort to him. Comfort Rest. The pains in his tired legs shot up across the small of his back. If only they wouldn’t cramp. Not now. He had to stick it out He
had
to.

The commandant’s voice again broke in on his rambling thoughts: “. . . Rudolf accepted for foster home placement by the Danish organization to aid needy Austrian children after the war, called Wienerbörn—Vienna Children. Arrived in Denmark September, 1920. Placed as foster child in home of Helga and Jens Peter Rasmussen, a childless couple, in Copenhagen. . . .”

. . . He had not understood. He had been frightened. First his father went away, and he remembered his mother crying all the time; and then she was gone, too. He felt abandoned. A lot of strangers had shunted him from place to place and finally put him on a big train that traveled away forever. He had not been able to understand the speech of the people in whose home he found himself, and he thought he would have to be different from everyone else for the rest of his life. But Helga and Jens Peter were warm and understanding people, and he soon looked upon them as a family. He had a natural gift for languages, and he was young enough to talk on and on in this new tongue without being embarrassed about any mistakes he made. Soon he was playing with the Danish children as if he’d always been one of them . . .

“. . . Enrolled in Danish School Vestre Borgerdyd, Copenhagen, 1921. Allowed to remain with Rasmussen family beyond normal time limit, for four years, due to the fact that there was no family in Austria to accept responsibility for him. . . .”

. . . The Rasmussens lived in an apartment house on St. Knudsvej Street on the third floor. There was a little garden in back, and here the boys had built a shack out of old crates. It was their fort. Here they became cowboys and Indians, acting out the stories they were all reading. His biggest hero had been “Leatherstocking.” They even had a totem pole painted in many colors.

He got on well with the other boys; he liked them, except one. His name was Holger, and he kept teasing him and calling him a no-good refugee from a coward country that had been beaten in the war. He called him a stupid foreigner who couldn’t even speak right. But he got his revenge. It still made him feel good when he thought about it. Like now. It had been just after his ninth birthday. His foster parents had given him three kroner to buy anything he liked. He bought two dog pistols. They looked just like real ones, but they could only shoot harmless blanks that made a deafening noise. People used them to scare off dogs that would chase them when they were riding their bicycles. He and his friends had played Mohicans, and they had captured Holger. They tied him to their totem pole and told him they would torture him like real Indians did. They told him they would make him blind and deaf and push him out into the middle of the street to be run over. They blindfolded their enemy and tied his hands. It had made him feel good to see how scared Holger was. He’d fixed his two new dog pistols to the totem pole, one on each side, right next to Holger’s ears, and shot them off. Holger had screamed. They had marched him around the yard and then turned him loose, still blindfolded and still with his hands tied. He thought he was in the middle of the street and about to be run over. He stumbled about sobbing and pleading with them, and it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. He laughed and laughed and laughed. And Holger couldn’t see anything and he couldn’t hear anything—even when they shouted at him. He only cried. It had been great They finally let him go, and he ran home. He never saw him again.

The guns had done a
prima
job. The guns . . . The
guns!
He had a flash of panic. Where was the gun? He’d had a gun. What had he done with it? Where was it?

Then he remembered.

He was aware of the civilian behind him. He had a strong urge to turn around, but he kept his position at attention.

The commandant turned a page in his dossier. “Father released from Italian prisoner of war camp, recuperated from his wound, October, 1924. Returned to Linz, where employed as state forester. Rudolf, aged nine, joined his father two months later. . . .”

. . . He suddenly felt a shiver of cold . . . He had been ten years old. His father was taking care of a
Staatsjagdrevier
near Linz, and the two of them lived in the little
Försthaus
provided. He knew his father was eager to make a good hunter out of him. He had promised to take him rabbit hunting as soon as he could handle a shotgun, and he had promised him his first buck when he turned twelve.

But he could not wait. He wanted to please his father. He wanted to show him he was big enough. Early one morning he had taken his father’s shotgun, the one with the fancy carvings on the barrel. He had gone out into the early morning fields. He was going to show his father. He was going to shoot a rabbit All by himself. The grass way tall and wet with dew, and his shoes and socks got soaked. And then he saw it A faintly seen gray figure sneaking through the tall grass. His heart beat wildly. He brought up the shotgun, fighting the weight of it. And he fired. The creature screamed a hideous shriek, which knifed through him with terror. And it did not stop. It kept on screaming and thrashing about He was petrified. He threw the gun away and ran to the screaming rabbit.

Only it was not a rabbit. It was Mausi. It was his cat—his Mausi! And he loved her. And now she was screaming and writhing in agony. Agony he had inflicted upon her. When she saw him coming toward her, she tried to run away, but her entrails were spilling out, and she got her hind legs caught in them. And she kept screaming. He tried to pick her up and she bit him and scratched him. He did not notice. Only her screaming. He thought he would lose his mind. He realized that only one thing could help her. Death. And it was up to him to give it to her. It was his doing.

He put her on the wet ground. He took a large stone. And he smashed her head—smashed it until the screaming stopped. . . . When his father found him, he was sitting in the grass, bloody with his own and Mausi’s blood, hugging the mutilated cat carcass to him. But he was dry-eyed.

His father had insisted that he go hunting rabbits with him the very next day. He could not be permitted to nurture a fear of guns, a fear of hunting, of killing. Like a rider thrown from his horse, he had to mount again at once. He had not the strength to protest. He had been certain he would never kill anything again. But he got over that. There had been more hunting, more killing, and soon it meant nothing to him at all. He was not afraid of death, of killing. He could cope with that. . . .

The civilian came around in front of him. He went to the table and sat on the edge of it He did not take his eyes from the young SS officer but watched him intently as the commandant continued reading.

“. . . Subject’s education continued at Linz Gymnasium. At age fourteen he joined the Austrian Hitler Youth. Attended the Reichsparteitag in Nuremberg, 1929, and the Reichsjugendtag of the NSDAP at Potsdam, 1932. . . .”

. . . He would never forget it. It had been a stirring adventure he felt certain would always be a high point in his life. He’d written about it in his diary: “Potsdam, 2 October 1932—the Greatest Experience of My Life!”

In his mind’s eye he could see the Gothic script marching along each pale blue line on the pages of the composition book he had used. He would always remember those words, words of pride and of glory, as he confided his feelings to his diary:

For many days thousands upon thousands of German boys and German girls from all the provinces of Greater Germany have streamed into town, this town of the heroic Prussian Warrior King, Frederick the Great It is awe inspiring.

At dusk every road and every path leading to the giant stadium seems alive with youth. The swastika banners fly high in the wind over the gigantic arena which we cover with our multitude. Torch bearers arrive, their firebrands blazing, and brilliant searchlights illuminate the mighty dome of heaven. We are thrilled at the splendid grandeur, almost reverent. . . .

The Führer is to speak to us!

We wait with an impatience that will hardly be denied.

At last He is at the podium.

Our exultation knows no bounds! The roar of our homage fills our world. We are in His presence.
Our Führer.
The one whose name we bear in pride—
Hitler Youth!
The one for whom no sacrifice is too great.

And He speaks. To
us.
The Youth of Greater Germany.

We listen. Impassioned. He speaks as a leader to his faithful followers, as a father to his children. His words shall forever remain emblazoned upon our hearts.

Others may mock and laugh, he says. But
you
are Holy Germany’s future;
you
are her coming people, and up
you
shall rest the fulfillment of what we so solemnly struggle for today. Already as boys and girls you have dedicated yourselves to our New Germany. You remain true. Rewards which no one can give you today shall be yours tomorrow. Germany awaken!

The tumultuous ovation we gave our Führer must be heard throughout Germany. Throughout the world! Our spirits soar with the rocketing fireworks and explode with them in a burst of radiance.

And it is over. . . .

. . . For a brief moment his attention returned to the close, windowless interrogation room and the droning voice of the commandant reading his dossier. But he knew his thoughts would go back to that day long ago. . . .

. . . Slowly they had started back to their tent city from the stadium. It was then he had met Elsa.

She was sixteen. A BDM—Bund Deutscher Mädel. Her thick honey-yellow braids were wound around her head, and her bright blue eyes sparkled with the excitement of the moment. He loved her at once.