Children of Wrath (38 page)

Willi was scanning for some way out.

Von Hessler stopped laughing. “Don’t think because I’ve only one eye that my vision’s poor, Inspektor. I see that look on your face. I can tell exactly what you’re thinking. You’re wondering how such an intelligent, cultured man as myself could be so diabolical as to use children in scientific experiments. Now, there’s an example of a conditioned response for you!”

He burst into more laughter, evidently his own best audience.

Ilse arrived with a shiny red apple and an exceedingly long, sharp knife, which glistened as she slashed it a few times in the air, indicating what fun she was going to have. Then she took up guard with Willi’s Luger, sitting on a desk, aiming it at him.

“I notice you’re perspiring, Inspektor,” von Hessler said as he took the knife and began peeling the apple. “Another unconditioned response quite natural for someone in your predicament. Unless of course there’s an impairment of some kind. I myself, for example.” He was denuding the fruit in one long strip, around and around and around. “Happen to be a person who doesn’t sweat. Not at least from fear. Oh, I did. But the shell that took my eye at Verdun, you see, damaged the part of my brain known as the frontal cortex, which is why that organ’s so central now to my work. I don’t sweat from fear. And”—he finished peeling in a single, unbroken coil—“I don’t feel remorse.” He smiled genially, shrugging as if puzzled. “Never.”

He placed the apple on a plate.

“It doesn’t mean I’m some kind of monster.” He wiped his fingers with a napkin. “Or deranged. Or psychotic, as your cousin might name it. On the contrary. Because I’m unfettered by constraints of so-called compassion and bourgeois ideals of right and wrong, I’m able to explore where others would never dare, to lift a torch so to speak for future generations. They’ll honor me someday, you’ll see. Or perhaps you won’t.”

Another barrage of laughter.

“You’re a national hero, Doktor,” Ilse said, caressing Willi’s Luger, then pretending to blow out Willi’s brains. “A great servant of the German
Volk
.”

“I employ children for very rational reasons.” Von Hessler took the knife again. “The human cortex, you see, is completely developed by age seven, its cellular structures remaining malleable for another seven years or so, then growing fixed.” Stabbing the apple, he carved out the core with a swift, hard twist. “The brains I chose are pefectly ripe for study.” He deftly divvied the rest into slices. “Boys are preferable because they’re hardier. Now don’t look at me like I’m Attila the Hun.” He speared a wedge and brought it to his mouth. “These children suffer nothing with me. Do they, Ilse?” His good eye fluttered as he chewed.

“They have it better than on the outside.” She crinkled her nose, sniffing the gun barrel. “Dying to get in.”

Von Hessler grinned at her patronizingly.

“My work, Inspektor”—he spit a remnant of pit on the plate—“requires extreme tranquillity. Distress is contrary to my needs. With fourteen billion neurons all subject to manifold influences, any irregularity can throw things off. Those boys feel no discomfort whatsoever. See for yourself.” He picked over which apple slice to have next. “Electrodes can be placed on any part of the brain without the slightest pain.”

Willi glanced at the nearest child. The face, it was true, showed no signs of pain, but also little of life, other than breathing and twitching. No apparent comprehension, either, of the insoluble predicament it was in—the top of its head no more.

“And the worlds unveiled beneath those skullcaps, Inspektor. Is there any more mysterious realm on earth?”

Ilse, unable to contain her excitement apparently, snatched the knife from von Hessler’s plate and approached Willi with it.

“All that white and gray matter,” she howled, circling him territorially. “And all the sensuous folds and clefts with all those … how do you call them again, Doktor?”

“Lobes.” Von Hessler munched his apple, amused, keeping his gun aimed.

“Oh, yeah, right.” Ilse touched the blade to Willi’s scalp, sending a tingle to his heart. “There’s a frontal lobe.” She touched a different part of his head, a little harder this time. “And a back lobe. And another that gets messages from the eyes, right, Doc?”

The cold, sharp knife pressed against Willi’s skin as if burning to penetrate.

“Very good, Ilse.”

“He’s training me to be a neurosurgeon.” She leaned right up to Willi’s face, practically touching noses. “But we can never find enough practice material.”

Reflected in her gray eyes, Willi saw not only the infamous child abductor spreading terror across Berlin, but a tortured child herself. All the Köhler siblings—Magda, blood-drenched, a modern Medea, devouring children to protect them; Axel, a vengeful Minotaur, herding them to their deaths in an insane stampede of hatred.

“I think the Inspektor’s had enough anatomy lessons for now.” Von Hessler motioned Ilse to give back the knife. “He’s far more interested in my work. An educated man can appreciate the world-shattering boldness of it. He knows that since time immemorial man’s ached to understand the relationship between body and mind. I don’t claim to have discovered a simple formula. I’m not crazy, Inspektor. But with one eye I have seen where none dared previously look. Deep in the coils of the living brain … the origins of thought itself. The pathways of learning. The basis of all conditioned responses. You don’t believe me? Ilse.”

She leaped, scenting meat.

“A demonstration.”

At some kind of control panel, she rolled up her sleeves and began hitting switches, tilting her head as if she were hearing faraway music.

“Enfolded in the cortex”—von Hessler projected to some imaginary audience of peers—“I have unearthed the very front line of human behavior, a whole chain of command and control centers responsible for motor activity. Infiltrating them with electric pulses, I am now able to create actions normally undertaken only voluntarily. For example, Ilse—Box Two. M-one.”

Licking her lips, Ilse flicked switches until the boys in the nearest glass cage began moving their mouths.

“Mastication!” she yelped.

Triumph flared across the doctor’s face.

The more the boys appeared to enjoy a large, delicious meal, the funnier Ilse found it. She bayed insanely, cruelly, the way her father must have when he brutalized her. Could a child so tortured ever have turned out differently? Willi feared all the doctors on earth could never put her back together again.

“Forget Freud,” von Hessler pronounced to the invisible world press gathered before him. “I have succeeded in discovering not only the origin of neurosis—”

Willi’s eyes darted desperately around.

“—but actually creating
and
removing it again.”

Willi couldn’t just stand here. A band of electrical wires ran across the floor. To where?

“Brilliant, von Hessler!” Willi tried chucking the words like a diversionary grenade, letting real anger explode. “You’ve surpassed even the great Pavlov himself. The world should kiss your ass. But have you ever healed even one of these kids?”

“Healed?” Von Hessler burst out laughing.

Willi’s eye quickly followed the wires to a large fuse box behind Ilse’s desk.

“Don’t be petty, Kraus. What do you think, I glue their skulls back on? Instead of human waste, these boys are ennobled by me to make the supreme sacrifice. Someday there’ll be monuments to them. And their deaths, believe me, are more humane than their lives. Your pathologist no doubt deduced it was carbon monoxide that killed them, but you never figured out how, did you? All my subjects are alive when I finish with them. Until you messed things up, we simply shuttled them by van over to Magda’s workshop on Bone Alley, the long way. Ran a hose from the exhaust pipe into the rear, made sure it was sealed airtight. By the time they arrived … quick, clean, inexpensive. Axel’s idea. It was a beautiful relationship we had, those Köhlers and I, until—”

Willi dove, landing on his shoulder and rolling hard as von Hessler fired. Bullets hit left and right, then directly into the bank of wires. A surge of sparks flew across the floor, leaping to the fuse box, exploding it into smoke and flame.

Ilse let out a primitive shriek. She jumped from her chair. Willi tackled her and grabbed his gun back. Letting her go, he flung himself behind a desk and began firing at von Hessler, who’d taken cover too and returned the attack shot for shot. Ilse lay frozen, head lifted, eyes fixated on the curtain of fire spreading across the wall.

“Get the extinguisher, you syphilitic whore,” von Hessler ordered her.

She seemed unable to hear, her pockmarked face stiff as a death mask. As the flames grew brighter, drawing across the doorway, she let loose a shriek of such primordial terror Willi felt it in his gut. Then she hurtled in a mad dash to save herself, and he could see her red hair flying, her wiry figure writhing in flame as she tumbled for the staircase.

“Bitch. Bitch!” Von Hessler fired after her.

The flames were rapidly intensifying, striking fear in Willi now too. An alarming stench of burning rubber stung his nose. Looking for a way out, he noticed von Hessler coughing convulsively, then smashing out a nearby window with a chair. Jumping onto the ledge and turning with his pistol aimed, he cursed wildly, “Damn you, Kraus!” then firing twice before taking a flying leap. A bullet sailed just centimeters from Willi’s ear as von Hessler vanished out the window into a whirlwind of smoke.

Willi ran to where he’d leaped, coughing too, thrusting his head out, looking down. A crowd had gathered on the sidewalk, but there was no fallen body. Everyone was staring up—at him. The chain he’d seen earlier whipping in the wind ran directly into the open window below, von Hessler’s obvious escape route. The rear staircase was still free, he saw, but there was no way inside again until the ground floor, and he wasn’t leaving without those boys.

Vaulting onto the ledge, Willi indulged in a quick glance over his shoulder, instantly regretting it. Trapped in their glass chambers, all the little boys were thrashing madly as flames approached.

Thinking of Erich, he jammed the Luger in his jacket and jumped, clutching the chain and using the outside wall to rappel down. Relieved to gain distance from the flames, he was nonetheless alarmed by the intensity of pain in his shoulder, where von Hessler’s bullet had clearly bruised him worse than he’d realized. Focusing on the distance to the window, he fought off the rapidly deepening agony until, just a foot or so above the aperture, it jabbed with such intensity the muscle just gave out, making him lose his footing. He found himself dangling there apelike by one arm, three stories over the pavement, the crowd below shrieking.

Trying to see through the sweat pouring down his forehead, he took a deep breath, telling himself to hold steady, that he’d been in tighter spots, although after a fast glance down he couldn’t quite think of one. That night outside Soissons, he reminded himself as he tried to calibrate the exact angle he needed to reach the window. They’d been caught in the open between friendly and enemy artillery bombardments. Only dumb luck saved them. Here at least he had some say in the matter—he hoped. Swinging as hard as he could, he tried to clasp the brick ledge with his foot. But it was too far. And too exhausting, his left arm starting to cramp from strain. Worming back and forth he hoped to create enough momentum to propel himself through the opening. He managed one firm push off the wall, which got him out at a pretty good angle, then all too suddenly he was no longer holding the chain.

The next thing he knew he was shaken by a furious bang. Not the sidewalk, but the floor inside the window. He’d swung far enough, he realized, writhing in grateful agony.

Gradually his vision came back, and he saw what looked like a hospital ward—multiple beds filled with silent figures attached to tubes. Overhead the roar of flames was sending wisps of smoke down. With a loud explosion, a bullet hit the wall much too close.

“You’re finished, Kraus,” von Hessler declared from across the room. “You and all the other dinosaurs.”

Willi fired at him, taking a fast glance at the nearest bed. It wasn’t Erich or Heinz, just an innocent kid lying there, close-eyed. Narcotized. The skull intact. The tiniest hope flickered through Willi. Aother bullet came much too close, though, buzzing past his face. The smoke at the ceiling was thickening, dancing through the air. He fired one shot high, then flung himself beneath a row of beds, crawling on his stomach.

“There’s a new age dawning.” Von Hessler sounded drunk from lack of oxygen. He was lecturing again to nameless multitudes. “I don’t know what form it will take. Hitler maybe. Maybe not. He’s a genius—except for that racial crap. It’s nonsense and I can prove it.”

The scientist’s legs appeared in Willi’s vision now, past several more beds. The veil of smoke was faintly drawing downward, making his eyes start to tingle. His throat itched. Inch by inch he had to fight the urge to cough, bringing him back to the Western Front and the fields of chlorine gas they’d had to crawl through in masks. How he wished he had one now as he pulled himself ahead, wondering if Heinz or Erich were above, if they could breath.

“In terms of brain development, there’s no more difference among races than between rich and poor. A child of savages raised by scholars is just as likely to turn out a—”

Willi fired, hitting von Hessler’s hand, making the gun drop, but not stopping him from leaping backward with a yelp. Springing from below the bed, aiming, Willi cried, “Freeze!” But it was too late. Von Hessler, feet away, had grabbed one of the kids from a bed with his bleeding hand.

Erich.

“I’ll snap his neck in a second unless you put your gun on that bed and step back,” the one-eyed doctor swore with vengeance, dripping blood across Erich’s chest. But the boy looked okay otherwise, Willi was thinking. Unconscious. But okay.

“Drop the gun, Inspektor. Or so help me.”

Willi put down the gun.

Upstairs he could hear cracking wood and smashing glass.

“Step away.” Von Hessler’s eye patch reflected black smoke coming in from the windows. Willi thought he heard clanging bells. Was anxiety making his ears ring? It wouldn’t be the first time.