Garden of Beasts (40 page)

Chapter Thirty-Six

Willi Kohl parked the DKW not far from the Labor Service truck, which was about fifty meters off the road, parked in such a way that the driver clearly intended that the vehicle not be seen.

As he walked quietly to the truck, his Panama hat low to keep the glaring sun out of his eyes, he removed his pistol and listened for footsteps, voices. But he heard nothing out of the ordinary: only birds, crickets, cicadas. He approached the truck slowly. He looked into the back and found the burlap bags, shovels and hoes he’d expected—the “weapons” of the Labor Service. But in the cab he located some items that interested him considerably more. On the seat was an RAD officer’s uniform—carefully folded as if it would be used again soon and the wearer was concerned that wrinkles might make him appear suspicious. More important, though, was what he found wrapped in paper beneath the seat: a blue double-breasted suit and a white shirt, both in large sizes. The shirt was an Arrow, made in the United States. And the suit? Kohl felt his heart thud as he looked at the label inside the jacket.
Manny’s Men’s Wear, New York City.

Paul Schumann’s favorite store.

Kohl replaced the clothes and looked around for any sign of the American, the toad Webber or anyone else.

No one.

The footsteps in the dust outside the door of the truck suggested that Schumann had gone into the woods toward the campus. An old service drive, leading in that direction, was overgrown with grass but more or less smooth. But it was also exposed; the hedgerows and brush on either side would be a perfect place for Schumann to lie in wait. The only other route was through the hilly woods, strewn with rocks and branches. Ach… His poor feet cried out at the very sight of it. But he had no choice. Willi Kohl started forward through the painful obstacle course.

Please, Paul Schumann prayed. Please, step out of the car, Colonel Ernst, and into clear view. In a country that has outlawed God, where there were fewer prayers to hear, perhaps He’d grant this one.

But apparently this was not the moment for divine help. Ernst remained inside the Mercedes. Glare from the windshield and windows kept Paul from seeing exactly where he was in the backseat. If he fired through the glass and missed he’d never have another chance.

He scanned the field again, reflecting: No breeze. Good light—from the side, not in his eyes—illuminating the killing field. A perfect opportunity to shoot.

Paul wiped the sweat off his forehead and sat back in frustration. He felt something pressing uncomfortably into his thigh and he glanced down. It was the folder of papers that the balding man had placed in the car ten minutes before. He pushed it to the floor but, as he did, he glanced at the document on top. He lifted it and, alternating between glancing at Ernst’s Mercedes and the letter, he read:

Ludwig:

You will find annexed hereto my draft letter to the Leader about our study. Note that I’ve included a reference to the testing being done today at Waltham. We can add the results tonight.

At this early stage of the study I believe it is best that we refer to those killed by our Subject soldiers as state criminals. Therefore you will see in the letter that the two Jewish families we killed at Gatow will be described as Jew subversives, the Polish laborers killed at Charlottenburg as foreign infiltrators, the Roma as sexual deviants, and the young Aryans at Waltham today will be political dissidents. At a later point we can, I feel, be more forthright about the innocence of those exterminated by our Subjects but at the moment I do not believe the climate is right for this.

Nor do I refer to the questionnaires you administer to the soldiers as “psychological testing.” This too, I feel, would be unfavorably received.

Please review this and contact me about alterations. I intend to submit the letter as requested, on Monday, 27 July.

—Reinhard

Paul frowned. What was this all about? He flipped to the next sheet and continued reading.

HIGHEST CONFIENTIALITY

Adolf Hitler,

Leader, State Chancellor and President of the German

Nation and Commander of the Armed Forces

Field Marshal Werner von Blomberg,

State Minister of Defense

My Leader and my Minister:

You have asked for details of the Waltham Study being conducted by myself and Doctor-Professor Ludwig Keitel of Waltham Military College. I am pleased to describe the nature of the study and the results so far.

This study arises out of my instructions from you to make ready the German armed forces and to help them achieve most expeditiously the goals of our great nation, as you have set forth.

In my years of commanding our courageous troops during the War, I learned much about men’s behavior during combat. While any good soldier will follow orders, it became clear to me that men respond in different ways to the matter of killing, and this difference, I believe, is based on their nature.

In brief, our study involves asking questions of soldiers before and after they execute condemned enemies of the state and then analyzing their responses. These executions involve a number of different situations: various methods of execution, categories of prisoners, relationship of the soldier to the prisoners, the family background and personal history of the soldier, etc. The examples to date are as follows:

On 18 July of this year, in the town of Gatow, a soldier (Subject A) questioned at length two groups convicted of Jewish subversive activities. He was then ordered to carry out the execution order by automatic weapon fire.

On 19 July, a soldier in Charlottenburg (Subject B) similarly executed a number of Polish infiltrators. Although Subject B was the proximate cause of their deaths, he had had no communication with them prior to their extermination, unlike the Gatow executions.

On 21 July a soldier (Subject C) executed a group of Roma Gypsies engaged in sexually deviant behavior in a special facility we have had constructed at Waltham College. Carbon monoxide gas from vehicle exhaust was the means of death. Like Subject B, this soldier never conversed with the victims, but, unlike him, he did not witness their actual deaths.

Paul Schumann gasped in shock. He looked again at the first letter. Why, these people killed were innocent, by Ernst’s own admission. Jewish families, Polish workers… He read the passages again to make sure he’d seen correctly. He thought he must have mistranslated the words. But, no, there wasn’t any doubt. He looked across the dusty field at the black Mercedes, which still sheltered Ernst. He glanced down at the letter to Hitler and continued.

On 26 July a soldier (Subject D) executed a dozen political dissidents at the Waltham facility. The variation in this case was that these particular convicts were of Aryan extraction, and Subject D spent an hour or more conversing and playing sports with them immediately before he executed them, getting to know some of them by name. He was further instructed to observe them die.

Oh, Christ… that’s here, today!

Paul leaned forward, squinting over the field. The gray-uniformed German soldier who’d been playing soccer with the boys gave a stiff-arm salute to the balding man in brown then he hooked a thick hose from the tailpipe of the bus into a fixture on the outside wall of the classroom.

We are presently compiling the responses provided by all of these Subject soldiers. Several dozen other executions are planned, each one a variation intended to provide us with as much helpful data as possible. The results of the first four tests are attached hereto.

Please be assured we reject out of hand the tainted Jew-thinking of traitors like Dr. Freud but feel that solid National Socialist philosophy and science will allow us to match the personality types of soldiers with the means of death, the nature of the victims and the relationship between them to more efficiently achieve the goals you have set forth for our great nation.

We will be submitting the complete report to you within two months.

With all humble respect,

Col. Reinhard Ernst,

Plenipotentiary

for Domestic Stability

Paul looked up, across the field, to see the soldier glance into the classroom at the young men, close the door, then walk calmly to the bus and turn on the engine.

Chapter Thirty-Seven

When the door to the classroom closed, the students looked around them. It was Kurt Fischer who got out of his seat and walked to the window. He rapped on it.

“You’ve forgotten the pencils,” he called.

“There are some in the back,” someone called.

Kurt found three stubby pencils sitting on a chalkboard ledge. “But not enough for us all.”

“How can we take a test without pencils?”

“Open a window!” somebody called. “My God, it’s hot in here.”

A tall blond boy, jailed because he’d written a poem ridiculing the Hitler Youth, walked to the windows. He struggled to undo the latch.

Kurt returned to his seat and tore open his envelope. He pulled out the sheets of paper to see what sort of personal information they wanted and if there would be any questions about their parents’ pacifism. But he laughed in surprise.

“Look at this,” he said. “The printing didn’t come out on mine.”

“No, mine too.”

“It’s all of them! They’re blank!”

“This is absurd.”

The blond boy at the window called, “They don’t open.” He looked around the stifling room at the others. “None of them. The windows. They don’t open.”

“I can do it,” said a huge young man. But the locks defeated him too. “They’re sealed shut. Why would that be?…” Then he squinted at the window. “It’s not normal glass, either. It’s thick.”

It was then that Kurt smelled the sweet, strong aroma of petrol exhaust flooding into the room from a vent above the door.

“What’s that? Something’s wrong!”

“They’re killing us!” a boy shrieked. “Look outside!”

“A hose. Look!”

“Break out. Break the glass!”

The large boy who’d tried to open the windows looked around. “A chair, table, anything!”

But the tables and benches were bolted to the floor. And although the room had seemed to be a regular classroom, there were no pointers, no globes, not even ink bottles in the wells they might try to shatter the glass with. Several students tried to shoulder down the door but it was thick oak and barred from the outside. The faint blue cloud of exhaust smoke streamed steadily into the room.

Kurt and two other boys tried to kick the windows out. But the glass was indeed thick—far too strong to break without heavy tools. There was a second door but that too was securely closed and locked.

“Stuff something in the vents.”

Two boys stripped off their shirts and Kurt and another student boosted them up. But their murderers, Keitel and Ernst, had anticipated everything. The vents were thick screening, a half meter by a meter in size. There was no way to block the smooth surface.

The boys began to choke. Everyone scrabbled away from the vent, into the corners of the room, some crying, some praying.

Kurt Fischer looked outside. The “recruitment” officer, who’d scored a goal against him just minutes earlier, stood with his arms crossed, gazing at them calmly, the same way someone might watch bears frolic in their pen at the Zoological Garden on Budapest Street.

Paul Schumann saw before him the black Mercedes, still protecting his prey.

He saw the SS guard looking around vigilantly.

He saw the balding man walk up to the soldier who’d fitted the hose to the classroom building, speaking to him, then jotting on a sheet of paper.

He saw an empty field where a dozen young men had just played a soccer game in their last minutes on earth.

And above all of these discrete images he saw what linked them: the appalling specter of indifferent evil. Reinhard Ernst was not simply Hitler’s architect of war, he was a murderer of the innocent. And his motive: the handy collection of information.

The whole goddamn world here was out of kilter.

Paul swung the Mauser to the right, toward the bald man and the soldier. The second gray-uniformed trooper leaned against the van, smoking a cigarette. The two soldiers were some distance apart but Paul could probably touch them both off. The balding man—maybe the professor mentioned in the letter to Hitler—was probably not armed and would most likely flee at the first shot. Paul could then sprint to the classroom, open the door and give covering fire so the boys could get away to safety.

Ernst and his guard would escape or hunker down behind the car until help arrived. But how could Paul let these young men die?

The sights of the Mauser centered on the soldier’s chest. Paul began applying pressure to the trigger.

Then he sighed angrily and swung the muzzle of the rifle back to the Mercedes.

No, he had come here for one purpose. To kill Reinhard Ernst. The young people in the classroom were not his concern. They’d have to be sacrificed. Once he shot Ernst the other soldiers would take cover and return fire, forcing Paul to escape back into the woods, while the boys suffocated.

Trying not to imagine the horror in the room, what those young men would be going through, Paul Schumann touched the ice once more. He steadied his breathing.

And, just at that moment, his prayer was finally answered. The back door to Ernst’s car opened.