No Dawn for Men (12 page)

“I will speak to Heydrich.”

“Yes, Herr Reichsfuhrer.”

“He will cooperate, of course.”

“Of course, Herr Reichsfuhrer.”

“It should not be hard to spot a dwarf, do you agree?”

“Yes, I do, Reichsfuhrer.”

“I want him kept alive and brought to me, here at the castle.”

“Yes, Herr Reichsfuhrer.”

“Goering should not be the only one to have fun with dwarfs.”

“Yes, Herr Reichsfuhrer.”

“You know he has them copulate on a table in his banquet hall with large crowds watching?”

“No, Herr Reichsfuhrer, I did not.”

“People bring their cameras.”

“Yes, Herr Reichsfuhrer.”

“And by the way, Lieutenant, I do not want Goering or Goebbels involved in this in any way. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Herr Reichsfuhrer.”

“Where is the daughter?”

“I don’t know, Herr Reichsfuhrer.”

“Place her under arrest as soon as you find them. She has had too much freedom.”

“Yes, Herr Reichsfuhrer.”

“If they escape us, Lieutenant . . . Well, you will not let that happen.”

“No, Herr Reichsfuhrer.”

“
Gut
, you have the direct number to reach me. Someone will be at the phone around the clock. I will be here for the weekend.”

Heinrich Himmler hung up the phone and looked out of the large double windows of his bedroom suite at the top of his triangular-shaped castle in the woods near Paderborn in northwest Germany. His wire-rimmed, pince-nez glasses were pinching his nose, so he removed them and rubbed away the itch with thumb and forefinger. Below were twenty men of varying size and age in purple-and-white-striped prison dress, each with a breast patch indicating his verminous blood, purple V’s for Jehovah’s Witnesses, yellow stars for Jews, and so on. They were mustering to be marched back to their camp a mile away. They were all coated in white from head to foot, having worked all day on removing the original plaster from the tower’s walls and replacing it with local stone.

On a pedestal behind him was a picture book of busts of young Aryan men, the chiseled blonds who would someday make up the Master Race. He had been thumbing through this book when his adjutant knocked and announced the call from Lieutenant Bauer. He had been thinking of Bauer while looking at the pictures of those handsome Aryans.

The thought of sacrificing young Bauer was disturbing, but not very. He had had other pleasures in mind concerning Bauer, but if he failed he would have to be killed, or perhaps placed with the scum in the nearby camp. Or perhaps he would succeed in locating the runaway Professor Shroeder and his friends. Either way, there was pleasure in store.

21.

 Carinhall

October 7, 1938, 10:00 p.m.

“Are we fully prepared, Captain Drescher?”

“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall,” the Luftwaffe captain replied. “The keepers are ready, and the Messrs. Heck assure us the cow is in heat.”

“Is that correct, Heinz? Lutz?”

“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall,” the Messrs. Heck said in unison.

The four men—Hermann Goering, his adjutant, a square-jawed ex-paratrooper, and the Heck brothers, Lutz and Heinz, the directors of the Berlin and Munich zoos, respectively—were seated in oversized leather chairs in Goering’s loft study at Carinhall, the aviation marshal’s lavishly appointed hunting lodge in the forest north of Berlin.

“And our surprise guests, are they in hand?”

“They are resting in their rooms, Herr Generalfeldmarschall.”

“Good. We will let them watch the breeding, then place them under arrest.”

“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”

“We will then see what Himmler and Heydrich are up to.”

“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”

“Do you know, gentlemen,” Goering said to the Heck brothers, “that the Fuhrer will soon announce me as his successor?”

“No, Generalfeldmarschall,” they replied. The awed looks on their faces were quite genuine. Adolph Hitler had replaced Christ in 1938 Germany, and his coterie were not just apostles or saints, they were demigods. A full-blown ur-god had now appeared in their midst. “We . . .”

“Yes, I know, you are honored to be in my presence. I have given him Austria, you see, his native country, and soon, with your help, I will give him a wild forest where the aurochs is the dominant beast, just as we Germans will soon be the dominant beasts in Europe.”

The three men facing Goering—who was sitting in the deepest, plushest chair, as if on a throne—nodded in unison.

“And the dwarfs, Herr Generalfeldmarschall?” Captain Drescher said. “Shall we prepare them?”

“No,” Goering replied. “They will not have to perform tonight. Tonight is for science and the advancement of knowledge, not comedic entertainment.”

“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”

“Are your men still out hunting?”

“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”

“These two were difficult to capture, I understand.”

“They are clever creatures, Herr Generalfeldmarschall,” Drescher replied. “We caught them by blowing up a mine entrance and trapping them at the other end, in nets. We subdued them while they were slashing at the nets, trying to break free. Which was the more savage, the man or the woman, I do not know. The knives they used were quite extraordinary.”

“Do you think you’ve found their habitat?”

“If so, it’s a wild place, I’d say untouched since the Ice Age.”

“And when was that?”

“Perhaps two million years ago, Herr Generalfeldmarschall.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”

“And our two, are they able to copulate? That’s the primary thing.”

“Yes, we believe so.”

“Extraordinary knives, you say?”

“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall. Extremely sharp, razor sharp, and made of a metal I have never seen. The edges do not degrade, no matter what we do. And there are flecks of some kind of ore in them that we cannot identify.”

“Yet they seem so submissive.”

“Yes, Generalfeldmarschall, they have adapted to their new lives. The male is training as a footman, as you know, and the female in the kitchen.”

“The last pair was not so hard to catch.”

“Circus freaks. But alas . . .”

“Yes, I know, the human cannonballs have all deserted our circuses.”

“They must have heard somehow . . .”

“Heard what, captain? We treat our dwarfs well. Surely public copulation is not torture.”

“No, Generalfeldmarschall.”

“Perhaps they have all gone to ground in the Bialowieza Forest,” Goering said, smiling broadly, liking his own joke, “fashioning Ice Age tools and living in mines. A stroke of luck for us, no? The easier to round them up.”

 “Yes, Generalfeldmarschall.”

At this moment, there was a knocking on the room’s oak door. “Yes,” Goering bellowed.

“Drinks, milord,” a man’s voice, deep and husky, said.

“Ah,” said the field marshal. “Our refreshments. Come in. Enter.”

A dwarf, in the red garb with gold epaulettes and buttons more fitting of a king’s servant, came in wheeling a glass and polished wood serving cart laden with liquor, champagne, and their accoutrements, including ice, silver tongs, and crystal glasses.

“Shall I pour, milord?” the dwarf asked.

“No, leave us.”

“Yes, milord.”

“One moment, Tor,” Goering said.

“Yes, milord.”

“Have you met your fellow dwarf?”

“No, milord.”

“Do all dwarfs wear beards?”

“Certain clans do, milord.”

“Why is that?”

“I don’t know, milord.”

“Your beard is different from our guest, Korumak’s.”

“Yes, milord.”

“Different clans, I suppose.”

“I don’t know, milord.”

“You may go.”

22.

Metten

October 7, 1938, 11:00 p.m.

“Our son is at school here,” Billie Shroeder said.

“The abbey is closed, madam,” said the SS corporal. As he spoke he shined a flashlight into the car, casting its stabbing beam first on Billie’s face, then Fleming’s, then doing a slow three-sixty of the interior. When he got to Billie’s legs, she lifted her skirt an inch above her knee and smiled.

“He has been ill,” Billie said.

“No one can enter.”

“Why all the fuss?” Fleming asked, leaning and ducking slightly so that he could see across Billie in the driver’s seat. Behind the corporal, four other soldiers were standing and warming their hands over a fire blazing out of a two-hundred-liter drum. Each had an Erma EMP-35 submachine gun slung over his shoulder, the elegant weapon that he knew Waffen SS Special Forces had recently been equipped with. Behind them the eighth-century abbey’s massive wrought iron gate was shut and padlocked. The spacious stone courtyard was nearly pitch black, its outline made barely visible by the yellow light from one window above the abbey’s imposing dome-shaped front entrance.

He and Billie had made it to Deggendorf by 9:00 p.m. and checked into an inn on the outskirts of the small city. Driving to the abbey, they had seen two SS staff cars parked in front of the Hotel Gasthof, the tallest building in the tiny town of Metten. Anticipating trouble, they had concocted their simple story and switched seats so that Billie could drive.

“Your husband?” the corporal said.

Fleming smiled and nodded.

“Yes, he’s American,” Billie said.

“No one can enter.”

“Of course. Sorry for the trouble. Can we come tomorrow?”

“No. Now you must leave.
Now
.”

23.

 Carinhall

October 7, 1938, 11:00 p.m.

“That’s the American bison on the left,” said Trygg Korumak, “the European on the right. The European is the female.”

“What in the world . . . ?” said Franz Shroeder.

“How do you know about this species?” Professor Tolkien asked.

“I have friends in the Great Last Forest, Dwerrow Forest, they call it,” Korumak replied. “Where there are still bison.”

“And what do men call it, this forest?” Tolkien asked.

“Bialowieza.”

 
What do
men
call it?
Tolkien said to himself.
Where did
that
come from?

There had been something from the very beginning about Korumak that had not just intrigued Tolkien, but haunted him somehow, as if they had met as children and forgotten each other, or perhaps known each other in distant past lives. In the long day they had just spent in each other’s presence, a day that was about to come to an obscene end, there had been little chance to converse, and when there had been a moment, Korumak had been singularly unforthcoming, his silence as solid and dense as a mountain. Now he seemed friendlier, but the scene below in the middle of Carinhall’s great central hall was irresistible. John Ronald’s questions would have to wait.

Looking down from the highly polished railing of the loft walkway that gave access to the bedrooms on the north side of the lodge, they could see two large, shaggy bison, one on the east side and the other on the west side of the immense room, each held in check by two muscular handlers gripping the ends of thick chains attached to metal collars on the animals’ necks. The American bison was snorting and pawing the hardwood floor, the European straining from side to side on her forged leash.

Below glowing chandeliers that hung from massive floating oaken beams, stood Goering’s guests for the weekend, perhaps fifty of what were obviously among Germany’s military and political crème de la crème. Champagne glasses in hand, they were gathered around a space that had been cleared of furniture in the center of the room. Korumak seemed to know who many of them were. “That’s Speer and his wife,” he said quietly, nodding toward a dim corner where a tall, thin, balding man in a tuxedo was standing next to a woman in a red satin gown. Both were sipping champagne. “Hitler’s best friend. And Bormann, another pig.” Now the dwarf nodded toward the room’s center, where a group of smartly dressed civilians and officers in beribboned uniforms were gathering along the velvet ropes and gold stanchions that marked off the makeshift arena.

Across the vast room—it was perhaps a hundred feet in length—they now saw Goering and his aide, a Luftwaffe captain, emerge from an inner room and approach the loft railing. The crowd acknowledged Hitler’s aviation chief with a roar, many raising their glasses to him as he waved down at them, blessing them like the devil’s vicar on earth.

Wagner could be heard from speakers concealed somewhere in the vast room, but only barely, as the cheering of the crowd was the dominant sound. That and the snorting and stamping of the bison as they strained toward each other on their leashes, the four handlers pulling hard along the flanks of the huffing creatures to hold them back. Goering raised his right hand high above his head, held it there for a long second or two, then swiftly brought it down, at which moment the handlers released the beasts.