The Metal Man: An Account of a WW2 Nazi Cyborg (13 page)

‘So much easier to leave number eight, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse – I think this time via the back courtyard, which if you remember is where you showed me out of last time I was here – dressed in this black uniform, wouldn’t you say, Major?’

Fleischer attempted a cynical laugh. But it came out more like the wheezing of a slowly dying man.

‘
’They’ll see your… face, idiot… You can’t hide… that…
’

Reinhardt pursed his lips and nodded, as though in consideration of this point.

‘Well, yes,’ he began. ‘But it’s late now, few people are around. I’ll just try and make my way quietly towards the back of the building. In any case, if the worst happens, I’ll be carrying my gun, yours and the weapon this young man lying on the floor doubtless has upon his person.  So I’ll be able to do for a few more of you bastards before I’m done – saving the last bullet for myself, of course…

‘As I say, I’d much rather not commit suicide, but given the choice between that and dangling on a meat-hook…’

Reinhardt looked towards the locked door of wood and metal. The key for it was in one of the dead young man’s trouser pockets – of that Reinhardt was certain.

He’d retrieve it in a few moments.

But first…

‘You said when I first came in here that this room is very soundproof, Major,’ said Reinhardt, walking over to the Gestapo man and crouching down beside him. ‘It seems you were right – two gunshots and no one’s come down to investigate…’

Reinhardt pressed the barrel of his gun hard against Fleischer’s chest, above the area of his heart.

‘So I’ll risk a third shot, now,’ said Reinhardt amiably. ‘Then I’ll quickly change into that uniform, lock the door behind me and try and get out of the building. Then, all going well, I’ll get a car and head for the border! Isn’t that wonderful, Major?’

‘
Kike
…’ hissed Fleischer, fear now evident in his rodent-like eyes as he tried staring down at the barrel of the gun.

Abruptly, all trace of good humor disappeared from Reinhardt’s face.

‘This is for everyone you’ve ever caused to scream out in pain and terror, Fleischer,’ he said into the man’s ear. ‘Everyone you’ve had tortured, and killed, and shipped off to those bloody ‘camps’ every German knows about, but still pretends that they don’t.’

Fleischer’s eyes swiveled round now to meet Reinhardt’s. The disfigured Jew almost started at the pleading expression they contained.

‘
Please
…’

‘Give my regards to hell, you Nazi bastard.’

With that, Reinhardt pulled the trigger. There was a muffled roar and Fleischer’s body bucked as the bullet tore into his heart.

Reinhardt stood up, shaking slightly with the adrenalin rush that was only now making itself felt. He remembered how nervous he’d been meeting Hitler; how he’d even thought he might wet himself.

So remarkable what he was capable of doing, he then considered almost abstractly, when his back was against the wall, so to speak…

…Fleischer’s body sagged sideways onto the floor. Reinhardt walked over to where the other dead man lay.

He had to move quickly, now.   

20

Mayer and the three other soldiers shared the last of their rations – dried sausage and some bread so stale it was like trying to eat a brick – with the five Polish men and women whom they’d saved from getting shot at the hands of Ackermann and his unit.

The woman whom the SS officer had repeatedly slapped in the face stared at Mayer as he handed her some food, saying something several times in her own tongue.

‘She says thank you,’ interpreted the man who spoke German.

‘Tell her we’re not all bastards,’ returned Mayer gruffly, trying to disguise the strange effect the woman’s gratitude had upon him. 

With the last of the food now gone, it became essential that the soldiers, and the five Polish men and women, find some more supplies.

It was the German-speaking Polish man – who gave his name as Arnold – who informed them that there was a town no more than a day’s walk away.

‘It is call Tornik,’ said Arnold. ‘I not go there for some year now, but often go when I child.’

The four soldiers doubted they’d find anything in this town – as likely as not it would be as wretched and desolate as all the other towns and villages they’d come across in Poland, the inhabitants half-starving.

But there was no choice; they were currently in the middle of a large forest of tall pine trees, following a path that seemed to get ever narrower, and they were out of food.  

‘I can show you way, through forest,’ declared Arnold.

‘Okay, thanks,’ said Mayer. ‘When we get to this town, you and the four others are free to go.’   

Arnold nodded, and the group kept walking. The four bearded, hollow-eyed soldiers dressed in their filthy, camouflage-pattern jumpsuits, sub machineguns dangling from shoulder-straps, and the five peasants in their old clothes and clogs. Their breath blew out in clouds in front of them (visible in spite of the night’s velvet darkness), their feet crunching on the snow blanketing the ground.

Mayer assumed the temperature was somewhere below freezing, although this wasn’t really
cold –
not for someone who’d experienced real combat on the Eastern Front…

The Front…

Mayer remembered Karl Brucker shaking two of his own toes out of his boot – frostbite – and then putting this boot back on and proceeding as if nothing had happened.

Tough bastard, Brucker. Toughest man Mayer had ever known, in fact – and the SS was hardly short of such types. But Brucker had had something else – an intelligence and… (Mayer fumbled for the correct word)
morality
, as it were, that had quickly caused a bond to develop between him, Mayer and the three other soldiers currently traipsing through the forest.

Numerous times it had seemed certain they’d die, and always Brucker had somehow managed to pull them through. Always with the same curt, yet at the same time almost half-humorous instruction –
Move your ass
– as bullets flew around them and shells exploded nearby…

And now he lay dead and buried somewhere, his body for some reason transported to Berlin all those months before…

Why
had
they taken Brucker’s body to Germany’s capital city? That was the question Mayer, Bach, Weber and the radioman Amsel had previously discussed among themselves – and the question Mayer again pondered now…

While a good soldier, and leader, Brucker had hardly been one of the military ‘elite’, as it were. Just another commanding officer, who should just have been buried where he’d fallen – if, indeed, there was the time and opportunity to do such a thing.

Try as he might, Weber could not think of the slightest reason
why
a lorry had been dispatched to drive the few hundred miles to Berlin with the body of Lieutenant Colonel Karl Brucker onboard…

*

Some hours passed as the group trudged on in silence, the night slowly lightening into dawn. Then at once the group abruptly left the closed shelter of the pine forest, entering into a clearing.

On one side the ground fell sharply away to a rocky pit below– a quarry, perhaps. 

And, straight ahead…

‘What the hell is that?’ murmured Mayer.

It was a sprawling complex of wooden huts and other, brick-built structures, enclosed by two high, barbed-wire fences situated several feet apart from one another. There were watch-towers on every corner, and two high chimneys.

But one of these chimneys was partially demolished; to Mayer’s expert eye, it appeared as though someone had recently attempted to blow it up.

This was also true of a number of other brick-built structures within this…

What?
thought Mayer.
Prison camp?

An evil smell wafted across to the group who’d emerged from out of the pine forest. A stench of disease, death and decay. Figures appeared behind the high, inner barbed-wire fence, dressed in a striped uniform, their heads shaved, horribly emaciated. It was hard to tell even if they were men, or women.

Some of them had ragged blankets thrown over their shoulders or wrapped around their bodies, in defense against the cold. They stared at Mayer and the three other SS soldiers with a chilling mixture of fear and utter hatred.

‘This – ’

Mayer’s voice came out like a croak.

He coughed, and tried again –

‘This place,’ he said, addressing Arnold. ‘What the hell is it?’

At once, Arnold appeared to have trouble meeting Mayer’s eye.

‘This is type of camp your country make,’ he muttered. ‘For the Jew.’

‘Shit,’ breathed Bach. ‘I thought that ghetto, back where they brought in the Metal Man, was bad enough – but this place…’

‘Where’s the town you said you knew? This place called Tornik?’ Mayer questioned Arnold.

‘Past here – maybe just two kilometer away,’ returned the Pole. ‘Before was nothing here; just that cliff where they sometime get the rock from. But I have heard of these camp; are many in Poland…’

‘I remember, several years back, when I was in Frankfurt…’ began Amsel in a low voice. ‘Some Brownshirts started shoving this old Jew around; he had the hat, the beard – the full works. I made them stop all that, actually hit one of them; he shouted ‘Jew-lover’ at me as he and the others ran off…’

‘There was
Kristallnacht
– the Night of Broken Glass, in ’38…’ said Bach, his own voice sounding similarly distant. ‘It was always going on; I just didn’t think they were building places like
this
to put them in…’

‘Didn’t you?’ said Weber, his expression dark. ‘
I
knew it, even before I saw that ghetto on the edge of that town. I just never tried even to think of it – like so many Germans…

‘Then again…’ continued Weber. ‘You know, I was in Berlin when
Kristallnacht
happened.  I saw children clapping their hands and shouting with excitement as a synagogue was set on fire. Well-dressed women holding up their babies, so they could better see the ‘fun’…

‘Jews then on their hands and knees, the police forcing them to sweep up the streets with a dustpan and brush after their property had been burnt, smashed and looted. People passing by laughing at them, egging each other on to give one of the Jews a kick up the ass, to throw stones at them, the police doing absolutely nothing when this happened…

‘Even then, you know, I thought –
What the hell is happening to this country?
’ 

There was a few moments’ silence, none of the soldiers liking even to look at one another. The Poles had also moved so that they stood slightly, but still noticeably apart from the four German men. As though concerned they would otherwise be mistaken for the enemy by the inmates stood watching in their striped, ragged uniforms.

The silence was broken by Mayer.

‘The guards for this place – where are they?’ he questioned quietly.

‘My guess is that they were ordered to clear out – or did so of their own accord,’ returned Bach. ‘They must know the Russians are only a couple of days away, at most.’