The Secret of Lions (19 page)

Three people were in the dank room. One man
was tied to a chair. His side was bludgeoned, and his eyes were dry
and bloodshot. Most of his teeth were scattered across the floor;
dried blood covered his face. The blood was blackish. This was the
first time I had seen so much blood.

“Father?” I said, trembling. “What is
this?”

“This, my son, is what you must learn,”
Hitler answered. He gestured to the guards to leave the room, and
they did.

The man in the chair was exhausted and
unwilling to move when they first entered. Seeing Beowulf
jumpstarted the prisoner; he severely shifted and struggled in the
chair. He convulsed back and forth, fighting his restraints.
Neither the chair nor the restraints budged. The chair was bolted
to a wooden plank attached to the floor.

Beowulf picked up the mallet from the floor
and looked over at Hitler, who gave a nod to demonstrate his
approval. Hitler stood behind me and placed each of his hands on my
shoulders so I could not turn my head. He didn’t want me to look
away.

Beowulf swung the mallet down and crushed
the man’s big toe on his left foot. The prisoner screamed out in
French. Blood splattered in all directions across the floor in
front of him. The toenail had splintered and shattered in several
places. The entire foot turned black almost immediately. Some of
his bones poked through his skin.

Beowulf raised the hammer again and slammed
it down. The next two toes splattered worse than the first had, and
again the Frenchman screamed out in pain.

“No!” he screamed. Tears streamed out of his
eyes and down his face.

Beowulf raised the mallet again.

“Stop!” I screamed out.

“Quiet!” Hitler said, squeezing my shoulders
tighter. Then he said, “Continue, Beowulf.”

Beowulf continued. The next blow was to the
man’s right foot. His whole foot cracked. The sound intensified
with the man’s scream. It sounded like every bone in his right foot
shattered along with each toenail. The blood ran off the wooden
plank and down to a drain I had just noticed for the first time.
The drain was rusted and appeared to be overflowing with the blood
that had passed through over the last few hours.

Hitler released me. I scampered to the wall
and leaned against it. The scene I witnessed horrified me to the
core. Blips of a past memory flashed in front of my eyes, but they
were too fast for me to grab onto.

Flashes of a lion appeared. Then flashes of
my mother, but I could not connect the two memories. I had blocked
out the events of my early childhood.

“Now tell me again, what is your name?”
Hitler asked the Frenchman.

“Fuck you!” he responded. His speech was
slurred because most of his teeth were on the ground and his gums
had already started to swell.

“Beowulf,” Hitler said.

Beowulf smiled and tossed the hammer to the
ground. He reached behind his back and pulled a long knife out of
his pocket. The blade glimmered in the dim light of the room. The
blade was not very thick but razor-sharp with one serrated
edge.

Beowulf leaned over the man in the chair and
grabbed his right arm. The prisoner struggled against his tormentor
as best he could, but Beowulf quickly stabbed the blade through the
man’s inner elbow and into the arm of the chair. He twisted the
blade in the wound. Then he tried to pull it out of the arm, but it
was stuck in both the wood of the chair and the bone of the man’s
arm.

With tremendous struggle, Beowulf recovered
the knife from the man’s arm. Then he grabbed the Frenchman's other
arm. He began to stab when the man finally blurted out his name. He
said his name in French. He said it too softly for me to hear, but
Beowulf heard it.

After the man’s identity became known,
Hitler stood closer to me. He said, “That’s enough, Beowulf.”

Beowulf wiped the blade off with a
blood-soaked towel and returned it to what looked like a small
scabbard near his back pocket.

Hitler smiled at me and guided me to the
door.

“Wait here for one more moment,” Hitler said
and then turned toward the man in the chair and pulled a gun from
inside his suit jacket. He fired the gun twice into the man’s
chest.

My mind flooded with horrific glimpses of a
lost dream. It was the face of my mother, a face I had nearly
forgotten. Suddenly, I was grasping at fractions of what she might
have looked like. And there was a boy. He held a gun, but the
glimpses vanished from my mind.

I wondered if the boy was me.

Chapter
Six

Feast of Wolves

Dijon, France

1936

62

A cobblestone street led up to the little
house. It was dimly lit, and the rain made it even darker. A figure
stood near the high hedges along the street corner. He peered out
from under the rim of a dark hat. The rain drizzled off the hat and
hindered his vision just slightly. Beowulf’s face was covered in
stubble. His eyes were black and soulless.

The streets were empty. He was on the
outskirts of Dijon, France. He had traveled across the
German-French border. No one had stopped him. No one suspected him
of anything. The Germans had marched up and down the French border
for weeks. They were ordered by the Führer to do so.

Hitler ordered them to march, just to test
the French response. He wanted to see what they would do exactly.
However, the soldiers were ordered to retreat if the French showed
any opposition. They never showed any resistance at all, and Hitler
was satisfied. The incursion Hitler ordered also had another
purpose; it was to distract the French from Beowulf’s journey
across the border. It was to make it easier for the assassin to
cross into France.

He’d walked into town only an hour earlier.
He searched for a certain house, a house that he now stood in front
of. He watched it from across the street, waiting for the lights to
go out, and finally most of them did. The last light that shone
from the front of the house had just gone dark. He felt the shotgun
scrape his leg under his trench coat as he walked up the
street.

The gate to the front yard of the house was
unlocked; he opened it. The gate squealed. He looked around at the
other houses on the street; none of the neighbors were awake. He
continued into the house. It was dark inside, but his eyes adjusted
to the faint moonlight leaking in through the windows. He found the
kitchen and quickly swept his gaze around the room, the shotgun
ready at his side. There was no one there.

He followed the tiled floor until he reached
the living room. A little girl slept quietly on the couch. She
appeared to be about 10 years old.

Beowulf suspected she might be faking sleep.
So he pointed the gun at her and took aim. She did not move. She
was completely asleep. He lowered the weapon and began to search
the rest of the home. He wanted to locate all of the occupants
before firing a shot and alerting any of them.

In the hallway he peered into an empty
bedroom. It seemed to be the little girl’s bedroom. The wallpaper
was covered with pink flowers. Scattered all over the top of the
bed were well-dressed dolls. Each doll was meticulously clothed.
Their hair was perfectly combed.

Beowulf continued down the hall and found
the master bedroom. A small boy, around three years old, slept on
the bed. The boy’s hair was messy. He was shirtless; he lay face
down.

Beowulf followed a flicker of light that
emitted from a door in the back of the bedroom. The door was
slightly ajar. He walked to it and peered in through the crack. He
saw a woman bathing in a tub. Candles surrounded her. The candles
dimly lit the entire bathroom.

The woman was alone. He watched as she
lathered her legs with a bar of dull, white soap. Her raven black
hair was soaked and slicked back. He jarred the door open with the
barrel of the shotgun. A slight creaking sound emanated that was
almost unnoticeable.

The woman kept bathing. She hummed softly to
herself. Her humming masked the creaking of the door. Beowulf moved
closer to her. He could see her naked body. Water glistened off her
bare breast. The water was gray and murky. Beowulf could see his
shadowy, distorted reflection in it as he approached. The woman did
not notice him. Instead, she watched her hand gliding the soap
across her stomach and chest.

Beowulf stepped onto a blue bath mat that
lay in front of the tub. The woman noticed him in her peripheral
vision and jolted around to come face to face with the shotgun’s
barrel.

Terrified, she whispered to him, pleading,
“Please, don’t hurt my children,” she begged repeatedly. “You can
do whatever you want. You can take whatever you want. Please?
Please? Just don’t hurt my children.”

Beowulf smiled at her and fired the gun into
her chest. Her body sprang back in the tub. The water splashed out
over the edges and across the floor. He moved closer to her and put
the shotgun in her face, but he did not fire.

Instead, he backed off and watched as she
struggled to breath. Her chest, ribs, and torn flesh were exposed.
Blood emerged into the murky tub water. Flesh and bone were covered
in blood. He watched her eyes roll back in her head. She coughed up
more blood. Unsuccessfully, she tried to move. She reached toward
Beowulf. After a short period of struggling, she stopped.

Beowulf turned back to the bedroom. He came
into the room and found the boy, now wide awake. He rubbed his
eyes. The shotgun blast had awakened him from a deep sleep. He
squinted, trying to focus on Beowulf.

The shotgun barrels pointed at him. Beowulf
fired. The second barrel went off. The blast propelled the boy into
the air and against the wall. A pool of blood separated his torso
from his shoulder and part of his neck. His small right hand
jittered around on the floor.

Beowulf stopped over the boy and popped the
barrel of the gun open. He pulled out the two empty shell casings
and threw them onto the bed. Reaching into the inner pocket of his
jacket, he pulled out two new shells. He reloaded the gun and
focused on the bedroom door. He expected the girl either to run
into the room or to run out of the house, trying to escape.

He turned the corner and aimed the gun at
the doorway to the living room. She did not enter. He walked
directly into the living room and saw her running out the front
door. He fired. The shotgun blast shot through the wall next to the
front door. Wood splintered all over the small foyer, but the girl
got away.

Beowulf walked out of the house after her.
She was already out of the yard and beyond the gate. She made it a
quarter of the way down the street. He estimated he only had a few
moments until she was completely out of range. He aimed and fired
the last round. The bullet tore straight through her side.

The girl flipped onto her back and landed on
the street. Beowulf opened up the barrel again and dumped the empty
casings out onto the street as he turned through the gate. The
casings bounced a couple of times.

He shut the gate behind him. He walked down
the street to the girl. She half-crawled down a hill. Even as he
approached her, she continued to try to escape. He reached into his
jacket, but he did not have any more rounds for the gun. He shut
the barrel and lowered the gun to his side. The hilt rested on the
ground next to her.

She was crying. He reached down with his
hand and covered her mouth and nose. She started to suffocate. She
struggled against him. She clawed at his hands and scratched his
wrists with her fingernails; her attempts did nothing but infuriate
him. He continued to suffocate her until she stopped breathing.

He stood up and looked around the
neighborhood. Some of the porch lights were on. Many of the
neighbors had started to come out to see what all the noise was. He
smiled at one of them and continued down the road, leaving the
French assassin’s family to rot on the street they had lived on for
so many years.

Part Four

Secrets Roaring

Chapter
Seven

School in the Mountains

Germany, 1938

63

Snow covered the mountains. The elevation
was high. The mountains were difficult to climb. The mountain range
proved to be adequate training grounds for mountaineers. It was
isolated, secluded, and provided the harshest conditions. Germany
had produced some of the world’s most famous mountaineers,
including the first Westerners to complete the journey to the peaks
of Tibet.

A secret school nested in one of the peaks.
It was half exposed and half buried into the ground. Much of the
outer part of the school stood on stilts—thick like the ones built
for the piers and harbors of southern Germany.

The school housed the children of Germany’s
elite. The students were the future of Germany and possibly the
world. They were the children of the leaders of the Nazi party.
Some of their parents were the highest members of the government. I
was one of these children.

“Herr Hitler, your scores were the highest
in the class for the second exam in a month. Your father will be
pleased,” said Professor Rouscher.

A thick man, Rouscher towered over the
children. We both feared and respected him. He was the hardest
instructor in the school. This would be my final semester.

The professor dismissed class, but not
before mentioning a special seminar scheduled for the following
day. The students would start a series on interrogation and
torture. We were to spend our night studying the different methods
of interrogation used by commanding officers in the field. We
studied the methods used by the best generals in history. Many
studied as far back as ancient Greece.

I gathered my books and headed for my room.
It was in the darkness of my room where I thought about Rouscher’s
words. I wondered what the project would be. More importantly, I
worried about the torture part. It was a year ago that I’d
witnessed the torture of the Frenchman, but it still haunted my
sleep; it still haunts my sleep.