The Secret of Lions (26 page)

Once my breathing returned to normal, I
headed toward the nearly destroyed building. Inside, smoke filled
the air. I could make out the charred remains of one of the
soldiers that I’d killed. Fire still burned throughout the
building. I tried to make it to the bottom of the stairs but
couldn’t.

“Anna!” I called up to the second floor.
There was no answer.

I searched the pockets of my coat. I found
the stiletto. It was the only weapon I had left.

Suddenly, the fires of Warsaw and the
violence that surrounded me induced a flashback. A memory flooded
my eyes. It was my mother’s death. She whispered a name, and I said
it aloud, “Willem.”

I looked up at the second floor from the
street. Fire raged from the windows. I walked around the building
and looked for a way up. But the upper floor was only accessible
from the stairs. At the lowest wall, I continuously leapt up and
tried to grab the roof. I jumped up over and over again, but I
couldn’t reach it. I jumped until I couldn’t jump anymore, until my
knees hurt and my joints strained.

Finally my body gave up. I could no longer
jump. I couldn’t even stand. I lay back on the pavement. I lay
there watching the building burn to ash. I lay there watching my
friend and first love burn to ash.

Part Five

Savages Unleashed

Chapter Ten

Blood in the

Artist’s Brush

Poland, 1939

77

Standing on the street, I was different. I
had changed. I was virtually unrecognizable to anyone who might
have known me.

To the soldiers, I was a pampered schoolboy.
Because I was the Führer’s son, they thought that I was a spoiled
brat. Ever since I came out into the public eye, people saw that I
was given everything, that I was spoiled. They didn’t know the
truth. Few of Hitler’s colleagues knew who I really was.

Anna was dead. My life was a lie. All I felt
was a smoldering fury. It raged inside me, consuming me like a
forest fire.

I walked down the street. My cold eyes were
glazed over and stunned. A cool breeze blew around me. It shifted
my torn, ragged coat. Pallid stains and soot covered my clothes.
They were blackened from the fire. My heart was blackened from the
fire.

As I continued toward the building where I
was supposed to be sleeping, soldiers passed by. Most of them
stopped to stare at me. The ones who recognized me saluted me
immediately. They were confused to see me on the battlefield and
covered in filth. In fact, most were shocked to see me at all. For
the most part, my existence was more of a legend than anything
else.

Many of the soldiers were just beginning
their day. Some went to breakfast. Others went to their assigned
units. As for the conquest of Poland, the bulk of the job was
finished. The purpose of their presence now was to police the new
German territory.

Some clean-cut officers walked by me. They
whispered something as they passed. For a moment, one officer
considered speaking to me, but he could see the anger in my eyes.
He had seen me before but never like this. My anger was reminiscent
of Hitler’s anger.

I did not give them a second look. I
continued on toward the federal building, to my temporary quarters.
Not sure of what to do, I decided to speak with my father
immediately.

However, in the corner of my eye, I saw a
large man crossing the street away from me. The man walked into a
bakery with a chainsaw strapped over his shoulder. I saw that blood
stains covered the rusted blade. I clenched my fists tightly. My
rage was fueled further by seeing him, the man who had killed
Anna.

Unexpectedly, I was surrounded by a band of
young soldiers marching down the street. Still, my eyes focused
only on the bakery the large soldier had entered. Through the front
window, I watched as the man wielding the chainsaw sat down across
from other members of the Todesgruppen.

The men wore tired expressions on their
faces. They must have spent the rest of the night searching for me.
It didn’t matter. They were in front of me now.

I walked toward the bakery before I realized
it. Along the way, three of the young marching soldiers broke ranks
to stop me. They were not sure who I was or even that I was
German.

“Where do you think you’re going, son?” the
oldest, highest-ranking soldier asked me. I looked at his hand,
which was suddenly grabbing my shoulder.

I peered up at him with a scowling
stare.

“Get your hand off me,” I demanded.

The soldier began to reach for my wrist to
detain me. Without thinking, without faltering, I slipped the
stiletto out of my jacket. With one hand covering his mouth, I
stabbed the blade twice into his heart. In an instant, the soldier
became lifeless, leaning against me.

The other two soldiers were stuck in the
moving crowd. I took advantage of this. I propped the body against
a severely bent street lamp, but not before stealing the Luger from
his holster.

His friends, the pursuing soldiers, lost
sight of me. There were too many people in the crowd to keep up. I
left my soot-covered jacket on the ground to throw them off my
trail. I continued up the sidewalk.

Now I was standing right in front of the
bakery window. I looked down at the gun and checked the ammo. There
were seven bullets in it. Looking back through the window, I
counted six men seated at the table, one standing by the door, one
leaning against the back wall, and the last one came out of the
bathroom on the farthest end of the room. There was a total of nine
soldiers.

Some of the men were not responsible for
Anna’s death, but most were. I didn’t care about the others. I held
the stiletto in one hand and the gun in the other.

Through the window, I saw that some of the
soldiers stared back at me. I couldn’t tell if they were a part of
the Todesgruppen or not. I knew for sure that the large man, whose
back was to me, was the same man who had killed Anna. I could have
returned to my room. I could have ignored him, but I couldn’t stand
for that.

I noticed for the first time that the
soldiers were playing cards. They all stopped after seeing me. I
attracted their attention because I stared at them so intensely. I
opened the door and entered the bakery.

One of the soldiers sitting across from the
big man stood up and signaled for me to leave. Another soldier,
standing in the doorway to the washroom, wiped both of his hands on
a white towel. The other soldiers looked relaxed. I noticed that
four of them carried Lugers.

Their guards were down. None of them feared
me. This would be my advantage.

Again, the soldier demanded I leave. When it
was apparent I was not going to abide, he backed out of his chair
and moved toward me. I waited for him to get closer and then I
lunged at him with the stiletto. I jabbed the blade three times
into his chest before any of the others reacted.

I pulled in close to the dying soldier and
used his body as a human shield. I fired a single shot at the man
standing in the doorway of the bathroom. The bullet tore through
the washcloth that he held out in front of his face. Blood
splattered across it.

Rapidly, I fired a couple of rounds into the
first soldier to brandish his pistol. The man returned fire as he
was jerked off his feet. He accidentally shot the shoulder of the
large man seated across the table, the one I was after.

The remaining soldiers, except for the large
man, leapt to their feet, guns drawn. I fired my gun in rapid
succession at them. The table held most of them in place for me.
The rest shuffled in multiple directions, looking for cover.

Clumsily, they ran into each other. I shot
two of them in the back, two in the chest. I purposely missed the
chainsaw man. I wanted to save him for last.

The last man to survive my attack could see
the room clearly, and he faced me holding a gun. He fired several
rounds at me. Each bullet shredded into the back of my human
shield. Except for one bullet; this one whizzed past me and out the
bakery’s front window. The window shattered, alerting the soldiers
outside. They brandished their machine guns, turning their
attention to the little bakery.

I didn't care about them. I only wanted
revenge. I returned fire at the last soldier standing. With one
round left, I shot him in the center of his chest. He fell back
onto another man who lay dying on the ground. I slipped the
stiletto out of my human shield’s chest, where I had basically used
it as a handle to control his movements. Savagely, I let his
bullet-riddled body fall to the ground.

On the street, an SS officer ordered his
unit to approach the bakery and investigate the violent commotion.
From the corner of my eye, I noticed them gathering outside the
bakery’s front doors.

While I examined the entrance, the large man
dashed beyond the bodies and through a swinging door that led into
the kitchen. I started to chase after him before I saw a weapon
that was much better than my stiletto leaning against the wall: the
chainsaw. I dropped the stiletto and picked up the chainsaw.

It was heavy, but I was so overcome with
rage that my blood boiled. I felt no struggle in lifting and
wielding the chainsaw. I turned the ignition switch a couple of
times. The motor roared to life like a mechanical lion. The chain
rattled as it traveled around the blade.

I pursued the large man into the
kitchen.

Beyond the double swinging doors, the large
man searched frantically for a weapon of his own, but there was
nothing he could use against the chainsaw. The kitchen was full of
rolling pins, cake utensils, and baking sheets. A terrified
expression consumed his face. He fell to his knees like he was
going to beg for his life. Instead, he trembled beneath me.

Suddenly, I noticed his face was distorted.
Someone had recently broken his nose. One of his eyes was mashed
shut. Also, the man didn’t speak; instead, he moaned. I realized
his jaw was broken.

A mental image flashed in my mind. It was a
repressed memory. It seemed recent. It was a moment that I had
blacked out of my memory, a blip of me in the act of beating this
man’s face in with the butt of an empty shotgun.

A fragmented smile cracked on my face.
Suddenly, my mind flashed again to the forgotten memory. This flash
turned into a living memory that flooded my mind. My lips unhinged,
forming a smile as I watched the entire scene unfold.

I remembered every piece as if it were being
played back in front of me on the white walls of the bakery's
kitchen.

78

I had a flashback to when I lay on the
ground, only hours before.

Suddenly, I remembered everything.

My body was coiled up near the burning
building where Anna had died. My eyes opened and suddenly I was on
my feet. The stiletto was in my coat pocket. Anna’s screams filled
my ears.

I ran around the building and found a
burning fire escape. I heard footsteps from above. A soldier
wielding a shotgun crawled through an open window on the second
floor and made his way down the fire escape.

He doused the flames with some kind of
extinguisher mix. It killed enough of the flames so that he could
climb down safely. He began descending. Before he set foot onto the
gravel, I jerked him off the ladder by his legs. His body slammed
down onto the street. I plunged my knee into his larynx, silencing
him. He tried to fight back, but my weight restrained him from
screaming.

I took the shotgun from him.

Once again, I heard Anna scream. Quickly, I
stood up; my eyes traced the tiers of the fire escape to the top
floor. Without thinking, I fired the shotgun into the soldier’s
stomach. Startled by my own action, I peered down. The soldier
squirmed around. Most of his guts stretched out across his chest
and pelvis. It was a disgusting sight.

I winced in complete horror at what I had
done.

Abruptly, a figure appeared on the landing
above me. It was the sniper.

“Who are you?” the sniper yelled.

I realized his mistake before he had. The
sniper came out onto the landing with his weapon relaxed. He should
have been more careful.

Reacting quickly, I pumped the shotgun,
reloading the chamber with a new shell. I fired twice at the sniper
as he reached for his rifle.

The shells blew two large chunks off the
man’s right and left shoulders. Within seconds, two severed arms
clumped down onto the landing. The man screamed and fell onto the
railing. He dangled for a moment before falling to the ground,
hard. His body bounced once on the ground. Moments later, he
stopped screaming.

I pumped the shotgun again. I felt
incredible, powerful.

I ascended the fire escape. The second floor
was mostly clear of flames. I climbed through an open window and
into an office. I quickly glanced over the room. It was empty.

Then, I heard Anna’s screams coming from
down the hall. I followed them through the darkness. I ran down a
corridor and turned a corner. As the wallpaper pattern changed into
a new pattern of green stripes, I noticed through an open doorway a
pair of moving shadows. I entered the room and saw the large
chainsaw soldier. His fist pulverized the once beautiful face of my
Anna.

“Get off her!” I screamed, charging into the
room. The large man leaned toward me as I charged. I fired the
shotgun, but nothing happened. I pumped it and squeezed the trigger
again, but nothing came out. I was out of ammunition.

The large man jumped to his feet, chainsaw
in hand, and swung the blade at me. I deflected the blade with the
shotgun. The force of the large soldier’s swing was so powerful
that it knocked me completely off balance. I flew over a nearby oak
desk, dislodging a stack of papers.

I rolled onto the ground and dropped the
shotgun. Lying on the floor, I could see Anna’s body across the
room. She slumped over. I studied her quickly; there was no sign of
consciousness or even life.