by Barry Sadler
The civilian population of East Prussia was in flight, heading back to the borders of Germany. They knew they would be safe there, the Führer had promised it.
The silence was broken only by the sounds of the SD men stuffing their faces with sausage and bread, gurgling it down with white wine. The prisoner was given nothing and he was nothing but dead meat anyway. If nothing else, he did give them a reason to put some distance between them and the advancing Russian hordes.
Langer's face was drawn and thin from days of little rest, which had worn him down to a ragged, thin-faced wretch who didn't look to be particularly dangerous, especially in chains. That is, until you looked close at the eyes and the steel-set jaw; then you knew the man was a chained animal, capable of tearing your arms off with his bare hands. Yes, the animal definitely needed to be properly restrained.
Spring was close, and green shoots stuck their heads up through patches of melting snow. Life in its endless cycle of birth and death was not to be denied; it went on. Langer rode for the most part with his eyes closed, getting what rest he could. He knew when they reached Germany there would be little of that for him. One town after another fell behind them and the waves of panic-stricken civilians thinned to a trickle. They felt safe here, but the soldiers knew different; the war was finished and the Russians were going to bleed Germany until there was nothing left. The Russian soldiers had been promised as their reward the women of Germany and everything they could carry off. It was to be the greatest rape in history.
The bumping of the car jogged his memory. They were all gone now, Teacher, Manny, Yuri and Stefan, all gone except for Gus, that rambling bear of a man. A tick at the corner of Langer's face tried to turn into a smile but failed. The last time he had seen Gus alive was outside of Osterode when the headhunters were taking him back; he was strolling down the road heading back to Germany with a pig following him on a leash, the pig blissfully ignorant of its destiny. Yes, Gus was heading back home singing off key as loud as he could, the familiar strains of "Ich hat eine Kamaraden," keeping time with a bayonet. How he had gotten past the head-hunters, Langer could only guess. But if anyone could get back it would be Gus. Langer wished him well; at least there would be one left.
They reached the border of Germany the next morning. The immaculate border guards checked their papers and waved them through. At Landsberg they handed their cargo over to an Obersturmnführer with the insignia of the Totenkopf Deathshead Unit on his collar and made their exit. Even they did not want to hang around any longer than necessary. This place had the antiseptic odor of a clinic, a place dealing with death and pain.
The Obersturmnführer adjusted steel-rimmed glasses and peered at the documents stating the prisoner's case. Taking his time and pursing his lips and clicking his tongue over several times, while Langer stood at rigid attention (old habits die hard), Obersturmnführer Meyer removed his glasses and rose from his desk. Shaking his head from side to side, he walked around the object of his attention, keeping a slight distance, not from fear but because the prisoner hadn't bathed in some time and still wore the mud of the eastern front on him. "You are really in a lot of trouble." The words were spoken gently and quietly, "You really are.
you know. I don't know why they had you brought back here anyway, you should have just been shot where they found you, but orders are orders." He chuckled. "Ours not to reason why, ours but to do or die, nicht war? and my orders read that you are to be sent on from here." He rapped on the door and two SS men entered. Pointing to Langer, he said, "Take him, have him cleaned up and give him a fresh uniform with no insignia. Army not SS! and keep him chained at all times. You may remove the manacles only when he is dressing; he's dangerous according to his files. However, he is not to be harmed in any way except by a higher authority, though God knows why. Remove him!"
Langer had to endure the humiliation of a complete body search, which meant every hole and orifice of his body was checked by rubber-gloved guards who poked and prodded, feeling for anything such as a tube of money concealed in the rectum or a poison capsule hidden in a tooth, but there was nothing, and half reluctantly they gave up their efforts and permitted the prisoner to dress after being deloused and scrubbed. He was fed white bread from the SS kitchen and given chicken in a cream sauce with vegetables. He ate with a spoon, as he was not permitted to use any sharp instruments. It was the first solid food he had eaten in four days and he had had nothing as exotic as white bread or stewed chicken for months. He almost threw it back up.
He was transported by truck to a nearby field and loaded along with his escort into a HE-111 converted for troops or passengers from its regular use as a bomber. Staying out of the corridors that the allies used for bombing runs on Germany, they winged high over the Fatherland, peaceful now from this distance; but below a nation was dying. After a flight of several hours, they touched down, the wheels screeching as the brakes gripped and dug in to stop the Heinkel. A Mercedes was waiting at the door when they stopped. Two more SS men with machine pistols in readiness stood by on motorcycles to escort the car and its passengers into the mountains. Langer noted carefully concealed bunkers that housed antitank guns and heavy machine guns all along the route leading to their destination. All the crews wore the camouflage patterns peculiar to the SS.
Stahlberg Castle rose out of the morning mist, a remnant left over from the feudal days of Germany. It looked more like a picture postcard than a real building. Strong, massively built from the native mountain stones, it had lasted centuries with little change, probably much less change than humanity had achieved since the bloody days of its construction. The Stahlberg. Even the name sounded ominous.
The terrain immediately adjacent to the castle was well guarded by the elite fanatics of the SS regiment Adolf Hitler. Young faces that had known defeat watched him through serious eyes. Their commanders were battle-tested veterans of Russia and Europe that had somehow managed to retain their fanaticism for the New Order even in the face of disaster. They had no god but Adolf Hitler and as with religious fanatics, to die in the service of your god was the greatest accomplishment one could hope for. They had the look of martyrs about them, men seeking their own perverse form of paradise and ready to kill or be killed for it.
Once inside the Stahlberg, the atmosphere changed to one of a time long past. Arms and armor lined the halls. Flags and pennants of battles long forgotten added bits of faded color to the gray stone. Interspersed were badly done paintings of the castle's former masters, with stern, righteous faces that glowered down on all who passed beneath as if sitting in judgment.
The floors were polished by a couple of Polish slaves who kept their eyes averted from those of their overlords. Slaves were not permitted to look directly at a member of the master race without permission. They too waited with a resignation to their own coming finality. They knew that they would never live to return home even if the Germans lost the war. They were dead men, they merely hadn't been buried yet, but knew that time was drawing close.
The escorting officer rapped once sharply on a single door, waited a moment and ushered his charge inside to stand in front of a plain, businesslike desk devoid of ornamentation except for a single telephone. The walls were bare save for the black and silver flag of the SS standing in the right corner.
More impressive was the man behind the desk, Brigadeführer Erich Zeitsler wearing the uniform of the Waffen SS, the only uniform in the castle that wasn't black. Around the neck he wore the Knight's Cross with oak leaves and swords. The only other decoration to break the plainness of the uniform was a gold party badge. The man's face had none of the look of the fanatic common to the rest of the staff he had seen. The face was strong, square jawed under close-cropped, graying, ash-blond hair. Pale-blue eyes looked him over with obvious curiosity. Intelligent, cold eyes. With a flick of his hand he dismissed the escort, leaving them alone.
The SS general indicated for his guest to sit in the single wooden-back chair in front of his desk. Langer's
manacles clanked as he obeyed the unspoken order.
Langer cast a quick look around the stone-walled room, noting a single window set about five feet from the floor. Zeitsler smiled and spoke for the first time, his voice steady, the words measured and precise. He shook his finger schoolmasterishly. "I really wouldn't consider it if I were you. It's a sixty-foot drop to the ground, where you would land in a stone courtyard in which a machine gun and its crew are positioned. And if you somehow managed to free yourself from your chains and take me prisoner it would still serve no purpose. My guards have their orders and they wouldn't hesitate a heartbeat to shoot me down to stop you, Herr Longinus."
Langer froze at the name. "You have me mistaken, Herr Brigadeführer, my name is Langer, Carl Langer."
Zeitsler smiled and shook his head, opening a desk drawer. He removed the contents. Several photographs were visible from where Langer sat and some older documents looking like parchment, old, very old. His heart skipped a beat. He sat tense, fully alert, awaiting the next move with a definite feeling of foreboding pervading the atmosphere of the sterile office.
"You may relieve yourself of playing at charades. We know exactly who you are." He tapped the folder. "It's all in here, including the report of your stay at the sanctuary of Elder Dacort. Indeed, we know all about you. How long has it been since you were called by your true name, Casca Rufio Longinus? No matter." He waved a hand dismissing the unimportant thought. "We have been looking for you for some time now. We lost sight of you in the twenties when the world went to pieces following the depression. But when we received your name from the Geheime Staats Polizei they also sent along your paybook, which they found after you killed three of our men. With that a complete investigation was launched as a matter of routine. There is no Carl Langer. You took the name from a tombstone in Bayreuth and acquired your other papers after that. Indeed, we have been awaiting your arrival for some time. You would be flattered to know how many man-hours and how much money have been spent on seeing that you could join us. Indeed, you have arrived at a most opportune time." He checked his watch. "In a few minutes all your questions will be answered. In the meantime you will remain in this room until someone comes for you. You are our guest and food will be brought. But please, no tricks. We know all about—how should we say it?—your condition." He laughed softly. "And as you know, there are worse things than dying." He left closing the door behind him, but Langer knew he was being watched. The general's words echoed in his mind, worse things than dying . . . Sweat broke out on his forehead.
Did the SS general know? And if so, to what purpose was he brought here? What could the SS want with him? Questions, too many of them.
No longer thinking of himself as Carl Langer, Casca Longinus rose from his seat and looked over the papers on the desk. He knew the general had left them out in the open for that purpose. The story, the truth, was there. Not everything, but enough. They did know.
There was nothing to be used in the room as a weapon. Even the flagpole would be of little use against the machine guns and hundreds of men here who would just overpower him. And as the general said, there were worse things than dying. He sat back down to wait.
Langer felt familiar with the stone walls of the medieval castle. He passed stone-faced guards standing rigidly at their posts with faces pale in the glow of the bare light bulbs, spaced every ten or so feet throughout the halls of the castle. Unsmiling, serious faces that stood in pale deathlike contrast to the black of their dress SS uniforms, each armed with a Schmeisser machine pistol slung from the shoulders by the straps ready for instant use, as was evidenced by the fact that the cocking levers were drawn full back ready to instant firing. They knew they were chosen, the elite. Ready to die for the Führer, God and the Reich.
His escort had the same vacuous expressions, the dead eyes, that would only come alive when they were witnessing the pain of another. They halted at the end of one corridor before massive, ancient wooden doors carved with the mystic runic symbols of the ancient Nordics, a stylized oak tree wrapped about with the twining tendrils of the great serpent. Standing in front of the Laers he felt a sense of foreboding that there was something evil behind the doors.
The guards escorting stopped, the one on the right raised a massive brass knocker in the shape of a Viking's head and let it drop once. The sharpness of the heavy brass head striking sounded once, heavily. The two guards then placed themselves one on each side of the door facing back down the hallways they had come from. Not a word had been spoken in the time since they had taken him from his rooms, and it appeared there would be none now.
With no sound the well-oiled hinges worked smoothly, holding the massive weight of the single door that swung to the inside. From the darkened interior came but one short command: Enter.
The door swung silently shut behind him, leaving him and the voice in a small anteroom lit only by the flickering glow of two oil braziers giving off a lightly pungent, scented aroma. The voice belonged to a man dressed in monk's habit resembling those the Franciscan monks wore, dark rough cloth. A hood covered the face so the features were indistinguishable in the gloom. A rope for a belt tied the waist loosely. The figure motioned for Langer to follow, leading him to a dark curtain of wine silk embossed with the symbols of the fish and cross.
The curtains parted. . . .
Langer's heart stopped for a moment with his throat constricting. ... A line of oil braziers identical to those in the anteroom lined the aisle and the walls of the long narrow room, illuminating the fifty or so kneeling figures all dressed identically to the monk next to him, their backs turned, facing the end of the room.
All attention from the kneeling monks was focused at the end of the hall, where superimposed over a life-size wooden cross was . . . THE SPEAR . . . Mine, it's back again, am I forever to be haunted by not only the Jew but that damned thing, too?
One kneeling figure at the front detached itself from the line of worshipers, rose and walked down the aisle to face him. The face was hidden in the shadows, but there was a familiarity to the walk, the body english of the approaching monk.
A hand raised itself and moved the hood back to show the face. Round plain features with steel-rimmed glasses. Heinrich Himmler, Reichführer SS, spoke to his guest. "Welcome, Longinus, welcome to the Brother of the Lamb. It has been a long time since you were our guest. But as you see, we survived as you do, and whither thou goest so go we."
Taking Casca by the arm, he led him from the chamber through a side door and down a narrow hall to his personal chambers. Once inside he removed the cassock; underneath was the more famil
iar black uniform of the SS. . . . Motioning for Casca to sit, Himmler sat himself opposite him behind a plain wooden desk. The room was bereft of any ornamentation other than a single picture of Adolf Hitler sitting on Himmler's desk in a plain silver frame. Speaking softly, the head of the SS adjusted his glasses with a fingertip, "Well, now, Casca Rufio Longinus, I regret that we here at the Haven must be deprived of your company without first having a proper opportunity to show some old-fashioned hospitality."
Casca spoke for the first time. "What do you mean, in the weeks remaining?"
"The war is lost, and we have many things yet to do. Those brothers you saw in the chapel are the last of our order in Germany to be sent to other countries. This experiment is at an end and it has been for our purposes reasonably successful."
Noting the consternation on his guest's face, he continued. "Perhaps I should enlighten you a little on the matter. It won't make any difference if you know. It was the Brotherhood who brought Hitler to power, to serve our purposes, which were and are the destruction of the Jews, who next to you we detest above all things on this earth." A pious tone came into his voice. "You killed our Lord Jesus, but it was the Jews who made it possible; you were merely a tool. For that crime the Jews must be erased. That was the purpose of the final-solution program and it worked quite well for the short time we were in operation. Somewhere between
five and six million of them have been eliminated; that accounts for about twenty-five percent of the total world Jewish population." He touched his finger tips together under his chin. "Not a bad start, would you say?"
Casca said nothing, merely stared in shock. For a soldier to kill was one thing, but the way this mild-looking man spoke of the deaths of millions who never had a chance to even defend themselves or fight back, was a horror his mind couldn't grasp.
Pleased at the effect he was having the Reich Führer continued. "Adolf Hitler was merely a member of the second circle of the Brotherhood and until forty-three we had him well under control.
"But then he began to think he was the real force and genius behind all that had taken place, and as you know, once he began to exercise his own judgment on military and political matters, the scene rapidly deteriorated. I must confess we were a little careless in letting him get so much personal control of things, but that's history or soon will be. And even now we must occasionally give in to his whims, at least, as I said, for the next few weeks. By then the war will be over and Hitler will be dead. So it is necessary to send you to Berlin. He wishes to see you.