die Stunde X

by Shaun Stafford

  She gasped, both in pain and pleasure, but Otto wasn’t concerned. He needed a release for his emotions, and she was it. Within five minutes, he was finished, and he stood up, his penis bobbing in front of him, glistening in the orange glow from the street light outside.

  She looked up at him, puzzled, hurt, but he couldn’t tell her what was wrong. He bounced from the bedroom and into the bathroom, where he sank down on the carpet and held his head in hands.

  And he cried.

  He was asleep when the Gestapo BMWs pulled up outside his house. It wouldn’t have made any difference if he had been awake. They had approached his house silently and with no lights on.

  The front and back doors were kicked in almost simultaneously, the noise echoing through the house and waking Otto, his wife and their children. As the Gestapo officers came crashing into the house, Otto leapt out of the bed, fumbled in the bedside cabinet for his pistol, a Sig Sauer P228. He didn’t know they were Gestapo officers – for some reason, he thought that they were dissidents, here to kill him.

  His wife screamed at him, and he could hear his children crying, as footsteps pounded on the stairs. The bedroom door was flung open, and a man stood framed in the light from the hallway outside.

  Otto raised his pistol and fired. The bullet blew a hole in the top of the man’s head, and he fell to the floor in a crumpled heap. There was shouting from outside the bedroom – in German. Panicking, a new fear entered Otto’s mind. These weren’t English dissidents. These were Germans.

  Gestapo!

  He heard the screams of his children, and then a voice shouted, “Günther, I am SS-Obersturmführer Loritz, Geheime Staatspolizei. You are under arrest for treason. Give yourself up. We have your children here.”

  Beside him, his wife said, “Otto, what is happening here? What are they talking about, treason?”

  “Shut up,” hissed Otto angrily, licking his lips. Sweat poured from his brow, and he wiped it away with the back of his hand. The hand gripping the pistol trembled. He heard his children crying out for him, for his wife.

  “Günther, there is no escape. Throw your gun out – now!”

  “I did not know you were Gestapo,” gasped Otto, as he looked at the dead man. “I thought … I thought you were terrorists here to kill me.”

  “Throw your gun out, Günther. There is no escape for you. We do not wish to harm you or your family, but in the event we have to force our way in, your family may well get caught up in the crossfire.”

  “Otto?”

  “Shut up,” Otto snapped at his wife. He looked at her shadowy face, rested a hand on her thigh. “I am sorry. I really am.” And he threw the pistol out of the bedroom door.

  Almost at once, three men rushed in and pinned him to the ground. They cuffed his hands behind his back and yanked him to his feet. Dressed only in a pair of underpants, he was dragged from the bedroom.

  His wife followed, gathering their two children and shoving them back into their bedroom. She bounced down the stairs after the Gestapo officers and her husband, her nightshirt flouncing up her body, revealing it to the men. None of them seemed to notice.

  They dragged Otto through the open front door.

  “Otto!” cried his wife, but Loritz stood in front of her, a sneer on his face. She tried to push past him, but he stopped her. “Get your hands off me, shit head!”

  “Frau Günther, I apologize for the damage done to your house. I will have the Ordnungspolizei come and watch you until the morning, when you can repair your doors. And the dead Gestapo officer up there will be removed as soon as possible – within the next fifteen minutes, at most. In the meantime, I would advise you not to touch him.”

  “What are you doing with my husband?”

  “He is under arrest, Frau Günther, for treason,” Loritz answered, walking to the door. Already, the BMW with Otto inside was driving off.

  Frau Günther followed Loritz out into the street, stones pricking her bare feet. The street had come alive. Lights were on in almost every house, the occupants awoken by the commotion and the gunshot.

  Loritz ignored Otto’s wife. He climbed into the passenger seat of one of the remaining two BMWs, and it screeched away from the kerbside.

  Otto’s wife could only stand and watch.

  And cry.

  48

  Otto Günther felt cold as they dragged him out of the back of the car and across the underground car park to the elevators. Dressed only in his underpants, the cool night air was biting into his flesh, much as the handcuffs bit into his wrists.

  They had beaten him for a few seconds in the back of the car, but their blows were restricted by the confined space of the car’s interior. Now, as he was hauled forcibly across the concrete surface, they struck him a few more times. Not only had he gunned down one of their comrades, but he was also a traitor.

  Otto was thrown into the elevator. His feet and toes had been cut open during the brief walk from the car, and he left blood trails on the floor. Two Gestapo officers got in the elevator with him and, the moment the doors shut, struck him with a number of blows to the body.

  Otto fell down, bruised, winded, and received a kick to the side. He though he felt a rib crack, and screamed in pain. At that, the officers ceased their assault and pulled him back to his feet. Clearly, they were under orders not to damage him excessively.

  Once the elevator reached the required floor, the doors hissed open, and Otto was pulled out into a crowd of waiting SS officers, some of them colleagues from the Sicherheitsdienst. As he was pulled along this gauntlet of men and women in both uniforms and plain-clothes, they rained punches down on him; some lashed out with kicks, others spat at him. Finally, he was dragged through a doorway at the end of the corridor and thrown to the floor.

  He recognized immediately what kind of room he was in.

  Otto looked up, his face bruised, cut, swollen, his body aching. Two Gestapo men looked down at him, smiling. They weren’t smiling to be polite or to put him at ease, he thought to himself.

  They dragged him to his feet and fixed him to the manacles that hung from the bar. Almost immediately, the specially sharpened steel edges that were like knives cut into his wrists. Otto gripped the chains, like he had seen so many prisoners doing, and the burden on his wrists was lessened.

  The Gestapo officers left the room, with him hanging from the bar for twenty minutes, before the door to the interrogation room was opened again, and two different men entered.

  One of them, overweight, wore a clean, neatly pressed suit. On his head was a hat, which he removed to reveal a his fair hair. He took a seat beside the table in the corner of the room. The second man, who also took a seat at the table, was taller than the first, but his suit was baggy, oversized and crumpled. The smarter dressed man took out a packet of cigarettes, lit one, smoked it for a few moments.

  Nobody spoke.

  Finally, the smart man said, “I am SS-Standartenführer Rauter, Geheime Staatspolizei. You are SS-Obersturmführer Otto Günther, yes?”

  “Yes,” Otto said.

  “You have been arrested for an act of treason against the Deutsches Reich. You understand that?”

  “I understand the charge, yes, but I … I do not know why I have been arrested. I am a good German, a party member–”

  “Yes, I have your record here,” Rauter said, scanning through a file he had brought in with him. The door to the chamber opened again, and two men entered, one of them short, burly. “Ah, Keitel, we have been eagerly anticipating your arrival. Herr Obersturmführer,” Rauter said to Otto, “allow me to introduce SS-Sturmscharführer Keitel. He is, for the purpose of this interview, our Folterknecht.”

  The torturer, Otto thought to himself as he watched the man called Keitel remove his jacket. This man was the torturer. And he sure looked like one too.

  Otto braced himself for a blow that didn’t come.

  Keitel seemed to notice this and smiled.

  “Herr Obersturmführer, as I sa
id, I have your record here. You are, indeed, a Nazi party member, which is good. But you were under observation by the Germanian Geheime Staatspolizei for suspect involvement with German terrorists – Vierte Reich terrorists, it says here. They had no substantial evidence, so you slipped through the net. It appears, Herr Obersturmführer, that your time has finally come.”

  “Please, tell me why I have been arrested.”

  “You were seen meeting with a Combat UK terrorist at the Adolf Hitler Denkmalhalle,” Rauter said, folding his arms. “We have photographs of the pair of you conversing.”

  Otto closed his eyes. He had thought Scott had betrayed him, but that wasn’t possible. The Gestapo had photographs, though, so how had they known where Scott was going? One of them had been under surveillance – and Otto had failed to spot that.

  “You were seen, Herr Obersturmführer, handing a document over to the terrorist. Now, I want you to tell me that terrorist’s name.” Otto blinked – perhaps they didn’t have Scott’s name. Perhaps it wasn’t Scott they had been following. Otto shook his head.

  “I do not know any terrorists,” he said. He didn’t want to name Scott, didn’t want to betray him.

  “Mm? Really? Well, tell me, Herr Obersturmführer, does the name Scott Cazelot mean anything to you.”

  Otto looked directly at Rauter, giving the game away immediately. Had Scott betrayed him? It was beginning to seem that way. It seemed as though they had pulled in Scott and got Otto’s name out of him.

  “Scott Cazelot?” Rauter repeated. “Perhaps,” he said, picking up a photograph of Scott’s face, taken in the Denkmalhalle, “This will jog your memory?”

  “I have … never seen him before.”

  “Really? Are you quite certain? Because Herr Cazelot is quite adamant that he spoke to you in the Denkmalhalle.”

  “He’s lying,” snarled Otto. Keitel punched him in the stomach, winding him.

  “Herr Obersturmführer, we have photographs of you and Herr Cazelot,” Rauter smiled, leaning back in his chair. He said, with a seemingly unconcerned and dismissive wave of the hand, “It is irrefutable evidence, Herr Obersturmführer, and you are only delaying the inevitable in obstinately remaining silent. Tell me, Otto, have you no love for the Fatherland?” Otto didn’t answer. “Or do your sympathies lie with terrorists and murderers? If that is the case, Otto, then you too will die like a terrorist, like a murderer. Naturally, you will also suffer like a terrorist and a murderer.”

  Keitel slammed a fist into Otto’s ribcage. Otto swung on the manacles, letting go of the chains, and dropping down an inch or so. The knife-edges sliced into his wrists, and he cried out in pain.

  “If you think you are in pain now, Herr Obersturmführer, then think again. Because in fifteen minutes, your concept of pain will have altered dramatically. SS-Sturmscharführer Keitel is capable of inflicting pain that you could not even imagine. He will take you to new heights of agony, and bring you back down to earth with a very hard bump.”

  As if to underline that fact, Keitel, having pulled a rubber truncheon from the inside pocket of his jacket which was hanging up on the back of the door, proceeded to batter Otto’s legs. After half a dozen blows inflicted by a man who seemed like a shark in eating feeding frenzy, Keitel stopped, and took a couple of steps back. Otto tried to move his legs – the right one felt okay, the left one throbbed and stung. It was probably fractured. His face contorted in agony, and Keitel smiled.

  “Now, Herr Obersturmführer, what is the connection between yourself and Scott Cazelot?” Rauter asked.

  “No … connection,” gasped Otto, straining to pull himself up onto the chains, to relieve the sharp pressure on his wrists. Again, Keitel hit him with the truncheon, this time concentrating his efforts on Otto’s left leg. The leg appeared fractured below the knee, and Keitel continued pounding away on the side of Otto’s shin. The lower portion of Otto’s leg moved in angles that it clearly should not have done. The pain wracked up and down Otto’s leg, a kind of grating, seething, harrowing pain that felt as though the flesh of his leg was being burnt from the bone. Otto screamed, not only because he was suffering intense pain, but because he knew that the worst was to come.

  Keitel stopped, and stepped back.

  Rauter continued with his questioning. “Herr Obersturmführer, why are you being so stubborn? If you just tell us the connection between yourself and Scott Cazelot, then we can all go home. Now, do you wish to tell us?”

  Otto didn’t, and his left leg was beaten once more. Strangely, Otto was thankful. His leg was numb, he could no longer feel the pain. It felt as though a dead weight was hanging from his body. Even his wrists no longer stung where the manacles had sliced into his flesh. He was thankful that Keitel had chosen to work on a numbing limb, rather than on one that could still feel pain.

  Still, Rauter was not satisfied, and understandably so. “Herr Obersturmführer, what was contained within the package you handed to Cazelot?” Otto closed his eyes, gritted his teeth and shook his head, preparing himself for another onslaught. This time, Keitel began working on Otto’s right leg, and within seconds, it too was fractured above the knee, the heavy thighbone splitting with a sickening, wet crack. Otto screamed loudly, tried to move out of the way of Keitel’s blows, but his body wouldn’t react. Instead, it hung limply before the frenzied torturer, who swung the truncheon violently into his victim’s legs, again and again. Otto thought he’d passed out, because he couldn’t recall Keitel stopping, but Rauter was talking to him once again.

  “–are not helping yourself, Otto. I may call you Otto, yes? It does not seem right calling you Herr Obersturmführer anymore. And Herr Günther is so impersonal. I feel we know each other well enough for me to use your forename.”

  Otto opened his eyes, stared into the unforgiving face of SS-Standartenführer Rauter, and let out a deep breath. He was in agony, and they hadn’t even begun – not really. Things could get a lot worse. More barbaric than he could imagine. They’d broken his legs – they would probably break his arms too. But he’d known Folterknechts to do far worse than that. Some paralysed their victims with drugs used during surgery, and then removed their eyes, sliced off their genitals, skinned them.

  Otto squeezed his eyes tightly shut and tried to think. They’d obviously arrested Scott. Whether they’d beaten Otto’s name out of him or whether he’d been identified by a colleague was immaterial. What they didn’t have was the information they required the most – what was inside the package.

  Otto could either tell them, have his torture over, but speed up his execution. Or he could drag it out, and let the torturer vent his frustrations on Otto’s body. And then they’d execute him, and they’d have to draw their own conclusions as to what information he’d given to Scott.

  That might mean, Otto thought, that they would realize he had seen the itinerary regarding the Führer’s visit. In which case, security measures would be tightened even further, and they’d probably even call off the visit.

  If, on the other hand, he gave them information that would lead their enquiries in a different direction, Combat UK’s operation to assassinate the Führer would be safe.

  Otto decided he would hold out just for a few more minutes – he didn’t want them to think he was giving up too easily.

  Rauter said, “Otto? The package, if you will. Tell us what was in the package.”

  “I do not remember any–” Keitel cut off his sentence. This time, the truncheon beat him in the stomach, around his kidneys. And Keitel wasn’t pulling his blows. He was hitting Otto with all of his strength.

  Otto screamed, but Keitel wouldn’t stop. If he didn’t stop soon, Otto’s internal organs would be severely damaged beyond repair. Not that it would make any difference – they’d still execute him.

  But Otto wasn’t thinking about that. He was thinking about the here and now, and about the pain he was in.

  “All right!” he howled, sobbing. “Stop! Okay? Please … stop.”

  Imm
ediately, Keitel stopped.

  “Yes, Otto,” Rauter asked.

  “I will tell you.”

  “Tell me what?”

  “What was in the damn package.”

  “I knew you would come around to our way of thinking, Otto. Go ahead, please.”

  “It was a letter, not a package.”

  “And the contents of this … letter?”

  “It was a list … a list of names.”

  “What names?”

  “Names and addresses,” gasped Otto.

  “Of whom?”

  “Of English collaborators.”

  “Name them.”

  So Otto named fifteen collaborators. He was confident that, if asked again, he could name them in the same order. He had a very good memory that certainly wasn’t affected by the pain he was in.

  Rauter got to his feet, as did the taller man with him. Rauter threw his cigarette on the floor, crushed it underfoot, and then walked through the door without saying another word.

  When the door closed behind him and the taller man, Keitel started again.

  This time, the pain didn’t stop.

  Not until Otto passed out.

  49

  They’d left Scott hanging upside down in his interrogation chamber, his broken arms hanging limply before him, throbbing, ballooned up to ridiculous proportions, the bones sticking through the flesh. He’d been there for more than an hour. The torturer had left ten minutes after Rauter and Loritz.

  Scott, unable to rest because of the position he was in, had plenty of time to think things over. They wanted to know who the man was in the photograph, but that man worked in the building where Scott now was. Surely it was just a question of time before they discovered his identity. He was amazed, at first, that they hadn’t recognized Otto, but it was ludicrous to believe that any SS officer could know all the hundreds of other officers who worked in the building.

  However Scott could see that they would learn his identity before too long, and when they did, Otto would be pulled in for questioning also. And perhaps Otto wouldn’t stand up to the questioning as well as Scott had.