by Sven Hassel
The waiter sent a pleading look across to a Party man standing at the bar. Their eyes met.
The Party man stood up, adjusted his uniform jacket and rolled high and mighty toward Paul Bielert’s table. The waiter was standing there in a cold sweat.
‘What’s going on here?’ the Party man asked, giving the waiter a friendly slap on the shoulder and grinning condescendingly at Paul Bielert. Pretty Paul, who was leaning back in the commodious club chair, crossed his legs, taking care not to disarrange his trouser creases.
‘This gentleman is threatening me with the People’s Court and the front,’ the waiter whispered, with terror still in his voice.
‘Now, now,’ the Party man growled, thrusting a round face with a lustful mouth toward Paul Bielert, who was indifferently puffing at the long cigarette holder. ‘Don’t you realize this man is my friend?’ Like a schoolmaster he raised his finger in an admonishing gesture. ‘If anyone is going East, I’m afraid it’s you. Show your papers!’
Paul Bielert gave a venomous smile. The watery-blue healthy eye flashed ominously. He resembled a reptile hypnotizing its victim before it devours it. Slowly, extremely slowly, he put his hand into his pocket, pulled out an identification card, and with two fingers held it up under the nose of the Party man, who reacted with astonishment. He clicked his heels when he saw the red Gestapo card and read the service rank: SS Standartenführer and Kriminalrat Central Security.
For a moment Paul Bielert’s glance shifted from the Party man to the waiter. ‘Gentlemen, we’ll discuss your eastern itineraries in greater detail tomorrow morning at 10:15 in room 338 at Headquarters on Karl Muck Platz.’ His dismissed them condescendingly and continued his conversation with Elsebeth.
The waiter and the Party man heard him say to Elsebeth: ‘I pounce ruthlessly on these wretched skulks wherever I find them.’
‘Have you been to the front yourself?’ she asked softly.
‘No, not the front you’re thinking of, but another one,’ came in harsh staccato from Bielert. ‘Adolf Hitler . . .’ – he perceptibly drew himself up saying the name – ‘can use some people right here, people who take care the whole thing runs like well-oiled machinery. People who mercilessly seek out traitors and anti-social elements and watch out that the plague bacillus of defeatism won’t destroy the heroic German people. Don’t imagine our work is a bed of roses, my dear. We must harden our hearts. We must be hard as Krupp steel! Know nothing of foolish pity or childish softness. Believe me, I don’t even know what a heart is!’
She looked at him.
‘I can well believe that.’
The Party man was scolding.
‘Theo, you’ve gotten me into a stinking mess. A fellow like that should be shunned – and what do you do, you stupid pig? Get into a discussion! Even an ass like you should be able to see what he is. You can smell Stapo miles away.’
‘But, Peter, you started arguing with him yourself,’ Theo protested mildly.
‘Shut up,’ the Party man flared up. He threatened the unhappy waiter with his clenched fist. ‘Don’t you get any ideas. That’s what one gets for picking fellows like you from the gutter. But now you are . . .’ He turned down his thumb in an eloquent gesture. ‘Before a week has passed you’re going to be in Putlos or Sennelager for infantry training, and there you can shove you weak heart up your ass. Don’t dare greet me any more. I don’t know you. Never have known you and will never want to get to know you!’ He called the manager. They whispered together. Both looked across at Theo Huber standing by the buffet.
The manager nodded eagerly and answered, ‘Gladly, Herr Ortsgruppenleiter. Of course, Herr Ortsgruppenleiter. In this place we want only nice and respectable employees. Be assured of that, Herr Ortsgruppenleiter.’
Theo Huber’s former friend rubbed his hands with pleasure. He pointed openly at the waiter, who was feverishly polishing a plate.
The manager nodded and bore down on Huber. He had put on his ‘strong’ face, as he always did when something special was up. He would thrust out his lower jaw, push out his cheekbones and knit his eyebrows to a fierce-looking wad of hair. He was overjoyed the first time he saw himself like this in the mirror and discovered how much a brute and a superman he looked when he put on this mask. He rubbed his milky white, soft hands and jumped upon Theo Huber with a shower of abusive language.
Ten minutes later the waiter was putting his things together and leaving the paradise of luxury by the narrow iron staircase reserved for the staff. The rumbling steel door slammed tauntingly behind him.
He was struck by a glaring light.
Hamburg was burning.
He lay down behind some rubble. He cried. He sobbed with self-pity. His heart ached. Tears ran down his cheeks at the thought of the wonderful world that would be closed to him from now on.
Six weeks later panzer-jäger Theo Huber was sitting in a Russian peasant hut smoking a self-rolled makhorka cigarette while wearily chatting with three Russian peasants and a couple of buddies.
They were drinking vodka and playing cards. The youngest of them, a boy of seventeen, was joking with a peasant girl. They slapped their thighs and laughed deafeningly. None of the panzer-jägers, who had arrived only the day before as a substitute crew, had yet been to the front.
A swell of sound, long and growling like the howl of a wounded wild beast, reverberated through the night.
All in the hut stiffened and looked toward the window. The dirty little window high up on the wall. Then the report from the firing reached them, a muffled roll.
‘Predsmertny chas!’ whispered the little Russian girl who’d been playing with the seventeen-year-old soldier. The death song of the artillery.
‘God,’ exclaimed one of the soldiers, and at the same moment it struck. A 30 cm shell plowing its way like a hurricane, tearing up the road, knocking down fruit trees, sweeping away the big well, and blowing away the outhouse with the cattle.
But those inside the hut didn’t see all that. They heard only the swelling roar, saw the ceiling collapse and the walls tumble down on them. Poisonous fumes paralyzed their breathing.
Then it was over.
The seventeen-year-old soldier was hurled through the air and impaled on a sharply pointed, half-severed tree. He turned round like a propeller a couple of times, waved and kicked with arms and legs, and let out a long, piercing scream. Then he died.
Former waiter Theo Huber lay on his back across a beam, staring into the darkness with dull, almost glazed eyes. The heavy Russian artillery, which was pounding the German supply lines to bits with strict precision, drowned his scream.
He ran both hands over his belly. Where the pelvis had been he felt a deep hole. A mushy, jelly-like hole where a shapeless piece of steel the size of a saucer had wedged itself.
Again he gave a long moaning scream. The blood gushed over his feverish fingers.
He quieted down. The pain seemed to recede for a moment. He pressed the half torn-off leg up against him and rested his head wearily against the crossbeam. He was lying as if asleep.
‘I’m bleeding to death,’ ran through his mind.
In a naive hope of stemming the blood he pressed his hands deep into the gaping wound.
Again he screamed. The house caved in. He struggled desperately to avoid being buried in the rubble.
The leg fell away from him. It floated around in a pool of clotted blood and shreds of flesh.
He sobbed and moaned in a monotone. A violent shiver tore through him. His arms became heavy. Slowly consciousness oozed out of him.
He died almost insane from pain.
In Hamburg the dance went on below Baumwall.
Sometimes a guest would ask the manager: ‘Tell me, wasn’t there a waiter here named Theo?’
The manager would look thoughtful. ‘Theo? Nah, I can’t recall any.’
And so Theo Huber was forgotten. Thrown on a dunghill east of the river Memel. A cadaver who had had heart disease.
No one missed
Theo Huber.
New Theo’s appeared. The ‘hero-hound’ saw to that.
He prowled about in many different guises, trawled through army hospitals, guard battalions, police units, factories, and offices. Invalids, old men and boys were caught in his net.
‘Forward, comrades!’ In training camp they would sing when marching. Grinning, sadistic NCOs always ordered them to sing: ‘Es ist so schön, Soldat zu sein.’
‘Long live Greater Germany! Long live Adolf Hitler! And long live a hero’s death!’
Pretty Paul was constantly walking around. He could be seen everywhere. One day he was sitting at Police Station 32 drinking cognac with the chief of the station’s criminal department and looking out on Reeperbahn. After they’d sat around being bored for a while, they ordered two women to be searched. It took a couple of hours.
When he left the station Paul Bielert was a bit warm and somewhat tired. The ‘searched’ women had been released. Everything has its price.
Three days later a new sex murder was committed, this time in Hein Hoyer-Strasse, a few yards from Reeperbahn. Not very far from the hospital.
Kriminalrat Paul Bielert became frantic. He summoned a dozen experts and let them loose like a pack of bloodhounds with the wildest threats buzzing in their ears.
‘Don’t show up, you dead ducks,’ he roared, ‘till you can show me some results! You have five days, not a second more. Any of you who reports no success by that time will make a long but swift detour to SS Lehrdivision, the central sector of the Eastern Front, where he can croak in the swamps according to military regulations.’
Two by two they slipped out of the large gray building on Karl Muck Platz.
The sixth victim was a nurse from our hospital. A young girl of twenty-one. She had been violated in exactly the same manner as the others.
His mother, a minister, and Nazi hypocrisy were guilty of his crime.
He murdered to do good. He believed he served the God of the Church.
The thousands of prayers with his selfish mother had become a black curtain shutting out the light.
Everything that imbecile theologian had told him etched itself into his brain and darkened his understanding.
When things went wrong no one wanted to understand him.
Like so many others he was killed by a ruthless police hunting for the sake of hunting.
Tiny killed. The Legionnaire killed. All of us killed. But we did it as the lawful murderers of the State. From the moral angle a small, but nonetheless very great difference – though not for those who were killed.
‘I have never killed anybody,’ a famous man once said, ‘but many death notices have delighted me.’
X
The Sex Killer
It was Heinz Bauer who found the panties.
First we laughed and exchanged coarse jokes. But then Paul Stein pushed the newspaper under our noses. We read in amazement: As in the case of the earlier victims, the murdered woman’s panties had been robbed by the brutal unknown murderer.
‘I’ll be damned!’ Bauer exclaimed and stared perplexed at the rucksack where he had found the undies. We counted them feverishly. Six pairs! Again we counted. Right, six!
The little Legionnaire gave a long whistle. ‘Saperlotte! Six pairs of panties! And six corpses! It tallies like hell!’
Tiny craned his neck and peered curiously into the large gray rucksack beside the bed. We could see a couple of packages of rye biscuit and some Air Force underwear, neatly folded with the eagle up as prescribed in the regulations.
‘How did you find them?’ Tiny asked, poking the rucksack with his foot.
Heinz Bauer shook his head. ‘Why the hell did I have to stick my nose into his rucksack? I was only looking for something to write with and then touched something smooth with a familiar smell.’
‘Dirty pig,’ Tiny said, letting on to be annoyed. ‘Nah, the truth is you could smell those ass-cases. That’s why you dived into George’s sack.’
We five were the only ones in the room. All the others were doing fatigue duty or taking physicals.
‘Christ, what should we do?’ Bauer asked, looking around despairingly.
‘You mean, what should you do,’ Stein answered. ‘You found the holsters, not us. We don’t put our noses into other guys’ business.’
‘You rotten corpse,’ Bauer burst out angrily. ‘So you want me to sweat out this one alone, huh? Of course, you never stick your nose into anybody else’s traps, right, Judas? I wouldn’t be surprised if white wings sprouted from your back!’ He bent forward and gave Stein a menacing glance. Stein squinted and hunched his shoulders as if expecting trouble.
Bauer grinned venomously and accusingly pointed a dirty finger at him.
‘Who’s the guy who doesn’t pry into another guy’s things, you rat? Maybe it wasn’t you who pinched Tiny’s schnapps that time we were going chasing broads? What do you have to say now, you bum, huh?’
Tiny was outraged. He flew up and bellowed, ‘Holy Moses, Abraham and Jacob, if this isn’t the most low-down bunch I’ve ever been with!’ He grabbed Stein by the chest and screamed with foaming mouth: ‘You hog louse, have you committed sacrilege against Tiny?’
Stein gave out some half-smothered inarticulate sounds.
‘You deny it?’ Tiny cried, giving him a backhand slap. ‘So you want to make me use force? Me who hates using force?’
Stein shook his head in protest.
Tiny spat at him and said gently, but ominously: ‘You have abused my confidence. Given me a terrible disappointment. You’ve hurt my feelings deeply.’
Stein looked completely crushed as he hung limp in Tiny’s fists, feet off the floor.
‘I won’t say anything about pimps and guys who murder whores,’ Tiny roared in indignation, ‘but to have to be together with someone who steals from his comrades, ugh!’ He shook Stein so his head went flying back and forth. With a curse he let go his hold and spat after him. ‘As a punishment you have to steal three bottles of schnapps for me as soon as possible – but fast, fast, you crippled hero! My patience is short, and if it gives out, may Jesus Christ and all his saints show you mercy, because I won’t!’ He picked up a pair of panties from the floor and sniffed at them. ‘They still smell of pig!’
‘Shut your mouth,’ the little Legionnaire dismissed him and turned to Bauer, sitting lost-looking on his bed. ‘What have you figured out? Call the cops?’
‘The cops?’ Bauer jumped up. ‘You must be going crazy. What do you think I am. Do you think I’m a fink playing patsy with dirty cops?’
The Legionnaire nodded. ‘That’s what I thought. But something has to be done. Any suggestion?’
Bauer shook his head helplessly.
‘In that case, maybe you won’t mind me telling you what to do?’ the Legionnaire asked, and without waiting for an answer he pulled his long Russian battle knife out of his boot leg and pitched it to Bauer. ‘Use it right so we can get this over with as soon as possible.’
Bauer held the long broad knife in his hand. His eyes wandered from the knife to the Legionnaire, who sat cross-legged on his bed smoking.
‘Do you want me to kill George? You can’t expect me to do a thing like that.’
The Legionnaire looked at him in surprise. ‘Are you stupid or nuts, mon camarade? Do you want me to do it? Or Sven? Or Stein? Or maybe Tiny? You discovered the holsters. It’s your business. But because you told us about it, it’s partly our business, too. Therefore we insist that something must be done. You’re right, you can’t go to the cops. That’s out of the question. The Police long ago violated their solidarity with us. We have to get along by ourselves. George must be made harmless. He shouldn’t be loose. But we can’t lock him up because we’ve no police. He has killed six women. Now, you might give an excuse and say that a lot of people get killed. True, but this is something different, and we knew the little nurse. She was a sort of comrade. When he killed her, George did something that can’t be forgiven, because she
was also his comrade. I’m sure you see we’ve got to do something.’
Bauer closed his eyes. He had turned deathly pale. ‘I just can’t kill George! He hasn’t harmed me, after all. What you expect me to do to him is murder. I may get caught and executed – by the man with the axe.’ He shivered at the thought.
The Legionnaire got up and slowly walked up to Bauer’s bed, tore the knife out of Bauer’s hand and slid it back into his boot. He snarled: ‘Cowardly bastard! If we did what was right you would be butchered!’
Bauer rocked from side to side. He was miserable. He shrank with shame before the utter contempt of the Legionnaire.
Tiny magnanimously offered to cut George’s throat.
The Legionnaire turned his face toward him and looked at him for a long while in silence. Then he sat down on his bed again, looking probingly from Bauer to Tiny.
‘Milles diables! Do you want to cut him down just for the pleasure of it, or why?’
Tiny simply laughed. ‘That filthy whore-killer is going to knock off anyway. So I think I might as well pack him off to heaven as someone else. What the hell is the difference?’
‘Don’t you think there’s anything wrong at all in killing him?’ the Legionnaire asked, glancing sideways up at Tiny, who stood in the middle of the room. He was assiduously trying to balance a glass of water on his forehead, as he had seen a juggler do it.
Tiny answered, the glass wobbling ominously on his forehead. ‘Nah, what wrong could there be in it? George is a shit. You said that yourself, Desert Rambler.’
The Legionnaire rocked with laughter.
‘Monte la-dessus! By Allah, you’re a fine one!’ Roaring with laughter he fell back on the bed again. ‘Because George is a shit you quite coolly cut his throat.’ He slowly raised himself. With scarlet face he looked at Tiny. ‘For the sake of future society I dearly hope you’ll die a hero’s death before this war is over.’