Horses of the North

by Robert Adams

  "Heinrich Himmler had always hated me and deeply envied my behind-the-scenes influence on my protégé, and after the try to blow up the Fuhrer failed so disastrously, Himmler accused me of being implicated and ordered my arrest. I fled Berlin and, after assuming the identity of a fellow surgeon who had died only the day before in an air raid on Magdeburg, I used his Soldbuch and orders to get me to the Western Front, then arranged to be captured by the American army, which presented no great difficulty in my unit's sector, so fluid was the front then become.

  "The medical officer of the Wehrmacht I was become—one Hauptmann Klaus Rudolf von Klippe—was well treated by his initial captors, only cursorily questioned by a tired, overworked intelligence officer who spoke very poor German, worse French and most ungrammatical English. After many weeks of waiting and of traveling, Hauptmann von Klippe arrived at Camp Trinidad, Colorado, U.S.A., and he there remained until quite late in the year of 1946, practicing his profession (for which he was paid by the U.S. Department of Defense), living quite comfortably and eating better than most any German then still in Germany.

  "Repatriated to Germany in 1947, Hauptmann von Klippe disappeared, ceased to exist, which was not at all a difficult thing or an unusual occurrence in the Germany of those bleak days of defeat and national dismemberment.

  "I then lived in Switzerland for a short while after I had claimed and taken possession of certain funds from a numbered account established years before in anticipation of just such a contingency. Then, by way of contacts in the Vatican, I made my way to South America, supposedly one Hauptsturmfiihrer Alois Schmidt, but traveling under the passport of Karl Herbert Bucher provided by the Vatican.

  "Friend Milo, I know that many people thought that the Fuhrer actually survived the debacle of the defeat of die Dritten Deutschen Reich, that he faked his death and escaped to Spain or to South America as did so many others, but I do not, cannot, so believe and I possess the very best of bases for my lack of belief.

  "You see, I became connected with the ODESSA network, and I traveled all over South and Central America, as well as to Spain, Portugal, the Near East and parts of Africa, on their behalf, and if he had been in hiding I would surely have found him, for no matter how he might have had his physical attributes changed, he could not have changed his mental makeup, and that I would have instantly recognized.

  "Oh, yes, we are most difficult to kill. Mere cyanide or a bullet in the brain would not have accomplished the purpose. But, because we know ourselves, a suicide would have been very easy and could have been accomplished most painlessly, as well. Even so long ago, there were drugs available which might have been used by trained personnel in such a way as to have frozen the action of the lungs for sufficient time to cause the organism to run out of oxygen and so die. Then a trusted associate could have fired a bullet into the head and the body could have been borne up to ground level, soaked with petrol and burned.

  "This would, of course, have required complete cooperation on the Fuhrer's part, but I think that his despondency at the foiling of all his plans and hopes and aspirations nurtured for so very long might have rendered him suicidal, knowing his mind as well as I did. Other causative factors might have been the announced intentions of his friend Josef Goebbels to take not only his own life but those of Frau Goebbels and all of his children, the deaths or desertions of so many men he had liked and trusted over the years and last, but far from least, the unhealthy influence of the Braun woman, who was at best a borderline manic-depressive personality and harbored suicidal tendencies almost constantly. She never was good for him, but he would hear no scintilla of her true nature from anyone, no matter how close or sincere.

  "In 1975, I entered Germany on a tourist visa as an Uruguayan citizen, traveled on in slow, leisurely stages to Switzerland and drew upon my last untouched account. With these funds, I returned again to Germany and, through certain persons, was able to purchase a new identity as a citizen of the Federal Republic and a physician.

  "Then, in 1980, I took advantage of the shortage of medical practitioners in the United States of America, emigrated and married an American-born woman of Germanic descent. Nurturing pleasant memories of my so-enjoyed and most comfortable captivity in Colorado, I moved there and set up a practice in an affluent suburb of Denver. It so happened that my wife and I were looking over investment property in Wyoming when the missiles were launched and Denver died.

  "As I am certain that you recall, friend Milo, 'chaotic' is a very mild term for the two weeks that followed the War, and in the interests of simple safety for my wife if for no other reason, I decided to remain in our hotel suite in Casper rather than try to make it back to who knew what in my home area.

  "Then those horrible, deadly plagues began, killing ninety-five or ninety-six out of every hundred who contracted them, and I, like every other person with even a soupcon of medical training or experience, was desperately needed in the overflowing hospitals and makeshift wards in commandeered buildings. My dear wife, Brigitte, had been a registered nurse when I met and wedded her, and she insisted on joining me in my labors despite the risk.

  "The emergency brought us all together as equals—doctors, surgeons, nurses, osteopaths, chiropractors, dentists, medical technicians of all sorts, paramedicals, midwives, veterinarians, pharmacists, morticians, orderlies, even sitters and military veterans with antique medical-corps training. But those terribly contagious plagues quickly weeded out almost all of the volunteer staff despite the most stringent precautions, and the man or the woman working beside you in the morning might well be just another dying patient before the fall of that night. Poor Brigitte lasted through three weeks of work in that hellish charnel house, then she came down with a combination of the two worst, most incurably deadly varieties, and, seeing the inevitable, I stole enough of the proper drug to give her a quick, painless death, for she had been to me a very good and loving wife.

  "Being what I am, of course, I neither sickened physically nor died. Although I grieved over the loss of my sweet Brigitte and missed her terribly for a while, I did recover in time and then saw for me and my talents a new and a pressing need. No leaders were left alive among the few pitiful survivors still rattling about in the almost empty city of Casper. Food stocks were perilously low, and no one seemed to know just what to do, how to go about the business of remaining alive. So I took over, took command, and won them all over to me with my abilities to so do.

  "I organized the survivors, disciplined them, had certain of them do a thorough inventory of our remaining resources and supplies, then set up rationing of food and fuel for the remainder of that mild winter. With the spring thaw, those with any knowledge or experience of farming were set to preparing selected land for the harrowing, plowing and planting, while others were sent out into the surrounding countryside to bring back cattle, horses, sheep, swine, goats, domestic fowl, seeds, farming machinery and equipment and all of the thousand-and-one other necessities.

  "Knowing that spoilers would make an appearance, soon or late, I collected firearms and ammunition, trained my people in the proper use of them and waited for the inevitable worst. When it came, each time it came, we drove them back with heavy losses and mounted counterattacks which extirpated their entire strengths, or as good as did so, then appropriated their arms and munitions and explosives to our own use to utilize against the next pack to descend upon us.

  "After some years and for a number of reasons, I persuaded my folk to move south to Cheyenne, where we found a few more of the survivors already in residence, but sorely beset by spoilers and overjoyed to be reinforced by trained and well-armed fighters. I was chosen mayor—which should be read to mean 'paramount leader'—and had served as such for a bit over four years when you rode in that day with your scouting expedition.

  "Friend Milo, alte Kamerad, I had wanted so very much to tell you many of these things over the years we have been co-leaders of the folk. Had you proved less hostile in regard to my rational beliefs abou
t breeding our folk along reasonable lines, I might have told you much of this that night by the camp-fire. Better yet, I might have awakened your clear, but now latent, telepathic powers and then have opened my memories to you, that you might more quickly have realized the truths, the validities of my beliefs, based as they are upon centuries of experience and of deep thought with which I occupied my mind through countless lonely nights of exile enforced by my differences from humans. "Now, with me departed, you will just have to awaken your mind yourself. I have left under this rather long letter copies of two books which will be of assistance in this endeavor. Also you will find in this locker formulae for the fullering and the hardening agents for felt, all derived of natural substances, all of these native to the prairie hereabouts; this must be my last gift to the folk once mine and now yours. I know that you will lead them well, probably as well as might I have led them, and possibly better.

  "I must soon depart, old friend. This typewriter has surely all but drained the storage batteries and I can hear the morning shift of felters cursing even now at the necessity of mounting the bicycles and recharging them so early in the day, none of them knowing that I and my laboratory will no longer have need of that electricity.

  "So, my work—such of it as you would allow—is done and I now make my exeunt, as it were. I am taking my Schnellig, of course, two spare mounts and two of the Bactrian camels to bear my yurt, gear, food and essentials, grain for the horses, et cetera; I believe that the folk and you owe me at least this much, friend Milo.

  "I feel most certain that we two will meet again, one day, be it in a few hundred of years or in a millennium, but meet we will. As you will then, perforce, be an older, sadder, but much wiser man, perhaps we can then converse as true equals.

  Your true friend,

  Clarence Bookerman, M.D.

  "Post scriptum: Guard well my sheafs of notes from my series of experiments, for contained within them are many other formulae upon which I stumbled. Included are formulae for the easy tanning of leather and furred pelts, the best materials for softening animal sinew (for use in fabricating bows, for instance), several really effective bonding agents all derived of natural, if not common, ingredients, a number of salves of antiseptic and/or anesthetic properties, some truly fast dyes, a procedure for rendering common cowhide leather almost as tough and impervious as metal, some analgesics, laxatives and a first-rate expectorant. Consider these to be bonus gifts to you and our folk.

  Clarence"

  The two books and the notes—ream after ream of them, all as neatly typewritten as the lengthy letter—filled the locker almost to the rim. Even after Milo had read through the notes and removed those which were repetitive, had ended in useless failures or in substances for which he and the people would never have any use, there still were two thick binders of the parchment-bond pages remaining—Bookerman's legacy.

  All the while he sorted and sifted the notes, Milo pondered on the letter of the now-departed doctor. Could it all be true? Were there more like himself scattered widely about the world? Never before having found any references to people with like abilities, he had for many long years thought himself to be unique. Now he was not so sure.

  Of course, there was always the chance that the letter was all an utter fabrication, cut out of whole cloth, containing no shred of truth, but ... if it was, then just how had the man so shrewdly assessed Milo's secret agelessness?

  And Bookerman's early experiences closely paralleled Milo's own. He still recalled the exact details of the first time that he had been "killed" in combat, though many of the later of such occurrences were become a little fuzzy around the edges unless he consciously set himself to recollect them in detail. One's first "deathwound" simply was not something easily or quickly forgotten.

  It had been in France, D-Day + 41. While warily slinking along the shoulder of a narrow roadway with what forty days of hot, vicious, hard-driving combat had left of the platoon with which he and poor little Lieutenant Hunicutter had hit Omaha Beach, they had come within range of a German sniper. And the crack shot quickly proved to them all both his expert-rifleman status and the fact that he was no tyro at combat sniping, which has always been an exacting and often fatal occupation.

  The automatic rifleman, Pettus, had slammed into the high grassy bank at their left before any of them had heard the first shot, a bloody hole just under the right rim of his helmet and the now-precious BAR pinned under the dead weight of his bulky body, tobacco juice from his ever-present plug dribbling from the corners of his slackened lips over his blue-stubbled chin.

  Then, before any of them could react in any way, the next shot had taken Milo—now, by way of combat attrition, a second lieutenant—under the right arm he had just raised to dash the sweat from above his eyes. The 7.9mm bullet tore completely through his chest at a slight upward inclination, tearing into the right lung, through it, then through the heart before exiting the left-frontal side of the chest and boring through the left bicep as well. Even as he dove to the hard, packed surface of the roadway, Milo had known that he was dead meat.

  The lancing agony had been exquisite, unbearable, and Milo had screamed, taken a deep breath to scream once again and ended coughing hot blood, almost strangling on the thick liquid. With only the most cursory of examinations of him, Chamberlin, one of the two remaining original NCOs, had taken over, gotten the men off the exposed stretch of roadway without any more losses, taken one half of the unit, turned the other over to Corporal Gardner and, after they had shed or dropped every nonessential item of equipment, started them out toward the point at which he had seen the muzzle flash of the second shot.

  As for Milo, he had just lain still, hoping that by so doing he could hold at bay the pain until he had lost enough blood to pass into a coma and so die in peace. But he did not, could not find and sink into the warm, soft, all-enveloping darkness, and the pain went on, unabated, movement or no movement. In automatic response to his body's needs, he continued to breathe, but shallowly, having no desire to bring on another bout of choking on and coughing up more of his own blood.

  Then, as he lay there, composed for the onset of his sure and certain death, the pain began to lessen. Although weak, he felt no drowsiness, no more than he had felt for the long days since the landings, at any rate. He opened his eyes and gingerly turned his head so that he could see—and see very clearly in the bright, summer-sunlit day, which last surprised him—the two contingents of his platoon swinging out wide to converge upon the suspected position of the sniper's nest among the jumbled wall stones and free standing chimney of a burned-out farmhouse.

  Feeling the pressing need for a clearer view of the distant objective, he cautiously moved enough to drag from under him his cased binoculars. Through the optics he saw three half-crouching figures, clad in Wehrmacht feldgrau, setting up a light machine gun, an MG42 by the look of it and fitted with the Doppeltrommel drum magazine, and the thing was on a rare tripod, which would make its fire far more accurate than from a more usual bipod, too.

  With no base of fire to cover them and their advance, Milo knew that those men of his would be slaughtered. They did not even know about that machine gun—after all, they thought themselves to be stalking only a sniper and his assistant and could not see from their positions just what Jerry was setting up for them—wouldn't realize the danger until the fantastically high rate of MG42 fire was ripping the life out of them.

  He dismissed his own Thompson submachine gun without thinking; it was a superlative, if very heavy, weapon at normal ranges, but it just could not accurately reach out the required distance, in this case. Forgetting his fatal wounds in his worry for the men in such deadly danger out there, he allowed his body to slide down the bank and then wormed his way up to where Pettus' body lay.

  It took no little effort to shift the big man's body enough to get both the BAR and the six-pocket magazine belt off it, but Milo accomplished both. Then, now laden with his own weapons and equipment as well as the
automatic rifle and its seven weighty magazines, he crawled up the bank to its brushy top and took up a position that gave him a splendid field of fire. A pair of mossy rocks situated close together provided both bracing for the bipod of the BAR and a certain amount of protection from any return fire, almost like the embrasure of a fortification.

  He took time to once more scan his target area with the binoculars and estimated the range at eight hundred yards, plus or minus a dozen or so. With the bipod resting securely on the boulders at either side, he scooted backward and calibrated the sights for the supposed range, then set the buttplate firmly into the hollow of his shoulder, nestled his cheek against the stock and set his hand to the grip and his forefinger to the trigger.

  Expertly feathering the trigger so as to loose off only three or four rounds per firing until he knew himself to be dead on target, Milo cruelly shocked the short squad of Wehrmacht who were preparing a deadly little surprise for the two small units of assaulting Americans. As short bursts of .30 caliber bullets struck the fire-blackened stones and ricocheted around the ruined house, the Gefreite reared up from where he lay and, using his missing Zugsfuhrer's fine binoculars, swept the area from which the fire seemed to be coming, nor did it take the veteran long to spot the flashes of the BAR.

  The present danger superseding, in his experienced mind, the planned ambush, he pointed out the location of the weapon that now had them under fire to the MG-gunner and ordered return fire. When he had spotted the glint of sun on glass, Milo had anticipated counterbattery fire and had scooted his body behind the longer and larger of the boulders, pressing himself tightly into the hard, pebbly ground, so he had only to brush off stone shards and moss, then get back into firing position. He now had the range.

  As Chamberlin later told the tale: "Well, whin I heared that damn tearing-linoleum sound, I knowed it was more than just some damn Jerry sniper up in that place, so I just stayed down and hoped old Gardner would have the good sense to do 'er, too. Then I realized it was a BAR firing from the road, too, and all I could figger was old Pettus, he hadn' been kilt after all and was giving us all covering fire, keeping the damn Jerries down so's we could get up into grenade range of 'em. So I waved my boys on, slung my M1 and got a pineapple out and ready."