It was hard to sleep with that light bulb burning overhead. It was just far enough from reach to make it impossible to unscrew the thing. It was also protected by a metal cage, so I couldn’t break it with a thrown boot, either.
As I thought about my boots, I found myself focusing on their laces.
The bastards had taken my belt, but left me my bootlaces.
Unfortunately, there was nothing to fasten the other end to, if I did opt for self-strangulation to escape torture. Even the interior doorknob of my cell had been removed.
***
A little after five in the morning, stomach in knots and mind turned-in on itself in a dark and ugly way, I finally drifted off.
What seemed like minutes later, I was awakened by the slamming shut of my cell’s metal door.
I sat up, startled and blinking.
A tray now sat inside my door.
Groggy, I want over to fetch it. Hard bread, cheese of dubious vintage and a cup of lukewarm coffee.
I didn’t care. I wolfed down the bread and cheese and guzzled the sorry joe.
At seven a.m., the door opened and four German soldiers filed in.
Their leader said, “I need you to take off all of your clothes. Do that now and then you will follow me for interrogation.”
27
They’d tied me naked to a stout wooden chair with my own belt and a few other sundry, bloodstained belts perhaps taken from the bodies of my irregulars.
The chair’s legs were bolted to the floor.
In the semidarkness, I saw light stands, a couple of cameras on tripods.
Two Germans were equipping a battered table with the tools of their trade: brass knuckles, needle-nose pliers, matches, a bucket of ice and various cutting utensils.
For the moment, I was glad I was tied tightly to the chair. If I pressed my thighs to the chair’s bottom they couldn’t see now badly my legs were trembling. But there was not much I could do about the flutter in my belly.
I’d already been two hours in the chair, watching them slowly, deliberately laying out and arranging all those things they were going to use to destroy my body. I took it as a bid to try and break me down to betray that little girl back home in Cleveland, Ohio without having to take the trouble to actually cut into me.
The door to the street opened and a skinny man in an SS uniform slid in. He motioned over my two guards. Low murmurs ensued, those and frequent looks back at me where I still sat strapped naked to the chair.
My guards strode back over and began to unfasten my legs. “There has been a delay.”
I said hopefully, “Höttl’s been captured?”
“Delayed by events, that’s all. You get to think more about what’s coming. Early tomorrow, we will start this again.”
“I could use some food,” I said.
“You’ve had your last meal,” the other said. He was about six-feet, well-built and dark-haired. In school-boy French, he said, “Herr Höttl has made it clear you will die tomorrow. He wants your bowels and kidneys empty so we don’t have any extra mess to deal with when you inevitably lose control of yourself during interrogation.”
That set my legs to trembling again. This time they noticed.
The other guard, very Aryan, said, “Let’s not get him dressed. It will save time tomorrow preparing him.”
And being held naked in a cell would meanly play with my head in the hours between now and then, demean me and maybe break me down that extra bit.
Of course, I’d played the game from the other side. I knew the drill.
They led me back deeper into the building and shut me away naked in that stinking meat locker.
***
Several hours later, one of the German guards who’d led me to my cell returned. It was the one with the black hair. He was maybe twenty-five or twenty-six. I said to him, “What time is it?”
“Eight o’clock at night,” he said softly. “The city has almost fallen. Tomorrow, I think, the Germans will be in full retreat.”
The Germans? Odd way for a Nazi to put a pending rout.
I forced a smile, trying for some bravado. I said, “For a fella on the losing side, you seem to be taking it in something like stride.”
The German licked and then bit his lip. Kid looked like he was trying to make his mind up about something. I said, “What’s your name, son?”
“Doesn’t matter. Look, Lassiter, I don’t want what I’m going to do or say in the next minute or two to give you any hope of an outcome other than the bloody one you face tomorrow. I know the endgame is almost here, and it’s cruel it has to come so tantalizingly close to your own fate being decided. You’re… well, you’re going to have to be a kind of a necessary casualty, Lassiter. I’ll try and see you’re awarded for your sacrifice.”
What the hell? A necessary casualty? I’d always hated that term. I said, “You talking about a medal or something? If so, screw that! What the hell are you going on about?”
He said, “I’m working with your military. Sent to watch over Werner Höttl.”
“Watch over?”
“Yes, to see he escapes harm or capture when the city falls.”
“Are you goddamn joking?”
“Lower your voice, Lassiter! I’m supposed to be here to check your mental state, to soften you up for tomorrow.”
I ground my teeth and said, “Right. You’re American?”
“Yes, I am. And, no, I can’t help you escape here. I just can’t do that. I’m ordered to stay right at Höttl’s side. From now, until we leave Paris, I’m tied to that man. So I can’t slip away to get word to our side about you or where you’re being held.” He took a deep breath and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Lassiter. I am so truly sorry for what is to come, for what you have to endure tomorrow.”
Watching him, trying to decide if he was on the level, I said, “If you’re telling me the truth, and if they should break me, why tell me your secret? In desperation, I could think I might barter myself some advantage with the information.”
He half-smiled. “I’ve read your file and made an assessment of your character. You’d gain nothing by doing that, and it would be same as you murdering me. You’re not that kind. That’s all on the one hand. On the other is the compassion I show you now.” He checked the door again, then handed me a single tablet.
I said dully, “An L pill?”
“A very powerful suicide pill, yes,” he said. “I only ask you let me be out of this room for an hour or so before you take it. They’ll believe you snuck it from your uniform before you were undressed. That you were weighing your options and finally decided to go out easy. Well, comparatively easy. There’ll be stomach pain, convulsions. But nothing like the pain you’ll experience tomorrow if you let them set to work on you.”
I looked at the tablet in my palm. “A suicide pill is your idea of a compassionate gesture?”
“Honestly, if our positions were reversed, I’d see it that way,” he said. “You saw those devices we were ordered to lay out today. Höttl is going to dissect you alive, Lassiter.”
“And you’re going to stand by and watch?”
“I’m guarding you tonight so I can try and sack out through the worst of it tomorrow. Depending on how long you hold out, I might not have to see it at all.” He hesitated, for effect, I reckoned, because he then added, “Doesn’t mean I won’t be likely to hear your screams, however.” He lowered his head and said. “Again, I’m so sorry. And I urge you to act tonight, or as they lead you out of here tomorrow. Once you’re in that chair, I don’t think you’ll get another chance to get your hand up near your mouth.”
Jesus H. Christ! This son of a bitch really wasn’t going to try and help me. Hell, he was going to invest all his energy to try and preserve Höttl’s wretched life. And he was evidently doing so on orders from our side. It was worse than insane.
I said, “Do you know what that bastard wants from me?”
He shook his head. “I don’t want to know. My
knowing can’t change my orders or your fate. I will follow my orders. It’s just a shame you didn’t show similar discipline. If you hadn’t started playing soldier, you likely wouldn’t be here now, frankly.”
That again.
He said, “I’m sorry, Lassiter. This truly makes me sick inside. For God’s sake, before dawn you please use that pill. Once things get started, you might not be able to change your mind. Hell, you might not even have fingers or hands left. Höttl’s had us prepare materials for swift cauterization of amputation sites.”
He got in a bit closer, whispering now. “I’m going to have to hurt you now, Hector. I have to do that to give myself cover. Maybe… maybe it will give you the push you need to spare yourself far worse suffering tomorrow. To help me do this, I’m going to make myself believe that’s so.”
I smiled, trying to project more of that false bravado. I said, “If that salves your conscience in some way, then by all means, you cling to that line of reasoning, you sorry son of a bitch.”
He swung on me then. It was a hard shot to the gut that nearly set me to retching bile. In flawless German he snarled, “Fool! You could have ended this now and saved yourself much misery!”
It was an act of will to keep from pitching that damned pill through the cracked door after the bastard.
I held onto the suicide pill for one reason. The prospect that somehow, come morning, before I was tied down, I might find a way to shove the damned thing in Werner Höttl’s mouth and make him swallow hard.
28
Cotton-mouthed, I said, “What time is it now?” I dug knuckles into my eyes. I could feel that suicide pill, still clutched in my right hand.
“Noon,” a smallish, very young German soldier said. “Get up and go through that door. It’s time to start.”
***
It was maybe thirty paces back to that chair.
Each step along the way, I thought hard about that suicide pill in my hand.
As they grabbed my left hand and set to work on tying it to the chair, that pill weighed heavy in my still-free right hand.
I had about a minute to struggle with the notion of swallowing the damned thing.
Then they grabbed my right wrist and started binding it to the chair.
I’d lost my last option.
***
Twenty minutes after being strapped in the chair, Werner Höttl arrived, looking very crisp and straight-backed in his SS uniform. He nodded at my three German guards. The dark-haired boy from last night was still staying scarce, the craven son of a bitch.
Höttl put down the swagger stick he was carrying and slipped off his uniform jacket. One of his men helped him on with a long, bloodstained leather smock. My legs began to tremble again. As he pulled on surgical gloves, Höttl said, “Leave us alone now. I’ll call you in when I’m ready to be relieved.”
We both watched his men file out. When they’d gone, Höttl pulled a chair up about three-feet from mine and he lit a cigarette.
“Some of what you’ve said has proven prophetic,” he said. “We are in full retreat. Paris has fallen, and, as you presciently pointed out, I am, for the moment, trapped. Consequently, we have a great deal of time to spend together.”
“Why don’t you just shoot me now, Werner? I can’t help you. Not because I don’t want to, but because I don’t know where she is.”
That earned me a sneer. “I don’t believe you. You’re going to have to tell me what became of my daughter, Lassiter. Don’t waste time lying to me or trying to convince me she’s dead. You killed that farm family, and we found their bodies. We found every one of the bodies of the soldiers you killed between Lyon and the coast. But no nine-year-old girls’ corpses.”
“Then just think of her as dead,” I said. “You’ve lost the war, Werner. Hitler will be captured or killed soon. The Reich has fallen. You fathering a Jewish girl is irrelevant so far as your career is concerned. You Germans’ efforts at genocide are at an end.”
Höttl narrowed his eyes. “Not at all. Hitler is finished, yes, that is clear. But the party and its aims will endure, and the cause will renew itself. When I escape here, and I will escape, I’ll be one of those uniquely positioned to rekindle the dream. Next time we will not fail. And the extinction of the Jewish race is still a worthy objective.”
I said, “With your anti-Semitic feelings, how’d you end up impregnating a Jewish woman, anyway?”
“I took the child’s mother by force,” Höttl said, very nonchalant. “It was a party, the liquor was flowing.” He closed his eyes, remembering. “Her name was Suzanne. She didn’t look Jewish that night.”
If I could manage the spit, I would have unloaded in his face. I said, “How’d you learn otherwise?”
He tipped his head back and blew a stream of smoke. “She tried to press charges for rape. Her family was…” He waved a hand. “She was a nothing. But there was enough information in the police complaint to determine she was a Jew. And to learn where to find her.”
“You killed her parents? You tried to kill her?”
“Her parents sent her away before I could strike,” he said. “They sent her away before she could begin to show and their family could be scandalized by a bastard grandchild. I was content to leave it at that. Years passed. Then, quite by accident, I found Suzanne. I went to Lyon, attached to SS-Hauptsturmführer Barbie. I saw Suzanne on the street. I confronted her there. That was stupid of me. It gave her time to hide the child from me. I should have followed her home instead of confronting her. Then I’d have taken them all. I killed Suzanne and her husband. Despite my urgings, neither would tell me where to find the wretched child. But I persisted in my search.”
“And that search led to the orphanage,” I said. “You and Barbie, you killed all those children?”
“Of course.” He stared at me a long time. “That was the first of my films you ruined, Lassiter. For that alone you deserve all you’re going to suffer today.”
“I’d heard you had cameras at the apartment building the night I fled there with the girl,” I said, desperate to keep him busy talking. “Struck me as strange you were filming the back of the building.”
“I wanted good coverage, for later, in the editing booth,” he said. “I had seven cameras running that night. I was going to show that cow, Leni, how to really make a film honoring the Party. I was going to title my film, The Girl in the Wall. It was intended to satisfy two aims. The protection of my reputation within the party, of course, and to create a superlative piece of art-cum-propaganda that would underscore the futility of sheltering Jews. But you snatched her away. I ended up with a recording of you killing German soldiers and saving the girl. It was a disaster that injured me with Klaus.”
I met his gaze; I couldn’t quite suppress a mocking half-smile.
Höttl said, “If you gloat, I’ll just hurt you longer.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Under the circumstances, why rile you?”
He smiled now. “Indeed. But your suffering will be exquisite, all the same. Screams for the ages.”
Angling to delay that suffering for as long as possible, I said, “The Girl in the Wall, that was the first of your films I ruined, you said.”
Höttl spread his arms. “All this,” he said. “This city and its demise was to be another film. The Death of Paris. I was going to record the destruction of the city, but you—and countless others, to be sure—have ruined this project, too.”
He stood and walked around my chair, his eyes on me, inquiring. I felt that flutter in my belly return. I fought to keep my legs from shaking harder. Höttl said, “Those whip scars on your back look rather old.”
February 1924. I’d gotten them here, in Paris, under the damnedest circumstances. My beloved Brinke. Molly. A cult of nihilistic artists and this particular sadist…
His gloved fingers traced the scars crisscrossing my back. I couldn’t suppress another shiver. “So many wounds. That tells me you have a high tolerance for pain. So I will a
djust my own plans accordingly.”
He walked to the front door, muttered something in German I couldn’t make out. Two men in civilian clothes entered the room. Höttl said, “My cameramen. They’re Polish. They speak not a word of English, German or French. I, however, know enough of their language to give them orders. I will interrogate you in your own language. Neither of us, therefore, has to worry about you compromising me.”
The lights were turned on, nearly blinding me. The heat from those movie lights, almost from the first second, was intense, and with the summer heat of the room, I was swiftly bathed in sweat. As the men fiddled with their cameras, I said, “You might be wrong about my tolerance for pain.” There was something quavering in my voice that unsettled me. “It’s been a hard few years,” I said. “They might have broken down my reserves. Made me weak for much suffering. I know you wouldn’t want to pass me out or prod me to a fatal heart attack or the like before you get what you want.”
“Nonsense,” Höttl said. “I’m a Nietzschean. That which does not kill us makes us stronger, yes?” He nodded at his men and I heard the cameras start up. “We’re rolling, now.” He punched me in the kidney. “To business!” I gasped for breath from the blow.
Höttl came back around in front of me and sat down again. He lit another cigarette. “We would have started with such beatings, confined to your torso, of course—must protect the head with its precious knowledge stored inside. But those whip scars show me the futility of such prosaic forms of motivation.”
“It could still be well worth the effort,” I said again, squirming a bit in the chair. The seat was slick with my sweat. My mouth was dry and my kidney burned.
“Nein, Lassiter. You would suffer a few broken ribs, likely. Perhaps some organ damage. But you’d not tell me what I want to know because of a simple beating.”
Höttl eyed the end of his cigarette, turned it, examining its golden-orange ember. “After the beatings failed, we’d inevitably come to these. Cigarette burns administered to the bottoms of your feet and the backs of your knees. To your throat, and, of course, to your testicles and penis. Cigarettes and ice, administered in tandem, of course.”
Roll the Credits: A Hector Lassiter novel Page 17