Metal Man

by Ben Stevens

  With a muttered curse, Ackermann moved away from the window. Despite his seniority, he knew that he risked a mutiny if he didn’t do as Brucker’s men wanted. Just those four hardened veterans of the Eastern Front could potentially cause him a lot of trouble…

  He grunted as, with both arms, he grasped Brucker’s body around the chest. The sleeves of Ackermann’s combat jacket were soon covered with blood, which at least served to reassure the SS officer of one thing: Lieutenant Colonel Karl Brucker was very dead.

  He hoisted Brucker’s body over to the window; then, leaning out, he lowered the corpse down, feet first, as far as he was able before letting it go. The body flopped down, and was caught by Mayer and the three other men.

  Smoke was starting to spill into this room. Ackermann guessed that the floor below was now ablaze. He’d have to exit from here through the space created by the opened shutter. It was a bit of a drop, but his men would be there to catch him.

  Then Ackermann realized that the diseased man lying on the bed was staring at him. He’d seen everything that had taken place.

  Ackermann moved towards him. The man whimpered in fear, but seemed wholly unable to move.

  ‘Wouldn’t do to leave any witnesses,’ Ackermann said softly. ‘Just on the off-chance they might manage to put out this fire, save your rotting hide – and then there happens to be a German-speaker in this village, who’ll interpret to Brucker’s men exactly what it was you saw…’

  The man gave another whimper, his rheumy eyes shiny with terror, as Ackermann picked up a pillow from the bed.

  ‘Jesus, you stink,’ Ackermann said softly, as he slowly placed the pillow over the man’s face and began applying pressure. ‘But think of this as me doing you a favor. After all, I could have just left you to burn alive…’

  4

  ‘Thank you for getting me released, Wilhelm,’ Jonas Schroder told his superior, now that the two men were alone. Had they been in company, Schroder would have addressed Wilhelm Reinhardt as ‘Captain’.

  ‘And thank you for – well, always looking out for me,’ Schroder continued. ‘I know that the Gestapo has been after me for a while, and you’ve managed to stop them before.’

  ‘You didn’t… suffer anything, while they had you?’ asked Reinhardt hesitantly.

  Schroder cut his gaze to the floor.

  ‘I wasn’t physically mistreated, at least,’ he replied quietly. “Sticks and stones’, as they say…

  ‘But, anyway – how did you persuade Hitler himself that it was worth freeing a Jew, for the sake of this… This so-called ‘Operation Metal Man’?’

  ‘A half-Jew, Jonas,’ corrected Reinhardt. ‘Had you been fully Jewish, there would have been nothing I or anyone could have said or done – but you know that already…

  ‘As it is, there are some conditions attached to you remaining out of the Gestapo’s clutches…’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ sighed Schroder. ‘I know these already – I am to be a virtual prisoner within this bunker, here in Berlin. The only daylight I’ll see is if I choose to take some exercise within the courtyard up top.’

  ‘I thought Hitler would have a fit, when I mentioned your race,’ observed Reinhardt thoughtfully. ‘Then he just… Well, he just gave this shrug and told me he’d order your release – that it was already as good as done.

  ‘I’ve never known a man to change moods so quickly…’

  The two men were sat on stools in a medium-sized room, the four walls of which were lined with workbenches covered with what Reinhardt could only have described as being a fascinating array of junk. There was any number of random mechanical parts, from what looked like part of a fighter plane engine to a complete artificial arm crafted from some sort of shiny metal, with a bulky, curiously outsized hand whose fingers appeared to be controlled by a series of chains.

  Dotted along the walls above was an assortment of diagrams and plans annotated in Schroder’s neat hand, while each workbench had its own adjustable light mounted on a rack, below the benches stored a mass of tools, electric and manual.

  Outside the closed door of this room was an area the size of a tennis-court. The two men could hear the muffled noises as the department’s other, white-jacketed scientists set up banks of machinery and connected seemingly miles of cabling.

  It was to be in this main area that the Metal Man was to be constructed, the whole process overseen and directed by Jonas Schroder.

  Reinhardt’s attention was again distracted by one of the more striking items crowded on one workbench.

  This time he pointed at it, saying to Schroder: ‘A face?’

  ‘Modeled from silicone, among other more… shall we say, exotic materials,’ replied the half-Jewish scientist mysteriously. ‘Just a… a little diversion of mine at the moment. But maybe, one day, it will prove a useful treatment for those people – both in war and peacetime – who have suffered severe facial injuries, for whatever reason.’

  There was a slightly awkward pause, Schroder realizing what he’d just said as he glanced at Reinhardt’s own damaged face.

  Then Schroder said, ‘Look.’

  He got up from his stool and walked over to where the life-sized face, modeled on an artificial black ‘skull’ which showed through the empty eye sockets, was located. Reinhardt saw now that several wires ran from the back of this skull to a hand-sized device which had several buttons.

  Picking up this device, Schroder then pressed one of the buttons with his thumb. Reinhardt gave a low whistle of surprise as the corners of the closed lips of the face stretched upwards in a smile. Schroder pressed another button: the lips now moved downwards, registering some source of upset. It was all incredibly lifelike.

  ‘Amazing,’ breathed Reinhardt.

  Schroder shrugged. ‘There is a great deal of work to be done yet – and this new operation will naturally take up all my time.’

  ‘When do you think it will be… ready?’ said Reinhardt. ‘The Metal Man, I mean.’

  ‘Once I have all the materials I need,’ replied Schroder, ‘I believe it can be operational in approximately sixty days.’

  ‘As soon as that?’ returned Reinhardt, slight disbelief sounding in his voice.

  ‘Assuming that the others do as I instruct them correctly, then yes,’ said Schroder firmly.

  Reinhardt nodded, and also took a deep breath.

  ‘Jonas,’ he began, ‘I’ve had this nominal rank of Captain since the war began. Technically, I’m in total charge of this department. But we both know I was selected as head only because I have a ‘knack’ – for want of a better word – for managing people and resources. That’s basically it.

  ‘When it comes to the science part… Well, my university degree in chemistry is about it. I don’t pretend to understand the workings of most of what you’ve produced for this department; I just determine whether it’s practical to bring this-or-that project to the attention of my superiors…

  'And I have already informed them – just as I told Herr Hitler himself – that you are one of the finest scientists in the world. Perhaps the finest scientist in the world.’

  Schroder was looking quizzically at Reinhardt, obviously wondering where this speech was leading.

  Reinhardt hastened to come to the point –

  ‘You cannot fail with this, Jonas,’ he told the half-Jewish scientist, who was dressed as always in an old cardigan, shirt and bowtie. ‘There’s too much at stake here – for us… For us both. I’ve placed my absolute trust in you, and your total ability.’

  ‘I will not fail,’ Schroder said a little grimly. ‘Although my arrest the other day has made me worry…’

  ‘You’re safe, so long as you can produce this Metal Man,’ Reinhardt hastened to assure him.

  Schroder stared at his superior with his clear brown eyes.

  ‘Not for me,’ he stated. ‘For my mother. You’re sure she’s safe?’

  Reinhardt’s heart sank as he attempted to maintain eye contact. He trotted out the
familiar line, which sounded evermore ridiculous every time Schroder made him say it.

  ‘Your mother is in a resettlement camp for Jews; a camp somewhere to the east – the exact location, even the country, has to be kept secret for security reasons,’ said Reinhardt, his voice sounding flat and false even to his own ears.

  Masking a sudden, acute sense of despair, he continued: ‘She is fine, well-cared for and fed. You… you receive letters from her, don’t you?’

  Schroder looked doubtful; and yet again, Reinhardt felt astounded that someone of such obvious genius could be taken in by this absurd tale.

  ‘Well, yes – yes I do,’ Schroder muttered, as though attempting to assure himself. ‘They come like clockwork, once a month. And it is her handwriting, but…’

  ‘But?’

  ‘But always the same information!’ Schroder cried. “This is what I had for dinner last night’… ‘I am taking painting classes’… ‘I am enjoying reading this book’’…’

  ‘Yes?’ said Reinhardt carefully.

  Schroder’s face twisted.

  ‘It’s not her!’ he said passionately. ‘It’s… it’s just all so stilted… So unnatural… She always used to mention my father, although he died over twenty years ago. But now she never says a thing about him…’

  Reinhardt decided that it would be best to terminate this conversation as quickly as was possible.

  ‘Having never met your mother, I can’t possibly comment on that,’ he said.

  Then, realizing that he too was compelled to try and continue the deception, he added: ‘But you get the letters; and as you say, it is her handwriting.’

  Schroder nodded slowly, and looked slightly more convinced.

  ‘Well, yes, that’s true, I suppose,’ he mused, stroking his chin with his small, fleshy fingers. ‘Maybe I’m just… just reading a little too much into the whole situation.’

  ‘I have to go now, and make my first report on Operation Metal Man,’ stated Reinhardt. ‘But, Jonas, I must repeat… There can be no room for error on this project. For all our sakes – yours’, mine, this very department’s – Germany must get this… this…’

  Suddenly, Reinhardt remembered Adolf Hitler’s words.

  ‘This ‘super-soldier’.’

  With a small, mysterious smile that Reinhardt for some reason found slightly uncomfortable, Schroder said quietly –

  ‘Oh, the Nazis will get their super-soldier, Captain Reinhardt – that I promise.’

  Reinhardt gave an uncertain nod and opened the door out into the cavernous room filled with machinery and scientists.

  So it begins he told himself.

  All they need now is the…

  He could barely even think the last word –

  All they need now is the cadaver.

  5

  Karl Brucker’s body was laid out in a shady area close to the collapsed but still-burning house. Mayer, the second-in-command, had found an old blanket to cover the corpse. Now Mayer was crouched beside his deceased commander, the expression on the broad face drawn.

  He looked over at a short, powerfully-built man, who was sat doing something with the bulky radio-set he usually carried on his back, but which was now placed between his legs.

  ‘Still nothing, Amsel?’ questioned Mayer.

  The radioman shook his head.

  ‘Zilch,’ he said curtly.

  ‘Keep trying,’ said Mayer.

  ‘Aim to,’ returned Amsel.

  The two men exchanged a brief, defiant grin… Then their faces again became set and hard.

  Brucker gone – it hardly seemed real. There was the same aching sense of disbelief in all the four men. Almost the belief that even now, Brucker might rise Christ-like, shaking off that blanket and saying, as he so often had –

  ‘Move your ass.’

  A veteran of the Eastern Front, and a survivor of numerous, bloody hand-to-hand battles, finally stabbed to death by a peasant woman he’d been attempting to save from a burning building…?

  Mayer and the others failed to see how such a thing could even have happened…

  There was the crack of a gunshot from nearby, and one of the two other men who were sat sharing a cigarette muttered a curse.

  Two more gunshots quickly followed.

  Then a woman screamed.

  ‘The man who apparently had this dagger found on him had two sons,’ muttered one of the men who were smoking. ‘So that bastard Ackermann has them executed too, saying they’re also partisans ‘by association’ – and one of them still a lad of fourteen. Guess that was the mother we just heard.’

  ‘We may be forced to follow Ackermann, now,’ said the other man, as he passed the cigarette to the soldier who’d just spoken. ‘But there’s no bloody way I was going to go and watch as they shot those three villagers in the square.’

  ‘Goes for all of us, Bach,’ grunted Mayer. ‘We shouldn’t even be in this village, full-stop. Best chance for us all now is to get back to Germany quick as possible and start building defenses against the Ruskies. Ackermann can tell the standard bullshit about how we’re ‘staging a tactical withdrawal’ and ‘preparing for a regroup’. Anyone else who hasn’t got crap for brains, or isn’t a full-blown Nazi, knows we’re in a full-on state of retreat.’

  ‘We have to stick with this unit?’ murmured the man sat next to Bach.

  Mayer glanced over at him, and sighed.

  ‘What are you suggesting, Weber – that we desert?’ he said. ‘As extremely tempting as that option is, you can still get shot for desertion, you know. We may not like being stuck with Ackermann and his animals – to put it mildly – but we’ve got no bloody choice in the matter.’

  ‘Getting something,’ said Amsel suddenly, as the radio crackled into life.

  ‘You want to say a few words?’ he then asked Mayer.

  ‘Yeah,’ returned Mayer, getting to his feet and walking over to the radioman. ‘As it happens, I do…’

  *

  When Ackermann returned a short while later, accompanied by several of his troops (including Rudolf Baer, whose nose Brucker had broken barely two hours before), he found Brucker’s men crouched almost defensively in front of their fallen leader’s body.

  ‘I’ve given the order to clear out,’ Ackermann informed them curtly. Darkness was beginning to descend. ‘Might be space for you on top of one of the three tanks, otherwise you’ll have to walk. Usual thing.

  ‘You might want to…’ – he gestured at the covered corpse with his chin – ‘get him buried quickly before we move on.’

  Mayer shook his head, staring steadily back at the SS officer.

  ‘Seems we’ve got to wait… sir,’ he said levelly.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Ackermann snapped back. ‘I’ve just given an order, damn you!’

  ‘We were able to get hold of General Hirsch’s secretary on the radio,’ Mayer informed him. ‘Told him what had taken place here…’

  Mayer allowed a brief but awkward silence to develop; then he continued, ‘We were also instructed to wait with the body of Lieutenant Colonel Karl Brucker, as they’re sending a vehicle to pick him up. Should be here within the next half hour, I believe.’

  ‘What?’ spat Ackermann. ‘Coming to pick his body up? What the hell is this – just get him buried, and get your asses –’

  ‘Those are the orders we received, sir – and those are the orders we’ll follow,’ declared Mayer, his right hand moving almost imperceptibly towards the pistol on his belt.

  Again, for the sake of avoiding a possible mutiny, Ackermann considered he’d no choice but to back down.

  For now – he wouldn’t forget what had just happened…

  ‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Let them come and pick up Brucker’s body. Maybe they’ll take it all the way back to Berlin, and give him the hero’s burial he so richly deserves.’

  With that, he turned and walked away, followed by the men he’d brought with him.

  Mayer fol
lowed him with eyes like flint.

  ‘I wonder what did happen in that room, with Brucker, the woman and that sod,’ he muttered, almost to himself.

  The others looked curiously at him.

  ‘How do you mean?’ asked Bach.

  ‘I don’t know… I just…’ Mayer began; then he shook his head.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he repeated, continuing to shake his head with some vague, nameless suspicion…