Garden of Beasts

by Jeffery Deaver

The large boy who'd tried to open the windows looked around. "A chair, table, anything!"

  But the tables and benches were bolted to the floor. And although the room had seemed to be a regular classroom, there were no pointers, no globes, not even ink bottles in the wells they might try to shatter the glass with. Several students tried to shoulder down the door but it was thick oak and barred from the outside. The faint blue cloud of exhaust smoke streamed steadily into the room.

  Kurt and two other boys tried to kick the windows out. But the glass was indeed thick--far too strong to break without heavy tools. There was a second door but that too was securely closed and locked.

  "Stuff something in the vents."

  Two boys stripped off their shirts and Kurt and another student boosted them up. But their murderers, Keitel and Ernst, had anticipated everything. The vents were thick screening, a half meter by a meter in size. There was no way to block the smooth surface.

  The boys began to choke. Everyone scrabbled away from the vent, into the corners of the room, some crying, some praying.

  Kurt Fischer looked outside. The "recruitment" officer, who'd scored a goal against him just minutes earlier, stood with his arms crossed, gazing at them calmly, the same way someone might watch bears frolic in their pen at the Zoological Garden on Budapest Street.

  Paul Schumann saw before him the black Mercedes, still protecting his prey.

  He saw the SS guard looking around vigilantly.

  He saw the balding man walk up to the soldier who'd fitted the hose to the classroom building, speaking to him, then jotting on a sheet of paper.

  He saw an empty field where a dozen young men had just played a soccer game in their last minutes on earth.

  And above all of these discrete images he saw what linked them: the appalling specter of indifferent evil. Reinhard Ernst was not simply Hitler's architect of war, he was a murderer of the innocent. And his motive: the handy collection of information.

  The whole goddamn world here was out of kilter.

  Paul swung the Mauser to the right, toward the bald man and the soldier. The second gray-uniformed trooper leaned against the van, smoking a cigarette. The two soldiers were some distance apart but Paul could probably touch them both off. The balding man--maybe the professor mentioned in the letter to Hitler--was probably not armed and would most likely flee at the first shot. Paul could then sprint to the classroom, open the door and give covering fire so the boys could get away to safety.

  Ernst and his guard would escape or hunker down behind the car until help arrived. But how could Paul let these young men die?

  The sights of the Mauser centered on the soldier's chest. Paul began applying pressure to the trigger.

  Then he sighed angrily and swung the muzzle of the rifle back to the Mercedes.

  No, he had come here for one purpose. To kill Reinhard Ernst. The young people in the classroom were not his concern. They'd have to be sacrificed. Once he shot Ernst the other soldiers would take cover and return fire, forcing Paul to escape back into the woods, while the boys suffocated.

  Trying not to imagine the horror in the room, what those young men would be going through, Paul Schumann touched the ice once more. He steadied his breathing.

  And, just at that moment, his prayer was finally answered. The back door to Ernst's car opened.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  I used to swim for hours at a time, and hike for days, Willi Kohl thought angrily, as he leaned against a tree and caught his breath. It was unjust to be given both a hearty appetite and a flair for a sedentary job.

  Ach, and there was the matter of his age too, of course.

  Not to mention the feet.

  Prussian police training was the best in the world but tracking a suspect through the woods like Goring on a bear hunt had not been part of the curriculum. Kohl could find no signs of Paul Schumann's route, nor anyone else's. His own progress had been slow. He would pause from time to time as he approached a particularly dense thicket and make sure no one was sighting at him with a weapon. Then he'd resume his cautious pursuit.

  Finally, through the brush ahead of him, he noticed a mowed field around a classroom building. Parked nearby were a black Mercedes, a bus and a van. An Opel too, on the opposite side of the field. Several men stood about, two soldiers among them, with an SS trooper beside the Mercedes.

  Was this some sort of furtive black market business deal Schumann was involved in with this Webber? If so, where were they?

  Questions, nothing but questions.

  Then Kohl noted something unusual. He eased closer, pushing aside brush. He squinted the sweat from his eyes and looked carefully. A hose ran from the tailpipe of the bus into the school. Why would that be? Perhaps they were killing vermin.

  Then he soon forgot this curious detail. His attention turned to the Mercedes, whose back door was open. A man was climbing out. Kohl realized with a shock that it was a government minister: Reinhard Ernst, the man in charge of what was dubbed "domestic stability," though everyone knew that he was the military genius behind rearming the country.

  What was he doing here? Could it--

  "Oh, no," Willi Kohl whispered aloud. "Good God..."

  He suddenly understood exactly what the security alerts were all about, what the relationship between Morgan and Taggert and Schumann were, and what the American's mission in this country was.

  Gripping his pistol, the inspector began jogging through the woods toward the clearing, cursing the Gestapo and the SS and Peter Krauss for not telling him what they knew. Cursing too the twenty years and twenty-five kilos that life had added to his body since he'd become a policeman. As for his feet, so urgent was his desire to prevent Ernst's death that he forgot about the pain completely.

  All lies!

  Everything they'd said was a lie. To get us to come willingly to their death chamber! Kurt had taken what he thought was the cowardly choice, agreeing to join the service, and he was now about to die for that decision-- while if he and Hans had gone to the concentration camp they might very well have survived.

  Listless and dizzy, Kurt Fischer sat in the corner of Academic Building 5, beside his brother. No less frightened than anyone else, no less desperate, he was not, however, trying to rip the iron desks from the floor or batter the door with his shoulder like the others. He knew Ernst and Keitel had thought this out ahead of time and had constructed an impregnable, airtight building to be their coffin. The National Socialists were as efficient as they were demonic.

  Rather, he was wielding a different tool. With the stub of pencil from the back of the room, he was jotting unsteady words onto a page of blank paper ripped from the back of a book. Ironically, considering that it was pacifism that had brought them to this terrible place, the volume's title was Cavalry Tactics During the War Between France and Prussia, 1870-1871.

  Whimpers of fear, shouts of anger around him, sobs.

  Kurt hardly heard them. "Don't be afraid," he told his brother.

  "No," the terrified younger man said, his voice cracking. "I'm not."

  Rather than the letter of reassurance that he'd planned on writing to their parents that night, which Ernst had promised they could send, he now wrote a very different note.

  Albrecht and Lotte Fischer

  Prince George Street, No. 14

  Swiss Cottage,

  London, England

  If by some miracle this reaches you, please know that you are in our thoughts now, at these last minutes of our lives. The circumstances of our deaths are as pointless as those of the ten thousand who have died before us here. We pray that you continue your work, with us in your thoughts, so that perhaps this madness can end. Tell everyone who will listen that the evil here is worse than the worst they can imagine and it will not end until somebody has the courage to stop it.

  Know that we love you.

  --Your sons

  Around him the screams abated as the young men dropped to their knees or bellies and began kissing th
e scuffed oak floor and baseboards to suck whatever air they might from beneath the floors. Some simply prayed peacefully.

  Kurt Fischer looked over his writing once more. He actually gave a soft laugh. For he'd realized suddenly that this was the essential purpose he'd been hoping for: delivering the message to his parents and ultimately, he prayed, the world. This is how he would fight the Party. His weapon was his death.

  And, now at the end, he felt a curious optimism that this note would be found and delivered and perhaps, through his parents or others, it would be the final root that cracked the wall of the jail imprisoning his country.

  The pencil fell from his hand.

  Using his last morsels of thought and strength, Kurt folded the paper and put it into his wallet, which had the most chance of being removed from his body by a local mortician or doctor, who, God willing, might find the words he'd written and have the courage to send them on.

  Then he took his brother's hand and closed his eyes.

  Still, Paul Schumann had no target.

  Reinhard Ernst was pacing erratically beside the Mercedes as he spoke into the microphone attached by a wire to the dashboard in the front seat. The man's tall bodyguard also blocked Paul's view.

  He kept the gun steady, finger on the trigger, waiting for the man to stop.

  Touching the ice...

  Controlling his breathing, ignoring the flies buzzing into his face, ignoring the heat. Silently screaming to Reinhard Ernst: Stop moving, for Christ's sake! Let me do this thing and get away, back to my country, back to my printing plant, my brother... the family that I've had, the family that I may yet have.

  An image of Kathe Richter came quickly into his head and he saw her eyes, felt her tears, heard the echo of her voice.

  I'd rather share my country with ten thousand killers than my bed with one....

  His finger caressed the trigger of the Mauser, and her face and words vanished in a spray of ice.

  And just at that moment Ernst stopped pacing, clipped the microphone back onto the dashboard of the Mercedes and stepped away from the car. He stood with arms folded, chatting amiably to his bodyguard, who nodded slowly, as they gazed at the classroom.

  Paul rested the sights on the colonel's chest.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Approaching the clearing, Willi Kohl heard a loud gunshot.

  It echoed off the buildings and the landscape and was swallowed in the tall grass and juniper around him. The inspector ducked instinctively. He saw, across the clearing, the tall form of Reinhard Ernst drop to the ground beside the Mercedes.

  No... The man is dead! It's my fault! Through my oversight, my stupidity, a man has been killed, a man vital to the fatherland.

  The minister's SS bodyguard, crouching, looked for the assailant.

  What have I done? the inspector thought.

  But then another shot rang out.

  Easing to the protective trunk of a thick oak at the edge of the clearing, Kohl saw one of the regular army soldiers slump to the ground. Kohl looked just beyond him and saw another soldier lying on the grass, blood on his chest. Nearby a balding man in a brown jacket scrabbled to safety under the bus.

  The inspector then looked back to the Mercedes. What was this? He'd been wrong. The minister was unhurt! Ernst had dived to the ground for cover when he'd heard the first shot but was now rising cautiously, a pistol in his hand. His guard had unslung a machine pistol and he too was looking for a target.

  Schumann hadn't killed Ernst.

  Then a third shot rang through the clearing. It hit Ernst's Mercedes, shattering a window. A fourth, too, hitting the car's tire and inner tube. Then Kohl saw motion on the grassy field. It was Schumann, yes! He was running from the Opel toward the school, firing occasionally toward the Mercedes with a long rifle, forcing Ernst and his guard to remain low. He reached the front door of the classroom as Ernst's SS man rose and fired several times. The bus, however, protected the American from the shots.

  But he was not protected from Willi Kohl.

  The inspector wiped his hand on his slacks and aimed his revolver at Schumann. It was a long-range shot but not impossible and at least he could pin the man down until other troops arrived.

  But just as Kohl began to squeeze the trigger, Schumann ripped the front door of the building open. He stepped inside and emerged a moment later, dragging out a young man. Several others followed, staggering, holding their chests, coughing, some vomiting. Another one, then three more.

  God in Heaven! Kohl was stunned. It was they who'd been gassed, not rats or mice.

  Schumann motioned the men toward the woods and, before Kohl could recover from the shock of what he'd seen and aim once more, the American was firing toward the Mercedes again, giving the young men cover with the rifle as they made for the safety of the dense forest.

  The Mauser kicked hard against his shoulder as Paul fired again. He aimed low, hoping to hit Ernst's or his guard's legs. But their car was in a shallow gully and he couldn't find a target beneath it. He glanced inside the classroom quickly; the last of the young men were leaving. They staggered out and ran for the woods.

  "Run!" Paul cried. "Run!"

  He fired twice more to keep Ernst and the guard down.

  Flinging sweat from his forehead with his fingers, Paul tried to get closer to the Mercedes but both Ernst and his guard were armed and good shots, and the SS man had a submachine gun. They fired repeatedly and Paul could make no headway toward them. As Paul worked the bolt to chamber a round, the guard peppered the bus and the ground nearby. Ernst leapt into the front seat of the Mercedes and grabbed the microphone then took cover again on the far side of the car.

  How long would it be until help arrived? Paul had driven through Waltham only two miles up the road; he was sure the good-sized town would be home to a garrison of police. And the school itself might have its own security force.

  If he wanted to survive he'd have to flee now.

  He fired twice more, using up the last of the Mauser ammunition. He

  tossed the rifle to the ground then bent down and pulled a pistol from the belt of one of the dead soldiers. It was a Luger, like Reginald Morgan's. He worked the toggle to put a bullet in the chamber.

  He looked down and saw, crouching, halfway under the bus, the balding mustachioed man who'd led the students into the building.

  "What's your name?" Paul asked in German.

  "Please, sir." His voice shook. "Do not--"

  "Your name? "

  "Doctor-professor Keitel, sir." The man was crying. "Please..."

  Paul recalled that this was the name on the letter about the Waltham Study. He lifted the pistol and shot him once in the center of the forehead.

  Then he took a final look toward Ernst's car and could see no target. Paul ran across the field, firing several shots into the Mercedes to keep Ernst and the guard down, and soon he plunged into the woods as bullets from the SS man's weapon chopped through the lush green foliage around him, none even close to its mark.

  Chapter Forty

  Willi Kohl had turned away from the clearing and now, drenched in sweat and sick from the heat and exertion, was heading back in the direction of the Labor Service truck, Schumann's means of escape, he assumed. He would flatten the tires to prevent him from leaving.

  A hundred meters, two hundred, gasping, wondering: Who were the young people? Were they criminals? Were they innocent?

  He paused to try to catch his breath. If he didn't, he was sure Schumann would easily hear the wheezing rasp as he approached.

  He scanned the forest. He saw nothing.

  Where was the truck? He was disoriented. This direction? No, it was the other way.

  But perhaps Schumann wasn't making for the truck. Maybe he did have another way out. The man was brilliant, after all. He might have hidden--

  Without a sound, without any warning, a piece of hot metal touched the back of his head.

  No! His first thought was: Heidi, my love... how
will you manage alone with the children in this mad world of ours? Oh, no, no!

  "Don't move." In barely accented German.

  "I won't.... Is you, Schumann?" he asked in English.

  "Give me the pistol."

  Kohl let the weapon go. Schumann took it from him.

  A huge hand gripped his shoulder and turned the inspector around.

  What eyes, Kohl thought, chilled. He reverted to his native language. "You are going to kill me, yes?"

  Schumann said nothing but patted the inspector's pockets for other weapons. He stood back and then examined the field and forest around them. Apparently satisfied that they were alone, the American reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew several pieces of paper, damp with sweat. He handed them to Kohl, who asked, "What is this?"

  "Read it," Schumann said.

  Kohl said, "Please, my spectacles." Glancing down at his breast pocket.

  Schumann lifted the glasses out. He handed them to the inspector.

  Placing them on his nose, he unfolded and read the documents quickly, shocked by the words. He looked up, speechless, staring into Schumann's blue eyes. He looked down and read the top page again.

  Ludwig:

  You will find annexed hereto my draft letter to the Leader about our study. Note that I've included a reference to the testing being done today at Waltham. We can add the results tonight.

  At this early stage of the study I believe it is best that we refer to those killed by our Subject soldiers as state criminals. Therefore you will see in the letter that the two Jewish families we killed at Gatow will be described as Jew subversives, the Polish laborers killed at Charlottenburg as foreign infiltrators, the Roma as sexual deviants, and the young Aryans at Waltham today will be political dissidents....

  Oh, our dear God in Heaven, he thought. The Gatow case, the Charlottenburg case! Another too: Gypsies murdered. And those young men today! With more planned... They were killed simply as fodder for this barbarous study, one sanctioned at the highest levels of government.

  "I..."

  Schumann took the sheets back. "On your knees. Close your eyes."