Armageddon_ A Novel of Berlin - Leon Uris [51]
And Klaus Stall’s killer dog, Messer. The dog strained on the leash waiting for the command, “Kill! ... Go for the throat, Messer!”
Klaus Stoll’s dark face was stubbled, dirty, and sweat-drenched. His black Nazi uniform was torn and caked with dried blood. The swastika was gone. “I am glad you are here, Herr Falkenstein,” he said in his semiliterate speech. “You are understanding. I have explained to them that I only followed orders. The Nazis would have killed me if I hadn’t obeyed. They held my family as hostage to see that I carried out orders.”
“Step back, Ulrich, and let us deal with them.”
“Herr Falkenstein! You are a civilized man! You cannot put me at their mercy!”
“Perhaps you are right, Stoll. Perhaps we should call in the Poles.”
“God no!” Emma screamed.
Stoll turned to the crippled Hoffman. “Didn’t I spare you even against orders?”
“Because it was amusing to see me scream in pain with my back.” Hoffman snatched up a brick. “Let us see how you will bear the pain of a broken back!”
The Nazi fell to his knees and clasped his hands. “God! God be my merciful judge! I hated every minute of it! They made me do it!”
The ring closed in.
“Wait!” ordered Ulrich Falkenstein with such power and authority they halted. “Let us not be so quick. In places like Schwabenwald human beings were turned into animals so that whores and bums like Klaus and Emma Stoll would become supermen in their own eyes by comparison. Let us see if the superman is made of our stuff. Stand up Klaus Stoll,” Falkenstein said in an almost paternal tone. “We shall not lay a hand on you.”
Ulrich quieted the others’ protests and continued. “Now, Klaus Stoll. Face your wife. Spit in her face as you made us spit on our comrades. Spit I say!”
He spat upon his wife.
“Now, Emma Stoll. Do not wipe the spit. Let it run down your face and into your mouth. Spit on your husband!”
She spat twice.
He ordered them to spit again and again and again until their mouths ran dry, and they were given water and made to spit again.
“Now, Klaus Stoll, slap your wife until her face bleeds.”
“Here, Emma Stoll. Take this stick and beat the face of your husband.”
And they beat on each other with sickening thuds. The prisoners of Schwabenwald shrunk back from the scene in revulsion. They beat upon each other until Emma Stoll slumped, semiconscious. The Nazi stood over her gasping and weeping and babbling to God for understanding.
“Klaus Stoll!” Falkenstein roared. “Call for your dog!”
“Mercy!”
“Call for your dog, I say!”
“Messer,” the Nazi voice whimpered, “Messer.”
“Tell Messer to kill! Tell him to go for the throat!”
“Kill ...” Klaus Stoll choked.
“Aha! Messer does not answer his master’s call. Get on your hands and knees and bark like Messer. Bark at your wife.”
Klaus Stoll grotesquely groveled about on all fours and barked and snapped at his wife.
Ulrich Falkenstein faced the others, and they knew that he had deliberately made them disgusted with themselves.
“It is enough!” Hoffman cried, dropping his weapon. “Make him stop!”
Klaus Stoll fell exhausted and Ulrich Falkenstein stood over him. “Why didn’t you have the decency to kill yourself? ... Hoffman ... call the Americans.”
Chapter Twenty-three
THE SHEETS WERE SOGGY with sweat. Dante pushed off the bed on rubbery legs, groped for matches, lit the kerosene lamp, turned the wick up. It flickered shadows about the war-battered room.
The shadows played over Marla’s glistening body. She lay on her side, her face buried in the pillow, her hair in disarray on the shambled bed. She was motionless except for the exhaling of deep sensuous groans.
Dante’s fuzzy mind tried to work. He washed himself as best he could in the single bucket of water, and then he dressed.
The numbness caused by her bites began to wear off and hurt. Crazy! It’s all plain crazy!
The rendezvous had been kept in a bombed-out apartment that her father once used for a mistress in the old days. When Dante arrived, Marla had been waiting in the