Five Past Midnight - James Thayer [43]
"A day. Maybe several days. No longer than that."
They carried Maria up the narrow stairs, passed the hunting prints on the stair walls, then by a tiny carved wooden truck that must have belonged to Rolf, then by a plant stand, and into the bedroom, Dietrich seeing none of it because of the tears in his eyes.
2
TWILIGHT LINGERED in Leipzig. The sky was washed in reds and purples. Dust and ash from the day's bombing runs had not yet settled. They never settled, persistent Allied airmen saw to that. The particles softened the city by obscuring the distance, letting citizens occasionally forget that the skyline of their ancient city—the spires and towers—was now a series of rounded mounds. Leipzig's great publishing houses were in ruins, their university — opened a half a millennium ago — cratered.
All a flying execution squad needs is a standing wall, and Leipzig still offered a selection. When the Kübelwagen pulled to the side of the brick road, and when the troopers inside began spilling out of the enclosed cargo bay, only one man seemed to notice. He was apparently a refugee, who glanced over his shoulder at the troopers. He then shuffled on, walking into the wind, arms across his chest, the tails of his thin coat flapping behind, his feet crunching the rubble. A scarf was around his head, covering his hair and ears. He turned into an alley between two destroyed warehouses. The alley was filled with debris, but he found sufficient space to pause out of sight.
A railroad track lay down the center of the street. The building opposite the alley had been a depot, with six loading bays looking out onto the street. Because a high-explosive blast had torn the roof off the building, sky was visible through the bays. Three smokestacks were behind the depot, the northernmost stack missing its top third. Just north of the depot was a power substation that bombs had reduced to a blackened knot of wire and steel. The refugee peered back at the Kübelwagen.
SS troopers dragged two men from the truck. They wore Wehr- macht uniforms stripped of badges and stripes and even buttons. They had no boots or hats. Their faces were twisted in terror.
An SS sergeant pushed one of the prisoners toward the wall, and said in a bored voice, "Let's go, let's go, let's go."
When one prisoner tripped over a fallen beam, two troopers righted him and shoved him toward the wall. That prisoner turned to the troopers and held up his hands, as if he had anything more to surrender. The second man was pushed against the wall. He too turned, but his legs gave out, and he slid to the ground. His mouth opened and closed like a fish.
"Let's go, let's go." Now the sergeant was addressing his troops.
There apparently was no time for the protocol of a firing squad. Without any further commands, four troopers formed a haphazard line, raised their rifles, and fired several shots each. The standing prisoner was blown back into the wall, then bounced back to hit the cobblestone street facedown, a red stain spreading below him. The sitting prisoner slumped sideways, blood gushing from his chest, his face frozen in his last unimaginable passion. The shots echoed among the ruins, racing up and down the street several times.
The sergeant pulled a placard from the truck's cab. He leaned it against the wall behind the dead men. It read in black paint written by a hasty hand, DESERTERS FROM THE FÜHRER'S ARMY. The paint had not fully dried, and beads ran down the placard onto the cobblestones.
"Let's go, let's go, let's go." The sergeant waved his arms at his men, hurrying them back into the truck. A day's work was never done.
One trooper made it only as far as the running board before the truck accelerated away, and he clung to the door, laughing about something, his rifle across his back. His helmet reflected red sparks of the long sunset.
The witness to the executions stepped out of the alley. Jack Cray continued down the road, the third time he had walked this circuit. His gait was a perfect imitation of a refugee's, a dispirited,