Sniper's Honor: A Bob Lee Swagger Novel Read online

  Thus, his mind was clear to consider the issue of railroads.

  It seemed the Russian Jabos weren’t blowing them up with the same regularity. They knew that Western Ukraine would be theirs again soon, and everything they blew up would have to be replaced, so they had decided momentarily against machine-gunning and rocketing German troop trains, if they were headed west, full of wounded. In fact, since the front was lost and would crumble any day now, they had ceased machine-gunning and rocketing even German troop trains headed east. The arrival of the new troops would just increase the Reds’ bag somewhere along the line.

  It wasn’t that they felt any mercy for the wounded Germans. It was that they would need the track to propel their own troop trains westward, through the Carpathians and into Hungary as they drove for the prize of Budapest in the next few months.

  “It is essential,” he dictated to his secretary for Directive No. 559, “that we seize upon this opportunity to accelerate certain goals.”

  It was a matter of priorities. A sound manager—having examined at length the competition for rail space per Reich element vis-à-vis the ongoing strategic situation and need-based budget requirement, the transportation difficulties, the volume of cargo—understood that not everyone could be accommodated. There weren’t enough locomotives, there wasn’t enough coal, there wasn’t enough track. This small window in the dynamism of the war had to be managed precisely in order to gain the most from it.

  He went back to his adding machine and prowled through the spools of calculation, to once again check his numbers.

  “Dr. Groedl?” asked his secretary, a lumpy woman named Bertha.

  “I want to check it one more time,” he said, not really seeing her or noting her lumpiness. Neither did he see the modern angles of this modern room, which had been built by the Poles in 1936, under Bauhaus influence, as an avatar of the future that they thought they faced. Alas, they found out in 1939 that they did not, when the Soviets took over North Ukraine and again in 1941, when the Germans did. He did not even really notice the aerodynamically sleek art moderne desk at which he worked, another example of misplaced Polish optimism. He did not see the Nazi banners that had been hastily thrown up everywhere, or the piles of files, the loose paper, the bound volumes, the records, the log books, the account books, everywhere. He did not see the mess of temporary relocation. He saw only the numbers.

  He calculated. Colonel Haufstrau of Medical needs a train of at least eighteen cars to move a thousand wounded men from the front at Trinokova railhead to Hungary. Eighteen cars requiring one engine and eight tons of coal, clear track from Trinokova to Stanislav by night, then out of the true danger zone, through the Carpathians whose rail tunnels hadn’t and wouldn’t be blown by Ivan, clear track to Budapest the next day. There would be a rest stop at the Uzhgorod rail yards, so that an ammunition train headed for the front could be routed through, and the medical train would have to recoal there, consuming another six tons. The total fourteen tons of coal would reduce the ready reserve by a factor of about 9 percent, when the average daily reduction was under 6 percent, and the 6 percent vs. 9 percent projected to six more operational days in late July when it was expected by Army Group North Ukraine’s Intelligence Staff that the front would collapse and would have to regroup and reestablish lines of resistance—tank pits and minefields were already being built—west of Stanislav, possibly in the lee of the Carpathians. The Carpathian passes must be held to enable most of Army Group North Ukraine and all of SS Reichskommissariat personnel to get out before the Reds took everything over.

  On the other hand, the train run by the small yet important niche of the SS security bureaucracy called Department IV-B4 had an equal claim to priority. It had assumed as part of its cargo a last load from Lemberg before it fell, and it had added transport cars at several way stations along the route, the trophy of a final sweep operation. Now it waited for coal here in the Stanislav yards, dispensing a foul miasma of stench demoralizing to men who came in contact with it, not just Ukrainian yard workers but also Reichskommissariat staff.

  The data: IV-B4’s cargo load was by far lighter than the thousand wounded soldiers, and for obvious reasons no time or resources must be spent on maintaining it as a physical property, whereas the medical train needed a constant influx of medicine, water, and food to sustain the lives of those poor wounded boys who were its passengers. This made everything about it problematic and meant added layers of administrative responsibility and refined organizational input. Regarded purely as a logistical contest, there was no doubt that the IV-B4 train represented a lesser allocation of resources than the medical train, and there were certain intangible spiritual elements involved.

  Dr. Groedl loathed such considerations. What was “spiritual,” what was “moral,” what was “ethical”? These values could not be calculated numerically. It took a certain sensitivity to the greater ethos, which he admitted, if only to Helga, that he somewhat lacked.

  “I hate it,” he had said. “It is nothing. You can’t quantify it, you can’t shape it, you can’t weigh it. What is it? Why do we care so much about such things?”

  “I’m sure you’ll work it out, my dear,” said Helga, stroking Mitzi’s smooth head on her lap. “You always do, my genius.”

  So now he struggled with the issue before him, yearning for guidance, and yet he understood that seeking advice would be interpreted as weakness, and even at this point, the Reichskommissariat was a cesspool of politics, with strivers and whores of ambition, politicals, plotters, cabalists, all of them waiting, just waiting, for him to make a mistake so they could whisper nasty things about him in the right ears, and ease the skids under him while assisting in their own rise. He had so many enemies! If Heinrich only knew, or The Leader himself, what mischief was perpetrated by the human folly of ambition! He was simply too pure for a political world. He lived only for duty, not foolish medals and empty titles or promotions!

  “Dr. Groedel?”

  “Yes, yes, Bertha, I simply want to be certain.”

  “It is difficult, sir, I understand.”

  “But we must forge ahead,” he said. He winced, pinched the bridge of his nose, wished he had a cup of tea, and then proceeded. “Where was I?”

  “ ‘ . . . to accelerate certain goals.’ ”

  “Yes, yes. Continue, ‘Thus priorities are henceforth determined. Train 56, under the auspices of Department IV-B4, will be given the coal authority and the track clearance to proceed at once to its destination. All entities are hereby directed to offer maximum support to this transport and further memos will follow adjudicating logistical responsibilities. Train 118, under the auspices of the Wehrmacht medical service, will wait at least twenty-four hours, dependent on the resupply of coal to the yards at Stanislav, which, when it again reaches a level of nine percent surplus under normal operating procedures, it will be allowed to depart.’ Sign it Groedel, and you know the rest, Bertha, get it out to our people as quickly as possible.”

  “You realize the Colonel-Doctor Haufstrau will go to Wehrmacht command to protest your decision, Dr. Groedl?”

  “I do. It can’t be helped. Whatever I do, I make enemies. Berlin will back me, I believe. Reichsführer Himmler has his own considerable clout. If it reaches The Leader, he will back me. I have always counted on my special relationship with The Leader. There will be grumbling, but one must do the right thing.”

  “You are truly an idealist, sir. You are my hero.”

  He smiled modestly, then immediately pulled his face back into its mode of blurred diffidence, humphing with some embarrassment, as direct compliments and expressions of affection made him quite uncomfortable.

  “I shall mark IV-B4 Train 56,” she said, “as cleared green and full speed ahead to Auschwitz-Birkenau.”

  Moscow

  “Groedl, Hans,” said Krulov, after unleashing a cirrocumulus of cigarette smoke to curl and lap in the high corners of the Kremlin office. “One of their nastier beasts. Like
so many of the truly vile ones, he’s overintelligent and overeducated. Prefers to be known as Dr. Groedl as opposed to Obergruppenführer-SS Groedl.”

  It was odd. Targets didn’t have faces, usually. They were anonymous men in feldgrau or camouflage, if SS, who scurried this way and that until a moment came when they went still in the embrace of the PU telescopic reticle, and it was her finger who shot them. It seemed not to involve great pain, of which, she would admit to herself and nobody else, she was glad. Usually they would stiffen or step back. She tried never to take a head shot. This was by doctrinal assertion: the head was a far more difficult target from the technical point of view, smaller, more active, unpredictable. But there was a psychological reason as well: a head shot could be alarming if it shattered and emptied skull, broke the face plate into halves or thirds, removed a jaw, all amid a copious outflow of crimson. Sometimes there was an extravagant splatter pattern, and in the snow, the red galaxies of blasted blood could be disconcerting. No, a torso shot was best.

  But here, now: a face. Dumpy, undistinguished save by the looseness of jowls, the sadness of demeanor, the lightlessness of expression. He looked so insignificant, like a janitor or an elderly factory worker. Still, a face. He was not a figure, he was a human being.

  “Not a soldier but a professor, like your father,” said Krulov. “You’d hardly notice him. Hmmm, let’s see, yes, born 1890, Linz, educated University of Linz, taught high school, served in staff position in the first war, never left Germany, renowned early for extraordinary mathematical capacity and organizational talent. Numbers, numbers, numbers with this one. After the war, got his doctorate in economics at University of Heidelberg, married, taught at University of Munich, and there was disgusted with the economic policies of Weimar and thus became an early Nazi, party number 133. Met Hitler and exchanged ideas on several occasions. Now he’s a favorite. It’s all in the file.”

  Petrova’s eyes ran quickly over the documents, confirming the high points. There was a photo of this Dr. Groedl with a grim woman, a picture of him with older people, parents possibly, and in each he had the stuffy formality, the lightless eyes, the awkwardness, the dowdy wardrobe. Finally she came across one of him in an actual SS uniform, and he looked ridiculous. He was trying to do that salute they do, the stiff arm at a 45-degree angle, when they shout “Heil”—she had seen it only in the cinema, for it never appeared on the battlefield—and the result was quite comical. What a grotesque fool; the physical realm was baffling for this fellow, and when he tried to express himself with something even so primitive as that salute, he had a clownish quality.

  “Why must he be killed, Comrade Commissar? I mean, all of them must be killed or driven out, yes, of course, and when they come before our gunsights it happens, but this is different. I’ve never been assigned a targeted killing before.”

  “Probably something in the woman in you rebels,” said Krulov with oil in his voice. “It’s to be expected. What you do is ‘fair,’ on a battlefield, against armed men who would kill you or, more important to someone of your heroic disposition, your comrades. And you can project the ruinous consequences for the nation if these bastards win. But now we take it a step further: we point out one man who, on the face of it, seems an undistinguished little chap, and we kill him. Why? A fair question. Colonel Dinosovich, you’re our Groedl expert. You could explain to the sniper sergeant.”

  “Yes, sir,” said the junior NKVD officer without making eye contact.

  “He was assigned to Reichskommissariat, which administers what the Germans call ‘colonies’ here in the east. His specialty from the start was Ukraine. He helped organize Einsatzgruppen D, which was the SS mobile killing unit in Ukraine. The ridiculous Ukraines thought the Germans were their liberators, and for their troubles, the Einsatzgruppen rounded them up and shot them en masse. Mostly Jews, also intellectuals, politicians, anyone with military experience, anyone bound to be dissident. Evidently Dr. Groedl put the lists of targeting killings together, with the assistance of SS intelligence operatives. He was very good at his job, and under the enthusiastic support of his mentor, Dr. Ohlendorf, head of D, he was quickly promoted. He became director of the Kiev district in Ukraine, once the Nazis had purified it, where his first priority was always total elimination of Jews and dissidents, as well as restoration of economic order for the benefit of the Wehrmacht supply organization. Those bastards might not have lasted so long at Stalingrad and Kursk and killed so many of us if Dr. Groedl’s organizational talents hadn’t been put to such good use.

  “Now he’s what’s called a senior group leader–SS, a major general, though he normally avoids the military accouterments of his job, and that ridiculous photo of him in his SS getup from 1942 is the only one we have of him in uniform. Promoted to Reichskommissar after Koch left, he has ruled Ukraine for the past six months. During that spell, he has sent over fifty thousand people to the extermination camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau. He has kept the rails running on schedule despite a heroic bombing and strafing campaign by our aviators. Though he never takes to the field, he has organized anti-partisan campaigns that are among the most effective the Germans have, and via his efforts, over six thousand partisans have been either killed in battle or captured and executed. To frighten the farmers, he has executed over a thousand of them. He’s cut quite a path through the motherland for a little fatty in an expensive suit.

  “Any further questions, Petrova?” asked Krulov.

  “No, Comrade.”

  “Another excellent lie,” said Krulov. “Wonderful job of pretending to be a mindless party automaton, what the Czechs call a robot. Nothing but obedience. Even your eyes hide questions. But of course you have questions. You do not ask them, because among such big shots as us, questions equal doubt, and if you doubt, we doubt, and consequences can be unpleasant.”

  Silence. Krulov was indulging himself by speaking the truth. It was a perquisite of his rank. Even one of the NKVD fools looked a little uncertain at this unusual tack.

  “All right, then,” said Krulov. “I will ask the questions you have wisely decided to pass on.”

  “As you say, Comrade Commissar.”

  “First of all: Why him? There are so many of them who we will hunt down and deal with after the war. Why this one little dim cog in their vast killing machine? Excellent question, Petrova. There are two answers, the first of which is all right for you to know, the second of which is not, and if any of these three NKVD monkeys report me, I could end up in the cellar of their fortress with a pistol muzzle behind the ear. Right, gentlemen?”

  The three monkeys laughed awkwardly.

  “All right, Colonel Dinosovich, control your giggles and explain.”

  “Yes, Comrade Commissar. The key is accessibility. We have captured their high-ranking military personnel before, including a field marshal, but the civilian administrators, who set the policy and then step back, are difficult to locate and, if located, difficult to target. This Groedl operated out of the Reichskommissariat Ukraine—RKU—at Rivne, which was a large military complex. It was heavily defended, not only by SS ground forces but also by an interceptor squadron. Bombers did not get through, no partisans got close enough to strike. So for three years he did his business like any bureaucrat, living with his wife and puppy in a nice house, adding his numbers, making his decisions, a long way from any actual death or dying. That changed in February, when the Red Army finally liberated Rivne after a furious battle. Like all rats, he escaped and disappeared.

  “NKVD has been hunting him for some time. Only recently has it come to us through radio intercepts that he has set up temporary headquarters in Stanislav, in the Town Hall, and that he continues to administer what is left of his shrinking empire with the same ruthless efficiency. Stanislav is about twenty miles behind the front. The difference is that Rivne was a more dedicated installation, with rings and rings of security. Stanislav is an improvisation. The security is ad hoc. There isn’t an SS division between him and us. Thus, we beli
eve, he is vulnerable to a sniper. He resides at the Hotel Berlin. Each morning, as a show of how he has tamed that town, he walks the four blocks from the Berlin to the Town Hall, crossing Hitlerstrasse and passing through a nice little park. He has a complement of four Gestapo bodyguards. We feel it would be quite an easy shot for an accomplished marksman such as yourself, Petrova, from any of a dozen buildings along the way. Moreover, Stanislav is in the foothills of the Ukrainian Carpathians, where we have partisans. They will supply logistical support, including transportation and security for your mission. Without knowing it, Groedl has placed himself where we can reach him. If we can reach him, we must. We owe it to our partisans, to the Red Army soldiers, even to the Jews he’s murdered.”

  “The offensive, Dinosovich. You can tell her about the offensive. She needs to know. And the Germans almost certainly know themselves.”

  “Yes, Comrade Commissar. Sniper Sergeant, in ten days the Second Ukrainian Front Army will begin a major offensive aimed to push the Germans from Ukraine and open the advance to Budapest. It will be a time of great chaos and confusion in the area, and when that happens, Groedl will be recalled to Berlin. Our opportunity to eliminate him will be gone. So you see, Sniper Sergeant, there is an imposed urgency, a time limit. This assassination must take place before the prey flees, and the prey will flee as a function of the offensive. So the clock is ticking.”