فصل سوم

3

BLITZKRIEG, HITLER’S lightning war, was faster than anyone imagined. At the castle Berndt found a company of the Totenkopf Death’s Head Division, Waffen-SS. Two Panzer tanks were parked near the moat with a tank destroyer and some half-track trucks.

The gardener Ernst lay facedown in the kitchen yard with blowflies on his head.

Berndt saw this from the wagon box. Only the Germans rode in his wagon. Grutas and the others had to walk behind. They were only Hilfswillige, or Hiwis, locals who volunteered to help the invading Nazis.

Berndt could see two soldiers, high on a tower of the castle, running down the Lecters’ wild-boar pennant and putting up a radio aerial and a swastika flag in its place.

A major wearing SS black and the Totenkopf skull insignia came out of the castle to look at Cesar.

“Very nice, but too wide to ride,” he said regretfully—he had brought his jodhpurs and spurs to ride for recreation. The other horse would do. Behind him two storm troopers came out of the house, hustling Cook along between them.

“Where is the family?”

“In London, sir,” Berndt said. “May I cover Ernst’s body?”

The major motioned to his sergeant, who stuck the muzzle of the Schmeisser under Berndt’s chin.

“And who will cover yours? Smell the barrel. It’s still smoking. It can blow your fucking brains out too,” the major said. “Where is the family?” Berndt swallowed. “Fled to London, sir.”

“Are you a Jew?”

“No, sir.”

“A Gypsy?”

“No, sir.”

He looked at a wad of letters from a desk in the house. “There is mail for a Jakov. Are you the Jew Jakov?” “A tutor, sir. Long gone.”

The major checked Berndt’s earlobes to see if they were pierced. “Show the sergeant your dick.” Then, “Shall I kill you or will you work?” “Sir, these people all know each other,” the sergeant said.

“Is that so? Perhaps they like each other.” He turned to Grutas. “Perhaps your fondness for your landsmen is more than you love us, hem, Hiwis?” The major turned to his sergeant. “Do you think we really need any of them?” The sergeant leveled the gun at Grutas and his men.

“The cook is a Jew,” Grutas said. “Here is useful local knowledge—you let him cook for you, you would be dead within the hour from Jew poison.” He pushed forward one of his men. “Pot Watcher can cook, and forage and soldier too.” Grutas went to the center of the courtyard, moving slowly the muzzle of the sergeant’s machine pistol tracking him. “Major, you wear the ring and the scars of Heidelberg. Here is military history of the kind you yourself are making. This is the Ravenstone of Hannibal the Grim. Some of the most valiant Teutonic Knights died here. Is it not time to wash the stone with Jew blood?” The major raised his eyebrows. “If you want to be SS, let’s see you earn it.” He nodded to his sergeant. The SS sergeant took a pistol from his flap holster. He shucked all the bullets but one from the clip and handed the pistol to Grutas. Two storm troopers dragged the cook to the Ravenstone.

The major seemed more interested in examining the horse. Grutas held the pistol to the cook’s head and waited, wanting the major to watch. Cook spit on him.

Swallows started from the towers at the shot.

Berndt was put to moving furniture for the officers’ billet upstairs. He looked to see if he had wet himself. He could hear the radio operator in a small room under the eaves, both code and voice transmissions in heavy static. The operator ran down the stairs with his pad in his hand and returned moments later to break down his equipment. They were moving east.

From an upper window Berndt watched the SS unit passing a backpack radio out of the Panzer to the small garrison they were leaving behind. Grutas and his scruffy civilians, issued German weapons now, carried out everything from the kitchen and piled the supplies into the back of a half-track truck with some support personnel. The troops mounted their vehicles. Grutas ran out of the castle to catch up. The unit moved toward Russia, taking Grutas and the other Hiwis. They seemed to have forgotten Berndt.

A squad of Panzergrenadiers with a machine gun and the radio were left behind at the castle. Berndt waited in the old tower latrine until dark. The small German garrison all ate in the kitchen, with one sentry posted in the courtyard. They had found some schnapps in a kitchen cabinet. Berndt came out of the tower latrine, thankful the stone floors did not creak.

He looked into the radio room. The radio was on Madame’s dresser, scent bottles pushed off on the floor. Berndt looked at it. He thought about Ernst dead in the kitchen yard and Cook spitting on Grutas with his last breath. Berndt slipped into the room. He felt he should apologize to Madame for the intrusion. He came down the service stairs in his stocking feet carrying his boots and the two packs of the radio and charger and slipped out a sally port. The radio and hand-cranked generator made a heavy load, more than twenty kilos. Berndt humped it into the woods and hid it. He was sorry he could not take the horse.

Dusk and firelight glowing on the painted timbers of the hunting lodge, shining in the dusty eyes of trophy animals as the family gathered around the fireplace. The animal heads were old, patted bald years ago by generations of children reaching through the banister of the upper landing.

Nanny had Mischa’s copper bathtub in a corner of the hearth. She added water from a kettle to adjust the temperature, made suds and lowered Mischa into the water. The child batted happily at the foam. Nanny fetched towels to warm before the fire. Hannibal took Mischa’s baby bracelet off her wrist, dipped it in the suds and blew bubbles for her through the bracelet. The bubbles, in their brief flight on the draft, reflected all the bright faces before they burst above the fire. Mischa liked to grab for the bubbles, but wanted her bracelet back, and was not satisfied until it was on her arm again.

Hannibal’s mother played baroque counterpoint on a small piano.

Tiny music, the windows covered with blankets as night fell and the black wings of the forest closed around them. Berndt arrived exhausted and the music stopped. Tears stood in Count Lecter’s eyes as he listened to Berndt. Hannibal’s mother took Berndt’s hand and patted it.

The Germans began at once to refer to Lithuania as Ostland, a German minor colony, which in time could be resettled with Aryans after the lower Slavic life forms were liquidated. German columns were on the roads, German trains on the railways carrying artillery east.

Russian fighter-bombers bombed and strafed the columns. Big Ilyushin bombers out of Russia pounded the columns through heavy flak from the anti-aircraft guns mounted on the trains.

The black swans flew as high as they could comfortably go, the four black swans in echelon, their necks extended, trying for the south, the roar of airplanes above them as dawn broke.

A burst of flak and the lead swan crumpled in mid-stroke and began the long plunge to earth, the other birds turning, calling down the air, losing altitude in great circles. The wounded swan thumped heavily in an open field and did not move. His mate swooped down beside him, poked him with her beak, waddled around him with urgent honks.

He did not move. A shellburst in the field, and Russian infantry were visible moving in the trees at the edge of the meadow. A German Panzer tank jumped a ditch and came across the meadow, firing its coaxial machine gun into the trees, coming, coming. The swan spread her wings and stood her ground over her mate even though the tank was wider than her wings, its engine loud as her wild heart. The swan stood over her mate hissing, hitting the tank with hard blows of her wings at the last, and the tank rolled over them, oblivious, in its whirring treads a mush of flesh and feathers.