The Master Sniper

“Oh, I’m known. Everybody in Switzerland knows everybody else. But as of the thirtieth I became uninteresting to them. They expected me to politely put a bullet through my skull. They’d rather pay attention to their new enemies, the Russians. That’s where all the activity is now. I’m a free man.”

“But you were nevertheless cautious in your preparations?”

“Herr Obersturmba

“My apologies,” said Repp.

Repp lit a cigarette. He noticed that they’d turned inland. There was no more water to be seen and now, ahead through the windshield, the Alps seemed to bulk up majestically, much nearer than when first he’d observed them.

“The last town was Rorschach, Herr Peters,” said the young driver. “Now we’re headed toward St. Gallen, and then to Appenzell.”

“I see,” said Repp.

“Pretty, the mountains, no?” said Felix.

“Yes. Though I’m not from mountainous territory. I prefer the woods. How much further in time?”

“Two hours, sir,” said the driver. Repp saw his warm eyes in the mirror as the young man peeked at him.

“I think I ought to grab some sleep. Tonight’ll be a long one.”

“A good idea,” said Felix, but Repp had already dozed off into quick and dreamless sleep.

“Herr Obersturmba

He awakened roughly. The driver was shaking him. He could see that the car was inside something. “We’re here.

We’re here.”

Repp came fully awake. He felt much better now.

The car was in a barn—he smelled hay and cows and manure. Felix, in the corner, labored over something, a trunk, Repp thought.

“Vampir?”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Repp walked to the barn door, which was ajar, and looked out. They were partially up a mountain, at the very highest level of cultivation. He looked down across a slope of carefully tended fields and meadows and could see the main road several miles away.

“It seems desolate enough,” he said.

“Yes, owned by an old couple. We bought it from them at an outrageous price. I tell you, I never worked an operation with such a budget. We used to have to account for every paper clip. Now: you need a farm, you buy a farm! Somebody sure wants those little Jew babies dead.”

Repp walked out of the barn and around its corner, to follow the slope upward. The fields ended abruptly a few hundred meters beyond, giving way to forest, which mantled the rest of the bulk of the mountain, softening its steepness and size. Yet he still knew he was in for some exercise. The best estimates, based on aerial survey photos, put the distance between himself and the valley of the Appenzell convent roughly twenty kilometers, rough ground through mountain forest the whole way, up one side of it, around, and then down the other. He flipped his wrist over to check his watch: 2:35 P.M. Another six or seven hours till nightfall.

Repp shook the lethargy out of his bones. He had some walking to do, with Vampir along for the ride. He calculated at least five hours on the march, which would get him to his shooting position by twilight: vitally important. He needed at least a glimpse of the buildings in the light so that he could orient himself and calculate allowances on his field of fire, the limits to his killing zone.

Repp stabbed out his cigarette and returned inside.

He took off the tie, threw it in the car, and peeled off the jacket, folding it neatly. He changed into his mountain boots, a pair of green-twill drill trousers and a khaki shirt. Then he put on the Tiger jacket, the new one, from the workshops at Dachau, its crisp patterns, green on paler green, flecked with brown and black. But Repp had vanity too: against regulations, he’d indulged in one of the traditions of the Waffen SS and had the German eagle and swastika sewn onto his left sleeve.

Against whose regulations? he wondered. For now not only did he represent the Waffen SS, he was the Waffen SS: he was what remained of thirty-eight divisions and nearly half a million men, heroes like Max Seela and Panzer Meyer and Max Simon and Fritz Christen and Sepp Dietrich and Theodor Eicke; and Totenkopf, and Das Reich and Polzei and Liebstandarte and Wiking and Germania and Hohenstauffen and Nord and Prinz Eugen, the divisions themselves, Frundsberg and Hitlerjugend: gone, all gone, under the earth or in cages waiting to be hanged by Russians or Americans: he alone was left of this army of crusaders, he was chief of staff and intelligence and logistics and, most important, the men, the dead men. It was an immense legacy, yet its heaviness pleased him. Better me than most. I can do it. A simple thing now, move and shoot. After Russia all things have seemed easy, and this last mission will be easiest of all.

“Herr Obersturmba

“Yes?”

“Sir, wouldn’t it be safer to travel in civilian clothes, in hiker’s kit? That way, if—”

“No matter what I’m wearing, I’ll have that”—he pointed to a table, on which Felix now had arranged the weapon components, gleaming with oil—“which no hiker would carry. But I won’t run into anybody. Dense forest, high in the mountains, far from climbing and hiking trails. And this is a day of celebration, people everywhere are dancing, drinking, making love. They won’t be poking about.”

“But the boy has a good point,” called Felix, “after all—”

“And finally, this is no SD operation. It’s the last job of Totenkopfdivision, of the Waffen SS. I’m no assassin, gone to murder. I’m an officer, a soldier. This is a battle. And so I’ll wear my uniform.”

“Well,” said Felix wearily, “it’s your funeral, not ours.”

“No,” said Repp. “It won’t be my funeral.”

He went over; he could see smudge marks from Felix’s fingers on the sheen of the cool, oily metal of the rifle components; these somehow bothered him.

“Of course it has not been opened until just now?”

He knew Felix was giving the driver a look of disbelief, but he heard the voice ring out, though without conviction, “Just as we were instructed.”

Repp assembled the rifle quickly, threading the gas piston, operating handle and spring guide into the receiver, inserting the bolt camming and locking units, forcing the pin into the hinge at the trigger unit pivot, and locking the whole together. It took seconds. Then, without ceremony, he loaded each of the six magazines, thirty rounds apiece, with the special subsonic ammunition with the spherical bullet heads. He set the rifle and clips aside, and checked off the co

“You look like a doctor getting ready to operate,” said Felix.