At Sword's Point (18 page)

Baumann waited behind the tree until long after the sound of the last truckload of prisoners had faded into the distance, biding his time, considering the growing number of options open to him, as more time passed and no one came back to look for him. One task that was not optional remained paramount, as night finally fell and he cautiously made his way back to the camp.

Very little had been left behind, but Baumann wasn't interested in the discards of his fellow prisoners or the guards who had climbed on the last truck and headed east. What he was interested in were the two guards left behind to secure the buildings. Slipping back into his old dormitory, Baumann quietly lay down on his old bunk to wait.

It was nearly midnight when Baumann heard the door of the guards' barracks slam shut and the sound of unsteady footsteps clumping along the wooden porch toward the privy. Rising quickly from his bunk, Baumann crossed soundlessly to the door and stepped out into the snow. Moving across the blackened parade ground like a shadow, he came up behind the guards' privy and circled around to the door in front.

Baumann knew what the interior of the privy was like from countless work details spent in the small cement-block building. There was a concrete gutter against one of the walls that was used as a urinal by the guards. Against the opposite wall was a wide plank with four holes cut into it, set above a six-foot deep cess pit. Between the urinal and the cess pit was a large oil drum that had been converted into a stove to heat the privy in the winter, so that the guards and prison staff wouldn't get frostbite while going to the toilet.

The latrine had been the only toilet for forty-two guards, six doctors, and a hospital staff of fourteen. Once a month a prisoner was ordered to clean out the pit. Baumann remembered when he first arrived at the camp and one of the prisoners, an old man who had been a general in the Czech Army before the war, had refused to climb into the cess pit to clean it out. Two of the guards had beaten him nearly unconscious and then thrown him in. Slowly sinking into the excrement, the old man had drowned.

Standing in the doorway, Baumann could smell the Russian. Easing himself into the latrine, he saw the Russian sitting next to the wall, his trousers down around his boot tops. It was obvious from the way he was hunched forward, his head in his hands, that he had been drinking, and drinking heavily. Baumann stepped up next to the soldier, who slurred something in unintelligible Russian.

Baumann smiled to himself in the dark. "
Nyet, Kamerad
," he said.

"Huh?" The bleary-eyed soldier looked up at Baumann, trying to focus on him in the pitch-black of the privy. "Who—"

Baumann grabbed a handful of the man's hair and smashed his head against the concrete wall, cracking the skull with a sound like an egg being dropped on the floor. The soldier went limp, and Baumann held him from falling to the floor.

Reaching down to the unconscious Russian's trousers, Baumann pulled his bayonet from its sheath. Leaning his victim against the wall, he used his free hand to pull the head back, exposing the throat, then drove the tip of the bayonet nearly an inch into the side of the Russian's neck, expertly severing the jugular. As he pulled out the blade, hot blood sprayed from the wound, frothy and steaming in the cold, almost luminous in its potency, beckoning…

Pressing his mouth over the wound, Baumann began to drink, feeling his strength return with each swallow. He drank until the Russian's heart stopped beating, sucking as hard as he could, coaxing the last mouthfuls, until no more blood could be had from the man's emptied veins.

The privy now seemed to Baumann to be no darker than a room with its shades drawn at midday. Looking toward the narrow doorway, the outdoors seemed as bright as a summer's day. By straining slightly, Baumann could hear the movements of the other Russian inside the guards' barracks. For the first time since his capture by the Soviets in 1945, Baumann felt alive. Picking up the bayonet, he moved cautiously toward the barracks and freedom.

Baumann didn't kill the other guard right away. It had been easy to overpower him, and once he was tied to his bed, Baumann allowed himself the luxury of a shower. There was no hot water, but he did manage to find a discarded sliver of soap, and for the first time in almost eight years he felt clean. He dried himself on one of the soldiers' blankets, then stripped the pants and boots off the terrified soldier he had tied to the bed and put them on. Going back to the privy, he came back with the dead man's clothes and piled them on the table in the center of the room.

The guards had two ancient Moisin Nagant rifles and a total of thirty-six rounds of ammunition between them. Dumping out the contents of their knapsacks, Baumann found two sausages, a can of lard, and half a loaf of thick black bread.

"Are you going to kill me?" the half-naked Russian on the bed asked.

"Yes," Baumann replied. "But not right now."

"Why?" the Russian asked.

"Because I need to escape, that's why." Baumann busied himself with inspecting the two rifles.

"You could leave me tied to the bed. No one will come for two days, and by that time you would be gone. We would never find you." The Russian sounded resigned to his fate despite his pleadings.

"Shut up," Baumann said, peering down the barrel of one of the rifles. "Shit, you Ivans are poor soldiers. Don't you ever clean your guns? Both these barrels are rusted and pitted."

"Ilya and me are clerks," the Russian began.

"I said shut up," Baumann interrupted. "Where is your motorcycle?"

"In the barn," the Russian replied.

"Keys?"

"It doesn't have any. You just switch it on and kick-start it." The Russian tried to shift to a more comfortable position, but found it impossible to move. "Could you…"

"No," Baumann said, putting out the lights. "Go to sleep."

"But I have to pee," the Russian said plaintively.

"So, pee."

Baumann settled back on one of the bunks and closed his eyes.

The Russian woke in the pre-dawn twilight to the sound of his motorcycle coughing to life. A few minutes later, Baumann returned, dressed in the baggy uniform of a private in the Soviet Army. Walking over to the bunk where the guard was tied, he pulled his bayonet out of its sheath and cut the Russian loose.

"Get up," Baumann said, dragging him off the bunk by his shirt front. "Outside." He shoved the Russian toward the door.

Legs aching and numb from the cold of the night, the half-naked guard stumbled out of the barracks and fell onto the hard-packed ground. Baumann was right behind him, and when he had dragged him back onto his feet, slid the long blade of the bayonet between his legs.

This isn't very sharp, so if you stumble it will tear more than it will cut." He pulled the blade slightly upward into the Russian's crotch. "Now, walk."

The guard tensed as he felt the cold blade press into the flesh between his legs. With Baumann gripping his neck from behind, he allowed himself to be steered to the privy beside the barracks.

"Inside," Baumann said, giving the Russian a shove. "You have latrine duty, Ivan."

The thick plank that covered the cess pit had been removed and placed on the floor next to the body of the other guard.

"Strip, Ivan," Baumann ordered. Numbly the guard did as he was ordered, pulling off his shirt and vest over his head. Naked, he shivered as much from fear as the biting cold of early morning.

"Hands against the wall, feet spread," Baumann commanded. "You know the routine. Just like you made us do in the camp."

"I swear I am only a clerk," the Russian blubbered.

"Not with this," Baumann said, placing the blade of the bayonet against the Russian's throat. "This is a German army bayonet, the kind you bastards use to carve up 'vanished' Germans." He punched the Russian in the small of the back. "Now, spread your legs and step away from the wall."

Biting back a sob, the Russian did as he was told. Satisfied that his prisoner wasn't going to try anything, Baumann bent down and stabbed the dead man half a dozen times in the abdomen, ventilating the corpse so that expanding gases could escape. He was taking no chances that the body, bloated from decomposition, would float to the surface of the cess pit. Whenever the relief troops arrived, he wanted them to think that the two Ivans had deserted.

"All right," Baumann said when he had finished. "Turn around."

The Russian slowly turned toward Baumann, then launched himself forward and tried to grab the bayonet. The movement took Baumann by surprise, but only for an instant. Balling his hand into a fist, he smashed the Russian's jaw with one blow.

Pain momentarily stunned the Russian. As he staggered backward, Baumann hit him again, this time in the solar plexus, doubling him up against the edge of the concrete cess pit. For good measure, Baumann kicked him in the ribs.

"Get up, Ivan. You've got work to do."

Slowly the Russian struggled to his feet, his jaw hanging from his face at a crazy angle, a large purple bruise forming where Baumann's boot had caved in several of his ribs.

"Pick up your comrade and lower him into the pit," Baumann ordered.

The Russian moved like a wounded animal, half dragging, half lifting the dead man to the edge of the cess pit. Before the corpse could topple in, Baumann reached over and caught it by one arm.

"You first, Ivan," he said nodding toward the pit. "Get in."

Whimpering now, the Russian sat on the rough edge of the pit and eased himself over the concrete blocks that had supported the front edge of the planks. Frost had hardened the top layer of the filth, and it cracked as he lowered himself into the mire.

Standing waist deep in the pit, the Russian pulled the body of the dead guard into the excrement and then, at Baumann's command, stood on it, gradually forcing it to sink to the bottom of the pit. From his stamping up and down on it, the body finally sank from sight. When the Russian got off, the body did not reappear. At Baumann's gesture, the Russian came back to the edge of the pit and started to climb out.

But as the man threw one arm over the side of the pit to hoist himself out, Baumann pinned him to the edge with his foot. Leaning down with the bayonet, he drew its rough edge across the guard's throat.

With a scream that was a gurgle, the Russian brought his hand up to his neck, eyes bulging. As he did, Baumann drove the point of the weapon deep into the guard's chest, puncturing his heart. Several more quick stabs with the bayonet, and Baumann was confident that the Russian would stay at the bottom of the cess pit with his comrade.

Baumann felt the man go limp under his foot, and carefully let him slide back down into the excrement. Returning to the barracks for a moment, he came back with one of the Russian rifles and, holding it by the barrel, used it to push the body down to the bottom of the pit. When he was satisfied that the body couldn't be seen, he threw the rifle in after and watched it sink slowly from sight. Then, picking up the thick plank with the four holes cut in it, he replaced it over the cess pit and left.

The motorcycle had taken him as far as the mountains, and there Baumann pushed the machine into a ravine and continued on foot. The villages of Azerbaidzhan were filled with dark-eyed, furtive people, and Baumann moved among them like a ghost. It took him four months to reach the frontier and cross over into Turkey.

Istanbul, with its bazaars, crowded narrow streets, and opium racketeers, became Baumann's hunting ground. In less than a year, he was back on the Russian border, talking to the nomadic traders and renegade cossacks. He bought information with gold or American dollars and repaid lies with death. When the nomads would head to Baku and Astrakhan, Baumann would see them off; and when they returned he would be waiting—waiting to hear of German prisoners. And while the nomads searched for his comrades, and Kluge in particular, Baumann stalked the streets of Istanbul.

Da. Wampyr. Hier
. As Baumann looked out across the expanse of snow, watching the Soviet guards make their rounds at the prison hospital where the Cossacks had led him, his escape from the Russians seemed as if it had happened a thousand years ago. He had learned a great deal since then. He watched the camp's inmates for the better part of a day, counting them as they moved about, and decided that there were no more than a dozen guards and perhaps as many as thirty prisoners.

None of the men he had seen looked like Kluge, but that didn't mean he wasn't there. If, as the Cossacks insisted, the Russians did have a
wampyr
in there, it almost had to be Kluge. To find out for certain, he would have to go in. In addition to the guards, there would be hospital staff. He couldn't tell how many there were of those, but it didn't really matter anyway. Civilians were not likely to give him any trouble, and he had already spotted a means of wreaking havoc when he was ready.

His Cossacks moved on, with a promise to rejoin him the following afternoon at the place where they had camped the night before. When it had been dark for several hours—for them—Baumann moved out across the moonless meadow to inspect the perimeter wire, which was supposed to protect the prison hospital beyond. It was obvious that the Ivans didn't expect the prisoners to try to leave, and they certainly weren't worried about anyone trying to get in.

Smiling to himself, Baumann slid easily under the wire without detection and made his way into the camp. Finding Kluge doubtless would be much harder.

He spent the next hour making a closer recce of the camp. Then he hid in the woodshed and waited. Early the next morning, when one of the prisoners came into the shed for wood, Baumann killed him with a single blow from one of the logs. The desire to take his blood was strong, but Baumann knew he would have to wait, if he planned to take the man's place.

Stripping the corpse, he changed clothes with the dead man, then picked up an armload of wood and went out into the prison yard, heading toward the guards' barracks. Inside the barracks, he carried the wood over to the stove and stacked it neatly on the floor.

Yes
, he thought as he looked around,
only a dozen Ivans
.

"Hey, you." Baumann jumped at the sound of the voice. "Where's Dieter?"

Turning around, he found himself face-to-face with a stocky Russian clad only in heavily stained long underwear. The man stepped menacingly toward Baumann.

"I said, where's Dieter?" It was obvious that the Russian was used to cowing the prisoners, so Baumann took a step back before answering, keeping his head down.

"The doctors wanted him. I came instead." Baumann restrained an urge to rip out the Russian's throat.

"Yeah? Well, tell that little grass weasel that when Rubinsky has finished playing with him, my boots need to be mended.
Verstehen
?" The Russian scratched himself. "
Verstehen
!"

Baumann nodded. "
Da. Da
."

"Well, you'd better
verstehen
, or you'll end up in the
Schlachthaus
like that pig of an SS officer." The Russian farted. "Now, get out of here."

The
Schlachthaus
. It was prisoner slang for the special wing of the hospital where the Russian doctors experimented on their German detainees. "Slaughterhouse" was hardly too strong a term. Baumann had learned more than he cared to know about it in the Crimea. As he went back to the shed for another load of wood, he decided that an SS officer who was also a
wampyr
was quite likely to be in the
Schlachthaus
.

Dieter's body was turning a pale bluish-gray color by the time Baumann got back to the woodshed, too long dead now for the blood to be really palatable, and he dragged it into the corner and covered it with logs, just in case some impatient Russian came in looking for more firewood. Satisfied that the hiding place would pass at least casual scrutiny, Baumann picked up another armload of wood and headed toward the hospital.

He had established the general layout the night before from looking in several windows of the sprawling single-story building. As he stacked the wood next to the stove in the center of what appeared to be a doctors' wardroom, possibly adjacent to a treatment area, he heard the voice of one of the Russian doctors speaking to a prisoner.

"So tell me again, Mr. Nazi bigshot. If Jews are inferior and Russians are sub-humans, why is it that I'm here and you are my prisoner?"

"You have it wrong, Dr. Rubinsky. You are my prisoner. You are here because of me." Baumann was astonished and relieved to recognize Kluge's patent-leather voice, though it sounded a little weak. "I know what makes a Jew, but you don't know what makes me. You are like a rat drawn to a cobra, mesmerized by its fatal power over death. If you want to know my secret, just ask. I'll share it with you. But watch out, it could kill you."

Picking up some wood, Baumann kept his head down and went into the room where Rubinsky was interviewing Kluge. As he came through the door, he deliberately stumbled and dropped the wood, causing Rubinsky to turn away from Kluge, whose look of surprised recognition otherwise would have betrayed him.

"What do you want, oaf?" Rubinsky barked at Baumann. "You know that this man isn't allotted any firewood. Now, get it out."

Baumann nodded, pretending to be cowed, and did not look at the prisoner as he picked up the scattered wood. But he had noted the chain around Kluge's ankle that was padlocked to the wall. He wondered whether Kluge was always kept in this room or if they moved him around. In any case, the chain would have to be dealt with once Baumann got back to him.

Closing the door behind him, Baumann dumped the wood into the box next to the stove, then went back outside, heading back around behind the woodshed. From his vantage point in the woods, Baumann had seen the prison generator located on the far side of the camp. The Russians relied on the German prisoners to maintain the camp, and the sight of a prisoner shuffling across the prison yard in the direction of the diesel generator aroused no curiosity. No one noticed when the prisoner went into the generator shed and did not come out.

The generator, like the prisoners, had been captured at the end of the war. Chugging along at a leisurely beat, it produced a steady charge for the banks of batteries that provided the camp's electricity. The voltage regulator on the generator was set to low output, keeping the needle in the VU-meter well into the green. Any increase in charge would cause the batteries to "boil," releasing a deadly cloud of hydrochloric gas, as poisonous to breathe as it was explosive if exposed to an electrical spark. To prevent any sort of accident, there was a vent in the roof above the batteries, and all of the generator cables were sheathed in thick rubber insulation.

Closing the door behind him, Baumann climbed up onto the top of one of the two diesel fuel tanks that fed the generator and removed his outer shirt, stuffing it into the vent. Then, looking at his watch, he stretched out on the tank top to see how long it would take the fumes from the battery acid to reach him. It was dark up here. No one would even notice him if they looked in.

The sharp tang of acid bit into Baumann's nostrils, and he checked his watch.

Twenty-five minutes.

Holding his breath, Baumann stood up and pulled his shirt from the vent. Twenty-five minutes to fill about a quarter of the room with fumes. At low power, it would take at least two hours to fill the room. Baumann guessed that by setting the voltage regulator to maximum output, he could boil the batteries and create an explosive cloud in about half an hour.

All that was needed now was the spark.

Using a small pocket knife, Baumann carefully cut into the main power cable of the generator. Gently scraping away at the rubber insulation, he exposed a few millimetres of the copper wire underneath. Reaching around his neck, he untied the string on his German army ID tag and, swinging it like a pendulum, tapped it against the exposed wire. The shower of sparks produced an uncharacteristic smile on Baumann's leathery face.

Balling his shirt into a pillow, Baumann lay down atop the diesel tanks and waited for nightfall.

It wasn't until evening roll call that the Russians discovered one of their prisoners was missing. At first there was general confusion on the part of the guards, and it wasn't until an individual count was completed that they instigated a search of the compound for the missing German. It took them less than an hour to find Dieter's body in the woodshed, stiff and naked under a pile of logs. Baumann listened to the confused shouts of the Russians over the steady chugging of the generator and waited for the night to deepen.

Shortly after two A.M., Baumann stood up on the diesel fuel tank and stuffed his shirt into the vent in the roof. Lowering himself to the ground, he went over to the generator and turned off the voltage regulator. He took his ID disk out of his pocket and tied one end of the neck string above the bare patch he had scraped in the cable. Pulling the string taut, he tied the other end well below the exposed wires, leaving the metal disk just a few millimeters above the bright copper wires.

Dropping back to the ground, he reset the voltage regulator, then slowly moved the control needle to full power. In the darkness of the generator shed, Baumann could see the bright blue spark that arced occasionally between the cable and the metal ID disk. With a satisfied grunt, he turned and went out into the night.

Moving through the shadows, Baumann quickly covered the thirty meters that separated the generator shed from the hospital and slipped quietly onto the porch of the Schlachthaus. He moved around to the far side of the building and tried one of the windows. Despite initial resistance the window slid open, and Baumann was inside in a matter of seconds.

Voices drifted in from one end of the building, and Baumann could tell from the light fanning out from under the door that this was the doctors' residence. Moving around the stove in the center of the wardroom, he made his way to the room where he had seen Kluge. Gently, very gently, he tried the door.

It was locked, which meant that Kluge probably was still in there.

As Baumann looked at his watch, thick gray-white clouds of acid vapor were boiling off the batteries in the generator shed, rising to the roof and slowly filling the room with their corrosive volatility.

How much longer
? Baumann wondered, as the minutes ticked by.

The lights finally went out in the doctors' residence, and Baumann looked at his watch again, just as another tiny blue spark arced between the cable and his ID tag.

Two-thirty-five.

The explosion tore through the camp with the force of a five-thousand-pound bomb, slamming Baumann back against the wall. The guard barracks was flattened by the concussion of the blast, and one of the guards on perimeter patrol was blown through the fence surrounding the prison with such violence that the wires sliced through his body as if it were so much cheese. A huge fireball rose into the ink-black sky, and for a few minutes the shattered prison hospital was bathed in an eerie, incandescent glow.

Then, as the fireball burned itself out, the camp faded into the confusion of darkness, lit only by the flames that boiled out of the destroyed generator shed.

Baumann stood up, shaking his head to clear it. Stumbling forward over the furniture scattered across the floor, he went to Kluge's cell. Bracing himself against an up-turned desk, he kicked open the door only to find the room shattered, open to the sky.

"
Sturmbannführer
?" he called softly.

From under a pile of rubble Baumann heard an answering moan. Throwing aside the remains of part of the roof, he gradually uncovered Kluge, only just conscious. Alarmed, Baumann pulled a folding knife from an inside pocket and made a small incision in his arm, then pressed it against Kluge's lips.

"Drink, drink," he urged.

The warm trickle ran into Kluge's mouth and sent an electric quiver through his body. Like a new-born wolf feeding for the first time, he sucked hungrily at Baumann's arm, feeling a revitalizing power begin to surge into every corner of his being. Not just blood, but vampiric blood. He was still weak and knew it would take time to recover fully, but he could feel himself growing stronger already. His eyes opened and focused on Baumann.

"
Herr Scharführer. Danke
," he said, as a small trickle of blood ran from the corner of his mouth.

"Come," Baumann replied, pulling Kluge to his feet. "We have to get out of here. I'll give you more later."

"Wait," Kluge rasped. "The chain… my leg…"

Looking down, Baumann saw that the leg chain still secured Kluge to the wall. He fingered the padlock briefly, then steadied his commander against some fallen timbers, grabbed a double handful of chain, and pulled with all his might. The steel staple set into the wall snapped out with an almost musical ping and Baumann tumbled backwards.

Getting back on his feet, he gathered up the length of chain still attached to Kluge's ankle and put the
Sturmbannführer's
arm over his shoulder. It was an easy matter to pick their way through the rubble and out into the prison yard. The blast had knocked down several hundred feet of fencing, and Baumann and Kluge were able to stumble over the downed wires and head for the safety of the forest beyond.

One of the doctors saw them go. Crawling out from under the collapsed remains of the doctors' residence, Jacob Rubinsky watched as Kluge and another man vanished into the shadows of the night. He tried to follow them, to call out for the guards to stop them, but his own injuries sent him spinning into a pit of unconsciousness from which he did not emerge for several hours.

But Baumann did not take Kluge far just then. Confident that they would not be followed while the Ivans dealt with the fires still burning in the camp, and aware of Kluge's need for rest, Baumann hid them just inside the edge of the forest, where they could watch while they waited for nightfall and the planned rendezvous with the Cossacks. Across the snowy meadow, amid the shattered remains of the prison hospital, they watched the surviving German prisoners forced to dig graves for the dead Ivans, carrying their bodies from the wreckage and lowering them into the graves. Baumann counted nine bodies, only three of whom were presumably guards; the rest he assumed had to have been the medical staff. As the Germans filled in the graves, Baumann could see what appeared to be an argument taking place between the leader of the guards and one of the medical staff.