Garden of Beasts

continue your work, with us in your thoughts, so that perhaps this madness can end. Tell everyone who will listen that the evil here is worse than the worst they can imagine and it will not end until somebody has the courage to stop it.
    Know that we love you.
    —Your sons
    Around him the screams abated as the young men dropped to their knees or bellies and began kissing the scuffed oak floor and baseboards to suck whatever air they might from beneath the floors. Some simply prayed peacefully.
    Kurt Fischer looked over his writing once more. He actually gave a soft laugh. For he’d realized suddenly that this was the essential purpose he’d been hoping for: delivering the message to his parents and ultimately, he prayed, the world. This is how he would fight the Party. His weapon was his death.
    And, now at the end, he felt a curious optimism that this note would be found and delivered and perhaps, through his parents or others, it would be the final root that cracked the wall of the jail imprisoning his country.
    The pencil fell from his hand.
    Using his last morsels of thought and strength, Kurt folded the paper and put it into his wallet, which had the most chance of being removed from his body by a local mortician or doctor, who, God willing, might find the words he’d written and have the courage to send them on.
    Then he took his brother’s hand and closed his eyes.
    •   •   •
    Still, Paul Schumann had no target.
    Reinhard Ernst was pacing erratically beside the Mercedes as he spoke into the microphone attached by a wire to the dashboard in the front seat. The man’s tall bodyguard also blocked Paul’s view.
    He kept the gun steady, finger on the trigger, waiting for the man to stop.
    Touching the ice . . .
    Controlling his breathing, ignoring the flies buzzing into his face, ignoring the heat. Silently screaming to Reinhard Ernst: Stop moving, for Christ’s sake! Let me do this thing and get away, back to my country, back to my printing plant, my brother . . . the family that I’ve had, the family that I may yet have.
    An image of Käthe Richter came quickly into his head and he saw her eyes, felt her tears, heard the echo of her voice.
    I’d rather share my country with ten thousand killers than my bed with one. . . . 
    His finger caressed the trigger of the Mauser, and her face and words vanished in a spray of ice.
    And just at that moment Ernst stopped pacing, clipped the microphone back onto the dashboard of the Mercedes and stepped away from the car. He stood with arms folded, chatting amiably to his bodyguard, who nodded slowly, as they gazed at the classroom.
    Paul rested the sights on the colonel’s chest.

Chapter Thirty-Nine
    Approaching the clearing, Willi Kohl heard a loud gunshot.
    It echoed off the buildings and the landscape and was swallowed in the tall grass and juniper around him. The inspector ducked instinctively. He saw, across the clearing, the tall form of Reinhard Ernst drop to the ground beside the Mercedes.
    No . . . The man is dead! It’s my fault! Through my oversight, my stupidity, a man has been killed, a man vital to the fatherland.
    The minister’s SS bodyguard, crouching, looked for the assailant.
    What have I done? the inspector thought.
    But then another shot rang out.
    Easing to the protective trunk of a thick oak at the edge of the clearing, Kohl saw one of the regular army soldiers slump to the ground. Kohl looked just beyond him and saw another soldier lying on the grass, blood on his chest. Nearby a balding man in a brown jacket scrabbled to safety under the bus.
    The inspector then looked back to the Mercedes. What was this? He’d been wrong. The minister was unhurt! Ernst had dived to the ground for cover when he’d heard the first shot but was now rising cautiously, a pistol in his hand. His guard had unslung a machine pistol and he too was looking for a target.
    Schumann hadn’t killed Ernst.
    Then a third shot rang through the clearing. It hit Ernst’s Mercedes, shattering a window. A fourth, too, hitting the car’s tire and inner tube. Then Kohl saw motion on the grassy field. It was Schumann, yes! He was running from the Opel toward the school, firing occasionally toward the Mercedes with a long rifle, forcing Ernst and his guard to remain low. He reached the front door of the classroom as Ernst’s SS man rose and fired several times. The bus, however, protected the American from the shots.
    But he was not protected