The Master Sniper by Stephen Hunter Page B

prosaically. “Economic and Administrative Department,” he said glumly, “that’s all. They do the payrolls. Clerks.”
    “Yes. Not the sort of lads to go gunning after generals, eh?”
    “No, no, suppose not.”
    “They’ve got other concerns at the moment. Those clerks run one of the more interesting phenomena of the Third Reich, old bun,” Tony said, smiling brightly. “They run the concentration camps.”

5
    V ollmerhausen not only knew that it wasn’t his fault the prisoner had escaped, he knew whose fault it was. It was Captain Schaeffer’s fault. The man was incompetent. Schaeffer was involved in most things that went wrong at Anlage Elf. He’d seen the type before, a real SS fanatic, sullen and stupid, a brutal, suspicious Nazi peasant. Vollmerhausen had explained this very carefully to anybody who cared to listen, though not many of them did.
    Now he was going to explain it to Repp.
    “If,” he began, “if Captain Schaeffer’s men had been adequately trained, had reacted quickly, had treated this whole enterprise as something other than a holiday rest camp, then the prisoner could never have escaped. Instead they blunder about like comedians in a farce, shooting at each other, screaming, turning on lights, hooting and tooting. A disaster. I thought the Waffen SS, especially the famed
Totenkopfdivision
, had a reputation for efficiency. Why, the most inept conscriptees—old men and youngsters—could have performed better.” He sat back smugly. He’d really told them. He’d really let them have it.
    Repp sat, toying with something at his desk. He didnot appear particularly impressed. He certainly could be a cold chap.
    But Schaeffer, there too, rose to his own defense.
    “If,” he replied, talking straight to Repp, “there had been no”—he pronounced the next words with special precision, knowing how they hurt—
“machine failure
, if Herr Ingenieur-Doktor had been able to get his gadget to do its job—”
    Gadget?
    “Slander! Slander! I will not be slandered! I will not be slandered.” He rose, red-faced, from the chair.
    Repp waved him down.
    “So that the
Obersturmbannführer
had been able to take out his targets as the mission specifications call for—”
    “There was no machine failure,” screamed Vollmerhausen hysterically. He was always being slandered, lied about. He knew people called him a kike behind his back. “I deny, deny, deny. We checked the equipment until we were blue in the face. It had integrity. Integrity. Yes, problems, we work around the clock, the Waffen SS should work half so hard, problems with weight, but the machine works. Vampir works.”
    “The fact remains,” insisted the young captain—some men just could not accept defeat gracefully—“the fact remains, and no Yid argument is going to change it, that Vampir displayed twenty-five targets and there were twenty-six subhumans out there.”
    It was obvious. “He slipped away before, don’t you see?” said Vollmerhausen. “He slipped out on your men before. I’m told he was a Jew, an educated fellow. Hemust have realized something was up and in the moments—”
    “He was seen leaving the field, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor,” Repp said quietly. “And fired upon.”
    “Yes, well,” Vollmerhausen sputtered, “he’d obviously, well, it’s clear that he separated himself before and so he wasn’t within the range of the mechanism.”
    “Herr Obersturmbannführer, the men swear he was standing
among
the corpses.”
    “The main question must be,” Vollmerhausen bellowed, cork-screwing insanely out of his seat, “why wasn’t the area fenced? My people slave into the night over Vampir, yet the Waffen SS is unable to construct a simple fence to hold a Jew in.”
    “All right, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor,” said Repp.
    “A simple fence to stop a Jew who—”
    Repp said, “Please.”
    Vollmerhausen had several points yet to make and he’d just thought of five or six of them when Repp’s stare fell