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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 Behind it was a door. Cook went into the concealed room behind the wine cellar and hung one of his lanterns back there. Then he carried the parcels inside. As he was swinging the wine rack closed, his back to the door, Grutas started up the steps. He heard a shot fired outside, and then the cook's voice below him. "Who's that!" Cook came behind him, fast on the stairs for a big man. "Stop you! You were never to come here." Grutas ran through the kitchen and into the courtyard waving and whistling. Cook grabbed a stave from the corner and ran across the kitchen toward the courtyard when he saw a silhouette in the doorway, an unmistakable helmet shape, and three German paratroopers with submachine guns came into the room. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 Grutas was behind them. "Hi, Cookie," Grutas said. He picked up a salted ham from the crate on the floor. "Put back the meat," the German corporal said, pointing his weapon at Grutas as readily as he did at the cook. "Get outside, go with the patrol." The trail was easier descending to the castle, Berndt making good time with the empty wagon, wrapping the reins around his arm while he lit his pipe. As he approached the edge of the forest he thought he saw a big stork taking off from high in a tree. As he got closer he saw the flapping white was fabric, a parachute caught in high limbs, the risers cut. Berndt stopped. He put down his pipe and slid off the wagon. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 He put his hand over Cesar's muzzle and spoke quietly into the horse's ear. Then he moved forward on foot, cautious. Suspended from a lower limb was a man in rough civilian clothes, newly hanged with the wire noose well into his neck, his face blue-black, his muddy boots a foot above the ground. Berndt turned back fast toward the wagon, looking for a place to turn around on the narrow trail, his own boots looking strange to him as he found footing on the rough ground. They came out of the trees then, three German soldiers under a sergeant and six men in civilian clothes. The sergeant considered, drew back the bolt of his machine pistol. Berndt recognized one of the civilians. "Grutas," he said. "Berndt, goody Berndt, who always got up his lessons," Grutas said. He walked up to Berndt with a smile that seemed friendly enough. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 "He can handle the horse," Grutas said to the German sergeant. "Maybe he is your friend," the sergeant said. "Maybe not," Grutas said, and spit in Berndt's face. "I hung the other one, didn't I? I knew him too. Why should we walk?" And softly, "I'll shoot him at the castle if you will lend me back my gun." 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. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 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 regret-fully-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. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 "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." |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 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?" |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 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. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 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. |
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著作権の関係でファンのみの公開となります。 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. |