The Secret of Lions

by Scott Blade

  The sounds of a rhetoric-filled radio broadcast emitted from numerous speakers set up all over Berlin. The broadcast was a looped Nazi report that constantly updated the citizens of the war with the current news of the invasion on their soil. In addition, the broadcast spread false propaganda, making it seem as though the Nazis were still holding their city. Not to mention, the broadcast was a week old.

  All of the sounds combined together and floated through the night air and onto the rooftop of Ingrid booksellers. This was the place I hid. It was a good sniper’s position. I could see the secret government building across the yard, through the trees. It was kept a secret from outsiders. Not many people knew of its existence. I was not an outsider. It was not a secret from me.

  The fortified building had few windows. Two lights emitted from them, one at the top floor, which was on the second story. This room was above my range of sight. The second light emanated from a room on the first floor. There were three men in this room. Two of them were soldiers, and the third was a decorated military officer.

  The British had trained me well. I recognized the officer as a general in the German forces. He was not the target, a bonus maybe, but not the target.

  I had come to embody the secret code name: Black Lion. I was not just a sniper. I was a project. My training was two years of intense combat and weapons courses. My past as a British captive was erased. My school records were erased. I was trained to kill, and I would have my chance.

  And after months of hunting him, and trying to get close again, I’d finally cornered the Führer, the fox. I had tracked him to this station. I knew he was in that building somewhere. I never actually saw him go in, but I knew he was there.

  My intel was good. The target would be in hiding because his war was coming to an end. He was cornered. Germany was on the brink of being conquered and the vultures were lining up at the gate. Hitler’s closest allies were growing mutinous toward their once beloved leader.

  I had been perched on the roof of that bookseller for nine hours. In training, my best time for waiting was eight hours. I had gone over that time; soon it would be affecting my actions. I was too tired, and it would end up costing me. I had to give up my sniper rifle for a close encounter with Hitler. The Führer was not going to come out onto the streets.

  He must have been plotting an escape plan, I thought. But I could not see one. Cornering himself in that bunker was suicide.

  Instinctively, my eyes focused on a sudden movement from down on the street in front of the building’s entrance. A man stood there. I set my rifle’s sights on him. Through the scope I saw there were actually two men.

  They wore armbands embroidered with the swastika symbol. After a moment of hesitation, I realized they were Hitler’s private bodyguards. They wore black street clothing from head to toe. They were the most elite soldiers he had. They were armed with pistols, holstered under their left arms.

  I recognized their guarding positions as one the British had trained me to commit to memory. The two guards at the door would have been easy for a sniper to kill. Yet, there were also two more men standing post below my position. If I shot the guards standing across the street then the men below the bookshop would rush me on the roof. And more than likely the guards that were with the Führer would be aware of the sniper’s presence. I would have to find another way. I would have to move in for a closer kill.

  I wouldn’t have lived through a gunfight with all of the bodyguards, not four at once. They were the best of the best. And they had been guarding Hitler for much longer than I had been an assassin. I was lucky to have lived through a gunfight like that once before. I did not wish to press my luck. I would have to infiltrate quickly and silently if I hoped to accomplish my mission.

  I set my rifle down on the roof and stood up slowly so I would not arouse their attention. I could see the lighted window from the second floor easier now that I was standing tall. My eyes fell upon the back of a man’s head. I recognized him immediately. It was Hitler. Quickly, I raised my rifle back up to a firing position. Only seconds later his head vanished into the room.

  “Damn,” I whispered as I lined the gun’s barrel with the window. I paused for a moment in case he stepped back into my line of sight. It never happened.

  I abandoned the rifle and walked to the back edge of the roof. I dropped down into the alley behind the bookstore. I pulled out my sidearm and screwed a silencer in place. I had to find a way into the building.

  The gun disappeared into my jacket. I pulled out a dirty street cap. It matched the tattered, brown jacket and gray trousers I wore. These clothes helped me to blend in as a rugged street bum.

  I knew the bodyguards probably had a man posted on every possible entrance. I would have to find the most vulnerable one.

  I walked along the streets and into a densely wooded area around Hitler’s hideout. I tried to stay out of view. I made my way just a short distance from the back entrance. Two guards were posted there. The back door was likely to be locked and reinforced with steel.

  That was why there were only two guards. I studied this entrance and realized there were definitely only two guards. Each was armed just like the ones in the front of the building. I thought if I was lucky I could kill at least one of them by surprise and maybe the other one before the man could get off a shot, allowing me to keep the element of surprise.

  If one of them fired his gun I was finished. The sound would surely bring the other guards around to the back of the building. I calculated I’d need only thirty to forty-five seconds to break through the backdoor before the others were on me. I would be dead if the second guard could not be killed fast enough. It was unfortunate I did not have another handgun to use.

  The only option that I had was to use both my gun and combat knife. It was located near the small of my back, tucked into my belt. I unsheathed it and quickly thought of a plan. I took the hilt of the knife and stood near the edge of the bunker. With my back to the wall, I moved slowly to the guards’ positions. The back entrance was around the corner. I could feel my heartbeat speed up. My anxiety and adrenaline rose.

  I tapped the hilt of the knife against the wall. It made a clicking sound. Both guards locked their attention to the sound and approached the corner. They assumed their defensive positions. The farthest guard pulled out his gun and pointed it at the corner, providing cover for his comrade. Meanwhile, the other guard approached the dark alley. I waited patiently.

  The front guard held his gun in his right hand. He crept slowly to the wall. He glanced back at his partner. The rear guard put a silver whistle in his mouth. This was to alarm the others in the event of a confrontation.

  The first guard turned his attention back to the corner. His feet slowly moved to the alley. He could see my shadow dart across the ground. With his gun drawn, his arm came around the corner first.

  My timing was crucial. Using my combat knife, I slashed clear through the guard’s wrist. His hand clumped off the bone with the gun still in its grip.

  I dove passed the falling appendage. I began falling to the ground. My firearm was pointed in the direction of the rear guard. Two bullets ignited through my silencer and cut through the air. The first hit the rear guard’s left shoulder, and the second cut through his throat. The guard fell back to the wall. The whistle dropped out of his lips. His gun bounced onto the ground. He lay on the ground, hacking up blood.

  The handless guard clenched his stub. Blood seeped through the cracks between his fingers covering his only remaining hand. Then it squirted through his tightly gripped fingers. He seemed bewildered at what to do next. He tried for his whistle, but I shot him twice in the chest. His eyes filled with a fluid combination of blood and tears. These were the last seconds of his life.

  I stood up, picked up the fallen hand, and threw it onto the dead guard’s remains and out of sight of anyone passing through the clearing between the edge of the forest and the bunker.

  I stopped and stared at the puddle of
blood on the ground. I saw my reflection in the pool. Now I feel sickened at what I was thinking. I remember I could see the stars and the night sky behind my reflection in the pool of blood. It had a hold on me. I felt like I was standing in a portrait of blood.

  I went to the door and tried the handle. It was locked. I knelt and looked through the keyhole. I could see the back of a large, steel bar. The door was reinforced as I had suspected.

  “Damn it,” I muttered. I had to get in.

  I stared at the door. Then I looked up at the building. There was a fire escape above a wooden fence. It looked too high for me to reach though. I looked back at the door.

  A noise came from the other side of the door. A knock sounded from the inside. It was followed by a second one. A guard on the other side of the door was checking on the outside guards. He was signaling.

  I returned the set of knocks.

  “Everything all right out there?” the guard asked from the inside.

  “Yeah,” I said, trying to muffle my voice. “Do you have a light?”

  “Yes,” the guard answered from inside the bunker.

  A loud noise of steel scraping steel sounded from the other side of the door. He was unlocking it. I pointed my gun at the door. The guard stepped out into the alley with a match in his hand. He lit it as he walked out. A bullet from my gun cut through the flame from the match and through the guard’s head. His body fell back down a staircase. I could hear the bones cracking together as they bounced off each step.

  I walked into the stairwell and closed the door behind me. I pointed the gun both down the stairwell and up. It was completely empty. I followed the stairs upward. I walked to the second floor. I came out into a long corridor. The corridor was scarcely lit. A guard stood at the other end. Light shone from the room behind him.

  I suspected the guard was not alone in the dark hallway. There must have been another guard in the shadows. I would have to get past them if I was to enter that room.

  I thought about going down the stairs and trading clothes with the other guard. I could disguise myself. I might be able to get past them, but that would take more time than I wanted to waste. The adrenaline was screaming for me to finish this, to just put a bullet in Hitler’s head. I stepped out and into the hallway. Slowly, I walked toward the guard, staying in the shadows. The guard at the end of the hall focused his eyes on my moving shadow. At first, he thought it was the other patrolling guard until I started to run toward him.

  Quickly, he raised his gun, aiming down the sight at my dark shadow. I shot first. The silenced bullets tore through him before he could fire a single shot.

  The hidden guard emerged from behind me. He began firing round after round in my direction. Without thinking, I leapt into an open door on my left. As I rose to my feet, I saw another door leading to the hallway from that same room about ten meters from me. I darted toward it at the same time I fired my gun at the wall.

  The guard, on the other side of the wall, ran toward the opening that he’d watched me dart into only moments ago. As my bullets pierced through the wall, barely missing him, he returned fire from his side of the wall. His bullets just missed my legs. Somehow, we both wound up at opposite ends of the hallway from where we’d started. We stared at each other, our eyes caught in a deadlock, our guns pointed directly at each other.

  I squeezed the trigger on my gun first, but the chamber clicked. It was empty. I had used all my bullets. The guard laughed and slowly approached me, feeling victorious. He had me cornered. I ejected the clip, letting it bounce on the floor.

  Calmly, I searched through my jacket pockets for a backup clip. Gradually, the guard closed in. He was less than three meters from me now. He toyed with me, allowing me ample time to search for an extra clip. He planned to kill me before I could insert it into the empty gun.

  Remaining utterly composed, I finally found a clip. He saw that I began to pull out an extra clip and slip it into the gun. Now the guard was aiming his gun at my head from less than a meter away. I raised my sidearm.

  The guard pulled his trigger before my gun was aimed properly, but his gun merely clicked. He had emptied it at the same time I did. I smiled at him. I had counted and was sure his weapon was empty. First I shot him in the chest, then again in his stomach and head.

  My attention turned toward Hitler’s room. I walked to the open doorway and stopped over the dead guard lying on the floor within the doorway. I looked down at him. The corpse’s dark and hollow eyes stared back. Blood slid out the dead man’s open mouth. It looked black and wet in the darkness, like oil oozing from a hole in the ground.

  I pointed my gun at the open doorway and walked in, ready to fire. Hitler was seated in a chair that faced the window.

  I pulled my cap off, revealing my short, blond hair. Over the last few years, I had aged. I was a young man now.

  I entered the room and threw the cap onto his empty lap. Hitler picked it up and stared at it for the longest time. He seemed spellbound by the street cap. His eyes studied it intensely. I wondered what he was thinking.

  “Turn around,” I said.

  Hitler just sat there for a moment with no reaction.

  “I knew you would come. I’ve known for a long time that someday death would come to me. The only thing I have always been unsure of was the face it would wear,” Hitler said.

  “Turn around,” I commanded, “and you shall see the face of death.”

  Hitler turned his chair around slowly. His eyes were glossy and filled with tears. He looked like a heartbroken old man. The tears flowed down his pale, withered face and dripped onto the floorboards. A Walther PPK rested on a small table next to the chair. He displayed no intention of reaching for it. He didn’t resist my commands. He wore the face of a man defeated.

  I lowered my gun. Hitler wasn’t going to fight me. I knew it.

  “I think of you, every day,” Hitler said. His eyes clung to me, squinting, trying to recognize the boy he once knew; only now I was a man who stood before him.

  “I’m glad it’s you. It should be you. You were my child. You were a good son. You were my son. And it should be you."

  He paused for a moment. Then he said, “Do you ever think about me, Willem?”

  “I think of you. I have thought about you for many years,” I answered.

  “Do you still paint?” Hitler asked, staring at me. It was hard for him to believe I was almost twenty-one, a man now.

  “I use this now,” I said, holding up my silenced pistol so he could see it. “This is my brush now.”

  “That’s a shame. You were such a great artist. I should have never taken that away from you. I used to be an artist too, you know. I want to show you something.”

  “Slowly,” I said, raising my gun again, “Very slowly.”

  “Follow me,” Hitler said.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “To the bunker below this building,” Hitler said.

  “I don’t think that’s very smart of me,” I said.

  “It’s important. I promise. It’s something you will want before you leave here tonight,” Hitler said.

  “You lead the way. Try anything and I will shoot you dead,” I threatened.

  He only glanced at me.

  “You’re going to do that anyway,” he said.

  Hitler stood up from his chair. We walked out of the room. I made sure to stay close behind him in case a guard shot at us. I followed him down the stairwell. We walked down to the very bottom of the stairs.

  Hitler opened the door and led me into a dimly lit bunker. It seemed empty, no sign that it was a trap. We walked into one room and then through the next until we came to a study. Hitler led me through the study and into another dark room.

  I held my gun out. No one was around. The bunker was deserted.

  Hitler walked over to a kerosene lamp and lit it. I could see a flicker of a shadow sitting behind him at an angle when Hitler lit the lamp. I spun around and pointed my gun at the f
igure. It was a woman’s lifeless body.

  “She’s dead,” Hitler said.

  “Eva?” I asked.

  “That’s my wife. We were married today. She drank a vial of poison earlier in the evening,” Hitler said.

  “She killed herself?”

  “Well that’s what we’re doing here—committing suicide. We will not let the Russians capture us alive. I was waiting for you. I’ve waited for you for years,” Hitler said. “I believed you would come. I wanted to give you enough time.”

  He walked over to a large brass cabinet on the opposite end of the room. I sidestepped so that the gun was still pointed at the back of his head.

  I watched from over Hitler’s shoulder as he pulled a small, dust-covered safe out of the cabinet. It was possibly fifteen centimeters wide and ten centimeters long.

  Hitler took a pair of reading glasses from his shirt pocket and slipped the rims over his face. He settled his eyes on the combination lock on the front of the safe. He focused on the numbers. He turned the knob five times around before the lock clicked. The door on the front of the safe came open.

  Hitler’s fat white hands reached into the box. They scurried through some dark objects I could not make out. My finger clenched the trigger of the gun tighter. I was ready for Hitler to give me a reason to shoot.

  The Führer pulled out a small, familiar book. It was leather-bound. A crest of a lion was engraved on the cover. I recognized the book immediately. Hitler had given it to me when I was six years old. When he gave it to me the pages had been blank. Now they were covered with illustrations.

  Hitler opened it. Beautiful designs of animals filled the pages. Each sketch was done with the skill of a master artist; only it was really the labor of a small boy. I was that boy. I had all but forgotten that particular sketchbook.

  “This is my favorite,” Hitler said. He held the book open with both hands. He showed me one I had not seen in ten years. It was a sketch of a lion. It was standing over cliffs. “It would have also been your mother’s favorite.”