'This is the night of breaking gla.s.s, Herr Wilson, and I want you to see it. No, it's not an order it's a suggestion. This is a night to remember.'

Wilson grinned, knowing he was being tested, then nodded agreement. 'All right, I'll come.'

'I want to come as well,' Greta said. 'I don't want to be left here.'

There were screams and shouts from outside, then the sounds of more breaking gla.s.s. Wilson glanced at the window, then at Greta, and saw the excitement in her hard eyes.

'Of course,' he said. 'Why miss such an experience? Let's all go right now.'

The gang of violent youths had disappeared from the street, leaving the b.l.o.o.d.y man groaning in the gutter. Many stolid citizens stared on from their doorways without coming forward to a.s.sist him. As Stoll stepped out of the doorway, the black SS car that Wilson had noticed earlier pulled up to them and stopped to let them get inside. When they were seated, with Stoll up front beside the driver, the car moved off smoothly.

It was a journey through h.e.l.l.

Stoll made the driver take them through the riot-torn city, first through their own district, which was burning and wreathed in smoke, then to the Magdeburg-Anhalt district where the broken gla.s.s glittered in the moonlight around a great many broken, b.l.o.o.d.y bodies and the debris from looted shops. The a.s.saults were continuing. People ran to and fro, some laughing, others screaming. Applause drowned out cries of terror. The synagogues they pa.s.sed were on fire and collapsing in showers of sparks. From there they drove to the train station and went inside. Stoll led them to the platforms where hundreds of frightened Jews were being herded onto the trains that would take them away.

'To where?' he asked rhetorically.

'The concentration camps,' Wilson said.

'Correct,' Stoll said. 'The concentration camps. Now let's see something else.'

He was like a man obsessed, wanting to plumb the depths of horror, but Wilson saw where the real horror lay not outside, but within. He saw it in Greta's excitement when she watched the beatings and humiliations, in the revulsion that Stoll could not hide when he saw the same sights, in the dread that started filling Stoll's gaze when he saw Wilson's indifference.

Finally, in the SS hospital on the outskirts of Berlin, in the laboratories and operating theatres where the human experiments were conducted, Wilson saw Stoll looking at him, trying to search for a weakness. He merely nodded, quite deliberately, in his most thoughtful manner, and said, while casting his gaze over the tortured people on the tables, 'It's good that there are many more where these came from. The experiments on longevity and other matters will take lots of time.'

Stoll practically stepped away from him, as if touched by scorching heat. 'And that's all you see here, Wilson? This is nothing but meat?'

'We are merely the creatures of evolution,' Wilson said, 'and as such, we each have our part to play. Life is nature's experiment. The whole world is nature's laboratory. Those who will be used, will be used and those, such as myself, who must use them, can do so without guilt. This human flesh is the material of evolution, like burnished steel and gunpowder. It is here to be used.'

Stoll didn't reply. He simply glanced at the silent Greta and saw the excited gleam in her wh.o.r.e's eyes. Then he drove them back to Berlin, through the now eerily deserted and smoke-filled streets of Krhessen, with its broken windows and looted shops and burned synagogues and crumpled, dead Jews. Only then, just before Wilson entered his apartment, did Stoll blurt out, 'You're a monster!'

'No,' Wilson replied, knowing that he had won and that he would be able to manipulate Stoll in the future. 'I'm just a man with a mission.'

Then he closed the door and turned into Greta.

'More s.e.m.e.n,' he whispered.

CHAPTER NINETEEN The three troop trucks rumbled through the streets of Cracow, Poland, just before midnight. Sitting up front in the second truck, watching its headlights illuminating the falling snow and the helmeted heads of the soldiers in the truck ahead, Ernst was suffering from his familiar mingling of excitement and angst. The white streets were deserted, like those in a troubling dream, and the headlights of the trucks were beaming off the closed doors and shuttered windows of the houses in this old part of the city. Ernst thought of the residents cowering inside, praying that the roaring trucks would not stop outside their own homes. The thought made him smile grimly.

'If this keeps up,' he said, 'Cracow will soon be a ghost town.' 'I doubt it,' Lieutenant Franck Ritter replied, moving the automatic weapon propped up between his knees and adjusting his black SS jacket. 'The d.a.m.ned Jews breed like lice and replace themselves as fast as we can get rid of them. We could be doing this forever, Captain, and there'd still be too many left.'

'But we're not after the Jews tonight,' the more concerned Lieutenant Willi Brandt said behind them. 'This area we're cleaning out is inhabited by ordinary Poles.'

'They're all vermin to me,' Ritter replied with a humourless, wolfish grin, 'so I'll enjoy what I'm doing.'

'You always do,' Ernst said dryly.

Ritter was about to make a retort, but was distracted when the trucks ground to a halt with a squealing of brakes. Familiar with the routine, Ernst's troops jumped out of the back without waiting for his command and were already spreading out along the lamplit street and hammering noisily on the doors of the houses with the b.u.t.ts of their rifles when Ernst jumped down to the road, followed immediately by the enthusiastic Ritter.

Shocked by the sudden cold, Ernst cursed softly to himself, then hurried along the road, barking orders at his men and reminding them that no violence was to be used unless resistance was offered. His men were bawling at those inside and still drumming on the doors with their rifle b.u.t.ts, then someone remembered to turn on the trucks' sirens. That ghastly noise, added to the rest of it, made the bedlam more frightening.

Lights came on behind many windows, the wooden doors creaked open, then wails of protest merged with the bawling of the troops as they entered the buildings.

When the door of his chosen apartment block had been opened, Ernst, with a reluctant Willi Brandt and grinning Franck Ritter, followed his troops inside.

This raid was on a street located near the university and containing select residential buildings, so Ernst was not surprised to find himself in an elegant hallway, with deep carpeting on the floor and what looked like antique paintings on the walls. The door had been opened by the residents of the nearest ground-floor apartment: an elderly couple, both wearing expensive dressing gowns and looking frightened. When the soldiers had parted to let Ernst walk through, he stopped in front of the couple, gave the n.a.z.i salute and 'Heil Hitler!', then said, 'We are requisitioning this building in the name of the Third Reich. Please pack whatever belongings you can fit into one suitcase each and then enter one of the trucks parked outside. The soldiers at the door will a.s.sign you to a truck and you'll come to no harm if you don't resist. Now please do as you're told.'

The old woman burst into tears. Her husband looked stunned. 'You cannot ' he began, trying to rally his senses. 'I will not permit '

Ritter stepped forward and smartly slapped the man across the face. 'You'll do as you're d.a.m.ned well told,' he said grimly, raising his submachine gun, 'or pay the price, you old goat. Now go and fetch your suitcases.'

The woman sobbed even louder, but tugged her husband back into the room while the soldiers, at a nod from Ernst, hurried up the stairs to force the other residents out. Hearing the drumming of rifle b.u.t.ts on doors, the soldiers bawling, women shrieking and sobbing, Ernst stepped up to Ritter, stared grimly at him, and said, 'Don't you ever dare do anything like that again without my permission!'

Ritter flushed with anger. About to make an angry retort, he glanced blindly at the embarra.s.sed Willi Brandt, but then changed his mind and grinned crookedly instead..

'Yes, sir,' he said, clicking his boot heels in mock obedience.