The Metal Man

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Epilogue

Prologue

Suddenly the moon broke through the clouds, illuminating the dark figure marching towards the Soviet soldiers. It moved in a curiously ‘steady’ manner, and appeared to be fully covered in some sort of gleaming, jet-black armor, head to toe.

What the hell is this? thought Commander Georgy Krylov frantically.

Aloud, he said, ‘Fire!’

A multitude of weapons opened up, more and more Soviet troops spreading out behind the ruined walls and buildings.

Whatever it was barely paused as the bullets ricocheted off its armor.

Krylov now observed that the black-armored figure was carrying its own weapon. This was cradled in its right arm with the left, thickly-gloved (was that a glove?) hand holding the area close by the muzzle.

But this gun looked huge – more like something you’d expect to see hanging from the underside of a wing of a fighter-plane…

Slowly, as though in a nightmare, Krylov saw the figure (bigger than any man he’d ever seen, although maybe that was the effect of the armor) bring this strange, outsized gun up to bear...

‘Keep firing – use your grenades!’ screamed the Soviet officer, as the massive gun erupted into life.

Instantly a man to Krylov’s left began shrieking, his left arm gone at the shoulder. Other men began desperately trying to stem the spurting blood, calling out for a medic.

The commander gave a wild yell, firing his own pistol until the hammer was clicking on an empty chamber…

The old walls and torn-down buildings, used as cover by Krylov’s men, were being blown apart by the incredible weapon the armored figure was wielding.

Krylov snatched a wild glance around. Everywhere his men seemed to be falling. Screaming as the nightmare figure clad in that impenetrable black armor continued its remorseless march forward, firing all the while…

*

…The orders were such as might have been given to a mechanical infant. Simple and direct –

‘March forward’, ‘Fire’, ‘Destroy’, ‘Return when finished’.

It saw the world with a large –

+

– in the centre of its vision. If it could now see almost as easily in darkness as it did in light, then it did not consciously realize this.

Its orders were given and it fulfilled them. Every time the ‘+’ alighted on one of its designated targets, its finger applied a precisely-determined amount of pressure on the trigger of the weapon it carried, and that target ceased to exist.

It heard the screaming, yelling and shouting that always accompanied this part of its mission, but such sounds stirred nothing within it.

It only responded to its orders. Given by men in uniform and peaked hats stood in front of it, their men stood around. And when it was done – when its mission was complete – the same men sometimes crowded around it, grinning, perhaps slapping its arms and back as though in –

It didn’t know. Immediately it discontinued this line of thought as being irrelevant. Always the next order came, from the man or men it recognized as being in authority –

‘Get back in the lorry.’

And so it was returned to the one whose authority it recognized most of all. The man it knew had constructed it; who had spoken to it and implanted his voice deep into its conscious.

And if one day this same voice was ever to speak and give a direct order…

Then, above all else – it would obey that order.

Whatever it was…

1

‘…I can’t promise you that you’ll enjoy this, you little bitch. But you can rest assured that I will, anyway,’ declared SS Sturmann Rudolf Baer.

With one meaty hand, he was attempting to open the fly of his dirty camouflage combat trousers. The other hand was around the throat of the young, dark-haired woman he’d found hiding here in the barn, crouched behind some old, rotting bales of hay.

So that the woman couldn’t cry out (not that Baer expected any of the inhabitants of this wretched village to come to her aid – not if they knew what was good for them), the SS trooper’s powerful hand was also keeping her jaw tight shut. She was making a strange mewling noise, her eyes screwed tight shut as the tears coursed down her cheeks.

Baer liked that; in fact, it made him even harder.

‘Oh yes, here it is,’ he told her, leaning down to almost whisper in her ear.

He was now holding his enlarged organ in his hand, the tip of it slimy with pre-cum. He’d already torn away most of this young slut’s clothes; all he needed to do was locate her hole, stick it in, and then thrust away for all he was –

Baer’s lustful thoughts were abruptly curtailed, as he was pulled off the woman by the collar of his combat jacket. He spun around, attempting to locate this sudden attacker. He snarled as he saw the pale face with the shiny scar that ran from underneath the right eye down almost to the mouth.

He clenched his fist, uncaring that he was about to strike an officer. This wasn’t his officer, after all. He answered to another – one who was far more tolerant of the types of recreation required by certain SS troopers…

With his right hand, he swung a hard punch. But the officer with the pale face and the shiny scar used his left arm to block the blow, before it could connect with his jaw. Almost simultaneously, he put his right forearm around the back of Baer’s neck, pulling him forward into a vicious headbutt which broke the SS trooper’s nose with an audible crack.

‘Those are the sort of moves you learn when you’ve seen some real combat, you piece of shit,’ Lieutenant Colonel Karl Brucker curtly informed Baer. ‘Now, get the hell out of here while you can still walk.’

The SS trooper crouched over, swearing, blood dripping from between the fingers which covered his crushed nose. With a venomous glance at the officer who’d hurt him, Baer then made for the entrance of the barn…

Brucker briefly watched him go, before turning his attention to the young woman who was starting to stand. She’d done the best she could at redressing herself in her old, torn clothing; she stared at Brucker almost with disbelief.

‘It’s all right – you’re safe now,’ Brucker told her tiredly. But she only continued to stare at him.

Brucker sighed, fatigue making his vision swim slightly.

He knew what this young, not-unattractive woman was seeing – and hearing. Another dirty, bearded man, hard-eyed and dressed in a ragged camouflage uniform. Speaking in a guttural and utterly incompressible language. There was a Mauser M712 pistol worn in a holster on his belt; an MP 40 submachine gun carried on a strap on his back.

How was this woman to know that she was hardly much younger than Freda, the name of Brucker’s wife whom he’d last seen at their home in Mainz almost two years before? She’d been pregnant then; and since that time Brucker had received several letters – and also a small photograph.

A boy, Max. His son. The ultimate reason for Brucker having fought tooth and nail to survive these many cold, bitter, hungry, lonely months.

The photo showed a smiling Freda holding Max in her arms. Brucker always kept the photo close on his person. Undoubtedly, it was his most treasured possession.

One day, vowed Brucker, he’d also hold his son in his hands and actually see him in the flesh…

One day…

He just had to stay alive…

Alive…

‘You have to come outside with me – out… side…’ said Brucker, pointing towards the entrance of the barn as he slowly enunciated the last word. As though this might somehow make her understand what he was saying.

But she only shook her head, and then began to cry again as she muttered something in her own language. Brucker knew what she was afraid of. Outside was more of the scum exactly like the man who’d just tried to rape her. Brucker would have liked to inform her that he and his men were entirely different…

But there were only five of them left, now…

‘Brucker!’

Brucker turned his face sharply back towards the barn door, to see who’d just called out his name and was now advancing rapidly towards him.

‘Ackermann,’ he said guardedly.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, striking one of my men?’ demanded Ackermann.

Brucker stared hard at the fellow officer, who stopped just a couple of feet away from him. Ackermann’s narrow, wolf-like eyes blazed with fury.

‘That… man… was about to rape this woman,’ said Brucker levelly.

Ackermann gave the young peasant an uncaring glance.

‘And for that you have to break his nose?’ he then barked at Brucker, spittle spraying from his thin lips. ‘Because he’s just fooling around with this little tramp? Who cares!’

Brucker took a deep breath. Already, he’d realized that Ackermann and his soldiers possessed a type of morality wholly different from his own – and that of the four men under his command

‘Ackermann, my men and I may have been ordered to join forces with you and your… soldiers,’ he began, attempting to keep his voice calm. ‘But I’m buggered if that means I’m going to stand by and watch as a girl gets raped – or indeed, if your men do anything that contravenes the rules of war.’

“The rules of war’,’ repeated Ackermann, barely keeping the sneer out of his voice. ‘We are engaged in dealing with dangerous partisans, in hostile territory. If you and those few men you still command wish to remain alive, I suggest that you remove these extremely naïve blinkers of yours.’

‘This is some God-forsaken village lost somewhere in Poland, where the people are too busy starving to death to concern themselves with becoming ‘partisans’, stated Brucker angrily. ‘Maybe you would like – as my men and I did – to spend two years fighting along the Eastern Front. Then perhaps you can talk to me about having ‘blinkers’.’

‘You think my unit hasn’t seen real combat?’ inquired Ackermann, his voice dangerously calm even as his eyes became clear with hatred.

Realizing that this whole situation was threatening to spiral out of control, Brucker steeled himself to say something placatory…

There came a sudden cry from the entrance to the barn –

‘Sir!’

Both Ackermann and Brucker looked to see who it was. One of Ackermann’s men, carrying something in his hand. As the SS trooper got nearer, Brucker saw that the item was a small dagger. It looked blunt, a little rusty and distinctly undangerous.

‘I found this on one of the men, sir,’ reported the trooper to Ackermann, giving Brucker a suspicious glance.

Ackermann nodded, and took the weapon from his subordinate.

‘Very good. Separate the partisan who was carrying this dagger from the rest of the villagers. Have you assembled them all together yet?’

‘Nearly, sir, though we think a few may still be hiding in some of the larger buildings…’

‘Okay, then – hurry up the search.’

‘Yes sir.’

As the trooper left the barn, Ackermann stared triumphantly at the other officer.

‘So there are no partisans here, eh?’ he said sarcastically.

Brucker shook his head with sheer disbelief.

‘And that’s it – that’s your proof?’ he demanded, pointing at the small dagger. ‘You’d have trouble cutting bread with that.’

Ackermann shook his head.

‘The man on whom this weapon was found will be shot, and –’

‘ – then you’ll set fire to the whole village, just for good measure,’ Brucker said between gritted teeth, sudden rage threatening to overwhelm him. He was so goddamn tired of this war; sick and tired of all the death and of having to deal with men like Ackermann. Soldiers who were supposed to be on his side, but who were more akin to animals than humans…

‘After all, shooting and raping peasants and burning up buildings is about all your men are good for, isn’t it?’ hissed Brucker then, wholly unable to stop himself. ‘The lousy bloody set of cowards…’

Ackermann’s eyes widened slightly as he took a step backwards, his right hand moving towards his holstered pistol.

‘Damn you, Brucker, you’ll take that back or – ’

Instinctively, Brucker’s hand also went quickly towards his own pistol. The young woman stood near them was now completely forgotten.

But before either man could act further, they were startled by a shrill scream coming from outside.

‘Your men, again?’ growled Brucker, who then walked quickly towards the barn’s entrance.

Ackermann’s wolf-like eyes watched his retreating back just for a moment, as there came another scream – and now the smell of smoke.

Before Ackermann followed Brucker, almost without thinking, he secreted the dagger inside his combat jacket…

2

‘Are you insane, Captain Reinhardt?’

Adolf Hitler asked the question quietly. But still Reinhardt blanched at the fury barely concealed in the Fuhrer’s steel-blue eyes.

‘No – no, Mein Fuhrer. Absolutely not… I assure you that this is a feasible plan,’ stammered Reinhardt, wondering if he dared produce a handkerchief to wipe his perspiring brow.

Hitler motioned at the pile of folders on one side of his large desk.

‘After you requested this meeting with me,’ he began in the same, dangerously even tone of voice, ‘I made a point of reading up on the work of your department.

‘And,’ continued the Fuhrer, with a slight nod of approval, ‘there is no doubt that this work is excellent, and of great importance to the Reich. That is why you are sitting here now.’

At this, Reinhardt began to breathe slightly more easily.

‘Yes, I’ve read many of the documents contained within these folders – most of which, as you are of course aware, are subject to the highest security classifications,’ declared Hitler. ‘And I’ve found it all fascinating – jet engines, sloped armor, infra-red radar, guided missiles…

‘And now,’ concluded Hitler, ‘you say that you – or rather, this department of yours – can build Germany a… robot?’

The ill-disguised look of angry disbelief was back in his eyes. Reinhardt swallowed thickly, by now sweating freely.

‘Not exactly just a… robot, Mein Fuhrer,’ he said hesitantly. ‘But I have some… details, here.’

Reinhardt put the folder that had until now been lying on his lap onto the desk. Hitler picked it up with an almost detectable air of reluctance. Clearly, he considered this meeting to be a waste of his time.

Still, he at least opened the folder and began to read some of the documents contained inside. An array of schematics and blueprints, all carefully annotated by the same, neat hand.

As Hitler read, Reinhardt found himself wondering exactly where the hell he was. Deep in a bunker located somewhere in western Berlin, was as close as he could call it.

When the three members of Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (‘LSSAH’) – Hitler’s personal bodyguard – had arrived to pick him up, he’d first been given a thorough body- search, with accompanying, polite apologies for the discourtesy. He’d then been asked to sit in the rear of a black Mercedes 260D, curtains drawn across the back windows, and had also been made to wear a blindfold.

So it was in total darkness that the approximate half-hour journey had taken place. Despite his rank and his involvement with highly-secretive scientific and research operations, Reinhardt was having the precise location of the Fuhrer kept secret from him.

Only when they’d entered the elevator that went deep into the bowels of the cavernously large bunker, had Reinhardt’s blindfold finally been removed. He’d been escorted along any number of winding corridors, before being shown into the room with the ornate wooden desk where Hitler was sat working.

Reinhardt had assumed he’d have to talk to Germany’s ruler in the presence of at least one bodyguard. But to his surprise, Hitler had ordered that he and his guest be brought coffee before being left alone.

Initial conversation had been polite, if a little strained. And then Reinhardt – quickly ‘encouraged’ to come to the point of his secretive and highly unusual visit – had cautiously begun to detail his department’s most ambitious plan to date.

Which was precisely when Hitler’s demeanor had become a little chilly…

…Several minutes passed as Hitler slowly turned the pages. The ticking of the large clock on the wall the only noise in the room. Reinhardt sat bolt upright in the chair, an empty cup on a saucer on the desk in front of him. He wished he hadn’t drunk his coffee so quickly. He had a weak bladder anyway – add coffee along with his current, extreme state of nervousness, and there was the potential of having a most embarrassing accident in the presence of the Fuhrer himself.

Finally, Hitler slowly put down the file Reinhardt had given him beside the cup of coffee he’d not yet touched. For several long seconds before he spoke, his icy blue eyes bored into Reinhardt’s own.

‘You wish me to authorize your department to build something that will cost as much as three battleships to construct – and which also appears to require some of the… remains… of a dead soldier?’ asked the Fuhrer levelly.

Reinhardt swallowed again.

‘Yes, Mein Fuhrer,’ he replied. There didn’t seem to be any other answer he could give.

‘And why, exactly, should I wish for this… alleged ‘super-soldier’ to be built, in any case?’

Careful, Wilhelm Reinhardt instructed himself. Be so very, very careful here. There was to be not the slightest suggestion that Germany might be losing the war – even if everyone (save for Adolf Hitler and a handful of diehard Nazis) was by now fully aware that this was exactly what was happening.

‘Mein Fuhrer,’ Reinhardt began. ‘My department intends to construct – something – that will be virtually indestructible. Nothing fired by a conventional firearm – not even a heavy-duty machinegun – will be able to penetrate its armor. And whereas a grenade thrown directly in its path may possibly succeed in blowing it over, it will then just stand straight back up again…

‘Mein Fuhrer,’ Reinhardt repeated, unconsciously leaning forward slightly in his chair, his eyes alight with passion. ‘Mein Fuhrer this… this Metal Man… It will be a true marvel of German technology. It will do the work of one hundred German soldiers. It will make the Allied forces cower before it. That is why I wish you to authorize its construction.’

Reinhardt sat back, suddenly concerned that he’d said too much. And why on Earth had he suddenly labeled this proposed project ‘Metal Man’? He’d no idea: such a name had come almost without conscious thought. It had just sprung naturally to his lips, all at once.

Hitler continued to stare at the thin, facially-disfigured Captain with the metal-framed glasses and the imploring hands. But Hitler now wore the faintest of smiles. Gone was the previous impression of barely-contained rage.

‘‘Metal Man’,’ said Hitler softly, almost to himself. ‘‘Der Metallmann’ – yes, perhaps…’

A few more seconds of silence… Then he spoke directly, brusquely, to Reinhardt –

‘Very well, Captain; consider this project of yours authorized.’

‘Mein Fuhrer…’ Reinhardt began, his eyes widening with grateful surprise.

Waving a hand to silence him, Hitler continued: ‘You will receive a phone call presently, after you have returned from here to your departmental headquarters. This call will tell you exactly how and when you are to make your reports, concerning the progress of this… project.

‘From this moment on, you are to treat it as being subject to the highest possible security classification. Is this understood?’

‘Yes, Mein Fuhrer.’ Reinhardt gulped yet again. He now had to broach the most delicate and potentially dangerous part of his request.

‘There is just one more thing…’ he began.

‘Yes?’ returned Hitler impatiently. ‘What is it?’

‘There is just one man who is capable of building the – well, the Metal Man. My finest scientist; indeed Germany’s, perhaps Europe’s finest…’

‘Captain Reinhardt,’ broke in Hitler, his voice once again dangerously calm. ‘I would be grateful if you would say exactly what it is you want…’

‘This scientist was arrested yesterday, Mein Fuhrer,’ blurted Reinhardt.

For the first time, Hitler appeared slightly surprised.

‘Arrested?’ he questioned. ‘By whom?’

‘The Gestapo, Mein Fuhrer.’

Hitler raised his eyebrows slightly; and then the look of surprise was gone.

‘And what was this… scientist of yours arrested for?’ he asked.

‘I repeat he is my best scientist, Mein Fuhrer,’ said Reinhardt quickly. ‘This whole project – like so many others carried out by my department before – is almost entirely his idea. Without him, there is no chance that…’

‘Captain Reinhardt!’ Hitler almost shouted, placing a clenched fist on the table. ‘I asked you – What was he arrested for?’

For a split-second, Reinhardt closed his eyes and saw his life flash before him. He felt he’d lose control of his bladder at any moment. He must have been insane to come here, to make this request…

And now he was going to have to tell the leader of the Nazi party himself that the Reich’s finest scientist was…

‘He is half-Jewish,’ Reinhardt almost gasped, as Hitler’s icy blue eyes widened and the upper-lip below the famous moustache curled with startled indignation…

3

One of the sagging, rotting wooden buildings in the village had been set on fire. Two of Ackermann’s men were stood by the flames, laughing and looking up at the woman’s head that had appeared, just below the roof.

She’d opened a shutter to look out, had seen the fire, and then started screaming with fear. (When closed, this shutter had disguised the fact that there was a second floor to this building – at least when it was viewed from the outside.)

‘What the hell is this?’ demanded Lieutenant Colonel Karl Brucker as he approached.

The SS troopers stopped laughing to stare darkly at him.

Brucker returned the look, and between gritted teeth said, ‘I asked you a question…’

‘We had an idea someone was hiding up there… sir,’ replied one of the troopers tightly. ‘I was sure I heard a cough, when I was searching the ground and first floors.’

‘And this means you had to set fire to this building?’ spat Brucker, the reflection of the flames nearby making the facial scar on his pale face seem even shinier.

The other SS trooper replied: ‘The staircase to this second floor has obviously been concealed in some way, with a false wall or something of the sort. Standard partisan practice… sir.’

The woman screamed again, staring down at the three soldiers gathered some thirty feet below.

‘Reckon she’ll jump for it?’ mused one of the SS troopers.

‘Looks like she’ll have to,’ sniggered the other man. ‘Silly bitch is bound to break a leg, or both.’

Ackermann joined the group. His two soldiers stiffened and greeted him formally.

‘The entrance or stairs up to the second floor of this building has been disguised in some way, sir, so you’d never know it was there,’ snapped out one of the troopers.

‘Yet more evidence of partisan activity in this village, wouldn’t you agree Bru – ’

Ackermann’s sneering question was cut short as he turned his head to look at his fellow officer, only to discover that the man was no longer stood in the place he’d occupied just a few moments before.

Then Ackermann saw Brucker disappear around the side of the large building, the front entrance of which had been used to start the fire. It had spread rapidly; viewed through the cracked, curtain-less windows, it seemed as though the entire ground floor was now ablaze.

‘Okay, Brucker,’ hissed Ackermann, as he moved to follow the man he’d so quickly grown to hate. ‘Let’s play hero…’

*

…The backdoor of the building was already open. Smoke billowed out from inside, making it difficult for Brucker to see if there was any way he could enter.

Then a strong breeze momentarily blew the smoke back inside, and Brucker saw that the flames hadn’t quite yet reached the staircase that was only a few feet beyond the entrance.

He moved quickly, starting to mount the stairs. Then he sensed rather than heard someone close behind him.

He turned round, and his expression tightened even further at the wolf-eyes gleaming back at him.

‘Let’s get upstairs quickly, Brucker,’ said Ackermann almost amiably. ‘It’s getting a little too warm here.’

There was little Brucker could do but to act as Ackermann suggested. A moment later they were on the first floor, quickly peering into several squalid rooms that possessed little more than bare floorboards and a few sticks of furniture. There were no flames, yet; but the smell of smoke was strong.

It was Brucker who first realized the significance of the large wardrobe. Pushed flush against a wall in one room, it looked heavy.

‘Help me move this,’ Brucker said to Ackermann. He wondered why the SS officer should have followed him into this inferno in the first place – and then, for now, let the mental question go. There were other, more pressing matters to attend to.

The two men took hold of either side of the wardrobe. Grunting with effort, they succeeded in pushing it away from the wall.

And there was the door. So that it could be fully concealed by the wardrobe, the handle had been removed. Brucker guessed that the door was bolted on the inside. Obviously, other people had helped whoever was upstairs to hide, moving this wardrobe into position before leaving the house…

Smoke was billowing upwards now from the gaps between the floorboards. Both men began coughing fiercely, and as Brucker heard the woman scream again he gave the door a hard kick with the heel of his boot.

A panel splintered; he kicked again and succeeded in making a hole large enough for him to insert first his hand and then his forearm.

He felt up and down along one side of the door (opposite the side which he knew was hinged), and located the large bolt. He tugged it open and the door immediately opened outwards of its own accord.

A short, narrow staircase ahead, at the top of which was the ‘hidden’ room. Taking the stairs and emerging into this room, Brucker quickly took in the scene. A Jewish woman wearing an old, dirty floral-print dress, who was despairingly moving between the open shutter and the bed that was placed against one wall.

The man lying on this bed (also obviously Jewish – the woman’s husband or brother, reasoned Brucker), covered by a ragged blanket, was clearly in the last stage of some illness or disease. Cancer, tuberculosis or whatever it was had already given him the appearance of a wispy-haired corpse. The only sign that he was, in fact, still alive was when his bony face suddenly contorted and he gasped with pain.

‘A bunch of dangerous partisans here, wouldn’t you say, Ackermann?’ Brucker grunted at the other German man.

Ackermann’s eyes narrowed still further, but he said nothing…

The woman had screamed again at the two soldiers’ abrupt entrance. Now, Brucker held up his hand as he looked at her, repeating: ‘It’s okay… It’s okay…’

As he said this he moved towards the opened shutter. He looked out and there, stood in uneasy proximity to the two SS troopers, he saw his own men.

Brucker knew that they’d previously, reluctantly been assisting with guarding the men, women and children assembled in the village square. He reasoned that they must have come here to investigate what all the commotion was about.

‘Mayer!’ shouted Brucker out of the window. A large man with a flat, open face looked up, startled out of the apparent argument he’d been having with one of the SS troopers.

‘Sir!’ he returned. ‘We tried to get inside, but the flames…’

By ‘we’, Brucker knew that Mayer was referring to the three other men under his command.

‘Listen,’ said Brucker. ‘There’s a woman up here and a man who’s sick – looks like he’s dying. I – well, Ackermann and I – are going to have to try and drop them out of this window down to you. There’s bugger all else we can do…’

‘Okay,’ said Mayer.

Moving away from the window, Brucker then approached the bed. The woman gabbled something at him in Polish.

‘Christ, this kike is giving me a headache,’ muttered Ackermann, who remained stood by the top of the staircase. Despite what Brucker had told his second-in-command, Ackermann showed not the slightest indication of helping.

Then Ackermann suddenly started, as though realizing something, Brucker’s back towards him…

Brucker himself was now leaning over the bedridden man. The smell was putrid. He realized that there was not a chance in hell of ‘dropping’ this man out of the window, down to the arms of his men. The man’s arms and legs were so thin, Brucker suspected they’d snap like twigs at the slightest impact. Any attempt to move him from this bed would just cause him to scream with pain.

‘Ackermann,’ Brucker began, still looking down at the sick man. ‘I don’t know what – ’

Brucker’s words were choked as something sharp penetrated the side of his chest. He gasped and sank to his knees, feeling the blood pumping from the wound.

Already his sight was starting to dim, yet he saw perfectly the small, rusty dagger being held in front of his eyes.

It was covered in blood.

His blood.

No! Brucker fought desperately to remain conscious, to try to stem the flow of blood with his hands…

To try and call out to his men stood below…

But his efforts were hopeless; he could not speak and that foul, impenetrable blackness was spreading all the while across his eyes…

‘Oh,’ rasped the voice in his ear. ‘Looks like this weapon is rather effective, after all. Wouldn’t you agree, Lieutenant Colonel Brucker?’

With these last words, Ackermann sank the blade two more times hard into Brucker’s chest. He knew exactly where to strike.

Just before Brucker collapsed to the floor, Ackermann said into his ear: ‘That’s for calling my men cowards, Brucker.’

‘You… Mayer…’ Brucker at last managed to rasp, although his voice was little more than a whisper as a final image of that photo he’d always kept close on his person – that one of a smiling Freda holding Max – briefly showed in his mind’s eye…

…Ackermann was surprised that his fellow officer was even still alive – but also gratified that this was so. It meant that the last words Brucker would ever hear had been Ackermann’s perfect parting-shot…

The SS officer looked up at the woman, who’d been watching what had taken place with her hands covering her mouth and her eyes wide with shock.

She started to scream as Ackermann grinned mirthlessly at her, drawing his pistol from its holster.

‘Time to shut you up, bitch,’ said Ackermann quietly.

Then – in a much louder voice – he cried out: ‘No! Brucker, look out! She’s got a dagger! Shit!’

With that, Ackermann fired a single shot, straight into the woman’s forehead. She fell to the floor, near to where Brucker lay still.

Ackermann adopted an expression almost of shock before he moved over to the window and stuck out his head. There was no chance that anyone could have seen what had taken place in this room, from down there on the ground.

‘Brucker’s been stabbed – the little bitch had a dagger,’ Ackermann shouted. ‘Shit!’

‘Pass him down to us,’ returned Mayer.

‘He’s… he’s dead,’ Ackermann replied.

‘Pass him down to us!’ bellowed Mayer again, as he and the three other men moved forwards, preparing to receive the body of their officer as it was dropped down.

With a muttered curse, Ackermann moved away from the window. Despite his seniority, he knew that he risked a mutiny if he didn’t do as Brucker’s men wanted. Just those four hardened veterans of the Eastern Front could potentially cause him a lot of trouble…

He grunted as, with both arms, he grasped Brucker’s body around the chest. The sleeves of Ackermann’s combat jacket were soon covered with blood, which at least served to reassure the SS officer of one thing: Lieutenant Colonel Karl Brucker was very dead.

He hoisted Brucker’s body over to the window; then, leaning out, he lowered the corpse down, feet first, as far as he was able before letting it go. The body flopped down, and was caught by Mayer and the three other men.

Smoke was starting to spill into this room. Ackermann guessed that the floor below was now ablaze. He’d have to exit from here through the space created by the opened shutter. It was a bit of a drop, but his men would be there to catch him.

Then Ackermann realized that the diseased man lying on the bed was staring at him. He’d seen everything that had taken place.

Ackermann moved towards him. The man whimpered in fear, but seemed wholly unable to move.

‘Wouldn’t do to leave any witnesses,’ Ackermann said softly. ‘Just on the off-chance they might manage to put out this fire, save your rotting hide – and then there happens to be a German-speaker in this village, who’ll interpret to Brucker’s men exactly what it was you saw…’

The man gave another whimper, his rheumy eyes shiny with terror, as Ackermann picked up a pillow from the bed.

‘Jesus, you stink,’ Ackermann said softly, as he slowly placed the pillow over the man’s face and began applying pressure. ‘But think of this as me doing you a favor. After all, I could have just left you to burn alive…’

4

‘Thank you for getting me released, Wilhelm,’ Jonas Schroder told his superior, now that the two men were alone. Had they been in company, Schroder would have addressed Wilhelm Reinhardt as ‘Captain’.

‘And thank you for – well, always looking out for me,’ Schroder continued. ‘I know that the Gestapo has been after me for a while, and you’ve managed to stop them before.’

‘You didn’t… suffer anything, while they had you?’ asked Reinhardt hesitantly.

Schroder cut his gaze to the floor.

‘I wasn’t physically mistreated, at least,’ he replied quietly. “Sticks and stones’, as they say…

‘But, anyway – how did you persuade Hitler himself that it was worth freeing a Jew, for the sake of this… This so-called ‘Operation Metal Man’?’

‘A half-Jew, Jonas,’ corrected Reinhardt. ‘Had you been fully Jewish, there would have been nothing I or anyone could have said or done – but you know that already…

‘As it is, there are some conditions attached to you remaining out of the Gestapo’s clutches…’

‘Yes, yes,’ sighed Schroder. ‘I know these already – I am to be a virtual prisoner within this bunker, here in Berlin. The only daylight I’ll see is if I choose to take some exercise within the courtyard up top.’

‘I thought Hitler would have a fit, when I mentioned your race,’ observed Reinhardt thoughtfully. ‘Then he just… Well, he just gave this shrug and told me he’d order your release – that it was already as good as done.

‘I’ve never known a man to change moods so quickly…’

The two men were sat on stools in a medium-sized room, the four walls of which were lined with workbenches covered with what Reinhardt could only have described as being a fascinating array of junk. There was any number of random mechanical parts, from what looked like part of a fighter plane engine to a complete artificial arm crafted from some sort of shiny metal, with a bulky, curiously outsized hand whose fingers appeared to be controlled by a series of chains.

Dotted along the walls above was an assortment of diagrams and plans annotated in Schroder’s neat hand, while each workbench had its own adjustable light mounted on a rack, below the benches stored a mass of tools, electric and manual.

Outside the closed door of this room was an area the size of a tennis-court. The two men could hear the muffled noises as the department’s other, white-jacketed scientists set up banks of machinery and connected seemingly miles of cabling.

It was to be in this main area that the Metal Man was to be constructed, the whole process overseen and directed by Jonas Schroder.

Reinhardt’s attention was again distracted by one of the more striking items crowded on one workbench.

This time he pointed at it, saying to Schroder: ‘A face?’

‘Modeled from silicone, among other more… shall we say, exotic materials,’ replied the half-Jewish scientist mysteriously. ‘Just a… a little diversion of mine at the moment. But maybe, one day, it will prove a useful treatment for those people – both in war and peacetime – who have suffered severe facial injuries, for whatever reason.’

There was a slightly awkward pause, Schroder realizing what he’d just said as he glanced at Reinhardt’s own damaged face.

Then Schroder said, ‘Look.’

He got up from his stool and walked over to where the life-sized face, modeled on an artificial black ‘skull’ which showed through the empty eye sockets, was located. Reinhardt saw now that several wires ran from the back of this skull to a hand-sized device which had several buttons.

Picking up this device, Schroder then pressed one of the buttons with his thumb. Reinhardt gave a low whistle of surprise as the corners of the closed lips of the face stretched upwards in a smile. Schroder pressed another button: the lips now moved downwards, registering some source of upset. It was all incredibly lifelike.

‘Amazing,’ breathed Reinhardt.

Schroder shrugged. ‘There is a great deal of work to be done yet – and this new operation will naturally take up all my time.’

‘When do you think it will be… ready?’ said Reinhardt. ‘The Metal Man, I mean.’

‘Once I have all the materials I need,’ replied Schroder, ‘I believe it can be operational in approximately sixty days.’

‘As soon as that?’ returned Reinhardt, slight disbelief sounding in his voice.

‘Assuming that the others do as I instruct them correctly, then yes,’ said Schroder firmly.

Reinhardt nodded, and also took a deep breath.

‘Jonas,’ he began, ‘I’ve had this nominal rank of Captain since the war began. Technically, I’m in total charge of this department. But we both know I was selected as head only because I have a ‘knack’ – for want of a better word – for managing people and resources. That’s basically it.

‘When it comes to the science part… Well, my university degree in chemistry is about it. I don’t pretend to understand the workings of most of what you’ve produced for this department; I just determine whether it’s practical to bring this-or-that project to the attention of my superiors…

'And I have already informed them – just as I told Herr Hitler himself – that you are one of the finest scientists in the world. Perhaps the finest scientist in the world.’

Schroder was looking quizzically at Reinhardt, obviously wondering where this speech was leading.

Reinhardt hastened to come to the point –

‘You cannot fail with this, Jonas,’ he told the half-Jewish scientist, who was dressed as always in an old cardigan, shirt and bowtie. ‘There’s too much at stake here – for us… For us both. I’ve placed my absolute trust in you, and your total ability.’

‘I will not fail,’ Schroder said a little grimly. ‘Although my arrest the other day has made me worry…’

‘You’re safe, so long as you can produce this Metal Man,’ Reinhardt hastened to assure him.

Schroder stared at his superior with his clear brown eyes.

‘Not for me,’ he stated. ‘For my mother. You’re sure she’s safe?’

Reinhardt’s heart sank as he attempted to maintain eye contact. He trotted out the familiar line, which sounded evermore ridiculous every time Schroder made him say it.

‘Your mother is in a resettlement camp for Jews; a camp somewhere to the east – the exact location, even the country, has to be kept secret for security reasons,’ said Reinhardt, his voice sounding flat and false even to his own ears.

Masking a sudden, acute sense of despair, he continued: ‘She is fine, well-cared for and fed. You… you receive letters from her, don’t you?’

Schroder looked doubtful; and yet again, Reinhardt felt astounded that someone of such obvious genius could be taken in by this absurd tale.

‘Well, yes – yes I do,’ Schroder muttered, as though attempting to assure himself. ‘They come like clockwork, once a month. And it is her handwriting, but…’

‘But?’

‘But always the same information!’ Schroder cried. “This is what I had for dinner last night’… ‘I am taking painting classes’… ‘I am enjoying reading this book’’…’

‘Yes?’ said Reinhardt carefully.

Schroder’s face twisted.

‘It’s not her!’ he said passionately. ‘It’s… it’s just all so stilted… So unnatural… She always used to mention my father, although he died over twenty years ago. But now she never says a thing about him…’

Reinhardt decided that it would be best to terminate this conversation as quickly as was possible.

‘Having never met your mother, I can’t possibly comment on that,’ he said.

Then, realizing that he too was compelled to try and continue the deception, he added: ‘But you get the letters; and as you say, it is her handwriting.’

Schroder nodded slowly, and looked slightly more convinced.

‘Well, yes, that’s true, I suppose,’ he mused, stroking his chin with his small, fleshy fingers. ‘Maybe I’m just… just reading a little too much into the whole situation.’

‘I have to go now, and make my first report on Operation Metal Man,’ stated Reinhardt. ‘But, Jonas, I must repeat… There can be no room for error on this project. For all our sakes – yours’, mine, this very department’s – Germany must get this… this…’

Suddenly, Reinhardt remembered Adolf Hitler’s words.

‘This ‘super-soldier’.’

With a small, mysterious smile that Reinhardt for some reason found slightly uncomfortable, Schroder said quietly –

‘Oh, the Nazis will get their super-soldier, Captain Reinhardt – that I promise.’

Reinhardt gave an uncertain nod and opened the door out into the cavernous room filled with machinery and scientists.

So it begins he told himself.

All they need now is the…

He could barely even think the last word –

All they need now is the cadaver.

5

Karl Brucker’s body was laid out in a shady area close to the collapsed but still-burning house. Mayer, the second-in-command, had found an old blanket to cover the corpse. Now Mayer was crouched beside his deceased commander, the expression on the broad face drawn.

He looked over at a short, powerfully-built man, who was sat doing something with the bulky radio-set he usually carried on his back, but which was now placed between his legs.

‘Still nothing, Amsel?’ questioned Mayer.

The radioman shook his head.

‘Zilch,’ he said curtly.

‘Keep trying,’ said Mayer.

‘Aim to,’ returned Amsel.

The two men exchanged a brief, defiant grin… Then their faces again became set and hard.

Brucker gone – it hardly seemed real. There was the same aching sense of disbelief in all the four men. Almost the belief that even now, Brucker might rise Christ-like, shaking off that blanket and saying, as he so often had –

‘Move your ass.’

A veteran of the Eastern Front, and a survivor of numerous, bloody hand-to-hand battles, finally stabbed to death by a peasant woman he’d been attempting to save from a burning building…?

Mayer and the others failed to see how such a thing could even have happened…

There was the crack of a gunshot from nearby, and one of the two other men who were sat sharing a cigarette muttered a curse.

Two more gunshots quickly followed.

Then a woman screamed.

‘The man who apparently had this dagger found on him had two sons,’ muttered one of the men who were smoking. ‘So that bastard Ackermann has them executed too, saying they’re also partisans ‘by association’ – and one of them still a lad of fourteen. Guess that was the mother we just heard.’

‘We may be forced to follow Ackermann, now,’ said the other man, as he passed the cigarette to the soldier who’d just spoken. ‘But there’s no bloody way I was going to go and watch as they shot those three villagers in the square.’

‘Goes for all of us, Bach,’ grunted Mayer. ‘We shouldn’t even be in this village, full-stop. Best chance for us all now is to get back to Germany quick as possible and start building defenses against the Ruskies. Ackermann can tell the standard bullshit about how we’re ‘staging a tactical withdrawal’ and ‘preparing for a regroup’. Anyone else who hasn’t got crap for brains, or isn’t a full-blown Nazi, knows we’re in a full-on state of retreat.’

‘We have to stick with this unit?’ murmured the man sat next to Bach.

Mayer glanced over at him, and sighed.

‘What are you suggesting, Weber – that we desert?’ he said. ‘As extremely tempting as that option is, you can still get shot for desertion, you know. We may not like being stuck with Ackermann and his animals – to put it mildly – but we’ve got no bloody choice in the matter.’

‘Getting something,’ said Amsel suddenly, as the radio crackled into life.

‘You want to say a few words?’ he then asked Mayer.

‘Yeah,’ returned Mayer, getting to his feet and walking over to the radioman. ‘As it happens, I do…’

*

When Ackermann returned a short while later, accompanied by several of his troops (including Rudolf Baer, whose nose Brucker had broken barely two hours before), he found Brucker’s men crouched almost defensively in front of their fallen leader’s body.

‘I’ve given the order to clear out,’ Ackermann informed them curtly. Darkness was beginning to descend. ‘Might be space for you on top of one of the three tanks, otherwise you’ll have to walk. Usual thing.

‘You might want to…’ – he gestured at the covered corpse with his chin – ‘get him buried quickly before we move on.’

Mayer shook his head, staring steadily back at the SS officer.

‘Seems we’ve got to wait… sir,’ he said levelly.

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Ackermann snapped back. ‘I’ve just given an order, damn you!’

‘We were able to get hold of General Hirsch’s secretary on the radio,’ Mayer informed him. ‘Told him what had taken place here…’

Mayer allowed a brief but awkward silence to develop; then he continued, ‘We were also instructed to wait with the body of Lieutenant Colonel Karl Brucker, as they’re sending a vehicle to pick him up. Should be here within the next half hour, I believe.’

‘What?’ spat Ackermann. ‘Coming to pick his body up? What the hell is this – just get him buried, and get your asses –’

‘Those are the orders we received, sir – and those are the orders we’ll follow,’ declared Mayer, his right hand moving almost imperceptibly towards the pistol on his belt.

Again, for the sake of avoiding a possible mutiny, Ackermann considered he’d no choice but to back down.

For now – he wouldn’t forget what had just happened…

‘Fine,’ he said. ‘Let them come and pick up Brucker’s body. Maybe they’ll take it all the way back to Berlin, and give him the hero’s burial he so richly deserves.’

With that, he turned and walked away, followed by the men he’d brought with him.

Mayer followed him with eyes like flint.

‘I wonder what did happen in that room, with Brucker, the woman and that sod,’ he muttered, almost to himself.

The others looked curiously at him.

‘How do you mean?’ asked Bach.

‘I don’t know… I just…’ Mayer began; then he shook his head.

‘I don’t know,’ he repeated, continuing to shake his head with some vague, nameless suspicion…

6

The required daily report for Operation Metal Man having been made, Wilhelm Reinhardt left his department’s bunker, taking the large elevator to the surface.

A cobbled courtyard was formed by the surrounding, nondescript buildings, which housed several offices but also the garage for the large military lorry that was currently being converted so that it could transport the Metal Man to wherever this machine was sent.

Yes – machine, thought Reinhardt firmly. That parts of a human brain including the cerebrum and cerebellum would be required in constructing the Metal Man did not give it any kind of soul.

It would be an automaton, obeying every order it received without any extraneous thought, designed and created purely to kill…

Reinhardt almost shuddered. Despite his enthusiasm for the project as a whole, he’d trouble accepting that the Metal Man would not be entirely mechanical.

But Jonas Schroder had informed him, right at the start, that there was no other way. For this project to be successful, parts of a recently-deceased soldier had to be utilized.

Sections of the brain, mainly, but also…

Reinhardt shook his head, refusing to think about this matter any further.

He approached the barrier, beyond which was a busy street, and perfunctorily showed his identification card to the soldier manning the small booth as he passed through.

It was evening. Slowly getting dark. Again, Reinhardt had worked a twelve-hour day. He was exhausted. He’d get a couple of drinks and something to eat at an excellent little café he knew, and then return to the apartment nearby where he lived alone.

Like most Berliners, Reinhardt was alert to the possible sound of the air-raid siren as he walked the city streets. Bombing attacks by the British were coming more frequently now; and there was muttered talk of the Russian and American forces, who were steadily retaking foreign territory previously occupied by the Germans at the same time as they made their slow, but determined advance towards Germany itself…

Reinhardt entered the café, and gave his coat to one of the attractive waitresses. She showed him to a small table and presented him with a menu. Reinhardt ordered trout with asparagus and new potatoes, and a large glass of white wine. Rationing didn’t even apply in a place like this – not if you could afford the prices.

There were a few other customers occupying the several other tables. Reinhardt recognized one or two of them by sight – they were all regular, equally well-heeled patrons – and he nodded his greeting.

He liked to come here, where everyone knew him. This in turn meant that this was a place where his disfigured face didn’t attract any attention. He’d suffered his injuries when he’d still been a baby; but whenever he met anyone for the first time, he was conscious of them noticing his face and thus secretly wondering what had happened to cause such damage…

The bell attached to the door of the café rang as another customer now entered. Reinhardt looked idly towards the source of the sound – and then felt his blood freeze.

A skull-like face gave a tight smile in his direction. The other diners quickly looked anywhere but at this man, who was wearing a black coat and hat.

The waitress approached him with barely-concealed reluctance, but the man simply waved her away as he advanced on Reinhardt’s table.

‘Heil Hitler,’ he greeted as, unbidden, he sat down opposite Reinhardt.

‘Fleischer,’ said Reinhardt, attempting to keep his voice even. ‘What can I do for you?’

For several seconds, the Gestapo member said nothing and just smiled. It was a smile that turned many a man’s guts to water, and Reinhardt was no exception. The smile somehow carried the impression of deep, soundproof cellars… The ones which had a solitary chair in the middle of the stained, concrete floor, and a meat-hook hanging close to the harsh, naked light-bulb…

Everyone in Germany had heard such rumors by now. You just tried not to think of them – that was all.

Suddenly, Reinhardt found that he had absolutely no appetite.

‘Captain Reinhardt,’ said Fleischer finally, his voice soft and with a very slight lisp. Just the sound of it caused Reinhardt’s testicles to tighten.

‘I am… disappointed,’ continued the Gestapo Major, his eyes small and bright as they stared into Reinhardt’s face.

‘In what?’ returned Reinhardt curtly.

‘In you, my dear Captain,’ said Fleischer. ‘Yet again, you have forced me to release one of my suspects.’

‘Only one – and this time the order comes directly from the Fuhrer,’ said Reinhardt, forcing himself to meet Fleischer’s stare. ‘Perhaps you would care to take it up with Herr Hitler himself?’

‘No, no – of course not,’ said Fleischer, as Reinhardt found himself wondering if the Gestapo member smiled that damn smile even in his sleep.

‘But several times now, you have… interfered… in the performance of my duty,’ said Fleischer in his soft, chilling voice. ‘The Nuremberg Laws are quite specific – and yet, once again, you find a way for one of your… employees… to be able to circumnavigate them.’

‘Major Fleischer,’ said Reinhardt, forcing a note of tired irritation into his voice. ‘I have already said that Jonas Schroder was released upon the orders of Adolf Hitler himself. So, do you really wish to continue this conversation?

‘Also,’ continued Reinhardt, ‘this is not the first time you have accosted me in this manner. I’m still ignorant as to why you should have informed me of the exact whereabouts of Jonas Schroder’s mother, for example. This simply will not do, Major Fleischer!’

Fleischer rose slowly from the table, his eyes never leaving Reinhardt’s face.

‘My dear Captain! I’d no idea you object so vehemently to what I thought were these friendly, informal chats between the two of us,’ he declared. ‘But I have to say… I do not like to be made to look like a fool.

‘And again, you have caused me to look foolish – no matter who it was who gave the actual order to release the half-Jew. It came about at your instigation; of that I have no doubt.

‘So I say to myself, maybe I can only… tolerate… so much…’

Fleischer chuckled, low in his fleshy throat.

Then Reinhardt almost gasped as the smile abruptly disappeared and he founded himself staring into two hard, hate-filled eyes that were moving steadily closer to his own.

‘…provocation.’

Fleischer virtually whispered this last word, close to Reinhardt’s right ear. The final syllable seemed almost to hang in the air, tainting it like the sweet smell of corruption.

With more effort than he considered he’d ever exercised in his life before, Reinhardt managed to say, ‘Are you… threatening me, Major Fleischer?’

The smile was back, as the Gestapo member replied, ‘Oh, I never threaten, Captain Reinhardt. Ever.’

With that he turned his back on Reinhardt, and moved at a leisurely pace towards the door of the café. One of the waitresses hurried to open it for him, thanking him and wishing him a pleasant evening even as she avoided looking at his sharp little eyes.

Reinhardt felt the curious glances of the other customers, and fought to keep his breathing steady and his expression neutral.

I have a secret he thought. Oh Christ, do I have a secret. And if that bastard ever finds it out…

At that moment, Reinhardt’s meal arrived. He looked down at the plate and swallowed hard.

He wanted to vomit. He’d never felt so scared in his life, Fleischer’s parting words echoing in his mind –

Oh, I never threaten, Captain Reinhardt.

Ever...

7

Jonas Schroder sat alone by his creation. It was lying on a large metal table in the centre of the room which was the size of a tennis-court. It was fully covered by a white sheet, which would be removed tomorrow when the Metal Man’s internal batteries had been fully charged and it received its first order to arise…

Only two of the many strip-lights on the ceiling were shining, directly above the large table upon which the machine was lying. A machine which only he, Reinhardt and a handful of others (including, of course, the Fuhrer) knew incorporated parts of a deceased soldier.

Not even the white-jacketed scientists at this secret underground laboratory, who’d set up the banks of equipment and who worked directly under the half-Jew Schroder, had any idea. It was one of the most strictly classified parts of the whole project.

Surrounded by the banks of machinery with the flickering dials, which now lay shrouded in darkness, Schroder said suddenly –

‘Were you a good soldier?’

He was surprised himself by his question, which he directed towards the area where the machine had its listening apparatus on its right-hand side.

Then, Schroder realized that he wished to continue –

‘Yes, I bet you were. A real, loyal, dyed-in-the-wool Nazi fighter,’ he said, his voice tight and the eyes burning behind his glasses. ‘Well, now you get a chance to live again – a thousand times stronger and tougher than you were before.

‘Only, you’ll never know that, of course – I mean of how you were… before…’

Schroder breathed deeply, fighting off another wave of exhaustion. Being in ultimate charge of the construction of this super-soldier for the Third Reich had left him in a state of near-collapse. Everyone knew that he routinely worked sixteen-hour days – and yet they were unaware that he’d often continued working long after everyone had left.

And it was during these lonely hours that he’d incorporated certain things into the Metal Man’s design that were not on any blueprint or design specification...

Why he had done this, he was not entirely certain himself. Psychological reasons, perhaps – yet another field in which Schroder had considerable expertise.

Chances were the things Schroder had secretly added would never even be used – or, rather, seen…

But, was the Metal Man one day ever to realize that he’d once been –

Impossible.

Schroder admonished this line of thought as being ridiculous and instead prepared himself to get a few hours’ precious sleep.

The Metal Man had no soul; he – it – was just a Machine. A Machine created to kill and destroy, whenever and wherever it was given the order.

‘But I built you,’ said Schroder softly in parting, as he stood up from his chair. ‘I built you – so just you remember my voice. And if one day I ever have reason to give you an order, obey that order above anyone else’s…’

Confused himself as to just why he should have said such a thing, and by now near-dead with fatigue, Schroder walked towards the large double-doors, flicking off the two strip-lights before leaving the colossal room.

The humming noise was loud in the darkness, the Metal Man continuing to charge.

8

‘Sir,’ said Private Klim Konev, squinting through his binoculars into the darkness. ‘Sir – there’s something out there…’

Commander Georgy Krylov walked over, cigarette cupped carefully in one hand. Just another half-derelict Polish village he and his men had to take over, as they made their slow but steady advance towards Germany and ultimately Berlin itself.

The poorly-equipped, half-starved, ragged SS soldiers and the like were out there, somewhere in the darkness. A motley band of rabble being pushed ever-backwards, their number constantly dwindling.

Although, Krylov had been almost surprised by the sheer ferocity of the German resistance. Even secretly respectful of it. These SS men fought as Soviet troops did, seemingly uncaring even as they faced almost certain annihilation.

So what a shame, in a way, that these two sides now had to be enemies…

Still, this was hardly any concern of Krylov’s. He and his unit were making excellent progress, with very few casualties. All of which served to place Krylov in a most excellent light with his own superiors.

‘Someone looking to surrender?’ demanded Krylov, as he unholstered his pistol. He hoped to try a little marksmanship in the dark; just something to sharpen his aim.

He was determined: no prisoners.

‘Can’t really see, sir,’ replied Konev.

Which was hardly surprising, given that it was nighttime with very little moonlight. Peering through a set of field binoculars, no matter how powerful these were, was hardly likely to help matters.

Now other men in Krylov’s unit were becoming alert to the fact that something was moving through the ruined buildings and piles of bomb-shattered rubble that lay all around. They could hear it now – for somehow, a slight, mechanical-sounding ‘whine’ was being emitted by this soldier(or whoever it was) as he walked.

‘Challenge it – and then shoot,’ ordered Krylov.

The first part of the command was given only on the off-chance that this might actually be one of his men, somehow got drunk and lost in the dark.

Konev barked out the challenge, but that strange whining noise only increased in volume. Whoever it was also sounded extremely heavy-footed, their footsteps crunching on the rubble all around…

For some reason feeling suddenly nervous, Krylov said –

‘Fire – fire!’

Konev’s machinegun was one of a number to emit a deadly chuckle, lighting up the night with their flashing muzzles. The strangely large, masked and goggled-eyed figure that was now just visible maybe fifty yards distant took the brunt of most of the rounds fired.

Krylov grunted with satisfaction, and mentally admonished his strange display of nervousness. Whoever had been advancing was dead now (Krylov hardly needed to actually see the figure falling to the ground to be certain about this).

But why had someone approached his unit like this in the first place? Had they actively been seeking suicide? Had no one in the German force sought to stop them…?

‘Sir!’ Konev’s voice again, high and almost panicky – ‘Sir, it’s still coming!’

Yes, Krylov could hear that whining sound again. The crunching of those – metal? – boots on the rubble.

The moon broke suddenly through the clouds and fully illuminated the dark figure marching towards them. It moved in a curiously slow and steady manner. It looked to be fully covered in some sort of gleaming, jet-black armor, head to toe.

What the hell is this? thought Krylov frantically.

Aloud, he said, ‘Fire again!’

A multitude of weapons now opened up, more and more Soviet troops spreading out behind the ruined walls and buildings.

Whatever it was barely paused as the bullets ricocheted off its armor.

Krylov now observed that the black-armored figure was carrying its own weapon, cradled in its right arm with the left, thickly-gloved (was that a glove?) hand holding the area close by the muzzle.

But this gun looked huge – more like something you’d expect to see attached to the underside of a wing of a fighter-plane…

Slowly, as though in a nightmare, Krylov saw the figure – bigger than any man he’d ever seen, although maybe that was the effect of the armor – bring this strange, outsized gun up to bear...

‘Keep firing – use your grenades!’ the Soviet officer all but screamed, as the massive gun erupted into life.

Instantly Private Konev’s head exploded, splattering Krylov with blood and fragments of bone.

The commander gave a wild yell, as he continued firing with his own pistol until the hammer was clicking on an empty chamber.

A man to his left began shrieking with agony, his left arm gone at the shoulder, other men desperately trying to stem the spurting blood as they called for a medic.

The old walls and torn-down buildings, used as cover by Krylov’s men, were being blown apart by whatever incredible weapon the armored figure was wielding.

Krylov snatched a wild glance around. Everywhere his men seemed to be falling, screaming as the nightmare figure clad in that impenetrable black armor continued its remorseless march forward, firing all the while…

Then a grenade exploded in a great ball of flame and blew the thing right off its feet.

Krylov gave a yell of triumph. Thank God – the thing was impervious to all conventional weaponry, it seemed; but still there were ways in which its awful steady progress could be checked.

A silence fell. The thing was close enough now to be observed by every Soviet soldier, even in the dark.

It lay still for a few moments.

As though dead.

Then it put out one massive arm – a red Swastika gleaming on its shoulder – and pushed its body back up, the whining starting again.

It still held its huge gun in its right hand; it pulled the trigger and again the soldiers cowering behind the low, ruined walls were chewed into so much blood and bone.

Now those still alive were starting to drop back, shouting out that it was hopeless – that this was a type of soldier they’d never had to face before.

It cannot be destroyed!

Such was Commander Krylov’s very last thought. The next moment his body was split almost cleanly in two, horizontally along the stomach, the top half falling to ground, the guts spilling out like the contents of a burst sack.

The legs continued to stand for a few seconds…

Then they, too, collapsed into the mud and rubble.

All around was the flash and noise of gunfire, the yelling and screaming of those trying desperately to flee from this awful, ever-advancing black figure…

9

‘Brilliant, Jonas – brilliant!’

Captain Wilhelm Reinhardt praised his senior scientist, the pair of them stood in the small workshop that was off from the massive room where the Metal Man was currently lying on the large table.

‘Seven operations in four days – and then back here for maintenance,’ continued Reinhardt happily. ‘How soon before…?’

Schroder pursed his lips as he thought.

‘The left leg has sustained some minor damage from a grenade blast; I think a part of it will have to be replaced. In any case, some of the scientists outside are attending to that now – they hardly need me to oversee such a routine task.

‘Other than that, the titanium-alloy armor has proved even stronger than I thought. A few standard tests and then it can be taken away in the lorry again… ‘

Schroder shrugged, and finished –

‘But in answer your question – the machine will be ready by this evening.’

Reinhardt’s eyes now became a little brooding.

‘The military want to know,’ he began, ‘if it’s possible for the Metal Man to remain longer in the field – on active operation, as it were. Perhaps the lorry in which he is transported could be outfitted with more equipment? Just something that will mean the Metal Man doesn’t have to be returned to Berlin for maintenance every few days…’

Schroder shook his head almost irritably.

‘Please understand, Captain,’ he said, unusually addressing Reinhardt by rank even though the two men were talking in private. ‘I have obviously never constructed anything like this before. So I have to keep a close eye on… it.

‘Also, you know how much this lab and all the equipment it contains cost to construct; you also know how much space and personnel are required. Also the sheer amount of electricity required to recharge the Metal Man. Clearly, the lorry which transports it only has room for the most basic of equipment – a temporary battery recharger, some spare parts, ammunition for the gun – and at the most two scientists to also ride in the back.’

Reinhardt nodded.

‘The question was asked by a number of officers – I was merely relaying it,’ he stated. ‘So, by this evening the Metal Man will be ready to be transported back to Poland, anyway. To fight against the Russian advance.’

‘Wilhelm, I have to ask – my mother…’ began Schroder uncertainly.

Again, Reinhardt’s heart sank. He cursed the day Major Fleischer of the Gestapo had chosen to inform him where Schroder’s mother was being kept. If indeed she was still alive. Many Germans had seen friends and acquaintances – Jewish, usually – ‘disappear’ from out of society; and many knew exactly the sort of places where they’d been taken…

But the half-Jewish Schroder, almost cosseted down here in his subterranean world of invention and thought, seemed not to be aware of the existence of these places…

Although, from previous conversations, he was clearly concerned by the strangely banal letters he was purportedly receiving from his mother…

‘I want to see her,’ Schroder continued, his voice becoming firmer. ‘I have built Germany this Metal Man, and in return I deserve to see my mother, if only once!’

‘Leave it with me,’ Reinhardt muttered. ‘Leave it with me. I’ll see what I can do…’

With an uncertain nod, he opened the door of the workshop and exited out into the large room where the Metal Man was lying upon the metal table.

A thick pipe ran from one of the machines lining the wall into a socket in its right shoulder – a socket usually protected by a square-shaped cover that had upon it a gleaming red swastika. Matching this was another swastika, on exactly the same place on the left shoulder.

A white-jacketed scientist, wearing industrial goggles, was using a welding torch on an area below the Metal Man’s left knee. Other scientists were stood by the various machines placed against the walls, observing the flickering dials and talking closely.

But only Schroder knew the ‘complete picture’, as it were…

Without his involvement, all this machinery – the very Metal Man itself – was just so much useless junk…

But Schroder would never get to see his mother. Such a thing was clearly out of the question.

So it was down to Reinhardt to have to stall the genius, half-Jewish scientist’s request for as long as possible…

10

It felt nothing.

Because there was nothing to feel.

Pain, hunger, fear, cold – such sensations no longer existed. Had never.

For a time it dwelt in darkness, conscious only of a faint humming sound coming from somewhere deep inside it.

And then it was awoken, and instructed to leave the area where it lay and to makes its way, accompanied by those same two men wearing white jackets, to the vehicle.

Sometime later (although it had no recognition of the passing of time – it could have remained immobile until Doomsday, if so ordered) it was told to leave the vehicle.

Then more orders, which it recognized by slightly inclining its head – the only way in which it was capable of communicating.

The orders were such as might have been given to a mechanical infant. Simple and direct. ‘March forward’, ‘Fire’, ‘Destroy’, ‘Return when finished’.

It saw the world with a large –

+

– in the centre of its vision. If it could now see almost as easily in darkness as it did in light, then it did not consciously realize this.

Its orders were given and it fulfilled them. Every time the ‘+’ alighted on one of its designated targets, its finger applied a precisely-determined amount of pressure on the trigger of the weapon it carried, and that target ceased to exist.

It heard the screaming, yelling and shouting that always accompanied this part of its mission, but such sounds stirred nothing within it.

It only responded to its orders. Given by men in uniform and peaked hats stood in front of it, their men stood around. And when it was done – when its mission was complete – the same men sometimes crowded around it, grinning, perhaps slapping its arms and back as though in –

It didn’t know. Immediately it discontinued this line of thought as being irrelevant. Always the next order came, from the man or men it recognized as being in authority –

‘Get back in the lorry.’

And so it was returned to the one whose authority it recognized most of all. The man it knew had constructed it; who had spoken to it and implanted his voice deep into its conscious.

And if one day this same voice was ever to speak and give a direct order…

Then, above all else – it would obey that order.

Whatever it was.

11

The somewhat remote village of Hegensdorf lay to the east of Germany. It consisted mainly of a small train station and a modest town square, surrounded by fields and isolated little dwellings.

That morning it was bright and sunny, despite the fact that it was well into autumn. Hans Greutmann, senior official and head record keeper at Hegensdorf town hall, waited nervously on the steps of the white building for his guest.

The previous day, Major Fleischer of the Berlin Gestapo had curtly informed Greutmann by telephone that he’d be arriving at ten o’clock sharp the following morning.

‘I hope to receive your full co-operation, Herr Greutmann,’ Fleischer had said, that quiet, lisping voice somehow causing Greutmann’s spine to prick with fear.

‘But Major, of course – ’ Greutmann had hastened to assure him, before realizing that the Gestapo man had already ended the call.

And here was the black Mercedes 260D, pulling up outside the town hall. Two men sat in the driver and passenger seats, both wearing black hats. The door on the passenger side opened and a man with a face like a skull got out.

His bright little eyes burnt at Greutmann as he said –

‘Heil Hitler. I am Major Fleischer of the Berlin Gestapo. You are Hans Greutmann?’

‘Yes, Major, yes,’ returned Greutmann, trying and failing to make his voice sound firm.

‘I am pursuing a line of investigation that has led me here,’ began Fleischer, putting his arm across Greutmann’s shoulders and thus ‘guiding’ the white-haired, ageing official back inside the town hall.

‘I am interested in a man named Wilhelm Reinhardt…’ continued Fleischer.

‘I knew the Reinhardt family,’ said Greutmann, who then instantly wished that he hadn’t spoken.

‘The father was a much… respected… man,’ finished Greutmann uncertainly.

‘Indeed? And did you know his son – Wilhelm?’ asked the Gestapo Major, coming to a halt as his burning, curiously mocking eyes bored into Greutmann’s own.

‘No – that is to say, not well,’ stammered Greutmann. ‘They – the Reinhardts – kept themselves very much to themselves.

‘They had a large house near here, but because of the nature of Herr Reinhardt’s work – I believe he was a high-ranking bureaucrat – the whole family was frequently obliged to travel around Germany.

‘They were in a train crash, once, in which Wilhelm received severe facial injuries – he was still a baby, only a few days old, I believe… Really, the Reinhardts occupied their home here at only infrequent times of the year, such as Christmas…

‘So I did not know them very well, as I say,’ finished Greutmann.

‘You’re certain that is all you know?’ lisped Fleischer.

‘Really, Major, that is all,’ returned Greutmann, allowing his voice to register slight indignation.

‘And the records are…?’

‘In here, Major,’ returned Greutmann, leading the Gestapo man through the reception area and into a large, musty-smelling backroom full of shelving. It was in here that a mass of papers and documents, in some cases dating back a couple of centuries, were stored.

‘So, we begin our search…’ announced Fleischer, giving a smile that made Greutmann’s flesh crawl.

Greutmann hadn’t been expecting that he’d be asked to assist the Gestapo member in any investigation. He thought it better not to mention this, however.

Instead, he said, ‘May I ask, Major, what we are looking for?’

His bright eyes already scanning the mass of documents filed on the shelves under the letter R, Fleischer returned –

‘Anything and everything to do with one Wilhelm Reinhardt, my dear Herr Greutmann.’

‘Of course, of course,’ repeated Greutmann quickly. ‘Naturally, I will do everything I can to assist – ’

‘Oh, I know you will,’ smiled Fleischer, his eyes briefly moving from scanning the many piled documents to bore into Greutmann’s face. ‘I know you will, Herr Greutmann.

‘Now, shall we begin?’

With a cowed nod, Greutmann reached up to take an armful of papers and documents from one shelf. Nothing here was in any special order; in his long career, Greutmann could recall only one other time when someone – a historian researching a book – had asked to examine these jumbled-up records concerning Hegensdorf and its inhabitants.

Without doubt, this was going to be an extremely long day.

12

Mayer grunted and spat on the ground. He was sat with the three other men who’d previously been under Karl Brucker’s command.

This group had placed themselves almost noticeably apart from the hundred or so other SS soldiers who’d assembled outside of the ghetto that had been formed on the edge of an already wretched-looking Polish town. (The name of which was quite unpronounceable to Mayer and the others.)

A large gate set within the high, barbed-wire fences surrounding this ghetto was open, while a number of the old, sagging buildings were on fire and smoking.

Bodies of slain men and women lay here and there, shabbily-dressed, alongside a few of them some crude, handmade weapons.

‘So they’ve been keeping the poor bastards stored away in here, then,’ remarked Bach quietly.

‘Looks that way,’ nodded Mayer. ‘Now they want to move them somewhere, and – Well, they’ve managed to get or make some weapons and they’re fighting back…’

Ackermann’s unit had received the radioed order to come and assist with the attempted clearance of this ghetto several hours earlier. As they’d been only a few kilometers away, they’d been able to come relatively quickly, some of the SS men sat on top of the three Panzer tanks.

But now, for some reason, all the assembled SS units (in reality a ragbag group of scruffy, hollow-eyed men, plus a few tanks that had little shells or fuel remaining) were being ordered to hold back.

The two excursions made into the ghetto so far had cost the German force a surprisingly large number of casualties – the reason why several soldiers lay on the ground near Mayer and the others, their bullet wounds causing them to sweat and curse…

But they were at least alive, unlike the corpses of five SS men lying elsewhere.

‘But where would these people even be moved… to?’ asked Bach quietly.

The others shrugged, and avoided looking at one another.

‘Not our concern, Bach,’ said Mayer finally. ‘We’ve just got to go in there and try and get them out, next time the order’s given.’

‘Shaping up to be a hell of a job, even with the basic weapons those Jews in there have got,’ observed the radioman Amsel. ‘They’ve dug tunnels and are hiding down in them. Women fighting as hard as the men – even some of the children…’

His words again caused the four SS men to look down at the ground, as though they felt ashamed.

‘Shouldn’t even be here,’ muttered Weber finally. ‘Just let these people get on with it, and get ourselves back to Germany.’

Mayer glanced with narrow eyes over to where Ackermann was stood.

The sole leader of their unit – now that Brucker was gone – appeared to be having a slightly ‘animated’ conversation with another officer, although neither Mayer nor the three others could hear what was being discussed.

‘He wants to get in there, I guess,’ growled Mayer, who then spat on the ground again. ‘Him and his men – get those buildings really burning; shoot a few of those poor bastards who’ve been virtually starving to death here in this… place.

‘But he probably doesn’t quite like the odds, yet – wants to make sure some more reinforcements arrive first…’

Mayer’s voice then fell into silence, as he and the three other men sat in the small group exchanged uneasy glances.

‘So we are officially waiting for reinforcements, then?’ asked Bach quietly.

‘Not sure,’ returned Mayer. ‘All I know is – ’

Mayer’s words were cut off by the sudden arrival of a huge military lorry. Its brakes squealed as it came to a stop near the four seated men. The driver – dressed in a smart grey uniform noticeably different to the shabby camouflaged overalls the SS troops were wearing – jumped down from his seat, and saluted Ackermann and the other officer as they walked over.

Some words were exchanged – again, Mayer and the others couldn’t hear what these were – and then the driver and the two officers walked to the back of the vehicle.

The back was opened up; two white-jacketed men, who had the appearance of being scientists or something similar, got down.

‘What is this?’ asked Amsel, his voice reflecting the confusion felt by everyone watching this curious scene.

Then the back of the lorry suddenly raised slightly, as a figure much larger than a man followed the two scientists out of the green-colored vehicle, down three metal steps and onto the ground, a huge gun held in its outsized hands.

‘What the hell…’ murmured Weber.

‘It’s – him,’ began Bach uncertainly. ‘This ‘super-soldier’ we’ve been hearing about. The one they call the ‘Metal Man’.’

‘No way,’ said Mayer. ‘No way could any man wear armor like – that – and still be able to walk. It must weigh well over a ton.’

‘Hear that, though?’ questioned Amsel, the stocky radioman’s eyes wide and fixed on the jet-black, goggle-eyed figure. ‘The whining noise as it walks, I mean…’

“It’?’ repeated Mayer, showing a slight, incredulous smile.

‘Well – you think there’s a man, somewhere in there?’ demanded Amsel. ‘You just said there’s not – there can’t be – because of the weight of that armor.’

‘I don’t know,’ shrugged Mayer, staring back at the Metal Man. ‘But what else can that thing be?’

The four SS soldiers were clearly able to hear what Ackermann said then, the officer raising his voice to address the Metal Man.

‘You’re to enter in there,’ began Ackermann, pointing with his finger towards the opened metal gate that led into the ghetto, ‘and level the place to the ground.

‘I want some prisoners, though – do not kill everyone. We will follow you in shortly.’

The Metal Man inclined its head, the face (if indeed it did have such a thing) concealed by the black mask that was below the goggle eyes.

‘It doesn’t speak, then,’ observed Bach.

‘But that ‘grill’-type thing – there where its… mouth… should be,’ noted Weber uncertainly. ‘What’s that for, exactly? So it can breathe?’

A hush descended across the approximate hundred-strong German force, as the Metal Man began walking towards the ghetto.

A shot rang suddenly out, fired from one of the shabby buildings inside. It ricocheted harmlessly off the Metal Man’s chest. Then another shot, and another, more coming as the Metal Man now entered through the large, open gate.

Its great arms moved (the red swastika showing on both shoulders), positioning the gun. It fired towards the source of the shot, in the direction of where the sniper was concealed.

The gun spat fire, its bullets chewing up the rotten masonry and wood of the building. The gun firing at the Metal Man was abruptly silenced.

But other snipers now opened up, driven in desperation to use the ammunition which Mayer and the others had already realized must be in such short supply.

In return the Metal Man aimed its gun in various directions, firing all the time, the bullets punching through bricks, wood and cement.

Someone screamed from inside one of the buildings. A woman.

The screaming continued as the Metal Man stopped firing. It stood motionless, its head bowed slightly, as though it felt somehow confused.

More shots bounced off that gleaming black armor.

‘Attack! Continue with your attack!’ bawled Ackermann at the armored warrior.

The Metal Man again raised its gun, and once more began firing. The screaming stopped.

Several figures ran suddenly in front of the jet-black figure, firing several shots in close range before attempting to dart back inside the buildings. The Metal Man fired and one man all but exploded, the other simply being cut in half.

There was shouting now from inside the ghetto, muffled voices of those hidden inside the buildings and down in the sewers and dug-out tunnels.

Telling each other to stand firm, to prepare for a final battle – to fight to the death. (Although none of the SS men listening spoke Polish, the meaning of the words was obvious.)

No surrender.

And then another sound, coming suddenly, the Metal Man again lowering its gun and head as it evidently heard this noise.

A baby wailing.

‘Attack! Attack!’ yelled Ackermann again, his face red and spittle flying from his lips.

Mayer and the three other men gazed alternately at the infuriated SS officer and then at the Metal Man, their faces becoming tight as the baby continued to cry. The only sound breaking an otherwise almost eerie silence.

‘Why’s he stopped?’ murmured Amsel.

‘How can a baby exist in a place like this? How can anyone live in a place like this?’ demanded Bach in the same low voice, his eyes dark and secretive as he shook his head.

At once the Metal Man turned around and began walking back towards the gate, its mechanical parts whining. Ackermann was virtually shrieking at the black-armored soldier now, but still the Metal Man continued to advance – until it stopped barely two feet away from the SS officer.

‘You – whoever you are – whatever you are…’ began Ackermann, his rage almost choking him. ‘You are disobeying a direct order!’

The Metal Man’s goggle eyes stared blackly at the officer who was jabbing his finger in front of him. Ackermann stood some six feet in height, but still the Metal Man dwarfed him.

No part of the mechanical soldier moved, except for the large fingers of its left hand, which had previously cradled the barrel of its colossal gun. These fingers twitched just slightly, Mayer wondering what if anything this signified.

Some sign of irritation – of anger? Could this thing (whatever the hell it was) actually feel any emotion? And if not, then exactly why was it disobeying a direct order from a superior?

Such thoughts passed not only through Mayer’s mind, but also through the minds of a number of those other soldiers who were stood watching in awed silence...

*

Some hours later, after heavy fighting between the SS soldiers and those Jews who’d been imprisoned inside the ghetto, victory finally fell to the German side.

The surviving Jews now stood in a line outside of the ghetto, their hands placed on top of their heads. Although one woman cradled a baby, attempting to hush the infant as it continued to emit the same cry which had, somehow, clearly caused the Metal Man to break off its earlier assault on the ghetto.

The mechanical soldier stood motionless and silent by the lorry which transported it. It had stood like this ever since it had finally walked away from Ackermann, who – virtually apoplectic with rage – had consulted with his fellow SS officers about what they should do next.

It was then that the SS troops had been ordered back inside the ghetto, with the final crushing of this rebellion costing the Germans the lives of another four soldiers…

The baby cried again, and an SS soldier with a badly-broken nose stalked over to where the woman was stood holding her child.

‘Shut that brat up, bitch – or I will,’ said the Sturmann named Rudolf Baer.

The woman now made frantic shushing sounds, juggling the infant in her arms, but still the baby continued to cry.

‘Give it to me,’ demanded Baer, his large hands trying to drag the baby out of its mother’s arms.

‘Please – please, he hungry… cold…’ said the thin, wretched-looking woman in bad German.

‘And I’m supposed to care?’ returned Baer, several troopers stood nearby – cradling sub machineguns as they guarded the captured Jews stood in a line – emitting harsh guffaws.

‘I know of one way to stop this kike kid from feeling hungry and cold – by wringing its bloody neck,’ continued Baer, making determined attempts to pull the baby away, and then using one hand to slap the woman around the face when she resisted.

‘Fuck this,’ growled Bach, bringing his machinegun which hung on a strap from his shoulder round to bear and starting to move towards the line of prisoners.

‘Bach!’ hissed Mayer, but his own eyes were flinty as he stared at the bearlike man who’d struck the captured woman, and who had by now almost succeeded in pulling the baby from her grasp.

‘I’m with Bach,’ declared Amsel suddenly, the stocky radioman also taking a determined hold of his machinegun.

For a moment Mayer’s face was an agony of indecision. The desire for rebellion lay hot and heavy in his guts, just as it did in the guts of the three other men.

But he’d been a soldier from the age of fifteen… Incessantly it had been drilled into him to follow orders without question…  From morning to night, always taught to obey his superiors no matter what the circumstances…

But this woman… And these people… This isn’t soldiering…

Then a whining sound caused the soldiers to look at the Metal Man. It was moving again, walking over in that curiously ‘steady’ fashion towards the line of Jews…

Rudolf Baer whipped round just in time for a massive metal hand to catch him by the throat and lift him up into the air. His own, usually powerful hands clawed desperately – but entirely in vain – at the Metal Man’s black-armored wrist.

Baer’s eyes looked almost as though they’d pop out of his skull, his feet weakly kicking as they hung a couple of feet above the ground.

His voice rasped something unintelligible – a plea for the Metal Man to release him, perhaps…

Everyone looked on, in shocked silence. Even the baby boy – safe for now in his mother’s arms – had suddenly stopped crying.

‘Let him go – release him this instant!’ shouted Ackermann, walking over accompanied by two other, shocked-looking SS officers.

A slight whine as the Metal Man moved its head to stare for several long seconds at Ackermann, as though it was, somehow, once again trying to place this man…

His voice…

Then Baer was abruptly released, falling to the floor where he lay coughing blood and cradling his ruptured larynx. An SS medic at once ran over to attend to him.

The Metal Man turned and walked back towards the lorry. This time it actually climbed the three steps and entered inside the back of the vehicle, as though not wishing to witness anymore of the scene taking place outside of the barbed-wire ghetto.

Mayer met the eyes of one of the people stood in the line with their hands on their heads. A young man of no more than thirty – a few years Mayer’s junior – curly-haired, almost boyishly handsome and with eyes a startling blue. But still there lay in those eyes and that face a distinct toughness; a determination to fight and live no matter what…

Mayer stared at the man for several long seconds, both confused and somehow slightly shamed by this strange, almost indefinable thing taking place between them...

Then he looked away, cursing quietly and spitting on the ground, as a still shaken-looking Ackermann gave the order to move out, taking the prisoners with them.

For now – some lorries were coming, to transport these Polish Jews to wherever it was they’d ultimately be incarcerated.

Dark shadows again moved at the edges of Mayer’s mind as he considered this.

He was a good soldier – one of the best.

And yet, with every passing day, it was becoming steadily more apparent to him that he was fighting on the wrong side…

13

The other scientists had finished for the day. Only Wilhelm Reinhardt and Jonas Schroder remained in the cavernous room, located deep in a bunker in southern Berlin, where the Metal Man was returned for maintenance every few missions.

It lay now on the metal table, the thick pipe running from one of the machines which lined the wall into the socket in its shoulder. The Metal Man had been officially deactivated, switched off like the machine it ostensibly was for the purpose of recharging its internal batteries.

Otherwise, it was again ready for deployment. On this occasion, there was no minor damage (from grenade blasts and the like) which needed repair.

But still there was a problem.

The half-Jewish head scientist stood beside his creation, facing his superior. Both men appeared a little haggard.

‘I’m telling you, Wilhelm, there is little I can do here,’ said Schroder earnestly. ‘The glitch would appear to be in the Metal Man’s… organic… matter. I can only think that something remains which caused it to disobey the order it was given.’

‘Impossible,’ returned Reinhardt shortly, shaking his head. ‘You originally said that this ‘organic’ matter – as you refer to it – was necessary only for the Metal Man’s basic movements. You said absolutely no memory of its – his, whatever – life of before would remain.’

‘I remind you that this is a prototype model, Wilhelm!’ exclaimed Schroder almost angrily. ‘Constructed in some haste, and if I might say so years – decades – ahead of its time.

‘I confess that in regard to so much of the Metal Man’s construction, its very physiological make-up, I am working in areas I still barely understand. Areas anyone still barely understands. For this reason, I still don’t know if the Metal Man will ever speak, although it has the apparatus to.

‘But I –’

With a wave of his hand, Reinhardt curtly dismissed Schroder’s excuses.

‘First a machine created by my department refuses an order it is given – then it attacks a German soldier!’ stated Reinhardt. ‘That man is in hospital now. It is doubtful he will ever be able to speak again, so badly was his throat crushed. He is fortunate even to be alive…’

At Reinhardt’s words, both men glanced at the Metal Man’s outsized hands. The fingers on each one were almost twice as thick as the fingers of a normal man. In earlier tests, the Metal Man had with one hand reduced a deactivated grenade almost to powder. So it was indeed fortunate that the injured SS soldier should still have his head on his shoulders.

‘You understand, Jonas, that this can’t happen again,’ continued Reinhardt, his voice now quieter. Almost pleading. ‘I’m telling you something a little earlier than I should, but…’

‘But what?’ prompted Schroder.

Reinhardt sighed.

‘I received a phone call earlier today from Hitler himself, about this matter,’ he then revealed. ‘I need hardly tell you how… concerned… the Fuhrer was to hear about the Metal Man’s – misbehavior? Especially after all it’s achieved until now. The various, successful missions it’s undertaken in Poland and so forth…

‘And now Hitler wants more.’

It took Schroder a few moments to understand exactly what Reinhardt meant by these last words. Then his face became a little ashen as he shook his head.

‘No way,’ he said. ‘There’s no way I can…’

‘You will receive the funding, along of course with all the – parts – you require,’ continued Reinhardt remorselessly. ‘A new Metal Man a week, is Hitler’s request.’

‘A week?’ repeated Schroder incredulously. ‘Is… is the man mad?’

‘Be careful, Jonas – be so very careful,’ warned Reinhardt quietly, looking about him as though trying to detect a hidden microphone here in this great room. Such a suspicion was not entirely unfounded. Men and women labeled as ‘traitors’ to the Third Reich had been unearthed in such a way before – and consequently imprisoned or executed.

‘I need hardly remind you how your freedom depends upon your work,’ continued Reinhardt. ‘You have no choice in the matter. You will of course be given every assistance by this department…’

‘It can’t be done – not one a week!’ returned Schroder passionately. ‘The thing is impossible. This Metal Man is a one-off, impossible to repli – ’

‘You’re not hearing me, Jonas,’ interrupted Reinhardt almost harshly. ‘I am merely passing on an order from the Fuhrer himself. I repeat: you have no choice in this matter.’

Schroder rubbed his face.

‘And my mother?’ he said then. ‘Did you mention anything about – ’

‘Goodnight, Jonas,’ said Reinhardt firmly. ‘I suggest you get some sleep soon. I will speak to you about Hitler’s order again tomorrow – for I’m to supply him with certain details as soon as possible.’

With that the Captain of the secret research lab walked away, heading towards the double-doors which led into the large room.

Schroder remained stood virtually in the centre, staring down at his creation as it lay on the metal table recharging, the only sound now the steady hum of the machinery lining the walls.

14

It should have been lying in unthinking darkness.

But images were troubling it.

Sounds too.

That cry had been made by a…

…Woman.

A new word? But it felt as though it had known this word all along.

Men… and women.

Different.

It thought of the word ‘woman’ again and a picture briefly flashed up, so quickly it could not properly see it before it vanished again.

A dark-haired – woman – smiling…

A smile.

It could not smile.

So why even visualize a… woman… smiling…?

A woman cried – not that woman appearing for a split-second in the darkness – and it froze. It knew that it did this now. Knew that it would do so again, if it heard this cry. That it would freeze. Rendered immobile.

That scream – that was the word. Another new word that was at once also somehow entirely familiar.

Men… it could attack… and kill… men.

But not these – women.

There had been another cry.

Brittle and –

A strange thought: a stick being stirred in a dark muddy pool?

Too many new words and disturbing images occurring. It felt as though such things had set… something… whirring fast inside of it –

Felt? What did this word even mean?

Another cry. A baby. Another flash of a picture. That dark-haired smiling woman was now holding… a baby…

It felt something else now. Some feeling of warmth.

This feeling stirred another flashed image. Four men crouched away from those other men gathered outside that place it had been ordered to enter.

It thought it had seen… had known...? them before; yet this was impossible.

But that sensation of warmth; of…

Affection.

The word flashed inside it just like the pictures. Another new word whose meaning it felt rather than consciously recognized.

But…

This feeling of warmth dissipated now. Other images, lasting longer although it almost did not – want – them too.

A big man. Damaged face: his nose. The recollection of that damaged nose stirred something else; but what this was, was not clear.

Another, more distant memory. The stick stirring the muddy pool more deeply.

Shouting… a sudden blow…

But this man with the damaged face pulling at the baby and…

The whirring within it seemed to be getting ever louder and faster. It did not breathe but somehow it felt choked by…

By…

Anger.

Another new word; another new feeling somehow instantly recognized. It had released this man when ordered but it had wanted to destroy him.

When ordered… That order coming from another man. A face somehow already familiar. But again that whirring increasing; more anger.

A superior it had to obey but –

Someone it already hated. The feeling intensifying now. Giving it yet more new vocabulary.

Detested.

Something still hovering on the edge of its consciousness.

Something it was searching for; trying to grasp at with its clinical metal thoughts as it lay there in the whirring darkness…

A name.

It wanted a name.

For that man…

And for all these other faces it was now recognizing…

15

Evening had fallen. Reinhardt left the cobbled courtyard ringed by the non-descript buildings, below which was located the secret research bunker, and again began the short walk towards his favorite restaurant.

It was freezing cold; snowing slightly. Christmastime for anyone who had something to celebrate. Reinhardt kept his hands stuck firmly in the pockets of his thick black coat.

He noticed an attractive woman walking towards him, met her eyes and briefly saw the shock and revulsion at his appearance register in her face. He was used to it by now – for he’d been on the receiving end of such a reaction his entire life.

But the terrible facial injuries he’d suffered in that train crash, while still a baby, didn’t mean that he’d never had a relationship. Anyone speaking to him for any length of time soon realized that he was not only an extremely intelligent man, but also modest and caring.

Such character attributes had been enough for Helga to see past his physical imperfections – and for three years they’d been blissfully happy…

As he walked, Reinhardt again blinked back the tears as he remembered her. That smile; the blonde hair. How the hell was it possible that a woman like that, so healthy – never drinking, never smoking – and in her early thirties, could be struck down with cancer?

The doctors had done the best they could, but it had been hopeless from the start. She’d died, stoically bearing the pain that must have been awful in spite of the morphine she was given, barely four months after diagnosis.

That day, something also died in Reinhardt. The idea that this life might ever have some sort of ‘happy ending’. He was a disfigured man whose beautiful, still-young wife had been cruelly struck down with a truly horrible disease.

And now she was dead, along with Reinhardt’s previous sense of happiness…

He went to her funeral (still visited the grave regularly to lay flowers and such), and now lived for his work. When he was involved with projects of such breathtaking complexity as the Metal Man, attempting to present the ideas of the genius, half-Jewish scientist Schroder to his superiors – to someone like the very Fuhrer himself – then he could, at least for a while, forget that aching void existing inside of him…

*

Inside the restaurant, Reinhardt ordered chicken and then sat thinking. Undoubtedly, Schroder had been completely shocked by what he’d been told – this directive of Adolf Hitler’s that a new Metal Man should be constructed once a week…

Were there even the materials available for such a massive project? To say nothing of the expense – for everyone knew Germany was now on its knees, even if to say this out loud was to invite arrest or worse…

The bell tinkled inside the small, exclusive restaurant as the door opened and Gestapo Major Fleischer entered.

Reinhardt met the small, blazing eyes in the skull-like face, sudden worry but also something like anger squirming in his guts. How the hell had Fleischer even known he was here? Was he being followed?

This was the second time that the Gestapo Major had intruded upon his meal…

‘My dear Captain,’ lisped Fleischer, waving away one of the waitresses as he sat down at the small table opposite Reinhardt. There was something in the Gestapo man’s face that chilled Reinhardt to the bone. A strange look of triumph…

‘Major Fleischer,’ he returned, trying (as so many did) to keep his voice even. ‘How can I help you?’

For several moments, the Gestapo man said nothing. Just stared and directed his skull-like smile towards Reinhardt.

Then in that soft, lisping voice, he said –

‘The last time we spoke, Captain, was in relation to the strange ability one of your employees has to circumnavigate the Nuremberg Laws…’

‘Firstly, Major,’ began Reinhardt with real irritation, ‘Jonas Schroder is not an ‘employee’ of mine. I am merely his superior at a research laboratory whose existence you should not even know about. A laboratory, I may say, which the Fuhrer himself…’

‘Yes, yes,’ repeated Fleischer, still smiling as he waved away Reinhardt’s protests.  ‘You would be surprised at how many things I do know about, Captain. How many… shall we say secrets, I am able to unearth. Sometimes people try to conceal certain things from me, but always I find them out.

‘All it takes is time, and a certain methodical patience.’

Something in what the Gestapo Major was saying made Reinhardt suddenly, urgently need to urinate. There was a sly hinting; an insinuation that Reinhardt himself had been hiding something…

Again the Gestapo man fell into silence, staring steadily at Reinhardt. There was no question now that he was enjoying this mental torment.

Reinhardt forced himself to say: ‘I have absolutely no idea what you are talking about, Major.’

Fleischer chuckled, an obscene sound made deep down in his throat.

‘Oh, but I believe you do, Captain. I realize now that it’s only natural you should have worked so hard to protect this half-Jewish scientist of yours…’

He paused, as the blood pumped loudly inside Reinhardt’s ears and his sight almost dimmed. He thought he was about to pass out from sheer terror…

‘After all, my dear Wilhelm Reinhardt, you are fully Jewish yourself,’ said the Gestapo man then.

16

In the near-darkness of the cavernous laboratory (only two strip lights shining above, which was exactly how Schroder wanted it), the half-Jewish scientist stood and gazed down at his creation lying on the metal table.

‘Who were you?’ said Schroder softly. ‘What kind of soldier must you have been, to now show these signs of rebellion?’

No reply.

Only the humming of the machines lining the walls as the Metal Man recharged. And yet Schroder had partially activated the machine with the human parts. It was not in that state which approximated to ‘sleep’, and which was required for the Metal Man’s non-mechanical components.

(Not that any of the other scientists were aware of this – they believed the Metal Man was just periodically ‘shut down’ for maintenance.)

‘What is happening in – there?’ whispered Schroder, leaning down and putting his mouth close to the machine’s listening apparatus on the right-hand side. This could hardly have been called an ‘ear’; in appearance, it was more like the metallic grill of a field-radio.

‘Have I made something with a conscience – or was that conscience already there?’ continued Schroder.

He then gave a mirthless chuckle.

‘Yes – a robot with human parts, devised as a killing machine to serve its Nazi masters, which is now refusing direct orders given to it during active service,’ he declared. ‘Dear, oh dear – that is not so good. And now it seems I have to build more of you…?’

At that moment, one of the double-doors leading into the laboratory crashed open.

Schroder spun round, squinting his eyes behind the glasses to try and make out who was stood there in the near-darkness.

‘Wilhelm?’ he said then. ‘Is that you?’

The figure advanced slowly. Schroder felt fear seize his insides.

Then the figure came into the weak light emitted by the two strip lights shining directly above, and the half-Jewish scientist almost gave a sigh of relief as he saw that it was his disfigured superior.

But something was wrong – the expression on that badly scarred face… The strange look to the eyes…

Never had Schroder seen Reinhardt looking like this before…

‘You want to know some truths, Schroder?’ demanded Reinhardt.

Something was wrong, thought the half-Jewish scientist. Reinhardt’s voice sounded slurred – half-drugged or drunk. Also this use of Jonas Schroder’s surname, even though this bizarre ‘conversation’ (such as it was) was taking place in private.

Never before had Reinhardt addressed Schroder so, when it was only the two of them talking.

‘What is this?’ asked Schroder finally. ‘What is the matter with you? Are you drunk – I have never seen this before.’

‘Not drunk, my dear Jonas,’ returned Reinhardt. ‘Just already dead, perhaps.’

‘What – what do you mean?’

‘You want to know where your mother is?’ the Captain of the secret research lab suddenly questioned. ‘I’ll tell you where she is – in hell. Just like every full-blooded Jew who’s ‘disappeared’ from out of society.

‘Haven’t you released that yet, Jonas – or are you so cosseted, down here in this laboratory of yours, that you’re blind to what has been happening all over Germany?’

‘What in hell’s name are you talking about, Wilhelm?’ asked Schroder slowly, his mouth dry.

Reinhardt suddenly looked as though he might collapse. He put one hand on the edge of the large table the Metal Man was lying upon.

‘Your mother was arrested and sent to a concentration camp called Mittelbruck in Poland, near a town that is close to the German-Polish border. The letters you have purportedly been receiving from her are fake, written by someone who is skilled at imitating peoples’ handwriting. For the purpose of you continuing to assist the Third Reich with your creations, such a deception was deemed necessary.’

‘What?’ cried Schroder, now appearing as though he would collapse himself. ‘Are you mad? What are you saying?’

‘The truth, Jonas,’ returned Reinhardt forcefully, the expression on his disfigured face terrible. ‘And I had to go along with this gross deception – I had no choice. I had to lie to you, day after day after day.

‘But today, the deception stops – for all of us.’

‘What do you mean, Wilhelm?’ asked Schroder, his voice little more than a whisper. His hands were clenched into fists; at any second, it seemed, he would launch a physical attack on his superior.

‘I am a Jew, Jonas – a full-blooded Jew.’

‘You… what…’

‘Wait – hear me out. I was travelling with my original parents – my Jewish parents – as a baby, when there was that train crash I have previously told you about. The one that caused – this.’

With this last word, Reinhardt briefly waved his right hand in front of his face.

‘My parents were killed instantly, while I was rushed to hospital, not expected to survive. Two other people had been travelling in the same, first-class carriage as my parents and me. A young and prosperous married couple, who strangely managed to escape with nothing more than a few scratches.

‘But they took a distinct interest in my recovery, with the male – Mr. Reinhardt – even paying for a specialist in facial surgery to travel up from Frankfurt…

‘They’d been talking to my parents before the crash, you see. Had even struck up a fledgling friendship of sorts. And now my parents were dead and…

‘Well, the Reinhardts had been trying for years to have a child, but with a cruel lack of success. And it was becoming ever more apparent that the Spielmanns – my parents – had been a somewhat private couple, with no close relatives or friends...

‘Certainly no one who wanted to claim this baby of theirs, now no longer considered as being in danger of death but still so facially disfigured…

‘Mr. Reinhardt – who became the only father I have ever known – quickly and efficiently arranged my adoption. He considered that it was what the Spielmanns would have wanted anyway.

‘My new father was a wealthy man, my mother devoted to her new son. They almost considered this strange quirk of fate to be a gift from God Himself – excepting the death of my ‘original’ parents, as it were. To anyone they met who did not know them very well, they simply pretended that I was their own son – they did not even mention the matter of my adoption.

‘I have not yet said that I was only seven days old at the time of the train crash! Really, it is a miracle that I survived… In any case, my circumcision ritual – as a Jewish baby boy – was due to take place the following day. That is, eight days after birth, in accordance with Jewish tradition.

‘Obviously, it never happened – something that until today, along with my facial injuries, served to conceal what one might call my ‘Jewish identity’.

‘Anyway, my father had my name changed and such. There was only one document alluding to this, just one, until recently forgotten and dust-covered in the records’ department of Hegensdorf town hall. That’s a tiny, rural town in eastern Germany, by the way. Where my wealthy parents had one of their several properties.

‘Later, when I became a teenager, only then did my father inform me of who my real parents had been – and thus about my Jewish heritage. And already detecting the anti-Semitism starting to creep through Germany, he advised me never to speak of who my real parents had been.

‘But just recently, Major Fleisher of the Berlin Gestapo found that long-forgotten certificate concerning my adoption in the records’ department of that town hall. And was thus able to trace the name of my original parents back to their hometown of Ahlach – and have their Jewish ancestry confirmed.’

‘You – you’re a Jew?’ Schroder could only stammer helplessly. ‘And my mother… This place she has been sent… What do you mean with all this, you are telling me…?’

The genius scientist’s face was red, his breathing fast and heavy. Reinhardt gave a faint smile and again waved his hand slightly, as though to calm him.

‘I have a map here, Jonas,’ he said, producing this from inside of his thick black coat.

He opened it up in front of Schroder, pointing with one finger at an area along the German-Polish border.

‘Across here, the river Neisse, is the town of Tornik. I believe I am pronouncing the name correctly. The concentration camp named Mittlebruck is to one side of this town. Really, you just cross over the bridge from the German side, and then follow the signs for a few kilometers.

‘There are many camps like Mittelbruck; it is hardly the only one of its kind. Situated in Poland and… elsewhere…’

The last word came out in a sigh. Again, Reinhardt appeared almost as though he might collapse.

Then, taking a deep breath, he continued –

‘Major Fleischer of the Berlin Gestapo – the one who previously had you under arrest, before your release was obtained at the behest of Adolf Hitler himself – previously took great pains to tell me the above information. To force me to share in your deception; as I say – to have to lie to you, day after day.’

‘Is she… alive, Wilhelm?’ asked the half-Jew plaintively, his expression anguished.

Reinhardt stared despairingly back at him.

‘I… I don’t know, Jonas,’ he returned. ‘All I can do is to show you this map; to tell you exactly where your mother is and to give you the truth at last…’

‘I am going to find her,’ said Schroder, his chin sticking out. ‘I am going right now.’

‘Then take this,’ returned Reinhardt, pulling something else from out of his inside coat pocket. ‘Whatever you plan to do – even if you aim to take the Metal Man himself with you – this will assist you greatly.’

‘This’ was a folded sheet of what was clearly high-quality paper.

Cautiously, Schroder accepted it. Then, opening it, he could not help but emit a small gasp of surprise.

‘But this is… Hitler’s signature…?’

‘Below which are also his words, stating that anyone who is shown this piece of paper, however senior their rank, must give the bearer of it their full and immediate assistance, however this is required.

‘I was given it before construction began on the Metal Man,’ continued Reinhardt. ‘How else do you think I was able to obtain some of the materials necessary, which are otherwise in such desperately short supply? Anyway, whatever you do and wherever you go now, this will prove invaluable.’

‘But you, Wilhelm…? What are you going to do…’ whispered Schroder, his right hand clutching his senior’s left shoulder.

Reinhardt gently freed the fierce grip.

‘I’m going to take a trip to number eight, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse – Gestapo Headquarters itself. Major Fleischer oh-so-kindly permitted me two hours to get my affairs in order, before I have to present myself there for arrest. He knows that I will not escape, and as the only other option available to me is suicide…

‘But he also offered me a deal, of sorts. If I know of any other Jews in hiding, he said, I could earn myself certain… privileges, by telling upon them.

‘So I go to see him now, and pretend that I have a list of such people…’

‘Wilhelm – what are you saying?’

‘I say no more. You do what you have to do – and I will do what I have to do. This Gestapo man has destroyed everything; he devoted himself to yours and my own destruction – and, of course, he has shattered so many other lives. And delighted in doing so.

‘But tonight, I have something of a surprise in store for the dear Major. I go now to deliver it to him. And to, you, Jonas, I say – goodbye, my friend.’

For a few moments, Schroder seemed entirely confused. Then, his face hardening, he nodded and took Reinhardt’s hand in his own.

The two men shared a brief embrace.

‘Go with God, Jonas,’ said Reinhardt, as he started to move back towards the double doors leading into the cavernous room.

‘No such being, Reinhardt – but do your best,’ returned the half-Jewish scientist.

Reinhardt nodded, and then was swallowed by the dark, the sound of one door clanging shut behind him a few moments later.

17

It was the smell of smoke that gave away the five Polish farm-workers.

They were all of them wretched-looking, ill-clothed against the brutal winter, shaking with cold as several soldiers from Ackermann’s unit marched them out from where they’d been asleep in the woods that were on either side of a wide and snow-covered track.

It was Mayer who’d caught the faint whiff of smoke, marching alongside one squealing Panzer tank, and had given the alarm to Ackermann. There were immediately fears of an ambush. Ackermann had dispatched the several SS troops (not Mayer, or any of the three soldiers named Bach, Weber and Amsel), and moving quietly the men had surprised the five men and women who were sleeping huddled around the dying fire.

With shouts and kicks, the five were awoken and marched out onto the track.

‘What the hell have I done?’ sighed Mayer, watching as Ackermann stalked over to the cowering group. A strong moon was out in the cloudless night sky, illuminating the whole scene.

‘They might have been real partisans, Mayer, hiding out and ready to cut us to pieces with machineguns and grenades. You did what you had to do, as a soldier,’ returned Bach, the two other men who’d once been part of Lieutenant Colonel Karl Brucker’s unit nodding their agreement.

‘Do any of you speak German?’ demanded Ackermann loudly, glowering at the three men and two women.

The group began nervously chattering, in Polish. Ackermann immediately slapped one of the women around the face.

‘Jesus!’ hissed Amsel. He glanced at Mayer, who was biting his bottom lip.

‘I said – does anyone here speak German?’ reiterated Ackermann.

‘Yes, I do – just a little,’ declared one of the men.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Please, we not soldier, just the farm-worker. We leave farm, try live in forest.’

‘Why?’

The man appeared agonized, as though he didn’t know how to reply. Ackermann slapped the same woman around the face again. She didn’t cry out, but kept her eyes almost defiantly fixed on the SS officer.

‘Why?’

‘We work on German-run farm. Other day all German soldier go. Destroy all building and food-store before leave. We not know where to go. And nothing to eat. Just go into forest to hide from…’

‘Yes?’

The man gulped, and Ackermann slapped the woman around the face for the third time.

‘Fucking animal,’ spat Bach. ‘I can’t just stand here and keep seeing this kind of thing happening…’

‘From other German soldier!’ the Polish male almost cried out.

Ackermann stared at the man for a few moments. Then he gave his thin smile.

‘Liar,’ he said. ‘You are partisans, hiding out in the woods hoping to attack German units like mine. For this, you will be shot.

‘Tell them this,’ he ordered the man.

The man gabbled something, and another male and one of the women gave a sharp cry of terror. But the woman whose face Ackermann had slapped now spat full in his face.

‘Bitch!’ yelled the SS officer, grabbing her arm and starting to pull his pistol from out of its holster. ‘I’ll put a bullet in you myself!’

‘No, you won’t.’

Ackermann and the men of his unit all spun around in surprise. There was stood Mayer, who’d uttered the three words. Amsel was stood on his left side, Bach and Weber on his right. The four men had their sub machineguns covering Ackermann and the other men, their faces hard and set.

‘What the hell is this?’ demanded Ackermann.

‘We’re leaving your unit, and taking those five Poles with us,’ returned Mayer, what he said surprising himself almost as much as the three others.

‘You’ll go to hell first,’ ground out Ackermann between gritted teeth. ‘These are partisans, dangerous and perfectly prepared to – ’

‘Partisans with not even one weapon between them!’ retorted Mayer. ‘What do you think they were planning to kill us with – their clogs? No, no; these are just yet more poor bloody peasants you plan to murder, to satisfy your cowardly bloodlust.

‘Well, it’s not going to happen this time – sir.’

Ackermann stared hard at the flat-faced soldier.

‘You treacherous bastard. May I remind you that there are still over twenty-five soldiers under my command – plus the five-man crew of each tank?

‘And you are – four…’

‘True,’ nodded Mayer. ‘And if there’s a fire-fight, then we’ll certainly all perish. Just as approximately half your men will, before we’re done – sir.’

Ackermann breathed heavily for a few moments, his narrow eyes wild with rage. Then it was his turn to nod, as though he’d just realized something.

‘Cowards and traitors – just like Karl Brucker was…’

‘Brucker was the bravest man I ever knew, and a true patriot,’ replied Mayer, forcing himself to keep his voice even.

‘Who was stabbed to death by some silly Jewish bitch,’ sneered Ackermann, as several of the men stood around him sniggered. ‘What a truly noble end for Lieutenant Colonel Brucker…’

‘You know – that’s something I still can’t figure out,’ declared Mayer, his eyes dark as the night sky as he stared across at Ackermann. ‘How in the hell did my commanding officer get killed like that? He went up to that room, accompanied only by you – and then suddenly he’s dead?

‘After all he’d been through… All he’d survived… And we have only you to say that it was that women who killed him. The same woman you conveniently shot dead just a few moments later. Isn’t that strange?’

Ackermann stared levelly at Mayer for a few moments.

‘If I ever see you back in Germany,’ he said then, ‘I’ll personally ensure that you and these three others are shot as deserters.’

‘We’ll take our chances,’ said Mayer. He briefly glanced at the Polish man who could speak German.

‘You there,’ he said. ‘You and the others are to come with us – that is, if you want to live.’

Again, the Polish man appeared uncertain.

‘Or you can stay here, and be executed by these other men,’ offered Mayer.

It wasn’t a hard choice to make. Still appearing confused, the man said something in his own language to the three others; and then hissed irritably at them when they appeared to hesitate.

With that, the five men and women walked quickly over to join Mayer and the three others – all of whom still had their eyes and guns fixed upon the superior number of SS troops stood opposite.

‘So long, Ackermann,’ said Mayer. ‘Before you hit the border, you might still find one or two more ruined villages you can burn out. Have yourself a little more fun before you’re done. Just watch out for any men who are actually carrying guns – they tend to fight back, and you and your boys here might find that a little bit scary.’

‘We’ll meet again, my friend,’ returned Ackermann, his wolf-eyes gleaming in the dark. ‘And then we’ll see just who’s scared.’

Realizing that further communication was pointless, Mayer trudged backwards, along with Bach and Weber keeping his gun trained on the other SS soldiers he was leaving further and further behind.

Amsel, meanwhile, shepherded the Poles ahead, quietly informing the German-speaking man that he and the others shouldn’t be scared – not now.

‘You did the right thing, Mayer,’ said Bach out of the corner of his mouth, feeling an undeniable sense of relief as Ackermann and the other SS men still under his command were swallowed up by the darkness.

‘But,’ Bach then continued, ‘we’re damn-near out of rations – too say nothing of ammo…’

Mayer swung round, to face in the direction he was walking. The track forked – the main track and now a narrower path. The group took the narrower path; there was no chance that Ackermann and the others would seek to pursue them along this. Indeed, relations had been strained for such a long time that they were probably glad to see the four remnants of Karl Brucker’s unit go.

‘We’ll ask our five guests here if they know of anywhere we can find something to eat. It’ll be as much in their interests as ours.

‘As for ammo…’

Mayer gave a fatalistic shrug.

‘Well – maybe the sooner we’re back in Germany, the better. Although frankly speaking, I doubt it.’

18

Again, it was in the rear of the lorry. Only this time it was alone. The man whose voice it recognized above anyone else’s had ordered it to go with him. No other, white-jacketed men in attendance. The ones who usually occupied the rear of the lorry with him.

They’d left that large room where it so often lay in darkness, and gone up in the elevator to where there was sky. A word it had remembered by now –

Remembered? Had it known it before?

Sky… Water... Trees... Sun…

These words felt strangely… thrilling… to think of.

Like – freedom.

Another new word.

Like – life.

Voices outside. Then a crash of gears and the lorry lurched off. Not the usual driver, it realized. The lorry this time being driven inexpertly. Could it be the man who’d gone up with it in the elevator who was now driving? But this man had never escorted it outside of the bunker before…

Bunker. Again another new word. They were coming all the time now.

The lorry crashed and bounced along. A squeal of brakes. It was sat in its usual seat, near the back. All around it cabling and metal boxes. A low light in a cage shining above.

The whirring started again. That peculiar thing which occurred every time it thought of the man who’d instructed it to let go of that soldier with the broken nose. It thought about that man a lot; more than it even wanted too. For, somehow, it wanted desperately to remember –

Yes – to recall the name of that man…

A man. Even it had heard itself being referred to as the ‘Metal Man’.

A man. It – he – a man.

Sudden realization… A man of metal, different to other men, but a man the same. Why had he not thought this before? Realized this before? He was so different, yet somehow – the same. He was made of metal and so he did not fall or… (he briefly scoured his memory for the right word)… bleed when shot. Or die. But he had… hands and… feet. Of a sort.

The desire for that man’s name again? Why did he want to know this? Everyone had names. He’d learned… or remembered… this again…

The stick stirring the dark muddy pool, dredging up –

He was the Metal Man. Sometimes the image of the smiling woman again occurred in the darkness, the one holding the baby, but there were no names there. He felt the warmth when the image flashed but also… Something else. Something contrasting wholly with this warmth. And also with those four men; the recognition of something that had been –

Lost?

That man. Again. The one who’d bellowed at him, after he’d caught the other man by the throat. The sensation of wanting to squeeze his hand – of metal – ever-tighter. Some recognition of authority, as that other man instructed him to let go, preventing him from doing this…

Was he a man? Or a machine like a tank?

The name…

Think…

It –

‘Ackermann,’ said the Metal Man suddenly, sat there alone in the rear of the lorry as it drove along.

19

This was the second time Wilhelm Reinhardt had visited number eight, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse – Gestapo Headquarters. The first time had been some months back, when Jonas Schroder had begun receiving harassment from Germany’s secret police. Then Reinhardt had paid his initial visit to protest; to claim that the half-Jewish scientist he had working under him was exempt from the Nuremberg Laws.

This time, he walked with the crouched, dejected air of a man who knows he is finished. He entered inside the front reception, where several smartly-dressed men and women were still working despite the lateness of the hour. He had on his thick black coat, and hat.

‘I am here to see…Major Fleischer,’ he said almost in a murmur to one stern-faced young woman.

She did not reply, but merely nodded and picked up a phone-receiver. Turning her head away from him, she quickly said something he could not hear and then put the receiver back down.

‘Wait,’ she instructed Reinhardt curtly. Clearly, she was already aware that this facially-disfigured man was effectively under arrest.

A couple of minutes later, a tough-looking young man in a black uniform approached.

‘Come with me,’ he said, taking Fleischer by the arm.

The Captain allowed himself almost to be pulled along, despair and fear registering on his damaged face as he was led out of the lobby and down a succession of staircases – descending into the very bowels of this large building.

Soon he was walking along long, ill-lit corridors, with doors of thick wood braced with metal on either side. They looked strong, sturdy – and soundproof.

At the end of one corridor, outside one of these doors, the uniformed man pulled Reinhardt to a halt. The man pushed first the door open, and then Reinhardt inside.

The room stank of damp, sweat, fear and something else which Reinhardt didn’t even want to try identifying. Moisture rolled down the exposed brickwork and the crumbling cement. The floor was of cement and stained in numerous places a dark-red color. An exposed bulb dangling from the ceiling gave a weak, sickly light.

In the centre of the room was an old wooden desk with a black telephone and an angled lamp set upon it. Sat on one side of this desk was Major Fleischer, his skull-like face smirking up at Reinhardt.

An unoccupied wooden chair was on the other side of the desk. It was much-chipped, as though it had violently impacted with the concrete floor on numerous occasions.

‘Take a seat, my dear Captain,’ said Fleischer, his soft lisping voice instantly causing fear to shoot like ice along Reinhardt’s spine.

There was a thud as the door behind him was closed – and then the sound of a key being turned in the metal lock. Reinhardt swallowed thickly, and blinked rapidly several times.

‘We are very much alone down here, Captain Reinhardt, of that I assure you,’ continued the Gestapo Major. ‘Also, Captain… But – why am I still addressing you by your rank? After all, we now know you’re just another filthy Jew, who’s managed to conceal his identity up until now…’

He paused, his beady, rat-like eyes staring unblinkingly at Reinhardt. Reinhardt bowed his head, nodding slightly as though he felt compelled to agree with Fleischer’s description of him.

Evidently satisfied with Reinhardt’s dejected appearance, Fleischer said then –

‘For your sake, I hope you have some information concerning other Jews who are currently in hiding. For I’m certain that you do know something – and I will get this information one way or the other. This room is very soundproof; and the man stood behind you has such… shall we say, persuasive methods of getting people to talk…’

‘For heaven’s sake, Major…’ Reinhardt almost squealed. ‘I have a list, I promise you…’

‘Show me it,’ ordered Fleischer. ‘And then sit down…’

Nodding in a servile manner, Reinhardt put one shaking hand inside the top of his thick coat...

Then abruptly his expression of crippling fear disappeared, along with any trembling. A pistol appeared in his hand – he spun round, firing a single shot. The young man in the black uniform barely had a second to register what was happening, before his brains blew out of the back of his head and spattered onto the brickwork behind. The man fell first to his knees, and then face down on the concrete floor.

Reinhardt didn’t see the man fall. Already he was back facing Fleischer, who snarled as he realized that he wasn’t going to be able to draw his own gun quite in time. The snarl then changed to a cry of pain as Reinhardt fired low, into his gut.

The Gestapo man – who’d hurriedly stood up in his attempt to draw his own gun – collapsed backwards over his chair, onto the floor.

‘Really, Major, I’m disappointed,’ declared Reinhardt, walking around the desk and kicking the gun out of Fleischer’s hand. It went spinning across the floor.

‘You took great pleasure before in boasting to me about this ‘methodical patience’ of yours; how you systematically set about gathering the information you require, and yet you did not know that I – just like all members of my department, even Jonas Schroder – had compulsory weaponry training some time ago? And that I showed a certain ability, shall we say, at using a pistol – so much so that I’ve kept in regular practice ever since?’

Reinhardt tutted, and shook his head.

‘If you’d known this, you might well have had me searched upstairs – just as I was searched that time I met Adolf Hitler, seeking to secure the release of Jonas Schroder from out of your clutches and also to obtain authorization for a certain… project.

‘Anyway – this failure to have me searched was a bad oversight on your behalf, if I may say so, Major.’

The beady little eyes now burnt with pain and rage, staring murderously up at Reinhardt. Fleischer was sat slumped against one wall, both hands covering his bullet wound.

‘Painful, isn’t it Major?’ observed Reinhardt almost sympathetically. ‘One of the worst places to be shot other than the groin – at least, so I was informed on that firearms’ course I attended.

‘Anyway, I currently find myself in a dilemma. You see, originally it seemed enough that I would have the satisfaction of killing you, Major. Hopefully also having the opportunity to exchange a few… shall we say, ‘free and frank’ words first – as indeed is currently the case. Then I would turn the gun on myself. But now…

‘No, no, no! Now I discover that I’ve not got the slightest desire to end my life so prematurely.

‘In fact…

Reinhardt paused, nodding contemplatively as he stared down at the panting Gestapo man.

‘But before I outline my plan now, let me tell you just what you’ve achieved here, Major,’ said Reinhardt then. ‘Through your actions, you’ve managed to get shot, firstly. That’s probably uppermost on your mind at the moment.

‘But you’ve also caused Germany’s finest scientist – a true genius – to take the machine of destruction he created for the Third Reich and to head for that camp named Mittlebruck, a short distance over the German-Polish border, where his Jewish mother is incarcerated. Or perhaps already dead. And I fully expect that Schroder will order his creation to tear that camp apart – along with anyone who dares to try and stop it.

Reinhardt paused again, smiling amiably at the sweating Fleischer.

‘Jewish… bastard…’ hissed the Gestapo man.

‘And I realize now that, actually, I have a strong desire to join up with Schroder and the Metal Man – you’ve heard about the Metal Man, I presume – and witness this destruction first-hand,’ declared Reinhardt. ‘But how do I get out of this building, unnoticed, first of all…?’

With that, Reinhardt walked over to where the dead young man in the black uniform lay. Grabbing the collar of the man’s tunic, Reinhardt briefly pulled him up.

‘Would you believe it, Major!’ Reinhardt then cried almost in delight. ‘Approximately half of the back of this gentleman’s head is missing, and the wall and floor is much stained with his blood – and yet there are barely three or four drops of blood on his jacket! And as this jacket is black, you would hardly see these drops unless you really looked hard; and furthermore, I believe this jacket – and trousers – are about my own size. What luck!

‘So much easier to leave number eight, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse – I think this time via the back courtyard, which if you remember is where you showed me out of last time I was here – dressed in this black uniform, wouldn’t you say, Major?’

Fleischer attempted a cynical laugh. But it came out more like the wheezing of a slowly dying man.

‘’They’ll see your… face, idiot… You can’t hide… that…’

Reinhardt pursed his lips and nodded, as though in consideration of this point.

‘Well, yes,’ he began. ‘But it’s late now, few people are around. I’ll just try and make my way quietly towards the back of the building. In any case, if the worst happens, I’ll be carrying my gun, yours and the weapon this young man lying on the floor doubtless has upon his person.  So I’ll be able to do for a few more of you bastards before I’m done – saving the last bullet for myself, of course…

‘As I say, I’d much rather not commit suicide, but given the choice between that and dangling on a meat-hook…’

Reinhardt looked towards the locked door of wood and metal. The key for it was in one of the dead young man’s trouser pockets – of that Reinhardt was certain.

He’d retrieve it in a few moments.

But first…

‘You said when I first came in here that this room is very soundproof, Major,’ said Reinhardt, walking over to the Gestapo man and crouching down beside him. ‘It seems you were right – two gunshots and no one’s come down to investigate…’

Reinhardt pressed the barrel of his gun hard against Fleischer’s chest, above the area of his heart.

‘So I’ll risk a third shot, now,’ said Reinhardt amiably. ‘Then I’ll quickly change into that uniform, lock the door behind me and try and get out of the building. Then, all going well, I’ll get a car and head for the border! Isn’t that wonderful, Major?’

‘Kike…’ hissed Fleischer, fear now evident in his rodent-like eyes as he tried staring down at the barrel of the gun.

Abruptly, all trace of good humor disappeared from Reinhardt’s face.

‘This is for everyone you’ve ever caused to scream out in pain and terror, Fleischer,’ he said into the man’s ear. ‘Everyone you’ve had tortured, and killed, and shipped off to those bloody ‘camps’ every German knows about, but still pretends that they don’t.’

Fleischer’s eyes swiveled round now to meet Reinhardt’s. The disfigured Jew almost started at the pleading expression they contained.

‘Please…’

‘Give my regards to hell, you Nazi bastard.’

With that, Reinhardt pulled the trigger. There was a muffled roar and Fleischer’s body bucked as the bullet tore into his heart.

Reinhardt stood up, shaking slightly with the adrenalin rush that was only now making itself felt. He remembered how nervous he’d been meeting Hitler; how he’d even thought he might wet himself.

So remarkable what he was capable of doing, he then considered almost abstractly, when his back was against the wall, so to speak…

…Fleischer’s body sagged sideways onto the floor. Reinhardt walked over to where the other dead man lay.

He had to move quickly, now.

20

Mayer and the three other soldiers shared the last of their rations – dried sausage and some bread so stale it was like trying to eat a brick – with the five Polish men and women whom they’d saved from getting shot at the hands of Ackermann and his unit.

The woman whom the SS officer had repeatedly slapped in the face stared at Mayer as he handed her some food, saying something several times in her own tongue.

‘She says thank you,’ interpreted the man who spoke German.

‘Tell her we’re not all bastards,’ returned Mayer gruffly, trying to disguise the strange effect the woman’s gratitude had upon him.

With the last of the food now gone, it became essential that the soldiers, and the five Polish men and women, find some more supplies.

It was the German-speaking Polish man – who gave his name as Arnold – who informed them that there was a town no more than a day’s walk away.

‘It is call Tornik,’ said Arnold. ‘I not go there for some year now, but often go when I child.’

The four soldiers doubted they’d find anything in this town – as likely as not it would be as wretched and desolate as all the other towns and villages they’d come across in Poland, the inhabitants half-starving.

But there was no choice; they were currently in the middle of a large forest of tall pine trees, following a path that seemed to get ever narrower, and they were out of food.

‘I can show you way, through forest,’ declared Arnold.

‘Okay, thanks,’ said Mayer. ‘When we get to this town, you and the four others are free to go.’

Arnold nodded, and the group kept walking. The four bearded, hollow-eyed soldiers dressed in their filthy, camouflage-pattern jumpsuits, sub machineguns dangling from shoulder-straps, and the five peasants in their old clothes and clogs. Their breath blew out in clouds in front of them (visible in spite of the night’s velvet darkness), their feet crunching on the snow blanketing the ground.

Mayer assumed the temperature was somewhere below freezing, although this wasn’t really cold – not for someone who’d experienced real combat on the Eastern Front…

The Front…

Mayer remembered Karl Brucker shaking two of his own toes out of his boot – frostbite – and then putting this boot back on and proceeding as if nothing had happened.

Tough bastard, Brucker. Toughest man Mayer had ever known, in fact – and the SS was hardly short of such types. But Brucker had had something else – an intelligence and… (Mayer fumbled for the correct word) morality, as it were, that had quickly caused a bond to develop between him, Mayer and the three other soldiers currently traipsing through the forest.

Numerous times it had seemed certain they’d die, and always Brucker had somehow managed to pull them through. Always with the same curt, yet at the same time almost half-humorous instruction – Move your ass – as bullets flew around them and shells exploded nearby…

And now he lay dead and buried somewhere, his body for some reason transported to Berlin all those months before…

Why had they taken Brucker’s body to Germany’s capital city? That was the question Mayer, Bach, Weber and the radioman Amsel had previously discussed among themselves – and the question Mayer again pondered now…

While a good soldier, and leader, Brucker had hardly been one of the military ‘elite’, as it were. Just another commanding officer, who should just have been buried where he’d fallen – if, indeed, there was the time and opportunity to do such a thing.

Try as he might, Weber could not think of the slightest reason why a lorry had been dispatched to drive the few hundred miles to Berlin with the body of Lieutenant Colonel Karl Brucker onboard…

*

Some hours passed as the group trudged on in silence, the night slowly lightening into dawn. Then at once the group abruptly left the closed shelter of the pine forest, entering into a clearing.

On one side the ground fell sharply away to a rocky pit below– a quarry, perhaps.

And, straight ahead…

‘What the hell is that?’ murmured Mayer.

It was a sprawling complex of wooden huts and other, brick-built structures, enclosed by two high, barbed-wire fences situated several feet apart from one another. There were watch-towers on every corner, and two high chimneys.

But one of these chimneys was partially demolished; to Mayer’s expert eye, it appeared as though someone had recently attempted to blow it up.

This was also true of a number of other brick-built structures within this…

What? thought Mayer. Prison camp?

An evil smell wafted across to the group who’d emerged from out of the pine forest. A stench of disease, death and decay. Figures appeared behind the high, inner barbed-wire fence, dressed in a striped uniform, their heads shaved, horribly emaciated. It was hard to tell even if they were men, or women.

Some of them had ragged blankets thrown over their shoulders or wrapped around their bodies, in defense against the cold. They stared at Mayer and the three other SS soldiers with a chilling mixture of fear and utter hatred.

‘This – ’

Mayer’s voice came out like a croak.

He coughed, and tried again –

‘This place,’ he said, addressing Arnold. ‘What the hell is it?’

At once, Arnold appeared to have trouble meeting Mayer’s eye.

‘This is type of camp your country make,’ he muttered. ‘For the Jew.’

‘Shit,’ breathed Bach. ‘I thought that ghetto, back where they brought in the Metal Man, was bad enough – but this place…’

‘Where’s the town you said you knew? This place called Tornik?’ Mayer questioned Arnold.

‘Past here – maybe just two kilometer away,’ returned the Pole. ‘Before was nothing here; just that cliff where they sometime get the rock from. But I have heard of these camp; are many in Poland…’

‘I remember, several years back, when I was in Frankfurt…’ began Amsel in a low voice. ‘Some Brownshirts started shoving this old Jew around; he had the hat, the beard – the full works. I made them stop all that, actually hit one of them; he shouted ‘Jew-lover’ at me as he and the others ran off…’

‘There was Kristallnacht – the Night of Broken Glass, in ’38…’ said Bach, his own voice sounding similarly distant. ‘It was always going on; I just didn’t think they were building places like this to put them in…’

‘Didn’t you?’ said Weber, his expression dark. ‘I knew it, even before I saw that ghetto on the edge of that town. I just never tried even to think of it – like so many Germans…

‘Then again…’ continued Weber. ‘You know, I was in Berlin when Kristallnacht happened.  I saw children clapping their hands and shouting with excitement as a synagogue was set on fire. Well-dressed women holding up their babies, so they could better see the ‘fun’…

‘Jews then on their hands and knees, the police forcing them to sweep up the streets with a dustpan and brush after their property had been burnt, smashed and looted. People passing by laughing at them, egging each other on to give one of the Jews a kick up the ass, to throw stones at them, the police doing absolutely nothing when this happened…

‘Even then, you know, I thought – What the hell is happening to this country?’

There was a few moments’ silence, none of the soldiers liking even to look at one another. The Poles had also moved so that they stood slightly, but still noticeably apart from the four German men. As though concerned they would otherwise be mistaken for the enemy by the inmates stood watching in their striped, ragged uniforms.

The silence was broken by Mayer.

‘The guards for this place – where are they?’ he questioned quietly.

‘My guess is that they were ordered to clear out – or did so of their own accord,’ returned Bach. ‘They must know the Russians are only a couple of days away, at most.’

‘One reason why we should keep pushing on, then,’ stated Mayer determinedly. ‘We’ll skirt round this… place, find this town, and…’

He shrugged. Pointless speculating until they actually got to Tornik. There might be some food there. More likely not.

The group started to move on, keeping well back from the barbed-wire fences at the same time as they followed them along. They realized they were at the rear of the camp; it was a couple of minutes before they reached one corner, and began to move along another side of the many wooden huts and brick-built buildings, some partially destroyed.

On the other side of the soldiers, barely twenty feet away, was the deep quarry.

‘What were the chimneys used for?’ asked Amsel.

The look he received from Weber was like a slap in the face.

‘Shit…’ he breathed.

There was a road some distance ahead. Also a train-track, which seemed to run directly into the front of the camp.

‘The cattle-trucks,’ nodded Bach. ‘I’ve seen them, full of people.’

‘Men, women and children,’ sighed Amsel. ‘Oh, Jesus Christ… Those chimneys…’

The inmates of the camp, behind the two separate barbed-wire fences, were cautiously shadowing the movements of the soldiers and the five Polish men and women. One of them was gnawing at something in a strangely furtive manner – a piece of bread, perhaps, or a potato.

‘Why don’t they get out of it?’ demanded Amsel. ‘Just leave, if the guards have all gone?’

‘And go where?’ returned Weber. ‘Look at what they’re wearing; the condition they’re in. This place may be death, but it least it’s got a roof, some wood they can now burn for warmth. Smell the smoke? Perhaps they’ve broken into the food stores, as –’

‘Over there – what’s that?’ questioned Mayer suddenly. He pointed in the direction of the road.

A lorry had appeared – a German military lorry.

Mayer briefly viewed it through his binoculars, and then looked puzzled.

‘What is it?’ asked Amsel, noticing his expression.

‘That lorry,’ returned Mayer, scratching one bearded cheek. ‘I’ve seen it before. That time at the ghetto which had all the… Jews in it. It’s the specially-adapted vehicle they use to transport – him.’

‘‘Him’?’ repeated Amsel quizzically.

‘Him,’ nodded Mayer. ‘The one they call the Metal Man.’

21

It was one of Ackermann’s soldiers, leaving the main track and heading into the forest to answer a call of nature, who discovered the feverish man dressed in a dark-grey uniform. The soldier dragged him out onto the track, in front of Ackermann, the other troops and the three Panzer tanks that were being driven in a single line.

‘Found another one, sir,’ the soldier reported to the SS officer. ‘Hiding out, just like the others were…’

‘No, no, no,’ said the man quickly, his fever-flecked eyes wide with fear. ‘I am Milan Havel – a Czechoslovakian who has worked for the Germans for three years now. I am supporter of Adolf Hitler! Heil Hitler!’

The man spoke German quickly, and well enough. He raised his arm as he shouted the last two words.

Ackermann’s narrow, wolf-like eyes showed slight confusion as he stared at the Czechoslovakian’s uniform.

‘Where did you get that?’ demanded Ackermann.

‘They give it to me at camp where I am guard,’ replied Havel almost proudly. ‘I am taken there from my country, and told to look over Jew. I am given truncheon and position of trust. I do my job very well!’

Ackermann stared for several seconds at the man, nodding slightly.

‘What camp?’ he asked quietly.

The man pointed vaguely in the direction Ackermann and his men were already heading.

‘Is call Mittlebruck, close to town of Tornik. Can get to through forest, but there path is too narrow for the tank. But just keep follow this wider track; it go round forest and take you to front of camp. Maybe fifteen, twenty kilometer.’

Ackermann nodded; and then said suddenly –

‘Why did you desert your post?’

Havel held up his hands in protest, his flabby, sadistic face contorting with concern.

‘No, no – I not desert! Just wake up one morning – just yesterday, I think – and all German soldier are going. They have already blow up some of camp; shoot some of the Jew but not all. Then, later, we guards go too.

‘But then I get sick and I am… left behind by other.’

Havel’s last statement was evidently given in a desperate attempt to elicit some sympathy. But absolutely none was forthcoming.

‘Were you given orders to abandon your post?’ persisted Ackermann.

‘But when German soldiers go, we think – ’

‘I repeat,’ interrupted Ackermann, his voice rising – ‘Were you given orders to abandon your post?’

‘But many Jew prisoner still alive!’ protested Havel in a trembling voice. ‘Without German soldier there, they now have chance to attack and kill us!’

Once again, Ackermann nodded, as though something he’d already suspected had just been confirmed.

‘So – first you and these other swine desert your posts, and then… Well, where you thinking of heading to now, eh?’

‘I… I…’ stammered Havel.

‘Because it wasn’t to Germany, was it, or you’d be heading in the opposite direction!’ barked Ackermann. Already, he was starting to loosen the strap covering his holster.

‘No, no – I am loyal to Germany!’ declared Havel, his fleshy face turning white as he again held up his hands. ‘I just get sick, not know where I am – ’

‘Liar.’

Ackermann’s cold voice cut through the former concentration camp guard’s claims like a whip. ‘You’re heading towards the Soviet forces – you’ve heard they’re only a day or so away and you want to surrender! You’re just like every other degenerate Slav – happy to work for the Reich when it suits you, and then running out like a rat as soon as the going gets a little rough!

With these final words, Ackermann pulled his pistol from its holster and took aim. Havel gave a hideous shriek as the shot was fired, his hands instinctively moving up further to his face.

The bullet blew away the last two fingers of his right hand. Havel gave another shriek, seizing his right wrist with his left hand as he stared glassy-eyed at the bloody mess.

‘Shit,’ sighed Ackermann, taking aim again. ‘Now there’s a waste of ammunition…’

He fired again. This time the round entered into the Czechoslovakian’s forehead, exiting out the back along with most of the man’s brains.

‘Berg,’ said the SS officer, calmly replacing his weapon in its holster.

‘Sir?’ replied the man whose body protruded from the top of the turret of the front Panzer tank.

‘How much fuel do you have left?’

‘Doubt we’ll even make it to the border on what we’ve got, sir,’ returned Berg. ‘Goes for the other tanks, as well.’

Ackermann swore slightly, but nodded his head resignedly.

‘And shells?’

‘Two for this tank; same number for the one behind. The one furthest back has got three. Hardly any ammunition left for the front-firing machineguns either, sir. Oh – there’s also the bazooka we’ve been carrying in this tank for months. Though that’s got only two rockets left.’

‘I think we should use everything up before we have to abandon these three vehicles because of a lack of fuel, don’t you think?’

‘Sir?’ returned Berg, secretly exchanging a quizzical look with two SS soldiers who were stood beside his tank.

‘That Slav said that they – our soldiers – tried to destroy this camp, before moving out. But if what he said is true, they didn’t manage to complete the task – nor kill all the kikes they’ve got shut away in there…

‘So, we’ll find this place – and fire what shells we’ve got straight into it. Should just be a simple clean-up operation then; a bullet a head, or just the knife.’

Ackermann at once spun around.

‘Okay?’ he demanded.

His men instantly returned a volley of ‘Yes, sir!’ They were starving, filthy and exhausted, longing only to get to the German border. But they were all of them well-trained: they would follow Ackermann wherever he led them first.

Besides… Eradicating a camp full of Jews hardly seemed to pose any major problem. And then onto the border – where (most of them were certain), there would be fresh supplies and a wealth of gleaming new machinery awaiting them.

Indeed, some talked almost desperately about a secret new ‘super-weapon’ the Fuhrer was about to unveil – something which would decimate the Soviet forces currently advancing behind them, and which would make even the Metal Man look laughable in comparison to its awesome destructive capability...

‘So we follow this track on,’ said Ackermann.

Just before the tank’s engines rattled back into life, steadily consuming the meager amount of fuel remaining, Ackermann instructed Berg –

‘Find this place Tornik on the map, if you can. The directions the Slav gave seemed straightforward enough – but we can’t do with taking any wrong turns now.’

‘Yes, sir,’ returned the tank commander.

22

Once Jonas Schroder had gotten used to driving the large military lorry with the Metal Man sat in the back, heading out of Germany and entering into Poland had proved a surprisingly simple task.

Schroder followed the map Reinhardt had given him, and leaving Berlin basically followed the same main road all the way towards Poland. It was a journey of approximately 250 kilometers, and took some six hours to complete.

The closer Schroder got to the border, the more people he saw retreating back into Germany. Soldiers, but also peasants, and other men and women dressed in casual clothing.

Schroder vaguely wondered if these people were Germans, previously assigned some job in captured territory, now desperately fleeing from the Russian advance. There were stories of the Russians shooting out of hand any German prisoners – having raped the women first…

The sides of the road leading towards the bridge over the river Neisse, and the border, were soon thick with soldiers (clearly starving and filthy, many with bloodstained bandages wrapped around their head or a limb, some on crutches) and the refugees pushing their belongings, the sick and the elderly in wooden carts, some others leading bony animals – a cow, a donkey…

There were also a multitude of abandoned vehicles – cars, lorries, several tanks…

Schroder witnessed this bizarre scene as a grey dawn broke over the bleak, freezing landscape. The soldiers manning the checkpoint were clearly preparing to retreat themselves. They seemed surprised that Schroder should wish to drive into Poland – and a little suspicious at his appearance – but he showed the form which Reinhardt had given him, signed by Hitler (just as he had when leaving the courtyard that was above the secret research bunker in Berlin), and so they immediately waved him on without any further question.

Schroder had driven barely a mile on Polish soil when he saw a sign for Tornik. It was on an ancient wooden post which had partially collapsed at an angle of forty-five degrees. Schroder could only hope it was still pointing in the right direction.

He drove on, passing overgrown fields and semi-derelict dwellings. More refugees at the sides of the road, their faces thin and hard. Tornik came into view – a church spire, more dilapidated buildings. Doors creaking in the winter wind. Cracked roofs partially covered with ice and snow.

Does anyone still live here? wondered Schroder.

But this camp – he had to find this camp… Reinhardt had said his mother was in hell; the letters saying how happy and content she was had all been faked…

Schroder gave a snarl as he continued to drive along, his eyes scanning everywhere. He had his creation sat in the back of this lorry; he’d order it to tear this camp apart – and to destroy anyone who tried to stop him from finding his mother…

The road was long, straight. Ahead, on the left hand side, Schroder saw what looked like a cliff. There were rocks below.

A train track appeared, to run close beside the road on the opposite side. Parallel.

And then…

…it seemed almost to materialize out of the low grey horizon. Crude blocks of black transforming into buildings of brick and wood; a tall, thick chimney...

A vast, sprawling place, located behind two separate barbed-wire fences…

His mother was – here?

Schroder gave another snarl, this time mixed with a choked sob…

Was she even still –

He didn’t allow himself to complete this thought. He was coming to a halt a short distance away from the camp. Ragged figures stood watching his approach behind the barbed-wire fences; scarecrows in striped uniforms, not even appearing human… Their heads shaved…

And outside of the camp, saw Schroder now, was stood a curious group. Four men dressed in filthy camouflage uniforms, machineguns dangling from shoulder straps. With them a group of five men and women, wearing clogs and giving the appearance of being peasants. The four soldiers’ prisoners, no doubt.

German soldiers – the only ones Schroder could see. But were there more, somewhere further inside that camp?

It didn’t matter. A hundred such soldiers weren’t going to be able to stop the Metal Man. Who would do exactly as Schroder ordered. He turned off the lorry’s engine, opened the door and got out.

The soldiers were staring at him, clearly confused by his sudden appearance. A German military lorry, being driven a small man wearing glasses, an outsized bowtie and a cardigan.

But as yet, the soldiers weren’t making any move to come over.

While he still had the advantage of surprise, Schroder walked quickly to the back of the lorry and opened up the two large doors. The Metal Man was sat in its special reinforced steel chair at the back.

Schroder spoke to it –

‘Stand up and get out of the lorry! You will obey everything I say from now on.’

The Metal Man first inclined its head, then picked up its huge gun and stood up. The lorry shook slightly as it walked towards the open doors. It got out, walking down the three steel steps that led to the ground.

Schroder stood beside his creation, looking across at the soldiers and the five men and women. Then he looked at the entrance into the camp, which the rail track beside the road led into. (The road itself ended in a square-shaped block of cement just outside.)

There was a large courtyard inside, surrounded by a number of low buildings, many partially or almost completely destroyed.

Some of the scarecrows in their striped uniforms were shuffling slowly around, their eyes fixed on the snow- and ice-covered ground, as though searching for something… Seemingly oblivious to the soldiers and their captives stood just outside the camp, or the titanium-armored machine of destruction that had just emerged from the rear of an extremely large military lorry…

‘We are going inside – there,’ Schroder told the Metal Man hesitantly, pointing.

Again, the Metal Man inclined its head slightly, holding its huge gun.

‘If those soldiers standing over there try to stop us – destroy them,’ said Schroder then.

The Metal Man looked over at the group stood on the outside of one barbed-wire fence.

The soldiers stared back, one of the men pointing.

‘Do you understand?’ demanded Schroder.

The Metal Man continued to stare.

‘Do you understand?’ repeated Schroder, worry beginning to sound in his voice.

Another moment’s uncertainty – and then the Metal Man nodded.

Schroder was less than reassured by this; but there was no choice other than to proceed. To try and find his mother in what Schroder realized now really was – as Reinhardt had said – a hell.

‘Let’s go,’ he said.

23

The sight of the buildings behind the barbed wire fences stirred a feeling within him. Similar to the one he experienced whenever he recalled the man he now knew was called Ackermann.

But why did he dislike – hate – this man so greatly?

Always there was a sensation of… something sudden and – sharp, when he remembered Ackermann.

Yes; that was the word.

Sharp.

And then blood and  -

Pain?

Another new word. But he could not approximate any type of feeling to go with this word.

And why should he think of these words like pain and blood, when he was so different from other men? More akin to a machine, in fact. He’d heard himself being called this. A ‘Metal Man’: a man constructed from something other than flesh, bone and blood.

Machines did not bleed or feel this…

Pain.

But there were more mental flashes, coming all the time now. Images; glimpses of… short scenes…

A burning building, a women screaming, a man who was – sick – lying in a bed…

A voice in his ear – Ackermann’s voice…

The something sharp and sudden. And the pain…

And back in the present: these buildings – of wood and metal. Strange people stood against the barbed-wire fences. Gaunt and shaven-headed. Men and women. A few children. Too few children.

As he noticed them the feeling of revulsion disappeared, and instead he felt –

Sadness? Pity? Compassion? (Another new word.)

He recognized that they were – captives – of this place he instinctively hated on sight. A place vaguely similar to the other, where the woman had screamed and the baby had cried. The sounds that had stopped him from doing as he’d been ordered.

From doing what he somehow sensed was…

Wrong.

And then that feeling almost of satisfaction when he’d grabbed one man around the neck – the man who’d been trying to take the crying baby away from the woman – and had applied the slightest pressure…

And the order to desist from Ackermann; obeyed even though everything within him had pleaded for him…

For him to continue – to kill this beast…

And back in the present: four men dressed as that man had been, stood by the long fence which ran all around this – place. Next to them a group of five men and women.

But he took renewed notice of the soldiers. He recognized them; one in particular – a broad, open face, the man stocky in build…

That warm feeling again. A sense of familiarity and – something else. Something much more than familiarity. And again, this feeling stirring the flash of that woman who was now holding the baby.

A – photo. Yes, that was what he was picturing. But he couldn’t remember – names, or – anything else. About the smiling woman or the baby. And this was something that made him feel sadder that he thought possible, staring out at a world which now had that

+

exactly in its centre…

He was approaching those four soldiers, his maker by his side. The one whose commands he was to obey above anyone else’s. The soldiers had walked forwards slightly, leaving the five men and women stood behind them. By the barbed-wire fence. He saw now that those emaciated men and women who were stood behind this fence were shrinking back, as though they feared –

Him?

But they had nothing to fear – he felt only these strange feelings of sadness and compassion and pity for them…

But now there was talking. Between his maker and these soldiers. He picked up some of the words.

‘… do not try and stop me…’ his maker was saying.

‘… this camp… nothing to do with us…’ returned the flat-faced soldier, for whom he felt this curious warmth.

For this man – and the other three soldiers.

‘…I am going inside…’ declared his master –

But he’d stopped listening. Couldn’t stop staring at this flat-faced man with the sandy… blonde… hair and beard. This man…

His name…

Think.

It seemed suddenly to matter more than anything else that he remember this soldier’s name. So many of the images which were flashing up now seemed to relate to this man – and the three others.

He –

An ‘M’ – the name started with an ‘M’.

…

‘Mayer,’ said the Metal Man at once.

24

‘Wait…’ gasped Mayer. ‘Wait just one damn minute…’

‘You… you can talk…’ gasped Schroder, staring sideways at his creation.

Then he shook his head, remembering what he’d come here to do. He couldn’t allow for any distractions. None at all.

‘I am going into this camp to find my mother,’ he informed the soldiers. ‘Don’t try and stop me – the Metal Man is under my command, and I have ordered him to destroy you if you try and interfere!’

‘But this… thing – it just said my name!’ declared Mayer angrily. He stepped in front of Schroder, blocking his path.

At once the Metal Man aimed its gigantic weapon – more like a cannon than a gun – towards the soldier.

Mayer stared defiantly up at its black goggle eyes.

‘So you just said my name – and now what? You plan to shoot me?’ he demanded, the words escaping his mouth almost before he’d even thought of them.

The black goggle eyes stared down at Mayer, above the grill-like ‘mouth’.

‘Weber,’ said the Metal Man again. His voice was like that which you’d hear coming from a radio, late at night. Distant, dispassionate, the speaker wholly anonymous.

Then, suddenly –

‘Move your ass.’

Mayer staggered back slightly, exchanging an incredulous glance with Bach, Amsel and Weber.

‘Brucker?’ he gasped, staring back at the Metal Man.

Ignoring what was taking place between the Metal Man and the four SS soldiers, Schroder stepped determinedly forwards. He walked towards the entrance into this camp, alongside the railway track. Over this entrance was a huge wrought-iron sign, curved in shape, which read –

Germany Needs Your Arms.

Schroder heard his creation walking just behind him and to one side. His personal bodyguard – at least for now. He – it – knew at least one of these soldiers’ names; had even just spoken in the customarily crude manner of the fighting man…

Were the parts of the brain Schroder had used, from the anonymous donor who’d been stabbed to death, now somehow ‘activating’ and taking over the mechanical side of his creation…?

Then, once again, Schroder disregarded this particular puzzle. His mission now: to locate his mother. Nothing else was important.

*

Stood behind the strange little man with the bowtie and the glasses, who was walking alongside the Metal Man into the sprawling camp, the four soldiers consulted among themselves.

‘I was sure… it had to be Brucker,’ said Mayer, although his voice was now tinged with doubt.

‘We were sat beside Brucker’s body a good couple of hours,’ reminded Bach, as Amsel and Weber nodded. ‘He was… dead – we all saw that.’

‘I know, but – what that… that thing just said,’ queried Mayer. ‘What the hell is it, in any case? A man? A machine? And now – what? It can speak?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Weber thoughtfully. ‘Anymore than I know who that little guy is who’s walking beside it. He looks – well, he looks Jewish to me.’

‘He said the Metal Man is ‘under my command’,’ noted Amsel. ‘What does that mean, exactly – that he made it? A Jew built this wonder-toy for the Third Reich?’

‘I’m going in after it,’ declared Mayer suddenly. ‘It said my name – how did it know that? Whatever it is, I’ve got to find out…’

‘This place… I know it’s bad, and God knows what these people inside have suffered,’ began Bach – and something in his voice now made the other three soldiers look silently at him. ‘But – remember… There’re four of us, with only limited ammunition. These people inside are going to be looking to rip us – as German SS soldiers – limb from limb, the slightest chance they get. And that’s before the Ruskies even get here…’

‘Bach’s got a point,’ said Weber quietly. ‘As SS men, we don’t want to end up as prisoners of the Russians. Better we just die fighting; or else get back into Germany as soon as we can.’

‘I hear you,’ returned Mayer, his jaw firm, ‘but I’ve got to know…’

‘Okay…’ sighed Weber. He turned back and called across to the man named Arnold –

‘We’re going into this camp for a short while! You can stay here, or come with us…’

For a few moments, Arnold first interpreted what had been said into Polish and then the group of five men and women briefly chattered among themselves. They held their outer clothing tight against their bodies in defense against the cold, and looked with stark, fearful eyes in the direction of the camp.

But when Arnold replied, he said –

‘We want to come in with you.’

Weber shrugged.

‘Okay, then,’ he said.

Quieter to Bach, Amsel and Mayer, he remarked –

‘I thought they’d want to stay outside.’

‘They probably think now they’ve got a little protection, so long as they stick with us,’ suggested Amsel.

The four soldiers set off after the Metal Man and his creator, followed by the five Poles.

25

A foul, freezing wind blew through the camp. Long wooden huts with slightly sloping roofs, the windows caged. The train track ran into the camp and ended in an area of the inner courtyard that had a large platform on either side. Several tall steel poles with lights on top.

By the end of the train track there was also a large, brick-built building, partially demolished. The towering chimney and its now-visible damaged, stunted twin, further inside the camp, dominated the horizon.

The snow in the camp had been churned into a filthy, grey and yellow sludge. There was rubble and debris everywhere, and those shaven-headed, cadaverous inmates who shuffled silently around, their eyes fixed on the ground.

Then one bent down, picking up a dented metal tin. Schroder understood that these inmates were scavenging for food, which was to be found lying in places around the camp. Perhaps dropped there by the guards who’d fled some time earlier. Or the camp stores since looted by the inmates…

But the inmates were shrinking back at the appearance of the Metal Man. They were disappearing further inside the camp, hiding behind the huts and buildings.

Schroder coughed, clearing his throat.

Then he said loudly –

‘I am not here, with this machine, to hurt you! I am half-Jewish, and my mother is here. I only want to find her; her name is Schroder. She came here…’

His voice paused, choked.

‘She came here over three years ago.’

He wondered if anyone even understood what he was saying. This camp was in Poland, after all.

But there were Germans here – of course there were. Stupid. Germans like his mother…

‘Are you hearing me?’ cried Schroder suddenly. He could sense rather than see the inmates creeping around the buildings near him, peering out at him and his creation with the gleaming, jet-black armor, its outsized hands holding that huge gun…

A man stepped forwards. He had paper stuffed inside his wooden clogs. He held a ragged grey blanket like a cloak against him. His eyes were deep, staring out at Schroder from some personal well of horror.

‘Why you bring soldiers with you?’ he asked in heavily-accented German. He had only two teeth left; incisors that looked like fangs in his upper gum. ‘That why everyone hide. Me – I not care. I feel like dead already.’

The man then motioned with a flick of his chin behind Schroder. The scientist turned around to see the four SS men cautiously advancing, followed by the five men and women who had the appearance of being peasants.

‘What are you doing?’ demanded Schroder of the soldier in front, who had a flat, open face.

Before Mayer could reply, a woman appeared, holding a baby close against her breast. She approached the Metal Man, staring almost in wonder at it. Then she cried out something in her own tongue, turning back around to face the other, hidden inmates.

They began, cautiously, to emerge.

‘She say that this… metal soldier of yours saved her baby. That it hurt another soldier who try to take the baby from her,’ explained the man with the fang-like teeth. ‘She say this metal soldier is a friend of the Jew, despite the swastika on its arm. That it not attack the Jew even when order to.’

Schroder shook his head.

‘My mother – I want to find my mother,’ he insisted. ‘That is why I am here.’

The man with the fang-like teeth pulled up one of the sleeves of his striped jacket, exposing the inside of his left forearm. There was a tattoo of five numbers, coming after the letter ‘B’.

‘You see that letter?’ hissed the man, coming closer to Schroder. His breath was poisonous, indicative of some rank, tumorous disease. ‘I come here over three year ago – as part of what is call ‘Shipment B’.

‘Everyone I arrive here with – many other Jew, and some gypsy, are now dead. I am longest living person here in this camp; most other been here not even a year; a few just one or two week, even. Three times in three year my name is chosen for selection – and three time, by sheer chance, I am in sick-bay, too ill even to walk. So three time I escape the gas chamber.’

The man sighed, and began to cry quietly, almost without change of expression.

‘Am I lucky? I don’t know,’ he said then. ‘Maybe I think not.’

‘Gas chamber?’ whispered Schroder. ‘What do you…’

He couldn’t finish, staring at the silently weeping man. His thoughts whirled. This man was the only person still surviving, out of those people who’d been transported to this camp over three years ago.

So that meant his mother was –

‘Oh no, no,’ he stammered, tears beginning to prick at his own eyes. He stared over at the chimneys, one partially demolished, which arose out of a large, squat, brick-built building.

Two massive chimneys, designed and built for the purpose of emitting –

Smoke.

Gas chamber.

Schroder gave a hoarse cry as he truly understood.

26

Mayer, the three other soldiers and the five Poles looked on in silence at the wretched scene unfolding in front of them. As Schroder cried out, covering his face with his hands, the soldiers shuffled awkwardly. The Metal Man stood impassive, only his head moving slightly, from side to side.

The woman holding the baby was still stood close to the Metal Man. She glared across at Mayer and the others, clearly communicating her hatred of the SS men. Now that she’d informed the camp’s other inmates that the Metal Man was a ‘friend of the Jew’, more people were appearing, circling around the group of outsiders which included the four soldiers. They were not afraid of them anymore – not with the Metal Man here.

He would protect them…

Mayer felt the hatred emanating from all the inmates stood gathered around. Even the few children had set, stern faces. The five Poles looked uneasily at one another, and then at the soldiers.

‘Best to get out of here, I think,’ muttered Mayer.

‘Yes,’ nodded Bach. ‘Let’s start heading – ’

One of the two Polish women – members of the group stood by the soldiers – suddenly spoke. Something loud and impassioned, in her own tongue. She addressed the inmates, looking around at them, and then pointing at the soldiers.

‘What is this?’ murmured Amsel.

‘She is saying how you save us from other soldier in the wood,’ explained Arnold.

He listened a little longer, and then continued –

‘She says you stop us from being shot. She says you are not like other German soldier. That you good men. That you also think camp like this is hell.’

Those inmates who were Polish now appeared confused. To those other inmates who didn’t speak that language, they attempted to explain what had just been said, in snatches of rough German presumably learnt during their time at this camp.

Mayer decided that it was time he said something –

‘You people,’ he began, loudly. ‘This… place… It has nothing to with us…’

Then his voice abruptly fell into silence. Whatever he said just seemed so… ineffectual – empty and hollow in contrast to the sheer horror of this camp…

‘Then why are you here?’ demanded one inmate, who was obviously a German Jew. ‘The soldiers guarding this camp all left just the other day, first shooting everyone in the sickbay – and now you are here, carrying your guns.’

‘We are part of the retreating German general army, that is all,’ said Mayer. ‘We didn’t know places like this even existed, until we came out of the forest behind it a short while ago. I mean, we came across it by chance.’

One of the inmates was staring intently at him, Mayer realized. He met the eyes that were a startling blue, the boyishly handsome but still somehow hard-looking face…

And he remembered. It was one of the Jewish guerilla fighters, from back there in that ghetto. Maybe two weeks before. That time when the Metal Man had silently refused a direct order coming from Ackermann, and had crushed Baer’s larynx…

Clearly, this guerilla fighter of about thirty remembered Mayer too.

There were now approximately two hundred inmates stood around them. Looking away from the blue-eyed man, Mayer asked loudly –

‘How many people are… here?’

Mayer glanced at Arnold, who nodded and repeated the question in Polish.

But the same German inmate then replied –

‘Maybe three hundred, perhaps three-fifty. But they shot about the same number, before leaving here. Blew up some of the buildings, too.’

Mayer swallowed thickly, and then said –

‘Where are the… bodies?’

The man pointed over towards one of the large, brick-built buildings. A sign over its front entrance read: Infirmary.

‘In there,’ said the inmate. ‘They were machinegunned and left as they lay, in bed or on the floor. They took pot-shots at us as they left, by motorbike and car. They killed a few more that way – women and children as well as men. They didn’t care; they never have. We collected the bodies, later, and put them in another building.’

Mayer heard Bach swear softly. Mayer opened his mouth to speak, but found he couldn’t say anything more. He glanced at Weber, his eyes almost imploring.

‘The Russians are coming – they’re perhaps only a day away. You’ll be safe then,’ declared Weber.

Then, in a quieter voice, he told the other three soldiers: ‘We should go now. There’s nothing we can do here.’

‘Wait,’ said Mayer, holding up his hand. He walked up to the small, Jewish-looking man, who still had his face in his hands. He appeared to be weeping.

Mayer put on hand on his shoulder. Instantly there was a whining sound as the Metal Man turned its head to look down at the soldier. Again, Mayer stared upwards for a few moments at the black goggle eyes, trying to see through them…

Then, in a low voice, he addressed the scientist.

‘I’m sorry for… what’s happened,’ he began, not really knowing what to say about the loss of the man’s mother. The gas-chambers… and those chimneys… And Arnold had said there were other camps the same as this one…?

Jesus thought Mayer. How many people have been –

Determinedly cutting off this thought, he forced himself to continue –

‘But this – this creation of yours. It addressed me by name… It said something that someone I used to know very well said often – but that person has been dead for months…’

The scientist turned slowly around to face the SS soldier. Schroder’s eyes were red with tears, but also now held a wild light which made Mayer somehow uneasy.

‘Maybe – maybe I have the answer to your question… The key to the mystery…’ said Schroder, his voice toneless. ‘Why not? Maybe the Metal Man wants to know itself – or should I say, himself. Maybe what I gave the Metal Man has been a secret too long, now. All I need is to get something from the lorry. A simple hand-tool. I’ll return in a minute.’

And he walked off, heading back towards the camp’s entrance. The Metal Man stood silently, still with his back to the soldiers, staring further into the camp…

27

There were Jews here. The woman and man he’d been trying to save, when Ackermann had stabbed him, had been Jews too. He realized this now.

This place was a hell. He knew that, too. The woman holding the baby was stood close by him. That, at least, felt good. The warm feeling. The same picture again flashing up, another woman holding another baby, but he couldn’t…

The names – he just couldn’t think of the names. That made him feel almost like weeping, although he couldn’t weep. No way of expressing any emotion behind this mask.

His name? He was almost there with remembering that. But at the same time he realized that he almost didn’t want to. Because – because maybe it was better not to know too much about…

About the man he had once been.

A man who’d known Mayer. The others – Amsel, Bach and… Weber. Yes, those were all the names. He’d only addressed Mayer so far, the instruction to ‘move his ass’ coming out almost without conscious thought. As though it was something he’d often said – although he’d only realized he could talk shortly before arriving here in this…

Place.

He turned his head to look at the woman holding the baby. Her head shaved, her face gaunt but… A definite strength within her. Some force that had kept her alive until now. He couldn’t see any other babies. Some children – but not nearly enough.

Unthinkingly he stretched out his right hand towards the baby’s head, the many motors and parts within his mechanical arm making their usual whirring and whining noises as the limb extended. He stopped the movement the woman flinched; but then she smiled at him, and said in halting German –

‘Is…okay…’

Still he began to withdraw his hand, until she said again –

‘Please, really, is okay…’

The same metallic hand that had once crushed the throat of an SS soldier – that was capable of crushing a grenade like an egg – now moved gently towards the top of the baby’s head. Carefully – oh-so-very-carefully – he used the same finger that pulled the trigger of his colossal gun (no man could have done this, even using both hands) and momentarily touched the head of the baby boy.

‘Name..?’  he heard himself asking. ‘What is your… baby’s… name?’

‘I not yet… think of… name,’ returned the woman, shivering as the icy wind again blew through the camp. ‘I think we die here and so name is not… matter…’

‘You will not die here,’ he said, making a… vow – that was the word. Promising the woman – and her baby – this. He suddenly thought: where is her husband? Then he heard the voice of his creator, that man approaching behind him. He turned around, instinctively recognizing that what this man held in his hand was intended for him.

28

It was a simple hand-tool with a socket on one end of it. Schroder instructed the Metal Man to set down his gun and to sit on a nearby, waist-high pile of rubble. Then Schroder fitted the socket onto one of the bolts that were on either side of the Metal Man’s head, above its ‘ears’. Painted jet-black like the rest of this machine of destruction, these bolts could hardly be seen.

Schroder’s face contorted with the strain of trying to loosen the first bolt. But all his efforts were futile. Finally, he handed the socket to Mayer. Who had a similar lack of success.

Finally, the Metal Man said –

‘Give it to me.’

His massive fingers almost hid the tool from view, as he loosened first the two bolts on one side, and then the two on the other. There was a hush, the only noise the slight ‘squeak’ as the bolts turned, and the wind that continued to sob its way through this camp of death.

The four SS soldiers and the five Poles now stood beside the massed inmates, watching in fascination as the Metal Man dropped the tool and brought up both of its outsized hands to its goggle-eyed mask.

Then it pulled this mask away, exposing a face.

‘Brucker!’ whispered Mayer hoarsely, his own face appearing suddenly shocked and drained of all color. The three other soldiers wore a similar expression.

‘Jesus…’ murmured Bach, his eyes wide.

With the mask removed, Brucker’s face was now slightly smaller in diameter then the back of his head. Six thick metallic struts – two just above the area of the forehead, and two more situated behind either cheek – served to lock the mask in position when it was in place and bolted.

The face itself was even whiter than those of the people watching. A death-mask. A shiny scar ran down from below the right eye almost to the corner of the mouth. The eyes were set, like those of glass. It seemed Brucker had to move his head in order to see around him; these eyes could not operate independently. The lips were extremely pale; bloodless. The mouth was closed.

Brucker moved his head, taking in the people gathered around him. Finally, Mayer stepped forward slightly.

‘It’s really you – sir?’ he asked hesitantly. ‘Lieutenant Colonel Karl Brucker, I mean?’

‘As close as it… can be,’ returned Brucker, his lips barely moving, scarcely forming the words. They came from a grill situated where his larynx would have been, had he been wholly human. His voice was almost mechanically measured, and without discernible emotion. And yet still the words, somehow, sounded sad, regretful.

The mask removed, however, there was no longer that distant, radio-like feel to his voice. Now (noted Mayer and the three other soldiers), it was even relatively similar to how Brucker’s voice had sounded –

Before.

It was a voice Mayer and the other three soldiers had never imagined they would be hearing again – and yet it was wholly different. This was Brucker; and yet also someone – something – else entirely.

Mayer turned to look at the little man who’d arrived with the Metal Man. The SS soldier seemed to be wrestling with several strong emotions at the same time.

‘This is – this is Lieutenant Colonel Brucker’s own face?’ he demanded.

‘No – it is just a death-mask, made partially from silicon as well as… other materials,’ returned Schroder, with a shrug. ‘It sits on top of a multi-layered, flexible metal frame – a marvel of design, if I may say so – that allows this face to convey a limited range of expressions.’

‘But you – you took Brucker’s brain?’ interjected Bach.

Schroder sighed, and shook his head slightly.

‘Just parts of it; what I thought would be essential for the basic motor movements of this machine. I did not think it possible the subject I used would ever regain its – or his – memory, even partially. But, just in case such an eventuality was ever to arise, I gave it a face – so it would have some way of recognizing what it had once been, together with any memories. That is – a man.’

The scientist’s almost dispassionate description of what had been done to Brucker did not sit well with Weber. His fists bunched, he started forwards, saying –

‘You sick bastard! You’ve made a Frankenstein monster of my commanding office!’

Even as Mayer (despite sharing Weber’s anger) moved to intervene, Brucker’s dispassionate voice sounded –

‘A Frankenstein monster or not, Weber, it’s still me. Or as good as you’re going to get, anyway.’

That black humor… That slight smile twisting the bloodless lips… Weber abruptly stopped his intended attack on Schroder, and instead walked over to stand in front of his commanding officer.

‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he said quietly, at once wiping his eyes with the sleeves of his camouflage overalls. ‘It’s – it’s good to see you again.’

‘Yes,’ said Amsel instinctively. ‘It is.’

Brucker’s internal motors whined as he stood up. The woman with the baby now approached him, carrying a piece of shattered mirror she’d found somewhere. She hesitantly held it in front of Brucker’s face.

Brucker stared at his reflection with his artificial eyes. Again, a hush fell over the people watching, silencing the excited chatter which had started with the unveiling of the Metal Man’s face.

Then Brucker simply nodded, and the woman lowered the piece of mirror.

Brucker looked at Mayer and the three other soldiers.

‘What happened to Ackermann, and his men?’ he asked.

‘We deserted his unit, sir,’ returned Mayer. ‘He was going to shoot these five people here’ – Mayer gestured at the Poles stood nearby with his hand – ‘in cold blood. That old trick of claiming they were ‘partisans’. We took these Poles and just walked away.’

‘‘That old trick’…?’ repeated Brucker, the expression on his recreated face one almost of confusion.

Then – ‘Yes, I remember what you mean, now.’

‘Sir… One thing I have to ask…’ began Mayer cautiously. ‘What happened… in that room in the burning house? Ackermann said a woman – stabbed you…’

‘Ackermann stabbed me,’ returned Brucker, in what was almost a sigh. ‘My back was turned and he stuck the knife in once, twice… I don’t know how many times. It is one of those memories I am having trouble recalling exactly. There are many such memories.’

Weber again wiped his eyes with his sleeve. Bach swore softly. Amsel shook his head and spat on the ground, saying –

‘That son of a bitch… I knew it – I knew it…’

‘We can report what happened, when we get back into Germany,’ declared Mayer grimly.

‘You mean to leave these people behind?’ asked Brucker evenly, looking around him at the gathered inmates.

‘I can’t see what good we’re going to do them by remaining here, sir. The Russians will be here within twenty-four to forty-eight hours, in any case. They’ll look after these people better than we could hope to.’

‘Yes – perhaps you’re right, Mayer,’ nodded Brucker.

‘The Russians mustn’t get hold of you, either,’ Schroder told his creation. ‘But – for me to return to Germany, now… I am a half-Jew. I mean, I may as well just remain in this camp…’

‘You can do as you please,’ said Weber curtly, who was seeing only the man who’d carved up his former commanding officer’s body, to use pieces of the brain and God knows what else as so many spare parts for…

For whatever Brucker was now.

The men started, the sound of squealing tank tracks coming suddenly from outside the front of the camp.

‘Russians?’ said Weber, his face hard. He began quickly checking over his machinegun.

‘Wait,’ said Mayer. ‘Sounds like only a couple of vehicles – three or four at the most. I don’t get it…’

The group consisting of the four SS soldiers, Brucker, Schroder, the five Poles and the accompanying inmates, had already moved to behind the large, brick-built building that was next to where the rail-track leading into the camp terminated.

Weber moved quickly, skirting round the side of the brick-built building. He returned in a few moments.

‘It’s Ackermann,’ he informed Mayer. ‘Ackermann and the rest of his unit. Got the three tanks spread out in a line. Looks like they’re getting set to blast this camp to kingdom come. Another soft target, I guess – their swansong before they head back over the border into Germany.’

Mayer nodded – and then looked directly at Brucker.

‘So – what do we do, sir?’ he asked his resurrected commanding officer.

29

Ackermann’s unit had found this camp without any difficulty. Now they took notice of the barbed-wire fences and the many huts and buildings behind these fences, but it stirred nothing within them.

A couple of SS troopers, using binoculars, observed a few inmates shrinking away further inside the camp, obviously trying to hide.

The SS troopers reported this to Ackermann.

‘Let them just try to hide from the shells these tanks are about to fire – and then we’ll go straight in and tear whatever’s left of this place to pieces,’ growled Ackermann.

The tank commanders stood from the top of the turret of each tank, looking to Ackermann to give the order to unleash their lethal salvo. Although there were only seven shells in total, that would still be sufficient to cause plentiful devastation.

Then they could just drive straight in, demolishing anything in their path, the SS troopers fanning out behind them and shooting anyone they came across. It was hardly as though they’d meet with any resistance, in any case – not in a place like this…

The tanks’ engines rumbled, as Ackermann slowly raised his right arm. When he brought it down, the tanks would commence shelling and –

‘Sir!’ called out one of the SS troopers, who’d been scanning the front of the camp through binoculars.

But now Ackermann could see what had left the courtyard area just inside the camp’s main entrance, and was walking in that curiously ‘steady’ manner towards them.

But – something was…

Wrong –

‘He’s got a face – the Metal Man has got a face!’ spluttered the SS trooper holding the binoculars. ‘He’s human…’

Then, as the trooper again put the binoculars to his eyes, he uttered what was almost a shriek.

‘No – Christ, no way…’ he moaned. ‘He’s dead…’

Ackermann opened his mouth, to demand to know what the man meant. Then he decided that it was simplest if he just took a closer look for himself. So he put his own binoculars to his eyes –

And was instantly transported to some shadowy, nightmare world, where a man he’d murdered months before now walked towards him with a new body of metal. Only the face remained the same – and yet also somehow different…

‘Ackermann!’ called out the apparition now. Lieutenant Colonel Karl Brucker – the Metal Man – whoever the hell this was – had raised his voice to be heard above the fearsome racket of the tanks; but there was no emotion at all contained within this voice.

And that somehow made it sound even worse…

The troopers gathered behind the tanks had started to chatter, sharing the two pairs of binoculars and so taking it in turns to take disbelieving looks at the SS officer whose dead, blood-covered body most of them had observed months before...

‘Shut up,’ growled Ackermann, trying desperately to keep both his voice and his thoughts steady. ‘Just shut up. This is some sort of trick, that’s all. Some foul experiment…’

Yes – already he was starting to recover himself. To take notice of certain important details. Such as the fact that the Metal Man wasn’t carrying that huge weapon of his. It seemed as though he was walking over to talk –

To talk…

To tell Ackermann’s men, perhaps, just what had really taken place that day in the Polish village with the building on fire…

‘Sir!’ called out one of his men again, who was now using one pair of binoculars to look past the Metal Man and again into the camp. ‘I can see one of Brucker’s men – one of the ones who deserted the other day…’

Ackermann realized he had to act quickly. Perhaps the Metal Man – if he still possessed some memory of his previous life as Karl Brucker – had already informed the man named Mayer and the three others presumably skulking within this camp of just how Brucker had met his end.

And now the Metal Man was walking over, possibly to give Ackermann’s men the very same information…?

How would they react to that – exactly?

‘It’s a trap!’ yelled Ackermann suddenly. ‘They’ve sided with the kikes – remember how the Metal Man behaved back at that ghetto?’

As the troopers stood behind the three tanks that were spread out in a line exchanged confused glances, Ackermann called out to the commander of the central tank –

‘Ram it – ram him! Don’t let him get near us!’

The tank commander turned to stare perplexed at his officer.

‘Now!’ demanded Ackermann, his narrow wolf-eyes blazing with hatred and fear.

The tank commander abruptly disappeared inside his vehicle and closed the turret hatch. A moment later the tank started forward, gaining speed as it headed directly towards the Metal Man.

‘Fire – fire!’ Ackermann bellowed at the two other tank commanders. They also disappeared back inside the vehicles – and a few moments later the first shell shot into the camp and exploded, as these tanks also started to rumble forwards.

30

‘Shit!’ shouted Weber, as nearby a large building disintegrated into a ball of flame and flying debris.

‘Everyone – get back, right to the back of the camp!’ called out Mayer then.

With Arnold and several others hurriedly translating, the inmates began to follow Mayer’s instructions. They moved almost as one, in a large crowd, the stronger ones trying to support the weaker. Getting rid of his bulky radio set, Amsel then put one arm around the waist of the woman carrying the baby, helping her on.

Then another explosion, near the edge of the group. Several inmates fell down; two did not then move, while the others began moaning, clearly injured. Amsel left the woman carrying the baby to run over to them, checking them over, trying to help one man get back up.

‘It’s no good, Amsel,’ yelled Mayer. ‘We have to leave them – get these others out of here, and into the forest behind – we’ll only be able to lose Ackermann’s unit that way…’

Then another shell landed in almost the same place as the last one had. Mayer stared in disbelief as Amsel’s body described a crazy cartwheel in the air. Then Mayer was running, heading towards the place where the stocky radioman had landed…

31

It was all over. Bach knew that. Now it was just every man for himself. He remained near the front of the camp, taking cover behind the various structures, emerging for a split-second to give quick bursts of fire at the SS troopers running behind the tanks.

Bach pressed his trigger only when he thought he had a good shot – ammunition was too scarce to do otherwise – but still he was certain he’d not actually hit anyone as yet...

Those German SS troopers. Men from the same country, the same army as himself – even their uniform identical. But still (appreciated Bach), men who were wholly different from himself…

It had been Brucker’s decision – if that metal thing actually was still Brucker – not to take that huge gun of his when he’d walked out there. He’d said he’d talk with Ackermann, persuade him and his unit just to drive on. Try to avert yet more bloodshed that way. If he took his gun, said Brucker, Ackermann might just get the wrong idea as he approached.

And…

Brucker had also muttered something about how he’d used that gun too much already. Seemed like he was tired of all the killing, despite the impressive jet-black armor and the shiny red swastikas on his shoulders that made him appear like the ultimate machine of destruction…

Bach had seen the tank drive into Brucker. Brucker had tried to move out of the way but – given how relatively slowly he walked – that had proved to be impossible.

So approximately twenty-five tonnes of metal had smashed into Brucker at around thirty kilometers an hour. There was a hideous rending, grinding noise of ruptured metal as Brucker disappeared underneath the tank’s tracks…

But now the tank was stuck. Unable to drive forwards as Brucker was pushing the front of it upwards with his mighty arms. Bach thought he heard Brucker actually yell out, that previously emotionless voice now actually registering the sheer effort of what his mechanical body was trying to do – and perhaps also the pain it was feeling…

Slowly – as Bach took cover, fired and then took cover again, the two other tanks now smashing through the outer barbed-wire fence, their shells obviously exhausted – Brucker pushed the tank that was on top of him over onto one side. The top of the turret opened, the five-man Panzer crew yelling as they attempted to get out before the machine completely turned turtle…

Bach emerged from behind cover once more. He had a clear shot – he could shoot down all of those five men with just one burst from his sub machinegun…

Yet something was stopping him. The men were yelling with fear – they appeared to have no weapons, except perhaps a solitary pistol carried by the tank commander. To open fire, now, whatever the circumstances, felt too much like murder for Bach’s tastes –

Then he gasped, several bullets tearing into his own body. He turned to see three of Ackermann’s men running towards him. They’d got into the camp behind these tanks and spread out, and he’d been so busy looking on at Brucker’s own battle that he’d failed to notice them creeping up on him…

Stupid, stupid…

He raised his gun, somehow managing to fire off a second-long burst. He had the satisfaction of seeing one of Ackermann’s men stumble and fall, before more bullets ripped into him – also coming from behind him, now.

He fell to his knees, his sight dimming. Feeling a curiously distant sort of amazement that he was even still alive. He put his hands to his belly and then removed them.

Yep – stained bright-red, just as he’d thought.

And –

‘He’s dead,’ grunted one of the SS troopers who’d first caught Bach unawares. He prodded Bach’s bloody body with the toe of his boot.

‘There’s only three of them left, now,’ continued the trooper. ‘We shouldn’t have much – ’

‘Look!’ cried out another soldier – one of the ones who’d fired at Bach from the rear.

The other soldiers looked in the direction the man was pointing, and then swore and staggered backwards.

The Metal Man was advancing upon the camp. His chest armor split in several places, smoke billowing from a great metallic rent near his right shoulder. His face was expressionless; but a short distance behind him lay the bodies of two of the tank crew, their heads smashed almost to pieces. The three remaining men were running in the opposite direction, away from the camp…

‘Quickly,’ said the soldier who’d prodded Bach’s body with his toe. ‘Get further into the camp – we can lose him in there.’

‘But how do we stop this bastard, if a bloody tank can’t?’ demanded another soldier, his face white as he stared at the ever-advancing figure. ‘And where’s his gun?’

32

He was angry. Angrier than he’d ever thought possible. He’d gone out with the intention of talking peaceably to the man who’d murdered him – in his previous existence – and instead a tank had been driven into him. Ackermann presumably wanting only his destruction – again.

Along with the destruction of everyone in the camp. The inmates; Mayer and the three other soldiers…

He’d crushed the heads of two of the men fleeing the tank. Had managed to get hold of them and smashed them together. He felt no regret about this. He’d thought he would but he didn’t. They’d been bad men – just as their commanding officer was a bad man…

Like attracting like.

Now he wanted only to get back inside the camp and protect those prisoners, and in doing so to fight alongside his own men. Again. And if doing this would result in the destruction of all of Ackermann’s men, then so be it.

Fool to have left his gun behind. What had he been thinking? He fully recalled what sort of man Ackermann was and still he’d told Mayer and the others that it would be best if he just went out to ‘talk’.

So now he’d suffered considerable damage, from having had that tank driven into him. He couldn’t feel anything – this word ‘pain’ – but still he could somehow sense the ruptured, torn armor and the damaged internal mechanisms and wiring. Some sort of difficulty operating the fingers of his right hand. They felt slow – sluggish.

But he could still walk, talk, think – and fight. As he entered back into the camp he saw those soldiers belonging to Ackermann’s unit flee before him and then…

He saw something else. A few bullets, fired by the retreating soldiers, bounced harmlessly off his armor as he bent down and almost tenderly used his still fully-functioning left hand to turn the bloody body of Bach over onto its back.

Then he again stood back up, his expression unchanging but still somehow terrible as he resumed his advance after Ackermann’s unit.

33

Amsel groaned, trying to hold in his intestines with blood-stained fingers. He wasn’t having much success.

‘Ah, shit…’ sighed Mayer, crouched over the stocky radioman.

‘Get… out of here… Mayer,’ rasped Amsel, gritting his bloody teeth against the pain. ‘It’s all… over… with me…’

‘I’ll help you up,’ began Mayer; but instantly he knew how stupid his words were. Amsel was dying; he just didn’t know how long that death would take.

‘Ackermann’s men… they’re coming,’ declared Amsel, his face contorting with the sheer effort of speaking. ‘You should – go… No use… just to stay here and… watch me die…’

He was right. Had their roles been reversed, Mayer would have said exactly the same thing. But to just go, and leave his colleague to bleed out in the middle of this hellish camp, sprawled out in the foul sludge that passed for ice and snow…?

‘Wait…’ said Amsel then. ‘Have you… a grenade…?’

‘Two,’ returned Mayer quietly.

‘Give me one… and go.’

‘But – ’

‘Mayer… just shut… up… and do… it…’

Mayer gave Amsel the grenade, and patted him twice on the shoulder before leaving.

34

Weber was busy trying to shepherd the group of inmates towards the back of the camp. Something had been said about hiding out from Ackermann’s men in the forest – but still that required cutting through the two barbed-wire fences. Also many of the inmates were in wretched condition, starving and shaking from fever and cold…

As such, Weber’s group was making slow progress.

They were cutting along a narrow path between two large buildings, near the towering chimney and its half-demolished twin, when two of Ackermann’s men suddenly appeared behind them. They gave a yell of triumph at their find and opened fire, hitting several of the inmates.

Weber moved away from the group and raised his own weapon to return fire – and discovered that his sub machinegun had jammed. It would take only a second or two for him to put this right – but this was a second or two he didn’t have…

Ackermann’s men grinned at him, one mouthing the word ‘Traitor’ as he aimed his gun in Weber’s direction –

Then he gave a grunt of pain, hitting the ground. His partner looked around quizzically, and the portly, slightly Jewish-looking man who Weber and the others had seen accompany the Metal Man (or rather, Karl Brucker) out of the large military lorry, smashed the length of wood he held in both hands into the soldier’s side.

That man, too, fell to his knees…

And at once the Jewish inmates were upon them, kicking, punching, clawing and scratching at the two soldiers who’d been firing upon them just a few moments earlier. Weber looked briefly away, hearing the shrieks of agony as one of the men had his eyes torn from out of his head…

‘…You don’t like me,’ said the portly man, advancing upon Weber with the length of wood still held in his right hand.

‘I like you better than I did before,’ returned Weber simply. ‘Thanks.’

‘I’m Schroder.’

‘Weber.’

‘So – what do we do now?’

‘The plan is to try and get as many people out the back of the camp as possible – through the fences there that are still standing, and into the forest behind. But…’

‘But what?’

Weber shrugged fiercely as he cleared his weapon. He looked at Schroder with dark, sweat-smeared eyes.

‘We won’t do it, Schroder. I’m the only one armed – ’

‘We’ll take those soldiers’ weapons – they won’t be needing them,’ cut in Schroder. He motioned at the bloody and, by-now, very-dead bodies lying nearby. The inmates were starting to move away, panting with their recent exertion. Many had their hands and in some cases even their mouths and faces stained red.

Weber couldn’t help but feel a chill of fear as he realized he was wearing almost exactly the same uniform as the two men who’d just been stamped, punched and torn to death…

But when he met the inmates’ eyes, there was only that same plea for leadership he’d seen before.

‘Over there!’ cried out one inmate, pointing towards the front of the camp.

A number of the buildings had been flattened and destroyed by the rumbling tanks, and the shells they’d first fired before entering, which had opened up a much wider field of view. And there was Brucker, walking through the destruction as bullets deflected off his damaged armor. A machine with a face: implacable, determined.

‘Son of a bitch,’ murmured Weber almost admiringly. ‘Hit by a tank and he’s still alive.’

He glanced at Schroder.

‘You made him almost as tough as he was – before.’

‘I did my best,’ replied the half-Jewish scientist. ‘Now, let’s get these soldiers’ weapons and move on. We’ll all get to this forest – or die trying…’

‘You’re not wrong there,’ returned Weber grimly.

35

Mayer ran between the smashed buildings. He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his torn, filthy jumpsuit. What the hell had Amsel wanted that grenade for? No way of knowing. Amsel dead now. Unless Amsel, too, somehow came back from the dead, just as Brucker had –

‘Snap out of it,’ growled Mayer to himself. He had to stay alert and sane, if he was to have one chance in a hundred of getting out of this situation alive.

Those tanks… There were only two of them, but still they seemed to be everywhere, crushing first the buildings and then the rubble beneath their squealing tracks, Ackermann’s men spreading out around them. Bursts of machine fire, cries of the wounded… Smoke and fire… The chimney and its half-smashed brother stark against that grey wintry sky…

Mayer rounded a corner and saw two of Ackermann’s men smashing the butts of their weapons against a writhing figure on the ground. A third soldier lay on the ground nearby, cursing and holding a bleeding arm.

Looked like he’d been stabbed, by the… inmate (Mayer saw now the striped overalls) who was currently being beaten – roughed up as punishment, as it were, prior to being shot…

‘Hey,’ said Mayer.

The two men turned round in surprise, and Mayer’s sub machinegun chattered. Both men whirled round before falling to the ground, almost on top of the inmate.

The soldier who’d been stabbed stared fearfully up at Mayer.

‘You’re going to shoot an injured man, Mayer – a fellow German?’ he tried to demand, although fear made his voice shake.

Mayer stared at him for a few seconds, remembering his face. There hadn’t been that many men in Ackermann’s unit, anyway. They all knew one another other by sight.

‘Do you remember Rudolph Baer trying to snatch a baby away from its mother, back at that ghetto where we first saw the Metal Man, and you laughing? You remember – when Baer said how he was prepared to wring the baby’s neck?’

Mayer’s voice became tight with his final sentence, spittle escaping his lips as his eyes narrowed.

‘N – no…’ the soldier whimpered.

‘Well I do,’ returned Mayer, who then fired a short burst into the injured man. He slumped over to one side, his eyes fixed and staring.

‘Thank you,’ said the inmate, wiping the blood from his mouth as he rose slowly to his feet. Mayer went to help him, but the man waved him away.

Then Mayer started slightly in surprise – it was that young but tough-looking male, with the startling blue eyes. The Polish-Jew who Mayer had first made eye-contact with back at that ghetto he’d mentioned to the soldier who was now distinctly dead.

‘…I remember that, too,’ said the man now. ‘You and two or three others didn’t look like you belonged with the rest of those SS troops – I remember thinking that.’

‘You… you speak German?’ asked Mayer, feeling slightly dazed.

‘But of course. Fluently. I was studying philosophy at Humboldt University, until it became obvious that being a Jew in Germany wasn’t a good idea,’ returned the man. ‘So I returned to Poland – not knowing that you’d then go and invade my home country, of course.’

‘Let’s move,’ said Mayer. ‘We’ll get to the back of this camp and into the forest.’

‘To hide, Herr – ?’

‘Mayer – yes, to hide,’ returned Mayer determinedly. ‘We can’t fight twenty-something men and two tanks.’

‘We can try,’ said the blue-eyed man, staring at the SS soldier.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Aron.’

‘You can fire a gun?’

‘Yes. I learnt that living in the ghetto. But you already know that…’

‘Well then, Aron, pick up one of those and let’s get moving,’ said Mayer, motioning at the guns, previously belonging to the dead soldiers, which were now lying on the ground.

36

Two members of Ackermann’s unit turned the corner and came across the body of a fellow SS member. The man was lying on his front, his features concealed. The churned up snow around him was heavily stained with blood.

‘I think that’s one of those guys who deserted with Mayer,’ said one soldier. Then he became aware that the man lying on the ground was quietly counting –

‘One… two…’

‘What?’ said the other soldier. He moved over, roughly turning over the bleeding man on the frozen ground.

‘Three… four…’ continued Amsel.

The other soldier had walked over to stand by the dying man.

‘Shit!’ he shouted then. ‘He’s got a grenade!’

‘Five…’ gasped Amsel, in the split-second before the grenade tore him and Ackermann’s men apart.

37

Brucker caught up with one of the tanks almost at the same moment as it ran out of fuel and so came to a sudden halt. His metallic fingers (the right hand still working – just about) clawed at the hatch on top of the vehicle.

There came a great screech of metal as he then tore it open. The five men inside the cramped, hot, oil-smelling interior gave a yell of terror, Brucker’s frozen face staring in at them.

‘Get out,’ said Brucker. ‘Now.’

‘You’re dead!’ shouted back one of the crew, his face almost as white as Brucker’s own. ‘I saw your body!’

‘Yes,’ returned Brucker, his voice flat and measured. For a moment he stared up at the brick-built tower directly behind him. ‘Yes, I was dead. But then I came back…’

*

…A short distance away, Ackermann saw what was happening as he stood beside the other tank.

Quickly, he said to the tank’s commander –

‘You have that bazooka, Berg, in your vehicle?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Give it to me.’

Doing as ordered, Berg’s face then registered shocked surprise as Ackermann aimed the weapon directly at the Metal Man.

‘Sir!’ called out Berg. ‘The men in the tank – if you fire that, they’ll also be – ’

‘They’re as good as dead, anyway,’ barked Ackermann, opening up the bazooka’s sight.

Then, taking aim, he fired…

*

…Almost abstractly, Brucker felt himself being lifted up in the air. Some part of his brain – that of it which still existed – registered: More damage.

The tank, also, was blown almost on its side, the men inside screaming as the flames from the explosion consumed them. Brucker landed on top of the tank, a strange feeling almost of detachment coming from his left leg. He lay, dazed. He looked up at the towering chimney, which to his numbed senses seemed almost to be swaying…

No – seemed was the wrong word. It was swaying. Then it suddenly collapsed, the thousands of bricks slamming into Brucker en masse, burying him…

All was darkness, Brucker now registering catastrophic damage to his titanium-armored body. His human brain swam in and out of conscious, Brucker desperately instructing whatever part of him still existed from before not to die, to stay focused – to try and claw his way out of this tomb which had landed upon him; to get back out and –

It was hopeless. There was now absolutely no response from his right arm. He felt himself slipping away. The machine side of him was only so powerful, no matter how thick the armor. The tank colliding into him – and now this – it had been too much…

‘Finished,’ he murmured, somehow knowing that his synthetic face had been torn apart by the tons of rubble which had just fallen upon him. ‘I’m finished…’

*

With a grunt of satisfaction, Ackermann put down the bazooka. The Metal Man – Brucker – had been completely buried by the falling chimney. Along with the tank and its crew. But that was a worthwhile price to pay for the destruction of Brucker, thought Ackermann vaguely.

But still he could hear the chatter of machineguns being fired; the shrieks of the wounded. The inmates of this camp – and perhaps some of his men, also. Ackermann knew that his unit had taken casualties. Whoever was left of Brucker’s men (Ackermann thought there were now only two of them – one of whom was that traitor Mayer) were too experienced as fighters not to sell their lives dearly.

Then Ackermann realized what he had to do. The simplest course of action for bringing matters to a head, as it were.

‘Everyone – out of that tank,’ he barked at the Panzer’s crew.

Berg and the four other men clambered out, still shaken by the callous attitude shown by their officer towards the lives of the crew of the other tank.

‘Get out there – find the others – tell them I want prisoners,’ instructed Ackermann. ‘You hear me? Prisoners. As many as you can; round them up and bring them back here.’

‘But, sir, excepting my pistol, we’ve no weapons,’ said Berg doubtfully.

‘You need weapons against some unarmed kikes?’ spat Ackermann.

‘No, sir,’ returned Berg. He nodded at the others, and they began to move cautiously away from their vehicle.

‘Remember,’ said Ackermann, ‘prisoners. As many as you can get – bring them back here. And quickly.’

38

Brucker was dead. Of this Mayer was certain. He’d seen the rocket being fired at him, the half-machine, half-human being blown up in the air along with the tank. And then that great chimney collapsing on him, completely burying him – along with the tank – under thousands of bricks.

A great dust cloud now hung in the air, while the roaring noise made by the falling rubble still reverberated in Mayer’s ears.

The blue-eyed man who’d given his name as ‘Aron’ was at Mayer’s side. He carried one of the guns which had belonged to the SS soldiers. Neither of the two men had much ammunition, however. The dead soldiers hadn’t had much on them, either.

The men crouched low, peering round the sides of buildings before running across any open spaces. Mayer’s boots crunched on the filthy snow; Aron, who was wearing the clogs given to all the inmates of this concentration camp, made slower progress.

The camp was destroyed and smoking. Gunshots and yelling sounded frequently. But the menacing squealing noises, coming from the tanks, had at least stopped. Mayer didn’t know who’d fired the rocket that had first exploded Brucker up in the air and then caused him to be buried alive – but whoever had fired it must have known that it would also destroy the tank Brucker had been in the middle of tearing apart with his metal hands.

Only Ackermann, thought Mayer, would have such a callous disregard for his own men. This was, after all, the same man who’d stabbed a fellow SS officer to death in cold blood.

With such thoughts running through his mind, Mayer turned a corner and almost collided into Weber and Schroder.

‘You saw… what happened… to Brucker?’ asked Weber, panting for air.

‘Yeah,’ returned Mayer, his own chest heaving.

‘Amsel?’ Weber then said quietly.

‘Dead. Bach?’

‘I don’t know, but I think he’s also…’

Mayer nodded, his face grim. He was certain there were only two of them left, now. Plus Aron and this podgy, Jewish-looking man. How many of Ackermann’s unit were left? And how many of the camp’s inmates had been killed?

Trying to shepherd them to the rear of the camp had proved a hopeless task. They’d scattered, got separated. Mayer had been forced several times to exchange fire with other SS soldiers; and when he’d returned to the group, it was always to find it smaller than it had been before…

Mayer and Weber then exchanged a confused look. For there was hardly any gunfire now; someone was shouting out in pain, but otherwise an almost eerie stillness hung over the smoking and shattered concentration camp.

Then Ackermann’s voice, coming loud and strident –

‘Mayer? I believe you’re still alive. I have approximately fifty Jews here. For every ten seconds that you – and whoever’s with you – don’t surrender to me, I shoot one of these kikes in the head.’

‘Shit,’ murmured Mayer. He exchanged another look with Weber. Was Ackermann serious?

‘… three… four… five…’ – the SS officer was already counting. His voice was coming from one side of the camp, near the quarry. The fences along this stretch had been all but torn away by the tanks.

‘What do we – ’ began Weber.

‘… ten…’ finished Ackermann. There was then the noise of a single gunshot.

‘One kike down, and – Oh, here come my men with some more prisoners,’ called out Ackermann. ‘Looks like we can carry on doing this for quite some time! The Yid I just shot was male, by the way; I’ll try a woman this time.’

‘Ackermann!’ yelled out Mayer – but he didn’t know what else to say. He’d no doubt that the SS officer would kill every single one of the inmates he’d caught, if he – Mayer –didn’t surrender himself.

‘I’ve just been informed that it seems as though there is one other traitor with you, plus the man who built the Metal Man, and perhaps another man – an inmate of this camp,’ said Ackermann then, his voice sounding almost jovial. ‘They also need to surrender, along with you.’

And then began the count –

‘One… two… three…’

At once, there came the awful noise of a woman screaming. Mayer pictured her on her knees (he’d no doubt that all the captured inmates were on their knees, hands behind their heads, guarded by whatever number of Ackermann’s troops were still remaining), the barrel of Ackermann’s pistol pushed against her right or left temple…

‘…six… seven… eight…’

The woman began babbling something in Polish, her voice high-pitched and hysterical.

‘…ten…’

The crack of the pistol suddenly silenced the woman’s voice. Weber swore, and Mayer called out suddenly –

‘Ackermann, you – ’

Again, his voice choked. No words could begin to express what he was currently feeling.

‘Surrender, Mayer, you and the others, and this stops,’ returned Ackermann. ‘The kikes can stay in this camp and wait for the Russians, and you and the other traitor can return with my unit into Germany – as prisoners.’

‘Bullshit,’ spat Weber, but his expression was as strained as Mayer had ever seen it. There seemed to be no choice, other than to do as Ackermann was demanding.

It was as though Weber could read Mayer’s thoughts –

‘You really think he’ll do it?’ demanded Weber of the other bearded, exhausted SS soldier. ‘Just leave here with us as his prisoners – let the surviving inmates have a chance of being rescued by the Russians? That being the case, why did he even start shelling this place and tearing it apart in the first place?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Mayer through gritted teeth. ‘I… don’t… know.’

‘A man and a woman so far,’ called out Ackermann. ‘I think another women, next. Ah yes – this one holding the baby. She’ll do fine. Two for the price of one, as it were.’

There was a loud whimpering. Mayer screwed up his eyes and cursed as he pictured the gun being placed against the woman’s head.

‘Two lives this time, Mayer – two shots unless you surrender within the next ten seconds. One… two… three – ’

‘Ackermann – okay!’ yelled Mayer suddenly.

‘What?’ gasped Weber, Schroder and Aron also looking at Mayer in disbelief.

‘Well, what the hell would you have me do?’ demanded Mayer, as he laid down his gun, removed the belt which held his holstered pistol and one remaining grenade, and started walking away from the cover of a half-ruined building. At any moment, he expected to be shot.

Hardly any building had escaped being damaged. A number of the long wooden huts were also on fire. Smoke stung Mayer’s eyes as he walked forwards, realizing that the other three men were now behind him.

He could see Ackermann, now. Ackermann stood with all his prisoners on their knees, maybe fifteen SS troops in a loose ring around them. Least we got some of the bastards, Brucker thought Mayer, his brain whirling with shock and exhaustion.

But then he realized this wasn’t good enough. Not remotely. He’d lost – Ackermann had won.

And now…

What, exactly?

‘Okay, Ackermann,’ said Mayer, as he picked his way over the rubble and burnt lengths of wood strewn across the snow-covered ground. ‘I’ve given myself up – all four of us have given ourselves up. So let’s leave these people to the Russians, and get back to Germany.’

As he spoke, Mayer saw that Arnold and the four other Polish peasants were among the captured. Ackermann gave only a thin smile at the approaching SS soldier; then he suddenly took several steps forward, and smashed Mayer around the face with the barrel of his pistol.

‘Shut up, you treacherous bastard,’ spat Ackermann, his narrow, wolf-like eyes blazing. ‘You’re going to be hanging from whatever part of this camp is still standing, very shortly – I’ll string you up myself.

‘But first of all, you can watch each of these kikes you so foolishly tried to defend get shot in the back of the head, and thrown over that cliff there. That’s what the Russians are going to find, when they get here – a load of exterminated vermin, and a traitor to the Third Reich hanging inside the remains of this camp.’

‘You’re fucking nuts, Ackermann – you know that?’ growled Weber.

‘No – just loyal to the Fuhrer, unlike you, this bastard’ (he motioned at Mayer) ‘and the Tin Man who’s now lying under several tons of bricks.

‘But don’t you worry’ (Ackermann now addressed Mayer) – you and whoever this man is’ (he indicated Schroder) ‘will be coming back to Germany as my prisoners. As for the Yid here – join the others there, on your knees!’

Aron walked over to the large group of prisoners, assisted by kicks coming from several of the SS men stood around. Then, Mayer realized that there were also a few more of Ackermann’s men working their way through the camp, searching for survivors – for those who were trying to hide…

Pathetic figures kept being shoved over towards the kneeling group, which soon numbered over one hundred. But too many of the wretched scarecrows, dressed in the ragged, striped uniforms, were lying sprawled out across the camp. Some shot dead, others with their heads beaten in, or their bodies crushed by the tanks.

We could rush them thought Mayer desperately. Then he realized such a thought was useless. These inmates had clearly abandoned all hope. A bullet to the head would at least grant them a final release from the perpetual cold, hunger and fear. Hope had briefly existed in the shape of the four renegade German SS soldiers, plus the metallic fighting machine Karl Brucker had become…

But now Brucker was dead, plus Amsel and (Mayer had not the slightest doubt) Bach as well.

So no point even to consider trying to attack the surrounding SS soldiers. They stood a little away from the group, sub machineguns held ready. Any sign of rebellion and the inmates, the five Poles, Schroder, Weber and Mayer himself would just be mown down.

But then – what was the alternative? To just watch as all the Jews were executed, before he was strung up from whatever part of this camp was still left standing…?

‘Up, scum – up!’ barked Ackermann then. Several of the SS soldiers stepped forward, kicking at the inmates until they did as ordered. Mayer, Weber and Schroder also stood.

Mayer tried to exchange a glance with Weber, wondering desperately if that man had any sort of plan which could be somehow communicated via eye-contact, but was then struck hard across the back of the head.

‘Keep your head down, eyes front, traitor,’ growled the soldier behind him.

Across the wasteland covered in snow, ice and rubble, destruction and dense smoke lying all around, marched the group of over one hundred prisoners. Now being pushed over the torn-down barbed wire fences, heading towards the deep quarry and – for all the Jewish inmates, the men, women, children and one baby – their deaths.

39

He wasn’t dead…

Not yet, anyway. Lying in darkness and a strangely muffled silence – yes. But this wasn’t death. Images kept flashing – that woman, holding the baby… The woman smiling… The warm feeling, coming even now, his metal body smashed and broken…

Names…

What were their names…?

But the woman – she was no longer smiling. In his mind’s eye (he remembered that phrase now) she was staring desperately at him. Imploring him to somehow escape this tomb he was lying in and –

Ackermann, outside… Had he won, he and his men? He would – kill – all the Jews. That was for sure.

Wearily, he concentrated and felt himself. Right arm useless. Completely unresponsive. Might as well not even be there. Left arm fine. His left leg, however, was a different matter. He knew that it had sustained major damage from the explosion which had thrown him up in the air. He could, however, still move it. In theory, that was. Not much chance of moving anything right now, buried under all these countless bricks. But nearly every part of his leg proved at least vaguely responsive, right down to his metal foot. Whether he could still walk on this limb, though…

That hardly mattered, anyway. He thought almost angrily to himself – exactly where are you planning to walk to, imprisoned and trapped here in the darkness?

You are not dead – the woman holding the baby almost mouthed the words at him.

Please, please, escape and – help…

And then he knew – somehow, but also for sure – that Ackermann had taken control of the camp. Maybe all the Jews were already dead.

And his – Brucker’s – men?

Determinedly, he started to move his left hand. The great metallic fingers opening and closing. Working their way with agonizing slowness through the pile of bricks lying on top of him.

The woman – what was her name? – nodding, frantically imploring him to make greater efforts. To not succumb to the overwhelming fatigue he was feeling; the desire just to cease his efforts and to close his artificial eyes against the blackness – forever.

Then, he realized that his hand had broken through the great pile of bricks lying on top of him. It was out there – in the light. Then his black forearm; he pushed and shoved away with it on either side, the bricks dislodged and slipping away. Making the hole ever bigger. His movements becoming stronger, faster. Certain now that he was needed outside – that everything depended on him escaping this tomb made by a collapsing chimney…

40

The Jewish inmates (plus the five Polish farm workers) had been made to kneel in a long line, right by the edge of the deep quarry. A few sobbed, but most seemed quiet and resigned to their fate. The woman hugged her baby boy tightly to her chest. He did not cry; he was silent, now.

Behind them stood the remaining soldiers of Ackermann’s unit. They’d withdrawn their pistols, although their sub machineguns continued to dangle from shoulder straps.

On their knees a short distance away, their hands on the back of their heads, carefully watched over by two of Ackermann’s men, were Mayer, Weber and Schroder.

Ackermann (stood behind the kneeling Jews, his own pistol withdrawn) spoke in the direction of the three men –

‘Make sure you watch this, Mayer. All these kikes getting the sort of treatment they deserve. In fact, far too good for them – a waste of ammunition, really. But time is short, and I need to get my unit back into Germany. But not before I personally deal with you – for good.’

‘You’re a sick bast – ’

Mayer’s retort was cut short, as one of the two SS men (responding to a nod from Ackermann) gave him a kick to the face that nearly broke his jaw.

‘That’s enough from a traitor,’ declared Ackermann.

Then he addressed the men stood nearest him -

‘You start from that end of the line, you from the other. When you run out of ammunition, you and you replace them while they reload. And vice-versa, until we’re done. I’ll start from the centre of the line, and work my way along to the…’

Ackermann shrugged.

‘…left,’ he finished.

The men he’d ordered to commence firing began walking to either end of the kneeling line of Jews.

Then, another soldier called out –

‘Sir – sir!’

Ackermann looked irritably at the man, who was pointing with an incredulous, but also fear-struck expression back into the camp.

Then Ackermann saw what was happening, along with his other men.

The Metal Man – Karl Brucker – he was almost half-way out of the thousands of bricks which should have buried him forever. Or at least for a good few months. His black metallic body was exposed from his chest up; his left hand was picking up the bricks around him and throwing them away. The Metal Man was methodically freeing himself from his tomb.

But Brucker was still a horrific sight to behold. His right arm hung limply from the shoulder; clearly he no longer had any use of the limb. And he had only half a face. On one side – the left – the synthetic skin had been mostly torn away, exposing a multitude of thin metal struts which had given the face its shape, and somehow ‘moved’ to allow Brucker to express a limited range of emotions. But both the artificial eyes remained, frozen in one position, some sort of camera doubtless situated behind each one.

The black armor, also, was no longer gleaming, but battered and split in various places. Smoke continued to escape from the great rent by the right shoulder.

‘Well, well, Brucker – or whatever the hell you are,’ called out Ackermann, shaking his head and smiling slightly, as though feeling somehow compelled to express his reluctant admiration. ‘You’re a hard act to kill – I’ll give you that. But let’s see if I can finally get it right this time.’

With that, Ackermann walked unhurriedly over to the tank that was also back inside the camp, but some distance away from where the Metal Man was continuing to make his determined efforts to free himself.

The bazooka – with one last rocket – was inside the tank, returned by Ackermann after he’d last fired at the Metal Man. Getting the weapon and loading it, Ackermann then walked back over to stand by the kneeling Jews.

‘This is it, Brucker,’ said the SS officer, his right eye squinting along the top of the bazooka, at its front sight, as he took direct aim at the Metal Man.

And then the frantic beeping of a car horn, coming from near the front entrance of the destroyed camp. Ackermann swore as he took his gaze away from the Metal Man, not taking the shot yet – momentarily distracted by whoever this lunatic was who’d suddenly turned up in this car that was screeching to a halt by the train track running into the camp.

41

Leaving number eight, Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse – Gestapo Headquarters – had been simplicity itself. Only twice, making his way towards the rear of the great building, had Wilhelm Reinhardt encountered someone walking towards him. (Once on the stairs leading away from the torture rooms down in the basement, and then along a long corridor.)

On both occasions, dressed in the impressive-looking black uniform Reinhardt had taken from one of the men he’d shot dead, Reinhardt had simply covered his disfigured face while pretending to have a coughing fit. On the second occasion, the person walking towards him – a woman – had said sympathetically –

‘Poor you – you must have this flu bug that’s going around.’

And that was it. No need at all for Reinhardt to use the three pistols he carried on his person. He’d escaped out into the courtyard that was at the rear of the building, where several black, official cars were parked. Reinhardt started one, and approaching the manned barrier that was before the exit into the street again covered his mouth with one hand and pretended to cough. The guard raised the barrier, and Reinhardt drove off.

He stopped outside his apartment, and went quickly upstairs to grab a few items – clothes, mainly, and a treasured photo of his dead wife Helga. He was leaving Germany for a good while – at least until this war was over. Having just shot dead two members of the Gestapo, and his Jewish identity no longer a secret, he could hardly remain in this country.

The only course of action seemed to be to try and find Jonas Schroder. To see if that little, half-Jewish scientist had found his mother in that concentration camp that was just over the Polish border.

So Reinhardt left his apartment and got back inside the Mercedes 260 D. No one had seen him enter or leave his apartment; but then, it was very late. He set off for the border, already knowing the route he needed to take. With luck, it would be several hours before anyone found the bodies of Fleischer and the other thug – and first, they’d need to get past the thick door which Reinhardt had locked from the outside, using the key he’d found in the trouser pocket of the black uniform he was wearing.

Dawn had already broken by the time Reinhardt reached the border. He was questioned by the two soldiers manning the checkpoint, but he brusquely claimed ‘official business’, and the sight of the impressive black uniform stopped any further questions. He was permitted to drive on, passing the hordes of soldiers and refugees lining either side of the road.

He saw the same sign which Schroder had seen – with ‘Tornik’ written  upon it – and passed that ruined town a few minutes later. Then the camp appeared, a sense of horror growing within Reinhardt the closer he got to it.

But it had been destroyed. Smoke was billowing out from it, the buildings crushed and on fire. And at the side furthest from Reinhardt, by what looked to be a rocky cliff, there seemed to be a large mass of people…

Then he could make out the soldiers standing above the kneeling – prisoners? They had to be the inmates of this camp, wearing those ragged, striped uniforms…

Then Reinhardt realized the soldiers had their guns out and were going to shoot the prisoners. But they were looking over at something, something lying with only the upper half of its body protruding from a huge pile of bricks and rubble.

Reinhardt gasped as he realized that it was the Metal Man. Without his mask. And with what looked to be half a human face. And one of the German soldiers was now taking aim at the Metal Man with a bazooka…

Scarcely knowing what he was doing – but knowing that he had to do something – Reinhardt pressed the car-horn. That caused the soldier aiming the bazooka to take notice of him.

Reinhardt skidded the car to a halt beside the train track leading into the camp – close to the huge lorry Schroder had brought the Metal Man in earlier – and hurriedly got out. He entered into the camp and walked quickly across the shattered ground, noticing the two tanks abandoned and the bodies that were – everywhere.

He had three pistols on him. The man with the bazooka was looking suspiciously at him.

Reinhardt opened his mouth to speak…

To say something – anything…

42

‘Wilhelm!’ cried out Schroder, turning his head to see what had captured Ackermann’s attention, and thus recognizing his superior.

Ackermann whirled his head back round to stare at the podgy man kneeling beside Mayer. He then stared back at the man walking across the ruined camp, wearing the black uniform of the Gestapo but…

Every instinct Ackermann possessed was screaming at him that this was a sham. Some kind of trick. That somehow this man was connected with the Metal Man, and anyone who knew the Metal Man thus knew Brucker, and so could possibly tell a story of how Ackermann had treacherously stabbed a fellow SS officer to death…

‘It’s a trap!’ yelled Ackermann suddenly, dropping the bazooka and grabbing for his pistol.

At first, the SS soldiers stared in startled amazement at their commanding officer. But when the black-uniformed man suddenly produced a pistol and began firing at them, it seemed to bear out the truth of their officer’s words. They raised their machineguns and began firing, the man diving behind a pile of rubble.

‘’Move forward – get him!’ screamed Ackermann, realizing that so long as the man remained behind cover, he was safe…

*

Mayer observed the commotion, and in a flash realized that the soldier guarding him was having his attention distracted.

That all the SS soldiers were having their attention distracted.

This was it – the only chance he and all the others currently down on their knees would get.

‘Weber!’ yelled Mayer, at the same moment as he sprang up and lunged for the guard stood a few feet away from him.

Weber, too, was quick to react. In a second he’d joined Mayer in bringing their guard down, Weber grabbing for his sub machinegun as Mayer repeatedly punched the man in the face.

Tearing the gun free from the shoulder strap, Weber then swung it in the direction of the kneeling Jews. But he saw that they’d already started to fight – to attack the soldiers guarding them themselves. The guards’ guns briefly chattered, and killed a few of the inmates – but then the inmates swarmed over the men wearing the camouflaged uniforms. Stamping, punching, biting, tearing, gouging… One of the guards screamed for mercy but there was absolutely none to be had.

Then his screams were muffled by the sheer weight of bodies upon him…

Weber turned his attention away from the bloody revenge being exacted and transferred it back towards Ackermann. That man had realized what was happening and was firing his pistol at the inmates advancing towards him, sheer hate shining in their eyes like a feral light.

Three… four inmates dropped as Ackermann’s pistol barked; then the hammer was clicking on an empty chamber.

With trembling fingers, Ackermann tried desperately to reload… But he was too slow. In a moment the inmates were upon him, Ackermann falling as the wooden clogs began kicking at his thrashing body…

‘Leave him!’

The voice was so loud – so authoritative – that it somehow cut through the sheer pandemonium taking place by the steep quarry. The inmates who’d commenced attacking Ackermann briefly paused, staring over in the direction the shout had come from and seeing…

The Metal Man. Karl Brucker. Risen from the huge pile of bricks and now standing with his right arm hanging uselessly from his side. The half of the face he still had was implacable. Smoke spilt out from the numerous tears in his armor as he began a slow, limping march towards the quarry, his gaze fixed determinedly on Ackermann.

As though somehow bidden, the inmates moved a few paces away from Ackermann, allowing the SS officer to get shakily back to his feet.

‘I knew you wouldn’t allow a fellow officer to be killed,’ said Ackermann, a weak smile showing as he wiped the blood from his nose. He took a cautious step towards Brucker, whose metallic left leg was emitting an awful, grinding noise with every step…

‘Leave him,’ repeated Brucker, his artificial eyes still fixed upon Ackermann, ‘to me…’

‘What…?’ emitted Ackermann, the slight, nervous smile now freezing. He stopped his uncertain walk forwards, and now took a step backwards, retreating from the advancing Metal Man. But then he realized that the quarry was barely two feet behind him.

Like a trapped rat, he looked frantically left and then right. But on either side stood the inmates – more joining their number as they finished off the other soldiers and so walked over to see what the Metal Man had in mind for this officer of the SS.

The inmates stared silently back at Ackermann, their flat gaze informing him that it was hopeless – that he’d no chance of escaping.

Karl Brucker extended the arm he still had control of. Ackermann almost squealed as the great metal fingers reached for his throat…

Then he was in a vice-like grip, being raised up, his own hands grabbing Brucker’s wrist in an attempt to stop himself from choking.

‘Brucker… for heaven’s sake…’ he rasped, his feet now dangling over the rocky chasm a hundred or so feet below.

‘Heaven?’ returned Brucker, his voice sounding almost ponderous. ‘I’m not sure there’s even such a place. But I’ll let you find out for yourself whether or not there’s a hell…’

‘Brucker!’ cried out Ackermann, the word turning into a scream as the Metal Man released his grip. A few moments later, Ackermann’s voice was abruptly silenced as his body hit one of the rocks, far below…

Brucker’s left arm fell back by his side. His great metallic body swayed, and for a moment it seemed as though he would pitch forwards into the quarry himself.

And then he fell backwards, onto the frozen ground, where he lay quite still.

43

Freda and Max. He could remember their names now – finally. His wife and their baby son. The source of the warm feeling he could still recognize; the smiling, dark-haired woman and the baby who’d somehow implored him to claw his way out of the imprisoning darkness and to at last destroy Ackermann.

He was dying. He felt his body of metal now almost as he’d previously felt his body of flesh and blood. It was twisted and ruptured and broken, the armor split open and many of the delicate inner mechanisms hopelessly smashed.

He was lying on his back staring up at the winter sky and his sight was fading. But the image of Freda and Max then flashed – and stayed there. They were proud of him. He’d done what he’d had to do. At least two of his men were still alive along with all those Jews.

He could go now. He could die again…

Then he realized that Mayer was leaning by his right side, saying –

‘Sir? Sir?’

44

‘Mayer…’ said Brucker almost hoarsely. The smoke spilling out from his mangled metallic body was so thick now that Mayer coughed, and had to wave a hand in front of his face in order to try and fan it away.

‘We did it, sir,’ said Mayer simply.

The woman holding the baby knelt down beside Mayer. She was crying.

‘Thank you,’ she said, putting one hand on Brucker’s ruined right arm, her other arm cradling her child.

She then looked at Mayer.

‘Thank you… all of you…’ she said in halting German.

‘All of us… did it…’rasped Brucker.

Weber had also moved to stand beside the Metal Man, as had all the surviving inmates, Schroder – and that strange man, dressed in a black Gestapo uniform, who’d so suddenly arrived just a few minutes earlier.

Weber looked at Schroder, who was standing almost beside him.

‘Schroder,’ he said urgently. ‘You… built Karl Brucker. Surely you can… fix him… now?

Schroder shook his head sadly.

‘Impossible,’ he said quietly. ‘Even if I had all the equipment I’d need, he’s suffered too much damage…’

‘It’s… okay…’ said Brucker – and his voice was now little more than whisper. ‘It’s my time – now. That is… again. Goodbye Mayer, Weber…’

Then the exposed steel structure of his face suddenly froze, Brucker’s artificial eyes fixed staring up at the winter sky. It started to snow, the surviving SS soldiers, Schroder, Reinhardt and the inmates stood in silence, looking down at the man who’d been resurrected as a machine.

Epilogue

It was out of the question for Mayer and Weber to remain at the camp. As SS soldiers, they had to get back into Germany.

‘We’re on the wrong side, I know that now,’ Mayer addressed the inmates, as some time later he and Weber prepared to leave. ‘But Germany’s still our country, and we have a duty to defend it. From the Russians – who will be here shortly.’

‘I wish we could get them buried, first,’ said Weber softly, staring down at the jet-black metal body of Karl Brucker – and also the body of Bach, which had been recovered by the two surviving SS soldiers and placed tenderly beside their commanding officer.

Aron – the blue-eyed man who’d led the Jewish revolt earlier – said –

‘It’s a shame, but the ground is too rocky and frozen. But – we will tell the Russians , when they get here, of what Karl Brucker and this other man did. How they fought to protect us. How they were men entirely different from those other animals.’

‘Well – so long,’ said Mayer, looking round at the inmates. The baby cried, and the woman cradling it said gently –

‘Hush, Karl – hush.’

Weber smiled.

‘He would have liked that,’ he told the woman. She smiled back at him, understanding the meaning of what he was saying even if the words were unclear to her.

The inmates watched the two SS men leave, sub machineguns again dangling from shoulder straps. Schroder and Reinhardt stood almost side-by-side, Reinhardt now wearing the civilian clothing he’d brought with him in the Gestapo car. As a full Jew – and Schroder a half-Jew – it had been decided that they should remain at the camp and allow themselves to be found by the Russians.

Schroder stared at Brucker’s body. He supposed the Russians would be greatly interested in the construction of the Metal Man – and also in Schroder himself, as the Metal Man’s creator.

Schroder supposed he’d have to work for them, which at least guaranteed his and Reinhardt’s safety.

They might even want a new Metal Man – one, perhaps, with the hammer and sickle where the swastika shoulder emblems currently were…

If so, then Schroder would have to start completely from scratch. Brucker was dead; there was no way that –

Unless…

Insanity – what was he even thinking? There was no way to resurrect this fallen metallic warrior –

Unless…

Schroder’s frantic thoughts were disturbed by the sudden squealing of tank tracks sounding in the distance.

‘It’s the Russians,’ said the Polish farm worker named Arnold. He’d survived the massacre at the death camp named Mittlebruck, along with two other members of his group.

‘They are coming. We are safe…’

End

By the same author: The Whistler: A Murderer’s Tale

Amazon author account

Table of Contents

The Metal Man

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