|
The screams of the wounded, the shouts of the angry, and the running of good samaritans and cowards in opposing directions formed the backdrop for Halstead’s silent lifting of his victim onto his shoulders. He left his suitcase where it lay and headed in the direction of the main railway station. The superbly fit Halstead carried the corpse of the corporal the full mile to the tracks leading westward from the station, through Karl’s Gate and down Bayer Strasse. Those observers who watched one man in a corporal’s uniform carrying another down the street chalked the pair up to a veteran carrying his comrade home after an evening of revelry at one of the local beerhalls, and allowed the pair to continue across the center of the city undisturbed. The body was finally laid to rest across Track Five, a pair of rails that would direct a Mühldorf-bound locomotive across the body before the light of the next day would shine upon its scattered pieces. Halstead reached to the dead man’s chest to remove the two missing pieces that would complete his disguise, the Iron Cross, First Class and the Iron Cross, Second Class. The American officer carefully pinned these Imperial German decorations over his own heart, then reached for the Bowie knife stuck in one of the two combat boots purchased on the black market in Berlin along with his uniform. Halstead’s eyes often glanced away as he applied the knife to the corporal’s face in order to ensure there would be no identification of the body, but his revulsion was tempered by the fact that the body had already lost the warmth of life. Once the desecration was complete, Halstead threw the hunk of flesh in between the rails, carefully wiped his knife and hands on the other’s uniform, and replaced the knife in the boot from which it had come. Then he readjusted the body so that the neck and hands rested on one rail, and the ankles rested on the other. Halstead gazed down at the man who would soon be crucified by rolling stock, then finally removed the bandages that had hidden his new face from the world he now inhabited. He threw the bandages down on the corpse’s chest, felt the flesh of a very un-Aryan face, then marched off into the night to report to the barracks of the Sixteenth Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment as Corporal Adolf Hitler. |