15

The first premonition of what he would remember only as the bad times came a couple of weeks later, unexpectedly. He was in his office, reading, when the older doctor's voice caused the younger man to look up from his papers. He heard a nurse saying something to Herr Doktor, and Riestermann saying “Danke,” as he came around the corner and into view.

“Busy?” asked Riestermann.

“Just reading."

“Who have you scheduled for tomorrow, the host subject?"

“Um, I have Number Twelve."

“No. I don't want Twelve yet. Get that little one you like. What's her name?” Shtolz looked at the physician who'd become a mentor to him. “The little fair-skinned Jewess you're so partial to? Let's use her."

“We've discussed this,” Shtolz said, swallowing. “Don't you remember? Twelve is all prepared."

“Emil,” the old physician said softly, “I don't mind your little games. But you're growing attached to Number Three.” He stepped all the way into the small room and pulled the door shut behind him. “Pleasures of the flesh can become self-destructive when a person isn't careful. It's all right to indulge but the key is moderation,” he was almost whispering. Shtolz could feel himself reddening.

“I don't know what you mean.” The words caught in his throat.

“Let's not embarrass one another, Emil. I wouldn't say anything to you but,” he gestured toward the wall, “you know how things are around here. I'm just watching out for your welfare.” He smiled paternally. “Agree? Good.” He winked his Uncle Hans wink, opening the door and moving out into the hall.

Shtolz had the oddest sensation that he'd dreamed the moment between them. It was the closest the two had come to anything resembling an argument since Emil was brought into the program.

In spite of the degree of closeness imposed by the work they did, the empathic bond that two evil kindred spirits might establish, Riestermann was someone Shtolz was sure he'd never get to know. Nonetheless, the older normally treated him as an equal, a respected partner. He didn't give a damn which subject they hooked up to the brain tomorrow. Shtolz was sure he knew what this was about. It had come from those black-shirted dumbheads in the front office.

There was one officious swine in particular, a suspicious and excessively observant clerk type from, according to the grapevine, the complex on Prinz Albrechstrasse in Berlin. Eyes and ears for Internal Security, or the Staatspolizei, or even Himmler himself.

Emil understood the need, obviously, for the program not to be compromised. But this thing he felt for the little girl whom Hans Riestermann referred to coldly as Number Three, defied logic or regulations. She was something he had grown attached to.

He loved it when she would kiss his face, arching up on little tiptoes to “taste his strawberry,” touching her warm, moist lips to his birthmark. The way she was so quick to forgive his excesses when the heat of his perversions caused him to inflict pain.

He wanted to take his girlchild and escape from a world that he sensed was beginning to collapse. Politics had no meaning to Emil Shtolz. Science was everything. He would envy the progress of the program, so long as it lasted, as it transcended any lowly morality, but there were practical matters of survival to deal with, both his and the object of his passion's.

The Waffen-SS clinic was within a quick hop to the border and he was not one to be without ways and means. It would be easy, he thought, getting up decisively and leaving his office, turning down the hallway outside the laboratory annex. They'd expect him to head for Switzerland, which was enticingly close, but Poland was only the narrow width of Czechoslovakia from there. He could melt into the crowds with his beautiful love toy and soon the Tear of Satan would be forever obliterated.

He stopped before her room and removed his keys, unlocking the heavy security door. The hallway smelled of equal parts of fear, formaldehyde, and insanity, as he closed and locked the door behind him.

“Hello, my darling girl,” he said, waiting for the child to run to him with outstretched arms as he had taught her.

“Hello, Papa,” she said. They kissed. There was only a bed, toilet, and a ceiling light fixture shrouded in steel mesh. The shelf of the old-fashioned water closet was several feet off the ground, nearly as high as he could reach. He gripped her tiny waist and with considerable effort sat her up on the shelf.

“Stand up on that, darling,” he told her.

She shook her head no, the long, beautiful hair gently falling against the smoothness of her perfect, blemishless, oval-shaped face. Not defying him, but afraid.

“Do what I say,” he coaxed her, gently, smiling with pleasure. He had learned she had a great fear of heights. "Do it!" he barked, putting some authority in his tone. “It's only a few feet off the floor. Just stand up."

He loved her pained expression as she forced herself to stand on the small ledge. Her hands were outstretched at either side, pressed against the wall.

“Please, Papa, let me come down now."

“I will, darling. That's what I want you to do. Come down,” he almost laughed with glee. “Put your hands out like this,” he said, showing her what he wanted. She complied instantly, but looked as if she were about to cry. “Jump into Papa's arms. Papa will catch you, you know that.” The girlchild trusted him. She stepped off like someone stepping into a shallow swimming pool.

“No, no,” he corrected, catching her thin body and sitting her back on the shelf in one motion, not even noticing the effort. “That's not it at all. I want you to dive into my arms, like a little bird.” The child, whose name was Marta, simply sat on the shelf, shaking in terror and confusion.

“Please,” she began, tears trickling down her face, making him even more resolved.

“Get up there, you vixen. Stand up! That's it. Put the arms again like so.... Now, dive into the air like a bird.” She was frozen to the spot. “Do it, you bitch, flap those wings and fly to Papa. Come on!"

The girl, her thin arms held to her sides, flung herself into space, and of course he caught her and sat her back on the shelf.

“Do it again and fly this time,” he said, his voice thick.

“Please, Papa, please let me come down,” she begged, sobbing.

“Come down then, darling, flap those arms and fly down here to Papa.” She dove off but this time he waited an extra quarter beat, keeping his hands down long enough to cause her heart to come up in her throat, snatching her just as she nearly smashed into the concrete floor, and the scream that his next kiss trapped inside her was what he'd been waiting for. For the Boy Butcher, this was his foreplay to lovemaking.