“It is not a heretical religion. It is about the Thousand-Year Reich that Adolf Hitler started.”
“And you feel your oath to follow Hitler’s orders requires you to support the notion of a Thousand-Year Reich?”
“Absolutely.”
“Forgive me, but I can’t see how your committing suicide by hangman’s noose is going to help anything.”
“Our deaths on the gallows will serve as an inspiration to those following in our footsteps!”
McKenna was silent for thirty-odd seconds.
The fury was still evident in Heimstadter’s facial expression, and McKenna sought to calm it with rational discussion.
“This is what will happen on the day of your execution,” he began, in the practiced tone of one who had counseled thousands through the screen of a confessional window. “The date of the execution will not be made public. You will be awakened at the usual hour. If you normally go to mass, you will do so.
“Then, without prior notice and at a random hour, you will be led from your prison cell to the gallows. Your feet and hands will be tied. The sentence of the Tribunal will be read. The hangman will place a black bag over your head, then the noose around your neck. You may well wish to request a cigarette at that point.”
Heimstadter, wordless, stared at McKenna.
“Then without warning,” the priest went on, “the door in the floor beneath your feet will fall away, and you will be dropped through the opening. The knot in the noose may—or may not—break your neck and cause instant death.
“Your lifeless body will be taken from the noose and laid on the ground. Your hands will be folded across your chest holding a placard bearing your name, and a photograph taken.
“Your corpse will then be placed in the back of an Army truck. No casket. This procedure will be followed for the next four to six men scheduled for execution that day.
“All of the bodies will be covered by a tarpaulin. The truck will then drive to a crematorium, where the corpses will all be burned.
“At this point, just as soon as the ashes are cool enough to handle, a senior officer whose identity will never be made public will supervise the placement of your ashes into a fifty-five-gallon steel drum along with the ashes of the others executed.
The drum with these comingled ashes will be loaded on a truck carrying other drums holding the ashes of other Nazis, those killed after the liberation of the concentration camps.
“The truck will then be driven to any of the five rivers within a hundred miles of the Tribunal. The senior officer will give the driver directions. A jeep full of MPs will follow the truck.
“Once on a bridge over the river, the truck will stop, and the contents of six of the drums will be dumped onto the bridge. The MPs will then first shovel all the ashes into one pile, which will serve to comingle them, and then shovel the ashes off the bridge into the river. Finally, they will puncture the bottoms of the drums and throw them into the river.
“The point of all this is to make sure that the final resting place, so to speak, of those executed will never be known.”
Heimstadter cleared his throat.
“Nice try, Father. But it didn’t work.”
“Excuse me?”
“Go fuck yourself, papist!”
McKenna nodded slightly and sighed.
“I’ll talk with you again when you’ve regained your composure.”
McKenna stood up and went to the door.
“Guard!”
This time, Cyril Kochanski and Basil Frankowski appeared at the double doors, both armed.
* * *
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