“Has the disassembly begun?”
The soldier in the doorway dropped his gaze, which had been resting on a spot just above the officer’s left shoulder, to the seated man’s eyes. He could only hold the contact for a few seconds before he had to look away again. He swallowed and breathed deeply before responding.
“No. The men have been lining up supplies, along with the vehicles, for abandonment of the camp.”
The man behind the desk didn’t change position or look away, but the soldier in the doorway felt a shift in the atmosphere. It was almost imperceptible, as if an errant gust of wind had entered the room and disturbed the quiet air between the two men.
“Begin disassembly. I will join you shortly.”
Without further hesitation, the younger man nodded and turned on his heel. His boot steps moved through the entry of the building and then onto the wooden stairs outside.
The officer sat motionless behind the desk, his face an immovable mask with two burning blue orbs above the long regal nose. After a moment, his right hand reached out and grasped the black telephone that sat on the far right edge of the desk. The gleaming buttons of his uniform cuff scraped lightly on the maps and pages of notes that sat before him.
He dialed and waited with the earpiece pressed tightly to the side of his head as he gazed out through the rafters of the office. The phone on the other end of the line rang twice before it was picked up, and a voice answered timidly.
“Gisela, it is time. I will be home before nightfall. Be ready.”
He hung the phone up without waiting for a response, and stood before the desk as he straightened the leather straps and belts on his uniform. He bent at the waist and drew out one of the desk’s lower drawers. The drawer’s opening yawned blackly, and his mind envisioned an open mouth as he stuck his hand into the darkness and retrieved what lay within.
A belt with many sheaths emerged from the inky shadows of the drawer and came into full view. Light fell and died on the blackened and stained wooden handles of the knives that sat snugly in their leather sheaths.
With a practiced motion, the officer swung the belt around his back and caught it on the opposite side. It buckled comfortably around his narrow waist, and he ran his hands over the ends of the handles that rested near his hips. Nearly a dozen blades hung from the belt as he deeply breathed the still air of the office one last time and adjusted the belt before stepping out from behind the desk.
His boots were polished to a black shine that reflected the dim rectangles of the windows, and his uniform swished as he strode across the floor of the room. When he reached the door to the outside, he paused and glanced back at the space with the solitary desk and the large red banner that hung above it. The black angles of the swastika stood out starkly from the bright red material around it. The man’s eyes took all of it in, and then with the movement of a person leaving a childhood home for the last time, he jerked the door open and stepped out into the wet grayness that blanketed the day.