Sleeper Agent Read Online Free PDF Page B

him. . . .”
    . . . The Rasmussens lived in an apartment house on St. Knudsvej Street on the third floor. There was a little garden in back, and here the boys had built a shack out of old crates. It was their fort. Here they became cowboys and Indians, acting out the stories they were all reading. His biggest hero had been “Leatherstocking.” They even had a totem pole painted in many colors.
    He got on well with the other boys; he liked them, except one. His name was Holger, and he kept teasing him and calling him a no-good refugee from a coward country that had been beaten in the war. He called him a stupid foreigner who couldn’t even speak right. But he got his revenge. It still made him feel good when he thought about it. Like now. It had been just after his ninth birthday. His foster parents had given him three kroner to buy anything he liked. He bought two dog pistols. They looked just like real ones, but they could only shoot harmless blanks that made a deafening noise. People used them to scare off dogs that would chase them when they were riding their bicycles. He and his friends had played Mohicans, and they had captured Holger. They tied him to their totem pole and told him they would torture him like real Indians did. They told him they would make him blind and deaf and push him out into the middle of the street to be run over. They blindfolded their enemy and tied his hands. It had made him feel good to see how scared Holger was. He’d fixed his two new dog pistols to the totem pole, one on each side, right next to Holger’s ears, and shot them off. Holger had screamed. They had marched him around the yard and then turned him loose, still blindfolded and still with his hands tied. He thought he was in the middle of the street and about to be run over. He stumbled about sobbing and pleading with them, and it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. He laughed and laughed and laughed. And Holger couldn’t see anything and he couldn’t hear anything—even when they shouted at him. He only cried. It had been great They finally let him go, and he ran home. He never saw him again.
    The guns had done a prima job. The guns . . . The guns! He had a flash of panic. Where was the gun? He’d had a gun. What had he done with it? Where was it?
    Then he remembered.
    He was aware of the civilian behind him. He had a strong urge to turn around, but he kept his position at attention.
    The commandant turned a page in his dossier. “Father released from Italian prisoner of war camp, recuperated from his wound, October, 1924. Returned to Linz, where employed as state forester. Rudolf, aged nine, joined his father two months later. . . .”
    . . . He suddenly felt a shiver of cold . . . He had been ten years old. His father was taking care of a Staatsjagdrevier near Linz, and the two of them lived in the little Försthaus provided. He knew his father was eager to make a good hunter out of him. He had promised to take him rabbit hunting as soon as he could handle a shotgun, and he had promised him his first buck when he turned twelve.
    But he could not wait. He wanted to please his father. He wanted to show him he was big enough. Early one morning he had taken his father’s shotgun, the one with the fancy carvings on the barrel. He had gone out into the early morning fields. He was going to show his father. He was going to shoot a rabbit All by himself. The grass way tall and wet with dew, and his shoes and socks got soaked. And then he saw it A faintly seen gray figure sneaking through the tall grass. His heart beat wildly. He brought up the shotgun, fighting the weight of it. And he fired. The creature screamed a hideous shriek, which knifed through him with terror. And it did not stop. It kept on screaming and thrashing about He was petrified. He threw the gun away and ran to the screaming rabbit.
    Only it was not a rabbit. It was Mausi. It was his cat—his Mausi! And he loved her. And now she was screaming and