Chapter 2705: Hollywood Rhapsody (Sixty-Four)

Eric watched Shiler open the basement door and throw the corpse he was carrying inside, and even though he had just walked through mountains of corpses and seas of blood, he had not let his clothes get a single bloodstain on them; considering that he had just carried seven corpses in this posture, Eric felt he should re-examine the past mentioned in Shiler's fragmentary words.

Because he had once been a member of the detachment, Eric knew that carrying corpses was a difficult task, and even though the execution in the gas chamber was bloodless, many people would lose control of their bowels and bladders before death, and there was even the possibility of projectile vomiting, or even eyeballs exploding due to excessive intracranial pressure; how to carry corpses without getting these filth on oneself required a great deal of practice.

Eric had such a skill because he was compelled to do these things; if he always dirtied his clothes, he would certainly be driven out of the detachment to do dirtier and more tiring work, and the children in the detachment could work in groups of two or three, handling corpses while ensuring their own hygiene.

When two or three people jointly carried a corpse, achieving the feat of not getting a single leaf on oneself was not very difficult, but when an adult carried another adult, especially when the one being carried had almost vomited all his internal organs out of his mouth, to transport seven corpses while remaining spotlessly clean seemed more like a superpower.

"What are you going to do?" Eric asked at the door of the basement passage, and Shiler looked at him somewhat doubtfully and said: "Of course, to destroy the corpse and erase the traces."

"They are sure to come here, are we still going to wait here?"

"No, they won't." Shiler said: "Those who want to find me are Hydra, so this operation must certainly be secret."

Eric seemed to understand somewhat, and he said: "They hide among the ranks of the secret police, using their manpower to accomplish their own secret goals, but at the same time they do not want to be discovered by the higher-ups; you are one of the secret targets, so this operation must certainly be confidential."

"It might even be random." Shiler picked up a tool from the toolbox and said: "They might merely be guiding that gaggle of Gestapo to patrol here, and then claim they just discovered suspicious traces on the house, so they would come around to the roof and enter through the balcony."

"That sounds more dangerous than I imagined."

"Of course." Shiler cut off an arm of the corpse on the ground and said: "They are far more dangerous than those swaggering mad policemen, always hiding in the shadows, cutting off one head and growing two."

"Is that the fine work you mentioned?" Eric walked in, also picked up a tool and began to help Shiler, but he actually did not feel this was any difficult work; people were already dead, no matter how terrible the state of the corpse, there was nothing worth praising.

"Of course not, this is very tedious and boring work, just do it casually." Shiler walked over and turned on the faucet and said: "I am talking about what comes next."

"What are you going to do?"

"I need you to do me a favor." Shiler tapped the ground with the saw and said: "You will know soon enough."

"Can I go down and take a look?" Charles stood again at the door of the basement passage, somewhat curious and peering inside, but the stairs had a turn, so he could not see the specific situation inside the basement.

"I suggest you don't go." Eric said.

Charles seemed to realize something, retreated two steps, and looked at Eric and said: "How did you handle those seven corpses?"

"Don't ask the obvious."

Charles swallowed his saliva, stayed away from the passage leading to the basement, but he wisely asked nothing; sometimes even without relying on telepathy, he also had a beast-like dangerous intuition.

Charles continued to look at the newspaper on the wall, but many of them were very old, and Eric's memory of those reports was not deep, so the forms manifested in the spiritual world were all very blurred, with nothing readable.

Charles then walked to the side of the dining room, and he saw a newspaper placed beside the utensils, and he could imagine Eric's state of reading the newspaper while eating; for a long time, this was the only lifestyle of Eric that Charles had seen that could be called a habit.

Charles walked over, and upon seeing that newspaper for the first time, his heart pounded—the large photo on the front page headline showed Shiler's face.

"The church killer finally apprehended, Andael Shiler—sinful surgeon, will pay a heavy price for his crimes."

In the photo, Shiler was being escorted forward, head down, the camera shooting from above to below, his thick eyelashes completely covering his eyes; Charles had never thought Shiler's brow bones could be so sharp, though most of the time his brows and eyes were very gentle.

Charles swallowed his saliva, looked up at Eric, and Eric indeed had some past connection with Shiler.

Wait, a surgeon? Wasn't Shiler a psychiatrist?

Of course, he could be a surgeon, Charles thought; for such a long-lived being, there is no skill that cannot be mastered; some surgical techniques are not complex, and ordinary people, after a period of training, can also master them.

Then Charles suddenly thought, there had also been a doctor in this house, so was Shiler the doctor who delivered Magda?

But why would he be arrested?

Eric put down the newspaper in his hand, stood up, used the boiled water to make warm water and poured it into the baby bottle, went upstairs to feed the returned Anya, put her to sleep, then Eric put on his raincoat and stepped into the misty rainy night.

In a small building by the riverbank, lights were burning all night; Shiler sat in a chair, and the person in uniform opposite walked back and forth, the heels of his leather shoes tapping on the floor, the clear sound appearing especially cold.

"I told you you cannot kill me." Shiler appeared especially relaxed, he said: "Now you have sensed that mysterious resistance, how does it feel?"

"No matter what tricks you are playing, you will certainly pay for your actions." The person opposite lowered the brim of his hat and said: "You are still alive now, certainly because you are useful to some people, and when you lose your utility, I guarantee you will die a miserable death."

"What are you waiting for?" Shiler asked him in German, as if genuinely curious; the pronunciation of this language itself is very hard, but Shiler can always speak it with a sense of tenderness.

He lowered his eyelids, smiled and said: "I guess next you will say, you can also help them extract from my mouth what they want, and at that time you will let me know how formidable you are, they will certainly come to see you, you have the right to negotiate with them, because it is you who caught me."

Shiler seemed to be guessing his thoughts, but in fact he was merely saying he was dreaming; he had never received such provocation, so he walked over, reached out and wanted to grab Shiler's collar.

But just then, the door was knocked, his subordinate stood outside the door wanting to speak but hesitating, so he only had to withdraw his hand, walk over and say a few words in a low voice, then turn back and look at Shiler and say: "Your good days are about to end, church killer."

"As you wish." Shiler still showed no sign of urgency.

The man went out, Shiler sat in place for a while, the handcuffs meant nothing to him as a meaningful restriction, he exerted force with his arms and pulled, the handcuffs broke in the middle, Shiler stood up from the chair, he did not immediately leave the room, but listened to the outside sounds.

With a bang, the door was burst open, a man with a gun rushed in, and the people behind him filed in, charging toward Shiler, seemingly wanting to just take him away like that.

Suddenly they all saw the broken handcuffs; the two people in front felt their steps hesitate for a moment and then felt the world spin, their heads slammed hard against the wall, blood blurring their eye sockets.

With a bang, the fired bullet missed Shiler; in an instant the first four people had already fallen, and the person who rushed in first but ended up last was slammed against the wall by a tremendous force; he felt his wrist being twisted off, and the moment the pain from the contact of his occiput with the wall came, a warm liquid flowed along his neck to his back.

"Uh..." he let out a cry of pain, then heard the person who had knocked him down say: "Whose man are you, Red Skull or Zemo?"

It was all too sudden, causing everyone to still be immersed in the shock and pain of the attack, no one replied.

"No matter whose man you are, go back and tell your chief, I need to talk with him, I am waiting for him in the confession room of Beebeley Church."

After saying that, Shiler left; when he passed the guard room ahead, he saw the corpse of that soldier, it looked like these people should be Baron Zemo's men; Hitler was still alive, Red Skull had too many scruples and would not act lightly.

When Nick arrived, he only saw corpses all over the ground, obviously killed by two different groups; those in the guard room were all shot, while those in the interrogation room...... looked as if someone had placed an elephant in this room.

Nick was not intentionally trying to use such a ludicrous metaphor, but all the corpses in this room looked like they had been shattered, as if someone had thrown them against the wall with tremendous force, the impact force completely exceeding the limit the human body can bear, to the point of breaking necks or rupturing spleens.

Besides the fact that there had once been an elephant here, there is no other explanation.

"Damn it, they were too hasty." Nick cursed, Jones followed behind him and walked in, shocked at the sight of corpses all over the ground, obviously also shocked by their state of death.

"Hydra." Nick said: "Shiler was just arrested, and they couldn't help but rush in here, wanting to take him away; more precisely, they might also want to silence him."

"How did he do it?"

"I have long said he is not simple; this kind of startling the snake in the grass will only make him leave Berlin at the fastest speed, and by then our plans will also have no hope."

"Perhaps the Eisenhart couple......"

"I mean the plan to operate on Felix, you think it's something else?" Nick said: "Even if Germany now has an atomic bomb, it cannot change anything; even if they drop one nuclear bomb to destroy Moscow, those Soviet fellows outside will still rush in, the only difference is whether the little mustache dies in a dignified manner or not."

Jones looked as if he had breathed a sigh of relief, but still said: "I'm glad you're so clear-headed; I still thought you considered completing orders as your heavenly duty."

"Then I will have to be an ordinary agent for life." Nick put away his gun and said: "If they scare Shiler away, we will have to consider transferring Felix out of Berlin before its liberation...... forget it, let's just go back."

Nick and Jones returned to the base, they heard movement on the second floor, worried that Felix was uncomfortable, so they went up, and then they saw an unexpected person—Shiler, chatting and laughing with Felix.