It was the well beyond the middle of the night when Landa arrived at the tavern. He had put in a special request to investigate the scene and was arranged to be driven there, and to meet with a truck full of grunts.
He knew Dieter was there. A few nights ago, after a movie screening with Goebbels at a small theatre, they had spent the night together in Landa's borrowed (stolen) Parisian apartment. The next morning Landa accompanied Dieter out to Nadine for his next post. They had driven in silence, both in the back of a familiar black sedan. At one point Dieter had surreptitiously stroked the back of Landa's gloved hand with his fingertips. They had looked at each other, and reacted with synchronized, crooked smirks.
Landa felt an annoying lump in his throat as he slammed the car door and headed across the deserted street for the tavern. The yellowish glow of the lamplights cast several overlapping shadows of him as he walked, each melting into the next under the steps of his boot heels. The half dozen other men saluted briefly, clicking their heels as he passed.
He descended the small spiral staircase quickly, into a horrifically bloody scene. His eyes flitted around the room as he walked through it, and he counted eleven bodies, one of whom wore a bright red armband, and whose body was bent over a table next to a half-full glass of beer, face down in a pool of blood. Taking off his hat for a moment, he held it against himself as he approached the seated figure with a knife jutting out of its neck.
Slowly he ran his fingers across the hilt of the knife. He took it with one hand, and held Dieter's neck down with the other. He tugged the blade out with a sickening, wet noise, and let it drop to the floor with a tinny clatter. His fingers grazed the many wounds at the nape of Dieter's slender neck.
"Did you know him?" a feldwebel behind him asked.
Landa nodded, and opened his mouth. His throat felt dry. He coughed and nodded again, mostly to himself. "Yes."
The other man seemed to know when to leave his superior in peace, and went off into another part of the tavern. Landa himself wandered around the room, then back towards the staircase and watched as the others snapped and gathered dog tags. He had already identified the two basterds in attendance, as well as noted another mysterious man, who had apparently been sitting across the table from Dieter when the shooting began. He stood over Hugo Stiglitz' crumpled corpse, and a wry smile formed on his face.
"Ah, Hugo. You've moved up in the world. Look at you, Obersturmführer. And with your record of insubordination. Truly remarkable." Landa felt the eyes of the feldwebel on his back. He turned to join the other man, standing above the other dead Basterd. "And that one's name is Wilhelm Wicki. He's an Austrian-born Jew, who immigrated to the United States when things began turning sour for the Israelites. They are the two German-born members of the Basterds." As he rattled off the facts numbly, Landa felt his mind ease back into a mechanical, practical, and familiar state.
"They've been known to don German uniforms, to ambush squads. But that doesn't look like this." He paused, feeling the gears in his mind stall for a moment. "This is odd."
The feldwebel looked down at the stone floor. Landa followed his gaze and stared at the pair of high heels beneath him. How had he missed it? He scolded himself quietly for being so distracted. He knelt down, holding the shoe in his hands. "It would appear somebody's missing. Somebody fashionable." Without looking back, he gestured with his finger towards the stairs. The feldwebel shouted for everyone to get out of the building.
Alone in the basement, Landa's eyes flitted around, landing on Dieter's slumped body briefly. The knot in his throat returned. He tried to swallow it, irritably, and forced himself to look away. He noticed a pristine white handkerchief under a bit of rubble. He reached for it with his gloved hand, shaking the wood splinters and dirt off. His throat got tighter when he read the name. Bridget von Hammersmark. So she was responsible for this. A cruel smile found its way onto his face. He kissed the handkerchief. His mind began to whir with ideas.
He tucked the handkerchief into his pocket, and stood up. He paced towards the stairs, but stopped himself. He walked over to Dieter. His hand brushed through the gelled strands of hair, messed up in the action, and thickly matted with blood. He combed out small clumps of the dried blood, and then gingerly lifted the young man's head.
Dieter's face looked pained, his lips parted and nose broken, crooked. Landa's left hand supported the weight of his head and neck, while his right slowly brushed along Dieter's jaw. His skin was cold and clammy, his blood cool and sticky. Carefully, Landa placed his second hand behind Dieter's head, cradling him with probably more gentleness than they had ever shared in life. He felt his fingers wet, and brought them back to his face.
He smudged a bit of blood on each of Dieter's cheeks, massaging it into his pale skin, bringing an uneven, ruddy colour to his face. Landa smiled dryly. He dabbed his fingers again in the blood at the back of his neck, and this time touched them to his lips, colouring them an unnatural crimson. Assessing his gaudy handiwork, Landa held Dieter at full arm's length, cocking his own head to one side. Then, hesitantly, he leaned in and kissed his cold lips. He tasted the saltiness of the blood, and the stale, old beer and cigarettes flavour of his mouth. It felt strange kissing him with no returned reaction.
Landa brushed some of the clumpy hair out of Dieter's closed eyes. He was still beautiful, battered as he was. As a last goodbye, Landa tugged at Dieter's shirt, and then his jacket, straightening them as best he could with his one free hand. He kissed his bloodied forehead, and then lay him back, face-down on the table.
As he stared at the back of Dieter's head for a moment, he suddenly felt a welling up of tight, suffocating anger. His hand reached into his pocket and clenched around the handkerchief. His eyelids fluttered shut as he closed his fist hard enough to feel a sharp pain in his palm. He didn't realize he was holding his breath until he found himself letting out a gasp, his entire chest feeling constricted, his toes curled up inside his boots, his teeth grinding against each other. When he opened his eyes, he saw Dieter's body on the table, and felt nothing but a silent, stinging rage.