The Proteus Operation

by James P. Hogan

  "We were just in time, Scholder murmured. "That means they'll be sealing off all movement between levels in a few minutes."

  The car stopped, and they came out into a wide, carpeted hall with potted plants and pastel walls. Figures were hurrying this way and that between corridors leading away in different directions, and to one side some people came out of an adjoining elevator at almost the same time. "What's it all about, any idea?" one of them asked.

  "Haven't a clue," Scholder said, sounding irritable. "What's it ever about? They're probably springing another drill on us."

  "Typical! It's only Security that never has anything better to do around this place."

  More of the gray-uniformed guards appeared and fanned out to position themselves by the elevators, "Hurry up," one of them told Scholder and Adamson. "You heard the announcement."

  Scholder nodded and walked briskly away, with Adamson tagging along and doing his best to look as if he knew where he was going. They went past a series of paneled doors and came out into a more open area of laboratory benches, experimental equipment with lots of gleaming metal and glass, desks, computer stations, and partitioned-off offices. Unhesitatingly, Scholder led the way through the maze of shoulder-high screens and glass-walled clean-rooms to the door of one of the corner offices. He crashed in without slackening pace and signaled in the same movement for Adamson to close the door behind them.

  Two desks were inside, facing each other by the far wall. The man sitting at one of them looked up with a start. "What the hell . . . ?"

  Another man, who was standing and had been about to put something in the drawer of a table behind the other desk, wheeled round. "Who are you?" he demanded indignantly. "Didn't you hear the alert? You shouldn't be here. What section are you from?"

  Scholder smiled reassuringly. "Not so tense, my friend," he said. "You should take things more easily, like Eddie here."

  The man at the desk frowned. He was in his mid-forties, perhaps, and had a rounded, open face with wide, pale eyes and sandy hair. Beside him, a screen displayed rows of mathematical symbols. "How do you know who I am?" he asked suspiciously. "I don't know you."

  "Don't you?" Scholder looked amused.

  Eddie stared at him for a second or two, then shook his head. "No."

  Scholder turned his head toward the younger of the pair, who was still standing. He was wearing a white sweater with dark pants and had sharp, intense features, straight, wiry black hair, and a thin, obstinate mouth—definitely German in appearance. "When you were seventeen, you had a skiing accident on the Dente Blanche, which left a distinctive scar on your left forearm and upper arm." Scholder glanced at Eddie. "Did you know about that?"

  "No, I didn't." Eddie sounded mystified. "Why? What does that have to do with anything?"

  Scholder looked hack at the younger man. "Your sleeve— show us that scar."

  "Why should I? First I want to know who the hell—"

  "Please."

  The word was a command, not a request. The man hesitated, then nodded and pulled back the sleeve of his sweater to reveal an L-shaped pattern of scar tissue. "Satisfied? Now would you mind explaining?"

  In reply Scholder pulled back the sleeve of his own coat, unbuttoned the cuff of his shirt, and turned it back. The same scar was there, faded somewhat by thirty-four more years of wear, tear, and living, but unmistakable.

  "You see, I, too, am Kurt Scholder," he said. "This used to be my office when I worked for you, Eddie—or at least, another version of you. And yes, I have to admit that we are the ones responsible for the excitement. We need your help to conceal ourselves until after the security check, and then we can talk." He looked back at the gaping copy of the person he had once been. "I'm sure you'll cooperate, Kurt. I am you, after all. And you wouldn't want to get yourself into trouble, now, would you?"

  CHAPTER 36

  LEIPZIG HAD NOT YET become the city that Harry Ferracini remembered from the early 1970s of his own world. In that world, the promises of glory, affluence, and power that had intoxicated the German people and dulled their senses while the Nazis were taking over the nation had long been forgotten. Instead of fulfilling their destiny as the proud and noble Master Race, they had awakened from their stupor to find themselves slaves to a ruthless, self-proclaimed elite wielding a total monopoly of authority and power. Subscribing to no code of ethics, the members of that elite had been subject to no restraint except loyalty to their kind. Free to command the labor of defenseless peoples and to plunder the resources of entire nations through the unchecked use of terror, they had lived with their courts of followers amid luxury and splendor undreamed of by the Caesars, while the children of the craftsmen who built their palaces starved in rags. Thus, the Nazi leaders had inherited the Utopia that Overlord sought to re-create.

  But the beginnings of it all were there already Ferracini could see as he and Cassidy walked slowly, hands in pockets, through the streets in the full light of morning. He could see it in the Nazi flags hanging from the windows; in the youths in brown-shirt uniforms with swastika armbands swaggering through the crowd, their jackboots crunching on the cobbles, their thumbs hooked jauntily in belts with silver-eagle buckles; and in the boarded-up shops with Jewish names overhead. And the fear—fear of ever-watchful police; fear of never knowing which relative, neighbor, or workmate might be an informer; fear of arbitrary search and arrest, interrogation on a whim, internment without trial—that was there already, too, in the faces of the people.

  Cassidy stretched as they walked. "You know, Benito, I'll never complain about the seats on a coast-to-coast flight again," he muttered. "A day and a half in that goddam train! What were they doing at all those stops, changing the boiler? Anyone would think there's a war on."

  "It's not the seats. You're too long and lanky. I've always said you're too long."

  "It is the seats. Everything's designed for mutants and amputees. . . . And anyhow, supposing you're right, exactly what am I supposed to do about it?"

  "It's too late now, Niels. You ended up in the wrong job. You should have gone in for basketball or something."

  "Oh, is that so? And who'd have saved your neck like I did the last time we were in this city?"

  They split up as they came to the Rathausplatz. It was a market day, and the square was filled with stalls and people. Ferracini stopped to buy a paper at a curbside kiosk, while Cassidy crossed the street and wandered around the square, stopping finally in a doorway at the corner opposite the bierhaus with the clock over its entrance as Lindemann had described. From there he could observe the whole square and see along the winding, cobbled lane that a sign confirmed was Kanzlerstrasse.

  Ferracini came into the square on the far side a minute or so later and walked slowly along the shopfronts to the bierhaus. He turned the corner into Kanzlerstrasse and had followed its single narrow sidewalk for only a short distance when he saw the shoemender's with the sign "Hoffenzollen" ahead of him on the opposite side. It was a small place with a protruding gable, whirly leaded windowpanes, and paint flaking from its green door. Ferracini could see nothing unusual or suspicious. Even so, he kept walking to the next corner and stopped there to stamp his feet in the slush, beat his arms across his chest, and take a quick look around. Then he turned and retraced his steps.

  He could see nobody loitering without obvious reason; there was no sign of anyone watching the shop from across the street; nobody was sitting in parked vehicles. He looked back along the street. In his doorway across the marketplace, Cassidy raised a hand to his mouth and yawned. It meant that no one had followed Ferracini up the street. Satisfied, Ferracini crossed and entered the shoemender's. The door creaked, and a bell tinkled overhead.

  It was dark inside after the daylight, and the smell was a mixture of mustiness and leather. Ferracini's eyes adjusted after a few seconds, and he made out a battered wooden counter with shelves behind it stacked with used shoes, a rack carrying polishes and laces, and an empty display case—under war regu
lations, real leather had disappeared for the duration. He registered a hammer, a knife, and some shears lying together on one of the shelves, and a faded picture of horses in a frame with cracked glass hung on the wall opposite the counter, behind the door. A corner bureau was stuffed untidily with envelopes and papers. The calendar above it still showed January.

  The sound of a tool being tossed down onto a bench came from a door leading to the rear, followed by somebody belching and a heavy shuffling of feet. Then a giant of a man appeared, with black, unkempt hair and a thick, ragged beard that gave him a wild look. He was wearing a leather apron, and his rolled-up shirtsleeves revealed massive forearms ending in two hams of fists that looked as if they could have crushed house bricks. His lips were drawn back, uncovering strong, even teeth that seemed to shine in the gloom. He dragged a leg as he moved.

  "Good morning," Ferracini greeted. The giant placed two palms on the counter, raised his chin in a silent query, and waited. "I, ah . . . I believe you have some shoes being heeled for Fräulein Schultz," Ferracini said. "I was told they should be ready about now."

  "Fräulein Schultz, eh?"

  "Yes."

  "You are a friend of hers? I don't know you."

  "I'm a friend of a friend, as it were. Just visiting, you understand."

  The giant stared at Ferracini expressionlessly for a few seconds. "One moment." He turned and shuffled back into the workshop. More sounds followed. Then Ferracini caught the faint click that only a trained ear would have recognized as a revolver being cocked. Ferracini moved instantly and flattened himself against the wall out of a direct line from the doorway. He felt along the shelf behind him, and his fingers closed around the hammer and the knife.

  "And how is the Fräulein?" the giant's voice inquired from beyond the doorway. "Has she recovered from her cold yet?"

  "Yes, she's much better now," Ferracini called back. "It's been such a dreadful winter."

  Ferracini's ears followed the hammer being released, the safety catch reengaging, and the gun being returned to its hiding place. By the time the giant reappeared, Ferracini was standing nonchalantly behind the counter again. The giant put down a pair of lady's boots, tied together by the laces and strung with a label. "Go to the address on the ticket tonight, after eight," he said, keeping his voice low. "You will be collected there. You didn't leave your bags at the hotel, I hope?"

  "No—a luggage locker at the station."

  "Good. Leave me the tags." The luggage had served its purpose. Ferracini and Cassidy would have no use from now on for clothes purchased in Italy.

  "Thank you."

  "And good luck."

  Ferracini rejoined Cassidy a few minutes later a block away on the far side of the square. "It looks okay," Ferracini said. "I've got a pickup address for tonight. Until then we've got the rest of the day to kill."

  "A movie?" Cassidy sighed.

  "I guess so. Any idea what's on?"

  "You wouldn't believe it."

  "What?"

  Cassidy gestured, and Ferracini turned to find a billboard behind him. The big attraction showing at the Marmorhaus that week was Adventure in China with Clark Gable. "Now all they need is yellow cabs and Max's place just along the street."

  Ferracini's mind flashed back across a million light-years of trains, planes, English winters with submarine schools and army assault courses, London buses, and U.S. Army Air Corps bombers over the Atlantic, to the lights and sounds of Broadway and Seventh Avenue. All of a sudden, somehow, he wished Cassidy hadn't said that.

  Meanwhile, over a hundred miles to the north, near the town of Kyritz, Inspector Helmut Stolpe of the local Gestapo was standing in the charge room of the area Security Police Headquarters. A half-dozen or so uniformed SS men and a couple of SD (the intelligence branch of the SS) were standing around smoking and talking, while in the back of the room behind the desk the Polizeiführer shouted into a telephone. The sounds of vehicles stopping, feet clattering, and a voice barking orders came from outside.

  The young man standing next to Stolpe in an Unterschar-Führer's uniform of the Waffen SS was probably in his mid-twenties. He looked haggard after the activity of the previous night, with tangled hair, a stubbly face, and the front of his tunic unbuttoned. He drew nervously on a cigarette as he talked. "But I've been there, and you haven't. You don't know what Heydrich's Einsatzgruppen are doing in Poland. The people don't know. Even the Army doesn't know. Nobody tells them. They all think we were sent there to stop saboteurs and partisans in the rear. But it's not true. They're killing anyone they think might be capable of organizing—teachers, doctors, unionists—thousands of them. And the Jews . . ."

  Stolpe was unimpressed. "You should know better than to talk like that," he growled. This kind of softness had lost the last war. He was offended at finding traces of its contamination among the SS of all groups—the elite whom Himmler had selected to become the new order of Germanic knights. "Were you cracking up? Is that why they sent you back?"

  The sergeant took no notice. "Old people, cripples, women with babies . . . We made them strip there in the snow, and we shot them down into the pits with machine guns. Thousands of them . . . day after day . . ."

  "That's enough," Stolpe snapped. "Weren't you taught that the State embodies the will of the People, and therefore whatever the State does is legal? Go away and think about how many Germans died because of traitors and scum in the Great War. This time it will be different. He caught sight of one of the security officers beckoning him from the door that led through to the rear of the building. "I have things to do. If you take my advice, Sergeant, you'll learn to control that tongue of yours. Schooldays are over now."

  Making a mental note to recommend that somebody talk to the sergeant's commanding officer, Stolpe walked across to the security officer and was ushered into a passage. It had rooms opening off it at the near end and farther back led to cells. The security officer indicated the medical room, and Stolpe entered to find an SS major and second lieutenant watching while a police doctor and an assistant stood by the table in the middle of the room, examining the first of the four bodies that had been brought in a half-hour earlier.

  "What happened?" he asked in a neutral voice. From the part of the face that hadn't been shot away, he judged the man on the slab to have been middle-aged. One shoulder of his jacket was covered in a mess of congealed blood and tissue mixed with splintered jawbone. The doctor was cutting away the clothing while the assistant went methodically through the pockets and laid the contents out on a side-table.

  "Three of them were spotted receiving something from a small boat at night a couple of days ago near Rostock," the major said. "The other one joined them later, and they began traveling south with a truck full of turnips."

  The other corpses were still on the floor, lying covered on the litters they had been carried in on. Stolpe stooped to turn back the first cover to reveal a teen-aged youth in a blood-soaked overcoat riddled with holes. "Any idea where this boat was from?" He dropped the cover back.

  The major shook his head. "It slipped away before anyone could get close. The coast guard was alerted but failed to intercept it. That was why we decided to let the reception party go and keep them under observation—to see what they were up to." He shrugged. "The boat? From Denmark or Sweden, possibly . . . or maybe even from a British submarine."

  The third body was of a man with a mustache; there was a single neat hole in the side of his head. "And?" Stolpe prompted.

  "The instructions were bungled, and some oafs at a road checkpoint about ten miles from here tried to detain them. They turned out to be armed, and they resisted. Two of the guards were killed, but the others managed to keep them pinned down while we were called out. The rest you can see."

  Stolpe turned back the fourth cover to find himself looking at the almost serene features of a woman who looked as if she had been quite attractive. Her face, however, seemed unnaturally low down as she lay facing upward; Stolpe realized it
was because her head had no back to it. "She was the last," the major explained. "Suicide—through the mouth."

  "A shame." Stolpe replaced the cover and straightened up. "And what were they concealing beneath the turnips that was worth so much sacrifice?" he asked.

  "Nothing. But the truck had a false bottom. What was inside was interesting. Come and see—it's next door." The major nodded to the lieutenant to carry on and led Stolpe back into the passage and along to one of the cells. Inside, an SD security officer and Erwin Poehner, Stolpe's colleague from the Gestapo office, were unpacking several large bundles that had been sealed in rubberized canvas. The items they had already taken out were arranged on the cell's two bunks.

  Stolpe picked up a strange, black, one-piece, hooded garment made from a greasy, rubbery material. He examined it curiously for a while, and then tossed it back down to look briefly at, in turn, some kind of transparent face cover, with valves and tubes fitted to it; a body-harness with peculiar metal cylinders and slings for attaching tools or weapons; and a kit of heavy underwear. On the other bunk lay a pile of ropes, snaplinks, pitons, and other unidentifiable metal devices in assorted shapes and sizes. "Make anything of it?" he asked, looking back at Poehner.

  Poehner shook his head. "I've never seen anything like some of this stuff. I don't know if they were planning to join the fire brigade or climb the Eiger. And do you want to know something else, Helmut? There's enough explosive in those sacks over there to sink the Bismarck. This is going to have to go a lot higher up."

  And that, Stolpe told himself, groaning beneath his breath, would mean spending the rest of the day writing up a report and filling in forms about it.

  CHAPTER 37

  THE ADDRESS TURNED OUT to be rowhouse in a shabby working-class district east of the city center. It was sparsely furnished, and the sole occupant a thin, bespectacled, baldheaded man, who said his name was Dr. Mueller. He effused a dismal cheerlessness that reminded Ferracini of the farmer depicted in American Gothic. He spoke little, and when he did speak, he sounded tense and nervous. Before they started asking questions, no, he didn't know who they were or where they were from, and neither did he want to; all he knew was that they would be picked up the next morning. What happened afterward was none of his business, and why he was doing what he was doing was none of theirs.