“Hang myself and save everybody else a lot of trouble,” Lou said promptly. He won a snort from his superior. After a moment, he went on, “Been a week since they made the snatch, right?”
“Yup,” Frank said.
“And nobody’s caught any physicists since. Not many diehards, either.”
“Nope.” The captain turned downright laconic.
“Well, shit,” Lou said. “Chances are that means they got away clean.”
“Yup,” Frank said one more time. “If we’d caught ’em, people like you and me never would have got to see this report. Now it’s gonna be up to us to try and track the bastards down.”
“My aching back!” Lou said. That didn’t satisfy him, so he added, “Gevalt!” Howard Frank’s head bobbed up and down. Lou took the name of the Lord in vain. “The fanatics’ll stash ’em underground somewhere way the hell down south. How many places have they got in the mountains there?”
“Too many-and we haven’t found a tenth of ’em yet,” Frank said. “They were ready for the collapse, damn them. They started getting ready two years before the surrender. That’s what the interrogation reports say, anyhow. Way things look, you’ve got to believe it, too.”
“Uh-huh.” Lou sounded as uncomfortable as his superior. Interrogators didn’t always bother playing by Geneva Convention rules when they caught diehards alive. The Reich had surrendered, after all. And they needed information, and didn’t much care how they got it-especially since the krauts weren’t playing by the rules, either. If a hotshot lawyer or a reporter who sided with the let’s-run-away-from-Germany people back home found out what went on questioning fanatics, the fur would fly. Oh, boy, would it ever! And the Chicago Tribune and the other anti-administration papers would print every goddamn word.
“Well, now you’ve got all the good news,” Captain Frank said. “Where we go from here, God only knows.”
“If He does, I wish He’d tell us.” Lou scowled. God didn’t work that way. If anybody’d had any doubts, what went on during the war would have quashed them. “And I wish He’d tell us why He decided to throw all the Yehudim from France to Russia into the fire.” Nobody knew how many were dead for no other reason than that they were Jews, not even to the closest million.
“Nobody has a good answer for that,” Frank said heavily. “God doesn’t have a good answer for that.” The words should have sounded like blasphemy. To anyone who’d seen the inside of a German concentration camp, they seemed only common sense. Reputable German firms had taken contracts for crematoria and bone crushers and all the other tools that went along with industrialized murder. Lou had followed more paper trails than he cared to remember. And they all led back to businessmen who said things like, We didn’t know what they’d be used for. And how could we say no to the government? The scary thing was, they meant it. Sometimes saying no to the government was the most important thing you could ever do, but try and explain that to a German.
“And Heydrich wants to start it all up again, only worse this time,” Lou said.
“Worse. Yeah,” Captain Frank said gloomily. “Who woulda thought that was possible after the Nazis surrendered? Nothing could be worse’n what they already did, right? Then along comes the atom bomb, and we find out maybe that’s not right after all. Swell old world we got, huh?”
Before Lou could answer, the phone on his desk rang. It was an Army field telephone, patched into a network that also included what was left of the German national telephone system. He picked it up: “Weissberg here.”
“You da guy in charge o’ going after the fanatics?” By the way the GI on the other end of the line talked, he was from New Jersey, too, or maybe Long Island.
“I’m one of ’em,” Lou said. “How come?”
“On account of I got a kraut right here who’s ready t’swear on a stack o’ Bibles he seen that Heydrich drive through town a little while ago.”
“Jesus Christ!” Lou exploded, this time altogether unselfconsciously. “Put him on.”
The German knew some English, but proved more comfortable in his own language. “He had a beard, but I recognized him,” he said. “His picture was all over the papers when the English tried to kill him in the war. There is a reward for me if you catch him, ja?”
“Jawohl,” Lou agreed. The reward for Heydrich, dead or alive, was up to a million bucks. Lou had no idea who this German was or what he’d done between 1939 and 1945. Whatever it was, it was nothing next to Heydrich’s list.
“What’s cooking?” Frank asked. One hand over the mouthpiece, Lou told him. The captain almost jumped out of his skin. “We can catch him! We really can! Find out how long ago this guy saw him and which way he was headed. We can spread the net ahead of him so tight a hedgehog couldn’t sneak through.”
Lou got back on the phone. He asked the Jerry Captain Frank’s questions, then relayed the replies he got: “Less than an hour ago, and heading southeast.”
“Son of a bitch!” Howard Frank said reverently. “We’ve got him!”
Reinhard Heydrich had served in the Navy before the war-till he left it abruptly after not marrying the senior officer’s daughter he’d seduced. He’d flown combat missions over Poland and the Soviet Union. The only experience he had as a foot soldier was getting away from the Ivans after his 109 crash-landed between their lines and the Germans’.
Squelching through a swamp and ducking down into the mud and the water plants wasn’t his idea of fun. But Hans Klein had the perfect spur for him: “Do you want the fucking Amis to catch you, sir?”
“Now that you mention it, no,” Heydrich admitted.
“Well, then, don’t stand straight up and down like a heron looking for frogs. Get down here with me,” Klein said. He hadn’t had much ground combat experience himself-certainly none since he became Heydrich’s driver. But he sure talked like somebody who knew what he was talking about.
“If you’d been able to fix the Kubelwagen when it broke down for real-” Heydrich began peevishly.
But that didn’t wash, either. The Oberscharfuhrer let out a derisive snort. “Ja, doch, then what? I’ll tell you what…sir. I’d’ve driven us straight into a Yankee ambush, that’s what, and they’d’ve filled both of us full of holes.”
Again, he was altogether too likely to be right. That made Heydrich love him no better when freezing water filled his shoe…again. Maybe infantrymen really were the heroes of the war, even if pilots and panzer commanders got more ink from Goebbels. Infantrymen put up with more shit-no possible doubt about that.
The Kubelwagen had flatulently expired about ten kilometers outside of Nuremberg. The horrible noises it made told Klein he didn’t have the tools to fix it. They started off for a farmhouse they could see a couple of kilometers off the road. Maybe the farmer would have the tools. If he didn’t…If he didn’t, they would think of something else, that was all.
They’d just trudged into a grove of apple trees not far from the farmhouse when Klein looked back over his shoulder and said, “Mm, Herr Reichsprotektor, I think maybe we don’t want to go back no matter what.”
“Are you out of your-?” Heydrich had begun. Then he’d looked over his shoulder, too. American jeeps and an armored car and U.S. soldiers in their pot helmets and ugly greenish khaki uniforms swarmed around the dead Kubelwagen. When Heydrich turned to say as much to Klein, Klein wasn’t there. He was down on the ground, and reaching out to tug urgently at Heydrich’s trouser leg. Heydrich needed a second to get it, which proved him no infantryman. Then he hit the dirt, too.
They crawled away from the car that had chosen such an opportune moment to crap out. No bullets chased them, so the Amis hadn’t spotted them before they went down.
“Have they got dogs?” Klein whispered as they slithered away.
“I don’t think so. I didn’t see any,” Heydrich replied, also in a low voice. Low voice or not, he had trouble hiding his scorn. The Russians would have had dogs. The Russians, damn them, were serious about this twili
ght battle. The Americans didn’t seem to be. They thought his men annoyances, nuisances. They wanted everything peaceful and easy and smooth. Well, you didn’t always get what you wanted, even if you were an Ami.
After a while, Klein found another question: “Do you know of any bunkers around here?”
A map formed inside Heydrich’s mind. He had an excellent, even outstanding, memory and a knack for visualization. After a moment, he nodded. “Ja. There’s one maybe three kilometers east of here.”
“Can you find it? Shall we go there?”
“I can find it,” Heydrich said confidently: what he promised, he could deliver. The other half of Klein’s question wasn’t so easy to answer. After some thought, the Reichsprotektor said, “I’d rather not go to ground if I can help it. If they track us to the bunker, we’re trapped like a badger inside its sett.”
“Well, yes,” Klein returned, also after a pause to think. “But they can run us down in the open, too, you know.”
If Heydrich made it back to his underground headquarters, he didn’t plan on coming out again any time soon. In the meanwhile…“As long as we’re above the ground and moving, we’ve got a chance to get away. I think the risk that they can follow us to the bunker and dig us out is just too big.”
Had Klein argued, he might have convinced his superior to change his mind. As things were, the Oberscharfuhrer only sighed. “Well, you’re right about one thing, boss-we can get screwed either way.”
They weren’t screwed yet. The Americans made a ham-fisted job of going after a pair of fugitives. Without false modesty, Heydrich knew the SS would have caught up with him and Klein in short order. For that matter, so would the NKVD. Professionals knew what they were doing. The Americans…
How the devil did they win? They were brave-Heydrich couldn’t deny that. And there were lots of them. And what came out of their factories…Few Germans had imagined just how much the USA could make when it set its mind to it. Bombers, fighters, tanks, jeeps, trucks…Yes, each man from the Wehrmacht or Waffen-SS was better than his enemy counterpart. But he wasn’t enough better, not when the other side had so many more troops and so much materiel.
And, however clumsy the other side was, it hadn’t given up here. American soldiers stumbled across the landscape. How far south and east the search extended, Heydrich didn’t want to think. Sooner or later, the Amis were much too likely to blunder across him and Klein by sheer luck. If they did…
If they do, I’m a dead man, Heydrich thought. So was Klein, but Hans could do his own worrying. If the noncom did, it stretched no further than himself. Heydrich also worried about the fate of the whole National Socialist uprising. It would go on without him; he knew that. Whether it would go on so well and sting the enemies from the east and west the way it had was a different question. Yes, Jochen Peiper was capable-he wouldn’t have been second in command if he weren’t. Still, Heydrich didn’t think anybody could match Heydrich.
“What are you idiots doing screwing around in this swamp?” The question came in such a broad Bavarian dialect that Heydrich barely understood it.
He almost plugged the man who asked it any which way. He’d had no idea anybody but Hans was anywhere within half a kilometer. But this wizened little grinning bastard appeared from behind a tussock as if he were a sprite in one of Wagner’s lesser operas. Now, was he a good sprite or the other kind? He was a sprite who was wary of firearms, that was for sure-he stood very still and kept his hands where Heydrich could see them.
“Hey, buddy, you don’t want to do that,” he said, his grin slipping only a little. “You shoot me, all the American pigdogs’ll come running this way.”
“Are you loyal to the Grossdeutsches Reich?” Heydrich demanded. He knew about the ever-rising price on his head. If this scrawny son of a bitch decided to play Judas, he’d get a lot more than thirty pieces of silver. But he won’t live to enjoy them if he does, the Reichsprotektor promised himself.
“Got out of the Ukraine in one piece. Got out of Romania in one piece. Hell, got out of Hungary almost in one piece-they grazed me while I was hightailing it over the border. Got stuck in Vienna after that, and got away there, too,” the Bavarian said. “We still owe folks a thing or three.”
Maybe he was telling the truth. Maybe he was spinning a line to lull Heydrich and Klein. The underofficer came straight to the point: “Can you get us out of here without tipping off the Amis?”
“Not a sure-fire deal, but I think so,” the Bavarian answered. “Want to come along and see?”
Heydrich and Klein looked at each other. They both shrugged at the same time. Heydrich didn’t see how he could leave somebody who might be a betrayer at his back. He also didn’t see how he could quietly dispose of the fellow. Yes, the man might take them straight to the Amis. Sometimes you just had to roll the dice.
“Let’s go,” Heydrich said after a barely perceptible pause.
“Get moving, then,” the Bavarian replied. Off they went.
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Klein whispered.
“No,” Heydrich returned. “Are you sure it isn’t?” The Oberscharfuhrer answered with another shrug.
After a few minutes, Heydrich became convinced the Bavarian wasn’t going straight to the Americans. He wasn’t going straight at all. His turns seemed at random, but they all took him and the half-trusting men at his heels deeper into the swamp. Bushes and scraggly trees-the edges of the Lorenzerwald-hid them ever more effectively.
“Right season, you can get all kinds of mushrooms around here.” Their guide smacked his lips.
“I believe it.” Hans Klein sounded more as if he was thinking of death and decay than of a thick slice of boiled pork smothered with mushrooms. Since Heydrich’s train of thought ran on the same track, he couldn’t very well tell Klein to shut up. The Bavarian chuckled. Not only was he at home in this miserable countryside, he was enjoying himself.
“How will you get us past the enemy?” Heydrich asked. One of his wet shoes was rubbing at the back of his heel. Pretty soon, like it or not, he’d start limping. He wondered if he’d do better barefoot. If he had to, he’d try that. But running something into his sole wouldn’t slow him up-it would stop him cold. He resolved to hang on to his shoes as long as he could.
“Oh, there are ways,” the other man said airily.
They came to a shack beside a little stream. The shack might have been built from junk salvaged after the surrender, or it might have been leaning there in growing decrepitude since the days of Frederick the Great…or Frederick Barbarossa. “Nice place,” Hans Klein said dryly.
The Bavarian chuckled. “Glad you like it. Follow me around back.”
Around the back, a stubby wooden pier stuck out into the stream. Like the shack, it might have been there a few months or a few hundred years. The boat tied to the pier wasn’t new, but also wasn’t obviously a remembrance of things past.
“Get in,” the Bavarian told Heydrich and Klein. “Then lie flat. It’s roomier down there than it looks.”
And so it was. This fellow probably didn’t smuggle fugitive National Socialist fighters every day. If he didn’t smuggle something every day, or often enough, Heydrich would have been astonished. Just to make sure of things, the Bavarian draped a ratty tarpaulin over them. The tarp smelled of mildew and tobacco. Heydrich nodded to himself. Thought so-cigarette smuggler. These days, cigarettes were as good as money in Germany. In a lot of places, they were money, near enough.
“Off we go.” The man’s voice came from the other side of the tarp like the sun from the far side of a cloud.
“What happens if the Americans make you stop?” Klein asked.
“We’ll worry about that when it happens, all right?” The Bavarian didn’t lack for nerve.
The boat began bobbing in a new way. It was floating down the stream now. Pretty soon, the Bavarian sat down and started rowing to help it along. The oarlocks creaked. Time stretched, all rubber-like. Heydrich didn’t know whether to
be terrified or bored. Beside him, Klein started snoring softly. Heydrich found himself jealous of the underofficer. Sometimes not thinking ahead made life simpler.
After a while, Heydrich jerked awake and realized he’d been dozing, too. Hans Klein laughed softly. “You snore, Herr Reichsprotektor.”
“Well, so do you,” Heydrich said. “How far do you suppose we’ve come?”
“I dunno. A ways.”
“Shut up, you two,” the Bavarian hissed. “Amis on the banks.”
Sure as hell, a voice called out in accented but fluent German: “Hey, Fritzi, you old asslick, you running Luckies again?”
“Not me,” the Bavarian answered solemnly. “Chesterfields.”
He got a laugh from the American. But then the enemy soldier went on, “You seen a couple of guys on the lam? High command wants ’em bad-there’s money in it if you spot ’em.”
“Your high command must want them bad if it’s willing to pay,” the Bavarian observed, and won another laugh. “But me, I’ve seen nobody.” He kept rowing.
If the American called for-Fritzi? — to stop…But he didn’t. The boat slid on down the stream. Heydrich wished he could see what was going on. He could see the bottom of the boat, the tarp, a little of himself, and even less of Hans. It wasn’t enough. He kept his head down anyhow.
After a while, the Bavarian said, “We gave that lot the slip. Shouldn’t be any more for a while. And even if there are, I can make it so they never see us.”
“Good by me,” Klein said.
“And me,” Heydrich agreed. One of the basic rules was, you didn’t argue with somebody who was saving your ass. Heydrich had broken a lot of rules in his time, but that one made too much sense to ignore.
Lou Weissberg could count the times he’d been on a horse on the fingers of one hand. He thought of a jeep as the next best thing, or maybe even the equivalent. A jeep could go damn near anywhere and almost never broke down. The Stars and Stripes cartoon of the sad cavalry sergeant putting a hand over his eyes as he aimed his.45 at the hood of a jeep that had quit only reinforced the comparison in his mind.
The Man with the Iron Heart Page 24
