Winner Lose All

by William F. Brown

  “It is not your fault, Papa. You are busy with your work.”

  “Then we must change that,” he declared, and then lowered his voice to a conspiratorial whisper. “I think the time has come for us to leave this place. Do you not agree?”

  “Then what Major Von Lindemann said is true?” She turned and her face lit up. “We are leaving for Bavaria?” It had only been six weeks since the Major had arrived at Volkenrode, fresh from his long stay in a hospital bed in Berlin. He could barely walk, but she would frequently accompany him around the grounds when her father was not watching.

  “Yes, we are leaving, but it will not be for Bavaria. Your Major is a fraud. He is like all the rest of them, nothing more than a liar and a blackmailer.”

  “The Major? Oh, no, he…”

  “I warned you not to trust that man. He is like all the rest of them — more politics and more plotting against us.”

  “You always say that, Papa; but not this time, not him,” she said, refusing to back down from her father’s harsh judgment. “He is a gentleman and a war hero.”

  “Your precious Major! I have seen you with him, Christina, and he would love to get you in his grasp because of your gift. It is not you; it is your gift he is after.”

  “No! I will not of hear it,” she said, putting her hands over her ears.

  “He is part of their conspiracy, Christina, like all those professors at the university. Believe me, I know. Why do you think they sent him here?” He began to pace back and forth across the small room, becoming more and more agitated. “We shall show them, you and I. We shall show them all.”

  He had begun acting like this more and more often now — red faced and angry, ranting and raving at the world. It terrified her. Before the war, in the mid-1930s, he had been a low-ranking instructor at the University of Berlin. It was a place and a time when labels and expectations meant everything. Raeder had been branded a mediocre aeronautical engineer with an inconsequential mind, destined to be no more than someone else’s laboratory assistant or to teach minor undergraduate classes. That was, until Wolfe Raeder suddenly began publishing the most inventive papers with revolutionary equations and formulas on aeronautical force, thrust, drag, and jet propulsion. “Brilliant mathematics… intricate equations… inspired designs,” they said. And very unexpected.

  His dramatic new work quickly brought Wolfe Raeder to the attention of the Luftwaffe and to Hermann Göring himself. Papa was still reveling in his academic glory then, and even Göring could not pry him loose from the University. The old World War I fighter pilot was one of Hitler’s oldest cronies, however, and intent on rebuilding German air power. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Göring became Prussian Minister of the Interior and he created the Gestapo. Göring soon moved on to head the new Luftwaffe when it became “legal,” but he left the Prussian police in the hands of his cronies. As such, he could have crimes investigated or dropped as he saw fit in the capital. When Mama had her horrible accident, she and papa had been having another of their loud arguments upstairs on the second floor landing. When she was found dead at the foot of the stairs, no one talked about it. No one said a word, but Christina suddenly found herself uprooted and transported from her beloved Berlin to a small cottage deep in the woods at this new, top-secret Luftwaffe research base hidden deep in the Harz Mountains.

  “You do not understand what Göring and those Luftwaffe devils have done to me. It is my jet airplane! It is mine, but the damned Luftwaffe dares to call it a Messerschmitt, the Me-262” he screamed. “Those ingrates! Willi Messerschmitt may have put the pieces together, but that jet fighter should have been called a Raeder. That fat, blackmailing pig Göring stole it from me. That Captain and his story about the Alpenfestung is nonsense. It is far too late for all that. We are leaving here and going to work for people who understand genius and know how to reward it.”

  “I… I do not understand.”

  “You do not need to understand.” He reached out with both hands and seized her by the shoulders, pulling her close, his angry eyes burning into her.

  “Stop, you are hurting me!”

  “Then trust me, Christina; trust me, and do what I say. You do trust me, don’t you?”

  “Of course, Papa, but…”

  “Pack some clothes, only a small bag, no more.”

  “What about my phonograph records?”

  His eyes flared for a moment, but he thought better of it and relented. “All right, yes, bring those damned things too, if that is what makes you happy.”

  She smiled.

  “Later this afternoon, you and I will leave here with Herr Dietrich.”

  “Herr Dietrich?” Her eyes grew round and filled with horror. “You mean the man from the Gestapo? Oh, no, I do not like him.”

  “The Chief Inspector is a man we can trust, Christina,” he said as his grip tightened on her shoulder, “and a man you must get to know better, much better.” She turned away in horror, but he pulled her back and looked into her eyes. “You are eighteen now, almost a woman. He likes young women, and we need a strong man to protect us. It is time you did your part. Do you understand what I am telling you? Do you?”

  She recoiled at the thought. “He scares me when he looks at me — that way.”

  “Do not play the innocent virgin with me, Christina, I saw how you flirt with that Major of yours. You are just like your mother.” He shook her again and pulled her even closer. “It is what women do to get their way with men, so do not think you’re any different, or any better. You need to do your part!”

  “Papa, you are wrong, I am not…”

  “You will do what I tell you! The war is going very badly now, and the future will be hard for us. Men will want you, just like this phony Major Von Lindemann, because of the things you do with the numbers. That is why we need a strong man like Chief Inspector Dietrich at our side — at your side — if we hope to survive the next few months.”

  She froze as she remembered Papa grabbing Mama and shouting at her like this.

  “I have managed to shield you from greedy men like that,” he told her. “I took all the risks, keeping your special gift a secret from all of them. I did it for you, Christina, for you; but I cannot do it alone anymore. We need him. Do you hear me? We need his help, and you will do whatever you need to do to make him happy.”

  She fell silent and stared at him with dark, disbelieving eyes. “Where — where is he taking us?” she finally asked with a leaden voice.

  “East,” he said as he released his grip on her shoulders.

  “East?”

  “To Russia.”

  “Oh, no, Papa,” her voice dropped to a whisper.

  “I will have my own research laboratories with a staff of loyal assistants this time, and I will have the respect that a top scientist deserves. The Russians understand things like that. They appreciate genius.”

  “But the radio says they murder women and children — and worse.”

  “That is war propaganda, Christina,” he laughed at her. “Can you imagine what their radio must be saying about us?”

  “Please don’t take me to Russia. I remember watching Boris Godunov standing over the bloody body of the murdered prince. ‘Weep, weep, you hungry Russian people,’ the chorus sang. That’s not propaganda, it is real.”

  “No, it is more of your damned opera nonsense, Christina!”

  “Papa, I… I don’t know what is real anymore,” she sobbed. “I want to go back home, to Berlin, where we can be happy again.”

  “Berlin? Never!”

  “If we go to Russia, people will say we are traitors.”

  “Traitors? It will be years before Germany can use our talents again. When that day comes, we can return with what we learned in Russia and make even greater contributions. Is that not more patriotic than sitting here doing nothing?”

  “I do not know,” she shook her head, her voice confused and frustrated. “What about Rudy, and Eugen, and Emil? They are coming wit
h us too, aren’t they?”

  “Those ingrates? They made their beds, now let them lie in them.” He turned and began pacing back and forth in the small kitchen. “They shall see. They shall all see. The West has become too decadent to even hope to survive. Our future lies in the east with men of iron will. That is where we must go.”

  “Yes, Papa,” she answered forlornly.

  “Good! You must trust Papa, my little Gilda. You must do what I tell you — exactly what I tell you — and that is all you need to concern yourself with right now.” He knew she would obey him in the end. She always did. “So,” he turned and smiled proudly at her, “have you completed those new equations I gave you last night?”

  “The equations? Oh, yes,” she said absently. “They are on the dining room table.”

  He hurried into the other room, and she heard him shuffling through the sheets of paper. “Christina, I… I cannot follow these steps. Show me what you have done here,” he called to her.

  She walked in and stood next to him, watching in silence as he flipped back to the first page. Tightly packed equations covered it from top to bottom, written in her small, fine hand. They flowed one into another along each line before dropping gently onto the next, line after line, down the page like a long flight of migrating birds. In her head, they were still her beautiful wild things in full flight, until Papa made her pluck them out of the air and pin them down on paper like this. It seemed such a cruel and unnatural thing to do, to ignore their squawks and screeches and watch their brilliant colors fade to a dull black on the white paper; but she did it. On paper, the wild things formed themselves into perfectly constructed equations. Each was part of the larger, seamless whole, each with its own flawless logic. She smiled, realizing that it took her less than an hour to completely fill the six sheets of paper this morning. To her, it was mere transcription, less time than it took to play half of Aida on the old Victor phonograph. If the truth were known, she had actually paid more attention to Aida. It was mere child’s play, but she could never tell him that. He hated to be reminded of how easily it came to her.

  Standing next to him in the dining room, she had to lead him step by step through the equations as if he were the child, walking him along the path with all those dead shapes and symbols, step by slow, monotonous step until he finally understood. To her, it seemed so strange. These equations were so elementary. When she was younger, she thought he was testing her. However, as the years passed, after he made her return to the beginning of the line or the page and retrace her path time and time again, she realized he was not checking her. No, he did not understand.

  “Yes,” he mumbled. “What? Ah! I see… I don’t… but how did you…?” Finally, she heard, “Yes, now I understand. Good, Christina,” he looked up at her. “But as I have told you before, you must document those intermediate steps, all of them. In mathematics, methodology is everything, my dear. Dashing and skipping about as you do is sloppy, sloppy.”

  She would nod and look chastened, as she always did; but she knew that her wild things, her complex equations, were simple, elegant, and perfect. She included precisely no more or no less numbers, symbols, equations, or steps than were necessary to prove the point, not one. It had gone on like this between them for as long as she could remember. How silly, she thought. Intermediate steps? She did not have the slightest idea what he was talking about.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  As Scanlon watched, the scientists and camp guards spent the remainder of the morning and the early afternoon packing boxes and crates with research papers and blueprints, before loading them into two trucks for the run south. They would burn the rest. Von Lindemann decided that the two most senior sergeants would come along to drive, and he would send the other enlisted men west to the nearest Luftwaffe base. It was not the papers or the trucks that concerned Scanlon the most, however. Germany was blazing like a house on fire, with flames licking out its windows. There was no way the Seven Dwarfs could possibly understand the horrors waiting for them out on the road.

  Scanlon also suspected that Wolfe Raeder was not finished stirring up trouble, but the Doktor waited until mid-afternoon to try again. The trucks were nearly packed. Von Lindemann knelt on the ground helping Rudy Mannfried and Emil Nossing nail some crates shut, while Eugen Bracht sorted through the last stack of papers. Scanlon helped the guards load the truck. That was when Raeder strode out of his office, down the stairs, and stepped into the center of their small circle. In a loud, self-assured voice, he stated, “This plan of yours needs further discussion, Herr Major, much more, I am afraid. Where exactly is this Alpenfestung place? It sounds like a very dangerous adventure to me.” Raeder was careful to make eye contact with each of his assistants, projecting his own anxiety onto each of them. “Chief Inspector Dietrich said we should wait here until he returns, so perhaps we should get his opinion, too. You two are Luftwaffe, so you may not care; but we are civilians. Provoking the Gestapo and SS, even if they are as uninformed as you claim, could put us in grave danger.”

  Clearly, Raeder’s words had struck a raw nerve in the other three men. They seldom agreed with him on much of anything, but this time it appeared they might. Von Lindemann was kneeling on the ground and he had to lean heavily on his cane to get to his feet. “No further assurances are necessary, Herr Doktor,” he grimaced with a thin, forced smile as he elevated to his full height and stared down on the meddlesome engineer. “The Gestapo is absolutely right; this installation is no longer safe. The difference between Herr Dietrich and us is that Captain Schmitt and I are under direct orders from the High Command to relocate this entire operation to a top secret location, and that is all you need to know for the moment.”

  “The High Command?” Raeder laughed contemptuously as he folded his arms across his chest. “Why don’t you show us these precious orders of yours, Major?”

  “It is a Führer Order, Herr Doktor, from him to Göring to us. That is why they remain verbal, to keep the location top secret from spies and from traitors.”

  “Are you calling me a traitor, Major? Because I ask to see some proof of these verbal orders of yours?” Raeder laughed. “What next? Will you shoot me, Von Lindemann?”

  “Oh, no, Herr Doktor,” Scanlon stepped forward with a thin, steely grin on his lips. “That would be my job. Summary executions are always delegated to the junior officer — military protocol, you see.”

  “Are you threatening me, Captain? How dare you?” Raeder puffed, but his smile quickly faded as he looked into Scanlon’s eyes.

  “How dare I?” Scanlon sounded surprised by the question and stepped closer, crowding Raeder. The Major was an upper-class gentleman, a known commodity for Raeder to try to manipulate; but there was something sinister in this new fellow’s eyes that told him the Captain really would shoot, and he would enjoy doing it. That sent a shiver up the Doktor’s spine.

  “I spent the last year on the Eastern Front,” Scanlon said, “and you have no idea how inexpensive life is out there. The ground froze so hard that our men would make a foxhole by stacking dead Russians in front of their positions. I can still hear the dull thud of sniper bullets smacking into frozen flesh. That can give a man a different moral perspective, Herr Doktor. So, if Major Von Lindemann tells me to put a bullet in you, that is exactly what I will do; and I suspect it will bother him a whole lot more than it will bother me. Of course, it will bother you even more, won’t it?” Scanlon chuckled.

  Raeder’s jaw dropped as he looked into those cold gray eyes. “This is an outrage,” he muttered as he beat a quick retreat back toward his office. “An outrage!”

  “See that you are back here at 6:00 p.m., Herr Doktor,” Scanlon called after him. “You don’t want me to come looking for you.”

  After his office door slammed shut, Scanlon turned back and saw Christina Raeder standing alone beside one of the trucks, watching the entire escapade unseen by any of them. She smiled at Scanlon and clapped her hands, her fingers spread wide apart like
a young child. “Bravo!” he heard her giggle, “Bravo,” she repeated, before she turned and disappeared.

  Scanlon could deal with all the others, even Raeder, but the girl was a wild card. At first, he thought she might be mentally retarded. She rarely spoke, except to Rudy Mannheim and occasionally to Eugen Bracht. When she did, she had the odd habit of using quotations from Italian grand opera, as if they were some kind of crutch. Maybe so, he thought. Everyone else around here seemed to need one, whether it was old movies, fanatical causes, chivalry that died with knights in armor, greed, envy, young men, a healthy dose of self-preservation, or a blue-eyed blonde with ice water in her veins, who could set a cold, alpine winter night ablaze. So, what was a little grand opera between friends? Compared to the others, she might be the only sane person in the place. As for her odd appearance, it was not that she was unattractive. It seemed intentional — no makeup, hair cut short and straight, and clothes from an auto repair shop. Retarded? Not likely. Those dark, haunting eyes of hers did not appear to miss much.

  Opera was not the only thing that appeared to interest Christina Raeder, Scanlon noted. She appeared to be infatuated by Paul Von Lindemann, but the thick-skulled Major never noticed. True, she was half his age and rarely out of her father’s sight. When she did manage to slip out, she tagged along with him, observing, hovering, and occasionally talking to him. To Scanlon, at least that small part of the operation was amusing.

  “Do not worry about Christina, Captain,” Rudy Mannfried took Scanlon aside when he was sure the others were well out of hearing distance. “She is a very, very special child. You may think she behaves a bit odd; but growing up out here with that monster of a father, it is a wonder she is not far worse.” Mannfried’s jovial smile then faded and his eyes grew deadly serious. “I assure you, she will cause you no problems. Please see that you cause her none.”

  “Is that a threat, Rudy?” Scanlon laughed at the plump, ungainly engineer.

  “No, simply a piece of good advice — one that you should invest wisely. We all have our little secrets, eh, Captain, like that odd accent of yours. It is almost perfect, almost; but you never did say where you were from, did you?”