‘We’ll fire it,’ Dieter said. ‘Out over the Baltic. The Russians must never get a rocket like this.’
He was the only one who knew how to prepare it for firing, and when the controls were set, he advised the SS men to take cover behind the log-and-stone revetments, for, as he warned them, ‘The noise and flame will be terrific’
He was the last man at the launching pad, a mere five feet four inches looking up at the rocket nine times taller than he. As he stood there he could see marks from the hundred improvements he had made, the thousand that Baron von Braun had suggested. This was one of the noblest instruments yet made by man, a messenger to a new age, and it would soon fly aimlessly.
Throwing the switches, running from the launching area, he leaped behind a bulwark as the mighty engine exploded. Upward through the autumn sky rose the last rocket, out toward the Baltic it roared, and far from Germany it plunged harmlessly into the dark waters.
Dieter feared that the northern ferry might be guarded by new SS men who would not let him pass to the mainland, so when the rocket disappeared he pedaled south to the bridge where the guards would recognize him. When they asked where he was going he said, as always, ‘To see my girl,’ and as soon as he reached the Koenig farm he announced, ‘Time to dig up the papers.’
‘Are we leaving?’ Liesl asked.
‘Haven’t you heard the Russian guns?’
‘I’ve been terrified.’
She did not seem like a woman who could be easily terrified, yet it was clear that she had for some weeks been obsessed by the approaching enemy and was now relieved that steps were to be taken. It was she who produced the shovel and started digging; it was she who knelt down to retrieve the knapsack.
Her father and mother, tied to the land their ancestors had farmed in Pomerania for generations, preferred to trust their fortunes with the Russians; they had despised what they had seen of the Nazis and judged that things could not be much worse under Communism. The farewells were not tearful; all over Germany families were being torn apart, and most took solace from the fact that their members were at least alive. Herr Koenig did not kiss his daughter but did shake her hand, as if she were a stranger from the village. Frau Koenig, standing in the doorway that led into the barn beneath the bedrooms, wept. She, too, shook hands first with Liesl, then with Dieter. At the last moment Liesl ran to the cow she had raised and kissed it on the side of its placid face, embracing it with her arms.
So they started on their hegira, he walking, she on the bicycle with the precious knapsack strapped into a large bundle behind. They headed south for Berlin, but whenever they came to a crossroads, armed guards kept shoving them north and away from the capital, which was already overcrowded.
‘We are ordered to Nordhausen,’ Dieter explained again and again. ‘They are waiting for us in Berlin.’
‘Blocked,’ the guards said. ‘You must keep to the north.’
If they did this, Dieter realized, they must sooner or later come into conflict with the SS units guarding the Baltic coast, so with all the energy he had he pressed for a southerly direction, and it was this stubbornness that caused the perilous shooting.
They were on the outskirts of Neustrelitz, a small city halfway between Peenemünde and Berlin, when an SS guard, determined to protect his post, even against Russians, directed them to stop pressing south and head westward. Dieter pointed out, quite correctly, that to do so would take them in the Lake Müritz region, which would be difficult to negotiate.
‘West!’ the guard ordered, and later when he spotted the Kolffs trying to sneak down a lateral road, he took aim at Dieter and hit him in the left shoulder. When the guard saw his target go down in a heap, he was satisfied that he had killed him, so he took careful aim at Liesl, but as he did so, she saw him, and in a flash fell to the ground, encouraging him to assume that he had killed them both. For a moment he contemplated running over to pick up their bicycle, but he knew he himself might be shot if he abandoned his post, so he thought no more about the matter.
On the ground, Liesl saw that her husband was bleeding copiously, so keeping low, she tended his wound, satisfying herself that he was not about to die. When she had the blood stanched, she turned her attention to the bicycle, pulling and hauling until she could work it into a position outside the line of sight of the trigger-hungry SS man. When she succeeded in getting both her husband and the loaded bicycle in safe terrain, she slapped Dieter’s face several times, challenging him to get on his feet and out of Neustrelitz.
He could do neither. His wound was more serious than she had detected, and after a few steps he fainted dead away. Now she had to make grave decisions.
Lugging first him, and then the bicycle, she worked her way almost to the outskirts of the town, but by then she was exhausted. Sitting under a tree, she breathed heavily and listened to her husband’s irregular panting. When a farmer came by she commandeered him: ‘Good fellow! My husband has been hurt. Can you find a doctor?’
The man had his own preoccupations: ‘The Russians are coming. Who cares about doctors?’
‘My husband is dying,’ she pleaded.
‘I’ll watch him. You fetch the doctor.’
‘You’ll steal my bicycle.’
‘The Russians will steal it if I don’t.’
‘Will you fetch the doctor?’
‘What is he, a spy or something?’
‘He is my husband.’ The forceful way in which she spoke convinced the farmer. Placing his own bundles beside the bicycle, he said, ‘See, I trust you, even if you don’t trust me.’
When the doctor arrived, a pale thin man, he asked, ‘Are the police after him?’
‘An SS man shot him for no reason.’
‘God damn them,’ the frail doctor said. He inspected Dieter’s wound, then looked up at the farmer. ‘This man could die if he’s not attended.’
‘He can come to my place,’ the farmer said, so he and Liesl watched as the doctor skillfully extracted the bullet and medicated the resulting gash. Handing Liesl a vial of medicine, he said, ‘Three days’ rest, he’ll live.’ Before leaving, the doctor looked in all directions, then returned home by a different route.
For three days the Kolffs hid with their bicycle at the farm west of Neustrelitz, talking incessantly with the owner, a sardonic man who had seen many fortunes rise and fall in his lifetime: ‘Germans down now, never lower. The war’s lost. Somebody will shoot Hitler soon. Then we’ll get the Russians and the damned Allies.’
‘Why do you hate the Allies?’ Dieter asked, not confiding that he was in search of them as saviors.
‘The bombings. Have you seen Berlin? Hamburg? I hear rumors that Dresden has been wiped out. One hundred and fifty thousand dead in one night. The Allies, too, are monsters.’
Then he became reflective. ‘I know what you’re doing. Running away from the Russians in hopes that the Allies will capture you. And I wonder what you guard so carefully in that bundle on your bicycle. I’ll tell you what it is, documents you hope to sell to the Allies. I’ll bet you’re from Peenemünde, aren’t you?’
When Dieter refused to answer, he asked, ‘What awful things were you up to? I never saw such secrecy. But don’t worry about running away to join the Allies, because I’m going to do the same thing. They’re bastards, all of them, but at least they aren’t Russian.’
His wife would not leave the farm, but he had no hesitancy in leaving her, and on the last night he explained why: ‘I know Germany, the good Germany. Can you believe, sitting here tonight on the edge of ruin, that within ten years we’ll be one of the most powerful nations on earth? And why? Because of people like you two. The husband very intelligent. The wife very courageous. I liked the way you looked after your man, little girl. You could run this country. A damned sight better than Hitler ran it.’
They were off, a wounded man, an elderly farmer, a would-be housewife and two bicycles. The farmer insisted that the Kolffs ride the bicycles, at least until Dieter recovere
d from his wound, and in this way they tried to move south to Berlin, but always they were stopped. At the interrogations the farmer said, ‘This is my son, wounded on the Russian front, and my daughter. We’re joining my brother in Frankfort.’
‘You can’t move down this road,’ the guards said, so, invariably, the trio were shunted westward until they came to the outskirts of Wittenberge, a small town on the right bank of the Elbe River.
‘This is a famous place,’ Dieter told his wife. ‘Martin Luther started here … at the doors of the cathedral.’
The farmer, a good Lutheran, burst into laughter. ‘All you bright boys say that. And you’re all wrong. This is Wittenberge with an e. Wittenberg without the e is miles and miles upriver. Martin Luther never saw this Godforsaken place.’
When they were inside the town, walking about to see how best to spend the few marks they allowed themselves each week, Dieter suddenly stopped in horror and leaped behind a pillar, for there, coming straight at him, was General Funkhauser, attended by three SS men. When the pompous, pudgy commander lost Peenemünde, having allowed its principal scientists to escape, he was demoted to officer-in-charge of the Wittenberge District, which the Russians would soon be attacking. It was his task to conscript every able male and arm him for the defense of the town, because if Wittenberge fell, Berlin would be exposed on the north. Dieter, guessing that something like this was afoot, sank deeper into the shadows, allowing the powerful and vengeful man to pass.
When he returned to Liesl and the farmer, he was shaking, and they thought he had been attacked by a fever, but after he took a drink of wine and sat for a moment he informed them of their peril: ‘General Funkhauser is in charge of this town, I’m sure of it. I saw him striding along with three of his SS men, and if he even hears of us, we’re dead.’
With the greatest circumspection, the farmer went into the heart of town to make inquiries, and he returned with doleful news: ‘Every male is now a member of the defense army, under command of General Funkhauser. We must all report at once or be shot.’ In the silence he studied Dieter, then asked bluntly, ‘Are the papers valuable?’
‘They can save our lives,’ Dieter said.
‘Then we must sneak out of here.’
With great ingenuity the farmer organized a plan whereby the three of them, with their two bicycles, could edge their way to the south of Wittenberge, but as they moved through the dark night an SS guard detected them and fired. The farmer was killed. The Kolffs were arrested.
In the morning they were hauled before General Funkhauser, and Dieter was astonished by the changes he saw in the man: because of anxiety and meager food he had lost more than twenty pounds and now had a neck like ordinary humans; also, his eyes seemed more compassionate, and Dieter remembered how Funkhauser had been repelled by conditions at Nordhausen. He’s becoming a human being again, he thought. He knows the war’s lost, and will soon be quitting Himmler and his gang. Alone with Liesl he whispered, ‘Do everything possible to keep him confused. He may save our lives.’
The interrogation started badly: ‘Well, our hero from Peenemünde. The little man who has a silver medal from Hitler himself. What evil tricks are you up to this time?’
Dieter stood silent, remembering that since this unpredictable man had once tried to have him executed, there was a likelihood that the sentence would now be carried out. Funkhauser, obviously uncertain of himself, was encouraged by Dieter’s cowering. Tapping the knapsack which lay on his desk, he asked sardonically, ‘And what is our little man stealing from the Third Reich? Secret papers? Could they be the ones I was looking for after the death of General Breutzl?’
Keeping his eyes fixed on Dieter, he shoved the knapsack at him. ‘You open it. Show me what secrets you were going to sell to the enemy.’
With fumbling hands, Dieter dug into the knapsack, producing a few papers. ‘What are they?’ Funkhauser asked in his silky voice. When Kolff made no reply, the general screamed, ‘Are they the secret papers of General Breutzl? Of course they are. And what do they deal with? Germany’s secret weapons.’ Whenever he said the word secret he lingered over it, as if, like Hitler and Goebbels and the German public, he believed that some mysterious force would still save the nation.
Dieter, realizing that Funkhauser had incriminating proof of everything he charged, could only remain silent, awaiting judgment. It was harsh: ‘He and his wife. Spies and traitors. Shoot them.’ He stomped from the room, leaving Dieter alone with two husky SS guards, who led him out into the hallway, where they grabbed Liesl, throwing her behind her husband as the death march to the courtyard began.
It was a warm day at the beginning of March and the sky was that wonderful Prussian blue which seemed half-dawn, half-midnight. Staring at it and remembering the days when he first bicycled to the Koenig farm to court Liesl, he wanted to take her hand, to console her, but the guards, now augmented by three riflemen, kept them separated. So he had to be content to look back at her, and he was relieved to see that she was marching to her death without panic. She even smiled at him as if to say that since they had been goaded into making their choices, there should be no lamentation.
When they were stood against the wall, Dieter asked in a quivering voice, ‘May I kiss my wife goodbye?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Liesl, it was short … but very good.’
‘I love you, Dieter.’
They kissed, and then of their own accord, as if their punishment was the inevitable consequence of their own actions, they resumed their places against the wall, and the three soldiers planted their feet wide apart and hefted their rifles. For an awful moment Kolff and his wife looked into the shining barrels, and Dieter, the engineer-mechanic, wondered: How can three shoot two? Something might go badly wrong. Then he saw, kneeling on the gravel, a fourth man with a machine gun, and in a curious way he was satisfied. The SS were doing it right.
But in the split second before the command ‘Fire!’ General Funkhauser ran into the courtyard, sweating, and shouted, ‘Take them back to their cells.’
‘We have no cells,’ an SS man shouted back.
‘Keep them in a closet. And guard them.’
The closet in the town hall of Wittenberge was seven feet wide and three feet deep, with no light and very little air. They had to find a place for themselves among brooms and mops, but there were several workmen’s smocks on which they could sleep. They were kept in this dismal place for what seemed like a week, although it could have been more. They were fed miserably, never had enough water to drink, and were allowed out only to go to the bathroom, one at a time, under heavy guard.
‘He’s confused about the papers,’ Dieter guessed.
‘A guard told me as we went down the hall, “Germany’s defeated. Everyone is closing in upon us.” He was almost crying, as if it were unfair.’
‘We must do nothing to anger them, Liesl. They’re in a trap, too, and they know it.’
On what seemed to them the eighth day, General Funkhauser brought them both to his office, an ornate affair, rather handsome in its display of the symbols prized by a provincial town. There was the engraving of Bismarck, crisp and clear in its fine black lines, the colored portrait of some local general, and the huge photograph of Hitler, menacing and fatherly at the same time. And there, on his desk, was the knapsack.
‘Are these papers what I think they are?’ Funkhauser asked, and instantly shrewd Liesl deduced two facts: the General was in desperate trouble, like all of Germany, and he had grown to believe that somehow these papers could save him.
Calmly she said, ‘They could save your life when the Allies come. But they have meaning only if Dieter is alive to explain them.’ She would hook their lives to his, for she knew that otherwise he would shoot them in the back when the Allies approached.
‘They look like plans for a rocket,’ Funkhauser said, riffling the papers.
‘Sssssh!’ she warned. ‘They cover a weapon so secret that only Hitler and General Bre
utzl knew the full details. And Dieter.’
When Funkhauser looked at the inoffensive little man he could not believe that Kolff could have been privy to some great secret, but then he remembered that when he and Dieter had visited Hitler at Wolfs Lair … ‘He did take you aside at the end, didn’t he?’
‘This is something entirely different,’ Dieter said.
‘You think the Allies would want to bargain for these papers?’
‘That’s why Von Braun sent them out secretly,’ Liesl said. ‘With the one man who could explain them.’
‘Wait!’ Funkhauser snapped, his beady eyes narrowing. ‘Von Braun and all the other leading scientists are at the underground works at Nordhausen. Why aren’t you there, with them, if you’re so important?’
‘I’m not important,’ Dieter said, ‘but the papers are, and Von Braun knew that I was the only one who could deal with them.’
In some irritation the general instructed his guards, ‘Lock them up,’ but when they were alone in the darkness Liesl assured her husband: ‘He’s worried. The Russians have him worried. And we have him worried. He won’t shoot us now.’
Early next morning General Funkhauser summoned them to his office and dismissed the guards. Without preliminaries he moved from behind his desk, stood with the Kolffs as if they were his equals, and pointed to the knapsack. ‘Could we deliver these papers to the Americans?’
‘Those were my orders,’ Dieter said.
‘From whom?’
‘From Baron Wernher von Braun,’ and as he uttered this influential name, he automatically reached for the knapsack, bringing it to his chest as if it were something he must cherish. Funkhauser jerked it away and clutched it himself.
‘We’ll take it through the lines to the Allies,’ he said. Then, looking with some contempt at the Kolffs, he added, ‘I can speak a little English, you know.’
They were a curious trio as they wound their way toward the triangle formed by Hamburg, Bremen and Hanover. General Funkhauser was always in the lead with a small bicycle which he had commandeered and to which the precious knapsack was tied. He had been afraid to use an SS automobile lest it attract too much attention and perhaps cause his arrest, and it never occurred to him to let one of the Kolffs use his bicycle, for he was a general, made so by Hitler himself, whom he was now abandoning.
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