The Project

by Brian Falkner

  Guns were drawn.

  “Is it us?” Tommy’s face was white.

  “I don’t know,” Luke replied, but thought it probably was. Mueller must have discovered the theft, and someone must have radioed ahead to the station.

  The train stopped and settled with a hiss and clouds of smoke, and he saw Mueller exit the train and go speak to one of the Gestapo officers.

  “Come on,” Luke said. “We’ve got to get off this train before they start searching it.”

  They ran down to the exit door, hauled it open, and stopped dead on the steps.

  On the platform, right in front of the door, were five soldiers in the field gray-green of the Wehrmacht, their rifles raised. A Gestapo officer stood beside them, his pistol leveled at Luke’s face.

  “Halt!” he yelled.

  They halted, frozen to the steps. Tommy was so close behind Luke that he could feel his breath on the back of his neck.

  Mueller appeared alongside the Gestapo man. His eyes were cold and still, like the air before a thunderstorm, and Luke could see that the storm was coming.

  “Where are the plans?” he barked. “What have you done with them?”

  “We destroyed them.” Luke kept his voice steady, despite the guns. “It’s over. The plans are gone.”

  “Stupid boys,” Mueller snarled. “I will simply return and print out a new set.”

  “You’ll find armed police waiting for you,” Luke said, knowing it was not true. Ms. Sheck had promised not to leave the cave.

  That shut Mueller up for a moment. His eyes—vicious, feral—twitched. Thinking. He said, “You drew those plans once from memory. You will do it again for us.”

  Luke’s world stood still. How could he have been so stupid? He did know those plans. He could easily draw them again, and threatened with torture, he doubted that he would be able to resist.

  If they had him, they had the atomic bomb.

  But without him, they had nothing. They needed him alive.

  “So shoot me,” he yelled. “Go ahead, fire!” They wouldn’t dare.

  Luke stepped backward up the steps, pushing Tommy back with him, slamming the metal door of the carriage in front of him.

  A shot rang out and glass sprayed all around them. He heard Mueller shouting from the platform, “Nicht schieβen! Nicht schieβen!”

  They ran back along the corridor, crouching low so they couldn’t be seen.

  One of the corridor windows had been shattered by the airplane attack, and Luke rushed at it. He slipped off a shoe and used it to smash away the remains of the broken glass on the bottom edge before climbing through and lowering himself to the tracks.

  On the other side of the train, the platform side, he could hear shouting.

  Tommy emerged from the window and fell onto him, knocking them both down just as boots sounded in the corridor.

  “Quick!” Luke said, and they crawled beneath the massive metal wheels of the carriage into the space underneath.

  Forward or backward? They had to move. Mueller’s men would quickly figure out what they had done.

  Luke chose forward, operating on that strange intuition that tells you the right thing to do even while your mind is still trying to work it out.

  They crawled beneath one, then another carriage, shielded from view by the height of the platform to their left.

  There was something different about the next carriage. It was cleaner. Luke could see a glimpse of the rear wall as they scuttled underneath the linking platform; it was polished and brass.

  It was the VIP carriage. The one reserved for officials of the Nazi party.

  Then it came to him.

  Three lines out of one of the books he had read in the library.

  One piece of information.

  A single fact.

  But it could save their lives.

  Luke risked a look over the edge of the linking platform. The attention was still on the other end of the train.

  “Follow me!” he said, and climbed up onto the linking platform between the carriages.

  The handle of the door appeared to be made of gold, and embossed in the glass window of the door was a large swastika. Luke grabbed the handle, opened the door, and stepped into the corridor.

  Tommy shut the door behind them. Again they kept low. As they got to each compartment, Luke popped his head up to see if it was occupied.

  The first three were not. The last one was.

  Luke stepped inside as the man in the compartment looked up, startled. He had a large notebook in one hand and a pen in the other, although he placed the pen down as they entered. He wore a dark brown civilian suit. Tommy closed the door, and Luke sank into the plush leather chair opposite the man.

  Tommy sat in the chair beside Luke.

  The man looked at the two boys without alarm. Luke glanced quickly at Tommy and said in English, “Helmut Fricke, three months from now in the Reich Chancellery in Berlin, you are going to attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler.”

  38. THE GOOD MAN

  Fricke’s expression did not change.

  “You are British,” he said in perfect, although accented, English.

  “From New Zealand,” Luke said, slowly unwrapping the bandages from around his head. No longer any need to pretend.

  Fricke smiled. “Young man, I think we are at war with your country. Should I be afraid?”

  Luke shook his head but said nothing.

  “Assassinate the Führer? In the chancellery?” he asked, and his eyes flicked once to the door. “Who would tell you such a thing about me?”

  “I read it in a book,” Luke said.

  “A book.” He tapped the end of his pen on his notepad. “A novel, of course. Or propaganda from the British or Americans.”

  “Neither,” Luke said. “It was a history book.” He gave that time to sink in, then continued. “In February, you and the man you work for, Albert Speer, will decide that the Führer is committing high treason against the German people. Perhaps you have decided that already.”

  “Hitler? High treason?” Fricke’s expression was not yet one of anger, but it was getting close.

  “Yes,” Luke continued. “You will see in the chancellery gardens a ventilation shaft that leads to Hitler’s bunker. You and Mr. Speer will ask a man named Stohl, or Stahl, I think—”

  “Dieter Stahl?”

  “Yes. You will ask him for some new nerve agent called Tabun, with the idea of somehow pouring it down the ventilation shaft. But he will tell you that it won’t work, and then armed guards will be placed on the shafts, which stops the whole idea.”

  “This is preposterous,” Fricke said, his voice raised, and turned toward the door of the compartment.

  “Don’t worry—Hitler will never learn of the plot,” Luke said.

  Fricke opened his mouth to call out.

  “Your son will grow up to be a highly respected scientist,” Luke said desperately, scratching for anything else he could remember from the books. “He will move to America and become one of the team that will land mankind on the moon.”

  Fricke closed his mouth abruptly.

  “Man on the moon?” he said, raising an eyebrow in clear disbelief.

  “It’s true,” Tommy said.

  “I don’t even have a son,” Fricke said.

  “Yes, you do!” Luke said. “It’s a recorded fact. He was born on …” His voice trailed off. “May eighth, 1945. The same day the war ended.”

  Crap! That was still months away. What else did he know about Helmut Fricke? He shut his eyes, visualizing the pages of the books he had read. But there was nothing that seemed to help.

  He opened his eyes again, expecting the worst, but he was surprised to see only a look of confusion on Fricke’s face.

  “A son,” Fricke said, a wisp of a smile playing at the corners of his mouth. “My wife is with child. The baby is expected in early May. But you could not know these things! We have told no one.” The anger in his voice was gone.<
br />
  Luke looked him in the eye and said, “You will survive the war. Afterward, you will be charged with war crimes but eventually cleared of any wrongdoing.”

  “I don’t know how you could imagine these things,” Fricke said.

  “I told you, I read them in a book.”

  “A history book? This book must have come from the future.”

  “Mr. Fricke,” Tommy said, “we have come from the future.”

  There was a knock on the door of the compartment, and a soldier slid the door open, peering suspiciously at the two boys.

  Luke held his breath and felt Tommy draw back on the seat beside him.

  “My nephews from Munich,” Fricke said. “They’re not the boys you are looking for.”

  The soldier left with a quick “Heil Hitler.”

  Fricke sat in deep thought, looking at them. He was a tall man, with blond hair and an air of authority in his speech and manner.

  Everything now depended on his believing this outrageous, incredible story. A story that even Luke himself was having trouble believing.

  But Fricke nodded and said after a while, almost to himself, “Das Vitruvian Projekt.”

  Luke’s jaw dropped.

  Tommy asked, “You know about the Vitruvian chamber?”

  Fricke said, “Only a little, and only because Herr Speer was asked to help design a magnetic shield wall for the chamber and sought my advice on some matters. All I really know is that something was found. Something very secret. Something very old. I heard it was in catacombs under a monastery in Florence. I believe we have agents scouring the world for some drawings, which are missing.”

  He thought for a moment longer, then said, “Imagine if I was to believe you. Imagine if I was to tell you that I have had discussions with Herr Stahl and Herr Speer along the lines you suggest and that nobody else could have known this. That would put me at great risk, especially if your story turns out to be a clever ruse by the Gestapo.”

  “It’s not,” Luke said.

  “And what you have not explained is what you are doing here, and why everyone is looking for you,” Fricke said.

  “A man named Erich Mueller used the Vitruvian Project”—Luke borrowed Fricke’s term for it—“to bring back plans from the future for a weapon so powerful that it will change the course of the war. We followed him here to try and stop him.”

  “And you want my help? But I am German—perhaps you noticed. Should I not hope that Germany would win the war?”

  “The weapon is an atomic bomb,” Tommy said. “One bomb can wipe out a city. It will be a disaster.”

  “The Americans already have the same weapon, and if Hitler has it, too, there will be a nuclear war,” Luke said. “It will be like the Blitz in London, only a hundred times worse. This will condemn millions of people to death, for nothing.”

  Fricke looked at Tommy, then back at Luke. “The ‘Blitz’? This is the German word for lightning. What do you mean by it? What is the Blitz in London?”

  Luke frowned. Surely Fricke knew about the Blitz. He said, “The bombing of London in 1940. It was known as the Blitz.”

  “The Blitz.” Fricke said it slowly. “A good word for a terrible tragedy. We have had the same kind of ‘Blitz’ in Berlin, and even worse in Cologne. Did you know?”

  Luke nodded.

  Fricke tapped his fingers on the seat beside him. “Does the Führer now have these plans?”

  “No, we destroyed them.”

  “Then the problem has gone, yes?”

  “Not quite,” Luke said. “There is one more copy of the plans.” He tapped his head. “In here.”

  For some reason, sitting down with Helmut Fricke, calmly discussing the situation instead of running and hiding and dodging bullets and the Gestapo, brought the reality crashing down on Luke with a thump, and he paled.

  Fricke said, “Are you all right?”

  “I’m okay,” Luke said. “But it just kind of hit home that if Mueller and your Führer get hold of me, then …” He trailed off, unable to bring himself to say what had to be said next.

  Fricke waited, and Tommy stared at him with concern.

  Luke looked at Tommy, right into the eyes of his best mate in the world, and said, “If we can’t get back to the chamber, if we can’t escape from Mueller, then I have to die. And you may have to do it.”

  “No way, dude. That’s crazy,” Tommy said.

  “Is it?” Luke asked. “If I live, and they catch me, then I will be responsible for a nuclear holocaust. That can’t be allowed to happen.”

  “What is it that you would like me to do?” Fricke asked. “Assuming that I believe you.”

  “My only chance—our only chance—is to get back to Berchtesgaden,” Luke said. “Back to the bunker and the Vitruvian chamber.”

  “Back home. Back to …?”

  “The twenty-first century,” Luke said.

  He whistled softly. “A new millennium. A different world, I think.”

  “Very,” Tommy agreed.

  Fricke looked from one of them to the other, undecided.

  He said, “You found my name in a history book.”

  “Yes,” Luke said.

  “History. How will it remember me?”

  “As one of the few who stood up to Hitler,” Luke said. “As a good man.”

  Fricke nodded and seemed to sit up a little straighter in his chair.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Herein bitte,” he called, and a young officer entered.

  His eyes flicked over them and settled back on Fricke.

  “Herr Mueller möchte Sie sprechen,” he said.

  Luke didn’t need to speak German to catch the name Mueller.

  “Ja, er soll reinkommen,” Fricke replied, and when the door closed, he said, “Perhaps you boys might like to make yourselves invisible for a moment.” He indicated a small door to one side of the compartment. Luke opened it to find a closet, just large enough for him and Tommy. It was empty except for Fricke’s overcoat. They scrambled inside, Luke thinking clearly enough to snatch up the discarded bandages as he did so.

  A moment later there was another knock. The officer was back. They heard Mueller’s voice as well.

  Fricke did not invite him to sit.

  Fricke and Mueller spoke in German, but Tommy translated it for Luke, whispering into his ear as the men talked. Mueller was telling Fricke a cock-and-bull story about Luke and Tommy being British spies, trained to infiltrate Germany, as they wouldn’t be suspected because of their age.

  Fricke said he had not seen them.

  Mueller apologized for the inconvenience and for the delay while the train was being searched.

  Fricke accepted his apology, then said, “Perhaps it is for the best. After the blitz last night in Berlin, I am not in such a hurry to return.”

  “It was terrible,” Mueller agreed. “The British are indiscriminate with their bombing.”

  “It is true,” Fricke said, then continued in a different tone. “You were not injured earlier, when the train was strafed?”

  “Fortunately not,” Mueller said. “And you and your men?”

  “This carriage is armored,” Fricke said. “But I fear the strafing is my fault. This carriage is a magnet for enemy aircraft.”

  “The tunnel was a stroke of fortune, then.”

  “Indeed.”

  “I must now return to Berchtesgaden,” Mueller said.

  Inside the closet, Luke froze. Mueller’s heading back to Berchtesgaden could mean only one thing. He was planning to go back through the time chamber to get another set of the plans. Ms. Sheck would be there, waiting, as Luke had insisted.

  And Mueller would let nothing stand in his way.

  “So soon?” Fricke asked.

  “Yes. Some important business has come up. I would be honored if you would allow me to use your carriage.”

  Don’t let him! Luke willed Fricke to say no.

  “My apologies, Herr Mueller, b
ut I am not permitted to let anyone use the carriage,” Fricke said.

  “I understand, Herr Fricke, but perhaps this will persuade you.”

  Even without seeing it, Luke could guess what Mueller was showing Fricke. His Werewolf identity card. Powerful magic.

  “I did not realize, and I wish I could oblige. However, I myself do not have the authority to—”

  “Herr Fricke, need I remind you that the Führer himself said that Werewolves are to be afforded every assistance?”

  “Yes, but—”

  Fricke was trying his best not to let Mueller use his compartment with Luke and Tommy stuck in the closet. But clearly he was not going to win.

  “Every assistance. Perhaps we should telephone Herr Speer for authority.”

  “There is no need. I will get my coat,” Fricke said.

  The door to the closet opened, just enough for Fricke to retrieve his overcoat. He mouthed Sorry before shutting the door again.

  The closet was barely big enough for the two of them, and Luke was very conscious that the slightest noise would lead to their discovery. He couldn’t imagine how they were going to remain hidden for the whole journey back to Berchtesgaden.

  A few minutes after Fricke left, there was a knock on the door and Luke heard Jumbo’s and Mumbo’s voices as they entered the compartment. He prayed that none of them would decide to check the closet.

  It took at least half an hour before the searchers decided that the two hunted boys were not on the train, and released it for its return trip to Berchtesgaden.

  There was some movement after a while, and Luke guessed that they were removing some of the more damaged carriages and replacing them with new ones. He and Tommy braced themselves against the sides of the closet as best they could. It would be a disaster if the train jolted suddenly and they burst out of the closet door right under the nose of their hunters.

  Eventually, the train began to move and gather speed. It was a curse and a blessing. A curse because the rocking meant constantly bracing themselves this way and that. After just ten minutes, Luke’s arms and legs were aching. But it was a blessing because the noise of the train covered any small sounds they made.