It was getting late, which meant that Stalin would soon arrive at the Little Corner to begin work. He lived nocturnally, and had done so for years. It didn't bother Beria. As a secret policeman, he preferred the darkness. He considered opening his flexipad and doing some file work, but neither he nor Malenkov had moved since they'd arrived, and it seemed as if to do so now would be to give away an important advantage. So Lavrenty Beria sat in the funereal waiting room, with its shoulder-high dark wood panels, its polished floors and dreary drapes, its worn red and green carpets and, of course, its guardian, the unchanging Poskrebyshev, sitting at his immaculate desk, scratching at papers with his fountain pen.
Beria wondered if it was significant that Stalin's secretary did not have a flexipad. They were precious instruments, rare and valued, not just for their near magical powers, but for the status they conferred on those chosen few who were authorized to possess them.
Stalin had three, but he almost never used them. He still carried his most important documents around wrapped up in newspaper, and filled his pockets with scraps of paper covered in crayon scrawl-everything from the number of T-34s produced last month to the latest results of the never-ending search for traitors, and they pored through the enormous library of the British warship.
At last, Stalin appeared and bade them both enter his sanctum. The Soviet leader's office was a long, rectangular space, lined with heavy drapes but well ventilated, which it had to be because of the ornate Russian stoves that lined the walls. As winter closed in, the Vozhd was often found leaning up against one of the heaters, trying to unknot the muscles of his aching legs. For now, however, he strode right past them, making for the huge desk in the far right corner. Beria slid in behind him like a python. Malenkov, who was cursed with a pair of breeding hips like some enormous Georgian baba, waddled along like a goose, trying to keep up.
"You tested Khrushchev?" Stalin asked without preemption. "He confessed?"
Beria knew the question was directed at him. "Another miracle, comrade. He would have signed a statement saying he was Hitler's mistress, if I'd asked. And we were right to imagine that the drug protected him from feeling even the harshest interrogation. Again, I believe I could have shot him in the genitals and he would not have flinched. At least not much."
Stalin turned his flat, Asiatic glare on Beria. "A pity we did not discover this earlier. When we still had some of them to question."
Malenkov grinned maliciously, but Beria was ready for the attack.
"We still have the woman. She is being transferred to a special hospital where her 'inserts' will be removed."
"And she will survive?"
"I hope so."
"Make sure she does," growled Stalin, "or I will allow Malenkov here to fulfill his destiny. At least as it relates to you."
Malenkov did not react for a full second, standing as he was, as still as a corpse. Then, just like a reanimated dead man, he brought up his little notebook and jotted down an entry in Comrade Stalin's Instructions before closing it just as slowly.
Stalin managed a lopsided grin at the charade.
Beria fumed silently to himself. Your time will come, Melanya…
5
DEMIDENKO CENTRE, UKRAINE
It was revealing to see how well the SS and the NKVD worked together. Colonel Paul Brasch supposed he should not be surprised. They were cut from the same cloth. But still, four months earlier, you could not have found more implacable enemies. The hatred had been visceral, as though each existed simply to pursue the annihilation of the other.
Now, as he passed through the increasingly stringent subterranean checkpoints on his way to the mission control center, he was vetted by combined teams of German and Soviet security men. It wasn't that they were friendly with one another. He knew that under different circumstances, each would draw his weapon and gun down his opposite number without a second thought. But having served in the vast slaughterhouse of the Eastern Front, and having seen the inhuman cruelty of that conflict up close, he was amazed at the passionless and efficient way in which the machinery of the two states could knit together so quickly. The Fuhrerprinzip in action, or whatever they called it in Russia.
The unfinished complex was being hastily constructed with a massive workforce of slave labor. Again, the SS and the NKVD had cooperated well, each organization providing hundreds of thousands of bodies from their networks of prison camps. Both the scale of the project and the speed with which it had progressed impressed Brasch, an engineer with professional qualms about using slave labor for any kind of skilled work. Whatever his own misgivings, he had to admit that the twenty square miles of half-built factories, proving grounds, test labs, and barracks that made up the Demidenko Center were a marvel. It was as though Satan himself had passed a hand over the barren earth and simply conjured it up.
"We must hurry, Herr Colonel, or we will miss the rocket launch."
Brasch smiled inwardly. His current SS shadow, Untersturmfuhrer Gelder, was every bit as humorless and constipated on matters of military formality as his last minder, Herr Steckel, had been. However, he displayed none of Steckel's awe concerning the Iron Cross that Brasch had won at the front, perhaps because Gelder carried his own scars and medals from that same nightmare, and was not so easily impressed.
They picked up their pace, the fall of their boot heels echoing down the long cinder-block corridor. The paint on the walls was still so fresh that Brasch thought it was probably wet. The work crews had not completed the job, an indication of how rushed everything had been. About two hundred meters from the solid steel door that led into the control room, the paint job ended abruptly, revealing naked concrete blocks. Brasch could see bloody handprints on some of them.
Four guards stood at the doorway: two Germans, two Soviets. The latter had the primitive features of Mongols, causing Brasch an uncomfortable, momentary flashback. He had been all but overrun by a human wave of such men near Belgorod. Pins and needles ran up his back and neck as they checked his pass.
He noted with some amusement that two pink spots of high color had come out on Gelder's Aryan features at having to submit to inspection by the subhumans.
"What a world we live in these days, eh, Gelder?" he said, smiling conspiratorially.
The SS lieutenant took Brasch's comment as an indication of sympathy and shook his head. "Best not to speak of it," he cautioned, nodding at the Communist pair.
The check complete, the senior SS guard, a slab-shouldered Unterscharfuhrer, or sergeant, clicked his jackboots together and snapped out a Nazi salute. Brasch's reply was as enthusiastic as Gelder's, although for a very different reason. He was merely enjoying the discomfort that appeared now on the faces of the Mongol warriors. You have to take your fun where you can find it in the Demidenko Center, he mused.
The sergeant spun a large iron wheel mounted at the center of the blast door, reminding Brasch of the hatches on the submarine that had brought him back from Hashirajima. The two officers stepped through into a much shorter concrete passageway, also unpainted, which veered off at right angles after a few meters. They could hear the voices of the technicians bouncing off bare walls. The door closed behind them with a solid crash, and they continued on without delay, marching through a series of switchbacks before emerging into the main chamber of the blockhouse.
They were in a large room staffed by nearly fifty men and even a few women. All of the females were Soviet scientists. The German rocket program was not such an equal-opportunity employer. The bustle and excitement, the lack of interest in their arrival, and the countdown that appeared on a large alphanumeric clock all pointed to an imminent launch.
Brasch watched Gelder stiffen noticeably as he caught sight of the official party that stood in the far corner of the room. Three NKVD generals and a handful of SS officers were gathered around the diminutive figure of Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler. Even Brasch tightened up somewhat. Before the Emergence, Himmler had been an almost mythical figure. With the te
rrible purges of the last few months, that aura had grown even more powerful. Indeed, he was the fuhrer's most frightening weapon: a one-man Vergeltungswaffe, protecting Hitler from those thousands of enemies who had been unmasked through information contained within the files of the future-ships.
Since June, it had seemed as though every night was given over to the Long Knives, as the SS raked at the heart of the Third Reich to see what treachery might be hidden there. For a while, Brasch had even stopped worrying about his son. Having been born with a cleft palate, little Manny was almost certain to go into a camp. But Himmler's minions were so busy purging the State of traitors such as Rommel and Canaris that for just a few weeks it seemed as though the pressure was eased on less significant "undesirables." Nearly a month had gone by without Gelder inquiring as to Manny's health.
But then, a fortnight ago, he had brought it up again. Brasch had responded noncommittally, knowing that the SS was, for the moment, content to simply remind him of his vulnerability. But that night he had not slept, as he was tormented by waking visions of his son choking to death on Zyklon B.
Seeing Himmler now, he was tempted by a rush of madness to draw his Luger and kill the man. Of course, that would condemn his entire family. So he forced himself to assume a neutral expression, the face of the perfect functionary. But while he threaded through the banks of control panels to join the delegation of high-ranking officers, a small part of his mind worked furiously, as it had been ever since he'd read about the Holocaust in the Fleetnet archive on the Sutanto.
It had been a long, unpleasant trip for the Reichsfuhrer, clanking through Poland and into the Ukraine. The rail line carried them only as far as Sobibor before they had to transfer to an armored convoy. The cease-fire was holding, but the war had ravaged this part of the world, and bandits were everywhere. Plus, one could not be entirely certain of the Wehrmacht nowadays. Two outright mutinies had already been put down, and Heinrich Himmler was certain that they were acute eruptions of a deeper, chronic malaise. Treachery was everywhere.
His current duplicity was of no consequence. The Bolsheviks were not comrades. The arrangements with them were a fleeting matter, to be put aside after the Reich had dealt with the disruptions caused by this accursed Emergence. Unlike the Nipponese, Germany had not suffered directly from the appearance of the Wunderwaffen in the Pacific, but the implications of their arrival-well, that was entirely different. The revelations they had occasioned necessitated the boldest of gambits and the most ruthless winnowing out of criminal elements within the state.
An image of Field Marshal Witzleben thrashing about like a dumb beast on a meat hook arose unbidden before the Reichsfuhrer's eyes. The former commander of Army West was one of more than twenty thousand conspirators who had been dispatched, but he was one of the few whose demise Himmler had personally observed. It was necessary work, but quite upsetting, and he had left the scene of the execution shaking and white.
He had authorized two weeks' leave for all members of the Einsatzgruppen who were personally involved in the countersubversion operations. Unfortunately, the pace of their work was such that nobody had managed to take as much as one hour's break since their vital mission began with the translation of the so-called Web files.
A PA system announced the ten-minute countdown in both German and Russian.
Himmler noticed the arrival of Brasch and his SS chaperone. While many had been sucked down in the recent turbulence, others had flourished, and Brasch was one of them. The fuhrer had personally promoted him to the rank of Oberst, thanking the engineer for his work in the Orient. Himmler, however, wasn't so sure of the man. The murder of Steckel remained unsolved and unsettling, but then Brasch could hardly be blamed for that. He'd been hundreds of miles away in Hashirajima when the intelligence officer was killed. And as a lieutenant in the Ausland-SD, Steckel had doubtless accumulated many foes. That circle of perverts from the Foreign Ministry were much more likely to have been responsible.
Still, Brasch had enjoyed unrestricted access to the historical documents for many weeks. It gave one pause to imagine how he might have been affected by them.
"Reichsfuhrer!" Both men snapped out perfect salutes.
Himmler nodded at their arrival and flicked back a restrained salute. The NKVD generals remained impassive. The junior officers shuffled around to allow them to join the circle.
Himmler put his doubts about Brasch to one side. The man had been more than effective in carrying out the special tasks they had assigned him here, and Gelder, one of Himmler's better lieutenants, had found nothing ill to report of him, as yet.
The Demidenko operation was proceeding in excellent order.
"I am hopeful that your test will prove to be successful, Herr Oberst," said Himmler.
Brasch, to his credit, did not blanch at being directly addressed by the head of the SS. Nor did he dissemble. "We all hope for success, sir. But as I'm sure you know, I cannot guarantee it. The rockets and technical data we took off the Sutanto and her sister ship in New Guinea have been most helpful. The computers are like magic boxes. Even so, I don't anticipate a perfect trial. But we shall see."
Silence fell over the group, and the Germans waited on Himmler's response. When he acknowledged Brasch's short speech with a curt nod, they all relaxed slightly. The Soviets did not.
"We are more than hopeful of success, Colonel Brasch," said Orlov, the senior Russian general, in his heavily accented German. "Much effort has been poured into this project. We are not a rich country, and every kopeck spent here is lost to the reconstruction and repair necessitated by the aggression of your own."
"That is your problem, General." Brasch shrugged.
The Bolshevik flared at the insult, and Himmler found himself in the unfamiliar role of peacemaker. "Orlov, this project is a concrete symbol of our cooperation against the common enemy. We do not need to rake over scorched earth. Colonel Brasch, you will apologize."
"Of course," said Brasch with easy equanimity. "I am sorry, Herr General. In the drive to complete our work, I forget myself."
The PA announced, "Launch minus five."
The Soviets seemed mollified, and Brasch remained completely unruffled. Himmler found himself privately amused at the engineer's cheek. Nobody was happy with this new rapprochement, but needs must out when the devil drives. And the fuhrer's plans were most definitely being driven by the devilish complications of the Emergence.
Himmler polished the lens of the specially tinted goggles they'd given him and turned to the foot-thick blast window. The striking sight of the prototype V-2 rocket, poised on its launchpad, was heavily distorted through the armored glass, but he preferred to watch the test as it happened rather than on the even fuzzier televiewing screen in the control room.
In truth, Brasch knew what would happen long before it transpired. The missile stood forty-eight feet high and measured five and a half feet in diameter. It weighed thirteen tons, most of which was liquid alcohol and liquid oxygen, to provide thrust to the 600,000-horsepower rocket engine. It was designed to carry a ton of high explosives, but did not do so for today's test. Theoretically it could reach a speed of 3,500 miles per hour, with a ceiling of 116 miles. Unlike the aborted V-1, a fast fighter could not intercept it.
All of which was irrelevant. This missile was never meant to fly.
As the metallic voice of the PA counted down toward zero, Brasch felt his heartbeat quicken. He had to will himself not to flinch. Himmler had retreated behind the tinted goggles. The Russians, in their excitement, had forgotten to put theirs on.
Stillness descended on the control room.
"… five, four, three, two, one… ignition."
Even through the concrete walls and thick blast window, they could hear the roar of the engine. The wavy, green tinted armor glass distorted the view, but Brasch fancied that he could see the fatal tilt within a second of the giant lance taking off. Smoke and flame blasted away from the gantry at high speed. The missile shuddered and lur
ched skyward, and the small boy within him ached for it to keep going.
But it didn't. He had sabotaged the launch most effectively, and the room filled with intense yellow light as the V-2 tipped over, sending a long spear of superheated exhaust in their direction. Now he flinched, like everyone else, as the flames seemed to lick at the window. A gigantic, muffled explosion sounded as nine tons of rocket fuel detonated a few hundred meters away. Some of the technicians cursed; some cried out in panic. He heard somebody swearing in German and, from the tone, somebody doing the same thing in Russian.
After a few seconds, the thunder subsided and everyone unclenched themselves. There was never any chance of the bunker being breached. Orlov and his men looked shaken. Himmler was paler and more thin-lipped than usual. He turned on Brasch with an evil look. "Well, Herr Oberst?"
"An initial failure," he replied flatly. "As I said, it was always a possibility. We know that the original tests, as documented in the computer records, were also problematic."
"But we are supposed to have learned from those mistakes," hissed the Reichsfuhrer. "The Soviets are not the only ones spending vast sums of money out here, Brasch. The Reich is engaged in a death struggle with the democracies, and we cannot afford this sort of thing."
Brasch could tell that the NKVD men, in spite of their shock at the explosion, were enjoying the spectacle of their exchange, though it meant nothing to him.
"I shall prepare a report on the failure by the end of the day, Reichsfuhrer."
It seemed as if every pair of eyes in the room was on them. A siren sounded very faintly from outside as fire trucks rushed to the pad.
"See to it that you do, Herr Oberst, and I shall wish to discuss this in private… later," he added ominously, before dismissing them both with a flick of the hand.
"An unfortunate accident," Gelder muttered as they slunk out of the blockhouse.
Brasch sighed with exasperation. "It is science, my friend. Trial and error. We are years ahead of schedule, but this is not a magic wand," said Brasch, waving his flexipad. "There will be more days like this one-believe me."
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