Anton laughed. “And who would believe her? First, she’s probably dead and isn’t going to testify against anyone. Even if she still lives, I’ve been told that most women who have been assaulted don’t want to testify against those who attacked them. By the way, Father, how was she?”
Gustav laughed harshly. “Inert and as passionate as a large piece of meat. You didn’t miss much.”
“But it nearly cost me my manhood to find that out. Thank God things are back in working order. But let’s get back to the point. We have to get out of here. Just about everyone I talk to is saying they’ll make their way to Central or South America. There are rumors that Goebbels has sent his family across the border to safety.”
“Not all of them. His wife is still in Bregenz. Or at least she was as of this morning.”
Gudrun spoke up. “He’s right. If we stay, we either get killed or are jailed. If we flee, we might find some form of freedom where we can start over.”
Gustav sagged. He looked at the Panzerfaust that was resting against a wall. How futile it all now seemed. “I’m too old to start over and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in jail. Or be hanged,” he said bitterly. “Anton, Gudrun, I saw the light a long time ago. Why the devil did Hitler have to invade Russia or declare war on the United States? It was madness. Who was advising him? I do not blame Hitler directly. He had to have been told that he would win. Why didn’t he simply wait a few years before taking on either nation?”
“Does that mean you will try to figure a way out of this mess? Why don’t we all flee to Switzerland?” asked Anton.
“Because,” Gustav answered, “the bastard Swiss are playing both ends against the middle. There already have been a number of attempts to cross and they have all been turned back or the people given over to Hahn and the SS. No, now is not the time to try that.”
“I understand,” said Anton, “but you will plan for it, won’t you?”
“Yes, and by the way, what does your sister think about this?”
Anton laughed. “My precious little sister is too busy screwing her brains out with that Hans Gruber boy who thinks he’s a Werewolf.”
CHAPTER 17
Brigadier General John Broome returned Tanner’s salute and waved him to a chair. “Get some coffee and have a seat. Close the door while you’re at it.”
Tanner was apprehensive. This was the first time he had had anything other than perfunctory greetings. He thought he’d done a good job for the late General Evans, but who knew what Broome might want out of him?
Tanner passed on the coffee and the general got quickly to the point. “Captain, when you first arrived and General Evans set your group up as a quasi-independent unit, I admit that I was less than thrilled. It was his prerogative, of course, but it was unusual and that offended my very orderly military mind. When I took over, I gave thought to bringing you more under the traditional structure. That would not have been a criticism. You’ve done well.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“You know what they say—if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. Well, what we have here ain’t broke. I have no intentions of doing anything that would disrupt a well-running headquarters, especially with the end of the war so close, and, God, I do hope it is close. Ergo, there is no reason for a new Broome to sweep clean,” he said, laughing at his own joke. Tanner winced.
“We all hope so, sir.”
“You planning on staying in?”
“No, sir.”
“Which brings up another point. This man’s army is being emasculated by this very confusing point system that lets our best men get discharged. Experienced and qualified soldiers are being sent home and replaced by troops who don’t know how to wipe their own asses. It’s a helluva way to win a war. And the Krauts know all about it, don’t they?”
“Yes, sir. Some of the men we’ve captured were openly hoping that our army would fall apart as a result. I’ve got to admit that some of the men we’ve gotten as replacements are pretty bad.”
“Like that Oster fellow? That poor puppy shouldn’t have been in any man’s army. His draft board should all have been drafted and sent to work cleaning latrines with their teeth. I know that the point system is supposed to build morale by showing that there was an end to this long and winding road. Instead, it’s helped make the troops we have pull back and not go into combat with the efficiency and aggressiveness they used to have. I’m sure you know how many points you have.”
“Of course, sir, but they keep changing the rules. I’ll get out when they open the door and tell me to leave and go back to teaching college kids.”
“The way things are shaping up, you might have a lot of customers. I understand Truman and Marshall are thinking of having the government pay for veterans’ tuition under some kind of plan. It’s a good idea if you ask me and it will mean millions of our men and women getting an education rather than going out and looking for jobs that don’t exist. That’s what happened when the last war ended and it helped cause the Great Depression.” Broome shook his head. “Enough of a lecture from me. Get out of here and take your young lady someplace nice, if you can find one.”
Tanner was surprised that the general knew about Lena. “I guess there are no secrets in this man’s army, sir.”
“None whatsoever, Captain. It’s worse than a small town full of old ladies.”
* * *
He was only in his mid-forties but looked and felt decades older. His once decent suit and shoes were dirty and tattered and he was hungry. It was a far cry from the position of power and respect he’d held in Berlin only a few months earlier. Now, he was a fugitive and he wanted to stop running. There was, however, no place to hide. Hitler was dead and Germany was devastated. American soldiers were everywhere and didn’t even bother to glance at him with anything more than contempt.
He was in what had once been the proud city of Bonn. Now it was a ruin. It was time to stop running. His only choice was to give up.
He strode up to an American sergeant who was just standing around and taking in the desolation. “Excuse me, but can you direct me to your military intelligence?”
The sergeant laughed. “Ain’t no such thing, Mister.”
He caught the joke and smiled. “Then how about your military police?”
He was given directions to, no surprise, a former city police station. Inside, a bored MP corporal looked him over. “What can I do for you?”
He drew himself up to attention. “I would like to speak to your commanding officer. I think he will find that it is important.”
A couple of moments later, a stocky major appeared. He was not pleased at being interrupted. “So what am I going to find so important?”
“I believe you have lists of important people who have not yet been apprehended. I think it is very likely I am on those lists. I would also like to be put in touch with one of the local Alsos teams.”
The major blinked. He had orders to cooperate fully with the Alsos teams. There was one only a couple of miles away, scrounging through the ruins of some scientific facility.
The major was much friendlier now. “Who shall I say wishes to speak with them?”
“My name is Werner Heisenberg and I am a scientist, a physicist.”
* * *
“I see water.”
“Not yet,” Hummel said gently to the still confused Schubert. Every day, Schubert seemed to be getting better, if only so slightly. The bombings had not abated, but they no longer appeared to bother the mentally unbalanced man. Nor had any of them struck as closely as the one that had damaged Schubert’s mind and nearly killed them both. Hummel wondered if his friend’s periods of lucidity were because he was already at the bottom of his mind and could fall no farther.
Their trek from Innsbruck had to be almost over. Lieutenant Pfister kept telling them that Lake Constance should be visible just over the next hill, or the next one. Someday he’d be right. Someday the world would end, too, and someday pigs would fly, tho
ught Hummel.
Their journey had been agony. They’d traveled by night and hidden as best they could during the day. It hadn’t taken long for the Americans to figure out where the troops withdrawing from the Innsbruck area were headed. The long columns of German soldiers had been bombed incessantly, leaving bloody and smoldering clumps of carnage along the trail.
American bombers dropped their loads from on high with little apparent regard for the existence of actual targets. The Americans understood that the Germans were hiding during the day and moving west at night. Thus, anything that looked like it could hide troops, like a forest, was bombed with explosives and napalm.
During the day, American fighter-bombers followed the trail that would lead to the lake or Bregenz. The attacks were incessant. American planes circled like hawks looking for mice. “And we’re the mice,” Pfister commented where only Hummel could hear.
There had been little food for the men and their clothes were rags. Their shoes and boots were falling off. Pfister had wondered if this was what it had been like when Napoleon’s men had retreated from Moscow or when the Germans had retreated from everywhere in the Soviet Union. At least it wasn’t snowing and icy, they decided, and gave sardonic thanks for small favors. And thanks to the mountain runoffs, clean, fresh water was not an issue.
The sound of a car horn blaring jarred them out of their exhausted reveries. They quickly moved off the road as a large Mercedes sedan bore down on them, going at a high rate of speed over the narrow dirt road.
“The driver’s insane,” said Pfister as they moved farther off the road and into a stand of trees.
“In more ways than one,” said Hummel. “There must be a score of Yank planes looking at the cloud of dust the car is churning up. The fool is just asking to be killed.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have much choice, Hummel. Maybe the poor driver has been ordered to drive that way by someone who outranks him. In which case, it’s the man or men in the back seat who are to blame. I will bet you that the driver is crapping his pants and looking up at the skies.”
Hummel agreed. The car was only a couple hundred yards ahead of them when a bird of prey, an American P51, shrieked down from the skies and strafed the car. The driver must have sensed his danger because he began swerving wildly and trying to escape.
The driver evaded the fighter’s first pass and stopped the car. He jumped out and ran into the woods. The occupants of the back seat were halfway out when a second American P51’s bullets minced the vehicle. It exploded and a ball of flame rose into the sky.
“If the driver has any sense at all he will lie low for a while,” said Pfister. The driver did. They waited a number of minutes. The Yanks again flew over, looking to see if anyone had either survived or come out into the open.
When they thought it was safe, Pfister yelled for the driver to come to them if he was able. He was. A few minutes later, a thoroughly shaken middle-aged corporal made it to them and collapsed. They gave him some of their water and a cigarette. He identified himself as Herman Farbmann, and said that he had been driving for General Lothar Rendulic, commander of all forces east of Innsbruck and titular second in command of all German forces in Germanica.
Pfister looked at Hummel who nodded. “I’ll take a look, Lieutenant. Just watch the skies for me.”
The car was still smoldering. Two bodies lay half out of it. One was a badly burned man in the remnants of a uniform and the other was naked and charred and might have been a woman. A few rags of bright cloth fluttered near her now sexless body. There was also a scorched leather briefcase, which Hummel took. In the event it contained anything important, it could not be kept by the side of the road.
“Yes, it was General Rendulic,” Farbmann said later as he sipped some brandy they’d found on another body earlier that day. “The fool said we had to wait for his mistress to get ready and the lazy self-centered bitch was impossible to get going. Her idea of getting up early was launching her ass out of bed about noon. I would have left her, but the general worshipped her. I urged the general to hurry, that the Americans had planes overhead watching all the time, but he laughed at me and said I was a coward. I guess he wanted to show the woman just how brave a German general was. Are you impressed by his bravery, Lieutenant? I’m certainly not.”
Pfister stood. He kept the briefcase. It was locked and he didn’t open it. If it contained secrets, he didn’t want to see them. “I think we should begin marching west again. At any rate, we should get away from this site. The Yanks are likely to come visiting again. We’re not that far from Bregenz or Lake Constance. Are you joining us, Corporal?”
“I’m honored, sir. Just curious, though. How far away is Bregenz?”
Pfister smiled engagingly. “Why, Corporal, it’s just over the next hill.”
* * *
Josef Goebbels shook his head sadly. It had been confirmed. Lothar Rendulic had been killed, murdered by American assassins. They would not keep it a secret. Too many people already knew about it. It was ironic that Rendulic was an Austrian and not a proper German. That point, however, was a small one. What to do with his portion of the army was the real question.
Field Marshal Schoerner sat across the room from Goebbels. Since they were in a cave there were no windows and Goebbels had the feeling that he was in a prison cell. Would this be his life if the Americans got their hands on him? That could not happen. He would rather die. He already had a cyanide pill in his pocket and was not afraid to use it. Now that the children were safe, he could concentrate on his own fate and that of Magda. In his opinion, she could bloody well do whatever she wished with her life. Whatever fondness he’d once felt for her was gone and not likely to return.
Schoerner removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Minister, I do not think it is necessary that we do much of anything about the army’s reorganization. So much of Rendulic’s forces had been turncoat Russians and Croats and so much had been whittled down by the fighting for Innsbruck that there really aren’t that many purely German units left. Once again, they are mere remnants. I propose getting them as close to Bregenz as possible and constituting them as a rear guard with General Warlimont in command.”
“All right,” Goebbels said softly. “We’re slowly being strangled. What I once said about preserving the seeds of Nazism is turning out to be terribly wrong. We’ve lost a third of our army, which was already vastly outnumbered in the first place, and much of the territory that we so confidently called Germanica.”
“But what we have left will be easier to defend.”
Goebbels stood and began to pace, quickly aware that the office was so small that he had no room to maneuver. Just like his army, he thought wryly, hemmed in by Jewish-dominated Americans who wanted to destroy him. At least the children were safe and Magda would soon be leaving for Bregenz, but not for the compound she and the children had recently occupied and had now been taken over by the Americans. He had initially been furious when he realized he’d been talking to an American spy at the family quarters in Arbon but later saw the humor in it.
His mind had wandered and he belatedly realized that Schoerner had been talking about tanks. “Repeat that, please,” Goebbels said.
“I was saying that the compressed Germanica will be easier to defend. I have already given orders to those remaining armored units to pull back and form a mobile defense force in Bregenz. Sadly, there are only about fifty tanks left. The idea of using them in fixed fortifications has proven to be a disaster. These remaining few would have to be thoroughly hidden.” Goebbels understood the logic. Perhaps, just perhaps, they could emerge and smash an overconfident American attack, thus buying the Reich some more time.
But time for what? Dr. Esau had insisted that his atom bomb would be ready shortly. Would that change matters? The Americans had proven that they had at least two bombs while Esau insisted that the best he could do was manufacture one. Goebbels believed the man. They would have to use their one bomb wisely.
G
oebbels shook his head. Germany stood alone. A devastated and thoroughly cowed Japan lay prostrate and ready to be crushed by an American heel. Nor did Germany have any defenses against America’s overwhelming air power. The Americans were destroying antiaircraft batteries in a manner that defied logic. His engineers said they had developed some way of using their radar to figure out the source of an antiaircraft gun and killing it. They tried to explain the science to him, but he couldn’t comprehend it. All he understood was that his hopes for the future were being destroyed. The Americans were gathering strength for an all-out push that would end all dreams of survival.
“Tell me, Field Marshal: are people angry or jealous that my wife and children will be safe?”
“They are. While there aren’t many families here in the Redoubt, there are some. May I suggest that you arrange with our Swiss friends to let them cross the border?”
“Are you suggesting that women and children should leave the sinking ship first?”
“I am.”
Goebbels pondered for only a moment. If nothing else it would get rid of a number of “useless mouths” who ate food and took up places in shelters. “And what do you suggest we do about our captive workers?”
Schoerner grimaced and shrugged. “It almost doesn’t matter. There are only a few thousand of them remaining. Most have died while working and others have been executed by the SS. If we attempt to execute them all, it is unlikely that our soldiers will comply. They do not want to be labeled as war criminals any more than anyone else does. If we leave them to starve, there is the very real chance that they will escape and either fight for the Yanks or at least provide assistance to them. Again, when the Americans come, anyone who imprisoned them could be accused of war crimes.”
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