‘What do you want?’ she asked coldly. Startled, he stopped in front of her, looked down at her, then glanced at the sofa opposite. ‘Can I sit down?’
‘Are you planning to stay long?’
‘No. I have a taxi waiting.’
‘Then you can sit down.’
He hadn't expected a warm welcome, but her coldness was truly shocking. He sat on the sofa and smiled at her, hoping to warm her.
‘What do you want here?’ she asked him, clearly not warmed at all.
‘I’m being posted out of Berlin, he said, ‘and I don’t know when I’ll be coming back. I came to say goodbye. I also came because I was worried about you and the children.’
‘Were you, indeed?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of the air raids, for a start.’
‘They’ve been bombing Berlin for a long time and you didn’t worry before.’
‘I did. It was you who left me. You do remember that, don’t you?’
‘Yes, Ernst, I remember. And I also remember why. It was because I found out about your whoring and so turned to another man. A good man, Ernst, a very good man, whom you sent to Russia.’
‘At the insistence of the Reichsführer,’ Ernst lied. ‘He thought it best you were parted.’
‘Damn the Reichsführer! And damn you for being a liar! Eberhard wasn’t sent to Russia on the word of Heinrich Himmler. It was you, Ernst, who came up with that idea. You. You alone. You had him sent to Russia because you knew he probably wouldn’t survive – and I haven’t received word from him since the Russians captured our troops. Either he’s dead or he’s rotting in a Russian prison camp. Either way, I won’t see him again. You’re a bastard! I hate you!’
She turned away from him, picked up a packet of cigarettes, tipped one out into her hand, then reached for the matches.
‘You’re exaggerating the whole affair,’ Ernst said, though he knew that she wasn’t.
‘Please leave,’ she responded, then struck a match, lit her cigarette, and exhaled a thin, nervous stream of smoke from shivering lips.
‘No matter what you think of me,’ Ernst said, struck by her beauty, cut by her vehemence, ‘I’m seriously worried about you and the children. You’ve survived the air raids so far, but they’re going to get worse, and sooner or later either the Soviets or the Allies, maybe both, will march into Berlin. What happens then...’ He tried to put it into words, but could find none, so just shrugged. ‘I simply don’t know.’
Ingrid blew a cloud of smoke, watched it intently, then turned unhappy green eyes upon him and said, ‘You haven’t told me anything I don’t know – except that if the Allies or Russians come, you probably won’t be here.’
‘I can’t tell you where I’m going, but it’s safer than here. We’re still married, so I can probably take you with me, and I think you should come.’
‘No, thanks.’
‘Please, Ingrid. For the sake of the children, if not yourself.’
‘You murdered the man I love – if he’s not dead, he might as well be – so I’m not going to share my future with you for the sake of the children. You’re not the man I once loved. You’re not the father I wanted for them. You could have been that man – you almost were – but then you threw it away. Now look at you, Ernst! A leading light of the SS. A man who fornicates with whores, collects the victims for the torture chambers, rounds up the unfortunates for the concentration camps, and generally lends his support to the bloodiest dictatorship on Earth. And a man who once wanted to be a scientist, or, at least, an engineer! No, Ernst, you’re not the man I married – and you’re not the man for my children. I’d rather they died in an air raid than grow up with you. If you want to say good-bye to them, you may do so. But that’s all you can do. After that, you can leave.’
Ernst drank her in, recalling what she had once meant to him, then filled up with unutterable grief at what he had lost. Though drawn and anguished, she was still attractive to him, but he’d lost her as well... Ingrid... the children... his whole world. How had it happened?
He sighed. ‘All right. Where are the children?’
‘Upstairs in their bedroom.’
‘Can I go up now?’
‘Yes, but don’t make your departure sound definite. As far as they’re concerned, you’re just off on another trip. Is that understood?’
‘I
do hope to be returning to Berlin,’ he told her.
‘Nothing’s certain these days.’
He went up the stairs and found the children in the bedroom they shared, Ula still blonde and lovely, though now ten years old, Alfred nearly seven years old and no longer chubby. They greeted him warily, as they always did on his odd visits, but he welled up with emotion and clung to them so long he embarrassed them. Eventually he let them go, gave them some money, kissed them on the cheek. Then, regaining his composure, he returned to the living room to say goodbye to Ingrid.
Her mother had come back in and Ernst was shocked when he saw them together. Ingrid now looked like her mother had looked only ten years ago. There were streaks of gray in Ingrid’s blonde hair. Her formerly bright-green eyes had darkened. She still had a good figure, but it had filled out in the wrong way, and Ernst noticed, with a shock, that she was wearing one of her mother’s old dresses. Her face, though still attractive, was closed against him.
‘Will you reconsider?’ he asked her.
‘No,’ she replied.
‘For the sake of the children. For your mother’s sake – ’ ‘Don’t bring them into this.’
Her mother looked embarrassed, staring down at the floor, and Ernst, not feeling angry but dead, walked up to the old woman, embraced her, formally kissed her cheek. Then, as her tears started falling, he simply nodded at Ingrid.
‘I promise, I’ll make it back,’ he said.
‘Don't make rash promises, Ernst. None of us can make promises these days. We take each day as it comes.’
‘I’ll be back.’
‘Goodbye, Ernst.’
He turned away and walked out. The taxi was still there, making a small fortune in these otherwise bleak days, and even as Ernst walked toward it, his boots kicking up gravel, he heard that distant, familiar rumbling and the eerie wail of the sirens. Looking toward Berlin, at the large moon in the starlit sky, he knew that the Allied aircraft were returning for another night of destruction.
There’s nothing left for me here, he thought forlornly. Now I have only Wilson.
Then he slipped into the rear of the taxi and was taken back to the city, which, even as he was driven toward it, was turning into a furnace.
Hell is on earth, he thought.
CHAPTER THIRTY Bradley was in church. He was, to be precise, in an annex of the shell of the Church of St Pierre in the ruined old town of Caen, France, to which he had driven, one week after its fall to the Canadian and British troops, from the town of Saint-Lo, which had been captured by the US 1st Army.
Bradley had driven in a jeep from Saint-Lo to Caen through a landscape devastated by bomb craters, burned-out barns, collapsed houses, mountains of rubble, and putrefying dead animals, mostly cows. He had arrived in Caen, at the invitation of the British SOE, which was now being more agreeable to him, after the lovely old cathedral town, eastern bastion of the German defence forces, had been reduced to ruins by relentless Allied artillery and air bombardment. He had then been directed by some weary British 2nd Army infantrymen to the Church of St Pierre, which he had found simply by heading for the tower that was visible above the ruins of what had once been prosperous streets.
The tower had been damaged and was surrounded by more rubble, but luckily the interior of the church remained intact. It had become a refuge for hundreds of the townspeople who had lost their homes in the artillery and air bombardments. The refugees were still there when Bradley arrived, but within days they had been moved out to more hospitable quarters. Bradley, at the invitation of the British Secret Intel
ligence Service, had set up a temporary office in this annex, where, with the assistance of members of the Manhattan atomic bomb project's ALSOS and OSS’s Project Paperclip, he had begun an intensive interrogation of resistance members and local townsfolk as well as less cooperative collaborators, suspected and otherwise.
While the members of the ALSOS concentrated on tracking down details of all German V-1 and V-2 rocket projects, Bradley and his fellow OSS sleuths were attempting to trace the whereabouts of those scientists and engineers known to have been involved in the construction of rockets and other secret weapons, including any aircraft remotely saucer-shaped and relating to Wilson.
Bradley was not having much luck.
What he had learned so far was that the Germans had built a frightening number of V-1 and V-2 rocket launching sites, most of them in the Pas de Calais area and the recently captured Cherbourg peninsula. What he had also learned is that after the devastating RAF bombing raids of 1943, Wernher von Braun’s rocket team had been moved out of Peenemünde to an unknown destination, had been returned when the damage had been repaired, but reportedly was about to be moved again. Unfortunately, no one knew more than that... and no one seemed to know Wilson.
The American.
Goddamn him!
The more Bradley saw of the war’s awesome devastation, the more
he wondered how much Wilson had contributed to it and the more he wanted to find him and put a stop to him. He was still haunted by the memory of that saucer-shaped aircraft in the barn near Montezuma, Iowa, where Wilson had been born and returned to work in secret, and he was convinced that the V-1 rocket program could not have been so advanced without Wilson’s help. Now, more than anything else, he had to find out.
Sitting behind his makeshift desk in the annex of the damaged church, he had come face to face with the best and worst faces of the war: female collaborators with heads shaved by their liberated former friends; male collaborators bruised and scarred from beatings by their fellow countrymen; the pitiful victims of Nazi torture; old and young members of the French resistance, whose features had been shaped by deprivation and constant fear. He was feeling overwhelmed and exhausted when finally he came up with something.
The man who sat facing him across the old, cluttered farm table the morning of July 20, 1944, was wearing the clothing of a French peasant – black jacket and baggy pants, open-necked white shirt and beret – but had strikingly handsome features and brown eyes filled with passionate conviction. He had not been brought in, but had specifically asked to see the investigating officer. According to his papers, he wasn’t French but Polish, and his name was Andrzej Pialowicz.
‘I’m surprised,’ Bradley told him, ‘to find a Polish citizen in the French resistance.’
‘I am a leading member of the Polish resistance,’ Pialowicz replied
in surprisingly good English, ‘but am forced to flee the country when
the Gestapo and SS round up and murder my group. When you finally get to Poland, and if you find your hands on the Nazi secret services
documents, no doubt you will find me listed there.’
Bradley nodded. ‘Why did you not just go underground in Poland?’ ‘It is becoming too difficult in Cracow, where I operate, and when
my group is captured and my lover tortured and then sent to a
concentration camp, I know that the last people I can trust are all gone,
and if I stay in Cracow, it will only be a matter of time before I am
caught.’
‘Good thinking,’ Bradley said.
‘Also, Major Riedel of the SS is becoming obsessed with capturing
me, which is a further motive to leave the country and go underground,
where even my name will not be known. So, convinced that the Allies
will invade Europe eventually, I come here and join the French
resistance.’
‘How did you get out of Poland?’
‘I travel by night, usually cross-country, keeping well away from
the roads. I also cover great distances by train, hanging under the
carriages for hours.’
‘That’s a helluva thing to do,’ Bradley said. ‘One hell of a thing.’ ‘When we have to, we can do surprising things. You should know
this by now.’
Bradley was certainly learning it. He was gradually getting used to
the fact that many of the people he interviewed, who often looked so
young and inexperienced, had lost their families and loved ones, been
tortured by the Nazis, lived under the threat of death for as long as they
could remember, and treated adventures such as that described by
Pialowicz as perfectly normal.
He was getting used to it, but sometimes it still amazed him, though
he tried not to show that.
‘So you’ve been in France since...?’
‘June 1940.’
‘Have you heard anything about your lover since?’
‘No.’ Pialowicz showed the merest flicker of emotion, then became
stone-faced.
‘You don’t know which camp she went to?’
‘No.’
‘If you give me her name, I’ll put her on the file. If she’s found,
we’ll get in touch with you.’
‘This I would appreciate. Also, she is the reason I come to see you.’ ‘Oh? Who is she?’
‘Her name is Kryzystina Kozilewski.’
Bradley wrote the name down in his notebook, after asking
Pialowicz how it was spelt.
‘So,’ he said, looking up again. ‘What’s the relevance of Kryzystina
Kozilewski?’
‘One of my functions here in France,’ Pialowicz responded, ‘is to
liaise between the French and Polish underground groups. It is one of
those Polish groups that conveys to you through the French resistance,
in 1942, that the Nazis are testing remote-controlled rockets near
Peenemünde, in the Baltic.’
‘The V-1 rocket.’
‘Yes. Anyway, since I am the person liaising between that Polish
resistance group and the Frenchmen who pass the information on to
you, through the SOE, London, I naturally know about your interest in
the American scientist, John Wilson.’
Feeling his weariness slipping away from him, Bradley leaned
across the table and prompted Pialowicz with, ‘Yes?’
‘This is where my former mistress, Kryzystina Kozilewski, comes
into the picture,’ Pialowicz said, keeping his features carefully
composed to mask any pain he might be feeling. ‘When the Nazis
overrun Poland in September 1939, I form a Polish resistance group
and enlist the help of Kryzystina. Kryzystina has had a hard life, is
experienced in the ways of men – I say this without rancour – and on
behalf of the resistance, uses her charm and experience to gain the trust
of German officers, obtain valuable gossip f'rom them, and pass the
information on to us.’
‘Is that why she’s in a concentration camp?’
‘I think so, yes,’ Pialowicz said.
At that moment, a great armada of Allied aircraft passed overhead,
heading for Germany. Pialowicz glanced up at the ceiling of the annex,
then lowered his gaze again.
‘Early in 1940 the Germans requisition the boarding house owned
by Kryzystina and send its residents to a concentration camp.
Kryzystina saves herself from this fate by engaging in an affair with the
commander of the troops involved in the requisition: an SS captain
named Ernst Stoll, who is under the command of my worst enemy,
Major Riedel. And it is through her affair with Stoll that Kryzystina
> learns about the American, John Wilson.’
The noise of the aircraft passing overhead had reached a crescendo
and Pialowicz stopped talking for a moment, waiting for the bombers to pass on... for the noise to die down. Bradley thought of the ruins of Caen, of all the other ruins he had seen in his journey and shuddered to think of what that mighty armada of bombers would soon do to Germany. The awesome power of modern technology was now ever present... and if Wilson had progressed even further, God knows what
would be coming.
When the noise of the aircraft had passed, Pialowicz said, ‘To
return to Kryzystina... According to what she tells me in 1940, this
German who becomes her lover, this SS Captain Ernst Stoll, is a
former rocket engineer, deeply embittered at being denied membership
of the VfR, or German Amateur Rocket Society and, later, General
Dornberger’s rocket program, which is placed under the command of
Wernher von Braun, one of Stoll’s old school chums, while Stoll is
turned into a mere technical administrator. Disgusted, Stoll lets himself
be persuaded to join SS intelligence, which at least gives him the
opportunity to supervise certain secret weapons research programs at
Kummersdorf, south of Berlin – and it is there that he becomes
involved with the American, Wilson.’
‘He actually worked with Wilson?’
‘Yes. Wilson does not actually work with von Braun’s rocket
teams, but with a much smaller group at the other side of an old firing
range at Kummersdorf West. However, according to what Stoll tells
Kryzystina, while Wilson is to work on secret weapons other than
remote-controlled rockets, many of his remarkable innovations are
passed on to the rocket team, which certainly hastens the development
of the rockets.’
Now Bradley was feeling really excited. At last Wilson’s
continuing existence had been confirmed. At last he’d been given
shape, even if he still was faceless.
‘Did Kryzystina find out what Wilson’s project actually was?’ ‘Yes. One night when Stoll is drunk and particularly bitter, he lets
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