“Rushed, though...” I said, striving for a casual tone. “Surely you wouldn’t have let the Streamliner go out with loose wheels and missing bolts?” I thought of those fairings, lying on the ground by themselves.
He snorted at my joke.
“No. But you talk to Ludwig, see what he says about it.” Ludwig Sebastien was Bernd’s crew chief; he would certainly have been there. “Better yet, talk to Horst Hasse.”
“And who’s that?” I knew Ludwig well, but not Hasse.
Dieter rubbed the back of his hand across his face, smudging his cheek with grease.
“One of the second-rank drivers. He’s the one who drove the car for a shakedown after the wind-tunnel tests. If there were wind-tunnel tests,” he added, narrowing his eyes.
“What?” I said, startled. He snorted again, and shrugged.
“Oh, I’m sure there were. But maybe not the way you’d have done them, mein herr.”
I spent another quarter of an hour with him, but having said as much as he had, he drew back and became vague, saying only that it had been Christmastime, half the staff not working, short days...and a rush. Things had been done in a rush.
Eventually we shook hands and I took my leave, smelling pleasantly of metal shavings and fresh oil.
I felt like a fool, peering to and fro as I stepped in through the rear door, but no one was in sight, though I could hear voices in the building, conversations in the canteen down the hall. I knew engineers, though, and sure enough, their room was deserted, all of them gone off like a horde of locusts in search of tea and baumkuchen.
The file closet was nearly as large as the main room but very well organized, the cabinets and plan shelves labeled. I found the drawer and shelf I wanted—but not a lot more. Eberan’s original design notes were there; I flipped through them quickly, but they told me little else than had the shattered remains of the Streamliner. My own preliminary notes for the car, the ones I’d made last year, before leaving—those were there as well, though shuffled together in an untidy roll bound with twine. But there were no operating notes. No results of wind-tunnel tests. No notes on the shakedown drive Dieter had mentioned.
The muffled voices changed their tone; the conversation was breaking up. I closed the drawer as quietly as I could and left by the rear door before anyone could emerge from the canteen and see me.
Eberan’s Daimler was still parked in the yard, its grille gleaming in the rain.
TELEGRAM
FROM: E BEINHORN
TO: F PORSCHE
MECHANIC SAYS HE HEARD EXPLOSION NEAR END OF RUN STOP ASK FURTHER QUERY STOP
My wife came in, a plate of rösti and eggs in her hand, and peered over my shoulder.
“An explosion?” she asked, putting the plate down. I shook my head and folded up the yellow paper.
“I don’t think so, no.” The possibility had sparked for a moment in my mind, but I could not forget the vivid picture of the wreckage; I had dreamed about it all night long.
You might think that the marks of explosion would be lost, masked by the damage—but not to the eye of someone who had built cars and who had seen many wrecks before. Elly was right; it couldn’t have been the tires—they hadn’t blown out. I thought the probable explanation—if in fact the mechanic had heard anything—was that the heavy air-intake plate had struck the pavement with a bang, dropped as the frame twisted.
Still...there was that uneasy suggestion, left by Elly’s question: Do you think they did it?
The next question, of course, was still “Why?” But the fact that she had asked that gave me an uncomfortable notion of why. Neither she nor Bernie liked politics—Bernie openly laughed at the Nazi Party’s pretensions and ceremonial carrying-on. I didn’t think he would have been fool enough to come right out and denounce them; I didn’t think he cared that much, for one thing. Bernie really only cared about motors. And Elly, to be sure.
I got up, ignoring the remainder of my eggs, and fetched a sheet of paper from the secretary. I wrote:
FROM: F PORSCHE
TO: E BEINHORN
UNLIKELY BUT WILL ASK STOP
I folded it in half, gave it to our maid, and asked her to take it to the telegraph office as soon as she had time.
“And where are you going?” Aloisa demanded, looking from the overcoat on my arm to my half-devoured eggs and back.
“To find a young man named Horst Hasse,” I said, and I leaned over to kiss her good-bye.
I went first to visit Ludwig Sebastien, who lived nearby. He confirmed my thoughts about the air-intake plate, had no idea as to the cause of the crash—or at least none he chose to share with me, though his gaze slipped a little to the side as he said it—but he did tell me where to find Horst Hasse; he lived in Stuttgart, fortunately, though in one of the less desirable districts, in a small flat over a bierstube owned by his parents.
Hasse was actually in the bierstube when I arrived, having lunch. He turned out to be a fair-haired young man, short, slightly built, and with a tendency to breathe through his mouth. An Aryan, if a puny one.
“Herr Doktor Porsche!” he said, blue eyes going very round at the sight of me. “I didn’t—I—such an honor!” He seized the hand I offered him and shook it forcefully. “Herr Sebastien said you wanted to talk to me, but I didn’t believe him, I thought he was playing tricks again, he’s always playing tricks to make people look foolish, so I—”
“Danke,” I said, trying to get a word in edgewise. He hadn’t let go of my hand, so I tightened my own grip and took a step forward, forcing him to back up into the bierstube. I had a quick look round—drivers tended to congregate, and something was telling me it was better if nobody saw him talking to me. There were a couple of stocky men in caps that looked like truck drivers, and a few surly-looking youths crouched over a table in the corner—these turned and gave me suspicious looks, but I saw no sign of recognition on their smooth young faces.
“So good of you to talk with me,” I said, smiling at Hasse with what I hoped was reassurance. “Let me buy you a drink.”
We settled at last in a corner with our beers. There was no point in trying to set him at his ease with casual chat; I wasn’t about to offer him a job, which was probably the only possibility occupying his mind at the moment, and the instant I mentioned the accident, any sense of ease would fly right out the window.
“I wanted to ask you a little bit about the Streamliner—the new one, you know.”
His face fell a bit—he had been hoping for a job offer, and I was sorry for his disappointment.
“But...you must know a lot more than I do, Herr Doktor?”
“I know the Type C I designed for Auto Union last year, yes...but they changed some things, of course, for the new model.” I took a swallow of beer; it was bock, strong and malty, and made me feel a little steadier; I hadn’t eaten since breakfast.
“Yes, I suppose so.” Hasse looked dubious. “But I wouldn’t know about that—shouldn’t you—” He was about to ask me why I hadn’t gone to Eberan with my questions. I interrupted him.
“Yes, of course I know what changes were made on paper.” I smiled, dabbing at my mustache with a napkin. “I’ve seen the notes.” Well, some of them...
“I was wondering how the car handled. There are things only a driver would notice, you know that—and I was just thinking after I heard about Bernd...well, I know that you drove on the trials, and I wondered whether you’d noticed any small thing while you were driving...”
The strangest expressions were crossing his face, and I actually stopped talking, watching him. There was sadness when I mentioned Bernd, and he lifted a hand briefly, as though to make the sign of the cross, but he stopped abruptly as his thoughts caught up, and wariness flashed in his eyes, succeeded almost instantly by recognizable fear. He licked his lips and pushed back his chair, making the legs scrape on the floor, loud enough that the louts in the corner looked at us.
“I can’t—I’m not allowed—I mean, I shou
ldn’t talk about the trials, Herr Doktor,” he said, the words tripping over each other. “I had to, I mean...” He groped for the next word, then stopped and bit his lip. My heart began to beat faster. I reached out and put a restraining hand on his arm, leaning toward him.
“You knew Bernd,” I said softly. “He was your friend.” I felt safe in saying so; Bernd was everyone’s friend. I squeezed his arm lightly. “He was my friend too. I only want to know, because you know, if it was something I did wrong in the design, something I should have foreseen...don’t you see? I worry that it was my fault.”
There was enough truth in this to touch him. He stared at me for a long moment, then swallowed convulsively and nodded once, then twice.
“I understand, Herr Doktor,” he said, and took a deep breath, then looked furtively around the room.
“I signed an affidavit,” he said, leaning close to me and speaking low and fast. “They made me say there were no problems, the new body had better stability, that it drove like it was on rails. But—” His lower lip was red and moist from being bitten, but he bit it again. “It was true, what I said—but the only time I drove it was a shakedown, a few days before the accident, an easy run; my orders were not to go above four thousand revs in fourth gear—and there was hardly any wind at all.” He stopped to breathe, making up his mind whether to go on.
“Please,” I whispered, looking into his eyes. They were pale blue, and full of tears.
“The wind-tunnel measurements—” he blurted. “I wasn’t there, but I heard them talking, Herr Eberan and Herr Weber, two days later, on the track before the shakedown. They were arguing—they said the rear lift was lower than the earlier Streamliner’s, much lower.”
That jolted me. A lower rear lift was good for drag reduction, but with a center of pressure too close to the center of gravity—and that’s just what they had, with the ice tank’s positioning—low rear lift is a recipe for longitudinal instability.
I forced myself to let go of Hasse’s arm and sat back a little, nodding and trying to look only grave and concerned, but I could feel my pulse beating in my ears.
“I see. Did they check for sidewind?” They must have...
Hasse nodded, feeling a little better now.
“It wasn’t good, but Weber was telling Herr Eberan that because of the time pressure and it being Christmas, they hadn’t been able to be very thorough. They were checking the wind at the track before I started—there really wasn’t any, and I was glad about that, having heard them talk. I could tell they were—maybe not worried, exactly, but very cautious.”
So they knew. They knew before the record run that the car was unstable—and they didn’t test it in real racing conditions. Wind-tunnel data will tell you only so much, and a shakedown cruise will tell you only that the wheels don’t fall off and the wiring is good.
They knew. And they went ahead and took the chance, because there wasn’t time, and they didn’t want to risk looking unready. Didn’t want to lose face in front of the Mercedes. Didn’t want to risk the chancellor’s birthday gift.
“I see,” I repeated mechanically. I took a deep breath of my own, and took my hand off his arm.
“I see,” I said again. “Danke.”
DESIGN NOTE 33: Stromlinienwagen 6.5 L
Radiator
The radiator is inactive, as it is supplanted by ice cooling. It should be equal in weight to the ice tank, however, so may be partially filled with water in order to achieve this. Hoses must therefore be detached and sealed.
It was late afternoon when I left the bierstube, and dark was already rising in the streets. Too late to visit Elly, I thought, making the excuse to myself. In fact, I needed some time alone before I spoke with her.
So now I knew why Eberan wouldn’t talk to me. I could have taken a taxi—it was a long way home and it was beginning to rain—but I needed to walk, needed something physical to keep the rising anger in my belly under control.
“Schweine,” I muttered under my breath, “bastards,” the words coming out in spurts of white, torn away by the wind. Wind. Unstable in a sidewind. The air vents, the ice tank, the shifted center of gravity, the downdraft, the sealed air intake...and they knew. They cut corners, they ignored all the testing protocols, they rushed things—and they killed Bernd Rosemeyer. For the sake of their pride.
I was trembling with rage, the handle of my cane slippery in my fist. I kept seeing the warped side panel, the air-vent plate, the torn-off fairings. A car caroming off the bridge, somersaulting twice, shedding pieces...and the smell of spilled fuel, the car’s blood sharp in the wind. And Bernie, lying dead in the grass.
After a time, my blood cooled—it had to; I was soaked to the skin and shivering, my shoes squashing with every step and the cold water welling between my toes. My thoughts began to drift back to Elly. Should I tell her? And—perhaps more important—what might she do if I did?
Go to Eberan and demand an admission of carelessness, insist on his guilt and demand reparation for herself and little Bernd? What reparation was possible for the loss of her husband, of a man like Bernd? I felt the loss of him myself like a salted wound, a slow agony. For her...
More likely, I thought, she would go to the newspapers and denounce Auto Union and Eberan in public. I was already shivering, but that thought made me tremble. It would be a huge scandal—and it was clear to me that this was exactly what Auto Union feared, the reason why they had concealed their tests (and the lack of them), why they’d had poor little Hasse sign his affidavit.
Exposure might destroy Auto Union—and while I was furious at them for what they’d done, I didn’t want that. There were too many people employed there, too many wonderful things that had been done; I couldn’t bear the thought of it all being discredited, lost in a furor of accusation and scandal.
And it might destroy Elly too. Scandal was a double-edged sword, and Eberan would fight back—maybe attempt to blame Bernd for the accident.
Ludwig had told me only one thing that I hadn’t learned or heard already: when they’d prepared for the third run, the run they weren’t sure was necessary, there had been some fuss about the wind, which had increased. And Bernd, smiling, had waved off the crew’s mixed concerns and suggestions, saying, “Don’t worry; I can figure it out on my own.”
I can figure it out on my own. Those words could be twisted, taken as arrogance—I gave a small puff of a laugh; Bernie was arrogant, with the perfect confidence of a man who would walk off a cliff because he knows he can fly. But they could say all kinds of things about him, try to destroy his reputation...and if they did that, what would happen to Elly? If she and Bernie were no longer the hero and heroine of the Reich?
She was a woman of deep feelings, and certainly impulsive. But at the same time, she had a cool head; at the age of twenty-two, she’d crashed her plane in the Sahara, survived the crash, been rescued by a group of Tuareg tribesmen, and talked them into escorting her across the desert to Timbuktu—and eventually got word of her plight to the French authorities, who sent a two-seater airplane to collect her. In a way, she had the same arrogance that Bernie had had; they were well matched. But she had a child now.
I was freezing, shaking now with the cold, my toenails burning. Home was in sight, the tall pale blue building on Mariannenstrasse, its white window boxes winter bare. Home, the glowing stove, food. And sleep. I needed to sleep before I went to talk to Elly.
DESIGN NOTE 10.1 Stromlinienwagen 6.5 L [Dr. Porsche]
Body
Slight alteration to the 6.0 L body. See drawing (attached).
I rose late the next morning, both because I was tired—I still ached from the long walk and the shivering—and because I didn’t want to go down until Aloisa had left to do her shopping. She’d been in bed when I came home, and while she’d turned to me, murmuring concern at my frigid skin and taking me to the comfort of her warm bosom, she’d been too much asleep to ask me where I’d been. One look at my face in the morning light, though.
..
I raised my chin, scraping the razor carefully up the side of my neck. I looked haunted in the mirror, eyes half sunk in my head.
After a little cheese toasted on bread and some coffee, I felt better. Sometime in the night, my mind had made itself up. Elly was Bernie’s wife; she deserved to know what I knew. What she chose to do about it was up to her, and I would help her, no matter what she decided to do.
Her apartment was on Bergstrasse, a wide pleasant street lined with well-kept town houses with a small park nearby. The trees were black and bleak, but the weather had cleared and the sky was a hard pale blue.
The door was answered by a girl in an apron who bobbed an old-fashioned curtsy to me. That made me smile, and the wariness with which she’d eyed me—I must look very bad, I thought—melted enough for her to answer my request for Frau Rosemeyer.
“She went to the park,” the girl said, pointing over my shoulder. “I said it was too cold for the baby, but she said he was wrapped up like a strudel and it would be all right.” A touch of disapproval in her voice, but clearly no one could argue with Elly if her mind was made up. With a small qualm, I bowed to her in thanks and went down the steps to the park.
I had crossed the street and was walking toward the gate when I saw a black car pull up before the house—one of the older classic Horch twelve-cylinders. I paused long enough to see a chauffeur in uniform get out and reach into the car for a basket ornamented with ribbons. He stopped for a moment as someone in the car said something to him, then nodded and bounded up the steps
The park was surrounded by a black iron palisade, and the gate was locked. I caught a flash of color through the trees, though, movement on the far side of the park, and I walked hastily around it, hoping to catch her.
The rattle of wheels on gravel led me to her; she was pushing a pram slowly along a path, head bent in thought. It was the maroon of the pram I had glimpsed through the trees; she wore a black coat and scarf, and her eyes, when she looked up at my greeting, were the color of the winter sky.
The Highway Kind Page 14