3.
The Malartre hideaway was just a kilometer away along a steep, tree-lined dirt road. Magpies thronged the trees, with a curious loud trilling call, as though they had a kettle whistle stuck in their throats. A low wall of chisel-cut rectangular stones framed the farm, but the home needed a paint job. A man and woman came out of their small cottage surrounded by rich fields of vegetables—spinach, onions, lettuce, artichokes, green beans, raspberries, carrots, more. The couple stood beside the stone wall, eyeing him and Moe suspiciously as they came up the pathway.
He had never met Marthe’s father, who had thick, coarse white hair that fell over his forehead. His skin was leathery and yellowish-white, like an old wrinkled-up kid glove. His long face was dignified and melancholy. He had something of the beauty of an elderly eagle, powerful though discouraged.
“Madame Malartre, Colonel,” Karl said, bowing a little and nodding.
She suddenly recognized Karl, eyes wide. “Ah!” She gave him a broad smile in her tanned, triangular face. “Please call me Madeleine.” When they had met in Paris in that hurried autumn of 1938, his mother-in-law’s formality had mellowed as they all conspired on how to get them quickly married and out of France. Now she wore rough cotton shorts and a bandanna around her hair, a lean farm woman.
He turned to the muscular, broad-shouldered man in pants and a sweat-stained shirt. A bow and nod again. “Colonel.”
“Dr. Cohen.” A stiff handshake, spine ramrod straight.
“Please, call me Karl.” A curt nod in reply.
He introduced Moe, and Madeleine said brightly, “Tea?”
It seemed appropriate to begin with an eating ritual. Inside the living room, which held a dining table, Karl swung his backpack off and unveiled his gifts: coffee, chocolate bars, some stale and hardened K rations, pipe tobacco, sugar, honey, dry finger sausage, gingerbread, cookies, a whole salami veined with pearly fat. As they surveyed the gastronomic wealth, he showed the topper—photos of Marthe and the girls. These lightened the mood and sent gleeful cries in a room with worn pine boards covered by a wrinkled red carpet. Moe seemed unsurprised by this suddenly appearing food. Smiling, he stumbled through some simple French as Karl went to the bathroom. The floor creaked, and when he flushed the toilet, the refilling tank on the wall gave a baritone siren scream. He used the sliver of soap and realized he should have thought to bring some.
In halting French, Moe had brought them up to date on the incident with the German soldier. The colonel wanted to know details. Karl downplayed his role, but Moe did the opposite, and the colonel laughed about the tripping. “The soldiers left behind in the retreat, they hide,” the colonel said.
“Afraid of us?” Moe asked.
“No!” the colonel said firmly. “The swine are afraid of what we French will do to them.”
Their hosts offered some of the honey, dry sausage, and gingerbread Karl had brought, and he and Moe declined while the couple happily dug in. They were frightfully thin and worn, though sturdy. They described how once the Germans had moved in, declaring this region occupied like the Vichy zone, the bread ration had been cut to a few ounces a day. The whole countryside lived by farming and bartering. The Malartres ate the rabbits they raised but could not get enough corn for chickens.
The colonel had not joined the Maquis, civilians who resisted the Germans. He had left the army but not joined de Gaulle’s Free French, either. “I wanted to help my wife survive the occupation, not run a camp for repatriated Algerians, as I was asked, nor fight in North Africa,” he said. A resigned shrug. “Family versus France.”
Madeleine said fiercely, “Now the Boches occupy us, they take, take.” A wave of hands, wide eyes. It emerged that other farmers who’d had the luxury of trucks or cars lost them, requisitioned away, along with canned goods and even shovels.
To break the mood, Karl launched into details of their daughter, the girls, how they fared in New York and his rise at Columbia University. “We’d like you to come visit as soon as possible. At our expense, all.”
Madeleine perked up. “Marthe is enjoying herself?”
“We have dinner with the professors there. She dazzles everyone with her French cuisine, even under rationing.”
Madeleine and the colonel beamed. Karl imagined life here, crouched beside an old radio and listening to the war news since 1940. He hesitated, then plunged ahead. “I have been working with Albert Einstein, too.”
This startled them. Probably Einstein was the only scientist they had ever heard of, and now their son-in-law knew him! The colonel stood, patted Karl on the back, and went to a cabinet, returning with a bottle of Margaux, a dark, musty 1928. He insisted on gingerly pouring them all a glass of what was obviously his prize vintage. They all stood, and the colonel gave a toast to “Peace, prosperity, Karl and Marthe.”
They sat and had some cheese, the only food apparently not in short supply here. “This war will be over soon?” Madeleine asked pensively.
Karl could not tell her what he was doing, of course, so he resorted to generalities about working on the war effort. “Then why are you here?” Madeleine asked.
“Ah, I can perhaps help with the American army’s understanding of such technical issues. Moe is my assistant.”
They seemed to think this was reasonable. A scientist traveling right behind the army, in a war that was more and more about technology. But the colonel studied Karl closely as he asked, “What does this new bomb mean in the longue durée?”
“Too early to tell about the long run,” Moe said.
Madeleine frowned. “And this deadly dust?”
Carefully Karl said, “The Germans will do anything, no matter how foul, as you know better than I.”
“Might they use it again?”
“Quite possibly.” He decided not to mention the possibility of dust use to block the invasion only a few kilometers away.
“Tell me more about the children,” Madeleine insisted, and they were back to safe territory. Moe used his schoolboy French to talk to the colonel, and Karl relaxed.
Before he knew it, the Margaux was gone and shadows stretched long across the vegetable garden. He hated to leave. Moe suggested they find a room at the Hôtel L’Oasis. He invited his in-laws to dine with them. Karl doubted that they could get a room.
Moe gave him a small smile and said in acceptable French, “I believe that clerk can quite possibly be persuaded.”
As it turned out, he was right.
4.
The Route Napoléon was the mountain valley winding way Napoléon had taken when he came back from the island of Elba, on his way to the Hundred Days before the allies broke him at Waterloo. It went around the main ground battle to the west, the farming plains and rivers where the American divisions and some Free French were pushing the Germans hard. Karl and Moe enjoyed a respite. The Germans had decided not to hold the Route Napoléon. Moe used the time to procure an army Jeep, rejecting an offer of a driver.
They had gotten on the Route Napoléon at Grasse and made some progress in a day. They took turns driving through the long jams of trucks and troops and tanks. At a jam the next day they climbed a hill and could hear the muffled, rolling barrages as Allied artillery slammed into the retreating German units. Fighters dogged the German columns on a distant highway. Moe had somehow gotten a pair of field binoculars, and they watched the tiny gray dots that were German tanks. The shelling threw smoke into the air. “Burning gasoline,” Moe said, and as if in answer, a fireball blossomed into the clear skies among the German column. Troops unseen were hitting them with accurate fire.
It was three hundred kilometers to Grenoble, where they could cut over to Switzerland. Going through Grenoble was a fragrant parade, La Jasminade, a tribute to the flower with young women in skimpy costumes on board flatbed trucks, throwing flowers into the crowd to celebrate their liberation. Karl and Moe grinned and bore through the crowds, honking and dodging people who wanted to throw garlands over their necks. “Damn earl
y to celebrate,” Moe said.
“The next bomb will be ready in a week or so,” Karl said, though he wasn’t supposed to talk about that.
“What’s the target?”
“That’s the question. Maybe we can answer it up ahead.”
• • •
They bounced along nearly a hundred kilometers among military traffic. Distant booms of artillery came up to the road from a battle to the east. Moe managed to drive fast enough to fend off the mosquitoes, slipping through openings Karl would never have tried. The soft summer air bore the tang of sweat and the sharp bite of gasoline.
GIs were walking alongside the road, weighed down by guns and fatigue. Karl could see it in the sagging bodies, burdened down by machine gun barrels, steel tripods, and leaden boxes of ammunition. These weights on backs and shoulders made them seem to sink into the mud as they slogged on fifty feet apart, dispersed in case they hit an ambush. They did not slouch but stepped with deliberate care. Their faces, flashing by the Jeep as he and Moe took turns driving, were dirty, with beards many days old. They were young, but the grime and whiskers and exhaustion stole years from them. Yet they kept on steadily, advancing against an enemy that might steal all the rest of their lives away. The antlike lines of GIs went on and on and never ended. Karl felt somehow ashamed to look at them.
“They’re fighting, we’re not,” he said to Moe.
“Sure we are. You more effectively than me.”
“What?”
“Without you guys, Berlin would still be there.”
Karl blinked at this and said sharply, “Stop.”
“What?”
“Stop.”
Before the Jeep pulled up, he was out and turned downhill. The man who had caught his eye was approaching—KIRS, his stenciled name badge said. Karl went to him and said, “You’re limping.”
“Busted my damn knee back there a ways.” A deep, sliding southern accent. Maybe from near Oak Ridge?
“Get in the Jeep.”
“I can’t—”
“Get in.”
Moe raised eyebrows in silence as Karl helped the private carrying a BAR into a narrow wedge of space behind their seats. The BAR rested on the private’s knees, weighing him in. Moe started up and their motor ground up the hill until Karl saw a sergeant marching along with a backpack. He gestured to Moe to stop.
Karl got out and said to the sergeant, reading his name badge, “Sergeant Macaffrey, this man shouldn’t be marching. That busted knee will just get worse, put him out of action. I’m taking him up to the nearest aid station.”
Macaffrey frowned and widened his eyes, encountering a puzzle. Karl looked stern and knew what Macaffrey was thinking. Who was this civilian, driven around by a big well-dressed guy? Macaffrey could go with the standard army response and shake this civilian off, but what was up with this? Macaffrey was even more tired than his men, and Karl watched his face change from surprise to calculation to . . . relax.
“I, I guess okay. Aid station’s supposed to be maybe ten klicks ahead. Six miles or so.”
“Thanks, we’ll get him there. You’ll have him back in time for action.”
Back in the Jeep, Moe roared off before Macaffrey could change his mind. Karl leaned back and said, “You need a day off your feet.”
Kirs said, “Don’t we all.”
• • •
They made surprisingly good time. The US command had taken all lanes, so there were no civilians. There was some room to pass on the road, which was usually just two lanes. Moe drove intently and with skill. He avoided troops or other Jeeps that blundered out of line. “You trained at this, too?” Karl asked.
Moe grinned. “My position with the Office of Strategic Services Special Operations Branch pays four thousand a year, and in return I had to let them teach me to drive again.”
“Wow, that’s more than I earn.”
“And you’re the one who decked that rifleman.”
Karl enjoyed that remark, but he also felt it was phony to be proud of a chance lucky stroke. They sped along the mountain roads, until at a broad patch a big sign displayed a red cross.
Karl found the aid station unsettling. There were wounded waiting for treatment, men with bloody uniforms and big bandages. Their faces were drained, gray, and dejected, their eyes fixed in the far distance. He helped Kirs into the admissions tent and got him an orderly, who took over. “I’ll be back with my buddies by the time they march on up here,” Kirs said, smiling. The orderly shooed Moe and Karl away, quite properly.
“Where’s the action up ahead?” Karl asked a supervising lieutenant.
“What’re you, some reporter?” the man shot back.
Moe took care of that with another letter, this time from the man’s division commander. He had a deft way of silently handing the envelope to the officer, waiting with downcast eyes, then taking it back and folding it into the envelope while the lieutenant studied him and Karl, clearly wanting to know what was up with these two civilians. Moe just shook his head and the lieutenant showed them on an army map where the few German units were operating. “Looks like they’ve given up on this road. They’ve retreated up the Rhône valley to our west.”
Moe nodded, compared the army map with theirs. Then they got back into the Jeep and moved off. Karl thought, In war, you do what you can. Step aside from your mission, do what needs doing right now.
They came down to run along the Durance River, where no boats were visible. The quick German vanishing act had left the way clear into the pleasant town of Digne-les-Bains. They stopped there beside the beautiful lake, again with few people in view and no craft on the water. The French had learned to keep their heads down, after four years of bombers and Gestapo. They ate some tired C rations, improved with two baguettes bought from a bakery whose warm, bready aromas sent Karl’s memories back to his first time in France in 1936, and the enchantment of those delicious days. They started out of town and Moe pulled over to a view site, looking due west into the lower green fields of the Rhône Valley.
The view was captivating. Karl said, “I’ll bet we can find a good Côtes du Rhône this evening to go with the C rations. The vintage comes from down there.”
Moe flourished a thick roll of the American-printed five-franc notes issued to the troops. “Might at that.”
“How’d you get so many?”
“I used my letters.”
“What else have you got?”
Moe flashed his enigmatic smile. “You’d be surprised.”
“I don’t like surprises, not in a war.”
“I think we’re about to get another.” Moe pointed.
Karl had not been watching the sky. Motes danced and zoomed far away. But one was much faster than the others. “Our flyboys are trying to gang up on a Messerschmitt Me 410, I’d say,” Moe observed, and produced a big pair of binoculars. “They developed this Schnellbomber for jobs like this. A jet plane. Works by heating air and pushing it out the back. Far beyond anything of ours. So I gather from the briefings I’ve had.”
Jets were not news to Karl, but this one seemed magically swift. He watched the bee swarm of silvery American Mosquito fighters he had learned to recognize back at their air base. They buzzed across the sky but could not get near the gray Messerschmitt, which swooped and turned with effortless grace. It made a hollow noise that reminded Karl of a dentist drill, much different from the angry buzz of the Mosquitoes. The German led the Americans across a clear blue vastness, headed nearer to where they stood. Once the Americans were nearly to the mountains nearby, the Messerschmitt dodged away in a breathtaking turn. It zipped off, diving toward the west.
“The Rhône is in the distance, see?” Karl said. “It’s headed—”
“For the major highway,” Moe said, voice calm. He handed the binoculars to Karl. “The one our main advance goes up.”
In the hazy distance, Karl studied the Messerschmitt. He had heard about it, first seen in June over France. The Germans were unveiling ne
w technologies as their troops withdrew, hammering home weapons coming from years of preparation—just like the Manhattan Project. V-1s and V-2s, the death dust, now this.
Moe casually added details. The jets were so fast German pilots needed new tactics to attack bombers. In a head-on attack, the closing speed was too high for accurate shooting. Even from astern, the closing speed was too great to use the short-range thirty-millimeter cannon to maximum effect. “So they use a roller-coaster method, coasting along above, then a quick dive to aim and fire. This guy is doing something else, though.”
As Karl watched, the Messerschmitt banked and turned parallel to the distant Rhône River. It zipped north, over the highway. A gray cloud burst from it, trailing like smoke—but darker, falling.
“Death dust,” he said. “They’re dropping it on our guys going up the valley.”
“Damn.” Moe took the binoculars back and studied the distant motes.
“Pitchblende, judging from the dark color,” Karl said. “We had some come in big tubs in the early days, crude ore, to separate out the uranium and work it chemically. Y’know, before all this, potters used it for coloring.” That seemed a long time ago.
The Messerschmitt made another run along the Rhône, a swift arrow dropping more, then darted across the sky and was gone.
“Let’s step on it,” Moe said.
• • •
They were crossing a narrow valley beneath a high ridgeline when Karl saw the Messerschmitt jet coming toward them. It flitted out of a cottony cloud and then through another, turning toward them in a steep bank. Over the Jeep’s steady hum he heard a thin, hollow skreee. This Schnellbomber was a dull gray dot as it dove straight at them in a long, straight descent parallel to the road ahead.
“Damn!” Moe said. It came at them fast, and Karl thought Moe would pull over or turn onto a side road. But instead he sped up, the Jeep rattling as it covered ground. They had just passed a half-ton truck convoy a few kilometers back, and Karl said nothing. Now the airplane was maybe a kilometer above them and still coming down, but flying nearly flat. A thin blue-black plume began to purl from it, as if it was spraying the pitchblende in a solution. The cloud fell toward them, aligned along the straight road. No traffic ahead. The swirling mass swarmed down the road at them, and only then did Karl realize he could button the doors all the way up. They had kept a vent on each side open for air in the mild heat here, and he got the thick snap clasps closed on his side just as the uranium hit them. He reached over and snapped secure those behind Moe.
The Berlin Project Page 32