Weapons of Peace

by Johnston, Peter D. ;

  It was Ania, the mother of two who had been ripped from her children in Poland by the Nazis and put on a train to Germany. Upon her arrival in Berlin, Ania was placed in a barbed-wire holding pen. Two days later, the man who ran Sicke’s household of fifteen staff members picked her out and brought her to the mansion.

  Within an hour, the thin brunette had showered and was wearing her new maid’s outfit.

  Within six months, Sicke had forced her to sleep with him, and by January, around the time of Emma’s own arrival, the scientist had started playing humiliating sex games with Ania—games involving guns, handcuffs, and scissors.

  Emma had consoled Ania in the library as she told her story in broken German. In the following weeks, Ania confided more and more in Emma, who tried to help her subtly deter Sicke and his aggressive acts.

  One day when Sicke was away on another trip to the Ore Mountains, Ania brought Emma into the cigar-scented library again, put her finger to her lips, closed the door, and went under the blotter on his desk to retrieve one of several keys there. She led Emma to a nearby mahogany panel and inserted the key in a concealed keyhole, sliding open the panel and revealing a cache of weapons—as well as an array of sex toys. Emma wouldn’t have known what the toys were for if Ania hadn’t explained some of them to her. They couldn’t help breaking down in giggles.

  At one point, Ania leaned over and picked up a pair of silver handcuffs with a miniature key in them. She confided to Emma that she’d been shackled to everything imaginable in the house, including a bed in the cellar, the heavy wooden Ping-Pong table in the parlor, and, just the night before, the desk in the library.

  The Polish maid said that Sicke actually bragged to her that he’d used these same handcuffs on every woman he’d ever conquered. She looked at Emma holding the handcuffs and said, “Such a pretty girl—just a matter of time before he comes for you. Leave while you can.”

  But Emma wouldn’t leave. Instead, she took the tiny silver key to Maria, who had two copies made and dropped off just before Emma’s boss returned from his trip several days later. Emma placed the original back in the library cupboard and offered the second copy to Ania, who refused it, terrified that Sicke would discover the key and punish her.

  Emma then retrieved a large skin-toned adhesive bandage from the nursing kit she’d brought from England—a kit that included helpful drugs such as the chloral hydrate she’d used on the train. From this bandage she cut out an oval, which would easily cover the key when she taped it to the back of her neck under her hair. Just knowing the key was there gave her comfort around Sicke, who seemed to be paying more attention to her of late.

  She remembered how, when she first played the coin game with Nash, she’d closed her hand on the coin each time he flinched, revealing a clear pattern and making her easier to beat. Emma had hoped that her new insider knowledge of Sicke’s bizarre sexual tendencies would render him just as predictable—and, in the end, that was exactly what had happened.

  —

  Fortunately, Sicke had been just as predictable about where he left the keys to his armored military jeep. She found them stashed under the driver’s seat, the same place he left keys for all the cars he lent to his favorite servants.

  Emma popped open the trunk and dumped her clothes and other belongings out of her rucksack. She replaced them with a dozen items, including Ping-Pong balls, a small but powerful pair of binoculars, a gray skirt, some food, a few things from her medical kit, and a roll of aluminum foil that she’d found in a kitchen closet.

  It was Sunday, and the boss had left early, so most of the other servants hadn’t risen yet. She’d been able to move freely about Sicke’s home. Strangely, Frannie wasn’t in the room they shared. Emma felt bad not saying goodbye to her roommate, because she never planned to come back.

  She knew where she was going based on Erhard Wolf’s information and the maps in Sicke’s study detailing the area surrounding his hideaway in the Ore Mountains. In particular, she’d noted those points marked “SP,” which she assumed stood for Sicherheitspersonal—guard posts. During the previous two months, she’d studied these maps as she dusted and cleaned.

  Emma had suspected for some time that she might have to pay a visit to Sicke’s bomb facilities. She hadn’t guessed, however, even after Magnus confirmed that Sicke might be able to act unilaterally, that the scientist would try to host a launch so close to Berlin. Yet this was apparently what he planned to do—without von Braun’s rocket, too far from any major target, and lacking the required expertise. Truly brilliant?

  Or had Sicke gone mad?

  Nash would warn her away from such an assumption, saying that it probably meant she simply didn’t understand how Sicke could see the world so differently from her. Was it possible, then, that desperation had driven the scientist to attempt the impossible?

  Or am I missing something? And, if so, what?

  After placing two large fuel containers in the trunk, she opened the garage door, got into the jeep, and looked in the mirror. With her blond hair pinned up, the angular grayish-green SS cap didn’t look too bad on her, she thought, matching up well with her SS ensemble—a skirt, trousers, and a waist-length jacket that Ursula had given her. Her disguise was complete, with the addition of a fake SS ID courtesy of Peter.

  She’d chosen to wear the trousers, carrying the skirt in her rucksack.

  Nothing was foolproof, but she figured her odds of being stopped on the way to Sicke’s retreat were lower now that she was in his jeep and wearing an SS uniform.

  —

  Emma pulled out of the mansion’s garage into a sunny day.

  She estimated that the drive would take five hours, since the roads had been gutted. After that, she figured she’d have to make her way through the forest on foot for several more hours. Her mind flashed back to one of her mentor’s rules of influence:

  Start by knowing that you cannot succeed on your own in the most difficult situations. Thinking otherwise would be like trying to win at chess with a single piece taking on all sixteen of your opponent’s pieces.

  She wanted to throttle herself. After everything she’d been taught by Nash, here she was completely alone, unprepared, uncertain what to do next, trying to piece together a plan as she drove through the streets of war-torn Berlin.

  I wonder if a single piece has ever won against sixteen attacking pieces. How the hell can I stop Hitler and his goddamn bomb on my own? Everett, you deserve better. I’ve failed you. I’m an idiot—a nurse, not a negotiator. I’ve also failed you, Axel, because I was doing all this for you, my love.

  She felt the way she had at Leeds Castle in her weakest moments, just as miserable, just as incompetent, unable to change her hopeless path forward—the poor nurse who’d lost her son and couldn’t bring him home. The difference now was that much, much more than one boy’s life was at stake.

  She’d escaped Sicke’s trap, but could she do anything else? Her eyes filled with tears.

  Christ, not the time to cry, Doyle. Don’t feel sorry for yourself. Get your act together.

  She knew that lack of sleep wasn’t helping her think clearly or positively. She was exhausted. She glanced at her watch: 7:00 a.m. The launch was scheduled for 5:00 p.m., just as it would be growing dark and millions would be taking to the streets to celebrate the day they’d gained their liberation from the Nazis, exactly seven months earlier.

  She learned in the library the night before that she’d been wrong.

  Sicke wasn’t targeting London, as she’d initially guessed.

  He was going to blow up Paris.

  If successful, nothing could stop him from doing the same thing anywhere in Europe that went against the will of the Nazis.

  Sicke had vowed to Kammler on the phone: once he had Europe under his thumb, the East Coast of the United States would be his next target. New York first. Then Washington.
r />   Chapter 42

  Sunday, March 25, 1945

  2:30 p.m.—Ore Mountains, Sicke’s Facility

  “You, make sure the cameras in areas two and five are repositioned,” Sicke shouted at a departing guard as he strode into the mountain’s control center, its door automatically closing behind him. He nodded at the only other person in the room, Heinz Stark, his second-in-command. “Guten Tag, Herr Doktor Stark.”

  Sicke moved to the large, thick glass window that ran the width of the inner-facing wall and stared down, unable to hear anything outside the soundproof room, but able to see everything.

  Of all the places the scientist spent his time, this quiet area overlooking his finest achievement was without a doubt his favorite, where he felt most at ease, in charge of his own destiny. It sat at the crossing of two grated catwalks near the very top of the mountain’s largest interior area—its cavernous main chamber running 150 feet from ground level to its internal peak.

  From here, closed-circuit television cameras, which the Nazis had developed three years earlier specifically for viewing rocket launches from a distance, allowed Sicke and the personnel at the control center to simultaneously monitor inside and outside the mountain.

  Outside, there were two dozen cameras positioned at key points to ensure that no intruders breached the thick stand of trees that made up the perimeter defenses.

  Inside, a scan of several monitors mounted on the wall to Sicke’s left allowed him to see the miles of caverns and interconnected tunnels hollowed out below the facility’s main chamber. Usually, there were thousands of prisoners working throughout the facility, developing bombs and various delivery mechanisms. But on this day, a Sunday, the confused laborers had been given the Lord’s Day to rest, the first time this had ever occurred, leaving the mountain’s bowels strangely empty.

  Directly below Sicke, however, through the veil of rising steam produced when the naturally cool mountain air mixed with warm machine emissions, there was a flurry of activity. The scientist continued gazing through the glass, smiling at the intersecting rail lines, the stockpiled missiles, the rail cars, the big vats of covered fuel—the smell of which permeated the facility—and the sheer orderliness of it all.

  He could see a small group of his disciples working away, focused on final preparations for the first launch of his creation, which he’d even managed to improve since the most recent test. He watched them with pride as they systematically checked welds and the warhead’s insides, examined the fuse, tested the rocket’s revolutionary engine, put fuel lines in place, and confirmed the coordinates for his chosen target.

  He’d insisted on as few people as possible being present for these final steps, and for the launch itself—fifty in total, including thirty guards inside and out—because he wanted absolute control, no one getting in his way or leaking his plan and his secrets.

  There was another reason Sicke reveled in these lofty heights. As one of God’s chosen few, designated to enact his will on earth, Sicke felt closer to his Creator here, his real father.

  He knew that Hitler expected his followers to see him, their führer, as a father or a god of sorts; Sicke found this laughable. He saw no need, however, to trumpet his God to others, so he kept hidden his ardent religious beliefs and his symbols, even in his own home, never speaking of them publicly. But here things were different, both more subtle and more obvious. Not only was he nearer to the heavens when he stood out on the catwalks or looked over the controls responsible for every detail of his mountain lair; he’d also managed to craft the huge chamber below into a visual feast of unparalleled splendor and piety.

  Two years earlier, he’d asked Albert Speer, Hitler’s architect, to bore a series of large but discreet holes in the top and sides of the mountain. He’d requested that the holes be filled with steel-framed windows in such a way that the light could shine through at different angles, refracting through the inner sanctum’s steamy air and bouncing off its pyrite-laden walls.

  For Sicke, the resulting aura was that of a God-filled cathedral, similar in size at least to the one he’d attended in his youth, but imbued with a brilliant golden hue across the entire space which colored the faint mist gold and conjured the divine.

  He’d first attended church at the age of six. That’s when he learned about the book of Revelation, the prophesy of Armageddon, and the Second Coming of Christ to save the world from its misguided ways. That’s when, too, as the minister stared out at him from the pulpit, Max Sicke had his first inkling that he might be one of the chosen, that his parents were impostors, and that the promised Kingdom could only begin once the judgment of fire had descended from the heavens.

  —

  Emma remained hidden in the trees, her eyes focused on the metal hut to her right, her nose and clothes filled with the scent of spruce.

  She used her sleeve to wipe sweat from her forehead as she worked, her hands to bat away insects on this warm, late March day. She’d hiked at least three miles to reach the most significant of the six security checkpoints she’d seen on Sicke’s map, as measured by its positioning and its breadth of view.

  She couldn’t drive any closer in the jeep, because she would have had to pass through a high-profile security checkpoint. She’d thought about approaching the hut ahead of her in a friendly manner, as a fellow SS officer, but assumed that the guards there might find it odd that she’d just dropped in for a visit in the middle of nowhere.

  Her three-inch knife was busy cutting. This had better work, Gottfried, she thought, looking skyward. Her late colleague had known how to turn anything into a weapon, and when he first mentioned this strange adaptation to her she’d scoffed. He assured her that he’d once taken out four men this way. I need you here with me. She stuffed the hole she’d made in a Ping-Pong ball with two other Ping-Pong balls that she’d shredded into tiny pieces.

  She finished by wrapping the ball with foil from Sicke’s kitchen, leaving only its hole uncovered. She placed this foiled ball into her bag with another one that she’d already prepared. Nash had told her that the best people in any task could both get the details right and see the bigger picture that set the context for those details. He said that one without the other was useless. As painstaking as the preparation had been, she believed that she had the details of her Ping-Pong-ball project right. She hoped her tiny bombs would help her stop the disintegration bomb that threatened to keep the Nazis in power for generations to come.

  With her binoculars, Emma zoomed in on the main windows of the structure. She could make out two SS guards inside, both facing away from her. They were watching televisions that somehow monitored the surrounding area, something she’d never seen before. The screens showed rivers and clearings that she guessed might allow any trespassers their easiest passage through the thick woods and into the mountain stronghold. This hut and its occupants represented the first line of defense, but she knew from the drawings in Sicke’s library that there were other, similar huts ahead.

  From the angle of the screen images that she could see, she concluded that there were cameras stationed high and across the mountainside. She could try to evade all the Nazis’ cameras but quickly surmised that this would take too much time and be too risky. She was already behind schedule because of the arduous hike.

  She was ready.

  Emma hoisted her rucksack and began to run. She dashed from tree to tree on her way to the left side of the hut, where she’d seen an open window.

  She reached for her matches, lighting two simultaneously and placing one inside each of the two foiled balls. She recoiled at the rush of celluloid smoke that sprang from her hand, but managed to suppress her overreactive coughing reflex. She moved forward, leaning into the window. Staying low, she launched the balls onto the floor.

  Within seconds, she could see the tiny room fill with dense smoke. “Was ist los?” one of the guards shouted, breaking the tranquilit
y of the forest. The two guards raced from the hut, pulling their guns as they ran to escape the noxious fumes.

  “Drop your weapons now or I’ll fire,” Emma said, rising from her knees behind them, where she’d positioned herself at the corner of the hut.

  They hesitated, looking at each other. She pulled the trigger on her silent revolver, hitting one guard’s hand. He swore loudly as his gun dropped.

  “Thank you, sir, and now you over there,” she said to the second guard. “Drop it, or I’ll aim for your head.” This time there was no hesitation. His gun hit the ground, too. Smoke poured out of the cabin’s open door. Emma tried not to cough, her lungs refusing to distinguish between a weapon that she’d made and someone else’s.

  “What the hell do you want from us, Fräulein?” the second guard yelled.

  “Information, and then your silence,” she said, pulling out two large needles—one filled with sodium thiopental serum, to loosen their tongues, the other with a longer-lasting barbiturate to knock both unconscious after she had what she needed.

  “Have you ever injected someone?” she asked the second guard, a burly man with bad skin, placing the needle carefully in his large hand and aiming her gun at him. He looked confused. “Not to worry,” she said. “I’ll tell you how to inject each other. I’m not going to kill you—if you do as I say.” The guards stared at her, slowly nodding their consent.

  Thirty minutes later, Emma knew the precise path she’d need to follow through the forest and what to expect once she arrived at her destination. Both guards were back in their chairs, one with a hurriedly bandaged hand. She’d dosed them, so that neither would wake until she’d somehow escaped the mountain or been killed.

  —

  She could hear their voices.

  Emma had made good progress in the ninety minutes since leaving the two guards asleep inside the hut. But, despite all her efforts to avoid detection, another pair of guards were converging on her.