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Early Monday morning, Henrik boarded a Junker passenger liner bound for Gotha. Gotha was a major center of uranium production and Henrik was dispatched by Heisenberg to somehow speed the whole process up. He wasn’t sure whether this was a fool’s errand or a genuine overture to become a full-fledged member of the Uranverein.
Heisenberg was a cautious man, secretive of his experiments and not entirely trusting of his new associate. So far he had resisted Henrik’s so called ‘new information’ or any notion that the American scientists could somehow be ahead in their efforts to build a uranium fission device. Henrik didn’t know if it was suspicion that restrained him or just German pride. But now at least Henrik would have a chance to demonstrate his worth. Little did he know there would be an added surprise on this particular trip—a British spy by the name of Neils Hollingsworth.
“Why Henrik, what a pleasant surprise. Nobody told me there would be a celebrity aboard this flight.”
Henrik winced. He began immediately to search for a seat some distance away from Neils but the plane was packed. Apparently General Goering was hosting a tour of his newest airplane factory in Gotha and all the spare Luftwaffe officers in Berlin were required to attend.
“No, Henrik. Sit here with me, back by the toilets. It might not smell too rosy but at least we can be alone together and have a pleasant chat. I’m afraid you don’t have any choice,” Neils said ominously, and then he held up his steinhager of Schnapps. “There are no other seats anywhere else, and we’re sitting right next to the galley cart. We can drink as much as we want.”
Henrik scanned the crowded plane one last time in a vain hope, and then headed resignedly down the aisle. After a forced exchange of pleasantries, he fell silent, brooding over a cup of black currant tea and gazing sedately out the window. The view from the Junker transport was breathtaking, the rich, fertile Elbe River Valley a gentle green beneath the rugged backdrop of the white-capped Harz Mountains in the distance. But the ride was anything but pleasant. Turbulence rocked the heavy, twin-engine passenger liner spilling Henrik’s hot tea on his lap.
Henrik never liked flying. Oh, he loved testing new aircraft and dog fighting in powerful fighter planes, but he was never fond of riding in the back of the bus, so to speak, in a crowded passenger liner. He remembered taking a trip once with his father in the Graf Zeppelin before the war. How elegant and peaceful it was! You could sit down at a table, eat a pleasant meal and never have to worry about spilling your tea. But all that had changed. The last dirigible was destroyed three years ago shortly after the Hindenburg disaster, and the great, elegant ships of the sky became little more than a footnote in history.
“Masterfully done,” Hollingsworth said with a puff of his cigarette. “I just wish I’d been there when you delivered the coup de grace. Maybe you can save me one next time.” He was rambling about the two German guards again. Something about their cold-blooded murder appealed to him. Neils seemed to have a particular fascination with wet work, but he was wrong to assume that Henrik shared his passion.
In three years of espionage work in the United States, Henrik had never killed an American because he never had to. He wouldn’t have killed the British pilots over the Channel or the German guards at the Reich Chancellery either if it hadn’t been necessary. Killing didn’t give him pleasure, or guilt. It was just mildly distasteful, like sour grapes in his mouth. He just happened to be good at it. Neils, on the other hand, used his flag as a license to do what he liked to do anyways. When he killed, he felt something too. He felt joy.
“Masterfully done,” he said again. “And now, you must tell me about your work with the Uranverein.” Neils lowered his voice just a little.
“You first.”
The British spy puffed his Turkish cigarette and looked at Henrik thoughtfully. “As you wish. The paper you found in the Chancellery Archive is a map of every base and labor camp in Germany. We’ve decoded some of the symbols based on known locations, but there are still a few that continue to baffle us. I was hoping that your excursion yesterday with Heydrich might shed some light on our problem.”
“And Esther?”
“That all depends on what you tell me.”
Henrik could taste the smoke from Neils’ cigarette and it made him want to vomit. “Schweinhundt,” he said under his breath. This man knew nothing about Esther’s whereabouts. How could he? It was all just lies. Henrik sighed. “He took me to some kind of weapons testing facility, Peenemunde, he called it.”
Neils nodded. “Go on. What kind of weapons?”
“A robot plane.”
“The V-1?” His excitement was growing.
“Yes. It flies by a remote guidance system.”
“How far? How fast? I need details.”
“It’s fast, all right, faster than the fastest fighter. It uses a jet engine. But I don’t know how far. Enough to cross the Channel from Calais to London.”
Neils went quiet, his irritating British confidence suddenly deflated. So far Britain had managed to thwart Germany’s plans for invasion. Operation Sea Lion was literally dead in the water, but the Luftwaffe’s continuous bombing raids had taken their toll. England’s cities were in ruins and the RAF defenses were spread desperately thin. It was doubtful they could stand up under another barrage of fast moving, mass-produced, robotic bombs. Henrik couldn’t help but smile.
“And what about the others?” Neils asked, butting out his cigarette into the ashtray.
“What others?”
“The V-2 and V-3?”
“I saw a rocket, a big one, maybe thirty feet tall, but Heydrich didn’t have much confidence in it. I think it’s not ready yet. I never heard anything about a V-3.”
Neils became agitated. “It’s a super canon, an enormous gun that can fire clear across the Channel.”
“I never heard anything—”
“You’ll have to go back.”
“What? Are you crazy?”
“You have to take out that gun before it can fire. At the very least, get me the coordinates and I’ll pass them on to SIS. They can send in the bombers. We have to take out that gun. The war may depend upon it.”
Henrik laughed ironically. Some of the other officers turned to see what was so funny, but Neils just tipped his glass and waved them away.
“Look, Major Koch,” Henrik said angrily. “I’m not your spy and I don’t care about your war. I’m here for one reason and one reason alone, and I’m starting to think you can’t help me with that anymore. Maybe you never could. I’m starting think I’d be better off on my own and you’d be better off up against a wall with a dozen German bullets in your gut.”
Neils smiled coldly. “45 days.”
“What?”
“45 days,” he repeated. “That’s the average life expectancy of a prisoner in the death camps.”
“That’s just propaganda,” Henrik said. “Those reports are exaggerated. Every country has prisoner of war camps. Britain’s no different.”
“Oh, some live longer in the nice camps like Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen, but the Jacobs wouldn’t stay there.”
Henrik remembered the letters on the map—W and BB. He could go there himself and search for her. Why was he playing this spy’s game?
“How do you know?”
“They’re educated,” Neils said simply. His British smugness had returned in full force. “And Eli Jacobs was a physics professor and an engineer. They’ll bring them to a weapons factory like Peenemunde.”
“What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s a bomb factory. They use prisoners of war to do the most dangerous jobs, but they don’t feed them or clothe them. If they don’t blow themselves up, they’ll die of starvation and exposure. They’ll work them to death in 45 days, probably less.”
The Junker jerked in the wind. Henrik looked down at his spilled drink. “I don’t even know whe
re it is,” he lied.
“But you said—”
“They had a hood over my head.”
“But didn’t you hear anything?”
“All I know is that it was a five-hour drive from Berlin, and then I heard rockets. Does that help?”
“Not really.” Neils shook his head in frustration. “Maybe SIS knows something. Meanwhile, you go back to the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute. Find out what you can.” Neils grabbed Henrik’s arm. “Here comes Goering. Herr Goering,” he called cordially to the passing general, “I was just commenting to Lieutenant Kessler on the superiority of your Messerschmitt to his new American Mustang. He seems to disagree.”
Goering had drunk a double steinhager of Schnapps and was quite probably on his way to the toilet in the tail of the airplane. He was a powerful man, both politically and physically and although largely uneducated, he had risen to spectacular heights as the head of Germany’s famous Luftwaffe. He wouldn’t let anybody belittle one of his planes, even a decorated spy in from the cold. He stopped dead in the aisle and stared at Henrik aghast.
“He does, does he?”
Henrik gave Neils a dirty look, but the presumptuous British spy ignored it. “Yes, he seems to think the Mustang has more power. I’m afraid I don’t know what he’s talking about. I’ve never seen a Mustang.”
“Let me tell you something, young upstart,” Goering began forcefully, but then the pressure in his bladder changed his mind. “No, I’ll show you. I’ll show you something that will blow your mind.”
Henrik braced himself, but the general just turned abruptly and pushed his way to the back of the plane.
Henrik stared daggers at Neils. “Schweinhundt.”
Neils laughed. “Come now, Henrik. Don’t be angry. Now you have an excuse to see Goering’s new plane.”
“Why would I want to do that? You weren’t wrong about one thing. The Mustang is a better plane than the Messerschmitt. It’s the fastest plane in the world.”
“Maybe so, but I’m not talking about a mere single engine fighter. I’m talking about a plane without a propeller at all.”
Henrik’s eyes widened. “You’re dreaming.”
“We’ll see.”
The Junker Ju-52 landed at Gotha just east of Erfurt and the Goering entourage disembarked noisily. Technically Henrik was here on official business for the Institute, but apparently all that would have to wait because the Luftwaffe general had other plans for him this afternoon.
“Where is he? That young upstart.” Goering scanned the crowd until he caught sight of Henrik crouching unsuccessfully in the back of the line. “Ah, there he is. Come with me, young man. I will show you something.” Goering forced his way through the crowd of air force officers until he was face to face with Henrik. Goering was a few inches shorter than Henrik but he more than made up for it in girth and volume.
“Come with me, young upstart,” he announced, grabbing Henrik by the arm and pulling him to the front of the line. The other officers laughed sheepishly. By now, they were used to their leader’s bouts of flamboyance. Like a bandleader in a parade, Goering led Henrik and the other air force officers to the roof of his aviation factory where more drinks and food awaited them.
“If it weren’t for your father,” Goering blurted out behind another steinhager of schnapps, “I’d have tossed you out the bay doors at 10 000 feet.” The inebriated war ace then proceeded to regale his captive audience with tales of his adventures, which included such notables as the Red Baron and the Kaiser himself. Henrik listened respectfully, barely sipping his schnapps, until the drone of an approaching aircraft diverted his attention.
“Ah, here we are,” Goering exclaimed.
Henrik looked up and was immediately disappointed. The approaching plane was a Bf 109, a solid aircraft for sure, but with a maximum airspeed under 400 mph, it was hardly cutting edge. At the beginning of the war, the Messerschmitts were impressive fighter planes, far ahead of their British and American counterparts.
But the British Spitfire and Hurricane had continued to improve and were now threatening to eclipse the German fighters in speed, maneuverability and altitude. And the American Mustang had surpassed them all. Henrik hoped he wouldn’t be called upon to explain this fact to the highly patriotic head of the Luftwaffe. But if he were, he had already decided upon an appropriate course of action. He would lie, caution being the better part of valor.
Henrik was just formulating such a lie when something dropped from the sky like a meteor. It fired across the nose of the Bf 109 and then rose swiftly. The Messerschmitt gave chase but its Daimler-Benz engine was no match for the interloper and it quickly lost its quarry in the clouds. The Bf 109 banked sharply over the factory and returned on an opposite course when once again it was assaulted by this mysterious menace from above.
This time, Henrik got a closer look at the impressive new flyer. It was a twin-engine airplane with a swept wing and no propellers. No propellers! Like the V-1 robot plane, this new aircraft utilized powerful jet engines. But this was no mindless mechanical automaton. There was a real human pilot flying this thing. Henrik felt his heart race. How he would love a crack at test flying that bird.
The jet plane descended on the helpless Bf 109 firing its tracer bullets. Smoke burst from the Messerschmitt’s engine and she dropped down helplessly onto the landing runway. There was a collective gasp from the rooftop observers and then Goering began to clap. All eyes fell on the general.
“Have no fear, my countrymen. This was a demonstration only. How else could I explain to you the superiority of our new fighting turbojet? With a top speed in excess of 500 mph, the new Messerschmitt 262 Me is the fastest airplane in the world. Behold, gentlemen, the Swallow.”
He held up his arms as the jet roared overhead in a wide, fiery arc. Henrik didn’t know what to say. So the British spy was right after all. He caught Neils’ eye and knew immediately what he was thinking. How could Britain’s RAF stand against a hundred squadrons of such airplanes? The tide of war was about to change and the British spy didn’t like it, didn’t like it at all.