Germanica (28 page)

All had been well until his mother died in the arms of Harry S. Truman, President of the United States. Like his late mother, he thought that Truman was an accidental president and not much of one. And, while he hadn’t given his mother’s antiwar activities much thought, her sudden death had changed his outlook. He had made himself a leader of Ruffino’s Marchers, a group dedicated to bringing the troops home. He had inherited all of his mother’s followers and added a number of his own. Mildred had gone from being a gadfly protester to a martyr. It was his fervent hope that her death would not have been in vain.

There would be another protest, but not a random one like the event that had seen his mother die. No, this one would be organized. Marchers would be grouped into companies and they would all have plenty of water and there would be doctors and nurses scattered through the crowd.

To his surprise and delight, Joey found that he could organize large numbers of people and, better, get them to follow him. When he talked, he spoke from the heart. He would not be able to bring his mother back, but it was his goal to make that Harry Truman person regret the day he’d become president.

* * *

SS General Alfonse Hahn looked up from the papers he was signing. Armies are supposed to fight, he thought, not drown in paperwork. “What is it, Diehl?”

“The prisoners have been broken, General.”

“I never doubted your abilities,” Hahn said with a smile, thinking of all the bodies, minds, and souls that Captain Rufus Diehl had destroyed.

The young people in the OSS team hadn’t been very good or very smart. They’d kept their radios too long in the same spot and it had been fairly easy to triangulate their rough location in the hills overlooking Bregenz. The fact that they were broadcasting had been noticed almost immediately by German radio experts who’d been on the lookout for just such an event. Locating them more precisely in the rough terrain had taken only a little bit longer.

Nor had they done a very good job of hiding their position. They were OSS, which meant that they were amateurs. He’d allotted one company of infantry to find them. They’d been caught in their sleeping bags. They hadn’t even set up a guard. It amused him when he was told that one of the men and a woman were sharing a sleeping bag and had been pulled naked from it. Now he knew just where and how Diehl’s interrogations would begin and he’d been right.

Hahn followed Diehl to the interrogation area. Torture chamber would have been a more accurate term, but interrogation had a more benign sound to it.

“Are all three of them alive, Captain?”

“No. The man named Hans managed to swallow a cyanide pill. The others, however, are still among the living.”

They entered a room where two people were laid out on cots. They were spread-eagled and their arms and legs were chained to the four corners of the cots. Their bodies were covered with only a sheet. Hahn pulled back the cover on the man. His body was a mass of burns caused by the electrical currents roaring through the clips and then into his body. He was unconscious and breathing shallowly.

“Will he recover?”

“If you wish him to, General.”

It was an easy decision. “I do wish it. Alive he can still be a tool. Dead he is only so much rotting meat.”

Two steps took him to the other cot. He pulled back the sheet. Despite the fact that the woman named Marie was badly bruised about the face, she was quite lovely. He was mildly annoyed that she had been beaten. Fists only cause pain, which can be tolerated. He preferred the subjects to be in agony and a state of terror. Besides, when he decided to take her, he wanted her looking as attractive as possible. He would have to wait until the swelling went down. He ran his hand down her breasts and between her legs. Her eyes opened wide with fear and horror. She closed them tightly as if doing so would make him go away.

Diehl was proud. “They told us everything they knew. We now know the names of their confederates and their locations in Arbon. We could go in and wipe them all out if that’s your wish. You said you wanted the girl totally broken so we did. Once she told us everything she knew, we told her she was a liar and that she was holding back.”

Hahn laughed. Giving a prisoner false hope and then snatching it away was a marvelous technique for extracting additional information.

Diehl continued. “We brought out the bathtub and filled it with water. We stuck her head underwater and waited to bring her up until she had half drowned. We did this a half dozen times; then we did it to her lover. I am extremely confident that she will cooperate.”

Hahn continued to probe her. Her eyes were open again and the look of terror excited him. She tried to twist her body away from him, which was quite impossible. “Sadly, Captain, we will not go after the OSS in Switzerland. An attack by us on Swiss soil would annoy the people who are providing us with so much in the way of food and medical supplies. Catching this pathetic little group in German territory was fair. Going into Switzerland would not be. Tell me, are there any women in the OSS group still in Arbon?”

Diehl quickly checked his notes. “One young woman named Winifred Tyler. She’s short and about in her mid-twenties.”

And doubtless the slut who’d tripped him and escaped from him. How nice it would be to have her in front of him instead of Marie Leroux. No, he could not fixate on the Tyler woman. The Americans in Arbon were doubtless scattering to the four winds. Even if he were to get permission to launch a raid, the Yanks were doubtless well away from this area of the world. No, Marie Leroux would have to take Winifred Tyler’s place.

Marie continued to stare at him through swollen and discolored eyelids. He again allowed his hands to roam her body, feeling her quiver. It delighted him. She had no further information that would be useful.

“Did you sodomize her, Captain?”

Diehl smiled. “Indeed, sir. She screamed when I entered her, and her lover howled just as much. It went as you ordered.”

He patted Marie on the cheek. “You are a lovely thing and you will be quite useful. Your lover is still alive and will remain so as long as you cooperate. Do you understand?”

The OSS had been fools to send lovers on the same journey. Along with pain from electrical currents, Diehl had told the boy that German soldiers would rape his girlfriend in front of him, which was one reason for sodomizing her. Another was that Diehl enjoyed it. Marie’s lover was told that the interrogators would mutilate her face and body. He had made much the same threat to Marie with the added proviso that she would watch while his manhood was slowly cut from his body. That had been the last straw. Both had collapsed.

Marie nodded and Hahn continued. “Diehl will be responsible for seeing to it that you are given medical care and that your wounds are healed. We will do the same for your boyfriend. As long as you are a good little girl, he will remain alive.”

CHAPTER 14

Lieutenant Pfister’s command now consisted of eight men and himself. Nine if you counted Schubert, who was led along by a rope tied around his waist. Pfister thought he looked like a dog that had been trained to walk upright for extended periods of time. It was a cruel comparison but war was cruel, and, if he thought too much about it, he wanted to weep.

Schubert had improved slightly. He now responded to basic orders and was able to feed and clothe himself. He was also able to take care of his personal hygiene, which was good. Not even Hummel looked forward to wiping Schubert’s ass. Hummel talked to him constantly; sometimes, Pfister thought, just to keep himself sane as their world crumbled around them. Constant artillery bombardments and their helplessness under bombing raids had sent most of his platoon either to the hospital or the grave. A couple of his men were simply “missing” and the SS had been justifiably suspicious that that they had deserted.

Having been so thoroughly shredded, the entire regiment had been withdrawn to the rear of Innsbruck and been replaced by thousands of insane anti-Stalin Russians. Neither Hummel nor Pfister had seen any turncoat Reds before, although they had heard of them. Both men thought the Russians were a scruffy, barbaric bunch. They were horrified at the thought of Red Army soldiers like them turned loose on German soil. Neither women nor property would be safe from those vandals, was their opinion. That German soldiers had committed atrocities on Polish and Russian women was unspoken.

All of them carried what they could of their equipment and supplies and left the rest. Hummel was now an infantryman. His machine gun had been bent into improbable angles in the air raid that had damaged Schubert’s mind. He had not been able to replace it. He now carried a simple bolt-action rifle and despised it. He loved the firepower and potential for devastating enemies of the Reich that his machine gun had given him. It had made him feel elite. Now he was nothing more than a humble soldier, and one with a very large pet named Schubert.

“We have orders, Sergeant,” Pfister said.

Hummel laughed sarcastically. “I’m a sergeant now?”

“Yes, and I’m a field marshal. Our orders are to retreat west along the valleys until we somehow reach an area near the capital of Germanica, some little town called Bregenz. I’ve never heard of it and it’s probably because it’s in what used to be Austria and I never gave a shit about Austria.”

Pfister pulled out a pack of cigarettes. They were German, which meant they’d be awful, but beggars can’t be choosers, they’d decided. He offered one to Hummel but not to Schuster, who was staring up at the sky.

Pfister breathed out the noxious weed. “Some days I almost envy Schuster. He is safe in his own little world.”

Hummel corrected his lieutenant. “Except when the Yanks are bombing and shelling us. Then he howls and screams and bites himself and shits himself.”

Pfister shook his head. “I’d tried to forget that part. We will travel at night, of course. It will be slow since there will be no trucks for us. Fortunately, it’s not all that far and the weather is fair. We will also hope for clouds and fog so we can move during the day and away from American planes.”

“And Bregenz is where we’ll make our last stand, isn’t it, Lieutenant?”

Pfister looked around nervously to see who else might be listening. No one was near them. “According to Minister Goebbels, it is where we will turn the tide of the war and emerge victorious, which is as unlikely as me fucking Marlene Dietrich.”

Hummel laughed. It felt good. Laughter had become a rare commodity. “Perhaps Herr Goebbels will unleash another one of Hitler’s super-weapons and save all our asses.”

“With our luck, Sergeant Hummel, the Yanks will unleash super-weapons of their own.”

* * *

On July 16, 1945, the night sky over Alamogordo, New Mexico, lit up with a degree of brightness described as coming from a thousand suns. Had anyone been looking directly at it, they would have been blinded. Instead, thick and heavily coated glasses, much like those used by welders, had been issued. Even with them, everyone was told to avoid direct contact for at least the initial explosion.

The blazing light quickly dissipated and the billowing, churning mushroom cloud could be watched by the naked eye as it boiled and roared thousands of feet into the sky. It grew like a living thing, terrifying some who watched.

Hundreds of scientists and hangers-on had cowered in trenches and bunkers to await the explosion that they all feared and hoped for. They simply did not know what to expect. A minority of the scientists thought that unleashing the power of the atom would result in the destruction of the earth, that the planet would simply fall apart and all mankind and mankind’s sometimes dubious achievements would cease to exist.

Others thought that it would merely be an enormous explosion and represent a weapon that would bring Japan to the peace table.
How
this would occur, they weren’t quite certain. When discussed, many were appalled at the thought of such a bomb being exploded over a Japanese city, incinerating tens of thousands of civilians. That firebombing of Japanese cities had been ongoing for months and had already caused many thousands of casualties was ignored. Others felt that the Japanese deserved what they would get for starting the war in the first place.

Most, however, were convinced that it would shorten the war and bring the suicidal resistance of the Japanese to a halt. Once Japan was finished, then all of the might of the United States, nuclear or not, could be turned against the Nazis who still clung on to life in what used to be Austria and northern Italy.

The news was sent to President Truman, who was in conference with Stalin and the new British Prime Minister, Clement Attlee, in the German city of Potsdam, outside Berlin. During the conversations with Stalin, Truman hinted about the success of the test bomb, code-named Trinity. He would later recall that Stalin appeared singularly unimpressed by the news. Truman at first thought it was because he hadn’t made himself clear to Stalin or that Uncle Joe just didn’t understand enough science to comprehend that a new day had dawned in the history and progress of man. It wouldn’t be until later that Truman and others would realize that Stalin’s spies, most notably Klaus Fuchs, had been keeping him informed on the Manhattan Project’s progress and that the Soviet Union was well on its way to developing its
own
bomb.

* * *

Staff Sergeant Billy Hill was the first from the division’s headquarters to arrive at the site of the slaughter. A message from his friend, Sergeant Jerome Higgins, had sent him to the site. Higgins met him. His face was pale and it looked like there was vomit on his jacket.

“Right this way,” Higgins said, “and you can see what the bastards have done this time.”

A short trek through the woods took them to a clearing where three long rows of bodies had been laid out with military precision. They were facedown, dressed in rags, and their hands had been tied behind them. From the grayness of their skin, he guessed they’d been lying there for a couple of days. Birds and squirrels had been at them and most were missing their eyes and he wondered what other soft parts as well. They had all been shot in the back of the skull. At least they’d died quickly, he thought, and then wondered what had been going through their minds as the others were executed. Had one person been the executioner, in which case their wait had to have been excruciating, or had there been a number of men blowing their brains out? He decided he didn’t really want to know.

Hill started to count and Higgins interrupted him. “I’ll save you the trouble, Billy. There are two hundred and seven of them.”

“Thanks,” Hill said, again trying to hold down the bile rising in his throat. He had seen death in battle, even caused it, but this was different. This was like Dachau, only on a smaller, more intimate scale. The numbers of dead at the concentration camp were too large to comprehend. But this was different. What made it worse was that the end of the war might just be around the corner. Jesus, how much longer could the Nazis hang on?

“Hey, Sarge.”

Hill wheeled and recognized the private who had argued with him about the merits of continuing the fighting. He was pale and it looked like he had been weeping. “What do you want, Private?” Hill snapped.

“I want to let you know that I changed my mind and want to apologize for what I said earlier. The pricks who did this have to be dug out of the mud and slime where they’re hiding and killed before there can be real peace.”

Hill nodded. The private held out his hand and Hill took it. “I’m really sorry, Sarge.”

“Forget it. I made a mistake once too. I’m just thankful I can’t recall it.”

They heard another jeep pull up and a few minutes later a grim-faced Tanner emerged from the woods along with Doctor Hagerman. After appropriate greetings, Tanner and Hagerman walked down the lines of corpses. “This place is out of the way, Higgins, how did you find them?”

“The birds were a giveaway. That and the stench, of course.”

“Of course.” Tanner had been so transfixed by the site that he had scarcely noticed the smell. Now it was almost overwhelming.

“Look at how emaciated they are,” Hill said. “Either the Nazi shits are deliberately starving their slave laborers or they’re running out of food.”

“Or maybe both,” Tanner said.

“We found someone’s briefcase, sir,” said Higgins. “The Germans are so well organized that they actually listed the names of the people they’d shot.”

He held out his hand. “Let me see the list.” He had told Lena where he was going and why. Thank God she hadn’t insisted on accompanying him. He scanned it and saw no one by the name of Bobek or Bobekova. It was a small blessing.

“What do we do with the bodies?” Higgins asked.

Hill laughed. “Why not bring up a bunch of German prisoners and let them dig a whole lot of graves?”

Higgins nodded and Tanner smiled grimly. “Great, but first let’s find a bunch of correspondents who can record this.” But he wondered if they would bother, he thought. The reporters might just think that one more atrocity was small potatoes and no big deal. Sadly, they’d be right.

Higgins was puzzled. “Doc, how come they ain’t stiff? Shouldn’t they be in rigor mortis?”

“Not necessarily. Bodies get stiffened by rigor after a number of hours and then come out of it and are limp and flexible again. Their condition only proves what we already know, that they were killed a couple of days ago.”

“Any other observations?” Tanner inquired.

“I’m not a pathologist, but I’ll confirm what everyone suspects. These were slave laborers and my bet is that they came from Dachau to work on the German defenses. It’s also apparent that they have been mistreated and poorly fed, if at all. I’d make another bet that they were executed because they were too weak to work.”

Tanner nodded. “And that also confirms that the Nazis don’t have enough food to keep their slaves alive. That’s good to know. By the way, Doctor Hagerman, you’re really good at this battlefield analysis stuff. I never did ask you, but what was your medical specialty?”

Hagerman shrugged. “Pediatrics.”

Two hours later, Tanner and Hagerman arrived back at the division headquarters. Soldiers and civilians were milling around and talking loudly. Cullen ran up to the jeep. “Gentlemen, you seem to know a lot, so please answer a question.”

“Cullen, you have my permission to test both my brain and my patience.”

“Great, now what the hell is a
Hiroshima
?”

* * *

Josef Goebbels was pale and his hands were shaking. The news broadcast by the Americans was staggering in its implications. Could one bomb have utterly destroyed a city of more than three hundred thousand? It was impossible to comprehend. Or was it? The Reich had killed millions in the camps, so what were a few tens of thousands more?

Now he understood what Doctor Abraham and his cohorts were working on. Until now, it was nothing more than theory. Now, Abraham’s bomb had to work in order for any trace of the Third Reich to survive.

And was it so terrible that the bomb had fallen on the Japanese? They were an inferior race whose military successes had been against third-rate powers like China or an unprepared United States. No. A world with a few hundred thousand fewer Japanese and their stupid code of Bushido and worship of their emperor would be a better place.

What concerned him was the
next
shoe dropping. Where there was one bomb, there had to be two. Or three. Or possibly many more. The first bomb over Hiroshima had been a message. The Japanese would ultimately surrender even if it took turning the Home Islands into floating cinders. Now it was obvious that the Americans would not have to invade Japan proper, just burn it from a distance. This meant that many of the American troops being sent to Asia could be returned to Germany for a final and massive assault against the Redoubt. It could also mean that future nuclear weapons could be dropped on Bregenz or anywhere else in Germanica. The Americans had promised not to bomb near the Swiss border, but would the Yanks continue to honor that promise if it meant ending the war? He knew precisely what
he
would do and to hell with the Swiss.

And how many bombs could Abraham develop—one, three, or maybe none. Success had been promised and failure would bring an agonizing death, but what if success was impossible? The Americans had vast resources, while Abraham had a few dozen scientists in a cave. Had he been a fool to believe Abraham?

He now had a mission. He and Magda had once agreed to kill their six children and themselves to keep from falling into the clutches of Stalin and the Red Army. The Americans were not savages like the Russians, and he was confident that they would not harm the children. As for himself, he would hang. Magda might just live, but would likely be imprisoned for a period of time, maybe even for the rest of her life.

It was sad, but so be it. He would speak with Magda and make the necessary arrangements.

* * *

Lena and her tent-mates had gotten a little drunk after hearing the news about the American atomic bomb. One of them got her hands on a couple of cases of real beer and not the heartily despised low alcohol beer issued by the U.S. Army. They kept their find to themselves rather than risk a stampede by GIs who hated what they felt was government-issue junk. The soldier’s rationale was very simple. They were fighting Germans and risking their lives so what the hell if they got a little drunk every now and then? Even though the women weren’t directly in combat, they weren’t about to share their find.