The Children's War (190 page)

62

“H
ERR JÄGER?”

Peter spun toward the figure of a man leaning casually against the wall near the door. He had one hand in his coat pocket, presumably holding a gun; the other held a cigarette. Without waiting for a reply the man motioned toward a car. “Come with me.”

So soon? He was sure he had left no trace of his crime. He threw a glance back at the shop. “May I inform my wife? I told her I’d only be a few minutes.” He was surprised that the man agreed. After telling Barbara that he was being escorted to an interview, he accompanied the man to the car. When the man opened the door for him, he realized that it must be something else—Ryszard perhaps.

The car made its way through the light morning traffic to the corner of Hyde Park that abutted Gestapo headquarters and the vast sprawl of Green Park prison. The man invited him to exit the car, and together they walked along the nearly frozen mud toward the restricted area around the Serpentine. A lonely sentry guarding the entrance to the exclusive park examined their credentials and let them pass without comment. Several meters from a disused bandstand, they found Ryszard contemplating the rotting woodwork and smoking a cigarette.

The man accompanying Peter led him to Ryszard and then waited expectantly.

“Any trouble?” Ryszard asked.

“No, sir,” the serious young man replied. He glanced at Peter as if assessing him but said no more.

“This is Stefan.” Ryszard gestured toward the man.“He’s one of ours.”

Peter nodded and waited to see if he would be introduced, but as Ryszard said nothing more, he guessed he was already well-known to the man or his true identity was considered inessential.

“We have an idea of where that device is,” Ryszard began, but still he did not remove his gaze from the wooden filigree overhead. After a moment he seemed to gather his thoughts, and with a peremptory “Let’s walk,” he took off in the direction of the lake.

They walked in silence for a moment, Ryszard still consumed by his thoughts. Peter hesitated to break his reverie, but finally ventured to say, “I’m sorry about your son.”

“Yes, so am I. One of those things. I thought I was protecting him, but I called it wrong.” Ryszard paused, then added with some embarrassment, “I guess I never offered you my condolences for . . .”

“No, I don’t think you did,” Peter responded, trying to suppress any bitterness. Why should Ryszard have offered condolences on the death of his sister’s daughter to an outsider? Into the silence of their footsteps he added under his breath, “We fight for our future while losing our children.”

“We are the children. Who among our parents would have thought we would still be fighting this bloody war, even now?”

“Our entire lives,” Peter muttered in sympathetic agreement.

Ryszard shrugged off their morbid commiserations and turned to business. “As you suspected, the Schindler name was not a fake; it was indeed the son of my colleague in Berlin.”

“So it wasn’t official business?”

“I don’t think so. At least not admittedly so. Could be the Führer’s office is trying to secretly resurrect the work done at that laboratory, but wants a handy scapegoat if things go wrong.”

“Or Schindler is doing some independent research.”

“Yes. In any case, I’ve learned that the son left Berlin for London and planned to meet up with a chap who works in that lab near here, the one that your little Underground group was keeping an eye on back in the good old days.”

“Do you want me to contact the English Underground and find out what they know?” Peter asked, doubtful of his chances of success.

“No, I’ve already gone through channels and they don’t know anything. Apparently they never got together a group to replace you and your buddies, and so all they get is intermittent reports from inside there.”

“Hmm. Makes me feel like we were doing something really important,” Peter commented sarcastically.

“I think you were, and besides, I think they realized that as well, but they just couldn’t find the talent to keep up such a close surveillance. Your language fluency, scientific literacy, and cryptanalytic skills were hard to duplicate, not to mention your willingness to work in such danger.”

“They should have thought of that before they used us as bait.”

“Such decisions are rarely made by people who have a genuine grasp of reality,” Ryszard answered quietly. “You guys should have elected your kings, the way we used to, then you wouldn’t have all these messy politics protecting a deposed royal family from adverse publicity.”

“We should have beheaded the lot, if you ask me,” Peter grunted.

Ryszard laughed. “So, you don’t feel loyalty in your blood?”

“Remember, I was in the English
Republican
Army!” Peter huffed.

“The same one that subordinates itself to the Monarchists?” Ryszard teased.

“Political expediency—you’re familiar with that! Now, do you have any more details?” Peter asked brusquely.

“Yes, Wolf-Dietrich, the son that is, was supposed to meet a fellow named Shantler, but I couldn’t find that name on any employee list. The closest I could find was Chandler.”

“Yeah, that sounds like how they’d mangle it. What’s this Chandler do?”

“Biochemist.” They stopped at the edge of the lake and looked out over its cold, gray waters. After a moment Ryszard continued, “Schindler junior brought along a computer as slick as yours—”

“Ah, that explains Katerina’s command,” Peter interjected. “Did you tell her to order me to bring my computer?”

“Order? No. I asked her to let you bring it. I assumed you’d want it with you.”

“Want it? Hell, no! Do you have any idea how suspicious it is for a normal working stiff to carry something like that around the countryside? I had to cross four internal border checkpoints with that in my luggage!”

“Well, no harm done,” Ryszard commented, unconcerned.

Peter muttered under his breath.

“Anyway,” Ryszard picked up the thread of his story, “he’s supposed to use it to interpret some data. Presumably that device. I assume since you have the same type computer, you can—”

“I don’t,” Peter interrupted.

“What?”

“I don’t have the same type.”

“How do you know, you’ve not even seen his!” Ryszard snapped angrily.

“No, but I know that my computer could not read a microdisc.”

“A what?”

“A microdisc. It’s a device for storing information that’s about the size of that device the American passed on,” Peter explained. “It sounds like that’s what we’re dealing with. A woman I met in the NAU showed me it and the computers that can read it. It’s a new technology, even in America, and my computer is too old and outdated.”

“How old is it?”

“About two years old. They age fast.”

“So you’d need a different computer?”

“No, I’d just need to upgrade what I have: add a bit of hardware, load the software to read it.”

“I don’t speak gibberish,” Ryszard said, clearly irritated.

“The upshot, dear brother-in-law,” Peter explained patiently, “is that, even if we had it, I couldn’t read that device with my computer.”

Ryszard swore under his breath.

“So, I risked my life carrying that machine here for nothing,” Peter added.

“So it would seem,” Ryszard agreed. “Well, maybe we can salvage the situation. I’ll still need your help.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“I want to go into the lab personally and see what we can find out. I need an excuse, and you’re going to be it.” Ryszard stooped down, picked up a flat stone, and flung it across the water. It skimmed nicely, skipping four times before sinking.

“How so?” Peter asked, picking up a stone and skimming that. Four skips.

“Well, I haven’t a clue about science, but you can pass yourself off as an expert,” Ryszard answered as he cast another stone across the water. Three skips.

“I
was
an expert, at one point, though now I’d be hard-pressed to know the current state of the art.” Peter took his turn. Five! He grinned at Ryszard. It was like being a boy again, before the epidemic, before private school, back when he was carefree.

“Doesn’t matter,” Ryszard offered dryly, casting about for a worthy stone, “as long as you can spout a few phrases and nod at the appropriate points. I want to bring you in with me as an expert from Berlin. They’ll be obsequious enough that no one will dare notice if you’re not really all that up-to-date.” Ryszard finally found the stone he wanted, and with a flourish he flicked it across the water. Four skips. He muttered to himself and began looking for the next stone.

“And once we’re inside,” Stefan spoke up from behind the two of them, “we’ll get a chance to nose around and find out what the American passed on to them. They themselves might not know its significance.” Stefan had quite clearly removed himself from any competition.

“How do you fit into this?” Peter asked Stefan, flinging another stone across the water. Five again!

“Officially, he’s my aide,” Ryszard answered; he kicked at the gravel with his boot, searching for the perfect stone.

“So you rate an aide now?” Peter asked, waiting for Ryszard.

“I have for years,” Ryszard responded dryly. “Though this is the first time I’ve managed to have one I could trust.” He finally found what he wanted.

“So I’ll be essentially useless to this mission. Just backup,” Stefan explained.

“In fact, I, too, will probably be useless other than as an entróe into the place.” Ryszard squinted across the water. “It will be up to you to ferret out the relevant information. Neither Stefan nor I would have a hope of recognizing important information even if it was dropped on our heads.”

“So I get to ask questions, nose around, and just see if I can find out what they’re up to?”

“Yes, it’s not ideal, but it’s the best we can do. I can’t find out anything in Berlin, which indicates that it must be important. Other than that, we’re clueless,” Ryszard answered distractedly. He positioned himself carefully, preparing to fling his stone.

“And our excuse for going inside?”

Ryszard finally released his missile. It arched too high but recovered on the
first bounce and continued to bounce four more times, with the slightest hesitation on the last bounce. “Six!” Ryszard trumpeted. He turned away from the water’s edge and began walking so that Peter had to follow in order to hear him. When they were a safe distance from the bank, Ryszard explained, “I’ve suggested a reorganization of laboratory work, and this is an inspection tour to see what exactly can be moved or consolidated or even abandoned altogether. So, asking questions will seem quite normal.”

“Ah, clever of you,” Peter said quite seriously, though it sounded somewhat sarcastic upon reflection. He was still wondering how in the world Ryszard had counted that last effort as six skips.

Ryszard shrugged. “At the least, I can probably cripple some of their science programs by doing an awful job.”

“But how, without any expertise, did you manage to get this assignment?”

Ryszard laughed. “We’re talking about National Socialist bureaucracy, what does expertise have to do with anything?”