Himmler's War-ARC (26 page)

“Excellent,” said Himmler.

“Since it is obvious that these people would be intended to operate behind enemy lines, the Class A types would be the ones who would actually come into contact with the enemy, while the others would avoid it as much as possible. It goes without saying that they would need appropriate clothing, uniforms, identification, and equipment.”

Himmler beamed while von Rundstedt nodded. “Colonel,” said Himmler, “all that will be done. In the near future, we will have several assignments for you. First you are to deliver a package, human, to the Soviets. Second, you are to disrupt matters in France as much as possible, and last, think about how you would deliver an extremely large bomb or two into the heart of the enemy.”

Skorzeny thought quickly. Disrupting the French would be no problem. They were in a state of near anarchy already. “I assume you want the French communists blamed for those disruptions, which would result in a heavy-handed response by de Gaulle and the fools around him.”

“Indeed,” said Himmler, again pleased by Skorzeny’s intelligence.

“As to delivering a human package to the Reds, would the package have to be still living, or even intact? For instance, would just a head be satisfactory?”

The field marshal turned away in disgust while Himmler beamed. “We will check on that, now what about the bombs?”

“How large, Reichsfuhrer?”

“Assume five tons each.”

Skorzeny whistled. What on earth could weigh that much? “When and where?”

“Several months, and let’s assume Moscow and New York,” Himmler said. Von Rundstedt looked surprised.

“It can be done,” Skorzeny said. Nothing surprised him anymore. He was confident about delivering a bomb to Moscow, but New York? Despite what he’d just said, he would have to think about it.

“Then go and work on it,” Himmler said and dismissed the scarred colonel, who saluted and left them.

“I wasn’t aware that Heisenberg was that far along with his work,” Rundstedt said when they were alone. He was thinking of Varner’s last report on the matter.

“He isn’t, but he will be. He is too much of a scientist with his checking and rechecking until everything is perfect. He will be informed that he must race to completion and if that means taking shortcuts, even dangerous ones, then so be it. If he loses some of his precious physicists in the process, then they will be casualties in our war. Heisenberg can no longer think of himself as working in a lab. He must begin to realize that he is a soldier in the trenches and the enemy is coming at him. He must stop them now, and not a year or two from now when everything is perfect and he can say ‘eureka’ and astound the scientific world, perhaps winning a second Nobel Prize. He will also understand that he and his family will be forced to pay the price of his failures should he not succeed.”

Rundstedt nodded silently. He wondered if Heinrich Himmler had any idea just what the hell he was talking about.

* * *

Jessica heard the groans while she was still out in the hallway. She paused and was tempted to go somewhere else while Monique and Master Sergeant Charley Boyle completed their usual noisy mating ritual. Nuts, she thought. She was tired and, besides, her money was paying for the apartment.

She quietly entered the apartment and tiptoed past Monique’s bedroom. The door was open and she stopped. Boyle was on top of Monique. He was a stocky man with reddish hair on his back. She wondered if Jack had a hairy back. Monique’s legs were wrapped around her lover’s waist. He was thrusting inside her while his hands grabbed her breasts. Monique’s hands were on Boyle’s buttocks, pushing him ever deeper inside her while they both groaned and sighed.

Jessica tore her eyes from the scene and quickly went to her room, quietly closing the door behind her. She took off her dress, and cleaned her face, arms, and shoulders from a bowl of water. She thought about what she’d just seen. Vive la France, she thought. Jessica had never before seen people making love, if that’s what it really was. A few years back, she’d had the chance to see a smutty movie that cousin Jeb had gotten from his friends, but had passed on it. He’d later admitted it involved some foreign people and the film quality was really bad.

“And the people were ugly, too,” he’d added.

My education is sadly lacking,
Jessica concluded. She wondered about Jack’s and thought she knew about Jeb’s. He’d bedded several of her friends who had told her what a wonderful experience it was. These comments had led her to let Jeb take a few liberties with her until they’d both called a halt to it.

Monique knocked and walked in. “My beloved sergeant is gone, if you haven’t noticed. Did you enjoy the view?”

Jessica was not abashed. If Monique had wanted privacy, she should have closed the door. “It was intriguing.”

Monique laughed. “Intriguing? Now you sound like an Englishwoman. It would have been truly intriguing if you’d brought your Jack Morgan up here and romped on your bed, with the both of you squealing with pleasure like Charley and I did. You should have, you know. Life is too short and sometimes people make it too damned complicated. There’s a war going on and we’d all better enjoy it while we can.”

Jessica and Monique had had this conversation before and Jessica had explained that, first, she wasn’t ready to have sex with Jack or anyone else for that matter, and, second, American women didn’t usually jump into the sack with someone they’d just met. Monique had said that was a shame because they were missing so much time and pleasure. She’d then gotten Jessica to admit she’d never gone all the way, and that some reasonably heavy petting had been about it. Monique again thought that was a terrible waste.

“You’re lovely and you have a wonderful figure, why don’t you use it?” she’d said. “Someday you’ll be old and wrinkled and no one will want you. Use it now, while you can still enjoy it.”

Why not indeed, Jessica had thought, although she figured she had more than a few years to go before she’d be old and withered. But Monique had a point. Jack could be dead at any time, and bombs were falling around Paris although, so far, its status as an open city had been sustained and kept it from damage even though the Allies now occupied it.

It was time to change the subject. “What do you mean about complications?” Jessica asked.

“I told my sergeant to go away and not come back,” she said sadly. “That was a farewell lay.”

“Good grief, Monique, why?”

“Because he is a thief and a crook and is going to get arrested. And that means anyone close to him might be arrested as well.”

“Ah.”

“Ah, indeed. Recall all the food and other things he got me, much of which I sold and sent back home to help with my son? Well, all of it was stolen. I thought as much, but I closed my eyes to it. My sergeant and a bunch of others are stealing from the U.S. Army and now the MP’s are investigating it. He is debating turning in others in return for a light sentence and came to me to tell me to get rid of what I might still have and be ready to answer some questions. He will doubtless lose his stripes and probably have to go to jail. He may be dishonorably discharged, but he may also be sent to a combat unit as a private. Either way, he is dead to me. I will miss him. He was a competent lover and a great purveyor of luxury items.”

Jessica had heard rumors from her uncle that some GI’s in the supply units were pilfering large quantities of supplies and selling them on the black market. A little thievery was common enough when temptation presented itself and, as Tom had said, who counts paper clips and pencils? Still, stealing to provide one’s self with creature comforts was one thing, but this level of thievery was much more ambitious. Jessica was glad that the apartment was in her name and that she could prove where the money came from.

“Monique, I’m sorry.”

“So am I,” she said with a mocking pout. “Now it will take me weeks to find a replacement for him.”

       * * *

Jim Byrnes’ career in the United States government had been varied, even spectacular, although he’d been denied his nation’s highest honor, the presidency. And, at age 65, he knew it would never happen. He’d been a congressman from his native state of South Carolina and then a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He had stepped down as a Justice in order to head the War Mobilization Board for his good friend, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He’d also been born a Catholic, which offended many Protestants, and then converted to Episcopalian, which offended Catholics, thus making him unelectable to national office.

Still, the President trusted him and liked to use him for unofficial duties like the one he was pursuing today. Andrei Gromyko, the gloomy looking Soviet ambassador to the United States awaited him in a conference room in the uninspiring red stone castle that was the Smithsonian Institute. Gromyko was much younger than Byrnes and was considered a rising star, a Red Star, Byrnes thought whimsically.

Typically, Gromyko came right to the point. “Why do you wish to speak to me, Mr. Byrnes?”

And a bright good morning to you too,
James F. Byrnes thought. “We would like to know what is happening to your army. It seems to have disappeared,” he said dryly.

“I don’t understand,” Gromyko said, either ignoring or not understanding the sarcasm. “We are fighting bravely and enduring casualties on your behalf.” Gromyko was known to be a stubborn negotiator.

“Ambassador, your vaunted Red Army does not appear to be moving. What has happened to your great advances and even greater victories?”

“The Red Army continues to fight. As you are aware, the Germans are now fighting far more intelligently than in the past. I believe your own forces are discovering this unpleasant fact in France. The Red Army’s senior commander, Marshal Zhukov, has informed our high command, the Stavka, that the army is exhausted. It requires far more in the way of supplies and manpower; thus, a period of relative rest is required. However, do not fear, the pace will increase once the situation improves.”

Byrnes continued in his soft Southern drawl. “In the meantime, the American army bears the brunt of fighting the Nazis. We are seeing German units in France that had been in Russia until recently.”

Ultra was providing disheartening information that numerous other German units were moving from the Soviet front to France. Aerial reconnaissance, along with captured enemy soldiers was confirming this.

Gromyko laughed unpleasantly. “Now you know what it is like to fight alone, even temporarily. From 1939 until now, Russia stood alone while your country dithered. My people bled. Our soldiers were killed and maimed, our cities ruined, our women raped, and all the while you Americans slept snug in your beds.”

Byrnes bristled. The accusation, however truthful, was unfair. The American people weren’t going to go to war against anybody until the Japanese had conveniently attacked Pearl Harbor and Germany subsequently and foolishly declared war on the United States. FDR had correctly identified Germany as the greater evil and had ordered the military focus to be against Hitler, even though there had been fierce opposition to that decision by those who felt that Japan should be defeated first. They both knew that an American focus on Japan would have meant defeat for Russia, and perhaps even Great Britain.

“It takes time to prepare an army,” Byrnes said, “and we were separated from the war in Europe by an ocean, whereas you had the Nazis by the throat. In Teheran, less than a year ago, we promised a cross channel invasion this spring and we have done it. We expected to be marching in lock step with you, and not have you giving the Germans a respite.”

Gromyko nearly sneered. “I concede that, however late, your army has arrived. But it is nowhere near the size of ours or that of the Germans confronting us. Your invasion of France is, for all intents and purposes, a sideshow.”

Byrnes nearly gasped at the insult. “Our army is large, getting larger, and will continue to grow, as will the amount of aid we are giving you. Our concern is that the Red Army isn’t fighting.”

Gromyko was clearly unimpressed. “I will relay your concerns. However, I will also remind you that General Winter was a Russian ally when the Hitlerites invaded, but is now a friend of the Germans. Winter in Poland might not be as severe as it is in Russia, but waging war in ice and snow and mud is still an extremely difficult enterprise.”

Byrnes reluctantly but silently concurred. “Then please add this. We are working hard and our people are in great danger in order to send supply convoys to the Soviet Union. Those supplies could just as well be used by our own soldiers as yours.”

Gromyko stood. His expression was one of controlled anger. “As I said, I will convey your concerns.”

CHAPTER 13

COLONEL ERNST VARNER thought he could hear Margarete’s cry of delight even before his Fieseler Storch landed in the dirt road by the farmhouse. He hopped out when it slowed and the pilot taxied towards some trees where the plane would be covered with a tarp and, hopefully, be out of sight of the damned Americans. He’d endured a couple of scares on the flight from Berlin to the farm.

Margarete jumped into his arm and hugged him while Magda approached a little more sedately. Her eyes, however, were warm with a promise of better things to come and he winked at her. Magda’s response was to grin and lick her lips provocatively.

As they walked to the house, Varner noted with distaste the presence of foreign workers. He felt that using prisoners and drafted foreign civilians as little more than slaves was almost as distasteful as what was going on in the concentration camps. Once more it brought home the necessity for Germany to win the war, or at least negotiate an honorable peace. If not, the world would doubtless wreak a terrible vengeance on the Third Reich, regardless of who was in charge at the end. Eric and Bertha doubtless thought having slave workers was their due as Nazis and conquerors. After all, weren’t the prisoners being well fed and cared for? What more could people who weren’t quite human want?

Despite the gathering dark clouds of disaster outside, dinner was jovial and the food plentiful. Ernst had been on rationed food and ate too much. So too with the drinks and he made sure that his pilot, an eighteen-year-old lieutenant who appeared both too young for his rank and to be flying a plane, was well taken care of. They would not be flying tonight, so let the boy have a good meal and a couple of glasses of wine. Normally, he would have eaten with the pilot, a pleasant young man named Hans Hart, who seemed spellbound by Margarete, but Hart was intelligent and discretely excused himself and gave Varner the privacy to be with his family.