AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Because, if I’d got rid of you, then I’d be the one left with nothing to do but watch while the Reich and the Race throw brickbats at each other,” Zhukov answered. “This way, if anybody ends up needing to take the blame, you’re the one.”
“Yes, having a scapegoat around is always handy,” Molotov agreed. “Stalin was a master at it. The only trouble is, the Reich and the Lizards have nastier things than brickbats to throw.”
“That’s the only trouble, is it?” Zhukov chuckled. “Have you got any nerves at all, Vyacheslav Mikhailovich?”
“I try not to,” Molotov said. “If you purge me, Marshal, you purge me. I cannot do anything about it.” Not yet. I wish I could. I’m working on it. “I cannot do anything about the Nazis and the Lizards, either. If I get excited about what I cannot help, that doesn’t change the situation, and it leaves me more liable to make a mistake.”
“You would not have made the worst soldier in the world,” Zhukov remarked after a few seconds’ thought.
He meant it as a compliment; of that Molotov was sure. And so he said, “Spasebo,” though he was not at all sure he wanted to thank Zhukov. To him, soldiers were crude and unsubtle men, relying on force because they lacked the brains to do anything else. They were necessary, no doubt about it. But so were ditchdiggers and embalmers.
“You’re welcome, Comrade General Secretary,” the marshal answered. “Here, for the sake of the rodina, the motherland, we have to pull together.”
When the Nazis invaded, Stalin had said the same thing. He’d practiced what he preached, too. He’d even cozied up to the Russian Orthodox Church after beating it about the head and shoulders for almost twenty years. In an emergency, he’d been willing to jettison a lot of ideology. And hadn’t Lenin done the same when he’d instituted the New Economic Policy to keep the country from starving after the end of the civil war?
“Yes, we all have to pull together. We all have to do everything we can,” Molotov agreed. And then, because he could speak as frankly to Zhukov as to anyone save possibly Gromyko, he added, “For the life of me, though, I don’t know how much good it will do, or if it will do any good whatever.” He hung up without waiting for a reply.
When Johannes Drucker strolled into the mess hall at Peenemunde, he discovered that the powers that be had wasted little time. Here it was, only two days after Ernst Kaltenbrunner had been named Fuhrer, and a color photograph of him now occupied the frame that had held Heinrich Himmler’s picture for years.
Drucker wasn’t the only man studying it. From behind him, somebody said, “He looks like a tough son of a bitch. We need one of those right now.”
That struck Drucker as a pretty fair assessment, though he was less sure about the need. Kaltenbrunner was in his vigorous early sixties, with a big head and heavy features. He was leaning forward, so that he seemed to stare out through the camera lens at whoever was looking at him. Even with the advantage of twenty years, Drucker wouldn’t have cared to meet him in a dark alley.
Till Himmler’s death and even afterwards, Drucker hadn’t paid Kaltenbrunner much attention. Himmler kept his strength by not letting anyone around him be strong; the man who now led the Greater German Reich had been just another official in a fancy uniform standing at the old Fuhrer ’s back in Party rallies and state functions. Now the whole world would find out what sort of man had been inhabiting that uniform.
Grabbing a mess tray, Drucker got into line. Cooks’ helpers spooned sauerkraut, boiled potatoes, and blood sausage onto the tray. Another helper gave him a small mug of beer. He carried the full tray to a table and sat down to eat.
Nobody sat near him. He’d got used to that. He knew he suffered from political unreliability, a disease always dangerous and often fatal-and highly contagious. He’d stayed away from men with such an illness in the days before the SS got curious about Kathe’s racial purity, and before Gunther Grillparzer had tried blaming him for the murders during the fighting of which he was, unfortunately, guilty. No one had proved anything-he was still here, still breathing. Even so…
No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than the loudspeaker in the mess hall blared out his name: “Lieutenant Colonel Johannes Drucker! Lieutenant Colonel Johannes Drucker! Report to the base commandant’s office! You are ordered to report to the base commandant’s office!”
Drucker took a last bite of blood sausage. It might really be the last bite I ever take, he thought as he got to his feet. Most of the men in the hall looked down at their own mess trays. Sure enough, they thought political unreliability was contagious. A few stared avidly. They wanted him to get a noodle in the back of the neck.
He hurried to General Dornberger’s office, wondering if a couple of hulking fellows in SS black would be waiting for him in the antechamber. If they were-well, he still had his service pistol on his hip. But what would they do to his family if he made them kill him fast instead of taking him away to do a lingering, nasty job?
With such thoughts going through his mind, he wondered why he kept heading toward the commandant’s office instead of running. Because you know damn well they’d catch you, that’s why. And maybe he wasn’t in a whole lot of trouble. He laughed. Fat chance.
When he got to the antechamber, he saw no bully boys in black shirts, only Dornberger’s dyspeptic adjutant. Shooting out his arm in salute, he said, “Reporting as ordered.”
“Yes.” Major Neufeld eyed him. “I rather wondered if you would. The general expected you, though. Go on in.”
“Reporting as ordered,” Drucker said again after he’d saluted General Dornberger.
Dornberger puffed on his cigar, then set it in the glass ashtray on his desk. He now had a photo of Dr. Kaltenbrunner in his office, too. “Drucker, you are a man who does his duty,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Drucker said.
“In spite of everything,” Dornberger went on, and then waved a hand to show Drucker didn’t need to answer that. The base commandant drew on the cigar again. “I have an A-45 on the gantry, fueled and ready for launch. Are you prepared to go into space within the hour?”
“Jawohl!” Drucker saluted again. Then he went from military automaton to honestly confused human being. “Sir, am I allowed? Has my grounding been rescinded?”
Instead of answering, General Dornberger picked up a flimsy sheet of yellow paper. “I have here an order for your immediate arrest and incarceration. I got it half an hour ago. I have spent that half hour documenting how I ordered your launch last night because of shortages of pilots. I will finish the documentation in the time remaining until the rocket goes up. Then, of course, just too late, I will receive this telegram. How unfortunate that I could not obey the order, don’t you agree?”
Try as he would, Drucker couldn’t hold his stiff brace. His knees sagged. He stared at Walter Dornberger. “My God, sir,” he breathed. “Won’t they put your head on the block instead of mine?”
“Not a chance,” Dornberger said calmly. “They haven’t got anyone else who can run Peenemunde even a quarter as well, and they bloody well know it. They’ll yell at me and tell me I was a naughty boy, and I’ll go on about my business for as long as I can go on about it.”
“For as long as you can go on about it,” Drucker echoed. “What about me? What do I do if they order me to land?”
“Ignore them,” General Dornberger told him. “You’re carrying two missiles with explosive-metal bombs. They can’t a
rgue too hard-or they’d better not.”
“But I can’t stay up forever, even so,” Drucker said. “What do I do when I run low on oxygen?”
“Maybe I can fix things by then,” Dornberger replied. “if you hear the phrase ‘served with honor’ in any communication, you will know I have done it. If you do not hear that phrase, you would do better to land somewhere outside the Greater German Reich.”
Drucker gulped. What would they do to his family if he did that?
Before he could speak, Dornberger held up a hand. “I do not expect any of this to matter, Lieutenant Colonel. When you go up there, I think you will have every opportunity to make yourself a hero for the Vaterland.”
That could mean only one thing. In a small voice, Drucker said, “The balloon is going up?”
“With him at the helm?” Dornberger jerked a contemptuous thumb at the new color photograph on the wall behind him. “Yes, the balloon is going up. If he weren’t the Fuhrer, he’d make a good butcher’s assistant. But he is, and we must obey.” He might have been speaking more to himself than to Drucker. Then he grew brisk once more. “A motorcar will be waiting outside. It will take you to the gantry. And Drucker-”
“Yes, sir?”
“If we must go down, let the Lizards know they’ve been in a brawl.”
“Yes, sir!” Drucker saluted, spun on his heel, and marched out of the office. He saluted Major Neufeld, too, even though he outranked the commandant’s adjutant.
The Volkswagen was there. The driver said, “To the gantry sir?” Drucker nodded, not trusting himself to speak. Air-cooled engine roaring flatulently, the VW sped off.
At the gantry the crew had Drucker’s pressure suit, tailored to his measure, ready and waiting. The upper stage of the A-45 there wasn’t Kathe; he could tell that at a glance. Someone else had his baby. This upper stage looked older, more battered, almost of an earlier generation. In the crisis, the Reich was using anything that could fly.
