The guard at the gate was busy talking on the phone. From his hip hung a huge, American-made, military.45 automatic. Carter hurried by, doing his best to appear worried about being late, and the guard glared at him, presumably for the same reason. But he said and did nothing, and Carter was inside.
Across the driveway, which split to the right toward the offices, Carter went left into the main factory building through a door marked Employees Only. He followed the safety notices down the narrow corridor and punched in at the time clock, finding Mueller's card with no problem. At least the man would get paid for today.
Inside the main workshop, it was incredibly noisy. Hydraulic hammers smacked parts out of thick sheet steel and sent them cooling down long assembly-line chains.
He hurried through the forming room and out on the other side into the factory yard. He was going to have to find out where they assembled the type of equipment he had seen on the docks in Buenos Aires. More photos were needed for a positive identification.
Outside, piles of material had been laid in neat rows with narrow aisles between them. Carter stood in the middle of one of the aisles trying to decide which way to try next, when a hoarse toot sounded behind him. He jumped just in time to avoid being run down by a forklift loaded with machine parts.
"Vorsicht, Jungen!" shouted a hard-boiled old man at the wheel, as he pulled up to a halt.
"Where is the assembly plant?" Carter shouted.
The old man turned, dropped his load expertly in its place, and backed up next to Carter. "New here… Mueller?" he asked, peering at the ID badge.
Carter nodded.
"Get on! I'm heading over there now."
Carter got a foothold, and they took off through the forest of machine parts, some piles of plastic piping, and several very large castings. The old man was an expert at getting around tight places, and within minutes they were rolling into a busy, brightly lit section of the factory, filled with huge hulks of machinery. The brilliant pinpoint lights of welding torches shone everywhere. Along the ceiling high overhead, a massive crane moved down the room. Dangling from the crane's cable was an enormous hollowed-out half-cylinder. Carter recognized it as the outer casting of the pump he was looking for. They were building another.
He shouted his thanks to the old man and jumped off the forklift, which continued across the assembly plant and out the other side. The pump casting overhead disappeared behind a barrier of corrugated iron that cordoned off one section of the work area. Along the barrier the stenciled word VERBOTEN appeared every few feet. The only gap in the barrier was the ceiling-high door through which the crane had passed. Beside the opening was a security guard, nodding at each man who came or went from inside. Personal recognition. Carter thought with a sinking feeling.
It would take some maneuvering to get around the guard, but he had come this far unchallenged; he wasn't going to stop this close to his goal. Yet he couldn't afford to have the alarm raised. He'd need time to take his photographs and then to get out with the film. He was going to have to be very careful.
He turned and started down the aisle in the opposite direction when he saw three men inspecting the spot welds on a section of pipe. One wore work clothes and the white hard hat Carter assumed was a foreman's. The second was in a business suit, and between them stood a taller man wearing a light jacket and slacks, and a white hard hat. He half turned, the harsh fluorescent light glinting off a lens over one eye.
Ziegler.
Carter retreated, walking hastily across the work area, cursing his luck. Ziegler had lost him in Buenos Aires, and he had run here to Germany to make sure nothing interfered with the work he had ordered. Goddamnit! He was the one man in Germany at this moment who could recognize him.
He hurried past an extruding machine, shooting out long sections of plastic piping, and past some other machinery whose purpose he could only guess at.
Overhead, the crane's empty cables sailed by. He followed the arc of their flight and saw the second half of the pump casting waiting by the huge outer doors. Two men stood in front of it, waiting.
He stepped up his pace, overtaking the cables, but not moving so fast as to attract any attention. Then he slipped around the huge pump casting to the inside, between it and the wall.
The huge hulk was shaped more or less like a teapot with three spouts: lower, middle, and upper. He tossed his lunch pail aside, grabbed the lip of the lower spout, and hoisted himself inside, just pulling his feet in as the cable's hook clanged noisily on the outer surface of the casting.
In a few minutes the cables were secured, and Carter felt the weightless surge as the casting swept into the air.
A panorama of the floor passed by the angle of his view from the spout as the massive piece of metal swung lazily on the chain. A minute later he could see the iron barrier, and the casting began to descend.
The pump hit the floor with a jolt, thrusting Carter deeper into the spout, almost into the main body. Then someone was directly below him as the cables were unhooked. They were saying something, the words coming only indistinctly to him where he lay.
After a few minutes the voices faded, and there were only the factory noises for an hour or two after that. At first he had feared that the two parts would be assembled immediately, and he would be discovered. But now he wondered how long it would be before he could get out of there.
As if on cue, a loud buzzer sounded, and gradually machines stopped, lunch pails rattled, and he could hear the men tramping away from the shop. Dinner break, he guessed, and in a few minutes the factory was silent.
Carter inched his way into the tank, and when he was clear of the spout, he stood up. A guard, seated by the door, was just visible from around the edge of the pump casting. The man was reading a magazine as he ate his dinner.
Carter took out his camera and, careful to make absolutely no noise, took several photographs of the pump casting he was standing inside of and of its mate on the other side of the shop floor.
He stepped out of the casting and, keeping it between himself and the guard, moved through the shop area, snapping photographs of the equipment and gears that evidently were to be installed inside the castings.
When he was finished, he stuffed the camera back in his pocket and went around the far side of the casting in which he had ridden.
The guard was still engrossed in his magazine. Carter picked up a large chunk of slag from the floor and threw it across the large shop. It clattered off the side of the twin casting.
The guard jumped to his feet, the magazine falling to the floor. "Was ist?" he shouted. He took a couple of steps forward, then hurried across to the other casting.
When he was around the opposite side. Carter hurried out into the main shop, then sprinted across toward the main doors leading outside. Suddenly in the wide doorway a knot of men appeared. At the forefront was the steel worker whose clothing he had stolen. He looked angry.
"Damn," Carter swore. He wheeled a hundred and eighty degrees and headed back toward the iron barrier. Just then the guard came out.
"Here, what are you doing?" the guard shouted, his hand on the butt of his automatic.
They asked me to come fetch you, sir," Carter said, pointing to the men across the factory.
The guard looked uncertainly that way.
"You'd better hurry, sir. They're mad."
"Verdammt," the guard swore, and he headed across the factory as Carter sprinted in the opposite direction to the left of the iron barrier.
At the rear of the building he went through a set of swinging doors into a packaging area. Three men in carpenter's aprons looked up from their dinners as Carter shot past.