“Cunning. Hard. Totally ruthless. He has the no doubt well-earned reputation for missing nothing. Visual or verbal.” Again the man's mouth contorted into his disquieting, downward smile. “Harbicht is that epitome of efficiency — a morally lobotomized professional Gestapo officer.”
“Where exactly is the pile itself located?”
“In the bowels of the mountain. Blasted into a cliff. An old complex of wine caves long ago hewn out of the rock has been enlarged and adapted to hold the pile.”
“Accessibility?”
Himmelmann looked straight at Dirk. “Accessibility? For you?” The corners of his mouth drew down. “Non-existent!”
Dirk returned the German's intense gaze. “Herr Professor,” he said. “One final question. Why are you helping us?”
For a moment Himmelmann stared at him. Then he lowered his head.
“Because — I am a coward,” he said, bitterness grating in his voice. “I abhor the use to which my work is destined. I detest the life I lead. Yet — I am reluctant to give it up. I have not the courage to take action myself.” He looked straight at Dirk. “I know the evil of Adolf Hitler and his National Socialists. They cannot be permitted to control this ultimate source of power and destruction…. You? You are — unknown. So, I will help you destroy the known. You can be no worse.”
Dirk turned to Sig.
“Sig?”
Sig was scowling at his beer. He looked up.
“Herr Professor,” he said, “you say that the Haigerloch Project is indeed concerned with atomic research. With an atomic bomb…. How can we be sure? How can you prove to us that this is so?”
Himmelmann glared at him. Then the crooked smile appeared.
“You are a scientist, I perceive, not merely a — saboteur.” He filled the word with abysmal contempt. “You must be shown before you believe.” He shrugged. “Very well. We will show you — Oskar and I.”
Oskar glanced at the German physicist, his eyes suddenly dark with shock. He opened his mouth — but Himmelmann stopped him.
“You brought them here, Oskar,” he said chillingly. “Surely you can have no objection to their seeing for themselves!”
The streets of Hechingen were dimly lit, obviously in an effort to save energy, but although not bustling with people, they were far from deserted.
Dirk was uneasy as they walked along the narrow sidewalk. He felt exposed. Any second he expected the imperious “Halt!” of an enemy patrol. He realized it was a reaction left over from earlier missions to occupied territories with their rigid restrictions, curfews and ever-present military patrols. But he was not in an occupied country now. He was a German in Germany among other Germans. At least that's what his papers said. He regretted having allowed Corny to talk him into carrying no arms. He'd have felt a lot more secure with the solid heft of a .38 under his left arm.
Oskar stopped at a house with a store on the ground floor. The naked metal skeleton of an awning was folded above the display window like the waiting arms of a praying mantis.
The small, half-timbered building with its steep roof and wooden shutters did not distinguish itself from the other houses on the narrow, cobblestoned street. Like many of them, it too had a stack of firewood piled on the sidewalk against one wall. A couple of houses away, on one corner of a street junction, stood a pump topped with the figure of a girl in the national dress of the Schwäbische Alb. A massive stone horse trough squatted before it. Empty.
Oskar stepped up to the door. Heavy curtains were drawn across the store window next to it, but there was obviously light behind them. A cardboard sign taped to the inside of the glass read: ANNA WEBER, NÄHERIN.
Oskar knocked loudly, opened the door and entered, followed by the others.
As the sign had indicated, it was a seamstress shop. Several racks held dresses, skirts and coats in various stages of repair. Other clothing lay piled on chairs and a wooden bench.
Directly under the single, naked bulb hanging from the ceiling and providing the only light in the place stood a large, ancient sewing machine, treadle-operated, with a multi-drawer, drop-head cabinet. An elderly woman sat hunched over the machine, her right foot working the treadle with a steady rocking motion, sending the flywheel spinning as she carefully guided a piece of cloth under the bobbing needle. The clacking whirring of the machine filled the room.
Sig felt a sudden pang of nostalgia. His grandmother had had just such a sewing machine. Back in Zürich. She had been so proud of it. He still remembered the name on it. In gold. BURDICK. He wondered if this machine was also a Burdick. He remembered the soothing effect on him of the cozy whirring of his grandmother's sewing machine.
The woman looked up as the men entered, but did not interrupt her work. Oskar walked up to her.
“Anna,” he said, “I have brought — friends.”
The woman nodded.
“It is necessary that we go into the back room.”
The woman looked up at them. Dark eyes set deep in her wrinkled face were old and joyless with too much knowledge. Slowly she nodded — before immersing herself in her work again.
Oskar turned to Dirk and Sig. “Anna is my sister, Gisela's aunt,” he said. “She is a seamstress. A good one.” He looked around the cluttered room, his face grim. “In these days she is busy. Old clothing must be made to last a long time.”
He walked to a rack loaded with clothing at the back of the room and moved it aside. Behind it was a closed door. As he reached for it, it suddenly opened.
In the doorway stood Gisela.
Her hair was tousled. In her hand she held a basin with soiled water and a sponge. She stopped short as she saw the four men, looking at them with a shocked expression on her face.
“Gisela!” Oskar exclaimed. “I did not know you would be here tonight.”
“Tante Anna has much to do,” Gisela said, her voice strongly defensive. “I must do what I can to help.” She put the basin down on a stool and ran her hands through her hair in a vain effort to smooth it. Her eyes met Dirk's. She looked away.
“What do you want here?” she asked tonelessly. It was obvious she already knew the answer.
“It is — Wanda, Gisela,” Oskar said softly. “The Herr Professor wishes to — to discuss her with our — with Otto's friends.”
Gisela looked resentful.
“You should not have brought them here,” she said. “In a few days — it will be all over.” She glared at Dirk and Sig. “Now — when they are caught — they will give us all away!”
Oskar looked at the defiant young girl. “Gisela—” he said.
She tossed her head. “I cannot stop you,” she said. She stood aside.
Oskar turned to the men, his set face grim and pale. He nodded curtly — and entered the room. Dirk and Sig and Himmelmann followed close behind.
The room was small and they saw the bed at once — and the figure hunched upon it. They stopped dead.
It was a girl. Eighteen? Or a woman. Forty-eight? It was impossible to tell….
She was wearing a flimsy robe. When she saw the strangers enter, she shrank into the corner of her bed against the wall, drawing her legs up, her hollow, dark eyes fixed on them with maniacal dread. Every inch of visible flesh was inflamed, festering with weeping sores. An infected eruption on one cheek was oozing pus. The hair on her scalp had come out in great tufts; her eyebrows and lashes were reduced to a few strands. She drew her cracked lips back in a snarl of terror, exposing bleeding, ulcerous gums. Then she moaned: a soft, mewing sound of abject fear.
Dirk and Sig stood transfixed.