Eichler started convulsively. The last shade of color drained from his pasty face, leaving it a sickly gray. His legs began to tremble.
“No, Herr Standartenführer!” he cried, terror in his voice. “No, I—”
“Did you or did you not give food to two men?” Harbicht shouted at him.
“Yes, but the—”
“Silence!”
Eichler froze in mid-word. Horrified, he stared at Harbicht. The officer contemplated him coldly.
“You do not deny that you gave supplies to the two enemy saboteurs?” he asked. The tone of his voice was distant, yet murderous.
“I–I did not — I ha-had no… I—” Eichler stammered in terrified confusion.
“The men were there?”
“Yes, but—”
“You heard the firefight with the enemy patrol that brought them across the river?”
“I–I did I went—”
“You knew who the two men were!”
“No!” Eichler was shaking uncontrollably. “No — I—”
“You were expecting them!”
“No! Please, Herr Standartenführer. Please! It was nothing like that!” He was wringing his cap in sweaty hands. “Please…”
Harbicht sat back in his chair. “Perhaps you had better tell me the whole story, Eichler,” he said “Every detail of it. Then we shall be able to determine if you are going to — eh, survive this little interrogation — a matter that is still not absolutely certain….”
Eichler gaped at him, speechless.
“Now, Eichler!” Harbicht snapped impatiently. “I am waiting.”
And Gerhard Eichler, Ortsbauernführer of Langenwinkel, talked. Talked as if his life depended on it. He was certain it did….
Standartenführer Werner Harbicht felt cheated. The farmer Eichler had been no contest at all. Harbicht enjoyed the process of breaking a man's will. He liked the feeling of power it gave him. But Eichler had offered no such pleasure. He had talked. At once. He had poured out every detail of his sordid little escapade into the black market The man was nothing but a stupid, avaricious hog. Beneath contempt.
Harbicht had had to cut through the feverish flow of words to get the few facts of any value. Eichler had been so intent on playing up his own alertness and patriotism that his account of his exploits that fateful night overflowed the borders of fact.
His description of the two men had been familiar. Useless. The men were — average. Looked just like native-born Germans. Harbicht felt a twinge of annoyance. Ridiculous. What does a native-born German look like? He could be anything from pure Aryan to Jewish. But the idiot had been able to corroborate some information he already possessed. The strangers spoke German. Fluently. They traveled on bicycles — and now he had a detailed description of one of those. And he had learned one important new fact. One of the men had a scar. A large, recent scar running across his left elbow. That was something. He felt excited as he put together the information from Eichler with what he'd learned from the non-com at the Lahr roadblock. He was beginning to form a real picture of his adversaries, and he was convinced they were enemy infiltrators. Two young men, well built, Nordic features. One a foreign worker, the other with a deep scar on his left arm, their papers in good order. Riding bicycles, carrying rucksacks — and headed for Hechingen!
He felt closer to his quarry as he pictured them. He thought of them almost with affection. He would make it impossible for them to do any damage to the Project — and they would provide him with an exciting chase….
Eichler…
Harbicht frowned. His first impulse had been to have the man taken through the streets of the town. Eichler might have spotted the suspects. But that worked both ways. They might just as easily spot Eichler — and realize the Gestapo was on their trail. They would take precautions. And Harbicht would lose the valuable advantage of surprise: the fact that the enemy agents had no idea how much he already knew about them. How close he was…
Meanwhile he would keep Eichler in detention. He would come in handy for positive identification at a later time.
Harbicht had no doubt that time would come soon.
22
Looking at the paper on the scarred wooden workbench before him, Dirk estimated he'd have to be on the air between ten and twelve minutes. It was too damned long. Especially since he'd have to stick around for another few minutes to receive instructions for a contact schedule from Corny.
He felt relatively secure. Oskar had been extremely helpful when it came down to picking a place from which to transmit in reasonable safety. The Storp house was out, of course. Had to remain their safe house. And so was Anna's shop. He needed a place with a power source, a place where he could rig an antenna that wouldn't stick out like Gable's ears — and one he could get in and out of before being tracked down by the monitoring trucks that were sure to get on to him.
The shack on the fringe area of the railroad hump switching yard seemed made for the job. A lot of rubble and damaged equipment lay strewn about, and his rig would not stand out. Moreover, the shack had power — having once been used as a minor-repair shed.
Oskar had given him Otto Storp's yard pass and his bike, and he'd had no trouble at all entering the work area. The transmitter was hidden in a burlap sack wrapped up in a heavy work jacket, sharing the space with a battered lunchbox, the whole load strapped to his bike. No one had paid it the slightest attention.
They had decided that Dirk should go alone. He'd followed Oskar to the yard and through the checkpoint — and then taken off for the shack by himself. Sig had stayed with Gisela. No reason to put all your aces on the line — however slight the risk.
The shack had turned out to be ideal. Isolated. Oskar had said that the only yardmen likely to come around would be foreign workers. All he had to do was shout at them in German to get the hell away and they'd obey. He had placed his bicycle on the ground among the rubble. It would be less noticeable from a distance that way. No reason to invite visitors.
It really had been a milk-run mission. They had obtained the information Corny wanted. In spades. And they had managed to get it without even raising an eyebrow of suspicion. He felt pleased with himself.
But — even so — he'd like to make his report as concise and brief as he could and be on the air as short a time as possible. No reason to tempt fate — however smiling a face she might present.
He reread the clear message. And again. It was the first transmission he would be sending to Corny and he had a hell of a lot to say. But there had to be something he could cut.
ARRIVED STOP OTTO DEAD STOP WORKING WITH SUB STOP HIMMELMANN CONTACTED STOP
Already cut to the damn bone. Nothing there. He studied the block letters he'd scribbled. There was the information from Himmelmann about the B-VIII pile being moved from Berlin during February and set up in Haigerloch; the uranium and heavy-water shipments from Stadtilm and other sites; the near-success in making the pile self-sustaining, with final success a virtual certainty…. There were the decrees by the top Nazis protecting atomic scientists, lending paramount importance to the Project; the discovery of Wanda — and Sig's scientific mumbo-jumbo proving atomic radiation….
He frowned at the next passage:
REACTOR LOCATION IN DEEP MOUNTAIN CAVES VIRTUALLY IMPENETRABLE STOP SINGLE REPEAT SINGLE HEAVILY GUARDED ENTRANCE—