He threw it at the attendant. The woman at once placed it across Oskar's eyes.
Blackness…
Fear enveloped him at once.
He felt himself straining to hear. There was utter silence. What were they doing? His naked flesh crawled. What would they do to him? He waited. The pain would strike… now!… He shivered…
Nothing…
Harbicht spoke.
“Finally, Herr Weber,” he said, “there are the fears in our own minds The special fears we all possess. They are the most powerful. That special place on our own body where we fear pain the most. That secret, intimate place we must hold inviolate at all costs…”
He paused.
“Where is yours, Herr Weber?” he asked almost seductively.
Oskar fought against the leather straps binding him, already slippery with his blood. They gave not a fraction of an inch….
Where?
When?
His mind screamed.
Suddenly he felt a light, cold touch on the nipple of his breast. A short cry burst from his lips.
“Here, Herr Weber?” Harbicht whispered.
A cut slicing into the skin of his abdomen made him twitch with sudden shock.
“Here?”
Oskar was trembling. He knew it. He could not stop. He waited….
Oh, God…
He listened.
He could hear nothing — except his own tortured breathing. Suddenly he felt a sharp hard tap on his testicles. He screamed. He could do nothing else. Waves of agony washed over him, spreading to every nerve end in his body. He was suddenly aware of his testicles utterly unprotected beneath him. He struggled against the leather straps. He sobbed.
“Ah, Herr Weber!” Harbicht exclaimed with pleasure. “The secret spot! Not so different from other men, are you, Herr Weber?”
His voice suddenly grew brusque “Where are the enemy agents, Weber?” He shot out the question “What was your real purpose?”
Oskar's mind whirled in a turmoil of anguish. With all his being he wanted to end the pain. He would talk No! Gisela. The others. Anna. He could not sacrifice them. If he talked, he would perpetuate creatures like this Gestapo beast. He — would — not — talk!.. He heard himself sobbing. He stopped at once. He heard a low, rumbling sound. Something was being rolled across the linoleum floor. Something big. What was it?…
It stopped. He listened, struggled to understand…. Clanks. Scrapes. Snaps…. What were they going to do?…
A sudden, sharp pain shot through him as if with a life of its own. Something had been clamped with a tight, sharp bite into one of his nipples…. He jerked violently as an iron grip clutched one of his testicles….
Alligator clamps…
And he knew!
He sobbed. His mind shrieked.
He tried to steel himself.
The fiery shock went through him. A million white-hot needles stabbed into every nerve The pain raged through his loins. It was the only reality in the whole world. There was only one thing to do. Stop it! Stop it any way possible. At any cost…
As suddenly as it had been turned on, the current was switched off.
Talk! Tell them anything!
At the edge of his mind, through the cotton-wool silence in the room, he was aware of someone talking harshly to him. The Gestapo colonel? He could not focus.
But one clear thought reached him in his sea of pain.
Talk now — and everything he had lived for, everything he had endured, would be in vain…. In an instant he would obliterate himself. And all the others…
He — would — not….
Yet he knew with absolute certainty he could not bear the torture any longer. His will would be shredded in an instant. There was only one way to end it.
Death.
But how? How? His aching arms were held tightly by the leather straps. His legs. The skin was torn and bleeding where he had strained against his bonds in his spasms of raw agony. He had been wholly unaware of it. Unaware?…
The massive pain had overridden all other hurts. There, perhaps, was the hope. The way he could rob the Gestapo colonel of his triumph…
Suddenly the blindfold was torn from his eyes. He found himself staring into the face of his enemy. His tortured eyes, peering from their sockets as if in the rictus of near-death, sought and met the cold, derisive eyes of his tormentor.
Oskar smiled. It was a hellish grimace.
He could do it.
There was a way.
“Ready, Herr Weber?” Harbicht mocked. He nodded imperceptibly.
Again the searing current burned through his tortured body.
Now…!
He bit down. With all the power he could muster he bit down.
He felt his teeth meet and grind together, severing his tongue. And there was no pain. Only the terrible fire billowing from his loins…
He felt the hot blood spurt and well in his mouth. He felt it pour down his throat… all without pain…
He breathed. Deeply. Exultantly. In triumph. The moist, velvety warmth rushing into his lungs brought him deliverance….
Harbicht held up his hand.
“Enough,” he said. “He is unconscious”
He snapped his fingers. “Revive him!”
Suddenly he stared at his victim, bent over him. How could the man look — serene?
Alarm assailed him. A trickle of blood was seeping from the corner of Weber's mouth. Harbicht grabbed his chin. He pressed the jaws apart. A cascade of blood welled out and gushed across his fingers, drenching the man's naked chest.
And a crimson lump.
It plopped to the floor….
“Verflucht!” Harbicht cursed. He slapped a vicious blow across Oskar's lifeless cheek. “The bastard drowned himself! In his own stinking blood!” He stared at the body.
The words of Aeschylus, learned long ago and long forgotten, came to his mind to mock him. Pain lays not its touch upon a corpse….
Abruptly he turned away.
“Get rid of him He is of no further use to me”
He strode to a washbasin and turned the faucet on. He held his hands under the streaming water and rubbed. Rubbed and rubbed…
His only lead had been destroyed But he felt coldly determined. He would find the enemy saboteurs. By God, he would!
He forced himself to think calmly. The enemy agents and their German accomplices would still be in Hechingen. They would have to be. He had given the alarm as soon as he had learned of the ambulance. It had not left the area. He would find it. Even if he had to turn over Hechingen brick by brick…
And — when he did…
The shrill clanging of a bell interrupted him. It was the telephone. One of the SS guards answered it. He held the receiver out for Harbicht.
“Herr Standartenführer,” he said.
The Gestapo colonel took it.
“Harbicht!” he snapped. He listened. Stonily Without a word he replaced the receiver. Slowly he turned to gaze wide-eyed at the dead man slumped in the massive chair.
It had been Professor Reichardt on the phone. The final, crucial test of the Haigerloch pile had been completed.
It had failed!
4
Dirk was getting increasingly uneasy.
There was well over half a tank of gasoline left in the tank of the ambulance. It was more than enough to take them where they had to go. No problem.
It was the time that worried him. It was moving too fast.
He glanced at his watch. It was nearly 1900 hours. They had been hiding in the ramshackle barn close to eight hours now. Too long? Or not long enough? There was a fine edge between letting enough time go by for the immediate scramble of pursuit to die down — and staying in the barn so long that discovery became imminent. Or — Oskar talked… It was Oskar who had suggested the abandoned barn near the village of Bodelshausen on a side road about four kilometers north of the main Hechingen-Haigerloch road. They had picked the barn as a place to hole up in case something went wrong and they became separated or were unable to return to the house. With Oskar's capture they had headed straight for the barn. Once they left it, it would be the final, irrevocable step in writing Oskar off. He knew it. Gisela knew it. They had to give Oskar every possible chance to get away. Get out of it and join them. But time was getting to be critical….