“What is it?” Dirk yelled.
“Tell me why the reactor test at Haigerloch failed.”
Dirk's heart skipped a beat. The test was a bust! And the Germans did not know why! They'd pulled it off. God dammit, they'd pulled it off!.. More than ever it was imperative that they not talk. The thought was sobering. He took a firm grip on his Luger. He shot a desperate thought at his partner. Sig!…
“I don't know what you are talking about, Colonel,” he shouted. “You should know that already. We blew it up!”
Harbicht glared at him. He did not comment. It was enough. The charade was over. He would give the order to fire. Only one of the terrorists was armed. The leader. They would shatter his knees. He smiled a chilling smile at the thought. The man would still be able to use his tongue….
Sig was sweating. His hands were bloody. The rope would not come loose…. One last thing he could try. But the SS would surely see him do it. He would have to try to move the belaying pin itself. Jiggle it in its socket. The rope might slip off. Just might… But he would have to use all his strength. He placed both his hands on the head of the pin. With all his might he pulled. He pushed. He jerked and jerked….
Harbicht saw the sudden movement. He froze. In that single instant he knew with blinding certainty that something was irretrievably wrong. He raised his hand….
There was a sharp whoosh. The rope flew from the belaying pin. It whipped up into the air.
Out over the stage the heavy catwalk hurtled toward the stage floor from the gridiron above, the rope screeching through the pulleys.
For a split second the SS soldier guarding the break in the wall glanced up In that same instant Dirk fell to one knee and emptied his gun at him. The man toppled over — dead before he could even register the cause of his alarm.
The catwalk crashed to the stage. The fire-weakened floorboards over the center trap gave way in a thundering cascade of charred and splintered wood. The catwalk, the flooring and the SS men plummeted down into the inferno raging in the storage rooms below the stage.
All but Harbicht.
At the last possible moment he grabbed hold of a protruding plank. Desperately he fought to hold on. To pull himself up. To crawl to safety.
Dirk and Sig and Gisela stood petrified with shock, their eyes fixed on the sight….
A gaping hole had opened up in the middle of the stage. A hole into hell itself. Below, fire and smoke boiled and belched in unbridled fury. Sprawled across the blazing papier-maché rocks from some Wagnerian opera, tangles of burning tree limbs, carts, benches, stools, picture frames — a jumble of a thousand theatrical props — two figures were being consumed by the flames. Costume mannequins? Or Rauner and the SS man…
Harbicht was hanging over the seething pit like a pig over a roasting fire. His uniform was beginning to smoke.
Dirk took a step toward him. The singeing heat drove him back.
Harbicht's eyes met his. The hate in them seared Dirk's own, or was it the scorching heat from the pit below?
The skin on Harbicht's hands and face was blistering. His hair blazed.
He screamed. The hellish sound knifed across stage as he slipped from the charred plank and plunged into the blazing pit below….
Dirk turned to the others.
For a brief moment they stood together. Silent. In infinite closeness…
Then Dirk took Gisela's arm. They ran along the pinrail to the break in the rear wall.
Outside, the sirens were sounding the All Clear.
PART IV
The Hour of
0500–0600
16 Jul 1945
1
“Five-minute warning!” the PA speaker boomed. “Five-minute warning!”
Dirk could feel the tension mount all around him He glanced at Sig standing next to him, staring out over the Alamogordo desert into the far distance. He wondered what his friend was thinking. Was he seeing in his mind's eye the Fat Man atop his hundred-foot steel tower ten miles away, ready for the final test? Code name: Trinity…
Or was he back at Haigerloch — and what might have been?…
For a moment, as he gazed into the raw morning twilight, his own thoughts went back….
They had returned to Hechingen two days after the raid on Haigerloch. They had nowhere to stay in Stuttgart, and with Colonel Harbicht dead, it had seemed reasonably safe. But they did not go near the Storp house. They kept a watch on Anna's place for a long time before approaching it cautiously.
Anna had been overjoyed to see them. Even the ever busy sewing machine was momentarily forgotten. Somehow the absence of its clackity whirring made the seamstress shop seem a different place.
No one had bothered her. No one had even talked to her — except some man named Schindler, who said he was the yard-master at the railroad yard, complaining that Oskar had not shown up for work and did she know where he was?
She had gone to the house and had found no one there. She had assumed they were all together.
When they told her that Oskar had been caught and was dead, she sat down at her sewing machine. Quietly she had run her fingers over the motionless flywheel and the still needle arm. Then she had looked up, her old, world-weary eyes dry.
“He was a good man, Oskar,” she said. “A good brother…” And she had bent over her machine and sent the flywheel spinning.
For ten days they had stayed with her, out of sight. And then, on April 23, a US combat task force had barreled into town hell-bent for the reactor caves at Haigerloch. It had been an incredulous captain of Combat Engineers whom Dirk and Sig had bade a cordial welcome!
Dirk had made certain that Anna and Gisela were placed under the full protection of the Americans….
He suddenly felt a longing pressure in his chest. As soon as the world stopped its insane ride on the roller-coaster of war, he'd get off. Hechingen would be his first stop….
He glanced around him.
It was still quite dark at 0525 hours. It was cloudy and a drizzle dampened everything and everybody. Only a few stars were visible in the sky. It was a miserable morning, but no one seemed to notice.
Base Camp was located ten miles from the bomb tower, the nearest point at which anyone was permitted out in the open. Between the camp and the tower — five miles away — was the Control Dugout. Only people whose duties made it absolutely necessary were allowed there. Most other observers were at a point twenty miles from the epicenter of the explosion.
He fingered the little piece of smoked glass he had been given with a strict warning not to watch the blast without using it. Ten miles? Typical brass exaggeration, he thought. An implosion-type atomic-fission bomb, they'd called it. What the hell kind of an explosion — atomic or not — could create a light strong enough to hurt your eyes at a distance of ten miles?
Oh, well. He'd use it. Everyone had a piece. Even General Groves, who stood only a few feet away, and another general with him. Rosenfeld called him McKinley.
“One-minute warning!” the PA system blared. “One-minute warning. Assume blast positions!”
He started to lie down…. Lie face down on the ground, he had been instructed, feet toward the blast. Close your eyes and cover them with your hands as the countdown approaches zero. After the flash you may sit up or stand up. Use the smoked glass as you watch the explosion. Be prepared for the shock wave which will follow in approximately fifty seconds.
All around him the observers were lying down, faces to the ground. General Groves. General McKinley. Rosenfeld. He glanced at Sig lying next to him. He winked.