It was shortly before the siege of Berlin, when Patton was directing his offensive in the west, and when every day the German railways were losing engine after engine to the boiler-busters. Loyal Nazis had only one hope— the secret weapon Goebbels had promised them. V one and V two were ancient history in London by then, but the Allied offensive still went forward. Nobody with any sense thought the talk about secret weapons was anything but bluff. Hutzvalek thought so too; he worked in the chemist’s shop near the Michle gasworks, and made a lot of money on the side, manufacturing complexion creams at home from stolen lanolin. He was getting along fine, and he loved his wife; they had not been married long, because her parents would not agree and only gave in because marriage would save her from having to go and work in Germany. They had no cause to think well of Hutzvalek; he was reputed to be far too fond of gaiety, women and home-made wine; in those days they drank wine made from bread. After his marriage, though, he settled down properly, employed his father and mother-in-law in his complexion-cream business, and waited contentedly for the war to end. Until one morning in February when the Gestapo came for him.
They handcuffed him to the door, socked his father-in-law on the jaw, kicked his wife, who was begging them on her knees to let him go. They knocked his mother-in-law down, tossed the newborn baby out of her cradle and woke up the two-year-old boy.
They took five books out of the bookcase and ripped the featherbed open. Yet it was not the Gestapo after all.
They got out of the Mercedes beyond the city, took off their leather coats and led Hutzvalek deep into the woods, following secret paths. Nobody said a word to him and he thought he was going to be executed. He tried to explain how he had come by all that lanolin, to soften their hearts, but nobody answered, although his German was quite good, really.
Deep in the woods was a hunting lodge where a foreigner was expecting them, dressed in a tweed jacket such as nobody wore in the Protectorate. He offered Hutzvalek Chesterfield cigarettes and Golden Milk chocolate.
“Aren’t you the Gestapo?” Hutzvalek was flabbergasted and looked round the room. They were alone.
“No, we’re not the Gestapo,” the foreigner spoke fluent Czech. “And you’ve not been arrested, either. You’re mobilized from now on.”
“What’s the idea? Whatever for? The war’s going to end in a week or two. Moscow announced in the news last night . . .” The foreigner frowned.
“I am Colonel Borovetz,” he said, and assumed that put him in a better position to judge the state of the war. “The war is going to end—unless the Germans succeed in using their last secret weapon. . . .” He got up and began to walk uneasily back and forth. He slowly unlocked the handcuffs Hutzvalek still had on his wrists.
“What sort of a weapon have they got?” asked the pharmacist, and wondered why Borovetz should need to mobilize just him. Was the secret weapon something to do with drugs?
“That’s just what we’ve got to find out,” the colonel shouted at him. “We have been informed that the last measures to be taken by the supreme command of the SS are called ‘Heil Herod’, but we don’t know anything more than that. We do not even know what it is to be used on. All we know is that the most successful murderous types from the front and the rear are being called in and housed in a deserted factory near Bohosudov. The place is so well guarded that we have so far failed to find out the first thing about it, although we have lost a number of our men in the attempt. It has therefore been decided that we must manage to get someone inside to take part in the whole campaign. . . .”
“Who is it going to be?” asked Hutzvalek, who thought the whole idea of espionage in the very last days of the war a ridiculous one. “Who is going to manage to get inside?”
Borovetz placed a photograph in front of him: “One of the first who was brought in to take part in the tests of the secret weapon was Sturmbannführer Yeschke. . . .” The pharmacist racked his brains to think where he had seen this fellow in the black uniform. Then the colonel laid a pocket mirror by the side of the photograph and Hutzvalek sprang back. It was his own face looking up at him.
“That’s just not possible,” he gasped.
“The two of you are as like as two peas. We shall get rid of him and have you taken to the secret laboratory. In a fortnight you will report back. We know that none of those working on the project stay there for more than a fortnight. You will ring me at this number, or else you can leave a description of the weapon in the hiding place under the Hus monument. . . .”
“I’m a pharmacist,” Hutzvalek protested. “I’ve only done a couple of weeks’ military training, that was before Munich—and I don’t know the first thing about the SS equipment. I’ll give myself away before I’ve said two words.”
“You are the only man who resembles any of these cutthroats, and we’ve searched right through the records of all the Allied armies. The future of humanity depends on your mission, in your hands lies our victory over Hitler, Brother,” the colonel spoke like a Czech legionary, and looked sadly at the red mark left by the iron handcuffs on Hutzvalek’s wrists. Up till then the pharmacist had assumed that they would defeat Hitler without him. He shook his head. “You will be paid a hundred thousand Swiss francs for your report,” the colonel went on. Hutzvalek did some quick mental arithmetic. That would be enough to buy a little chemist’s shop. In Switzerland. Was it worth risking his life for? Borovetz got impatiently to his feet. He opened a drawer and pulled out a short American army repeater fitted with a silencer. So it was a question of life or death anyway. The pharmacist nodded quickly.
“If I die, my children are to get the money, Brother. . . He did not feel afraid, yet. It felt more like taking out life insurance, or selling his own face.
That was the only thing that interested the guards outside the Bohosudov factory; they just checked the documents with the face. Sitting frowning by the side of the driver was the exact likeness of Sturmbannführer Yeschke, unshaven and bad-tempered after a sleepless night’s journey back from the front. They took him past a lot of barbed wire inside the gate and through an empty workshop to the next guard. Here they asked for the password, but memory was Hutzvalek’s strong point, and they took him on to the entrance to the underground. Here he was taken over by a tall, not so young blonde in uniform, whose name appeared to be Leni.
“Can you start right away?” she asked. Hutzvalek-Yeschke nodded. The sooner he got it over the better. All of it. Whatever it was. In an underground cell that looked more like a hotel room he flopped down on a soft bed, wiped the sweat from his brow, loosened the Iron Cross that was strangling him and gazed round at the walls. He expected to see drawings of the secret weapon there, but instead he found Germanic beauties, naked and fair-haired, displayed to his gaze in the most alluring positions. What had these nudes got to do with the last secret weapon of the third Reich? He could not see it at all. Soon the door opened and Leni came in, wearing a dressing-gown. She was certainly quicker at getting out of her uniform than Hutzvalek was. Putting a bottle of brandy down on the table, she flung herself upon him. At first he tried to fight her off, then he realized that it was not a wrestling match.
“Is this sort of thing allowed?” he asked doubtfully later on, as they lay side by side on the soft featherbed in the corner.
“What d’you mean, allowed?” she did not understand.
“Well, I mean, here, where we are manufacturing the secret weapon . . .” She started to laugh, but not for long. She got off the bed and then he realized that she was not Leni; as she raised her arm in the Aryan salute he saw the hair under her arm was ginger. She picked up her dressing gown and the bottle of brandy from the table and marched off as briskly as a soldier on parade.