Henry looked at her, and in her eyes found something that hadn’t been there a minute ago: acceptance, forgiveness, even love. All at once, he was ashamed of himself. He wasn’t worthy of this woman. She was more than he deserved.
“Doris, I… I don’t know what to say. I mean, I…”
“Don’t say anything you shouldn’t. Just don’t say anything you don’t mean, either.”
He was still fumbling for words when Esther nudged him with her elbow. “Look, I hate to break this up, but… I’m sorry, Henry, but you can’t stay here. We’ve got to get back before anyone discovers you’re gone. If they find out you ran off to meet her…”
“Yeah, okay.” For an instant, Henry had an impulse to walk away from the project. Give up his role in Blue Horizon, go back to Worcester with Doris, and the hell with the consequences. Like it or not, though, he didn’t have that option. “Just give me a minute, will you?”
“I’ll give you two minutes.” Esther slid out of the booth. “Meet you at the car.”
The drive back to the lodge was mostly in silence. Esther didn’t say anything after Henry kissed Doris good-bye but simply waited in her car until he left the diner. Neither of them said anything until they’d nearly reached Rindge, when Henry happened to check his watch.
“Nearly 3 A.M.,” he said, then fought back a yawn. “Don’t think either of us are getting much sleep tonight.”
“Yes, well… insomnia’s always been my problem.” Esther smiled. “At least this is more interesting than the book I’m reading.”
Henry gazed out the window. The night seemed darker now. The moon had disappeared behind the clouds, and very few lights could be seen from the farms they passed. It seemed as if the whole world were sleeping. “What if someone wakes up when we come in? What are we going to tell them?”
Esther thought about it for a moment. “How ’bout we tell them I couldn’t sleep and neither could you, so we decided to go for a little drive?”
“You think they’ll believe that?”
She looked at him askance. “Would they have a reason not to? So long as Doris keeps her mouth shut…”
“She will. I got that across to her before we left. She promised… not a word to anyone, ever.”
“Good.” Again, Esther smiled. “But ‘ever’ is a long time, Henry. You’re going to have to stick with her for quite a while to make sure she keeps her promise.”
He gave her a sharp look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Oh, nothing. Just thinking out loud.”
HORROR AND MISTLETOE
DECEMBER 12, 1942
God forgive me, Wernher von Braun thought, what have I done?
A vast canopy of camouflage netting concealed the construction site in the river valley that ran through the Kohnstein range of the Harz Mountains. Made of parachute silk, opaque triangular segments interspaced with transparent segments, the nets were suspended eight meters above the ground from long poles, effectively hiding the construction site from any enemy reconnaissance aircraft that might happen to fly overhead. Indeed, when von Braun had flown in from Peenemünde, he had had trouble spotting the site from his Storch; everything below looked like a forested mountain ridge. Yet even the most clever camouflage couldn’t hide what lay below from anyone who walked beneath the nets.
A long monorail, shaped in cross section like an isosceles triangle with its broad side against the ground, was being built beneath the net. Five meters in height and already one and a half kilometers long, it stretched out along the dry valley like a white ribbon made of steel-reinforced concrete. Perfectly horizontal and painstakingly flawless in every detail, the half-finished monorail would have been an engineering marvel worthy of admiration were it not for the reason it was being built.
Although von Braun tried to focus his attention on the Silbervogel launch rail, his gaze kept returning—reluctantly, despite his best efforts—to the men laboring in its shadows. Dressed in tattered and grimy prison stripes, their feet often bare despite the fresh snow that lay thick upon the ground, the men were so emaciated that they resembled walking corpses; shaved heads and missing teeth only added to their ghastly appearance. Hundreds of men, perhaps as many as a thousand, struggled to build the raiclass="underline" pouring concrete, mixing cement, pushing wheelbarrows, using pickaxes to dig a path across the frozen ground and break down rocks and boulders in their way, laying down steel rebar and hammering it into place… all beneath the watchful and merciless eyes of soldiers who strode up and down the site. The sounds of men at work were punctuated with the crack of leather whips, the occasional agonized cry.
And those were the lucky ones, the prisoners who got to work outside. Behind him, the rail made a long, gradual turn that went up a slope to a large, n-shaped iron tower still under construction. On the other side of the tower, the monorail merged with a railroad track; from there, the monorail and the rail track split apart and, running in parallel, continued uphill to the nearby mountainside, where they disappeared into giant tunnels that had been excavated in the steep granite bluff.
Von Braun knew what was going on in the tunnels. And although it was his duty to visit them, it was the last thing he wanted to do.
“It’s coming along well, don’t you think?” A short, barrel-chested man with dark brush-cut hair and a thick mustache walked alongside von Braun, gloved hands thrust in the pockets of his wool overcoat. It was a cold morning, and everyone except the prisoners was bundled up against the brisk wind that moved through the mountains. “One and a half kilometers of launch track already laid, ahead of schedule.”
“Yes… ahead of schedule.” Von Braun was distracted. Not far away, an old man—probably really only in his early fifties yet withered by starvation and cruelty—dropped a sledgehammer and sagged against the rail, his head dropping to his chest.
“Not progressing fast enough for you, Wernher?” Eugen Sanger peered at him, thick brows furrowing. “I assure you, the track will be finished by summer even though we’ve had some problems we’re still trying to overcome.”
“What sorts of problems?” Von Braun watched as one of the guards angrily stormed over to the prisoner. Two other laborers had stopped what they were doing to try getting their companion back on his feet, but the soldier yanked them away as if they were nothing more than mannequins. He grabbed the old man’s shoulder and shook him roughly, yelling something von Braun couldn’t quite hear.
“Well, as you know, this track has to be perfectly straight and level for its entire length from the point of engine ignition.” Silbervogel’s designer and the Luftwaffe’s chief engineer at Mittelwerk pointed toward the eastern end of the valley, the direction in which the monorail was being built. “So much as the slightest bend or dip and”—he threw up his hands—“poof! the sled goes off the track, and Silver Bird is destroyed.”
“Yes, of course,” von Braun said. “I can see how that might be…”
His voice trailed off. Instead of standing up, the old man fell forward, collapsing on his hands and knees at the soldier’s feet. The soldier was still shouting at him, but the prisoner was exhausted past the point of being able to get up on his own power. Another prisoner started to come forward to help him, but two other men held him back.
The soldier said something more. Von Braun couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like, “Go to hell.” Then he pulled his Luger from his belt holster, planted its muzzle against the back of the old man’s head, and squeezed the trigger.