“Johannes Drucker speaking,” Drucker said, feeling like an idiot.
“Hello, Hans. Good to hear from you.” That was Walter Dornberger’s voice, all right.
“Hello, sir,” As soon as Drucker spoke, he knew he should have called Dornberger mein Fuhrer. Now that the former commander at Peenemunde had the job, how seriously did he take it? Would he be offended if he didn’t get the respect he thought he deserved? Drucker plowed ahead, trying to hide his gaffe: “What can I do for you? I thought I was retired.”
“Nobody who’s still breathing is retired,” Dornberger answered. “If you’re breathing, you can still serve the Reich. That’s why I was so glad to hear you’d turned up in Neu Strelitz. I can use you, by God.”
“How?” Drucker asked in real confusion. “The Lizards won’t let us get back into space. Unless…” He paused, then shook his head. With radar watching every square centimeter of the Reich, clandestine launches were impossible. Weren’t they? Hoping he was wrong, he waited for the new Fuhrer’s reply.
“That’s true-they won’t,” Dornberger said, which nipped his hope before it was truly born. The Fuhrer went on, “But that doesn’t mean I don’t need you closer to home. I’m going to order you here to Flensburg, Hans. You’ve got no idea what a small cadre I have of men I can really trust.”
“Sir…” Drucker’s voice trailed away. Dornberger had him by the short hairs, and he knew it. Of course the Reich’s new leader could trust him. Dornberger knew why the Gestapo had seized Kathe. If Drucker gave him any trouble, the blackshirts could always grab her again.
“I’ll have a car there for you-for all of you-in a couple of days,” Dornberger said. He didn’t mention the sword he’d hung over Drucker’s head. Why would he? Smoother not to, smoother by far. The Fuhrer continued, “You’ll be doing important work here-don’t kid yourself for a moment about that. And you’ll have the rank to go with it, too. Major general sounds about right, at least for starters.”
“Major general?” Now Drucker’s voice was a disbelieving squeak. The young lieutenant who’d brought him to the fire station stared at him. He didn’t look as if he believed it, either.
But Walter Dornberger repeated, “For starters. We’ll see how you shape in the job when you get here. I hope to see you soon-and your whole family.” He hung up. The line went dead.
“Sir…” The lieutenant spoke with considerably more respect than he’d given Drucker up till then. “Sir, shall I escort you back to your house?”
“No, never mind.” Drucker walked back to his wife’s uncle’s in something of a daze. He didn’t know what he’d thought Dornberger would have to say to him. Whatever it was, it didn’t come close to matching the real conversation.
When he went into the house, the children, Kathe, and her uncle Lothar all pounced on him. The children exclaimed in pride and delight when he gave them the news. Lothar slapped him on the back. Kathe congratulated him, too, but he saw the worry in her eyes. She knew the grip Dornberger had on him through her. He shrugged. He couldn’t do anything about it but hope things would work out all right. He wished he could think of some-thing else, but what else was there?
The motorcar that came for them was an immense Mercedes limousine. People up and down the street stared as they piled into it. Drucker hoped it wouldn’t tempt some ambitious band of holdouts into trying a hijacking. It purred away from Neu Strelitz in almost ghostly silence.
A few hours later, they were in Flensburg, in Schleswig-Holstein hard by the Danish border. “It’s like another world,” Kathe breathed as the motorcar pulled to a stop in front of the Flensborg-Hus, the hotel where the Reich was putting them up till they found permanent lodgings. And so it was: a world that hadn’t seen war. In the Reich, that made it almost unique. It was the main reason Walter Dornberger had chosen the town at the west end of the Flensburger Forde, an arm of the Baltic projecting into the neck of land that led up to Denmark.
Some of the people at the hotel spoke more Danish than German. The monogram of Frederick IV of Denmark stood above the gate: he’d built the Flensborg-Hus as an orphanage in 1725.
A major general’s uniform waited in the room to which the bellboy led Drucker. He put it on with a growing feeling of unreality. After he’d adjusted the high-peaked cap to the proper jaunty angle, Heinrich’s arm shot out in salute. “You look very handsome,” Kathe said loyally. If her heart wasn’t in the words, how could he blame her?
The next morning, a lieutenant who might have been brother to the one back in Neu Strelitz took him to the Fuhrer. Walter Dornberger was working out of another hotel not far from the downtown maritime museum. A servant brought Drucker pickled herring and lager beer. After he’d eaten and drunk, he asked, “What will you have me doing, sir?”
“We’ve got to rebuild,” Dornberger said. “We have to conceal as much as we can from the Lizards. And we have to take full control of the country, put down the outlaw bands or at least bring them under government control. Until we’ve done all those things, we’re hideously vulnerable. I’m going to put you to work at concealment. The more weapons we can keep from turning over to the Lizards, the better.”
“What have we got left?” Drucker asked. “Explosive-metal bombs? Poison gas?” Dornberger just smiled and said nothing. Drucker found another question: “What do I do if the Lizards find some of it?”
“Give it up, of course,” Walter Dornberger answered. “We can’t afford to do anything else-not yet we can’t. One of these days, though…”
“If the Lizards are patient, we have to be patient, too,” Drucker said.
“Just so.” Dornberger beamed at him. “You will do very well here, I think.”
By God, maybe I will, Drucker thought.
“Well, well.” Gorppet looked up from a listing of new appointments by the Deutsch government. “This may be interesting.”
“What have you found?” Hozzanet asked.
“Remember that male named Johannes Drucker, with whom I had some dealings because he was associated with Anielewicz?” Gorppet waited for his superior to make the affirmative gesture, then went on, “He has turned up in Flensburg with a promotion of two grades.”
“That is interesting,” Hozzanet agreed. “What is he doing there, to earn such a sudden, sharp advance?”
“His title, translated, is ‘commandant of recovery services,’ ” Gorppet replied after checking the monitor. “That is so vague, it could mean anything.”
“I always mistrust vague titles,” Hozzanet said. “They usually mean the Big Uglies are trying to hide something.”
“We already know the Deutsche are trying to hide as much as they can from us,” Gorppet said.
“Really? I never would have noticed,” Hozzanet said. The Race didn’t have an ironic cough to set beside the emphatic and the interrogative. Had it possessed such a cough, Hozzanet would have used one then.
“Here, however, we are in an unusual position, because this Drucker speaks our language fairly well and has interacted with us in ways that are not hostile,” Gorppet persisted. “We have some hope of getting him to see reason and cooperate with us.”
“Really?” Hozzanet repeated, still sounding anything but convinced. “Is this Drucker not the male who refused to tell you anything whatsoever about how the male who drove him to, ah, Neu Strelitz ended up dead something less than halfway there?”
“Well, yes,” Gorppet said. “But that was an individual matter. This one pertains to the survival of his not-empire. If he sees he will endanger the Reich by refusing to cooperate, I think he will tell us at least some of what we need to know.”