"But why do you call them 'bulletproof vests' if they do not stop bullets?" Himmler asked testily.
The researcher paled, and he hadn't had much coloring to begin with. "The vests by themselves could not stop a high-velocity round," he explained. "But we have augmented them with differing types of ballistic plate, and together they are enough to provide excellent protection."
They reached the three men, each of whom looked quite dead to Brasch, until he saw that they were breathing. But only just. The director hurried on, lest Himmler decide the whole exercise was a waste of his time. A good idea-people had died for less.
"Now, Herr Reichsfuhrer, these subjects were not in very good physical condition to begin with, certainly not as good as one of your storm troopers. And they have been hit three times with high-velocity rounds. It would still be an enormously traumatic event for the body. But I think you will be pleasantly surprised at the results."
Paul Brasch often felt as if his capacity to feel anything had been burned away during his time in the Soviet Union. Now as the project director's aides roughly stripped the bulky black vests away from the men's bodies, he found himself thankful for the crust of scar tissue that had formed around his feelings. It allowed him to appear as inhuman as his colleagues.
The director was babbling on to Himmler about some production-line issue that would involve the use of concentrated sulfuric acid. Skorzeny was boasting of his marksmanship to another SS officer, who was laughing at the way one of the prisoners' eyeballs had popped out onto his cheek. Brasch breathed in slowly and fought down the urge to draw his pistol and kill them all. Instead he watched with apparent detachment as SS orderlies finished removing the body armor and the men's prison camp shirts.
Their torsos were massively bruised, and one man had a large concave depression just under his heart. But none of the rounds had actually penetrated. Their guide was holding one of the jackets, pointing out features such as the pivoting shoulder pads, grenade hangers, and rifle butt patches. Himmler wanted to know how many of the vests would be ready in time for Operation Sea Dragon, and he was unhappy to be told that four hundred was the limit of current production capacity.
As the director kept babbling about sulfuric acid, Himmler tuned him out and turned to face Brasch instead. "Well, Herr Colonel, another miracle for you to work in our behalf, yes? I don't expect to be able to outfit every Waffen-SS Division, but I need at least two thousand of these vests by the time we are ready to go. Can you guarantee me that?"
Brasch shook his head emphatically. "No, Herr Reichsfuhrer, but I shall increase production by whatever amount is possible. Based on my experience at Demidenko, I imagine we can get you at least fifty percent more than the director believes possible."
Himmler, he had discovered, preferred realistic assessments from his underlings. He asked for superhuman efforts, but did not actually expect the impossible. "Good enough, then." Himmler nodded. You shall stay here another week, supervising the operation, then join me back in the Fatherland. Goring wishes to discuss the jet project with you."
Brasch did not roll his eyes, but he did not meekly accede to the order, either. "With all due respect to the Reichsmarshall, there is almost no chance of getting his fighters aloft in time for Sea Dragon. I would very much like to return home to see my family, but I would not wish to waste time in doing so."
A smile played across Himmler's rodentlike features. The Luftwaffe chief had already lost a great deal of influence after failing to destroy the RAF in 1941. The bombing of Germany's cites by the Allies and the poor performance of the air force in the Russian campaigns had left him a much-reduced figure. Only his unquestionable loyalty to the fuhrer was thought to have saved him in the bloodletting that had followed the Emergence.
"I agree that the Reichsmarshall is probably being overambitious," purred Himmler. "But he is a Reichsmarshall, and you are not. Indulge him, Colonel. There is important work for you at home. And the fuhrer himself would like to personally thank you for your efforts at Demidenko."
Brasch snapped his heels together and saluted like a machine.
Himmler returned the salute crisply but without any flourish. He even managed a wry smile. "My word, these Wehrmacht types do know how to salute well, don't they Skorzeny?" he said.
Brasch felt a meaty paw thunder into his shoulder as Skorzeny slapped him on the back. The report was almost as loud as the rifle shots of a few minutes earlier. "He's a grand fellow, all right! Not Totenkopf material, but pretty damn good anyway."
Brasch faked a hearty laugh as the three Jews were cut down and dragged away. He wondered if anyone would bother to finish them off before they were reduced to ashes and hot wax. He had never felt like less of a man in his whole life.
He took a train from Monovitz a week later and tried to relax on the journey, but every time they passed carriages heading in the other direction, it jolted him awake, or out of whatever semiconscious state he'd managed to drift into.
The trains were running east with much greater frequency now. Partly it had to do to with the shift of many heavy and special engineering projects into Poland and the Ukraine, beyond the easy reach of the Lancaster bombers and B-17s. But also he suspected, it had to do with a greatly accelerated program at Auschwitz.
Unlike most Germans, Brasch could not pretend he knew nothing of the massive series of camps that made up the Auschwitz facility. Some of them were labor camps, some were specialist research facilities-now hosting small teams of Japanese doctors-and some were simply designed for mass extermination.
As he stretched out in the first-class carriage and tried to rest, he was haunted by the idea that one day his son would be tossed into one of those fetid cattle cars that so frequently roared past rattling the windows of his train.
At times he tried to work. He was one of the few men in all of Europe who had been allocated not only a flexipad, but a much larger data slate, as well. As a war hero, and the principal consulting engineer to so many high-priority projects, he was trusted-a rare thing these days. But even so, he noted that his drives and data sticks had been purged of a great deal of material he had been able to access freely back in Hashirajima, aboard the Sutanto. There was no trace of the Holocaust in his Web archive. No mention of a country called Israel. And only sketchy material relating to Germany after the year 1944.
He wondered that the vandals had left anything.
But there were still extensive technical files, and he was adding to the store all the time.
As the train shuddered to a halt at a siding in Poland, Brasch tried to concentrate on the file he'd created to contain all the material he had concerning Goring's new pet project, the ME 262 jet fighter. The fat fool wanted hundreds of them in the air over Britain, slicing through Spitfires and Hurricanes like screaming hawks. The impossibility of doing so, and more seriously the waste of resources in even trying, meant nothing to Goring. He was determined to regain his former prominence in the fuhrer's affections, and he had become obsessed with this new fighter as the answer to his dilemma.
It was night, and as Brasch peered out the windows he could see nothing in the darkness. The reflection of his cabin in the cold frosted glass, and the steam drifting back from the engines, blocked his view entirely. He could hear shouting, vehicle traffic, a whistle, and even, he fancied, some distant gunfire. Partisans, perhaps? Many of them had turned against Stalin. There were the Poles, of course. And small, scattered renegade units of both the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, which had been caught up in the internecine warfare of the post-Emergence period.