During the day, American fighter-bombers followed the trail that would lead to the lake or Bregenz. The attacks were incessant. American planes circled like hawks looking for mice. “And we’re the mice,” Pfister commented where only Hummel could hear.
There had been little food for the men and their clothes were rags. Their shoes and boots were falling off. Pfister had wondered if this was what it had been like when Napoleon’s men had retreated from Moscow or when the Germans had retreated from everywhere in the Soviet Union. At least it wasn’t snowing and icy, they decided, and gave sardonic thanks for small favors. And thanks to the mountain runoffs, clean, fresh water was not an issue.
The sound of a car horn blaring jarred them out of their exhausted reveries. They quickly moved off the road as a large Mercedes sedan bore down on them, going at a high rate of speed over the narrow dirt road.
“The driver’s insane,” said Pfister as they moved farther off the road and into a stand of trees.
“In more ways than one,” said Hummel. “There must be a score of Yank planes looking at the cloud of dust the car is churning up. The fool is just asking to be killed.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have much choice, Hummel. Maybe the poor driver has been ordered to drive that way by someone who outranks him. In which case, it’s the man or men in the back seat who are to blame. I will bet you that the driver is crapping his pants and looking up at the skies.”
Hummel agreed. The car was only a couple hundred yards ahead of them when a bird of prey, an American P51, shrieked down from the skies and strafed the car. The driver must have sensed his danger because he began swerving wildly and trying to escape.
The driver evaded the fighter’s first pass and stopped the car. He jumped out and ran into the woods. The occupants of the back seat were halfway out when a second American P51’s bullets minced the vehicle. It exploded and a ball of flame rose into the sky.
“If the driver has any sense at all he will lie low for a while,” said Pfister. The driver did. They waited a number of minutes. The Yanks again flew over, looking to see if anyone had either survived or come out into the open.
When they thought it was safe, Pfister yelled for the driver to come to them if he was able. He was. A few minutes later, a thoroughly shaken middle-aged corporal made it to them and collapsed. They gave him some of their water and a cigarette. He identified himself as Herman Farbmann, and said that he had been driving for General Lothar Rendulic, commander of all forces east of Innsbruck and titular second in command of all German forces in Germanica.
Pfister looked at Hummel who nodded. “I’ll take a look, Lieutenant. Just watch the skies for me.”
The car was still smoldering. Two bodies lay half out of it. One was a badly burned man in the remnants of a uniform and the other was naked and charred and might have been a woman. A few rags of bright cloth fluttered near her now sexless body. There was also a scorched leather briefcase, which Hummel took. In the event it contained anything important, it could not be kept by the side of the road.
“Yes, it was General Rendulic,” Farbmann said later as he sipped some brandy they’d found on another body earlier that day. “The fool said we had to wait for his mistress to get ready and the lazy self-centered bitch was impossible to get going. Her idea of getting up early was launching her ass out of bed about noon. I would have left her, but the general worshipped her. I urged the general to hurry, that the Americans had planes overhead watching all the time, but he laughed at me and said I was a coward. I guess he wanted to show the woman just how brave a German general was. Are you impressed by his bravery, Lieutenant? I’m certainly not.”
Pfister stood. He kept the briefcase. It was locked and he didn’t open it. If it contained secrets, he didn’t want to see them. “I think we should begin marching west again. At any rate, we should get away from this site. The Yanks are likely to come visiting again. We’re not that far from Bregenz or Lake Constance. Are you joining us, Corporal?”
“I’m honored, sir. Just curious, though. How far away is Bregenz?”
Pfister smiled engagingly. “Why, Corporal, it’s just over the next hill.”
* * *
Josef Goebbels shook his head sadly. It had been confirmed. Lothar Rendulic had been killed, murdered by American assassins. They would not keep it a secret. Too many people already knew about it. It was ironic that Rendulic was an Austrian and not a proper German. That point, however, was a small one. What to do with his portion of the army was the real question.
Field Marshal Schoerner sat across the room from Goebbels. Since they were in a cave there were no windows and Goebbels had the feeling that he was in a prison cell. Would this be his life if the Americans got their hands on him? That could not happen. He would rather die. He already had a cyanide pill in his pocket and was not afraid to use it. Now that the children were safe, he could concentrate on his own fate and that of Magda. In his opinion, she could bloody well do whatever she wished with her life. Whatever fondness he’d once felt for her was gone and not likely to return.
Schoerner removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “Minister, I do not think it is necessary that we do much of anything about the army’s reorganization. So much of Rendulic’s forces had been turncoat Russians and Croats and so much had been whittled down by the fighting for Innsbruck that there really aren’t that many purely German units left. Once again, they are mere remnants. I propose getting them as close to Bregenz as possible and constituting them as a rear guard with General Warlimont in command.”
“All right,” Goebbels said softly. “We’re slowly being strangled. What I once said about preserving the seeds of Nazism is turning out to be terribly wrong. We’ve lost a third of our army, which was already vastly outnumbered in the first place, and much of the territory that we so confidently called Germanica.”
“But what we have left will be easier to defend.”
Goebbels stood and began to pace, quickly aware that the office was so small that he had no room to maneuver. Just like his army, he thought wryly, hemmed in by Jewish-dominated Americans who wanted to destroy him. At least the children were safe and Magda would soon be leaving for Bregenz, but not for the compound she and the children had recently occupied and had now been taken over by the Americans. He had initially been furious when he realized he’d been talking to an American spy at the family quarters in Arbon but later saw the humor in it.
His mind had wandered and he belatedly realized that Schoerner had been talking about tanks. “Repeat that, please,” Goebbels said.
“I was saying that the compressed Germanica will be easier to defend. I have already given orders to those remaining armored units to pull back and form a mobile defense force in Bregenz. Sadly, there are only about fifty tanks left. The idea of using them in fixed fortifications has proven to be a disaster. These remaining few would have to be thoroughly hidden.” Goebbels understood the logic. Perhaps, just perhaps, they could emerge and smash an overconfident American attack, thus buying the Reich some more time.
But time for what? Dr. Esau had insisted that his atom bomb would be ready shortly. Would that change matters? The Americans had proven that they had at least two bombs while Esau insisted that the best he could do was manufacture one. Goebbels believed the man. They would have to use their one bomb wisely.
Goebbels shook his head. Germany stood alone. A devastated and thoroughly cowed Japan lay prostrate and ready to be crushed by an American heel. Nor did Germany have any defenses against America’s overwhelming air power. The Americans were destroying antiaircraft batteries in a manner that defied logic. His engineers said they had developed some way of using their radar to figure out the source of an antiaircraft gun and killing it. They tried to explain the science to him, but he couldn’t comprehend it. All he understood was that his hopes for the future were being destroyed. The Americans were gathering strength for an all-out push that would end all dreams of survival.