Still naked, Hilda walked with Jeb and Jack to the tent flap. “He is joking with you. I’m twenty-one and not sixteen. My family has decided that it will be a long time before Germany again controls the Rhineland, so we are cooperating to the fullest.”
“And they are indeed,” Jeb said happily. Hilda said goodbye and led an unprotesting Jeb back to the cot. Elated, Jack walked back to his own quarters.
The trip across Poland was about as Skorzeny had expected-appalling and miserable.
Eleven vehicles made up the column. In addition to the warm and fairly comfortable staff car he shared with Heisenberg, there were nine trucks of varying sizes and makes. Although a couple were the crude but robust Russian made Zis three-ton vehicles with their absurd wooden cabs, the majority were General Motors two-and-a-half-ton trucks sent to Russia via lend-lease and captured by the Germans. A bus carrying extra men and scientists completed the motorized menagerie.
All the vehicles were painted with the dread red shield insignia of the NKVD and their crews were, with the exception of the handful of scientists accompanying them, all Russians who hated the Soviets because they either lost everything in the Revolution, or had been part of Vlasov’s anti-Soviet army and wanted revenge for his capture. Skorzeny declined to tell any of them that it’d been he who had turned Vlasov and the others over to the Reds to be butchered. Let them believe the fairy tale that a Soviet raid had captured Vlasov.
Skorzeny’s second in command was a young major named Ivan Davidov. He hated Stalin with a white-hot fury because his parents and brother had disappeared into the Siberian gulags for the crime of being intellectuals who asked questions. He didn’t give a crap what had happened to Vlasov whom he considered a turncoat who couldn’t be trusted. Davidov considered himself to be a true patriot.
None of this was a great concern to Skorzeny. He had his orders from Himmler and would carry them out. Of course, Himmler had tried to pin him down as to how long it would take to get to Moscow and detonate the bomb. Skorzeny first had to remind the Reichsfuhrer that no one knew for certain if the damn thing would explode or not, which obviously frustrated Himmler.
Nor was Himmler happy when Skorzeny said they’d arrive when they got there, that he had no idea what the conditions were in Poland and western Russia, and what kind of delays would ensue.
Now he knew. Poland was a study in desolation. It had been fought over and savaged several times by both Russia and Germany since 1939 and in wars prior to that. Few buildings were intact. Decomposing and dismembered corpses, animal and human, lay everywhere. Mounds of rubble gave off intolerable stenches because thousands of bodies were buried underneath, the result of more recent battles.
Few people were seen. Either they were all dead, or had fled somewhere, or were living like rats in the rubble. Skorzeny didn’t blame them for hiding. Both the Germans and the Russians despised the Poles. Men had been massacred while women and children were raped by both sides. Poland was well on its way to becoming a ghost land.
Before the war, Poland had not been noted for its efficient road system and now the situation was worse. Craters forced detours and many bridges were down. Spring was coming and creeks were becoming rivers. Several times the convoy had to wait for the floods to go down or Soviet engineers to repair bridges.
While the NKVD insignia gave them priority, it was often an empty honor. Nothing could solve the problem of a downed bridge or a blasted road except patience. Still, slowly and gradually, they made their way across Poland and to the Russian border, where they found things only marginally different. At least there were people, even though they were gaunt and in filthy rags, and there were few children or old ones. When they noticed the hated and feared NKVD symbol they scurried away and hid as quickly as they could.
Nor did they push their luck when it came to taking priority against westward traveling columns of trucks and tanks. It was not lost on Skorzeny that the Soviet Army was again building up against the Reich. Himmler had told them that the Americans would attack as soon as the Rhine was clear and that the Reds were rebuilding. Therefore, the bomb had to be detonated as soon as possible.
All of this forced Skorzeny’s group to have more contact with local military and police units than he wished and to either buy or confiscate food for his people. This was Davidov’s job. He relished taking food and supplies from hungry Russians in the name of Beria’s dreaded secret police.
“We did this, didn’t we?” asked Heisenberg. “I once read something about making a wasteland and calling it peace.”
Skorzeny laughed harshly. Heisenberg had never seen the realities of the world outside his laboratory. “Of course we did this. It’s called war and as some American once said, war is hell. Don’t fret, there are many more parts of Europe that are just as bad, if not worse. Germany will look like Poland unless we stop the Russians.”
“This is terrible. Something must be done.”
“Then think about this, Doctor! If your bomb does what we wish, Russia will be eliminated as an enemy for the foreseeable future. This means we can concentrate on the Americans and possibly drive them to discussing an armistice that will actually result in a long-lasting peace.”
“I will pray for that,” Heisenberg said.
Fool, Skorzeny thought. If the bomb works, Himmler will want more and more of them and will unleash them against the United States and England, creating additional peaceful wastelands. Heisenberg was a genial little simpleton, just like so many of his scientific brethren, with not a rational cell in their brains.
Skorzeny slowed the car. “What?” asked Heisenberg.
“Take a look,” Skorzeny said.
“I don’t see a thing except dirty Russian buildings. We’ve been driving so long I’m not certain where we are.”
“See those spires in the distance?”
“Yes.” A sense of awe entered Heisenberg’s voice.
“That’s the Kremlin, you ass. We’ve done it.”
CHAPTER 22
The refugee camp outside Rheinbach wasn’t that big but it made up for its small footprint by being stuffed with large numbers of wretched humanity.
The camp commander, an American army major named Diggs, greeted them at the main gate of the barb wire enclosed facility. In addition to Jessica and Florence Turnbull, Jessica’s Uncle Tom Granville was representing SHAEF.
“Please tell me you’re here to relieve me,” Diggs said with a wan smile as they took seats in his office by the heavily guarded main gate of the camp.
Florence Turnbull took the lead. “Is it that bad?”
“Worse. And with all respects to you and the others in the Red Cross, the United Nations, and SHAEF, I’m getting next to nothing in the way of help or supplies.”
“Are people actually starving?” Jessica asked. She’d seen the camp’s wasted inhabitants through the barb wire that kept them in. It angered her. Refugees from Nazi Germany should not be prisoners.
“Close enough,” Diggs said with a sigh. “Not only am I not getting enough food, but there aren’t enough tents or blankets, and there’s damn little in the way of medicine. I’m sure you’ve noticed that the refugees are in rags and it’s still cold, so, to answer your next question, yeah, a lot of people are still dying. Oh yes, I don’t have enough men to administer this place. I’ve got two hundred American soldiers and most of them are castoffs, the petty criminals, dregs and dunces nobody else wants.”
“So you’re using Germans to help out? Nazis?” Turnbull snapped.