“Hello there, Red Cross lady.” It was Levin. Could Jack be far behind? He answered for her. “Your friend is looking for the address. These street names and numbers are a mess. Don’t worry, he’s just going around the block, and I was trying to find the place, too.”
“Wonderful. And what are you doing here?”
Levin’s expression became grim. “I’ve gotten permission from Colonel Stoddard to interview some of the Jewish refugees at the camp you inspected. I don’t suppose you had a chance to talk to any of them?”
“Nope. Never went inside the compound,” she said and told him about the fight over the chicken.
“No surprise,” Levin said, “but I want to talk to people who actually survived the death camps. I want to know what really went on in them and whether it was as awful as I’m hearing before I make a decision regarding the rest of my life.”
“What do you mean?”
“Palestine. We Jews are going to need a place to have as a homeland. We can’t trust any other country except, possibly, the United States, and even there I’m not so certain. Therefore, having Jews migrate to Palestine and set up their own government is the only alternative. I’ve spent too much time not quite denying my Jewishness, but not living it either, so Palestine it is.”
She had just finished wishing him well when Jack spotted them and ran up. He kissed Jessica, who quickly responded. Levin laughed, took the Jeep, and drove off.
Jack laughed. “Hey, he took my chariot.”
“You don’t need one, dear Jack, you’re not going anywhere.”
She didn’t mention that her Red Cross car was behind the hotel. She took him by the hand and led him across the hotel’s small lobby and up the stairs to her third-floor room.
“Here we have everything we need,” she said. “There’s food, wine, and each other.”
“Are you sure?”
Jessica smiled and began to undress. “Don’t just stand there, help me.”
In a moment they were naked and in each other’s arms. Another and they were on the bed, caressing and enjoying each other. She gasped when he entered her and then, as he filled her, grasped him more tightly, pulling him deeper inside her. He climaxed first and, to her astonishment, she did too, just a couple of seconds later.
After they’d made love a second time, they rested and drank some very decent Rhine wine. Jessica felt she was a little drunk in more ways than one.
“We should have done this a long time ago,” she said, giggling.
“I wanted to in Paris, but I was afraid you’d slap me silly.”
She sighed. “I probably would have.”
“Jess, I’ve been thinking a lot about you and us. Where do you see us in the future?”
“Hopefully in a better hotel,” she said as she poured some more wine.
“No, do you see us together a year from now?”
“God I hope so.”
Jack smiled and began again caressing her, marveling at the beauty of her body. Her breasts were small but full and firm, and her belly was flat. Her legs were slender and surprisingly muscular. She’d told him she liked hiking and it showed. He loved it all. He kissed every inch of her body and she groaned with pleasure, quickly returning his intimate kisses.
Later, she smiled impishly. “Did you learn that at Catholic school?” she asked and he laughed. They made love again and slept.
The next morning, they heard the sound of thunder. The sky, however, was clear. “It’s starting, isn’t it?” she asked softly.
“Yep. We got a briefing a couple of days ago. What you’re hearing is bombing. It’s going to be a couple of weeks, though, before much else happens.”
They got dressed and picked up her car. They drove an hour to a hill from which they could barely see the Rhine and the enemy hills behind. Bombs were falling and flashes were visible seconds before the sound washed over them. Jessica was starkly aware that she was seeing war, although from a safe distance, and it was nothing like the buzz-bombs in London or the riots in Paris. What she was watching was man-made hell.
“Can anyone survive?”
“Very likely quite a few. No matter how hard we bomb, a lot of them will make it. They are dug in deep and well.”
Jessica shuddered and grasped his hand. “Enough. I’m glad you showed me, but enough. We’re going to back to the hotel and make love all night and make up for the time we missed and the time we may never have again.”
“The word Kremlin is nothing more than Russian for fortress,” Skorzeny said to a totally disinterested Heisenberg. “There are several kremlins all over Russia.”
Heisenberg ignored him. He was too busy supervising his mens’ efforts to assemble the atomic bomb. They were in a warehouse across the Moscow River from the red walls of the Kremlin, the real Kremlin. It was less than half a mile away. His scientists were dressed in lead-lined suits they hoped would keep radiation at bay. Skorzeny was nearly a hundred feet from the bomb’s components and the radioactive material.
Davidov had found the place, and brutally using his NKVD identity, imprisoned the handful of inhabitants in a back room. Inside the warehouse’s double doors there was plenty of room for the entire caravan.
A pair of trucks had been backed up to each other and the bomb was now on them. Heisenberg had been assembling it for two days and he was getting even more nervous than usual. They were hiding in plain sight in the center of the Soviet Union, trusting that their NKVD badges would keep out the curious long enough for them to do their job, and that the three men locked in the store room wouldn’t be missed.
Some other NKVD officers had stopped by, curious, and had been told that this was a special project for Laventri Beria himself and that if they had any question they should ask him. No one would, of course. Beria, a murdering child-molester, was the second most feared person in the Soviet Union.
“Done,” Heisenberg said and stepped away from the trucks.
It was almost noon. Skorzeny nodded. “Set the timer and we leave immediately.”
Davidov had seen cars that could only belong to Stalin and others entering the Kremlin an hour earlier. They had to detonate it before Stalin left.
“Half an hour?” Heisenberg asked and Skorzeny agreed. It would give them time to get clear. They hoped. Heisenberg had no idea how powerful the bomb would be.
A moment later the physicist said the timing was set and the clock was ticking. Skorzeny, Heisenberg and Davidov got into a car and drove out. The remaining Russians and physicists clambered into the bus and departed behind them, leaving the three warehouse workers to their fate. “Martyrs to the cause,” Davidov said sarcastically. It was time to return to Germany.
They had only been gone about fifteen minutes, driving through maddeningly slow traffic, when the world was lit by a glare so bright that they screamed and tried to cover their eyes. Seconds later, a shock wave washed over them, toppling the bus and ramming the car into a wall.
Inside the Kremlin, Laventri Beria stood by a window and wondered at the report he’d been given about some damn project across the river being done in his name. He was just about to give an order to investigate when an unholy fire washed over him and reduced him to ashes.
The blast and shock wave evaporated part of the river and completely destroyed Lenin’s Tomb along with the stone wall of the fortress that faced the river.
In his office but not facing the blast, Josef Stalin sat at his desk while Vacheslav Molotov and several high-ranking generals waited nervously. The glare startled them but their minds had only a second to register the fact when the shock wave hurled them against and through the building’s outer shell.
Two miles away, Skorzeny crawled out of the car. Heisenberg was badly injured and Davidov’s arm hung limply. “What just happened?” Skorzeny said as he looked in amazement at the rising plume of boiling and flaming smoke towering above them like a living and angry god from hell.