Staver held up a photo of Schreiber — tall, widow’s peak, thin, very Nazi-looking — inspecting a line of cadaverous, emaciated people in some kind of examination room. The German had a Geiger counter in his hand, but there were several pieces of machinery on a table in the foreground that Staver — whose specialty was researching and occasionally stealing new weapons technology — was unexpectedly at a loss to identify.
“That’s at Dachau, one of the Nazi concentration camps,” she said. “We’re told Schreiber was conducting radiation experiments on prisoners there.”
Staver’s eyebrows inched higher. “Holy hell. Trying to see how much they could take?”
“Not exactly. Our best intelligence indicates that the intended goal of the tests was to genetically alter the subjects. We don’t have much in the way of testing results or journals, but what we’re being told is that the Nazis were looking to enhance a human’s physical and mental abilities. They were trying to make them bigger, faster, smarter, not kill them, even if many of the test subjects were treated about as humanely as lab mice might be. The reports haven’t been confirmed, but there were also disturbing signs that some of the experiments Schreiber was conducting had their origins in occult literature. Black magic. More evidence, Major, that the man’s a nut. Why the hell would we want to pardon and recruit him?”
Staver closed the folder and leaned back in his leather chair, closing his tired eyes a moment. “Well, if there is a compelling reason, we will find out soon enough. He’s next up.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes, shuffling through paperwork and other dossier files in the wood-paneled, book-lined conference room inside Nuremberg’s Palace of Justice. Several floors below, Germany’s remaining Nazi leaders were on trial for crimes against humanity — and dear God, there were so many goddamn crimes. More than once, Staver had wished out loud that the trials could have been held in Auschwitz or Dachau — let the bastards come face-to-face with what they had done.
And yet he was now advocating that some of these particularly sick bastards were useful enough to the United States to avoid the swift hand of justice. Life was horrible that way sometimes. But he was under orders, and this new Operation PAPERCLIP, he was assured, was incredibly important to the balance of power between the United States and Stalin’s Red hordes.
There was a gentle knock on the door, and both Staver and Fitzgerald stood as it opened. A white-helmeted MP led Schreiber in by the arm, while another kept just behind them, his rifle at the ready. It was a formality; Schreiber was far more hollowed and emaciated than he looked in his photo, moving with the speed and gait of a disoriented prisoner. Still, he looked a damn sight better than the poor SOBs in that picture from Dachau, and even if Staver was considering sparing him the death penalty, he sure as shit wasn’t going to give him an inch more than that.
Schreiber was guided to an armchair and seated by the MP, who then shackled each arm to the thick wooden armrests and tested their security before leaving. The Nazi scientist gave the MP a surprised, bemused look at this treatment.
“Something wrong, Dr. Schreiber?” Fitzgerald asked as the door closed.
“Not at all, Fräulein. This will be a most interesting meeting between you and I, I am sure,” Schreiber responded in excellent, lightly accented English.
“What makes you say that?” Staver said.
Schreiber shrugged as best he could under the circumstances. “I am not under guard, perhaps for the first time since I was traded by the Russians to the Americans six months ago. So, I wonder why you traded for me, all this time. And I think right now I will find out.”
“We just wanted a complete set, that’s all,” Fitzgerald said with obvious satisfaction. “You assholes are like baseball cards. You’ll look better hanging side by side.” But Staver caught the look she’d flashed his way immediately after, and he was thinking the exact same thing: What trade?
“What do you think will happen here, Dr. Schreiber?” Staver asked.
“If you have done your research, then you will have understood my value to you, and I will agree to help you.”
“And why would you want to help us?” Fitzgerald asked. She’d lost count how many times she’d asked that over the last few months.
“Obviously because I do not want to die,” Schreiber answered calmly. “I am not so married to Nazi ideology or German nationalism that I would not wish to save my own life. So, I will help you, and you will let me live.”
Staver had no choice but to smile at that. “Well, that’s the first goddamn honest answer we’ve gotten to that question so far,” he said. “There’s just a small problem, Doc. We already got V-2 scientists. We got nuclear scientists — and by the way, ours are better. And we got plenty of people willing to rat out, in detail, every fucked-up thing you bastards did in those concentration camps. So, what exactly do you think you can give us that we don’t already have?”
This, too, was a carefully posed question, one they asked at every single one of these meetings. It had all started to follow a familiar pattern. Some would break down and plead. Others would go stoic and silent. A few — and those were the real paydays — would open the floodgates and give up the farm right there and then, all for the possibility that they might live to see another day.
Yet once again, Schreiber surprised them.
“You mean you do not know?”
“Know what, exactly?” Fitzgerald asked.
Schreiber smiled and sat back in his chair. He made to cross his arms against his chest, forgetting his shackles, but his restricted movement only seemed to amuse him more as he let his arms rest on the armrests again. “And here I was worried that this, too, was an area in which you were well ahead of us. But you are merely children! You are children with new toys who are incapable of understanding what they do.”
Staver frowned. “You’re talking about the A-bomb. That’s where your research came in, right?”
At this, the Nazi actually laughed. “Oh, you Americans truly are lost. But you are young, both of you. You are a… major, yes? A mid-level officer. And you, Fräulein, I would assume you are from the intelligence agencies, yes? A spy? So, maybe you do not know what your superiors know. But as I said, I wish to live very much, so I will help you. Write this down.”
Schreiber waited, patiently, until Staver rolled his eyes and picked up his pen.
Over the course of the next few minutes, the Nazi gave up… very little, actually, in terms of actual volume. There were a few places and dates. A handful of names. Times. And a sparse handful of details so insane and convoluted that Staver had to ask the German to repeat them slowly so he could get it down in the right order.
“Is that it?” Fitzgerald asked when he was finished. “This is crazy. You expect us to believe any of this? What are we supposed to do with this fairy tale?”
“Call Washington, of course. Call your superiors, and ask to speak to their superiors. I humbly suggest, for I am the prisoner here, that you go as high up the chain of your command as you can, because only at the top will they know of this. And they will also know what to do with me.”
Staver looked at the single page of notes he’d taken. “It’s not enough. We’ll need a hell of a lot more than this if you think we’re going to risk running this up the flagpole for you, pal.”
“This is a ‘nice try,’ as you say, but I think I am done talking for now, because you are obviously not the ones who will decide my fate,” Schreiber said. “So, we are finished.”
Schreiber then sat back in his chair, muscles relaxed, and closed his eyes. The two Americans traded looks. Then Staver summoned the MP, who dutifully removed the prisoner from the room. Schreiber would return to the prison on the grounds of the Palace of Justice and sit tight with the rest of his Nazi compatriots as they awaited the world’s judgment.