Gisela's tears could no longer be contained, and she let them flow freely down her cheeks. She looked at the girl drawn up unto herself, cowering uncomprehending on the bed.
“And they — they observed her. And made their notes.” She turned back to Sig and Dirk. She bit her lip and gulped a deep breath.
“And when they had observed enough, when her body too had been burned out, they discarded her. They packed her into an old Sonderkraftwagen—an S-truck — with a load of others, and sent her on her way to Dachau to join her family in the ovens….”
Dirk felt his own sanity slipping as he listened. He knew he had to get a grip on something real or be lost. Something that was comprehensible to his horror-scourged mind.
“S-trucks?” he said. Was that his voice? He turned to Oskar. He could not bear to look at Gisela. “I don't know what S-trucks are.”
“They are special trucks,” Oskar said, his voice heavy. “Death trucks. They were built on direct orders of Himmler, already back in 1942. They are rigged so that the exhaust gas from the truck is funneled into the sealed cargo space Fifteen, twenty prisoners can be crammed in. The carbon monoxide—” He stopped. He took a deep breath. “The ten or fifteen minutes’ ride to the crematorium would be enough to — to kill the prisoners. The trucks were used mostly for women and children. There are still some of them in use….
“But how?” Dirk asked. “How did she — escape?”
It was Gisela who answered.
“Wanda was one of the last to be pushed into the truck,” she said tonelessly. “Next to her was a large woman — panic-stricken. When the guards slammed the doors shut, this woman tried to stop their closing with her bare hands. One hand was caught and horribly mangled. But, as a result, the doors didn't close completely; a narrow crack remained. The woman screamed when her hand was crushed. A scream of agony— which changed to terror when the gas began to seep in. Wanda knew about screams. How they changed as the stimuli tearing them forth changed. The instinct to keep alive still existed in her mutilated mind. She cupped her hands over the narrow crack held open by the woman's mangled hand. And she breathed. The poisoned air made her sick. But she remained conscious, her face covered with a foul mixture of her own vomit and a dying stranger's blood….
“Instead of taking the bodies to the overworked crematorium at Dachau, they took them to a lime pit in the forest. When they dumped them from the truck, Wanda was half-conscious. But she was alive. She did not move. She lay motionless among the corpses. When darkness came, some of the bodies were still unburied in the mass grave — and she crawled away into the wood — into the night….”
“Otto found her,” Oskar said quietly. “He speaks — he spoke a little Polish. He pieced together her story. He brought her here.”
“We — we could not let her die alone,” Gisela said. “We had to try to help her through her last few days.” She fell silent Spent.
Dirk looked at Gisela. Otto's sister. The girl who had called on her uncle to turn him and Sig over to the police. The girl who cried in outrage and pity at the fate of a stranger and risked her own safety to minister to that stranger. The girl whose irresolute hands held the future of their mission — and their own—
And with sudden lucidity he knew what he had to do.
His face grew hard. “I hear you, Gisela,” he said quietly. “I see your tears. But are they not the tears of a crocodile?”
Gisela stared at him in shocked incomprehension.
“Your tears, Gisela, on your cheeks even now. Like the tears a crocodile cries over its prey.”
The girl's face flushed. Her lips trembled in an effort to speak.
“Take another good look at the abomination on that bed,” Dirk said coldly. “Are you any better than the swine who did this to her?”
Gisela started to tremble. Her eyes were riveted on Dirk. The others in the room stood motionless, in shocked silence.
“You see their work!” He pointed at the girl on the bed. “There! And you want it to go on….”
“No!.. I… I — do — not….” Gisela forced out the words. “I — do — not!”
“Yet you would deliver us into their hands,” Dirk said vehemently.
“I—”
“You would stop us from destroying this evil. From ridding your country of this Nazi cancer you profess to abhor!”
“No! I–I—”
“You have a choice to make, Gisela. Now!” Again his finger aimed straight at Wanda. “This—or us!”
“Oh, God…” Gisela sobbed.
“Make up your mind. Your brother did. He gave his life. Your uncle is with us. What about you? Do you still want him to hand us over to them?”
“NO!”
“Then you will help? Help as Otto helped? Like your uncle?”
“I—”
She stopped. With an enormous effort, she regained control of herself. Her dark, terrible eyes bored into Dirk's.
“Yes… May God damn you! Yes!”
She gave a sudden sob — and threw herself into her uncle's arms.
Sig stared at Dirk. He understood fully what his partner had done. It was imperative to secure the girl's cooperation. They must be certain of her — even if something happened to her uncle. But could he, Sig, have done what Dirk just had?
He felt chilled to the marrow of his bones. The glimpse of hell they had been shown had made one thing monstrously clear.
The Haigerloch Project was in fact atomic.
21
“Herein!”
Standartenführer Werner Harbicht barked the order. He sat ramrod stiff behind his massive desk, glowering at the door. It was promptly opened and his aide, Obersturmführer Rauner, pushed a man into the room.
He was a civilian. A farmer. He stumbled — caught himself and stood uncertainly in the middle of the room, nervously clutching his grimy cap in big, callused hands, close-set eyes in a waxen face watching Harbicht with apprehension. Rauner closed the door behind him with a thud of finality and silently took up position beside it.
Harbicht glanced at the clock on his desk. It was precisely 0800 hours. Monday, March 26. He smiled inwardly. Rauner was learning to be punctual.
Deliberately he moved a file folder in front of him. He opened it. He began to study it, frowning. He was gratifyingly aware of the effect he was creating in the man standing in front of him. The man had been brought to Hechingen the night before. On orders from Harbicht, he had been treated coldly, roughly — and given no reason for his arrest and detention. His belongings, his suspenders, his shoelaces had been taken from him. He had undergone a humiliating search, and he had been kept in a bare, brightly lit cell overnight with nothing to eat. It was standard procedure to soften up a suspect before interrogation.
Harbicht took his time. The longer he could keep the man uncertain, giving his imagination ample opportunity to conjure up countless dark fears, the easier it would be to make him talk.
Finally Harbicht looked up, his face stern.
“You are Ortsbauernführer Gerhard Eichler from Langenwinkel?” he asked curtly.
Eichler started He bobbed his head eagerly. “Zu Befehl, Herr Standartenführer!” he croaked subserviently. “At your orders! I—”
“Just answer when you are spoken to.”
Eichler cringed. Harbicht consulted the file.
“During the night of the twenty-third/twenty-fourth you issued special rations to two men in your home.” He looked up, fixing Eichler with a penetrating, hostile gaze. “Two enemies of the Reich!”