Mitzer stamped on the brake once again and stopped the truck.
'Get out,' ordered the sergeant. 'Get out now.'
'Do it,' said a defeated Mitzer to Spiedal. 'Easy. These men have itchy fingers.'
The two men climbed out of the truck as the sergeant called to the others.
'Come on. Get in. Come on, hurry. And get that rabble off the back.'
One of the men grabbed the girl and tried to pull her out of the hedgerow.
'Leave her!' ordered the sergeant. 'Unless you want to stay behind and fight the fucking Russians on your own.'
The soldier cursed, gave her one last hefty kick with his boot and rushed towards the truck as the others cleared the other passengers off the rear. The sergeant and one of the soldiers climbed in the cab, the others onto the back.
As they drove off, the sergeant waved cheekily at Mitzer and Spiedal. The administrator turned away and walked towards Goodenache who was still clutching his knee and screaming with pain.
'Let me see,' said Mitzer, kneeling down and examining Goodenache's knee. 'Jesus Christ. What a mess.' The bullet had passed right through his leg, but shattered the knee. It was a pulpy, fleshy mess and Mitzer set about bandaging it with the remnants of Goodenache's trouser leg and sleeves off his own coat.
'We need a doctor,' said Mitzer. 'Someone who can stop this bleeding.'
Spiedal took off the scarf that was wrapped round his neck and gave it to Mitzer. 'Use that for a tourniquet,' he said.
Mitzer applied it to Goodenache's thigh and, with a broken branch, turned it tight until the bleeding eased off.
'You're going to have to walk with us,' said Mitzer. 'Lean on us. Between us. Can you manage that?'
'I'm sorry,' replied Goodenache. 'I was only trying…'
'I know. To help.' Mitzer looked up to where the girl had been, but she had scrambled away by now, had run down the road, her dead father and the terrible ordeal behind her. In her panic she was running east, back from where she had come and straight towards the Russian troops. He shook his head. God knows what they would do when they stumbled on the half naked girl. Shit, what a mess. 'Forget it. Can you walk?'
'I don't know.'
'Come on. We'll give you a hand.'
They helped Goodenache to his feet, supporting him between them while he held on to the tourniquet. In this slow and painful fashion, they continued their journey to satety.
Just before night fell, when they had only managed to complete another six agonising kilometres, they heard gunfire to the south. It was the Russians, having entered Berlin, sending their troops north to mop up any resistance in that area.
'You'll have to leave me,' said Goodenache.
'No,' said Mitzer. 'We came this far together. We've been friends too long to split up now.' He wondered if they believed him. He knew he was lying.
'At this rate it'll take us three weeks to get to the Americans or the British. And we don't know if they're any better than the Russians. Look, I caused this. If I hadn't tried to…we'd have been there by now.'
'We can make it,' said Spiedal. 'If we go through the night.'
'Stop dreaming. He's right,' interjected Mitzer. 'And he'll bleed to death if we keep walking. He needs medical attention.'
'Go on. I'll be all right. I will,' said Goodenache. 'Put me down and get going. Before it's too late for all of us.'
They helped him down, let him sit with his back against a cedar tree.
There was so much to say, but little that could be said.
They had known each other for more than six years and had worked closely as a team on the rockets and other weaponry projects. They hadn't seen war through the eyes of the soldier, death was something you read about. War to them was a state of being, somewhere they practised their arts without seeing the fruits of their results. War was no more than a laboratory, where success wasn't a nation's victory, but a scientist's achievement. They knew they had failed, their rockets had been too late and too futile to change the final destiny of the war.
The whole thing was so bloody useless now.
'If the Russians get to you first,' said Mitzer, 'tell them that you're a scientist.'
'Why?' asked Albert Goodenache.
'Because they'll want your experience.'
'I can't work for them.'
'We'll all be working for someone else from now.'
'But the Russians…?'
'Wait and see. It might even be the Americans first,' lied Mitzer. 'Look, when someone finds you, then you must ask for an officer. Say it's important, a matter of life and death. When you speak to the officer, tell him who you are, that you worked on the rockets. Tell him you must speak to his superiors. You must tell them that, Albert.
There was no answer from Goodenache as the awful realisation of his predicament sank in. He leant against the tree, twisting the tourniquet above the shattered knee. They didn't ask each other what Goodenache's chances were. It was a slim thread that kept him alive, a flash of a chance that he wouldn't either bleed to death or be killed by a passing looter or invading Russian.
'Whatever happens,' Mitzer attempted to raise his friend's spirit, 'we must never forget we are comrades. Let's not forget the past, especially the failures. We must be one. Let us not forget that. They will destroy our Germany. Just like they've tried to do before. But we must wait, and believe, and work towards becoming one again. Don't lose the dream. Believe in that, believe it with all your heart, always remember it, and one day…all this…shambles…will be just a bad memory.'
Mitzer held out his hand to Goodenache, who reached up and took it.
'To the day we meet again,' he said.
'And if we want to communicate? If we are to be friends at a distance? If we are found on opposite sides? Then how do we talk?'
'Die Lucie Geists. That must be our password,' said Mitzer after a long pause. And Mitzer told them of the Lucy Ghosts, what they had been and what they would become. When he had finished, the others nodded. The Lucy Ghosts would be the password to their future.
Two days later Mitzer and Heinrich Spiedal stumbled on an American unit at the town of Marienstadt and were taken to a senior officer who arranged to transport them in an army jeep some fifty kilometres to Hamburg.
After a series of interrogations and interviews, Heinrich Spiedal would join the eighty-nine other Peenemünde rocket scientists who went to America under the leadership of Werner Von Braun. This same team, the most experienced and integrated of rocket scientists in the world, would spearhead the drive that resulted in America putting the first man on the moon twenty four years later.
Grob Mitzer, the administrator, was to remain in Europe and use his exceptional organisational skills to build one of the most successful electronics corporations in the new West Germany, a cornerstone of the new economic miracles that would revitalise that country.
They were never to find out what became of the scientist Albert Goodenache.
Two days after Spiedal and Mitzer were driven to Hamburg, the Russians rolled into the eastern outskirts of Marienstadt. The border they established was to split Germany for the next forty five years.
BOOK TWO
TODAY AND TOMORROW
Ch. 1
Santa Claus leant against the sled and took a last deep draw on his cigarette before dropping it in the snow and stamping on it with his boot.
Next to him, the old reindeer waited patiently, trapped by the harness that attached to the heavy wooden sled that it would soon be urged to pull out from its crystal flaked hiding place in the trees.
The man in the red suit and padded stomach looked at his watch; it was time for another show. The snows were starting to fall again and he was impatient to get things done.