Barstow’s voice had risen, become quite adamant, as he spoke the last sentence. Now he lowered his speaking voice. “There are going to be, as I said, similarities in the conduct of this operation to our previous operation in Munich, but there are going to be glaring dissimilarities, too. In Munich, one of our primary functions was that of finding out, of unmasking, former SS, members of the Nazi Party, bureaucrats, non-German collaborators and the like who were trying to pass themselves off as innocent, abused displaced persons.
“In this operation, on the other hand, it will not be up to any of the military interviewers to make value judgments on the interviewees. The doctors, alone, will make the decisions as to just how useful the individuals will be, and their decisions will be all based upon other things than the politics or the former military activities or affiliations of the subjects in question.
. “Those of you who were combat officers or active operatives with General Donovan may dislike some of our new subjects instantly, on first meeting, subconsciously recognizing them as the Enemy. But you all are just going to have to force your conscious to override your subconscious, for the old war is done and now a new one has begun for our nation, our way of life, and, like it or not, these subjects will be allies in this new war, potentially very valuable allies indeed, and they must at all times be treated as such, no matter how they may have behaved in the past, how they behave now or how you may feel about them and their past deeds, gutwise.”
“In other, plainer words, general,” said the man called Buck, dryly, “you are setting us up here to coddle and kowtow to a passel of Nazi and quisling war criminals, right? Men who would likely be, rightly be, shot or hung or at least imprisoned did they remain in Europe, right?”
Barstow shook his head. “You’re not very good at following orders, Buck, are you? Didn’t I just say that none of you are to make any value judgments based upon the supposed deeds or misdeeds of our incoming subjects? You’ve been with me for some time, and, frankly, I’d expected more professional conduct from you.
“I reiterate, ladies and gentlemen: the Second World War is over, done; the initial skirmishings of the new war are already commencing, but not easily visible yet. The subjects who are coming in to us have the potential, many of them, to be extremely valuable to us, to the United States of America and all other free people everywhere, to be of great help in thwarting or defeating the totalitarian aims of the new enemy.
“It has been said that the art of politics makes for exceedingly strange bedfellows. Well, the art of modern warfare makes for even stranger ones, I assure you all. Believe me, I was shocked, too—shocked to the very core of my being—when my superiors gave me this assignment and told me what my people and I would be doing on this Operation Newhaven, but as I already knew and knew well, the danger, the deadly peril, we all face whether or not we know it, I could immediately grasp the necessity of salving over old prejudices and accepting former enemies as respected allies if not as friends. You, Buck, and all the rest of you must follow my lead and do the same. If any of you feel that you cannot, for whatever reason or none, tell me now and I will replace you before any of the operation has started. Well . . . ?”
Milo and Betty wound up sharing a bungalow with Buck and Judy. Buck was a compact, wiry man a bit under average height, with thin, brown hair and gray eyes flecked with green. Always graceful, he was capable of moving as silently and as swiftly as a cat, in some of his ways reminding Milo of certain of the traits of Jethro Stiles. His English had aspects and sounds of Britain, but his Hochdeutsch and his French were both flawless and accentless.
Judy was a little taller than Buck. She was round-faced, rosy-cheeked, with thick hair of a chestnut hue. Her arms and legs were thick, but her body was well proportioned, her teeth white and even and her hazel eyes thick-lashed. In a dirndl, she would have looked the very picture, thought Milo, of a strong, healthy, happy Bavarian peasant woman. And her Hochdeutsch was sprinkled well with the accents and idioms of Bavaria and Westphalia.
Milo was certain that Buck and Judy were in love, but theirs was an easygoing, relaxed relationship, with little or no public traces of touchings to advertise their emotional attachment one to the other. Back in Germany, he had not known either of the two of them any better than he had then known Betty. Back in Germany, indeed, Milo had spent the most of his nonduty time alone—reading avidly of both English and German books, anything onto which he had been able to lay hands, sipping schnapps and whisky and cognac and wines, trying to wind down to near-normalcy after the long months of privation, squalor, combat, fear and sudden death. Now he was getting to know these coworkers as housemates and friends.
The work they all were doing with the mostly German interviewees had progressed smoothly to date, sixteen men having passed through their hands thus far—fourteen Germans, one Norwegian and one of Rumanian origin. The three doctors had passed on twelve of these men to whatever came after this Operation Newhaven. Barstow had mentioned in an oblique manner that those not passed on were to be speedily repatriated to whatever internment camps they had originally been plucked from and left to whatever fates their wartime activities had earned them from the victorious allies.
On a night when Milo and Betty and Buck and Judy sat in the parlor of the shared bungalows, chatting and drinking and smoking, three new subjects were occupying the tar-paper barrack, their screenings to begin in the morning. This was the smallest number to arrive to date, and all of this lot were German, or listed themselves as such. Earlier in this evening, the four house mates, along with Emil Schrader and Hugo, had listened for a while to the conversations of the three via the microphones well hidden in the subject barrack and latrine, now they and Schrader sat discussing what the three men had said and the thus-revealed personalities of the men, themselves.
“This Hizinger,” asked Milo, “what do you make of him, Emil?”
“Clearly the leader of this bunch. A born leader and accustomed to command, I’d say, too. He may well be a German intellectual, but he’s clearly not a civilian one; he walks like a soldier, he talks like a soldier and he behaves like a Prussian officer of the alte Garde. He puts me in mind of an SS Panzer officer we captured in southern France—hard as nails, tough-minded and so damned convinced that he was right that nothing would or could ever shake his beliefs. That Untersturmfuhrer was from the same part of Germany my own folks came from, too, and after I’d come to talk with him for a while I could almost’ve come to like him, but then he come to get ahold of a carbine, some-way, and shot Lieutenant Mallow and I had to blow his head off with my pistol. I think Hizinger over there is just the same kind of Nazi fanatic.”
Milo nodded and turned to the others. “Betty, Buck, Judy?”
“Emil is right,” said Betty, “Herr Hizinger has got Nazi and SS written all over him. He seems very intelligent, very voluble and well educated, very precise and methodical, but it’s clear that he was no civilian specialist at whatever our three scientists—Smith, Jones and Doe—are interested in; no, he was a military man, all the way, probably from birth. I’d give odds that his real name, his patronymic, has a ‘von’ preceding it, Milo.”
“Yes,” agreed Buck. “You know, what I think is that this Hizinger got wind of what was going on and thought he might have the ability to pass himself off as a scientist and thus escape Germany, Europe and his just deserts for whatever he may have done in service to Hitler, the Party and the Fatherland.”
While Betty and the others had been talking, Judy had just sat in silence, biting her lips and wringing her hands. Now she spoke. “Look, if anyone here in this room has real reasons for hating and despising the Nazis, it’s me. But there is this, too, to be considered and not ever forgotten. Not all Germans were Nazis, not all German soldiers were Nazis, not even all German officers were Nazis. There were even SS men who were not Nazis or even Germans, for that matter. Whether this Hizinger was a scientist or a soldier or both or neither, he deserves to be judged just as objectively as we judged all of the men who came before him and will come after him. If he is a Prussian—and I doubt that he is, he doesn’t have that accent—that is not at all his fault. Who has choice in where he is born?