Fox On The Rhine (33 page)

More customers arrived, a pair of quiet German citizens. Krueger’s eyes followed the swing of her ample hips as she refilled glasses and cleared a couple of tables. It occurred to him that it had been a very long time since he had had a woman.

He finished his third beer before her other chores were done and she once again sat at his table. Perhaps she was nervous because of his earlier anger. In any event, she chattered away, and he let her talk without paying much attention to the words.

The air raid sirens came as a rude surprise, piercing through the night, rising with a mournful wail until the keening sound seemed to penetrate every molecule, every fiber of her being.

The pilot leaped to his feet, his first thought that he should get to a plane, take to the air against the enemies of the Fatherland. Only with a shock of cold, piercing anger did he realize that there was no fighter for him here, that he would have to endure this affront just like any landbound citizen.

“Come--to the wine cellar!” Gerti urged, leading Krueger and the three other customers--elderly men who moved with the careful precision of experienced drunks--down the stairs into a small, stone-walled chamber.

Krueger wasn't used to being on this side of an air attack, and the feeling of helplessness frustrated and angered him. For a while he put his arm around the frightened barmaid while they sat in silence, listening for the sounds of the bombing. Instead, Krueger was startled to realize that they could feel the impact before they heard it, shivers of vibration that thudded through the ground. The impacts came closer, and bottles rattled on the shelves, while little cascades of dust trickled from the roughly hewn beams overhead. “This is a British raid,” he said, knowing that the English practiced night bombing, while the Americans followed the more dangerous, and marginally more accurate, practice of bombing during the hours of daylight.

They huddled in the cellar, listening to the crump of countless bombs. Krueger knew that the target must certainly be the Jumo factory, and he feared that the confluence of Dessau’s two rivers would make it easy to find even at night. He felt rage at the enemy airmen, an intensely personal hatred that flamed all the hotter as his own plans for the evening were disrupted.

Gerti shivered in the cold and dank cellar, and finally slid next to Krueger, taking his arm and draping it over her. Her head leaned against his shoulder. He looked down at her, and suddenly his mind was filled with cold contempt. She did not even know for certain her husband was dead, but she was working in a bar, flirting with patrons--even worse, coming on to them with red-painted lips and a blouse that flaunted her femininity.

Although the sirens still wailed, he could take it no longer--he stalked up the stairs, through the Rathskeller, and up onto the narrow street to see what was happening. He saw the searchlights stabbing through the night sky, watched the bright bursts of antiaircraft fire, and grinned fiercely as a British bomber vanished in a violent, vision-searing explosion. The bombardment continued, explosions booming a block away, but he felt no fear. Planes droned overhead, and more destructive loads thumped downward, sending fiery plumes shooting skyward from different parts of the city.

He knew that these bombs would not kill him. And as he watched, he felt something peculiarly exciting about the power of the bombing, even as he hated the men who flew the planes.

An hour later the last of the heavy aircraft droned away, and he returned to the Rathskeller. The three old men were sleeping in a comer of the wine cellar, but Gerti looked up wide-eyed as he came in.

“It’s over... I don’t think the idiots even came close to the factory.”

“But--but the city? Are there fires?”

“Of course!” he snapped, suddenly irritated with her. He forced himself to grow calm. “Come here, I’ll show you. And you three--wake up! It’s time to go home!” He knew she would come with him.

He strode impatiently back to the street while Gerti locked up the bar. Krueger could see from the flames in the skyline that the bombers had completely missed the massive engine works. Instead, they had plastered a district of shipping docks and dilapidated apartment buildings near the Elbe, as well as a few blocks of residences just a street or two away.

Gerti gasped when she saw the nearby damage and looked at him in fright. “I live near there.”

“I’ll walk you home... we’ll see how your place fared.”

She nodded meekly, and he took her arm, leading her around the comer, standing back as several horse-drawn carts of the fire brigades trundled past. Flames rose just beyond the neighboring street, and everywhere there were weeping people, others shouting urgently, the sounds blending into a cacophony that had nothing to do with Paul Krueger.

“That’s my building,” she said, and he saw a three-story structure rising directly across the street from the swath of flattened houses. She took his hands, leaned into him, kissed him. With a shock, he realized he was aching with desire. It had been a long time since he’d had a woman. It was a lack he didn’t notice most of the time, but now, after the air raid, he felt the yearning, mixed with hatred and contempt for this woman who would betray her own husband, a brave German soldier.

As he escorted the shaken woman up the stairs, and followed her through the door into her small apartment, he noticed her face, flushed with tears, was bright in the roaring flames.

“Thank you... I’ll be all right now,” she said hesitantly.

But the flames were roaring in his ears now, so loudly that he couldn’t understand what she was saying, nor did he care. He pulled her close to him and wasn’t surprised when she opened her mouth to receive his rough kiss. He kicked the door shut behind him and in the dim light began pushing her toward her bedroom. She kissed him back hungrily as they made their way toward her small bed. Then he slammed her back on her bed and tore away her blouse and brightly colored dress.

“Wait--stop, you’re tearing it! No, let me--” she protested, but he was in no mood to listen. He slapped her, hard, so hard she fell backward, stunned.

“Whore! Slut!” he spat. “Making yourself available to every man while your husband suffers and dies on the Russian front!” She began to cry, to protest, and that gave him license to punish her, punish her for her unchastity, slapping her again and again, holding her hands tightly in his steely grip. She fought back, but he hit her harder and harder until her tears were mixed with blood, then he was ramming into her, his faced clenched in a snarl of hatred and disgust.

In the dark, afterward, the blood mixed with the shadows so that he could not see what he had done. She was moaning a little, still unconscious. He dressed quickly, his rage now spent, and left her, throwing a twenty-mark note on the bed.

When he returned to the street, the flames of the burning buildings cast blood-red shadows on his face and hands.

Jumo Engine Plant, Dessau, Germany, 7 September 1944, 0830 hours GMT

Oberst Paul Krueger strode into the factory like a conquering warrior. His Knight’s Cross was prominently displayed at his throat, and the row of medals on his tunic gleamed like the treasures they were. Guards at the door--Gestapo thugs to a man--saluted instinctively, then eagerly pointed out the factory manager’s office.

Krueger brushed past a flustered secretary, pushed open the door, marched up to the desk and glared down at the chubby man who regarded him with wide, startled eyes.

“I will be inspecting your plant immediately,” he declared, crisply handing over the authorization paper signed by Speer and Galland.

“Of course, Herr Oberst! Allow me to make some arrangements.” The man, whose desk bore a plaque with the name “Wilhelm Friedrich,” quickly scanned the paper. His eyes widened, and he mopped at his suddenly damp brow with a silk handkerchief. Krueger was privately amused. His entrance had the desired effect, and he’d only been in the factory for minutes. This plant manager would be no problem: an overfed, balding bureaucrat who squinted at the world through his wire-rimmed glasses, more comfortable with abstract numbers than with the real machinery that carried pilots into the sky.

“C-can I arrange an escort? Or coffee--ersatz, I’m afraid.”

“You will accompany me.”
Never allow people like that a chance to recover. Dominate them by your every move
. It was a good plan, and it was working.

Friedrich made a gesture at his desk, which was covered with blueprints, requisition forms, and other detritus of the bureaucrat. “But, as you can see, Colonel, there are many things--”

“Now!” snapped Krueger.

“Of course... all of this, it can wait.” Friedrich bustled out of the office, speaking to his secretary as he passed. “I will be unavailable for some time.”

He turned to the airman as they stepped into the hot, noisy factory. “Shall we begin with the design and engineering section?”

“Very well... I intend to see it all,” Krueger replied.

The opening of the tour did nothing to dispel the colonel’s initial impressions. He took care to walk stiffly, to hold his face aloof from any expression of emotion as Friedrich led him through the vast engine works.

At first glance, he could see that much of the floor of the factory was devoted to the assembly of the elaborate compressor mechanisms that were the heart of the turbine engines. He had seen the blueprints and knew that many miniature fans were arrayed along a central axis, then contained in a housing that shaped the thrust of the jet exhaust--the expulsion that gave the Jumo 004 engine its uncanny power.

Friedrich led him down a catwalk, through the heat of the factory toward a series of glass walled rooms at the far end of the building. On the way he continued to prattle.

“Unfortunately, Herr Oberst, we have been delayed by raids from the American bombers. Part of our factory was destroyed this summer, and it took several days to rebuild. Furthermore, we are working on the dispersal of the assembly, especially the housings... these are being sent to smaller facilities hidden in the forests, more secure from bombing.”

“Such dispersal has already been put in place for airframe assembly,” Krueger noted coldly. “And that part of the work is proceeding on schedule. It is in the engines that the production of these jets is facing its most serious delays.”

“I understand, Colonel.” Friedrich mopped his pate with a handkerchief, and the pilot suspected it was not just because of the heat in the factory. “But you must realize that these engines are something totally new to the world. The assembly requires the complex facilities of a large factory, such as this. And really, the design should have had another half-year of testing before we began production--you see, there are difficulties in--”

“Perhaps you are the wrong man to solve them?” Krueger purred. “Shall I notify Berlin to appoint a replacement?”

“No--of course not, Herr Oberst. I was merely observing--” But the plant manager was talking to Krueger’s back and had to rush to keep up.

The miserable manager led Krueger through the engineering labs, where men--Germans--in white coats pored over blueprints, models, and tests. They were diligent and apparently conscientious, working with slide rules and pencils, quietly discussing aspects of design and production, with only a few sideways glances at the manager and the Luftwaffe officer. The pilot observed everything but knew that he could not influence this work by his current set of techniques. Intimidation would not speed up the process. He itched to sit down and join the design work--he knew he could contribute there. But first things first.

It was a different story when they moved onto the factory floor. In most places the workers he saw were gaunt, skeletal creatures, men and women who--the manager explained--were brought by train to the factory every morning from camps in the forests beyond the city. They worked their long shifts and then were returned to the camps. Every morning there were new faces, because every night there were some who went to sleep and didn’t wake up again.

“Where do they come from?” Krueger inquired coldly.

“Mostly Czechs and Poles,” Friedrich explained, clucking his tongue. “Undesirable compared to good Germans, of course... but they have been provided for us, and we are grateful.”

“And Jews?”

The factory manager nodded his head. “Yes, in fact... many of them are. We get the healthiest and the strongest of the wretches gathered for transport to the east. The others of my workers are political prisoners, or else were prominent leaders in their home communities. The stay in the camp is a means of breaking any unacceptable ideas and attitudes that they may have held.”

Krueger paid particular attention to the assembly of the turbine compressors, where forty carefully machined blades were fixed to a central shaft. The engines were mounted on long racks, and the bright fires of welding torches cast an ice-blue light in the depths of the shadowy plant. Sparks dropped in long cascades, burning and curling across the concrete floor.

“We are having the most difficulty here,” Friedrich admitted. “It is so hard to obtain the proper metals... if only we had another six months for development. But no, the ministry requires production immediately, and so we are learning as we work.”

“What are your most serious problems?” asked Krueger in his icy voice, camouflaging the real interest he had in this technical work as he picked up one of the narrow, straight blades. He was surprised at its light weight.

“The turbine becomes extremely hot, as you can well imagine. Ideally, the blades should be coated with nickel or chrome--but these metals are unavailable. The engine derives some cooling from the actual flow of air over the parts, but we are experimenting with hollow cores on the blades. It makes them lighter, and also provides another avenue for cooling.” The pilot noticed that many of the technicians had slowed in their work as they watched the conversation.

“What are you gaping at?” he snapped. “The future of the Reich may depend on the work you do here--but you will have to do it quickly, and reliably! Do you understand?” Immediately the workers returned to their assembly.