The Children's War (194 page)

He stopped dead.

“Hands up!” the unseen voice ordered.

He complied, turning toward the voice as he did so. He could see out of the
corner of his eye that Mark was already through the outer fence, Erich was just climbing to his feet, but that Barbara was still crawling on the ground. A small explosion emanated from the laboratory, and as the guard momentarily turned his attention in that direction, Peter began to reach for his own gun.

The guard caught Peter’s action and turned to fire. Peter flinched as he heard the explosion of gunfire, expecting pain, but then he realized the noise had not been loud enough, as if the gun carried a silencer. The guard crumpled silently to the ground. Peter glanced at his companions and saw Barbara, on one knee, still holding her gun.

He ran toward his companions. They pulled him through the gap in the outer fence, and then they all disappeared into the night even as the sounds of an alarm were being raised in the darkness behind them. Once they were a safe distance away and all the incriminating evidence and weapons had been hidden, Barbara and Mark broke into the wild chatter that was a natural outlet for all their adrenaline. Erich seemed excited as well and soon joined in as if he were an old coconspirator.

Only Peter remained oddly silent, troubled by the information he had seen. He thanked Barbara for her well-aimed shot and patiently accepted Mark’s profuse apologies for freezing.

“I didn’t know what to do. I was afraid if I shot, it would draw attention to us. I’m sorry!” Mark continued to blather.

“I said it’s all right,” Peter repeated with growing irritation. Clearly nothing he said would matter, since Mark was waiting not for Peter’s forgiveness, but for Barbara’s.

“I’ve never shot anyone,” Mark continued to plead. “I didn’t want to . . . I wasn’t sure it was the right thing to do.”

Eventually Barbara had mercy on all of them, and grabbing Mark’s hand, she pulled him around toward her and kissed him passionately. “You were great!” she praised. “Let’s go celebrate!”

The two of them disappeared together and Peter continued to walk his brother to his flat. “Will your wife lie for you if the police come?”

“Yeah, she’s not a bad sort. I’ll tell her that story you suggested about undercover work for the government. She’ll buy it,” Erich responded, his earlier excitement completely dissipated. He sounded tired, almost sad. “Do you think they’ll come looking for me?”

“I see no reason why they should. We’ve destroyed our gloves, it was a clean entry. Everything went well.”

“That guy was going to shoot you!”

Peter shrugged. “No big deal. I’ve had so many guns shoved in my face over the years . . . Well, I’m sure one of these days that will be the very last thing that I see, but until then, there’s no point fretting over something that didn’t happen.”

Erich shook his head, amazed by his brother’s calm demeanor. They reached the entrance to Erich’s building and stopped.“Niklaus?” Erich asked quietly.

“What?”

“I don’t have a name, an address, anything!”

“I know.”

“I don’t even know you.”

“You never did, Erich.”

“Will I see you again?”

“I doubt it,” Peter replied, surprised by Erich’s tone. Peter bit his lip as he thought about Erich’s comments during the evening, then said, “Look, if you’re serious about what you said earlier, you know, about helping . . .”

“I am. I mean, I guess . . .” Erich sounded suddenly quite hesitant. Maybe it was the sight of his home and the thought of his family that brought doubts.

“You ought to know that both Mum and Dad, by the end of it all, were workingfor the Underground.”

“They were?” Erich sounded stunned.

“Yes. So, if that’s your inclination, I want you to know, it would have pleased them as well. It’s a difficult decision, and you should take your time to think about it. Don’t take it lightly, you’ll be risking everything—your family included.”

“What if I decide to join?”

“Some time from now, after you’ve had time to think, someone will contact you. She, or maybe he, will say, ‘Greetings from Joanna.’ They’ll be a friend. If you want to join, listen to them. Okay?”

“And if I don’t?”

“No harm done. No harm at all.”

66

“S
ORRY FOR HAVING YOU SUMMONED
like that, but I don’t have much time in London,” Ryszard apologized quite uncharacteristically.

“Don’t worry about it, I’ve grown used to your methods.” Peter leaned back on the upholstered bench and rested his head on his hands.

Forced to lean across the table so that he could continue to keep his voice low, Ryszard scowled. The noise of the pub was sufficient to cover them, but he felt nervous anyway. “I’m here about that Schindler thing. There was sabotage there last week. Chandler’s office was destroyed, a security guard critically wounded.”

“Yes, I’ve heard.” Peter’s eyes wandered around the room, lighting on an attractive woman in intense conversation with a short, burly man. He tried to read her lips to work out which language she was speaking.

“There have been numerous arrests,” Ryszard said, intruding into Peter’s
observations. “The police already have over a dozen confessions and three deaths in custody.”

“Ah, really? So efficient, aren’t they.” English probably. There was something in her gestures.

“Retaliatory actions as well.”

“Yes, I’ve heard the bulldozers were on the move.” Her hair was dyed platinum blond. Still that was becoming depressingly common among Englishwomen. Ugh, what a horrible thing to do to hair!

Ryszard cocked his head and contemplated Peter. “Do you know anything about it?”

“Yes,” Peter answered, without taking his attention from the odd couple.

“What? What did you have to do with it?”

Peter’s eyes darted to Ryszard’s face and then back to the blond woman. She looked angry now and her voice was louder, but still he could not make out any words. “Everything. I destroyed the lab so that I could wreck their research. Of course, there’s no guarantee they don’t have copies somewhere else, but it was my best shot.”

“What the hell did you do that for? Now we’ll never know what was going on!”

“Do you think I’m stupid?”
Verdammt.
Had she said that? German then.

Ryszard fell silent, unable to answer that. Finally he asked carefully, “What do you have?”

“Plenty,” Peter answered brusquely. He felt fed up with Ryszard, with everyone for that matter.

“How did you get it?”

“The old-fashioned way. I stole it all. Me and a few friends broke into the lab and grabbed the results.” Maybe English after all.
Verdammt
had probably worked its way into the vernacular.

“Why? That was risky.” Ryszard sounded truly impressed. “Especially for you—you know what they’d do if they got their hands on you.”

“I know; they would tear me limb from limb. But I wanted the information, so I got it.”

“What did you find out?”

“Lots,” Peter assured him, finally taking his attention off the woman. “We were right, Schindler was trying to resurrect his defunct sterilization program. My guess is he thought it would be useful to have his own ‘secret weapon’ in his political arsenal, though I can’t fathom why.”

“I can. They stopped that program not only because of the political heat it generated in the NAU, but also because it wasn’t bearing results. Now, caving in to the Americans was unpopular, and if the program could be resurrected and made to work, then it would be a heroic salvaging of Nazi science from the weak capitulation of the Führer to the capitalists, and who knows, it could always be used against political enemies as well.”

“Ah, that’s the other point. It does now,” Peter said.

“What do you mean?”

“The program, it works. Those formulae contained a final, potable, essentially tasteless agent for the sterilization of male humans.”

Ryszard shuddered and instinctively glanced at the beer he had been drinking.

Peter caught his glance and nodded. “Fortunately, it would take more than that, so it would have to be in a water supply, or in a product that is drunk with some regularity, well, like beer. But essentially, you’re right—that’s all he’d have to do: have a lab mix it up and distribute it to some target population.”

“How? The laboratory just got the documentation, how did they have time to complete it?”

“They didn’t. The Americans did the job for them.”

“What!”

“He wasn’t using the American to ferry information within the Reich, he was using him to bring
new
information directly from the NAU. That’s why it was on a microdisc and that’s why Wolf-Dietrich had to acquire the computer that could read it. My guess is the courier knew that of his two missions, his appointment in Lewes was considered much more important.”

“Do you think he knew what he was carrying or for whom?”

“Working for them and us at the same time?” Peter shrugged. “I don’t know. My guess is he wasn’t told more than that he should go to Lewes, check into that inn, and put his boots out to be polished. The arrest set him back a few days and he arrived on the wrong night—the wrong night manager was on duty, but they managed to work their way around that. Anyway, that’s probably why he was so agreeable about the arms shipments with you. He was hoping to get away in time to make that second, more important date.”

Ryszard nodded. “So you’re saying the Americans completed the project begun in Hamburg using the data we sent them? How could they? It’s been little over a year since you discovered that information. Don’t such things take time, more time than that?”

“I would have thought so, but they have a lot of analysis tools which we could only dream of. Or maybe they had the information long before we sent it to them; after all, that lab was in operation for years before we infiltrated it. It wouldn’t surprise me if the Americans knew about it all along.”

“Those fucking—”

“That’s only a conjecture on my part. In any case, they completed the research.”

“That’s immoral!”

“Don’t be naive,” Peter chided, “and give them credit; it may have been a preemptive strike, or they may have wanted to check to see that we weren’t feeding them a load of bull. Once they started their research, I guess they just kept going.”

“Did they go so far as to conduct human trials?”

“Nothing massive, just individuals. All volunteers,” Peter added sarcastically. “Chandler and his crew were in the process of duplicating their formulae and testing the results. I guess they wanted to be sure the Americans weren’t planting utter nonsense on them. They got as far as testing humans, and he seemed to be coming to the conclusion that it was effective. From his notebooks, it was still unclear to him if it was reversible or how long it lasted.”

“So how did Schindler get this information?”

“I don’t know, but I think the fact that he did get it, along with the technology that he had in hand, is almost more important than the information. They obviously have a huge security problem there, and we, worse luck for them, have proof of it. That computer, that microdisc, and the entire results from a topsecret research program . . .” Peter shook his head in mock dismay. “They even had the files I sent over there—exactly as I translated them.
Word for word!”

Ryszard smiled. “Word for word?”

Peter nodded solemnly. “After all their pious shit about not sharing information with us, we have extremely embarrassing proof of a huge breach of their security. We can probably write a very long wish list of technology and cooperation, and they’ll be more than happy to oblige us.”

“Plus I have the goods on Schindler.”

“How so?” Peter asked.

“Oh, you don’t understand the politics, but he only did this to embarrass the Führer, and now I know about it. I can bring him down at my leisure or I can convince him to be a trusted lieutenant.” Ryszard flicked a bit of dirt out from under a fingernail. “This is perfect. Just what I needed!”

“Blackmail Schindler, extort the ASA into cooperation, preempt any possibilityof a nasty sterilization campaign . . .”

“Yes, good work,” Ryszard praised condescendingly. “How do you want to give me the information? Did you bring it with you?”

“No.” Peter shook his head. “I’m not giving it to you.”

“What!” Ryszard calmed his voice immediately. “What the hell do you mean?”

“I want the opportunity to present whatever I find directly to the Szaflary Council. They can then do with it as they please.”

“Why?”

“I want to make a deal with them: my findings for a chance to come home.”

“I
need
that information,” Ryszard hissed.

“Oh, you’ll get it. I just want to be the one to hand it over.”

“If all you want is to go back, I could have arranged that ages ago!”

Peter tilted his head as he thought about what Ryszard had said. “Would you have done that for me?”

“Of course, they’d have listened to me. I can get Katerina to do anything!”

“Hmm. Well, I was unaware of that, but never mind,” Peter responded, politely disguising his disbelief that Ryszard would have helped him in that
manner. “I want to do this myself. I’m too old for mentors, and if you had insisted on my return, all I would have done is trade one colonel’s protection for another.”

Ryszard looked confused and slightly insulted.

“I need to run my own life,” Peter explained. “I can’t have other people constantly doing me favors. If I get back to Szaflary, I want it to be on my terms, not yours.”

Ryszard seemed ready to say something, but he stopped himself. He lit a cigarette and smoked in silence for a moment, then he shrugged. “Fair enough. If you plan on passing the information on, that’s good enough; leave a copy with me or Barbara just to be safe, then go ahead and take it to them. I just want to make sure the organization gets it so they can use it to my advantage.”

“Haven’t you got that backward? Aren’t you supposed to be working to our advantage?”

“Oh, it’s essentially the same. I just need help promoting my career.”

“To what end? You’ve been so busy promoting your career, I get the distinct impression you’ve forgotten that it is a revolution that you’re supposed to be working toward.”

“Have patience.”

“When do you plan to do something useful?” Peter pressed.

“You mean something more useful than saving your wretched life, twice?”

“I mean something politically useful,” Peter answered deadpan, refusing to rise to the bait.

“When the time is right.”

“And when might that be?”

“When I’m Führer.”

“You think you can pull it off?”

“With the organization I have behind me? I don’t see why not.” Ryszard gazed pensively at his cigarette. “I still have to shuffle some of the competition out of the way, then I have to deal with the current Führer.”

“Assassination?”

Ryszard shook his head. “Probably not, more likely a setup that will get him to step down and name me as successor. Stefi’s been working on that.”

“Stefi? How can she . . . ?”