“Making him a criminal. For working in the war. So did my brother. So did everybody, even your policeman. Who knows what they did? In my name. Sometimes I think I don’t want to be German anymore. Isn’t that terrible? Not wanting to be who you are. I don’t want to know what they did.“
“Lena,” he said patiently, “the files are there. They’ve already been seen. Emil handed them over himself. They’re not about him.”
“Then why do you want to see them?”
“Because I think they can tell us something about the man who was killed. He was in the business of selling information, so what was there to sell? Now, doesn’t that make sense?” he said calmly, coaxing a child.
“Yes.”
“Then why does it worry you?”
She looked down. “I don’t know.”
“It’s the flat. We’ll move.”
“It’s not the flat,” she said dully.
“Then what?”
She folded her hands in her lap. “He came to Berlin for me.” She looked up, her voice faltering and dispirited. “He came for me.”
He reached over and covered her hand. “So did I.” Contents — Previous Chapter / Next Chapter
“The problem is the cross-referencing,” Bernie said, walking past the rows of file cabinets. “They just threw everything in here and we’re still sorting it out. Himmler’s personal files are over there, the general SS ones here, but sometimes it pays to check one against the other if dates are missing. You know, what’s personal? That’s assuming Brandt’s files haven’t been mis filed. Which you can’t assume. They got involved in the rocket program in ‘forty-three, so you can skip all of these.” He waved away half the room. “Program was designated A-4, so we try to keep it all together in an A-4 section, but as I say, it pays to cross-check. Here,” he said, pulling a drawer, “happy reading.”
“And these would be what Brandt turned over?”
“Some of them. Sources aren’t indicated, but if they’re his, they’d be in here. Of course, the scientific documents were down in Nordhausen. Von Braun buried them for safekeeping-in some old mine, I think-so FIAT’s got them, but you only wanted Brandt’s, right?”
“Right.”
“Then you’re here,” he said, tapping the cabinet.
“Christ,” Jake said, looking at the long row of files.
“Yeah, I know. They were so busy covering ass you wonder when they got time to fight.”
“Well, the army. They live on the stuff, don’t they? I’d hate to see ours.”
“These are a little different,” Bernie said. “If you get bored, try the aeromedical files over there. Want to know how long it takes a man to freeze to death? It’s all there-blood temp, pressure, right down to the last second. Everything but the screams. I’ll be downstairs if you need any help.”
But the first folders, at least, were ordinary-memos, staff directives, summary reports, the sort of thing he might have found im any office files, American Dye in Utica, except for the black SS letterheads. A paper trail of a bureaucratic takeover, with a Trojan horse of laborers. Peenemunde had been built with foreign conscripts, but by July ‘43 the program had needed more, the extra hands only the SS could supply- haftlinge, detainees, a memorandum word for prisoners in the death camps. After that first requisition, the fatal bargain, the real files began, thick with dates and events, a flurry of paper between department heads to seize opportunity while it lasted. July 7, an A-4 demonstration for Hitler, who is impressed. July 24, the great fire raid on Hamburg. July 25, A-4 gets a top priority go-ahead to produce its rockets, vengeance weapons. August 18, Peenemunde bombed. August 19, as night follows day, Hitler orders Himmller to provide camp labor to speed production. Three days later, August 21, Himmler takes charge of constructing a new production site at Nordhausen, far away from the bombs. August 23, the first workers arrive, the horse inside the gates.
The next folders followed the race to build Aladdin’s cave, clawed out of the mountain to house the vast underground factory. File after file of numbing construction details, weekly progress reports, new camps for workers. Even as Jake’s eyes glazed over at the day-to-day tallies, he was watching a whole city take shape, the sheer scale of the thing right there in the numbers. Ten thousand workers. Two giant tunnels reaching two miles back into the mountain; forty-seven cross tunnels, each two football fields long. Bigger every day, the way the pyramids must have been built. The same way, in fact. The ten thousand were slaves. No mention of how many were dying-you bad to guess by the requisitions for replacements from Himmler’s endless supply. The whole terrible business obscured by engineering estimates and monthly targets. In Berlin, the reports were dated, stamped, and filed away. Had Emil seen them back at Peenemunde, where the scientists gathered at night over coffee to discuss trajectories?
