Meanwhile, page by page, the tunnels grow, rockets begin to be built, more camps, and finally the takeover is official-8 August 1944 Hans Kammler, SS lieutenant general, replaces Dornberger as head of the program. Now the scientists and their wonder rockets belong to Himmler. Medals are passed out. Jake looked for a minute at the memo describing the ceremony. Peenemunde, not Berlin; no families; a special luncheon. There had been champagne. Toasts were exchanged.
More folders. February ‘45, the rocket team finally abandons Peenemunde. A request for a special train, air travel too risky for scientific personnel, with the skies crowded with bombers. Everyone south now, scattered in villages near the great factory. The prison population reaches forty thousand-spillovers from the eastern camps as the Russians get closer. In spite of everything, V-2s are still streaming daily out of the mountain on their way to London. More files in March-demands, improbably, for increased production. And then the sudden end to the paper. But Jake could finish the story himself- he’d already written it. April 11, the Americans take Nordhausen. A-4 is over. He leaned back in his chair. But what did it mean? Drawers full of details not known to him but presumably known to someone. Nothing worth flying to Berlin for, getting killed for. What had he missed?
He left the last file open on the table and went outside for a smoke, sitting on the steps in the sun. A yellow afternoon light washed the trees of the Grunewald. Hours, to find nothing. Had Tully spent the day here?
“Need a break?” Bernie said from the doorway. “You lasted longer than most. Maybe you have a stronger stomach.”
“They’re not like that. Office politics, mostly. Production stats. Nothing.”
Bernie lit a cigarette. “You don’t know how to read them. That s not German, it’s a new language. The words mean something else.”
“ Haftlinge,‘’ Jake said, an example.
Bernie nodded. “Poor bastards. I guess it made it easier for the secretaries to type. Instead of what they really were. See the ‘disciplinary measures’? That’s hanging. They strung them up on a crane at the tunnel entrance so everybody had to pass under when they went to work. They let them swing for a week, until the smell got bad.”
“Discipline for what?”
“Sabotage. A loose bolt. Not working fast enough. Maybe they were the lucky ones-at least it was quick. The others, it took weeks before they dropped. But they did. The death rate was a hundred and sixty a day.”
“That’s some statistic.”
“A guess. Somebody took a pencil and averaged it out. For what it’s worth.” He walked over to the steps. “I take it you didn’t find what you wanted.”
“Nothing. I’ll go through them again. It has to be there somewhere. Whatever it is.”
“Trouble is, you don’t know what you’re looking for and Tully did.”
Jake thought for a minute. “But not where. He must have been fishing too. That’s why he wanted your help.”
“Then maybe he didn’t find it either.”
“But he came. His name’s right there in the book. It has to be here.”
“So now what?”
“Now I look again.” He flicked the cigarette end into the dusty yard. “Every time I think I’m getting someplace, I’m back where I started. Tully getting off a plane.” He stood up and brushed the seat of his pants. “Hey, Bernie, can I twist your arm for another favor? Talk to your pals in Frankfurt again-see if Tully’s on a flight manifest for July sixteenth. On whose okay. I asked MG, but if I wait for them I’ll be eighty. They have this way of getting lost in somebody’s In box. And see if anybody knows where he went the weekend Brandt left.”
“Frankfurt, they said.”
“But where? Where do you spend the weekend in Frankfurt? See if he said anything.”
“Does it matter?”
“I don’t know. Just a loose end. At least it gives us something to do while I figure out these files.”
Bernie looked up. “You know, it’s possible he got it wrong-that there isn’t anything here.”
“There must be. Emil came to Berlin for them. Why would he do that if there’s nothing in them?”
“Nothing you want, you mean.”
“Nothing he’d want either. I just read them.”
“That depends how you look at it. Want a theory?” Bernie paused, waiting for Jake to nod. “I think von Braun sent him.”
“Why?”
“It took about two weeks to round up the scientists after we got to Nordhausen. They were all over the place down there. Von Braun himself didn’t surrender until May second. So what were they doing?”
“I give up, what?”
“Putting their alibis in order.”
“That’s a DA talking. Alibis for what?”
