‘There’s no point procrastinating,’ added the third man.
The four men got out of their chairs and approached the steel door that was
the single entrance to the room. Each man in succession unclipped his red
badge and pressed it against a grey plate in the wall. At the instant of
contact, a small white bulb was lighted, remained so for two seconds and
then went off,~ a photograph had been taken. The last man – one of the
Peenemiinde personnel – then opened the door and each went into the hall-
way.
Had only three men gone out, or five, or any number not corresponding to
the photographs, alarms would have been triggered.
They walked in silence down the long, starched-white corridor, the Berliner
in front with the scientist who sat between the other two at the table, and
was obviously the spokesman; his companions were behind.
They reached a bank of elevators and once more went through the ritual of
the red tags, the grey plate and the tiny white light
30
that went on for precisely two seconds. Below the plate a number was also
lighted.
Six.
From elevator number six there was the sound of a single muted bell as the
thick steel panel slid open. One by one each man walked inside.
The elevator descended eight stories, four below the surface of the earth,
to the deepest levels of Peenemiinde. As the four men emerged into yet
another white corridor, they were met by a tall man in tight-fitting green
coveralls, an outsized holster in his wide brown belt. The holster held a
Uger Sternlicht, a specially designed arm pistol with a telescopic sight.
As the man’s visor cap indicated, such weapons were made for the Gestapo.
The Gestapo officer obviously recognized the three scientists. He smiled
perfunctorily and turned his attention to the man in the pinstriped suit.
He held out his hand, motioning the Berliner to remove the red badge.
The Berliner did so. The Gestapo man took it, walked over to a telephone on
the corridor wall and pushed a combination of buttons. He spoke the
Berliner’s name and waited, perhaps ten seconds.
He replaced the phone and crossed back to the man in the pinstriped suit.
Gone was the arrogance he had displayed moments ago.
‘I apologize for the delay, Herr Strasser. I should have realized. . . .’
He gave the Berliner his badge.
‘No need for apologies, Herr Oberleutnant. They would be necessary only if
you overlooked your duties.’
‘Danke,’ said the Gestapo man, gesturing the four men beyond his point of
security.
They proceeded towards a set of double doors; clicks could be heard as
locks were released. Small white bulbs were lighted above the mouldings;
again photographs were taken of those going through the double doors.
They turned right into a bisecting corridor – this one not white, but
instead, brownish black; so dark that Strasser’s eyes took several seconds
to adjust from the pristine brightness of the main halls to the sudden
night quality of the passageway. Tiny ceiling lights gave what illumination
there was.
‘You’ve not been here before,’ said the scientist-spokesman to the
Berliner. ‘This hallway was designed by an optics engineer.
31
it supposedly prepares the eyes for the high-intensity microscope lights.
Most of us think it was a waste.’
There was a steel door at the end of the long-dark tunnel. Strasser reached
for his red metal insignia automatically; the scientist shook his head and
spoke with a slight wave of his hand.
‘Insufficient light for photographs. The guard inside has been alerted!
The door opened and the four men entered a large laboratory. Along the
right wall was a row of stools, each in front of a powerful microscope, all
the microscopes equidistant from one another on top of a built-in
workbench. Behind each microscope was a high-intensity light, projected and
shaded on a goosenecked stem coming out of the immaculate white surface.
The left wall was a variation of the right. There were no stools, however,
and fewer microscopes. The work shelf was higher: it was obviously used for
conferences, where many pairs of eyes peered through the same sets of
lenses; stools would only interfere, men stood as they conferred over
magnified particles.
At the far end of the room was another door, not an entrance. A vault. A
seven-foot-high, four-foot-wide, heavy steel vault. It was black; the two
levers and the combination wheel were in glistening silver.
The spokesman-scientist approached it.
‘We have fifteen minutes before the timer seals the panel and the drawers.
I’ve requested closure for a week. I’ll need your counterauthorization, of
course!
‘And you’re sure I’ll give it, aren’t you?’
‘I am.’ The scientist spun the wheel right and left for the desired
locations. ‘The numbers change automatically every twenty-four hours,’ he
said as he held the wheel steady at its final mark and reached for the
silver levers. He pulled the top one down to the accompaniment of a barely
audible whirring sound, and seconds later, pulled the lower one up.
The whirring stopped, metallic clicks could be heard and the scientist
pulled open the thick steel door. He turned to Strasser. ‘These are the
tools for Peenernfinde. See for yourself.’
Strasser approached the vault. Inside were five rows of removable glass
trays, top to bottom; each row had a total of one hundred trays, five
hundred in all.
The trays that were empty were marked with a white strip across the facing
glass, the word Auffiallen printed clearly.
32
The trays that were full were so designated by strips of black across their
fronts.
There were four and a half rows of white trays. Empty.
Strasser looked closely, pulled open several trays, shut them and stared at
the Peenemtlnde scientist.
‘This is the sole repository?’ he asked quietly.
‘It is. We have six thousand casings completed; God knows how many will go
in experimentation. Estimate for yourself how much further we can proceed.’
Strasser held the scientist’s eyes with his own. ‘Do you realize what
you’re saying?’
‘I do. We’ll deliver only a fraction of the required schedules. Nowhere
near enough. PeenemUnde is a disaster.’
SEPTEMBER 9, 1943
THE NORTH SEA
The fleet of B-17 bombers had aborted the primary target of Essen due to
cloud cover. The squadron commander, over the objections of his fellow
pilots, ordered the secondary mission into operation: the shipyards north
of Bremerhaven. No one Eked the Bremerhaven run; Messerschmitt and Stuka
interceptor wings were devastating. They were called the Luftwaffe suicide
squads, maniacal young Nazis who’might as easily collide with enemy
aircraft as fire at them. Not necessarily due to outrageous bravery; often
it was merely inexperience or worse: poor training.
Bremerhaven-north was a terrible secondary. When it was a primary
objective, the Eighth Air Force fighter escorts took the sting out of the
run; they were not there when Bremerhaven was a secondary.
The squadron commander, however, was a hardnose. Worse, he was West Point:
the secondary would not only be hit, it would be hit at an altitude that
guaranteed maximum accuracy. He did not tolerate the very vocal criticism
of his second-in-command aboard the flanking aircraft, who made it clear
that such an altitude was barely logical with fighter escorts; without
them,
33
considering the heavy ack-ack fire, it was ridiculous. The squad. ron
Commander had replied with a terse recital of the new navigational headings
and termination of radio contact.
Once they were into the Bremerhaven corridors, the German interceptors came
from all points; the antiaircraft guns were murderous. And the squadron
commander took his lead plane directly down into maximum-accuracy altitude
and was blown out of the sky.
The second-in-command valued life and the price of aircraft more than his
West Point superior. He ordered the squadron to scramble altitudes, telling
his bombardiers to unload on anything below but
for-God’s-sake-release-the-goddamn-weight so all planes could reach their
maximum heights and reduce antiaircraft and interceptor fire.
In several instances it was too late. One bomber caught fire and went into
a spin; only three chutes emerged from it. Two aircraft were riddled so
badly both planes began immediate desobnts. Pilots and crew bailed out.
Most of them.
The remainder kept climbing; the Messersclunitts climbed with them. They
went higher and still higher, past the safe altitude range. Oxygen masks
were ordered; not all functioned.
But in four minutes, what was left of the squadron was in the middle of the
clear midnight sky, made stunningly clearer by the substratosphere absence
of air particles. The stars were extraordinary in their flickering
brightness, the moon more a bombers’ moon than ever before.
Escape was in these regions.
‘Chart man!’ said the exhausted, relieved second-in-command into his radio,
‘give us headings! Back to Lakenheath, if you’d be so kind.’
The reply on the radio soured the moment of relief. It came from an aerial
gunner aft of navigation. ‘He’s dead, colonel. Nelson’s dead. ,
There was no time in the air for comment, ‘Take it, aircraft three. It’s