Heroes, David Hagberg [me reader .txt] 📗

started. He looked more like a farm boy than a mathematician. At just under six feet, he was big-boned and dark-haired with a ruddy outdoors complexion. In actuality, he had attended the University of Heidelberg, then Gottingen, where he had studied mathematics from ‘32 to ‘36. There were times when he’d admit to himself that those were the very best years of his life. The camaraderie. The student pubs. The hard work with Dr. Alois Reichert. God, it had been grand. But now he mostly hated Germans and what they stood for. He had heard of Auschwitz.

He could not believe it, and yet he knew it was true.

There was a lot of activity in the compound this afternoon, despite the nasty weather. Deland supposed they would be firing another V2 sometime tomorrow. Before long there’d be others, though: V3’s, V4’s. He had been doing a lot of work lately on intercontinental trajectories: Ireland to the U.S. east coast.

Farfetched, Dulles had called it; nevertheless, it was frightening, because if the Germans could hold out for another couple of years, they’d have the V9 or even the V10; with enough power to span the Atlantic.

He noticed all that and more, including the truck coming from the liquid oxygen plant toward the Preufstande where the rockets were fired.

Also, there had been a lot of big wigs coming on base all day, including an SS General who had been in the mess hall at the VIP table with Von Braun himself.

Something definitely big was set for tomorrow if the weather and the Allies cooperated.

The little five-car electric train rattled under the canopy across the main road; Deland rushed across to it and took a seat in the last car. There were only a couple of dozen people, some of them officers, but most of them civilian engineers and technicians. No one Deland knew, which was just as well. He wanted to keep to his own thoughts long enough to calm down.

It was just after four in the afternoon. The main rush wouldn’t begin for another hour, when most of the four thousand employees here at Peenemunde would head home to Koserow farther down the island or to Swinemiinde and Wolgast on the mainland.

The S-Bahn rattled out of the terminal, picking up speed as they crossed the base to Werk Siid, where they stopped for another dozen passengers, then headed down to the main highway for the first checkpoint this side of Zinnowitz.

The others on the train were in a good mood this afternoon.

Laughing and joking. “They may be bombing Berlin, but they haven’t been at this little nest lately,” was the consensus.

“Besides, it’s Wednesday, already the halfway point. Can Sunday be far behind?”

Except for the big concrete buildings like Werk Siid, the base looked more like a small town than a rocket research and testing facility. Most of the buildings were neat two-story structures nestled in and amongst thick stands of pine. In fact, he had been told, Peenemunde had once been a very fashionable resort area.

He believed it. In the summer the place was lovely.

They came down the long, open southern stretch, the sea to their left, and Deland’s stomach tightened as it did each time he got to this point.

A large sign moved slowly past them, and he did not have to look up to read it. The words were burned indelibly into his mind. He even dreamed about them.

WHAT YOU SEE WHAT YOU HEAR WHEN YOU LEAVE LEAVE IT HERE

Just beyond the sign the S-Bahn made a wide loop, coming around to the main gate and to the transfer point for the regular train and for the parking area where Deland kept his bicycle.

Barbed wire and tall fences surrounded the entire area. A dozen SS guards were waiting as the S-Bahn came to a halt at the platform, while other SS guards patrolled outside the fences with their German shepherds.

It was nothing more than routine, Deland told himself, as he told himself every day at this time. He was taking nothing out with him, nothing other than what he had catalogued in his mind.

He had no need to take anything with him; he had total recall—a photographic memory.

His instructors in Virginia had been delighted with him, and Wild Bill Donovan himself had come out to the school one afternoon to meet with the whiz kid, as he was then called.

Six lines were formed, each passing through a turnstile manned by a pair of guards who checked papers, retrieved passes, and searched parcels, lunch boxes, and even pockets.

“If they were really sharp, they’d understand that none of us is interested in rocket parts; all we want is bread,” someone behind Deland quipped.

Someone else laughed. “A little meat wouldn’t be so bad either.”

“Meat … what’s that?” the first one shot back.

It was Deland’s turn. He handed over the badge which he wore clipped to his lapel, his identity card, his work permit, and his military classification card, which exempted him from service as long as he worked on a priority project such as Peenemunde.

One guard looked at his papers while the other quickly and efficiently frisked him. He carried nothing but his wallet, a package of cigarettes, a lighter, and fifty or sixty marks—yesterday, the first, had been payday. The bicycle lock key he kept on a string around his neck. The guards never searched there.

He was allowed through the turnstile; his papers were returned to him, all but the security badge which would be kept here at the gate, and he hurried across the entry area to where he had parked his bicycle.

It would be a long, cold ride into Wolgast, 10.5 kilometers to be exact, but he never really minded the ride. He got to see more of the comings and goings from Peenemunde (many of the VIP’s visiting the station came on the ferry from Wolgast), and it gave him the time to settle his nerves, which by the end of the workday were usually frayed. Today he was really