seventh.”
“No, I suppose not.”
“Actually, it’s quite a common name in Germany. The street between this lovely spot and the town of Dachau is in fact Nibelungenstrasse. Isn’t that interesting?”
“I wonder if—” Leets began.
“No: it’s nothing to do with that curious coincidence. I guarantee you. No, there’s a joke in this. There’s some hammy German humor. I see the touch of a Great Wit, a jokester.”
“I don’t follow.”
“It’s rather too clever, actually,” Tony pointed out.
Leets, way behind, requested clarification. “So what’s the punch line?” he demanded.
“It’s an opera.”
“Oh, yes, Wagnerian, huh? Some huge thing, goes on for hours. Has to do with a ring.”
“Yes.
“Who are the Nibelungen?” Leets asked.
“I’m getting to that.” He smiled. “The Nibelungen, my friend, are a tribe of dwarves, in the oldest stories. Living underground. Guarding a treasure.”
24
He checked his watch. Two hours, she’d been out two hours!
He was upstairs. He peeled back the curtain from the window and looked down the street, as far as he could see. Nothing. He’d done this a dozen times in the past few minutes, and each time his reward had been the same, nothing.
He felt warmly damp in his civilian clothes. He could not get comfortable in them. The shoes were no damned good either, blunt-tipped bluchers, pebble-grained, with cap toes, yet they rubbed a blister onto his left heel. Now he walked with a limp! Locked in this stuffy little house, he was falling apart; he hobbled about in another man’s clothes with a headache and digestive problems, and a short temper and a blister on his heel. He woke up at night in cold sweats. He heard sounds, jumped at shadows.
He really was not cut out for this sort of business, the polite waiting in an untouched residential section.
He sat back, pulled out his pack of cigarettes.
He looked again out the window, even though it had been only a few seconds.
He saw the truck swing around the corner.
It was a military vehicle, moving slowly down the Neugasse toward him. Big thing, dark green after their fashion, about the size of an Opel Blitz, a white star bold on its hood. Soldiers seemed crowded in the back: he could see their helmets bobbing as the truck rumbled along.
Repp drew back from the window, and had the P-38 in his hand.
He threw the slide on the pistol … he felt very cool all of a sudden. It seemed a great weight had been drained away. His headache vanished. He knew he had seven rounds in the pistol. All right, if it was worth six of them to take him, then six it would be. He’d save the last for his own temple. Briefly, he wished he had his uniform. Better that than this silly outfit, banker’s pants, white shirt, shoes that did not fit, like a common gangster.
He was breathing heavily. He crouched at the stairway. He heard the truck outside, nearly up to the house. His finger moved the safety on the grip of the pistol to off. The weapon felt cold and big in his hand. His heart pounded heavily. He knew the truck would stop shortly, and he’d hear the running feet as one squad headed out back. He was all ready. He was set.
“ALL CIVILIANS ARE WARNED THAT CURFEW IS 6 P.M. REPEAT ANNOUNCEMENT: ALL CIVILIANS ARE WARNED THAT CURFEW IS 6 P.M. YOU WILL BE DETAINED IF FOUND OUTSIDE AFTER 6 P.M.”
The speaker on the truck boomed like an artillery shell as it drew even with the house, vibrating through the wood, causing the windows to rattle. It continued on, growing fainter, until it finally went away.
25
It began appearing in odd places.
“Yes, here, by God,” shouted Tony, “mess records. March eighteenth and nineteenth, meals in the SS canteen, a hundred and three men, charged not to a unit but to one word: Nibelungen.”
Nibelungen: April 11, supplies from the central storage facility at Dachau dispatched: rations, equipment, replacement, fuel allotments.
February 13: Ammunition requisition; 25 crates 7.92 mm X 33 kurz; 25 crates 7.92 mm belted;
March 7: More food, a wire requisition, construction supplies.
The total mounted. A hundred scraps of information providing for the creation and nurture of Operation Nibelungen,
“It was higher than the rocket program even. My God,” said Leets.
Roaming through the CIC Documents Center, a clearinghouse the Army investigative unit had established at Dachau, Leets and Outhwaithe in one frantic day seemed to succeed wherever they touched. The files here were jumbled, immense, confusing stacks and tiers of paper; yet always, on the buff folders, one stamped word, whatever the category: NIBELUNGEN.
“We were so lucky,” Leets said. “If Shmuel hadn’t gotten to the old man. And if he hadn’t written it down. And if I hadn’t picked up—”
“We’ve been lucky all the way through. And yet we’re still no closer. I find that quite a bothersome thing.”
Leets scored. “Here,” he hooted, “under ‘Construction and Supply,’ the original site preparation order. Sixteenth of November ’44, orders here for a construction battalion to prepare a site for experimental purposes. In the Schwarzwald. Code name Nibelungen. Chalked off to WVHA. And a list of specs, required equipment.”
“Special transportation orders, these. Moving some solid-state testing gear down from Kummersdorf, the
“We’re really cooking,” Leets crowed. “Goddamn, now we’re getting somewhere.”
Leets’s fingers pawed through the drawers and vaults of the files. He worked quickly, but with thoroughness, and did not stop for lunch or dinner. He would have stayed busy late into the night on his prowl through the paper labyrinths of the Third Reich but there came a moment when a shadow fell across the face of the document he was examining and in that same second a mousy voice, full of self-recrimination and humility, spoke up.
“Uh, sir. Captain Leets. Sir?”
Leets looked up through a cloud of cigarette smoke.
“Gad, he’s back,” said Outhwaithe.
Roger stood shyly before him.
And Roger was some help, this time. He would not talk of Paris, or explain; he was not full of his match or himself. He even, for a day or so, worked hard as they continued their hunt through the paper work. And he came up with some possibly pertinent material: a Nibelungen-coded requisition for wind-tunnel data on projectile performance from the
