Germ

make it this far. She had cast hundreds of Allied ships to the sea floor. On this voyage, however, she was fangless; the captain had jettisoned the torpedoes to accommodate more precious cargo: gold, scientific equipment, Aryan blood.

Cartoonish insignias had replaced U-boat identification numbers when the war started, an attempt to mystify the fuhrer's U-bootwaffe. The one on this submarine—a grinning devil—glared with vivid white eyes from its position on the partially crushed conning tower. Karl glared back, daring the seafaring imp to blink first.

The shadow of a workman splashed against the conning tower, obscuring the devil face. Karl watched the man shuffle up the gangplank, hugging what appeared to be an extraordinarily heavy crate. Red-faced, he waddled to the open deck hatch, set it down with a thud, and slid it into the arms of another, who would stow it in the belly of the metal beast.

Karl watched the man lumber away from the hatch, chapped hands kneading his lower back. When the man reached the gang-plank, Karl shifted his vision to the conning tower again. He had stopped tracking the workmen's pendulum-like movements from wharf to U-boat and back again; the glare of the naked bulbs near the crates shot daggers into his eyes.

He surveyed the dock. The few fathers who had arrived here stood away from one another, watching the workmen with dazed expressions. Karl had the great privilege of witnessing this historic event to its end. It was a privilege commensurate with the daunting responsibility he bore for their survival—for the survival of the Reich. Like the creaking war vessel before him, his adolescent shoulders did not appear up to the task. But only the sons and daughters of the Reich's top scientists could possibly carry on the battle now; they had been trained, they were ready.

Absently, he ran a hand over his filthy jacket.

Standing at rigid attention next to him, the boy's father tugged on the front of his own jacket for what must have been the hundredth time. He was trying to flatten wrinkles that were stiffened by too much sweat and blood and grime ever to lay smooth again. With blown-out knees, unraveled stitching, and rumpled hat, the uniform was at odds with the man's proud posture. Only the Ritterkreuz—the cherished Knight's Cross of the Iron Cross that hung around his neck—gleamed in the lamplight.

Josef Litt was a man of exquisite refinement. If not for the triumph of knowing his life's work would continue through his son, he would find the humility of his current situation unbearable. He wore the uniform and title of an SS-Oberstgruppenfiihrer, a lofty military rank reflective of his authority, but certainly not of his duties. Although he had killed, he was no soldier. In the lab he had shown how men in white coats could turn men of muscle into pathetic drones. His experiments had earned him the attention of the Supreme Commander. Before long, he was head of a top secret research laboratory, with an SS regiment—and title—at his disposal.

Karl was proud of his intimate knowledge of his father, an otherwise guarded man. He turned to appraise the familiar, crisp profile of the man who was now entrusting the Aryan dream to him.

Approaching footfalls drew his attention to the wharf. One SS soldier had broken away from the other four. Three diamonds on his left collar marked him as an officer. His gray uniform looked disheveled and grubby, but it was a model of German aristocracy compared to Karl's clothes.

The soldier moved to within a handsbreadth of Josef Litt. He angled his head away from the boy and bent closer and whispered in his father's ear.

Josef nodded tersely, without hesitation.

The soldier glanced back at the workmen. Finished, they were talking quietly and waiting for their pay so they could go home and at long last fill their families' bellies. He pulled a Schmeisser submachine gun from a strap over his shoulder. He positioned the weapon so only the boy and his father could see him yank back its bolt, chambering the first round. He flicked his eyes toward Karl. The look surprised the boy; the man's face reflected doubt, even sorrow. Then

the soldier turned away, leaving Karl to wonder. With the gun hidden behind him, the soldier marched toward the workers.

Karl felt his father's hand on the back of his head. The elder Litt's voice was cold as an executioner's blade.

'Sei fleisig, mein Sohn.' Learn well, my son.

The hard lessons had started six days before, when his

father had awakened him after midnight. 'It's time, Karl,' he had said breathlessly.

'I'm ready, Father.'

In the anemic light of the foyer, there was a teary farewell with Karl's mother. Hair in curlers, she wore a thin beige nightgown that smelled vaguely of sweat. She alternately embraced him crushingly, kissed his face, and babbled about how much she loved him. He stood stoically unresponsive; her antics shamed him. She had known for more than half a year this day would come. Karl broke free of her arms and strode out the door without looking back.

Several trips along the rubble-strewn streets of Berlin filled the car with three other children—two boys, one of whom wept incessantly, and a cheery little girl who informed them that she was five. Travel was slow as they moved against a pounding tide of refugees heading into Berlin.

Two hours later, they lost their car to three German army officers determined to escape the wrath of both the Allied war machine and an increasingly unstable fuhrer. What followed was a blur of trudging through fields and swamps and dense forests.

The thought of missing the U-boat made his father nearly insane with panic. They caught an hour's sleep here, a couple more there. They rummaged through heaps of trash and the clothes of decaying corpses, looking for scraps of food. Josef feared all pedestrians, and vehicles even more so. He instructed the others to hit the ground and stay flat at his signal.

Once, Josef told the children to wait, and he loped off toward a farmhouse. Karl thought he looked like a wounded beast, bounding toward shelter under the glare of a hateful moon. He returned thirty minutes later with two loaves of bread and a small bag of carrots and potatoes. The bread was splattered with a dark, coppery- smelling liquid, impossible to identify in the night. The group ate it without question.

Sometime after that a fat man in tatters sprang out from behind a stone wall. He grabbed at the children, demanding food. Josef rushed to him and knocked him into the mud. In an instant, he was sitting on the man's fat belly. A huge knife appeared. Josef pressed the blade against the man's bulging neck. Karl saw muscles strain in his father's jaw and forearms and caught a flash of gritted teeth: the wounded beast cornered.

'Don't try me,' his father said. 'You won't survive to tell the tale.'

They did not move for a long moment, then his father pushed off the man and started walking again. Always walking.

The downed man gasped for breath. Blood flowed from what looked to Karl like a small, smiling mouth etched into his neck. But the man pulled himself up, held a dirty handkerchief to his wound, and stumbled off in the other direction.

They staggered into Rostock on the Baltic Sea late the next afternoon. After three years of Royal Air Force bombings, the town was a crumbling mess. Tiny billows of dust danced like ghosts in the empty streets. Shutters clung to darkened windows. If the Brits had failed to completely destroy the place, they had succeeded in beating the spirit out of its people.

They rounded a ravaged brick building and faced the harbor—but no U-boat. The opaque water was smooth and undisturbed. The scorched pilings of shattered docks jutted from the water like rotten teeth. Only the nearest dock had barely survived, the huge sliding doors of its warehouse intact and drawn tight.

Karl turned to his father, who did not look devastated as Karl had expected, only worried. Josef held his hand up to Karl—Don't panic, it said—and walked on, his hand still raised, forgotten.

As they drew closer, one of the warehouse doors screeched open and SS soldiers stepped out. The SS commander explained that the U-boat was waiting thirty miles offshore. Josef's mood lifted; he laughed. 'Call it in,' he said.

Karl lumbered into the gutted warehouse. A ragtag bunch of children—most of them nowhere near puberty—