The Man with the Iron Heart

Which didn’t stop the Indiana Congressman from trying to rip him a new one. “How do we let things like this happen?” Duncan thundered. If a newspaper columnist had put it the same way a few days earlier, well, it was still a damn good question.

“Um, sir, when both sides have weapons and determination, you just aren’t likely to pitch a perfect game,” Holmyard said. “We found that out the hard way in the Philippines at the turn of the century, and again in the Caribbean and Central America during the ’20s and ’30s. Sometimes you get hurt, that’s all. You do your best to prevent it, but you know ahead of time your best won’t always be good enough.”

“One of those things, eh?” Jerry laced the words with sarcasm. General Holmyard nodded somberly. Jerry went on, “When we were fighting in the Philippines at the turn of the century, though, we didn’t have to worry about the guerrillas getting the atom bomb, did we?”

“No, sir,” the general replied. “Of course, we didn’t have it ourselves, either.”

Would we have dropped one on the Philippines if we’d had it then? Duncan wondered. His guess was that we probably would have. How could Teddy Roosevelt have carried a bigger stick? And the Philippines were a long way away, and the people there were small and brown and had slanty eyes. They weren’t quite Japs, but…. Yeah, Teddy would have used the bomb if he’d had it.

With an effort, the Congressman pulled his thoughts back to the middle of the twentieth century. “Why haven’t we been able to recapture any of the physicists the fanatics kidnapped?” he asked.

General Holmyard looked even gloomier; Jerry hadn’t thought he could. “A couple of points there, sir,” he said. “First, we don’t know for a fact that the missing scientists ever entered our occupation zone. They may be under British or French administration, or even Russian.”

“So they may. The only thing we’re sure of is that they’re under Reinhard Heydrich’s administration. Isn’t that a fact?”

A muscle in Holmyard’s jaw twitched. But his nod seemed calm enough. “Yes, sir,” he said stolidly. “Another thing I need to point out is that, unfortunately, a nuclear physicist looks like anybody else when he’s not wearing a white lab coat. Coming up with these guys is like looking for multiple needles in a heck of a big haystack.”

“Terrific,” Jerry said, at which point the Democrat running the committee rapped loudly for order. “Sorry, Mr. Chairman,” Duncan told him. He wasn’t, but the forms had to be observed. “I only have a few more questions. The first one is, how likely are the fanatics to be able to manufacture their own atom bombs now that they know it’s possible?”

“Very unlikely, Congressman. I have that straight from General Groves,” Holmyard replied. Jerry winced; having run the Manhattan Project to a successful conclusion, Leslie Groves owned a named to conjure with. General Holmyard continued, “Atom bombs may be possible, but they aren’t easy or cheap. You need a sizable supply of uranium ore, and you need an even bigger industrial base. The Nazi fanatics have neither.”

“You’re sure they can’t get their hands on uranium?” Duncan said.

“When we entered Germany, we had a special team ordered to take charge of whatever the Germans were using to try and build their own bomb,” Rudyard Holmyard said. “That team did a first-rate job. The War Department is confident Heydrich’s goons can’t come up with anything along those lines.”

“The War Department was also confident the Germans would stop fighting after they signed their surrender,” Jerry pointed out. The chairman banged the gavel again. Jerry didn’t care. He’d wanted to get in the last word, and now he had. “No further questions,” he said, and stepped away from the microphone.

None of the other Congressmen raked General Holmyard over the coals the way Jerry had. Of course, the majority of the committee members were Democrats, but the rest of the Republicans also stayed cautious. The Democrats wished the issue of Germany would dry up and blow away. Too many men on the same side of the aisle as Jerry Duncan didn’t have the nerve to reach out and grab it with both hands.

Of course the majority were Democrats…. Jerry muttered to himself as he went back to his office. Ever since the Depression crashed down, the Democrats had ruled Congress. These days, most people took their comfortable majorities for granted. Jerry didn’t. He thought Germany was a prime way to pry them out of the chairmanships and perquisites they’d enjoyed for so long. He only wished more Republicans agreed with him.

As usual, a fat pile of correspondence awaited him when he sat down at his desk. Actually, two piles: one from within his own district, the other from outside it. Before he made a name for himself about Germany, nobody outside the area that stretched northeast from Anderson and Muncie had cared a nickel for him. That had suited him fine, too.

Now, though, people from all over the country sent him letters and telegrams. Some said he should run for President. Others called him a fathead, or told him he would burn in hell, or said he had to be a Nazi or a Communist or sometimes both at once. And still others-sadly, fewer than he would have liked-were thoughtful discussions of what was going on in Germany and what the United States ought to do about it.

This latest stack of mail from all over would have to wait a while. His district came first. Any Congressman who didn’t get that didn’t stay in Congress long. More people from Indiana seemed to understand what he had in mind. Not only did he know his district, but he’d represented it long enough to let it get to know him, too.

Oh, there were a couple of burn-in-hell letters here, and one unsigned one decorated with swastikas. But you couldn’t make everybody happy no matter what you did. The local mail wasn’t anything that made Jerry doubt he’d win in November.

And winning in November was what he had to do. Once he’d taken care of that, he would look around and see everything else he needed to deal with. But if he lost the upcoming election-well, there wasn’t much point to anything after that, was there?

Reinhard Heydrich didn’t bother with full dress uniform very often. What was the point, God only knew how many meters underground? The other resisters down here knew who he was and what he was and that he had the authority to command them. What more did he want-egg in his beer?

Sometimes, though, he needed to impress-no, to intimidate-people. And so today he wore the high-peaked cap, the tunic with the SS runes on the black collar patch and the eagle holding a swastika on the right breast, the Knight’s Cross to the Iron Cross at his throat, and the rest of his decorations on his left breast. It was all devilishly uncomfortable, but he looked the part of the Reichsprotektor, which was the point of the exercise.

Hans Klein, also in full SS regalia, came in and said loudly, “Herr Reichsprotektor, the scientist Wirtz to see you, as you ordered!”

“Send him in, Oberscharfuhrer,” Heydrich replied.

“Zu befehl, Herr Reichsprotektor!” Klein clicked his heels. They never would have bothered with that nonsense if Karl Wirtz weren’t out in the corridor listening. But they had to make Wirtz and the other captured physicists believe the Reich was still a going concern. And, to a certain degree, they had to believe it themselves.

Klein strode out. He returned a moment later with Professor Wirtz. The scientist looked to be in his late thirties. He was tall and thin, with a hairline that had retreated like the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front, leaving him with a forehead that seemed even higher than it would have anyhow.

Heydrich’s right arm snapped up and out. “Heil Hitler!” he barked.

Wirtz gaped. “Er-Hitler’s dead,” he muttered.

“You will address the Reichsprotektor by his title,” Hans Klein rumbled ominously, sounding every centimeter the senior underofficer.

“The Fuhrer may be dead,” Heydrich said. “The Reich he founded lives on-and will live on despite any temporary misfortunes. And you, Herr Doktor Professor Wirtz, will help ensure its survival.”

“M-Me?” If the prospect delighted Wirtz, he hid it very well. “All I ever wanted to do was come home from England and get back to my research.”

“You are home-home in the Grossdeutsches Reich,” Heydrich said. “And we brought you and your comrades here so you could conduct your research undisturbed by the English and the Americans.”

“You want us to make a bomb for you…Herr Reichsprotektor.” Wirtz wasn’t altogether blind-no, indeed.

“That’s exactly what we want, yes,” Heydrich agreed. “With it, we are strong. We can face any foe on even