The Man with the Iron Heart

Several of the guys standing around laughed. Two or three, though, scowled instead. One of them made a point of turning his back on Jerry. In Nazi Germany or Red Russia, that kind of rudeness would have bought him a ticket to a concentration camp, or maybe to a firing squad. In Anderson, Indiana, it only meant he wouldn’t vote Republican when the election rolled around.

As far as Jerry was concerned, that was bad enough. He wasn’t ready to hang out his shingle and go back to practicing law, even if he would make more money here in Anderson than he did in Washington. Politics was as addictive as morphine. To Jerry, it had a sharper kick, too.

A private stuck his head into Lou Weissberg’s office. “Sir, there’s a Frenchy outside who wants to talk to you,” the kid said.

“Yeah?” Lou set down his pen. “Does he speaka da English?”

“No, sir. But he had a piece of paper with your name written on it. He’s a skinny guy; looks kinda mean, y’know? Got a scar right here.” The private ran a finger along the side of his jaw.

“Ah. Okay. I know who he is.” Lou was depressingly aware he might make a good target for Heydrich’s fanatics. But if that wasn’t Captain Desroches, the Nazis had come up with somebody who could play him in the movies.

“You want I should bring him in?” the GI asked.

Lou pushed back his swivel chair. “Nah. I’ll go out there and talk to him. Any excuse to get outside is a good one.”

Spring was in the air. So was the stench of death, which winter chill had muted, but Lou ignored that. Pigeons and house sparrows hopping on the rubble-strewn street crowded hopefully around his boots, looking for handouts. Starlings in shiny breeding plumage trilled from any high spot they could find. He might have seen and heard the like back in New Jersey. He wished like anything he were back in Jersey.

But he wasn’t, so…. So he watched storks build a big, untidy nest of sticks on top of a chimney. He wouldn’t have seen that in New Jersey, and neither would Roger Tory Peterson.

Captain Desroches, by his expression, didn’t give two whoops in hell about spring, pigeons, sparrows, starlings, or storks. The Gauloise he was puffing on insulated him from the death reek, though it might have smelled worse.

Lou wondered why the Frenchmen had ridden all the way to Nuremberg. As soon as Desroches saw him, Lou stopped wondering. The French officer’s face lit up in an I-told-you-so sneer. It couldn’t possibly be anything else.

And it wasn’t. “A good day to you, Herr Oberleutnant,” Desroches said in his Gallic German. “I have for you news from Hechingen.”

“Guten Tag, Herr Hauptmann,” Lou answered resignedly. “Tell me the news, whatever it is.”

“There was indeed a fearsome raid by these vicious and savage German renegades.” Desroches was as good at the mock-epic as anybody this side of Alexander Pope.

“I’m glad you survived.” Mock-epic was beyond Lou. Sarcastic he could manage, even in German.

“Oh, yes. A great relief. The terrible monsters struck…the rubbish heap outside the building where some of the Nazi scientists got seized last year.” Captain Desroches stubbed out his butt and started another smoke screen.

A sparrow darted in to grab the dog-end, then spat it out after one taste. Lou’s sympathies were with the bird. Before long, though, some German would gladly scavenge the butt. Collect three or four of them and you could roll one nasty cigarette of your own and either smoke it or use it to buy something you needed more.

But that was by the way. “Did the fanatics get anything?” Lou demanded.

“Rubbish, I assume.” Desroches inhaled till his already hollow cheeks looked downright skull-like. “What else is there in a rubbish heap?”

“Well, I don’t exactly know.” That was truer than Lou wished it were. Nobody above him wanted to tell him much about what went into making an atomic bomb. He couldn’t blame his superiors for that, but ignorance made his job harder. “Maybe you’d better tell your story to Captain Frank.”

Desroches exhaled an exasperated cloud of smoke. “This is a waste of my time, Lieutenant.”

“If you wasted enough time to drive to Nuremberg and gloat, you can damn well waste a little more. Come on.”

They glared at each other in perfect mutual loathing. But Captain Desroches came. “Hello, Lou,” Captain Frank said when Weissberg led the French intelligence officer into his cubbyhole. “Who’s your friend?”

“Sir, this is Captain Desroches. He doesn’t speak English, but he’s fine with German,” Lou answered in the latter tongue. He nodded to Desroches. “Please tell Captain Frank the story you just told me.”

“If you insist.” Desroches had the air of a man humoring an obvious lunatic. He gave Frank the tale almost word-for-word the way Lou had heard it. “But for the warning from your bright young lieutenant here,” he finished, plainly meaning anything but, “we never would have noticed the garbage-hounds at all. As things were, we fired a few shots, they fired a few shots, and then they ran away. It was, I assure you, nothing to get excited about.”

Captain Frank didn’t look assured. “You say this was outside the place where the German scientists got caught?”

“Yes, I do say that. But so what?” Any comic who wanted to play a Frenchman on the stage would have studied Desroches’ shrug. “A scientist’s rubbish is no different from anyone else’s, nicht wahr? ”

“I don’t know about that-but I think I’d better find out.”

As far as Lou could tell, Captain Frank didn’t know much more about atom bombs than he did himself. The French captain watched alertly as Frank spoke. Lou suspected Desroches followed more English than he let on.

After talking with somebody, Captain Frank hung up and called someone else. He told Desroches’ story over again. There was a long, long pause at the other end of the line. Then whoever was there shouted, “Son of a motherfucking bitch!” Lou heard it loud and clear. So did Captain Desroches, who raised an eyebrow. It must have damn near blown out Frank’s eardrum.

The other officer went on at lower volume for some little while. Captain Frank listened. He scribbled a couple of notes. When he finally rang off, he nodded to Captain Desroches. “Well, thank you for bringing the news. Now we know what we’re up against, anyhow.”

“Which is?” Desroches inquired acidly.

Howard Frank looked right through him. Lou admired that look, and wanted to practice it in front of a mirror. It would cow every rude waiter and sales clerk ever born. “Sorry, but I can’t tell you,” Frank said. “You haven’t got the clearance or the need to know.”

“This is an outrage!” Desroches was almost as loud as the fellow who’d talked with Frank on the phone. Lou looked for him to breathe flame, or for steam to pour out of his ears. “You have no right-”

“I have my orders, Captain,” Frank replied. “I’m sure you understand.” I’m sure you understand you can fuck off, he meant.

Desroches called him several things in German. Captain Frank only smiled blandly. Desroches switched to French. Lou hadn’t thought French was much of a language to cuss in. He discovered he’d never heard an expert before. Captain Desroches sounded electrifying, or possibly electrified.

Captain Frank never lost his smile. When the Frenchman slowed down a little, Frank said, “Et vous. Et votre mere aussi.” Even Lou could figure out what that meant. Desroches stormed out. He slammed the door behind him. It didn’t fly off its hinges, but not from lack of effort.

“Wow,” Lou said, listening to Desroches roar down the corridor like a tornado with shoulder boards. Then he asked, “So what was that all about?”

“I talked with this guy named Samuel Goudsmit. He’s a colonel, I think-some kind of science officer,” Frank said.

“Goudsmit,” Lou said musingly. “Kraut?”

“Dutchman,” Captain Frank replied. “And now I know what the fanatics were after-what it looks like they got.”

“Nu?” Lou said.