is that smell?” he asked.
“Lunch. You want some?” Everett asked.
“Not on a bet,” Ellenshaw said in disgust. Jack and Carl walked past him toward the communication shack. Charlie was about to turn away, but instead looked around to see if anyone was watching. Then he reached down and took the remains of Jack’s lunch. He took a bite. His eyes widened and he made a face, then he chewed and nodded. “Not bad,” he said to himself, turning to follow the two officers with his newly acquired lunch in hand.
Collins peered into the large communications area and saw Pete Golding sitting in front of a large monitor. He was examining an old document that Europa had brought up on the screen.
“What have you got, Pete?” Jack asked anxiously.
“Ah, Colonel. Please have a seat,” Pete said. He pulled one of the rolling chairs out for Jack. “This may be what you would call a long shot, but Europa believes the men here are definitely connected.”
Jack sat as Everett and Ellenshaw also took seats.
“As you see, we have General Heinz Goetz. I believe you said he was the antagonist of Senator Lee.”
“Yes, he was involved in Operation Columbus.”
“Well, I’m sure it will surprise no one that our dear general was a confidant of none other than Heinrich Himmler himself.”
“Oh, Mr. Wonderful,” Everett said, as Europa brought up a picture from the war years showing Goetz and Himmler standing together outside one of the smaller buildings at Wolf’s Lair, Hitler’s Eastern Front headquarters in Poland.
“Goetz was what you would call a special projects coordinator for Himmler.”
Jack looked at Pete. “Special? You mean beyond the horrible historical connotations that word brings to mind?”
“Yes, Goetz had nothing to do with the Final Solution. His talents were more appropriate for the protection of projects like the Vengeance rocket program at Peenemunde. It says nothing, however, about his participating in anything called Operation Columbus.”
Jack studied the picture of the small, heavyset general. He knew that it was his old boss, Garrison Lee, and Alice’s first husband, Ben, who had dispatched the man from the world of the living.
“But there’s this,” Pete said. He ordered Europa to bring up a series of pictures of General Goetz. The photos had been taken at various places around the Third Reich and Russia. “Are you seeing what we saw, Colonel?” Pete asked. He turned around and looked at Ellenshaw and what he was eating. He made a sour face and turned back to the screen.
“This man right here,” Jack said, pointing to a small, bookish-looking officer in an SS uniform. “He’s the common denominator in every photo.”
“Very observant, Colonel. His name is Joss Zinsser, a corporal. We suspected he might be an assistant to Goetz or possibly a secretary. We cross-referenced the corporal’s name against the report filed by the FBI field office from the site where they found the empty train. While the bodies of Goetz and several others were positively identified, there was no mention of our little corporal. It seems our friend Zinsser escaped into the night, you might say.”
“And?” Jack asked.
“He disappeared after the war. He was finally captured with false papers by the British in 1947. He was convicted of assisting in the war crimes of General Goetz and was sentenced to twenty years. He was sent to Spandau Prison and released in 1956 after serving eight years of his sentence. He was a low-priority prisoner and very much ignored by the Western media at the time.”
“Okay, anything else?” Collins asked. He nodded at Everett and gestured for him to get organized. Carl immediately turned and disappeared.
“Yes, there is,” Pete said. He turned and spoke to Europa. “Please bring up the cell allocations for Spandau Prison in the years 1948 thru 1956.”
As Jack watched, several frames flashed before his eyes. Cell assignments started scrolling down until Europa locked on cell number 117. There was the name Joss Zinsser. However, it was the second name that caught his attention, the name of the man’s neighbor for almost eight years.
“Albert Speer,” Jack said, nodding.
“Exactly, Colonel. Unless you believe in happenstance, I would say that these two men who shared breathing space were the only two left after the war who’d had anything to do with a top secret project known as Operation Columbus.”
“Tell me this man is still alive,” Collins said, standing and carefully avoiding Ellenshaw and his lunch.
“That he is. He’s a spry man of ninety-one years and the best part is that he never left Berlin. He lives with his daughter in a small apartment, 236 Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse, part of a large apartment complex.” Pete handed Jack a slip of paper. “Here are the directions,” he said.
“It’s a start, Pete. Good job. You and the Doc stay put and we’ll be back as soon as we can.”
“You mean we don’t get to go?” Golding asked, removing his glasses.
“No, you two keep trying to get hold on any other links to Goetz in case this doesn’t pan out.”
Golding deflated at the prospect of being left behind. He looked at Ellenshaw, who took the seat Jack had just vacated.
“They do this all the time. I never got used to it either,” Ellenshaw said. He took another bite of the fast dwindling sandwich.
“Maybe they wouldn’t have left us behind if you didn’t smell like crap. Just what in hell are you eating?”
The rental car eased slowly past the massive demonstrations. As Carl drove, Jack read the banners. They not only protested the cost of ESA’s attempt to land on the Moon but complained that it was a slap directly to the face of God. The two groups, though different in makeup, had the same goal in mind-making the German government pull all funding from the European Space Agency’s attempt at a Moon landing.
“With the pope and the other heads of organized religion calling for calm while this mystery is solved, where are all of these fundamentalist movements getting their gas from?” Jack asked. Outside, several men and women slammed their hands and fists against their car.
“In my opinion, most people don’t need a leader anymore to show that they’re idiots,” Everett said. He reached through the car’s window and pushed one of the protesters away. The long-haired man dropped his placard, which read in both German and English: “Hoax! America is once again perpetrating the greatest fraud against God!”
As the car slowly moved through the multitude, Jack saw a large group of skinheads gathering on the street corner not far from the center of the throng. He could see immediately that these men and women were here not to demonstrate but to do what they did best-start a riot.
“This could get ugly real fast,” he said, pointing to an empty side street. “Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse is right up there. Let’s dump the car down that alley and walk the rest of the way.”
Everett saw where Jack was pointing and steered in that direction. Several protesters refused to move, but apparently decided against any action when Everett’s eyes bore into them. They gradually moved out of the way.
Everett finally made it to the alley. Both he and Jack got out and returned to the street. The mass of humanity was growing by the thousands and the mood was becoming angrier by the minute. Sirens and the sounds of police bullhorns could be heard further down the street as authorities started ordering the protesters to disperse.
“There,” Jack called out over the noise of the chants. Voices had just started calling for a break with the United States and the European Community.
A large set of stairs fronted the apartment complex. The large structure was one of the remaining vestiges of an era long gone in Germany. It was one of the last buildings that had been owned by the Nazi Party and had once been used to house VIPs, but now housed the poorer residents of downtown Berlin, with each of the original apartments cut into three.
They pushed their way through the crowd, drawing angry looks from some very large men with shaved heads.
