He was elderly, but Aubrey could not guess his age; this place had added years onto it. The shove almost sent the old man to the floor, but she could see a steely determination in his eyes. He was getting out of here on his own two feet. He was going to have that one small victory.
Aubrey said nothing. The sergeant showed the two of them through the gates again. Lazarus waited outside while Aubrey was shown back into the first hut, where she signed that she had received the prisoner. Then she and Lazarus walked to the car and climbed in.
The temptation to put the pedal to the floor was strong, but she resisted it. She drove away slowly, pulling over again as an army truck, now coming the other way, roared past.
When they were well away from the camp, Lazarus finally spoke. He spoke excellent English and started slowly at first, asking her name, who she was. Then he got around to asking how she was mixed up in the affair. She did not go into the details. Didn’t explain that she had first heard of him from the mouth of a dying man in a field in Belgium.
Lazarus’s words dried up, as if he had no more energy to speak. Instead, he leaned his head against the window and watched the countryside roll by. They drove in silence for forty-five minutes, Aubrey going over the directions to the farm in her head. If Lazarus recognized that she was taking him home, he did not reveal it. He made only one other sound, a deep, wracking cough, and she scrambled in her purse for a handkerchief. He had none of his own.
27
Aubrey brought the car to a stop in front of the farmhouse. It was obviously deserted; the windows were broken, the wooden steps were worn, and paint was peeling off the sides of the house. No one had lived here for a long time, perhaps since before the Great War. She wondered if she’d gotten lost. Lazarus certainly didn’t seem to show any recognition.
“You know this place?”
He shook his head.
“I was told this farm was yours.”
“I’ve never owned a farm. I’m a scientist. I grew up in Cologne. I live in Berlin.”
Aubrey gripped the wheel, then reached under the seat and pulled out the pistol. Lazarus showed no signs of alarm; he just averted his eyes to the car’s floor.
“Stay here.” Aubrey got out of the car, the pistol by her side. Suddenly, she heard the cocking of weapons in the tall grass that surrounded the farmhouse. Lydia stepped from the shadow of the falling-down barn, a Sten gun slung around her neck.
“You wont need that,” Lydia said.
“I brought Lazarus, your father. Funny, though, he doesn’t even recognize his own farm. Place needs a bit of a clean-up, don’t you think?”
Other members of Lydia’s group now came out of the grass. They were armed with rifles, pistols, submachine guns. There were half a dozen of them, including Ernst, the driver who’d picked her up that morning. And there was one more person with them. Richard Fuchs.
28
“Richard?” Aubrey said. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“Aubrey, it’s good to see you. I thought you were—"
“Dead?”
Another car—a Volkswagen, the people’s car—pulled in behind the one loaned to Aubrey. A young man in a suit with no tie got out. He went to Lydia and spoke quietly to her, then took his place with his comrades. One of them handed him a pistol.
“What’s the report?” Fuchs asked him.
“Luther says she wasn’t followed.”
They meant Hewitt, Aubrey realized. She certainly hadn’t seen him. “You’re part of all this?” she asked Richard.
“Our comrades and I want to thank you,” Lydia said.
“Comrades?”
Two of them went and retrieved Lazarus from the car. He came with them quietly; he still looked defeated, broken. He gave not a shred of acknowledgement to his minders.
“You lied to me,” Aubrey said. “He’s not your father.”
“No, he’s not. My father is dead, stomped to death by the brownshirts. Most of us have had a relative killed by those Nazi thugs. We fought them in the streets in Munich, in Hanover, in Cologne and finally in Berlin. But he is somebody’s father. We’re members of the KPD, the communist party of Germany. Or what’s left of it. Hitler has rounded most of us up, put us away in camps like Lichtenburg and Dachau.”
“Like Lazarus here,” Aubrey said. “So, if he isn’t your father, then who is he? Is he even a scientist?”
“Yes, he is. A very intelligent and important one. His specialty is atomic physics. We’re going to deliver our comrade, with Richard’s help, to the Russians. They will have great use for him.”
Aubrey had read in scientific and engineering journals about physicists like Enrico Fermi and the brilliant Albert Einstein, who had only just fled the Reich. She read those journals regularly, looking for articles on flying and aircraft development. The article about Einstein especially had caught her eye; the physics of it all were staggering. She would stick with airfoils, lift rates and fuel consumption ratios.
“Does he want to go to Russia?”
“He does,” Lydia said.
“Why don’t you let him answer?”
Lydia ignored her question. “Thank you, Miss Endeavours. Ernst will drive you back into Berlin.”
There was the groan of a truck’s engine from the hill that looked down on the dilapidated farm. All heads turned toward it, and then Lydia and her group froze. There was the
