They got dressed and picked up her car. They drove an hour to a hill from which they could barely see the Rhine and the enemy hills behind. Bombs were falling and flashes were visible seconds before the sound washed over them. Jessica was starkly aware that she was seeing war, although from a safe distance, and it was nothing like the buzz-bombs in London or the riots in Paris. What she was watching was man-made hell.
“Can anyone survive?”
“Very likely quite a few. No matter how hard we bomb, a lot of them will make it. They are dug in deep and well.”
Jessica shuddered and grasped his hand. “Enough. I’m glad you showed me, but enough. We’re going to back to the hotel and make love all night and make up for the time we missed and the time we may never have again.”
“The word Kremlin is nothing more than Russian for fortress,” Skorzeny said to a totally disinterested Heisenberg. “There are several kremlins all over Russia.”
Heisenberg ignored him. He was too busy supervising his mens’ efforts to assemble the atomic bomb. They were in a warehouse across the Moscow River from the red walls of the Kremlin, the real Kremlin. It was less than half a mile away. His scientists were dressed in lead-lined suits they hoped would keep radiation at bay. Skorzeny was nearly a hundred feet from the bomb’s components and the radioactive material.
Davidov had found the place, and brutally using his NKVD identity, imprisoned the handful of inhabitants in a back room. Inside the warehouse’s double doors there was plenty of room for the entire caravan.
A pair of trucks had been backed up to each other and the bomb was now on them. Heisenberg had been assembling it for two days and he was getting even more nervous than usual. They were hiding in plain sight in the center of the Soviet Union, trusting that their NKVD badges would keep out the curious long enough for them to do their job, and that the three men locked in the store room wouldn’t be missed.
Some other NKVD officers had stopped by, curious, and had been told that this was a special project for Laventri Beria himself and that if they had any question they should ask him. No one would, of course. Beria, a murdering child-molester, was the second most feared person in the Soviet Union.
“Done,” Heisenberg said and stepped away from the trucks.
It was almost noon. Skorzeny nodded. “Set the timer and we leave immediately.”
Davidov had seen cars that could only belong to Stalin and others entering the Kremlin an hour earlier. They had to detonate it before Stalin left.
“Half an hour?” Heisenberg asked and Skorzeny agreed. It would give them time to get clear. They hoped. Heisenberg had no idea how powerful the bomb would be.
A moment later the physicist said the timing was set and the clock was ticking. Skorzeny, Heisenberg and Davidov got into a car and drove out. The remaining Russians and physicists clambered into the bus and departed behind them, leaving the three warehouse workers to their fate. “Martyrs to the cause,” Davidov said sarcastically. It was time to return to Germany.
They had only been gone about fifteen minutes, driving through maddeningly slow traffic, when the world was lit by a glare so bright that they screamed and tried to cover their eyes. Seconds later, a shock wave washed over them, toppling the bus and ramming the car into a wall.
Inside the Kremlin, Laventri Beria stood by a window and wondered at the report he’d been given about some damn project across the river being done in his name. He was just about to give an order to investigate when an unholy fire washed over him and reduced him to ashes.
The blast and shock wave evaporated part of the river and completely destroyed Lenin’s Tomb along with the stone wall of the fortress that faced the river.
In his office but not facing the blast, Josef Stalin sat at his desk while Vacheslav Molotov and several high- ranking generals waited nervously. The glare startled them but their minds had only a second to register the fact when the shock wave hurled them against and through the building’s outer shell.
Two miles away, Skorzeny crawled out of the car. Heisenberg was badly injured and Davidov’s arm hung limply. “What just happened?” Skorzeny said as he looked in amazement at the rising plume of boiling and flaming smoke towering above them like a living and angry god from hell.
“It worked,” Heisenberg said weakly. “An atomic bomb. I’ve done it.”
Skorzeny lurched to his feet. In every direction, thousands of people were milling in panic, wondering which way to run. Bodies littered the street and hundreds showed injuries of all kinds, many with horribly blackened skin. People with burns and peeling skin were running away from the explosion and the malevolent cloud expanding in all directions. Many staggered and fell, screaming through lipless mouths.
“It went off early,” Heisenberg said, providing utterly useless information. He wondered if he would get another Nobel for physics.
Skorzeny swore and ran into an apartment building, fighting his way against a human tide that wanted to leave it. His uniform was of no use against mindless panic and it took him several minutes to where he could see the Kremlin.
It wasn’t there. In its place was fire and ruin and that plume of black smoke still churning skyward. “We did it,” he chortled in German and then looked around. No one had heard him and it wouldn’t have mattered if they had.
Skorzeny then ran to the overturned bus. Several of the occupants were dead and the others badly hurt. He hated this part, but no one could be left behind to provide information to the Soviets. He pulled out his pistol and shot the survivors in the head.
Davidov came up. He seemed to have gotten his arm working. His face showed shock but then calmed. “I understand.”
“Good. Now let us get the damned car going and get us out of this town before somebody takes charge and closes the doors.”
It did occur to Skorzeny that it might be some time before somebody was found to take over the reins of Mother Russia.
CHAPTER 23
Truman was livid. “How the hell did the god-damned Nazis pull off a stunt like this?” he said into the speaker that connected him with General Leslie Groves in Alamogordo, New Mexico. “Didn’t all your scientists assure me that we were well ahead of the Nazis?”
Groves’ normally powerful voice came through clear but tinny. “Our scientists were clearly wrong. Oppenheimer and his pals are working on that now.”
“Wonderful. I assume everybody heard Goebbels’ announcement?”
The Reich Propaganda Minister had broadcast on the radio, gloating that a German secret weapon, an atomic bomb, had worked and destroyed Moscow and wiped out the leadership of the Soviet Union. He went on to say that the Reich had a number of atomic bombs in its arsenal and would use them to destroy London, Paris, New York, Washington, and God knows where else. In a twist of humor, Goebbels even said Germany would have an atomic bomb destroy Independence, Missouri, Truman’s hometown.
Truman clenched and unclenched his fists. He was the President. He had to maintain at least a semblance of his poise. “First, was it an atomic bomb?”
Groves answered. “No doubt about it, and other reports from neutral embassies broadcasting short wave are confirming the bomb’s destructive power. It went off either in or by the Kremlin and totally destroyed it and very probably killed everyone in it.”
“Finally,” Truman said wryly, “some good news. Can you confirm that lying Uncle Joe Stalin is well and truly dead?”
“We can’t confirm anything,” interrupted Assistant Secretary of State Acheson. He had just entered the room. “Admittedly, no one’s heard from him since the bomb, but he could be in hiding. God knows I would.”
