He went to bed late and awoke feeling groggy. He was more alert later when Kammler"s special train, with its sleeping cars and dining car and many well-armed SS guards, left with Wernher von Braun and about 500 of his V-2 experts and their families, on the first leg of the journey to Oberammergau. Once they"d gone, Ernst paid a visit to the Kahla complex, where he found Wilson, silvery-haired but lean and remarkably fit, supervising the packing of the last of the components and drawings for the Kugelblitz. Because the workable model had been blown up a few weeks before, the hangar outside Wilson"s office looked vast and cold.
"Will you soon be finished?" Ernst asked of Wilson.
"Yes. Today, I think. Most of the components have already been boxed. Copies of the drawings and notes have been placed in three separate, portable safes and will be taken with each group, to ensure that if one lot is lost, the others will make it. Those in charge of the papers have been instructed to destroy them if there"s the slightest chance of Soviet or Allied forces capturing them. And since the Kugelblitz itself has been blown up, there"ll be no evidence left here regarding what we were doing."
Ernst smiled. "Excellent," he said. "Wernher von Braun"s men did something similar with their papers. I gather that two of his engineers, Dieter Huzel and Bernard Tessman, hid the archives of the Peenemnde research station in the disused iron-ore mine near the village of Dorten, not far from Bleicherode. All over Germany, in disused mines and evacuated caves, the Third Reich is hiding its scientific secrets. We"re the only ones who are burying ourselves with our secrets hopefully in the Antarctic."
"We"re not burying ourselves," Wilson corrected him. "We"re creating our own world."
"I hope so," Ernst replied.
He didn"t see Wilson for the next two days; he was too busy supervising the continuing evacuation of Camp Dora and ensuring that those in charge of the ragged columns of prisoners would not be merciful to anyone too ill to march. As before, they were moved out at night, by truck and train or on foot. Driving back and forth in his jeep, between the trucks and the trains, along the roads filled with those marching, he heard the snarling dogs, cracking whips and gunshots, and saw bodies in the ditches or sprawled beside the railway tracks, their crumpled forms illuminated by moonlight and stars, or by the incandescent flashing of the exploding bombs from the planes growling overhead.
On the horizon, where the starry sky met black earth, the Allied big guns also flashed constantly, moving forward inexorably.
By the fourth day, both Camp Dora and the Nordhausen Central Works had been cleared of all prisoners. Then Ernst could begin moving out the technicians and troops. By nightfall the caves were empty, the great tunnels echoing eerily, the railway tracks leading into a darkness in which nothing stirred. Ernst drove back to Kahla, leaving Nordhausen to the Allied troops, and found Wilson, his technicians, and the SS troops ready to leave. They went in three groups, one on each successive night. On the third night, Ernst joined Wilson and his team on the last train from Kahla.
The Allied guns sounded much louder as the train pulled away.
General Nebe was in charge and shared a car with them. His face was impa.s.sive, but his dark eyes were restless, first studying his fellow officers, then examining his pistol, then gazing out of the window at a darkness fitfully illuminated with distant explosions.
"The Americans are rich and have an endless supply of aircraft and bombs," he said. "No wonder they"re winning." After that rare observation Nebe contented himself with his restless roaming, from one carriage to another, going outside when the train stopped, checking the box cars containing the components or the workers they had decided to take with them to help with unloading.
Occasionally there was trouble usually a prisoner in revolt. At such times Nebe moved with calm efficiency, usually by dragging the recalcitrant, ragged figure from the box car, making him or her kneel by the tracks, then putting a single bullet through the back of the victim"s neck and kicking the body down the incline or into the brush.
That night brought another problem, near the station of Wolfsburg. A group of resistance fighters or possibly escaped prisoners attacked the train where it had stopped to change tracks. There were perhaps a dozen men, all wearing civilian clothes, firing rifles and pistols through the windows as they leapt up from the dark field and ran alongside the train. Nebe knew what they were doing: trying to capture the engine. While his men fired at them, he hurried though the linked cars to the engine and personally protected the driver until the train had pulled out again. When it did so, Ernst saw many of the resistance men sprawled dead in the dirt.
None of this bothered Wilson, though he said, "Nebe enjoys the smell of blood in his nostrils. I"m glad he"s on our side." Other than that, he kept to himself, s.n.a.t.c.hing sleep when he could and spending his waking hours with his notebook and pen, playing with mathematical formulas to distract him from the smouldering ruins of Germany outside the train.
They were bombed before dawn, just as Ernst was about to sleep. The sudden roaring almost split his eardrums as he dived to the floor. The bending tracks shrieked and he thought of Wilson and his crates. The whole car climbed up and crashed down and then rolled onto its side. The noise was deafening. Ernst slid along the floor, struck a wall, and rolled over Wilson. He turned around and saw the windows above him, gla.s.s shattered and glinting. Men screamed or bellowed curses as Wilson crawled toward the nearest door. A b.l.o.o.d.y corporal formed a stirrup with his hands, Nebe planted his boot in it, then the corporal heaved him up through a window. More bombs fell and exploded around the train as Ernst found a cleared s.p.a.ce. He pulled himself up through the window. The night roared and spewed flames. He crawled away from the window, rolled off and crashed down to the ground outside.
"Get the crates!" Wilson bawled.
He saw Wilson hurrying alongside the car, which was practically on its side. Men were dropping through the windows and crashing down and rolling away from him. Ernst followed Wilson, crouched low. A silhouette was bellowing orders. Ernst clawed two or three men from his path and then saw the box car. General Nebe was already there. Six or seven trucks were near the train, and a dozen men were labouring under Wilson"s crates with smoke billowing over them. Another bomb fell nearby. Nebe stepped forward and barked an order. The men heaved the crate up into the truck, then some knelt down to rest. General Nebe"s jackboot glistened. He kicked one of the lolling men. All the men jumped up, grabbed at their weapons, and climbed into the truck. Wilson was in there with the crates, so Ernst climbed up beside the driver. Nebe slipped in beside him, barked an order, and the truck started moving. The bombers pa.s.sed overhead. A gray dawn began to break. Ernst saw a truck ahead, another behind, and was surprised to be still alive.
The dawn that broke over the devastated land was smoke-filled. All that remained were charred trees, smouldering buildings, and dusty columns of refugees, the latter heading in the opposite direction, away from the Soviets. They were gone soon enough, and the countryside became anonymous. Eventually the trucks stopped on a hill just outside Kiel, offering a view of the Baltic Sea beyond a broad, windblown field.
They were at a military station, surrounded by SS guards.
An enormous bunker, half buried in the ground, its sloping roof covered in earth and gra.s.s, dominated the middle of the field. Presumably it could not be seen from the air.
"That"s where we"ll stay until the U-boats arrive," Nebe explained with a shrug. "It"s as safe as we"ll find."
The remaining workers from the concentration camps unloaded the train and carried the crates and boxes into the bunker. When they were finished, Nebe said to Ernst, "Now we have to get rid of them. My SS men will help us load the submarines, but we"ve no room for this sc.u.m. Take care of the men in the bunker and leave this lot to me."
Ernst did as he was told, glad to wash his hands of the matter, and merely looked on as Nebe"s men forced the prisoners up onto the waiting trucks and then drove them away, to another field well away from the sea. He caught Wilson"s glance, but the American said nothing. When they heard the distant, savage roar of the machine guns, they turned away from each other. The trucks came back empty, and when Nebe climbed down, stroking his pistol, he simply nodded at Ernst.
Another day pa.s.sed. Ernst had to wait for Kammler. The SS troops pa.s.sed the time by playing cards and reading magazines, while their leader, General Nebe, sat in a chair all day to breathe in the fresh sea air. The docks could not be seen from there, only a gray swathe of the Baltic, but Nebe seemed to be content to just sit there and let events take their course. Wilson, on the other hand, was as restless as ever, didn"t like being in the bunker, and as usual pa.s.sed the time by solving mathematical equations and toying with scientific formulas.
"Don"t you ever just relax?" Ernst asked him.
"I am relaxed," he replied.
Beyond the noise of the sea, it was quiet. The Allied bombers hadn"t come this far yet. It. was the first peace and quiet Ernst had known for a long time, but he was still glad when Kammler finally showed up to give him something to do.
"It all went well," he said. "The rocket team is now off our hands. Von Braun and his men were housed in army barracks in Oberammergau, behind wire and under SS guard, and will soon be joined by General Dornberger. Now you"d better get back to Berlin and keep Himmler happy. I"ll expect you back here on the tenth. Goodbye
and good luck!"
Ernst was driven from the hidden bunker to a small, heavily guarded SS airfield nearby, where he boarded a plane. He spent the whole flight scanning the sky for Allied aircraft, but his luck held that day and soon, when he cast his gaze down, he saw the ruins of Berlin.
A pall of black smoke covered the city and was thickened with dust. The devastation was boundless.
"It"s the end of the world," Ernst said aloud, to no one in particular.
The plane touched down in h.e.l.l.