Joseph Kanon - A Good German

“Lena,” he said patiently, “the files are there. They’ve already been seen. Emil handed them over himself. They’re not about him.”

“Then why do you want to see them?”

“Because I think they can tell us something about the man who was killed. He was in the business of selling information, so what was there to sell? Now, doesn’t that make sense?” he said calmly, coaxing a child.

“Yes.”

“Then why does it worry you?”

She looked down. “I don’t know.”

“It’s the flat. We’ll move.”

“It’s not the flat,” she said dully.

“Then what?”

She folded her hands in her lap. “He came to Berlin for me.” She looked up, her voice faltering and dispirited. “He came for me.”

He reached over and covered her hand. “So did I.” Contents — Previous Chapter / Next Chapter

“The problem is the cross-referencing,” Bernie said, walking past the rows of file cabinets. “They just threw everything in here and we’re still sorting it out. Himmler’s personal files are over there, the general SS ones here, but sometimes it pays to check one against the other if dates are missing. You know, what’s personal? That’s assuming Brandt’s files haven’t been mis filed. Which you can’t assume. They got involved in the rocket program in ‘forty-three, so you can skip all of these.” He waved away half the room. “Program was designated A-4, so we try to keep it all together in an A-4 section, but as I say, it pays to cross-check. Here,” he said, pulling a drawer, “happy reading.”

“And these would be what Brandt turned over?”

“Some of them. Sources aren’t indicated, but if they’re his, they’d be in here. Of course, the scientific documents were down in Nordhausen. Von Braun buried them for safekeeping-in some old mine, I think-so FIAT’s got them, but you only wanted Brandt’s, right?”

“Right.”

“Then you’re here,” he said, tapping the cabinet.

“Christ,” Jake said, looking at the long row of files.

“Yeah, I know. They were so busy covering ass you wonder when they got time to fight.”

“Well, the army. They live on the stuff, don’t they? I’d hate to see ours.”

“These are a little different,” Bernie said. “If you get bored, try the aeromedical files over there. Want to know how long it takes a man to freeze to death? It’s all there-blood temp, pressure, right down to the last second. Everything but the screams. I’ll be downstairs if you need any help.”

But the first folders, at least, were ordinary-memos, staff directives, summary reports, the sort of thing he might have found im any office files, American Dye in Utica, except for the black SS letterheads. A paper trail of a bureaucratic takeover, with a Trojan horse of laborers. Peenemunde had been built with foreign conscripts, but by July ‘43 the program had needed more, the extra hands only the SS could supply- haftlinge, detainees, a memorandum word for prisoners in the death camps. After that first requisition, the fatal bargain, the real files began, thick with dates and events, a flurry of paper between department heads to seize opportunity while it lasted. July 7, an A-4 demonstration for Hitler, who is impressed. July 24, the great fire raid on Hamburg. July 25, A-4 gets a top priority go-ahead to produce its rockets, vengeance weapons. August 18, Peenemunde bombed. August 19, as night follows day, Hitler orders Himmller to provide camp labor to speed production. Three days later, August 21, Himmler takes charge of constructing a new production site at Nordhausen, far away from the bombs. August 23, the first workers arrive, the horse inside the gates.

The next folders followed the race to build Aladdin’s cave, clawed out of the mountain to house the vast underground factory. File after file of numbing construction details, weekly progress reports, new camps for workers. Even as Jake’s eyes glazed over at the day-to-day tallies, he was watching a whole city take shape, the sheer scale of the thing right there in the numbers. Ten thousand workers. Two giant tunnels reaching two miles back into the mountain; forty-seven cross tunnels, each two football fields long. Bigger every day, the way the pyramids must have been built. The same way, in fact. The ten thousand were slaves. No mention of how many were dying-you bad to guess by the requisitions for replacements from Himmler’s endless supply. The whole terrible business obscured by engineering estimates and monthly targets. In Berlin, the reports were dated, stamped, and filed away. Had Emil seen them back at Peenemunde, where the scientists gathered at night over coffee to discuss trajectories?

Meanwhile, page by page, the tunnels grow, rockets begin to be built, more camps, and finally the takeover is official-8 August 1944 Hans Kammler, SS lieutenant general, replaces Dornberger as head of the program. Now the scientists and their wonder rockets belong to Himmler. Medals are passed out. Jake looked for a minute at the memo describing the ceremony. Peenemunde, not Berlin; no families; a special luncheon. There had been champagne. Toasts were exchanged.

More folders. February ‘45, the rocket team finally abandons Peenemunde. A request for a special train, air travel too risky for scientific personnel, with the skies crowded with bombers. Everyone south now, scattered in villages near the great factory. The prison population reaches forty thousand-spillovers from the eastern camps as the Russians get closer. In spite of everything, V-2s are still streaming daily out of the mountain on their way to London. More files in March-demands, improbably, for increased production. And then the sudden end to the paper. But Jake could finish the story himself- he’d already written it. April 11, the Americans take Nordhausen. A-4 is over. He leaned back in his chair. But what did it mean? Drawers full of details not known to him but presumably known to someone. Nothing worth flying to Berlin for, getting killed for. What had he missed?

He left the last file open on the table and went outside for a smoke, sitting on the steps in the sun. A yellow afternoon light washed the trees of the Grunewald. Hours, to find nothing. Had Tully spent the day here?

“Need a break?” Bernie said from the doorway. “You lasted longer than most. Maybe you have a stronger stomach.”

“They’re not like that. Office politics, mostly. Production stats. Nothing.”

Bernie lit a cigarette. “You don’t know how to read them. That s not German, it’s a new language. The words mean something else.”

“ Haftlinge,‘’ Jake said, an example.

Bernie nodded. “Poor bastards. I guess it made it easier for the secretaries to type. Instead of what they really were. See the ‘disciplinary measures’? That’s hanging. They strung them up on a crane at the tunnel entrance so everybody had to pass under when they went to work. They let them swing for a week, until the smell got bad.”

“Discipline for what?”

“Sabotage. A loose bolt. Not working fast enough. Maybe they were the lucky ones-at least it was quick. The others, it took weeks before they dropped. But they did. The death rate was a hundred and sixty a day.”

“That’s some statistic.”

“A guess. Somebody took a pencil and averaged it out. For what it’s worth.” He walked over to the steps. “I take it you didn’t find what you wanted.”

“Nothing. I’ll go through them again. It has to be there somewhere. Whatever it is.”

“Trouble is, you don’t know what you’re looking for and Tully did.”

Jake thought for a minute. “But not where. He must have been fishing too. That’s why he wanted your help.”

“Then maybe he didn’t find it either.”