Designated Targets

Four guards stood at the doorway: two Germans, two Soviets. The latter had the primitive features of Mongols, causing Brasch an uncomfortable, momentary flashback. He had been all but overrun by a human wave of such men near Belgorod. Pins and needles ran up his back and neck as they checked his pass.

He noted with some amusement that two pink spots of high color had come out on Gelder’s Aryan features at having to submit to inspection by the subhumans.

“What a world we live in these days, eh, Gelder?” he said, smiling conspiratorially.

The SS lieutenant took Brasch’s comment as an indication of sympathy and shook his head. “Best not to speak of it,” he cautioned, nodding at the Communist pair.

The check complete, the senior SS guard, a slab-shouldered Unterscharführer, or sergeant, clicked his jackboots together and snapped out a Nazi salute. Brasch’s reply was as enthusiastic as Gelder’s, although for a very different reason. He was merely enjoying the discomfort that appeared now on the faces of the Mongol warriors. You have to take your fun where you can find it in the Demidenko Center, he mused.

The sergeant spun a large iron wheel mounted at the center of the blast door, reminding Brasch of the hatches on the submarine that had brought him back from Hashirajima. The two officers stepped through into a much shorter concrete passageway, also unpainted, which veered off at right angles after a few meters. They could hear the voices of the technicians bouncing off bare walls. The door closed behind them with a solid crash, and they continued on without delay, marching through a series of switchbacks before emerging into the main chamber of the blockhouse.

They were in a large room staffed by nearly fifty men and even a few women. All of the females were Soviet scientists. The German rocket program was not such an equal-opportunity employer. The bustle and excitement, the lack of interest in their arrival, and the countdown that appeared on a large alphanumeric clock all pointed to an imminent launch.

Brasch watched Gelder stiffen noticeably as he caught sight of the official party that stood in the far corner of the room. Three NKVD generals and a handful of SS officers were gathered around the diminutive figure of Reichsführer Heinrich Himmler. Even Brasch tightened up somewhat. Before the Emergence, Himmler had been an almost mythical figure. With the terrible purges of the last few months, that aura had grown even more powerful. Indeed, he was the führer’s most frightening weapon: a one-man Vergeltungswaffe, protecting Hitler from those thousands of enemies who had been unmasked through information contained within the files of the future-ships.

Since June, it had seemed as though every night was given over to the Long Knives, as the SS raked at the heart of the Third Reich to see what treachery might be hidden there. For a while, Brasch had even stopped worrying about his son. Having been born with a cleft palate, little Manny was almost certain to go into a camp. But Himmler’s minions were so busy purging the State of traitors such as Rommel and Canaris that for just a few weeks it seemed as though the pressure was eased on less significant “undesirables.” Nearly a month had gone by without Gelder inquiring as to Manny’s health.

But then, a fortnight ago, he had brought it up again. Brasch had responded noncommittally, knowing that the SS was, for the moment, content to simply remind him of his vulnerability. But that night he had not slept, as he was tormented by waking visions of his son choking to death on Zyklon B.

Seeing Himmler now, he was tempted by a rush of madness to draw his Luger and kill the man. Of course, that would condemn his entire family. So he forced himself to assume a neutral expression, the face of the perfect functionary. But while he threaded through the banks of control panels to join the delegation of high-ranking officers, a small part of his mind worked furiously, as it had been ever since he’d read about the Holocaust in the Fleetnet archive on the Sutanto.

It had been a long, unpleasant trip for the Reichsführer, clanking through Poland and into the Ukraine. The rail line carried them only as far as Sobibor before they had to transfer to an armored convoy. The cease-fire was holding, but the war had ravaged this part of the world, and bandits were everywhere. Plus, one could not be entirely certain of the Wehrmacht nowadays. Two outright mutinies had already been put down, and Heinrich Himmler was certain that they were acute eruptions of a deeper, chronic malaise. Treachery was everywhere.