The Haigerloch Project

Suddenly the blindfold was torn from his eyes. He found himself staring into the face of his enemy. His tortured eyes, peering from their sockets as if in the rictus of near-death, sought and met the cold, derisive eyes of his tormentor.

Oskar smiled. It was a hellish grimace.

He could do it.

There was a way.

“Ready, Herr Weber?” Harbicht mocked. He nodded imperceptibly.

Again the searing current burned through his tortured body.

Now…!

He bit down. With all the power he could muster he bit down.

He felt his teeth meet and grind together, severing his tongue. And there was no pain. Only the terrible fire billowing from his loins…

He felt the hot blood spurt and well in his mouth. He felt it pour down his throat… all without pain…

He breathed. Deeply. Exultantly. In triumph. The moist, velvety warmth rushing into his lungs brought him deliverance….

Harbicht held up his hand.

“Enough,” he said. “He is unconscious”

He snapped his fingers. “Revive him!”

Suddenly he stared at his victim, bent over him. How could the man look — serene?

Alarm assailed him. A trickle of blood was seeping from the corner of Weber's mouth. Harbicht grabbed his chin. He pressed the jaws apart. A cascade of blood welled out and gushed across his fingers, drenching the man's naked chest.

And a crimson lump.

It plopped to the floor….

“Verflucht!” Harbicht cursed. He slapped a vicious blow across Oskar's lifeless cheek. “The bastard drowned himself! In his own stinking blood!” He stared at the body.

The words of Aeschylus, learned long ago and long forgotten, came to his mind to mock him. Pain lays not its touch upon a corpse….

Abruptly he turned away.

“Get rid of him He is of no further use to me”

He strode to a washbasin and turned the faucet on. He held his hands under the streaming water and rubbed. Rubbed and rubbed…

His only lead had been destroyed But he felt coldly determined. He would find the enemy saboteurs. By God, he would!

He forced himself to think calmly. The enemy agents and their German accomplices would still be in Hechingen. They would have to be. He had given the alarm as soon as he had learned of the ambulance. It had not left the area. He would find it. Even if he had to turn over Hechingen brick by brick…

And — when he did…

The shrill clanging of a bell interrupted him. It was the telephone. One of the SS guards answered it. He held the receiver out for Harbicht.

“Herr Standartenführer,” he said.

The Gestapo colonel took it.

“Harbicht!” he snapped. He listened. Stonily Without a word he replaced the receiver. Slowly he turned to gaze wide-eyed at the dead man slumped in the massive chair.

It had been Professor Reichardt on the phone. The final, crucial test of the Haigerloch pile had been completed.

It had failed!

4

Dirk was getting increasingly uneasy.

There was well over half a tank of gasoline left in the tank of the ambulance. It was more than enough to take them where they had to go. No problem.

It was the time that worried him. It was moving too fast.

He glanced at his watch. It was nearly 1900 hours. They had been hiding in the ramshackle barn close to eight hours now. Too long? Or not long enough? There was a fine edge between letting enough time go by for the immediate scramble of pursuit to die down — and staying in the barn so long that discovery became imminent. Or — Oskar talked… It was Oskar who had suggested the abandoned barn near the village of Bodelshausen on a side road about four kilometers north of the main Hechingen-Haigerloch road. They had picked the barn as a place to hole up in case something went wrong and they became separated or were unable to return to the house. With Oskar's capture they had headed straight for the barn. Once they left it, it would be the final, irrevocable step in writing Oskar off. He knew it. Gisela knew it. They had to give Oskar every possible chance to get away. Get out of it and join them. But time was getting to be critical….

He looked toward the girl.

She stood silent, rigid, quietly looking out through the large crack in the side of the barn. Looking down the little road that snaked peacefully through the wooded hills. She had stood there for hours….

Sig glanced at Dirk. He knew the anguish his friend was feeling.

By now the Haigerloch test had been run. He'd pretty near give his right arm to know what had happened. But all he knew was that they were in greater danger than ever before. A danger that grew with every passing moment….