The Haigerloch Project

For several years Decker had worked at the Degussa uranium-refining plant in Frankfurt. After the massive RAF raid in mid-September of ’44, which gutted large parts of the facilities, the plant machinery and remaining raw materials and supplies had gradually been evacuated to Rheinsberg near Berlin and the plant personnel reassigned. Decker was one of the last to leave.

In his mind Harbicht reviewed the meager — and puzzling — facts….

Decker had been staying for a few days in the apartment of his mother, who had left for Munich the day before Decker himself was supposed to leave for Haigerloch. His luggage was still in the house. He was known to be traveling in the uniform of a Wehrmacht major. This uniform was gone, including greatcoat and cap but not the boots. Harbicht frowned. It irritated him that he could not determine the significance of this single little fact. The apartment showed no signs of any struggle. Only one item was out of the ordinary. Part of a page had been torn out of a magazine lying on a side table in the hall. The Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung. The scrap of paper was not found in the apartment. The torn page had been reconstructed. On one side of the missing piece was a portion of an ad for Electrola Musik-platten; on the other, part of a report about a bombing raid on Dresden. It made no sense. The gramophone-records ad had listed several selections with ordering code numbers. EJ443… EH607… EG861… and so on. Could easily be a more sinister code as well, he reasoned. The standard five-letter or five-digit group of a Morse code transmission? Was that why the ad had been torn out? He made a mental note to follow it up.

The local Gestapo had turned up only one additional piece of information. The hotel porter in the Jägerhof Hotel. This man informed the investigating agents that during the night of February 28-March 1 two men had inquired about Decker. The men, who said they were movers, were strangers to him. Although he did know where the Decker family lived, he denied giving the strangers any information, and his description of them was vague. He thought they had worn some kind of field uniform, but he had been unable to make any identification.

Harbicht smiled a thin smile. He wondered idly how efficient the interrogation of the porter had been. He had no doubt the man was lying. It was logical. It was also unimportant. Decker had disappeared — with or without the unintentional help of the night porter.

It was not much to go on. But Werner Harbicht had a sharply analytical mind — as orderly and crisp as his SS uniform. He was convinced the Decker case was of paramount importance, and he was determined to find out exactly what that importance was. He felt wholly alert. His powers of analysis extended to himself, and he was thoroughly aware that he welcomed challenges; thrived on trouble. The more difficult the problems, the more cunning his opponents — the greater his satisfaction in defeating them.

His superiors at Gestapo Headquarters in Berlin had recognized this characteristic in the young officer. That was the principal reason for transferring him out of the Prinz Albrecht Strasse offices and promoting him, at the age of thirty-seven, to Standartenführer, placing him in charge of the Stuttgart Regional Gestapo Headquarters in the highly sensitive Wehrkreis V, which included the vital Hechingen-Haigerloch Project. The other reason had been a vague feeling on the part of his immediate superior of a predatory threat in the intensely ambitious young officer — a danger which the older man preferred to keep at a distance….

Harbicht pressed a button on his desk.

At once an SS Scharführer appeared at the door.

“Zu Befehl, Herr Standartenführer!” The sergeant clicked his heels. “At your orders, Colonel!”

“I shall be leaving for Hechingen in one hour. I want the local office informed. See to it,” he snapped.

“Jawohl, Herr Standartenführer!”

“I shall be gone indefinitely. Sturmbannführer Meister will take over here. Have him report to me at once.”

“Jawohl, Herr Standartenführer, sofort—at once!”

The man's hand shot out in a stiff-armed Nazi salute.

“Heil Hitler!”

He left.

Harbicht sat back in his chair. He would not be unhappy to be leaving Stuttgart. With the presence there of the Daimler-Benz aircraft-engine, truck and tank factories, the Bosh electric plant and the important railheads, the city had become a prime target for Allied air raids.

But that was not the reason he had decided to go to Hechingen and take charge of the Decker case himself. It was the only logical decision he could make.

Why had Decker not shown up in Haigerloch?

What had happened to him?