Berlin Encounter by T Davis Bunn

Author:T Davis Bunn [Bunn, T Davis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9780786212347
Google: KBh_GEma2xQC
Amazon: 1556613822
Goodreads: 599710
Publisher: Baker Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

“Hans is alive only because of good luck and two very important factors,” the dark-haired scientist was saying quietly. He had told Jake to call him Rolf. With the journey and fatigue his nervousness had gradually worn away. “First, he resigned the Nazi Party the day after Hitler invaded Russia. He did so quietly, and with relative safety because of the project’s importance. His actions meant he would never rise to a position of running the project as he should. But Hans is one of those people who are so sure of their own importance that they feel little need of receiving status from others.”

They stood at the truck’s tailgate, parked in a rubble-strewn lot. The region had once been a middle-class suburb skirting eastern Berlin’s outer border. The lot was now a gathering place for black marketeers. There were perhaps three dozen trucks, another dozen or so horse-drawn farm wagons, and twenty or thirty people displaying paltry wares on threadbare carpets or wheelbarrows or from boxes attached to bicycles. The atmosphere was very subdued. Jake was parked to one side, slightly removed from the others. His display of pots and pans and boots brought many stares, but few who even bothered to ask the prices. They seemed to simply accept that such things were beyond their reach.

“Hans resigned in protest of what he called a tragic repeat of Napoleon’s mistake,” Rolf went on. “But he did not say this openly. So the Russians were able to view this as an endorsement of their Communist cause. Which of course was nothing more than a means of hiding their true reason for letting him live.”

Jake found it difficult to watch the faces. They looked so tired, so resigned. This was far worse than anything he had seen in the days leading up to his Karlsruhe departure, and that had been a good half-year before. Unlike the constant banging and working and clearing and rebuilding which turned every city in the American sector into a unending din, here there was silence. Everywhere Jake looked, he saw the war’s remnants standing untouched by any sign of reconstruction. The people mirrored this strange vacuum. They did not even bother to meet his eyes. There appeared to be no room for hope, for bargaining, for anything save a tired envy at the wealth he had on display.

He glanced over at Rolf. The neat, nervous scientist was gone, replaced by a hollow-cheeked trader in denim and tattered sweater, his ratty beard flecked with traces of silver. Jake asked, “And what was their real reason?”

“That Hans was truly the brains behind the project’s success,” Rolf answered. “Not the name, you understand. Not the senior man who wore the medals and met with Hitler and was pictured in the press. The brains. Your people are right to want him.”

Despite Jake’s best driving and the newly acquired Soviet pass, they had almost not made it to the contact point on time. Driving in and around eastern Berlin had

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