The Capsule by David Hagberg

Author:David Hagberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tom Doherty Associates

IX

SATURDAY, AUGUST 2

Sturm cleared customs in Frankfurt am Main by eight-thirty in the morning, hired a small Fiat at the Hertz counter, and after checking a map supplied in the glove compartment, headed away from the city on E5 for the hundred-mile drive to Bonn, West Germany’s capital city.

Away from Frankfurt and heading north, roughly parallel to the Rhine River, the traffic was light on the autobahn, and Sturm slowly began to relax from the hectic pace of the last twenty-four hours. Although he had managed to get a few hours sleep on the flight over, he was groggy this morning, and his mouth felt as if it were full of foul cotton. He would not be very alert today, he knew. But he also knew that if he stopped now and slept, his system would take several days to gear itself to the time change.

He drove steadily through the lush green Rheinland-Pfalz forests and farmlands, the highway wending its way first over a series of low hills and then down into a pretty valley cut by the Lahn River on its course west to the Rhein itself.

At Limburg an der Lahn, Sturm stopped for a leisurely cup of coffee and a Brötchen—the hard rolls Germany is famous for—before he continued his course north.

The land began to flatten out as he passed Königswinter and then skirted Siegburg, turning west off the main highway for the final short distance across the Rhine and into Bonn.

It was just before noon when Sturm stopped at a phone booth in the center of the city and telephoned the main government number. The weekend operator came on.

“Guten Tag, Bundes Auskunststelle.”

Sturm spoke in German, asking the information operator to connect him with the Records Ministry. After a few moments the connection was made, and another operator was on the line.

“Federal Records Ministry, may I have your call?”

“This is Travis Sturm. I’m a writer for an American magazine, and I’m trying to locate someone.”

“Yes, sir?”

“By chance is there a clerk who would be in charge of World War II records?”

“Yes, sir, but that office is closed on weekends, as are most of the others in the ministry,” the operator said.

“Could I have the man’s name and his home phone number?” Sturm asked.

The operator hesitated.

“It’s quite important,” Sturm said.

After a moment she acquiesced, giving Sturm the record clerk’s name and phone number. After he broke the connection, he dialed the number he had been given, and after a few rings an old man answered, speaking in a very heavy Bavarian accent.

Sturm introduced himself, and after he quickly explained his request, the man agreed to see him immediately, giving him directions to Bad Godesberg, a suburb of Bonn a few miles to the south.

Sturm had no trouble finding the address from the directions he had been given. Parking in front of the large, two-story brick house by one o’clock, he surveyed the neighborhood for a long moment before he went to the door. Herr Winzler’s house was one of

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