1
They had him living in a gray brick apartment building on the only intact block on Hohensteiner Str. His flat was on the second level, the top level, and with the shade open, he had an unobstructed view of the street and the field across the way where some birch trees were budding with rejuvenating greenery. It was the end of April, the rain fell unevenly on the sidewalks and the ruins of the sidewalks, and Stroud felt himself extraordinarily lucky because his flat had a window with a view of the street while his neighbor across the hall had a window facing the courtyard where an undetonated bomb lay in eerie silence atop the rubble of a birdbath. No one wanted to look out that window.
Part of the deal, as the Americans had pitched it to Stroud, was that his family would have to stay behind; he would not be allowed to see or speak with anyone from his previous life. There was nothing else left to do in the city, anyway, no public spaces left undestructed, no venues worth visiting that weren’t crawling with Americans, and he had abundant time to lie on the hay-filled mattress on the floor of his bedroom and listen to the voices of the other residents carrying on their long, tedious conversations, their whispery voices slipping in like chittering mice through the cracks in the floorboards and the chinks in the drafty wooden walls and doors.
Among his neighbors, Stroud stood out as the only collaborator. The other units were inhabited by middle-class Germans whose homes had been temporarily appropriated by a contingent of willful American officers; they were too polite—perhaps they were too proud—to openly complain or state their contempt for Dr. Stroud directly; nevertheless, they found other ways to manifest their intense disdain for him.
For example, Simon Muller, whose twin sister Marlena had tormented Stroud from the start with her rude countenance, vapid expressions, and tendency to spit at the back of his head, had squeezed him out of the way on the stairs just the other day, roughly jostling him and hurrying heedlessly on by as if he hadn’t seen Stroud.
But he had, Stroud thought, tightening his grip on his bed sheets. He had, he had. He looked back and caught me looking at him. Our eyes met!
And what had Stroud done? Nothing. He hadn’t made a peep. Now the shame hung around his neck like a heavy weight.
Who am I? He wondered. A doddering, middle-aged fool. Unsympathetic to every race—even my own. So much for Nordic solidarity!
He laughed weakly and rubbed his nose; his hands returned dependably to the bed.
I am weak and now I am alone, he thought, dependent on an enemy only recently reconciled, an enemy cursed with a short memory at that. He coughed, squeezed the sheets in frustration.
So where does that leave me? He rubbed his shoulder where Simon had jostled him, felt a tenderness there, let it go. He dropped his palms flat on the raggedy sheets once again; with a long exhalation, he resigned himself to the sordid fact of the matter: I am fodder for the whims of children.
The pain Stroud felt only worsened when he recalled how Simon Muller’s father—Herman—had actually, physically shoved him once, though the other man claimed it had been an accident.
And the liars believed him!
Stroud fumed, his hands quivering around his sheets. All at once, his rage returned, and he heard his heart pounding in his head, and he knew he was getting excited. He knew he should calm down, but he couldn’t. Only his wife or his youngest son, Sigi, could cool Stroud’s head when he became heated like this. He let the rage wash over him, and his thoughts gave way to anger.
“A careless outstretching of the arms.” That was what he called it, Stroud thought. And everyone acted as if they were so ashamed and embarrassed. “Oh, poor professor, let us help you to your feet!” As if I wouldn’t line the lot of them up against the wall . . .
Stroud knew the truth that lay behind their eyes. He knew his neighbors had all been delighted by this display of his impotence: Herman’s powerful shove—for a shove it was, no accident—had knocked him to his knees in the common area, leaving him reeling with pain. What was even worse was the humiliation of being unable to retaliate. His stomach was a hollow pit of despair. He recalled the smirk struggling to form on the puckered red lips of Mona Wertheimer, coming in through the foyer to help “the poor professor” to his feet.
Before it was scorched beyond repair by the fiery blast of an Allied incendiary, the front bricks of the apartment building on Hohensteiner Str. had been painted a bright, bluish color; on the inside the walls had once been white but were now a shade of gray much like the exterior. And presently lying on his belly, occasionally raising his eyes to greet the gray walls, Stroud listened as the family Muller whispered about him over a late Sunday breakfast.
The Mullers lived in the unit directly beneath Stroud’s. They also had a window with a view of the street, but every time Stroud happened to peek inside their flat, he noticed the shade was drawn.
“You know,” said Greta, the mother, “he lives all alone up there. But he has a girl.”
“I’ve seen her, yes,” said Simon, “a delectable redhead. What is it with old men and redheads? I wonder. Something about reigniting that fire in their bellies? Father, what do you think? Mother, leave the room.”
“Don’t be filthy, now, son,” said Herman Muller, halfheartedly, as part of an attempt to defuse what had become, by then, a routine conversation with few variations.
“A girl? His daughter, you mean, surely?”
Mrs. Muller laughed at her own daughter’s impertinence. “Marlena, you are a bright child,” she said.
Herman laughed as if to cosign his wife’s endorsement. Stroud squeezed the sides of his mattress until his knuckles reddened and his hands started throbbing. The things they let these brats get away with!
The late morning light was layering itself on the dusty wooden floorboards, and the yellow bars appeared tinged with a filmy haze of reddish orange that momentarily clouded his vision, so that Stroud felt as if the world were moving at the same glacial pace as those last few minutes that precede the arrival of a train.
How he would like to line them up, how he would like to crush them . . .
An Allied weather plane was passing over the city, and the low-pitched buzzing it produced disrupted Stroud’s fantasy: The light shifted back to its ordinary colors, and his hands relaxed their grip on the sheets. From below, the Mullers’ ribald discussion continued, and from the way they all sounded as if they were out of breath, Stroud could tell they had only recently stopped laughing.
“But you must admit, it is funny,” said Simon, and from the soft, irreverent murmurings made by the young man’s parents, Stroud inferred they were shrugging, as if in quiet affirmation.
“Well,” Herman blustered, as if he agreed but would rather put the matter to bed, “I think it’s hard to say what is and is not strange right now.”
Stroud snorted, heedless of being overheard, for Herman was one to talk about strange.
Before the war, Herman Muller had been a wealthy importer, with contacts all over the Baltic, but when hostilities erupted with Poland in ’39 his business was seized by the State and his expertise redirected toward the organization of munitions factories throughout Thuringia.
Mrs. Muller and the children were resettled, in relative comfort, in a villa on the outskirts of Nordhausen (presently in the possession of a cadre of American officers). While Muller was busy slaving away at the factory, his Baltic contacts were busy prospering: Their profits doubled as smuggling operations drove shipping prices to astronomical levels.
Now the war was over, and Herman would soon be a free man. Stroud had overheard him boasting about how excited his old colleagues were to resume their business. He anticipated enormous profits.
Yes, Herman’s future glittered with promise, while Stroud felt his own prospects darken more and more as the days went by, confined, unable to see his family, with no assurances from his jailers. Lying on the mattress, eavesdropping on the Mullers, Stroud imagined Herman seated atop a pile of shipping containers overstuffed with Allied provisions—American meat, French bread, English beans, Canadian whiskey. He pictured the stout, rotund, utterly bland Herman with his fleshy, drooping face and slick black hair like a coal vein picking over the spoils, mentally calculating what he might keep, what he might use for bribes, and what he might give away or sell to the starving supplicants of Nordhausen. Stroud smirked sourly, wondered how it would look, Herman distributing bread like a Roman emperor in a greasy business suit. He thought he saw the room’s light turning red again and time slowing to that treacly pace; then he heard the Mullers clattering their dishes, their long Sunday breakfast drawing to a close, and as the colors of the room reshuffled to their ordinary configuration, Stroud pushed himself off the mattress and onto his feet and went over to the sink mirror to inspect his appearance.
2
There was something clownish about Dr. Hubert Stroud, something of the circus. Lt. Brewster certainly thought so: Stroud had elfin ears, almost batlike in appearance—the veiny, liverish appendages framing a sallow, sunken face stretched thinly and vertically, like a length of hide pulled taut across too large a frame. His hollow, hungry cheeks compressed much of his face horizontally, so that the doctor’s massive, balding brow protruded prominently from the front of his head, resembling most closely the ridged forehead of some scaly aquatic creature. His arms were short and stubby. His legs were small and his posterior flat, so that he walked via a series of knobby steps, traversing streets and rooms in sporadic bursts of insect-like excitement. Had Dr. Stroud not been an expert aeronautics engineer with firsthand knowledge of the German’s Aggregat missile program, and had Brewster not been under strict orders to bring him over to their side undamaged, then the lieutenant would have had no compunctions about squashing Stroud like the troublesome pest that he was. Instead, she supplied him with writing material, extra rations of bread and meat, cartons of clean water, and a small allowance of American dollars.
Born June 15, 1888, in the Prussian province of Westphalia, the son of a civil servant father and a mother whose ancestral tree could be traced all the way back to one of the Capet kings of France and a princess of Denmark, Hubert Stroud graduated from the Technical University of Berlin in 1910 with a diploma in mechanical engineering, and in 1913 from Humboldt University with a doctorate in physics. Less than a year later, Stroud’s plans for a quiet professorship were interrupted when Germany declared war on Russia and France. He was drafted into an engineering company where he received specialized training in bunker construction. He spent the next four years in southern Belgium, overseeing the excavation, fortification, and maintenance of a sprawling network of trenches. In his limited free time, he penned desperate, pleading letters to the general staff, requesting a transfer to one of the research departments in Berlin, where he might be closer to his family and utilize his professional training more effectively. But very few of his letters were ever answered, and any replies he did receive were universally negative.
Like a great many Germans, Stroud’s fortunes plummeted in 1918. The Treaty was signed, and peace was declared. It was the beginning of a humiliation ritual carried out on a national scale: Stroud watched helplessly as his country’s land was appropriated by hostile powers and its industry stripped for parts, leaving precious few jobs for engineers like himself, and even fewer positions for professors. Indeed, Stroud’s memories of the immediate post-War years were of an unending bread line. Eventually, he secured a position with a Polish mining firm, where he put his wartime experiences to work overseeing a complex of coal mines in Silesia. The next twelve years passed for Stroud like a bad dream, a perpetually gray procession, moving day after day from the same grimy hovel in that dreadful Polish village, to the open pit mines where he observed the dismal operations, the daily death toll and the pointless struggle. Sometimes he offered suggestions for improvements, none of which were ever adopted by his superiors.
This bleak existence was interrupted only by a few brief sparks of joy, the first coming with his marriage to Ana Hobsbawm, a former schoolteacher, in 1931, and the birth of their first child, Rudolph, in 1932. But it wasn’t until 1933, when the top military, political, and scientific minds in Germany became obsessed with the concept of air power, that Stroud succeeded in finding a better position more suited to his expertise. Overnight, it seemed, hundreds of opportunities for aeronautical scientists and engineers opened at factories and universities and research laboratories all across the country. By 1934, he was one of several dozen senior engineers at the Army Rocket Center at Peenemünde. By 1936, he was promoted to head of research for thruster development and launch protocols. And by 1937, he had applied for admission to, and was accepted by, the Nazi Party.
That was where Stroud’s intelligence dossier more or less concluded. In 1938, Ana gave birth to another son, Sigismund. Stroud and his family remained in Peenemünde until 1943, when their relatively peaceful existence was smashed wholesale by an Allied bombing raid, which forced German rocket production to move from the Baltic sea coast inland to Nordhausen. After that, Stroud’s record fell off altogether. By the time Brewster arrived in the occupied city, Army Intelligence had already moved the doctor into the apartment building where he was currently residing.
3
It was at Stroud’s request that Sgt. Shields accompanied Lt. Brewster when she came on her weekly visits.
“The others I am living with,” Stroud explained, “they think that you and I . . . well, Lieutenant, I don’t mean to be rude, but you are young enough to be my daughter. Do you understand?”
Brewster understood, and so did Shields. For a Yankee, the sergeant spoke excellent German. He had soft, sympathetic brown eyes and a gloomy expression on his face at all times, but otherwise he kept his emotions veiled behind thin, placid lips that rarely moved except to issue terse responses and commands.
He guarded the door while Stroud and the lieutenant talked.
“I need to speak with my family.”
“That will have to wait for now,” said Brewster. They were sitting at the rickety, square wooden table in a corner of the flat, well away from the window. “Give me a message, and I will see that it gets through to them.”
Stroud hesitated. His eyes flicked over to Brewster. The lieutenant’s skin was as brown as a ripe olive. Her curled red hair was cut short like a man’s, and she had yellow-green eyes that rarely blinked.
Stroud drummed his fingers on the table, stopped. “I don’t have anything prepared.”
“Next time then,” said Brewster. “You can write it down. You have writing paper, yes? And pencils?” In her questions lay the implication that Stroud might have sold these things on the black market.
“Yes, yes—I have plenty of supplies.”
“And?” she asked. “Have you been writing?”
Stroud frowned. “Yes, yes—all the time,” he said.
“Anything to share?”
Stroud said nothing. The truth was he hadn’t written a line, hadn’t even touched the materials Brewster had given him, other than to move them to the bottom of the desk drawer, underneath a photo album of his family he had been allowed to bring with him as a courtesy and the cheaply-printed packets of Allied propaganda they had foisted on him after he surrendered himself to their custody (and which he had so far succeeded in not examining in the slightest).
Brewster rested her hands on the table.
“Are you familiar with the word ‘untenable’, Dr. Stroud?”
The lieutenant let the silence linger uncomfortably between them. She had studied psychology at Vassar, graduating with honors in 1942, and she had learned German and studied translation and linguistics at the WAC school in Minnesota. In 1944, she flew to France to work with a new department established by the War Department for the interrogation and potential acquisition of captured enemy personnel. In less than a year, she had witnessed horrors that would inhabit her worst nightmares for as long as she lived: prisoners clubbed to death with shovels, girls as young as twelve prostituting themselves for a crust of bread, a pack of dogs picking over a ditch of dead children.
“Untenable, Doctor,” Brewster repeated. “Do you know it? It means a position that can’t be held. You might be more familiar with equilibrium. Well, in this case, there isn’t one. You understand? Nothing is balanced against anything else. Something has to give; it’s just a question of when.”
Stroud wanted to tell her to lower her voice; sound could travel both ways through the floor.
Brewster stood abruptly, her chair scraping the floor. “This position you’re in right now,” she went on, “you may not recognize it as such, Doctor, but that’s the dilemma.”
“Without guarantees . . .” Stroud began.
Brewster stopped him short. “You have to understand there can be no guarantees.” She allowed herself a smile. “You should have fought harder if you wanted any of those.”
There was a pause, and the room seemed at once hotter and stuffier. By the door, Sgt. Shields cleared his throat.
“Why do I feel as if I’ve heard that one before?” Stroud mused bitterly, and in a fit of barely-contained rage, he rose and paced over to the window. He cranked the lever that raised the glass pane vertically and rested his elbows in the open frame, leaning out almost as if he meant to somersault down into the street. But after emitting an agitated groaning sound, all he did was pull himself back inside the apartment and crank the window shut again.
“What is it then?” Stroud asked, rounding on Brewster and Shields, his voice rising. “What would satisfy you? Blueprints, diagrams, research materials? Do you want to see my laboratory notebook? Are you a scientist, Lt. Brewster? Are you, Sergeant?”
“No, but—” Brewster began.
Stroud cut her off.
“So what good would my explanations do you?”
Brewster glanced quickly at Shields, who shrugged.
“That’s something for the officers above me to decide.”
“You mean men, no doubt.”
Brewster ignored the comment. “I’ll be back next week, Doctor. If you still don’t have anything to show me, I’m going to have to recommend turning you out of this apartment. Maybe one of your former colleagues will be more cooperative, and we can put this flat to good use.”
Then she snapped her heels together, Sgt. Shields opened the door for her, and the two of them marched down the stairs and got inside the waiting motor car. Standing at the window, Stroud watched the car drift up Hohensteiner Str., turn right at the corner, and disappear behind a mountain of rubble.
4
No one in Stroud’s building worked. Anyway, there were no jobs in the city to be had. So it was in the middle of a Tuesday afternoon, a Tuesday afternoon Stroud was spending face-down, listening through the floorboards as his neighbors gossiped about him, when Hans Dieter, a tailor and part-time smuggler who lived across the hall from him, knocked on his door and asked Stroud if he wouldn’t like to come over for a cup of tea.
“No word from Mina?” asked Stroud. They were drinking their tea at Dieter’s kitchen table, which he had pushed under the window that faced the courtyard with the unexploded bomb in the bird fountain. It was hot for the beginning of May, the sun was shining, and Dieter had the shade drawn.
Dieter shook his head somberly and sipped his tea. “Nothing to report,” he said.
It had been roughly a week since Mrs. Muller had reportedly watched Mina Dieter wander into the field across the street and continue on past the birch trees until she dropped out of view behind a grassy rise.
In the words of Greta Muller: “Mina said she was going off to market, but I don’t think she knew the way. She had a whole suitcase with her, too. Maybe she meant to bring her husband home a big bundle?”
To Stroud, Dieter said:
“Probably she found some relatives of hers that have survived. Her mother lives in the city, you know, and many of her cousins. The situation being what it is—” he raised his hands, gesturing vaguely at the crummy apartment “—I’m not surprised she hasn’t yet sent word.”
In response to this explanation, Stroud nodded consolingly, but his thoughts ran to a much more cynical conclusion. More likely she’s run off with an American officer, he thought. What sane woman wouldn’t?
As soon as these thoughts crossed his mind, however, Stroud recoiled from them, realizing that if what he posited were true, the same logic would apply to his wife.
Indeed, the more Stroud thought about it, the more he realized it may already have occurred—Rudolph and Sigi could be in Washington munching on hot dogs at this very moment, listening intently as their new papa explained to them the mechanics of baseball.
Ana would never do that, though, Stroud thought quickly. She adores me. The children adore me. Little Sigi, especially. Such a dumpling. No, if Ana tried to take them away like that, they would revolt. They would try to kill their American father and demand to know where their real one had gone. Even if she told them I was dead or in prison, they would know she was lying. But she would never do that. She is waiting for me now. She is.
“Did you go to the police?” Stroud asked.
Dieter’s reply was sarcastic. “What police?” he asked. “I go to the Germans, they say they don’t know—the Americans have them under lock and key. They cannot go out on patrols or to investigate. I go to the Americans, and they act as if they can’t understand me. They act as if they have never heard her name before. ‘Meera?’ they ask. ‘Mister Deeder, did you say your wife’s name was Meera or Vera?’ And I tell them, ‘Mina. It’s Mina, you swine.’ And this smug private, probably doesn’t even speak German, I know he doesn’t, said they’ll add her to the list. Oh, I tell you, Hubert, I wanted to crush his face. I wanted to flatten it like an iron. I saw him there, pretending to write! Didn’t want to waste the lead in his pencil! I guess that’s what it’s come to.”
“I guess,” said Stroud, noncommittally.
Dieter slurped his tea and peeked behind the shade, pulling it back with two fingers and then letting it fall.
“You know, Hans,” said Stroud, settling his mug on the rickety table and staring at Dieter seriously, “I am . . . friendly, let’s say, with some of the new authorities. If you wanted, I could . . .”
Dieter’s eyebrows shot to the top of his forehead as if in alarm. He was a short, stocky man, built like a boxer, not quite a bantam, but not far off either, and he had straw blond hair like a field of wheat, and he was running his hands through it excitedly.
“So, it’s true then? The girl that comes to see you . . . she’s . . .”
“An officer, yes,” said Stroud.
“And the man?”
“A sergeant who works for her.”
“Fascinating.”
“Yes, Dieter. American Army intelligence. A special branch they’ve set up just for us.”
“Us?”
“Scientists, engineers—probably some skilled technicians. Anyone who knows anything about rockets. They want us.”
Dieter laughed. “They want you, is what you mean.” Stroud blushed. Dieter continued: “Want you for what?”
“Well, to build rockets for them,” said Stroud, still blushing, and speaking as if it should have been obvious. He slurped his black-market tea and smacked his lips together magnanimously, as if he were doing Dieter a favor by coming over to drink his tea and offer the services of his benefactors.
“Who needs rockets now?” Dieter asked. “The war is over.”
Stroud laughed politely. “My friend, in the grand scheme of things, this little dust-up will look like a prelude to the main event.”
“Dust-up, yes,” said Dieter, again peering out the window.
“Yes,” said Stroud wearily. He had finished his tea and, in a series of clumsy movements, rose to his feet. “Well, anyway, thank you for the tea, friend Hans. Allow me to return the favor. Say, Thursday afternoon? Same time? My flat next time. The view is much nicer, I assure you. What do you say? I won’t have seen my American friends by then, but perhaps you and I could draft up a little description of Mina to give to them. To help them in their search.”
“Maybe,” said Dieter, though his voice was not encouraging, and Stroud noticed his eyes twitching rapidly as if a great deal of activity, like calculations, was occurring behind them.
“Actually—no, I—I would rather you did not, friend Hubert. Go to the Americans about Mina. I mean . . . I don’t want anyone else thinking that you and I . . . Well. You understand?”
“Yes,” said Stroud, moving toward the door. “Yes, I understand.”
“Maybe you could ask your friends to get that . . . that thing out of the bird bath?”
Dieter peeked once more behind the shade; the light in the room fluctuated, exposing the filthy conditions more brightly as the sun flooded in and out. “The children should have some place to play, yes?”
“Yes,” said Stroud, throwing open the door. “Yes, they should.” And without another word, he left the flat and went back to his own. By the time the door had shut behind him, he was already lying face-down on his mattress again, with his eyes closed and his ears cocked, listening for what new gossip might be circulating about him.
The only sounds that reached his ears were silence, someone unstuffing their nose, the clinking of dishware, soft footsteps on the stairs. He shut his eyes but could not sleep.
What was it Dieter said? “The war is over.”
Yes, thought Stroud, indeed.
He got up off the mattress, then, and with a face of mild bemusement, as if he were slightly self-conscious about what would happen next, Stroud went over to the desk and retrieved the writing materials. He had to pull out the photo album, as well, and as he flipped through the lace-fringed pages, his smile faded and his countenance resolved into a look of grim determination. His mouth softened on an infant portrait of Sigi, a few days after his first birthday. The boy’s cheeks were stained pink as if he had been crying, but his eyes were bright and his smile was merry.
When Stroud started to feel as if he might soon be shedding some tears of his own, he shut the book and returned it to the drawer. Then he spread the writing materials out on the desk and released a lengthy sigh as he commenced the grueling task of putting his life’s work into words.
Later, he thought. The time for tears comes later.
5
The next Sunday, when Stroud answered the door, Sgt. Shields was standing alone in the upstairs hall. He was wearing his olive drab uniform with the chevrons sewn into the shoulders, and he carried a carbine rifle slung over his back. Behind him, across the landing, Dieter’s door was shut; everyone in the house got quiet and shut their doors when the Americans came to visit Stroud.
“Where’s the lieutenant?” Stroud asked.
“You’re to come with me,” Shields said.
“Are we going to see the lieutenant?”
“Get your coat, Doctor,” said the sergeant, “outside looks like rain.”
But it was not raining when they stepped out, only overcast and gray, though the sky was puffy with dark clouds and the air was thick with the sweet warm smell which precedes a deluge. Stroud thought they would turn right and head up Hohensteiner Str. before turning right again onto the rubble-strewn highway that followed the river to the Allied barracks, but instead Shields led him across the street and into the birch field. All the branches were covered with leaves, hanging hotly in the sticky air, and everywhere one looked on the ground, the grass was littered with rotting flowers. As Shields continued, taking Stroud past the trees and over a slight rise that dipped into another field beyond, an image flashed in the doctor’s mind of Mina Dieter traversing this same field alone.
Another month and still no news, he thought. And Dieter never came for tea. Perhaps he has now turned on me, as well. Cast in with the Muller’s. Well, good riddance!
Stroud stopped halfway down the slope to catch his breath. Weeks of virtual immobility had sapped his strength, for setting down in writing all the work he had done for the Army Rocket Center had proved to be more taxing than he had originally anticipated. His efforts were nearly complete, however, and while this sudden burst of activity caused the blood to stir painfully in his joints and enervated his muscles with the desire to sit down and rest, the painful sensations also reminded him that there was more to life than merely recounting the past.
“Come on, Doctor. We’re almost there,” said Shields, and he pointed ahead with his hand visoring his forehead though the light was gloomy and not bright out at all. “See, Doctor?” said the sergeant, “that’s the lieutenant up ahead.”
And she was. About a hundred meters away, at the far end of the field where it joined the street, stood Lt. Brewster, dressed like an envelope in her brown cotton blouse and matched trousers, and accompanied by three other individuals whom it took Stroud only a few belated seconds to recognize as his family.
Rudolph and Sigi rushed across the field to greet their papa, and with a strength and agility that surprised him, Stroud scooped Sigi into his arms while Rudolph clung to his knee and cried.
“None of that now,” said Ana, dabbing her eldest’s cheeks with a dirty handkerchief.
“Darling,” said Stroud, embracing his wife with Sigi’s arms wrapped around his neck and Rudolph’s around his knees, so that from the short distance at which Brewster and Shields stood observing everything, it appeared as if the Stroud family were a single mass of amalgamated torsos, arms, legs, and heads.
“Had I known I would be gone from you all so long, I would never have agreed,” said Stroud. With his own soiled handkerchief, he lightly rubbed his eyes. “How are you?” he asked, for the first time really looking at them. “They are feeding you well, it seems. Yes?”
“Yes,” said Ana softly. “Yes, they have us . . .” She glanced at Brewster. “They have us somewhere safe. They are feeding us and we have a warm bed to sleep in.”
“Just the one bed?” asked Stroud.
“Well,” said Ana, lowering her voice, “the boys don’t want to sleep alone.”
“Ah,” said Stroud, gently tousling their hair. They were flaxen blond, like their mother, and while their cheeks were thinning the last time Stroud saw them, now they appeared almost plump, and they ran around the field with enviable energy.
“I’m sorry I could not get word to you . . . They have me in a sort of isolation now.”
Ana smiled, brushed a tear from her eye, and squeezed her husband’s shoulders. “Go and play with the boys,” she said. “It looks like Sigi is trying to climb that tree . . .”
It was an hour later when they separated. The boys made a show of being brave, but then Ana sniffled and it set off a cascade of tears that began with Sigi and ended with Stroud.
“Now, now,” said Stroud, composing himself. “No more tears. It’s almost over. The Americans are helping us. It will all be over soon and we’ll be back together.”
“Why can’t you come with us now?” asked Sigi, wiping snot from his nose with the back of his hand.
“Your father’s working very hard to make that happen,” said Ana, when her husband didn’t answer. “Give him a kiss now, both of you, and tell him you’ll see him again soon.”
Stroud embraced them, squeezing his sons until his arms ached, then released them to their mother, who told them to go with Brewster. The lieutenant gave each boy a piece of chocolate and walked with them to the edge of the field where the motor car was waiting. The sergeant had moved away, as well, saying, “Five minutes,” before leaving the couple alone.
“Hubert—how much longer?”
“I don’t know,” said Stroud. “Another week, perhaps.”
“They say the Russians will be here soon.”
“Who says?”
Ana shrugged.
“It’s a rumor,” said Stroud. “The Americans have the city—why would they give it up?”
“I don’t know,” said Ana. “But I’m scared, Hubert. I need you, and the boys need you. They ask about you constantly. You have to come home.”
“I will. It’s not much longer, now. I’ve told them almost everything I know.”
“Everything?” asked Ana. “Even . . . ?”
Stroud watched his wife’s eyes flit from left to right.
“Even what?” he asked. “What on earth are you talking about?”
“Nothing,” said Ana. “Just . . . I wasn’t sure . . . I mean, what do they want to know?”
“It’s all scientific, darling. Highly technical.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” said Stroud.
“Okay,” said Ana, sounding relieved. “I’m sorry. It’s just that . . . one hears things.”
Stroud nodded. “One does,” he says, “but one should be careful to talk only about those things one knows to a certainty. The rest is speculation.”
Then Shields was at his ear. “Time to go, Doctor. Mrs. Stroud, the lieutenant will see you and the children home.”
“Goodbye, my love,” said Stroud, embracing his wife for the last time. He kissed her lips and her wet cheeks. “We’ll be together again soon, in a place where there are no tears.”
Several minutes later, Stroud could look back from the grassy rise and just make out the small, smudged figures of his wife and children and Lt. Brewster climbing into the black American motor car. Smoke sputtered from the exhaust pipe as the car drove away from the field and slipped silently up a street of charred townhouses. When it reached the end of the street, the car turned and disappeared out of sight.
“Come on, Doctor,” said Shields, several paces ahead. He held his empty palm up to the sky and frowned with disapproval. “Feel that rain starting now.”
6
Later that afternoon, once the worst of the downpour had passed and there was no more than a cold drizzle tapping lightly against the window, Lt. Brewster arrived in a motor car driven by Sgt. Shields. The sergeant waited in the car, and this time when Stroud answered the door, he found Lt. Brewster standing alone in the hall. He sat across from her at the rickety table while the lieutenant turned over the most recent pages he had written. Seemingly pleased, she placed the papers in a tan folder and slid the folder soundlessly into a brown leather satchel. Then she smiled curtly at the doctor and got up to leave.
“Wait,” said Stroud, getting up to go after her. “That’s everything. All I know. Are we done now? Can I leave this place?”
“I’m afraid that’s not up to me, Doctor.”
“Who’s your commanding officer? Let me meet him.”
“I’m sorry.” Her hand was on the knob. “That’s not going to happen.”
“Wait,” repeated Stroud. “Please, I have nothing else to tell. I’ve given them the whole program, in a nutshell. I mean, it would take years to give a full account. But the principles are there. Everything I know about Aggregat. I promise you, it’s all there.”
Brewster sighed. She took her hand off the knob and turned squarely to face the doctor.
“I believe you,” she said, and adjusted the messenger bag hanging low across her body. She sighed a second time.
“Listen, Doctor, I . . . I shouldn’t be telling you this, but . . .”
“But?” asked Stroud, stepping closer.
“Well,” said Brewster, looking down at the floor, “the thing is, some of the other officers, they feel you aren’t being completely open with us about certain . . . labor practices.”
Stroud stared at her blankly. “Labor practices?” he asked. “I’m a scientist.”
“And I’ve tried explaining that to them, but, well . . . All I can tell you is some people don’t think that’s an excuse.”
“An excuse for what?”
Brewster’s eyes met Stroud’s, and the look they carried reminded him of the look his wife had given him earlier that day.
“An excuse for what?” Stroud repeated.
“Never mind,” said Brewster. “If you’re going to make me say it . . .” She trailed off. “Good night, Doctor. I’ll return next week.”
“Wait!”
Brewster hesitated, the door half-open.
“Is it true the Russians are almost here?”
“You know I can’t tell you that either,” the lieutenant said, “but yes.” Stroud’s breath froze; his heart could have stopped. “We’ll be staging a phased withdrawal from the city, so as not to cause a panic. I would appreciate it if you kept this a secret, Doctor.”
“And my family and me? Will you be taking us with you?”
“I hope so, Doctor. For the sake of those children, I really do. But that’s in your hands now. Good-bye.”
And with that, she shut the door, leaving Stroud standing there stupidly in the middle of the room. He heard her footsteps echo softly on the stairs, the motor car pulling away, and the whooshing of its tires as it sped up the rain-soaked street.
7
The rain stopped at dusk, and from then on, the only sound was the steady drip-drip-dripping of water draining into the puddles and the ditches outside. Stroud tossed and turned on his mattress, unable to rest for the knot in his belly. It was painfully burdensome and burdensomely painful, and he flopped about hopelessly in an effort to crush it out of his guts, thinking it might be something he had eaten, some spoiled meat; the more he tried to suppress the sensation, the worse it pained him, and as midnight came and went he was left lying in agony on the mattress, waiting for sleep to claim him.
What more can I tell them?
Brewster’s oddly chosen words—”labor practices”—haunted his thoughts.
No, he thought. No, surely they wouldn’t be interested in . . . To what purpose? Hypocrites! As if they wouldn’t have done it themselves. Probably they did. The only difference is: They won.
His thoughts swirled, spiraling down a hole of memories and associates, more horrific and painful to recollect than any knot tugging at his guts.
But I was not responsible! I always tried to look after my workers. I treated them like family . . .
He breathed deeply and got up, thinking some water might be a remedy.
What was that? He could have sworn he had just heard footsteps in the hall. He went to the door and opened it, but there was nobody out there. He closed the door and latched it shut. He tried to sleep but could not. Morning came, and he spent it in a daze that did not diminish.
What do they want from me? What do they want?
He sat at his desk, thinking.
A confession? Is that it? It would be a false one. To what end?
It maddened him. Infuriated him. With his expertise, he was certain, the Americans would soar well past the Europeans when it came to rocket technology.
What more could they possibly want from me than that?
8
That night, another restless night with zero sleep after another restless day making zero progress on his “confession”, Stroud was roused again by the sound of footsteps in the hall. This time, he opened the door and saw a flash of blond hair disappear around a corner.
Simon? Stroud thought, shaking his head. Seeing things. He latched the door, too exhausted to consider the matter further.
But around two in the morning, he heard more footsteps on the stairs—loud, definitive ones—and after they stopped, there was a series of harsh knocks at his door.
“Who is it?” Stroud asked, placing one eye against the peephole. To his shock, everyone was out there—the Mullers, the Wertheimers, even Dieter, though he at least was standing halfway in the hall and halfway in his flat, as if he were only a witness.
Greta and Marlena Muller and Mona Wertheimer were all carrying candles, it was unclear what the men were carrying; the hall was richly but spottily illuminated, and shadows danced gleefully among the greasy contours of his neighbors’ frightening faces.
“Open up, Professor,” said Simon, the apparent leader. “We have words for you.”
“You can speak through the door, then,” said Stroud. “It’s late, you know. I’m not dressed.”
“Get dressed, then,” said Marlena insolently. “This may take a while.”
“What may take a while?” Stroud asked. These impudent children. “What is going on?”
Simon let out a bloodless chuckle. Then the rest of those assembled—there were seven of them, including Dieter—exchanged ambiguous expressions. For a long time, no one said anything, and then Simon asked: “What do you and the Americans talk about, Doctor?”
“What?”
“Don’t lie! Dieter told us—you’ve been working with them for weeks now.”
“Months, even,” shouted Marlena.
“Months, then,” said Simon. “Come out, Doctor. Come out and tell us what’s going on. You come out for the Americans. You trust them more than your own countrymen?”
“This is ridiculous. It’s the middle of the night. Come back in the morning if you want to talk.”
“He’s a spy!” exclaimed Greta, as if she had been holding it.
“Hush, Mother, we’re not at that point yet.”
“I don’t care! He’s always eavesdropping. Listening in! Well, what are you telling the Americans about us, Doctor? Hm?”
“We heard that slut who comes to visit you talking about the Russians—are you selling us out to them?”
“What?” said Stroud, almost amused by their misunderstanding. “Nothing! I’m not a spy, I’m—”
“Liar!” shouted Greta.
“Open up!” shouted Herman, pounding on the door, and his fist was joined by Carl Wertheimer and Simon, and soon they were all pounding on the door, and Stroud had to pull his eye away from the peephole. The last thing he saw was Dieter retreating into his own flat and shutting the door.
Hurling himself across the room, Stroud seized the desk by its corners and hauled it toward the door. The room flashed red. The candlelight leaked in through the cracks. He meant to brace the door shut, barricade the entrance with the desk, but before he had made it even halfway across the room the wood splintered, a hand crashed through the panel. Stroud screamed as the latch was thrown and the door swung open. That was when he saw what the men were carrying: rope.
Soon they were upon him, the men wrestling him to the floor while the women stood around kicking him and spilling hot wax. Everything was red and orange and hot, and everything hurt. Simon bound his hands while Herman tied his feet together, and Carl Wertheimer stuck a filthy rag in his mouth and secured it with a strong knot.
So this is it, thought Stroud, as his neighbors bundled him out the door and down the stairs.
His token attempts to struggle only provoked laughter from his tormenters, and he soon ceased fighting altogether, having wasted his initial adrenaline trying to move the desk.
At first, Stroud wasn’t sure where his neighbors were taking him, but as soon as they were outside, in the still, wet and humid air, and he saw the birches looming over him, he knew. The leafy crowns grew larger as they carried him to the noose.
The next Sunday, when the Americans arrived, they found the entire building abandoned, and all the shades drawn.
