The captain thought fleetingly of his wife and child. He had not seen them for over three years; now he wondered if he ever would again. He nodded slowly.
“Once we’re in the plane,” said Hess, “I won’t be able to see your face. Let me see it now. Before.”
As the captain reached for the end of his scarf, Major Berger scurried back to tell them the plane was almost ready. The two pilots, enthralled in the strange play they found themselves acting out, heard nothing. What the SS man saw when he reached them struck him like a blow to the stomach. All his breath passed out in a single gasp, and he knew that he stood at the brink of extinction. Before him, two men with the same face stood together shaking hands! And that face! Major Berger felt as if he had stumbled into a hall of mirrors where only the dangerous people were multiplied.
The pilots gripped hands for a long moment, their eyes heavy with the knowledge that both their lives might end tonight over foreign soil in the cockpit of an unarmed fighter.
“My God,” Berger croaked.
Neither pilot acknowledged his presence. “How long has it been, Hauptmann?” Hess asked.
“Since Dessau, Herr Reichminister.”
“You look thinner.” Hess murmured, “I still can’t believe it. It’s positively unnerving.” Then sharply, “Is the plane ready, Berger?”
“I … I believe so, Herr—”
“To your work, then!”
“Jawohl, Herr Reichminister!” Major Berger turned and marched toward the crewmen, who now stood uncertainly against the fuel truck, waiting for permission to return to Aalborg. Berger unclipped his Schmeisser with one hand as he walked.
“All finished?” he called.
“Jawohl, Herr Major,” answered the chief mechanic.
“Fine, fine. Step away from the truck, please.” Berger raised the stubby barrel of his Schmeisser.
“But … Herr Major, what are you doing! What have we done?”
“A great service to your Fatherland,” the SS man said. “Now—step away from the truck!”
The crewmen looked at each other, frozen like terrified game. Finally it dawned on them why Major Berger was hesitating. He obviously knew something about the volatility of aircraft fuel vapor. Backing closer to the truck, the chief mechanic clasped his greasy hands together in supplication. “Please, Herr Major, I have a family—”
The dance was over. Major Berger took three steps backward and fired a sustained burst from the Schmeisser. Hess screamed a warning, but it was too late. Used with skill, the Schmeisser could be a precise weapon, but Major Berger’s skill was limited. Of a twelve-round burst, only four rounds struck the crewmen. The remainder tore through the rusted shell of the fuel truck like it was paper.
The explosion knocked Major Berger a dozen feet from where he stood. Hess and the captain had instinctively dived for the concrete. Now they lay prone, shielding their eyes from the flash. When Hess finally looked up, he saw Major Berger silhouetted against the flames, stumbling proudly toward them through a pall of black smoke.
“How about that!” the SS man cried, looking back at the inferno. “No evidence now!”
“Idiot!” Hess shouted. “They’ll have a patrol from Aalborg here in five minutes to investigate!”
Berger grinned. “Let me take care of them, Herr Reichminister! The SS knows how to handle the Luftwaffe!”
Hess felt relieved; Berger was making it easy. Stupidity was something he had no patience with. “I’m sorry, Major,” he said, looking hard into the SS man’s face. “I cannot allow that.”
Like a cobra hypnotizing a bird, Hess transfixed Berger with his dark, deep-set eyes. Quite naturally, he drew a Walther automatic from the forepouch of his flight suit and pulled back the slide. The fat SS man’s mouth opened slowly; his hands hung limp at his sides, the Schmeisser clipped uselessly to his belt.
“But why?” he asked quietly. “Why me?”
“Something to do with Reinhard Heydrich, I believe.”
Berger’s eyes grew wide; then they closed. His head sagged onto his tunic.
“For the Fatherland,” Hess said quietly. He pulled the trigger.
The captain jumped at the report of the Walther. Major Berger’s body jerked twice on the ground, then lay still.
“Take his Schmeisser and any ammunition you can find,” Hess ordered. “Check the Daimler.”
“Jawohl, Herr Reichminister!”
The next few minutes were a blur of action that both men would try to remember clearly for the rest of their lives—plundering the corpse for ammunition, searching the car, double-checking the drop tanks of the aircraft, donning their parachutes, firing the twin Daimler-Benz engines, turning the plane on the old cracked concrete—both men instinctively carrying out tasks they had rehearsed a thousand times in their heads, the tension compounded by the knowledge that an armed patrol might arrive from Aalborg at any moment.
Before boarding the plane, they exchanged personal effects. Hess quickly but carefully removed the validating items that had been agreed upon: three compasses, a Leica camera, his wristwatch, some photographs, a box of strange and varied drugs, and finally the fine gold identification chain worn by all members of Hitler’s inner circle. He handed them to the captain with a short word of explanation for each: “Mine, my wife’s, mine, my wife and son …” The man receiving these items already knew their history, but he kept silent. Perhaps, he thought, the Reichminister speaks in farewell to all the familiar things he might lose tonight. The captain understood that feeling well.
Even this strange and poignant ceremony merged into the mind-numbing rush of fear and adrenaline that accompanied takeoff, and neither man spoke again until they found themselves forty miles over the North Sea, arrowing toward their target. As the plan dictated, Hess had yielded the controls to the captain. Hess now sat in the radio operator’s seat, facing the twin tail fins of the fighter. The two men used no names—only ranks—and limited their conversation to the mechanics of the mission.
“Range?” the captain asked, tilting his head back toward the rear-facing seat.
“Twelve hundred and fifty miles with the nine-hundred-liter tanks,” Hess replied.
“I meant range to target.”
“The island or the castle?”
“The island.”
“Six hundred and seventy miles.”
The captain asked no more questions for the next hour. He stared down at the steadily darkening sea and thought of his family. Hess studied a sheaf of papers in his lap: maps, photographs, and mini-biographies secretly copied from SS files in the basement of the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse. Ceaselessly, he went over each detail, visualizing the contingencies he could face upon landing. A hundred miles off the English coast, he began drilling the pilot in his duties.
“How much did they tell you, Hauptmann?”
“A lot. Too much, I think.”
“You see the extra radio to your right?”
“Yes.”
“You can operate it?”
“Yes.”
“If all goes well, you have only a few things to remember. First, the drop tanks. Whatever happens, you ditch them into the sea. Same with the extra radio. After my time is up, of course. Forty minutes is the time limit, remember that. Forty minutes.”
“Forty