They let him dangle for a bit, nudging him closer and closer to despair. Worries on top of worries. His career in total collapse. Questions were asked. People began to avoid him. Nobody would look him in the eye. He thought he was being watched. The Army called him up for a physical exam and pronounced him fit for combat duty, despite fallen arches, a bronchial infection, bad ears and severe nearsightedness. He was advised to get his affairs in order, for the notice would arrive any day. It appeared his final fate might be to carry a “Schmeisser” on the Ostfront.

One day he happened to run into a friend in a disreputable café where he’d taken to spending his days.

“Have you heard, is Haenel still taking on people? I’d do anything. Draftsmanship, apprentice work, modeling.”

“Hans, I don’t think so. Old Hugo, you know. He’d stand in your way.”

“That old fool.”

“But, Hans, I did hear of something.” The friend was extremely nervous. It was the first time Vollmerhausen had seen him since he’d been fired. Hans had in fact been startled to see him in this place.

“Eh, what?” Vollmerhausen squinted, rubbed his hands through his hair and across his face, noticing for the first time that he hadn’t shaved in quite some time.

“Well, they say some fellows in the SS are going to let a big contract soon. For Vampir. They may revive Vampir.”

“The SS. What do they care about—”

“Hans, I didn’t ask. I-I just didn’t ask. But I hear it has to do with …” He trailed off.

“What? Come on now, Dieter. What on earth? I’ve never seen you quite so—”

“Hans. It’s just another job. Perhaps the Waffen SS wants to put Vampir into production. I don’t—”

“What did you hear?”

“It’s a special thing. A special mission. A special most secret, most important effort. That’s all. It’s said to originate from—from high quarters.”

Vollmerhausen pursed his lips disgustingly, puzzled.

“I think they’re interested in you. I think they’re quite interested in you. Would you be willing? Hans, think about it. Please.”

The SS filled him with dread. You heard so much. But a job was a job, especially when the alternative was the Ostfront.

“Yes. Yes, I suppose I—”

A day or so later he found himself in conversation with a pale officer at Unter den Eichen, the underground headquarters of the SS administrative and economic section, in Berlin.

“The Reichsführer is anxious to let a contract on an engineering project, sited down in the Schwarzwald. Actually, I may as well be frank with you, he believes this Vampir thing you worked on might have applications with regard to the duties of the SS and he’s anxious to pursue them.”

“Interesting,” said Vollmerhausen.

The man then proceeded to discuss with surprising precision the history and technology of Vampir, especially as linked to the STG-44. Vollmerhausen was stunned to realize how carefully the project had been examined by—what was it?—WVHA, of which up until a day or so ago he’d not even heard.

“There’s no question of funding,” the man explained, “we have access to adequate monies. A subsidiary called Ostindustrie GmbH produces quite a lot of income. Cheap labor from the East.”

“Well, the budget would certainly be a factor in such a project,” said Vollmerhausen noncommittally.

“Do you know this fellow Repp?”

“The great Waffen SS hero?”

“Yes, him. He’s a part of it too. He’ll be joining the project shortly. We’ve given it a code name, Nibelungen. Operation Nibelungen.”

“What on earth—”

“The Reichsführer’s idea. He likes those little touches. It’s a joke, actually. Surely you can see that?”

But Vollmerhausen was baffled. Joke?

The officer continued. “Now, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor, here”—he shuffled some papers—“Vampir’s chief liability, according to the field results—”

“The test was planned for failure. They treated it like a piece of cookware. It’s a sophisticated—”

“Yes, yes. Well, from our point of view, the problem is weight.”

“With batteries, insulation, wiring, precision equipment, a lens system, energy conversion facilities, what do you expect?”

“What does the Vampir weigh?”

Vollmerhausen was silent. The answer was an embarrassment.

“Seventy kilos.” The man answered his own question. “At the very limits of movability.”

“A strong man—”

“A man at the front, in the rain, the cold, hungry, exhausted, is not strong.”

Vollmerhausen was again silent. He glared off into space. It was not safe to show anger toward the SS; yet he felt himself scowling.

“Herr Doktor, our specifications call for forty kilos.”

Vollmerhausen thought he had misheard. “Eh? I’m not sure I—”

“Forty kilos.”

“That’s insane! Is this a joke? That’s preposterous!”

“It can’t be done?”

“Not without compromising Vampir out of existence. This is no toy. Perhaps in the future, when new miniaturization technologies become available. But not now, not—”

“In three months. Perhaps four, even five, difficult to say at this point.”

Vollmerhausen almost leaped from his chair again; but he saw the man fixing him with a cool, steady glare.

“I—I don’t know,” he stammered.

“You’ll have the best facilities, the top people, the absolute green light from all cooperating agencies. You’ll have the total resources of the SS at your disposal, from the Reichsführer on down. I think you know the kind of weight that carries these days.”

“Well, I—”

“We’re prepared to go all the way on this. We believe it to be of the utmost importance to our Führer, our Fatherland and our Racial Peoples. I don’t see how you can say No to the Reichsführer It’s an honor to be chosen for this job. A fitting climax to your service to the Reich.”

Vollmerhausen deciphered the threat in this, more vivid for remaining unspecified.

“Of course,” he finally ventured, with a weak kike smile, “it would be an honor,” thinking all the time, What am I doing? Forty kilos?

* * *

The forty kilos now, months later, were within ten kilos; they’d picked and peeled and compromised and teased and improvised their way down, gram by painful gram. Vollmerhausen could almost measure the past days in terms of grams trimmed here and there, but these last ten kilos seemed impossible to find. After steady progress, the staff had stalled badly and another of Vollmerhausen’s concerns was whether or not Repp had noticed this.

It was a typical career development for him, he thought. He’d done so much good work, so much brilliant work, and never gotten any real credit for it. Meanwhile, once again, everything was coming unraveled over some nonsense that he had no control over.

Tears of black bitterness welled up in his eyes. Bad luck, unfair persecution, unlucky coincidences seemed to haunt him.

For example, for example, what thanks, what respect, had he gotten for his modifications thus far to the STG-44? He’d taken a clever, sound production rifle, albeit one with a hand-tooled breech and barrel, but still just another automatic gun, and turned it into a first-class sniper’s weapon. He solved the two most pressing problems—noise and accuracy at long range—in one stroke, devising a whole new concept of ballistics. The mission specs called for thirty rounds to be delivered silently and devastatingly to a target 400 meters out. So be it: now Repp had his thirty chances, where before he had nothing.

And what had been the response?

Repp had merely fixed those cold eyes on him and inquired, “But, Ingenieur-Doktor, how much does it weigh?”

Today’s meeting was not going well: a bitter squabble between the optics group, most of them from the Munich Technological Institute, and the power group, the battery people: natural antagonists in the weight business. Meanwhile, the people from Energy Conversion remained silent, sullen.