Though Shmuel had no interest in knowing Repp, that was now Leets’s job. He stared hard at the photo. Its caption simply said, “Kadett Repp, one of our exemplary German sportsmen, has a fine future in shooting competitions.”

Another day passed, another interrogation spun itself listlessly out. Leets felt especially sluggish, having spent so much time the night previous with the picture of the German. Another researcher had been dispatched at Tony’s behest through the back issues of all German periodicals at the British Museum; perhaps something new would surface there. Whatever, that aspect had passed momentarily out of Leets’s hands; before him now, instead, sat the Jew, looking even worse than usual. He had rallied in his first days among the Allies, bloated with bland food, treated with unctuous enthusiasm; perhaps he’d even been flattered. But as the time wore on, Leets felt they were losing him. Lately he’d been a clam, talking in grunts, groans. Leets had heard he sometimes had nightmares and would scream in the night—“Ost! Ost!” east, east; and from this the American concluded things had been rough for him. But what the hell, he’d made it, hadn’t he? Leets hadn’t been raised to appreciate what he took to be moodiness. He had no patience for a tragic view of life and when he himself got to feeling low, it was with an intense accompanying sense of self-loathing.

Anyway, not only was the Jew somewhat hostile, he was sick. With a cold, no less.

“You look pretty awful,” said Rog, in a rare display of human sympathy, though on the subject of another man’s misfortune he was hardly convincing.

“The English keep their rooms so chilly,” the man said.

“Roger, stoke the heater,” Leets said irritably, anxious to return to the matter at hand, which this day was another runaround on the topic of the Man of Oak.

Roger muttered something and moped over to the heater, giving it a rattle.

“A hundred and two in here,” he said to nobody.

Shmuel sniffled again, emptied his sinuses through enflamed nostrils into a tissue, and tossed it into a wastebasket.

“I wish I had my coat. The German thing. They make them warm at least. The wind gets through this.” He yanked on his American jacket.

“That old thing? Smelled like a chem lab,” Roger said.

“Now,” Leets said, “could there be some double meaning in this Oak business? A pun, a symbol, something out of Teutonic mythology—”

Leets halted.

“Hey,” he said, turning rudely, “what did you mean, chem lab?”

“Uh.” Roger looked up in surprise.

“I said, what did you mean—”

“I heard what you said. I meant, it smelled like a chem lab.” It was as close as he could get. “I had a year of organic in high school, that’s all.”

“Where is it?”

“Um,” Roger grunted. “It was just an old Kraut coat. How was I to know it was anything special? I uh … I threw it out.”

“Oh, Jesus,” said Leets. “Where?”

“Hey, Captain, it was just this crappy old—”

“Where, Sergeant, where?”

Leets usually didn’t use that tone with him, and Rog didn’t like it a bit.

“In the can, for Christ’s sake. Behind the hospital. After we got him his new clothes. I mean I—”

“All right,” said Leets, trying to remain calm. “When?”

“About a week ago.”

“Oh, hell.” He tried to think. “We’ve got to get that thing back.” And he picked up the phone and began to search for whoever was in charge of garbage pickup from American installations in London.

The coat was found in a pit near St. Saviour’s Dock on the far side of the Thames from the Tower of London. It was found by Roger and it did smell—of paint, toast, used rubbers, burnt papers, paste, rust, oil, wood shavings and a dozen other substances with which it had lain intimately.

“And lead sulfide,” Leets said, reading the report from the OSS Research and Development office the next day.

“What the hell is that?” Roger wanted to know. Shmuel did not appear to care.

“It’s a stuff out of which infrared components are built. It’s how they could see, how Repp could see. I find out now we’re working hard on it in ultra secrecy, and the English as well. But this would tend to suggest the Germans are at the head of the class. They’ve got a field model ready, which means they’re years ahead of us. See, the thing converts heat energy to light energy: it sees heat. A man is a certain temperature. Repp’s gadget was set in that range. He could see the heat and shoot into it. He could see them all. Except—” he paused—“for him.”

He turned to Shmuel.

“You were right,” he said. “God did not save you. It was no miracle at all. The stuff absorbs heat: that’s why it’s photo-conductive. And that’s why it’s such a great insulator. It’s why the thing kept you so warm, got you through the Schwarzwald. And why Repp couldn’t see you. You were just enough different in temperature from the others. You were invisible.”

Shmuel did not appear to care. “I knew God had other worries that night,” he said.

“But the next time he shoots,” Leets said, “the guys on the other side of the scope won’t be so lucky.”

10

Vollmerhausen is visibly nervous, Repp noticed with irritation. Now why should that be? It won’t be his neck on the line out there, it’ll be mine.

It was still light enough to smoke, a pleasant twilight, mid-April. Repp lit one of his Siberias, shaggy Ivan cigarettes, loosely packed, twigs in them, and they sometimes popped when they burned, but it was a habit he’d picked up in the Demyansk encirclement.

“Smoke, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor?” he inquired.

“No. No. Never have. Thanks.”

“Certainly. The night will come soon.”

“Are you sure it’s safe here? I mean, what if—”

“Hard heart, Herr Ingenieur-Doktor, hard heart. All sorts of things can happen, and usually do. But not here, not tonight. There’ll only be a patrol, not a full attack. Not this late. These Americans are in no hurry to die.”

He smiled, looked through the glassless farm window at the tidy fields that offered no suggestion of war.

“But we are surrounded,” said Vollmerhausen. It was true. American elements were on all sides of them, though not aggressive. They were near the town of Alfeld, on the Swabian plain, in a last pocket of resistance.

“We got in, didn’t we? We’ll get back to our quiet little corner, don’t worry.” He chuckled.

An SS sergeant, in camouflage tunic, carrying an MP-40, came through the door.

“Herr Obersturmbannführer,” he said in great breathless respect, “Captain Weber sent me. The ambush team will be moving out in fifteen minutes.”

“Ah. Thank you, Sergeant,” said Repp affably. “Well,” turning to the engineer, “time to go, eh?”

But Vollmerhausen just stood there, peering through the window into the twilight. His face was drawn and he seemed colorless. The man had never been in a combat zone before.

Repp hoisted the electro-optical pack onto his back, struggling under the weight, and got the harness buckled. Vollmerhausen made no move to help. Repp lifted the rifle itself off its bipod—it rested on the table—and stepped into the sling, which had been rigged to take most of the weight, made an adjustment here and there and declared himself ready. He wore both pieces of camouflage gear tonight, the baggy tiger trousers along with the tunic, and the standard infantry harness with webbed belt and six canvas magazine pouches and, naturally, his squashed cap with the death’s-head.

“Care to come?” he asked lightly.

“Thanks, no,” said Vollmerhausen, uneasy at the jest, “it’s so damned cold.” He swallowed, clapped his hands around himself in pantomimed shiver.

“Cold? It’s in the forties. The tropics. This is spring. See you soon. Hope your gadget works.”