CHAPTER 21

The car stops with a painful jolt and Harry hears a sliding door roll up. He is yanked out onto his feet and roughly ushered into a long, narrow building. His head is lolling, and he has to be half-carried, half-dragged. The car drives off and the door rolls shut. The smell is no-smell and there are no outside sounds, not even a ship’s whistle, odd for this close to the Rio Tejo, Harry thinks. The place has to be jam-packed with asbestos insulation.

Harry can blurrily distinguish numerous partitions. Lighting is steady and low intensity. A humming sound seems to come from the rear.

Another chapter in a weird day, Harry thinks. Hopefully not his last.

A small man in a white lab coat accompanied by men in business suits are out front, waiting. The suited individuals hold Lugers at their sides, not a welcome sight to a man terrified by guns. They look angry and eager to do mayhem. The guy in the lab coat is wiry, gaunt. He has curly hair and thick glasses. He is not holding a Luger and he appears to be scared to death of guns and most else.

“Where the hell are we?” Harry mumbles, trying his best to recover his equilibrium.

He’s slapped on the back of the head, a clue that they don’t want him to speak unless spoken to. Him the guest of honor it seems.

Harry is coming out of his torpor, faking wooziness, his head continuing to droop as he steadily digs his fingernails in and loosens the cord binding his wrists.

Horst Wessel had entered first and is standing behind the small man. He too is holding a Luger, a replacement for the one with the faulty sights that had caused the car fire and explosion. Harry cannot bear to focus on it.

The goon who had been sitting on Harry’s legs in the car shoves him forward. Harry stumbles and pretends to nearly lose his balance.

Horst Wessel says, “You are at the dawn of a new civilization, Antonelli. You and the esteemed Jew scientist are going to launch a new era for the Fatherland.”

This has to be where they’re brewing the poison uranium, the mad scientist and all his pals, David’s target. Too bad Dave can’t be here. Along with an armored division.

His wits and balance fully restored, Harry begins to fall, to gauge the reaction speed of his captors, but is assisted by a goon with a grunt and a jerk. “Always glad to be helpful, Hans. How am I gonna launch your fucked-up Fatherland?”

“First, you will tell us where the gold is.”

“What gold?”

“Gold that is required to continue our sacred mission.”

“What gold that is required to continue what sacred fucking mission, Fritz?”

“As much as we would love to enjoy your horror, we have no time to explain and to encourage your cooperation. The fruit of our labor is ready for transport. There is risk in doing so, risk that you will undertake for us. Tell us where the gold is and you may be allowed to live.”

“Is that all?”

“That is not all. You must pass along your knowledge of the secret invisibility ray.”

When someone tells you it’s not gonna hurt, it does, Harry knows. Same with being told you may be allowed to live.

He says, “My ears are ringing from the rough treatment, Fritz, and I’m seeing stars. Can you speak up?”

The first lesson of street fighting was to hit first and hit hard.

Wessel doesn’t take the bait but a Luger-toting thug does, stepping closer. Harry miraculously recovers from his befuddlement.

Wrists free of the cord, he jerks his arms up and forward, grabs the closest thug by the lapels, comes off his back foot, and slams his forehead into his nose, hearing the satisfying sound of crushed cartilage, a move he’d perfected on the football field.

As the Kraut drops to his knees, gushing blood and screaming, Harry pivots and buries a toe into the second Luger’s groin, with force similar to that of the general’s boy at Kristallnacht. His Luger goes off, perforating the ceiling as he falls flat on his back, groaning and howling.

Harry pivots again at the Lab Coat and takes his hand. The PVDE types want nothing to do with Harry. Their bribe money won’t cover a trip to the hospital.

Lab Coat says, “They have men in the rear who will be coming at the sound of the gunshot, sir. What can we do?”

At the door, he searches in vain for the button and says, “Damned good question.”

Outside, there is the sound of spinning tires, the smell of burning rubber.

The door is slammed. It caves inward, smashed by the rear of a car.

Its horn honks nonstop.

Harry recognizes the rear bumper and taillights of a 1938 Ford sedan.

Harry and Lab Coat crawl through an opening in the ruined door.

Harry says, “Our taxi is here. Hop in.”