Legend / Triumphs

I'm 29 years old, and I'm freezing cold, mucking up from the surf off a rain-swept beach into the woods near Peenemünde, an old V-2 launch site.

It's nighttime. The Company likes to send me out at night. The boys call me Orlok; the sunlight hurts my eyes. I hate the night shift. It's like I'm walking through a nightmare. But it's my job. It's how we win.

A cluster of concrete buildings damp and dribbling. An airstrip. Old blast pits where V-2s once launched to buzz over the North Sea into England. South, the horizon glows. A city.

A truck trundles into the base. It stops. Idles. A person gets out, lights a cigarette, and limps into the only standing building. He leaves the door open.

"What the hell?" I mutter. I draw my pistol.

Inside, the rain hammers on the rusted roof. I can hear water churning; whole sections of the building are flooded. This place has been dead for years. Something gravitational draws me deeper in.

"Amerikanisch, Britisch, oder Deutsch?" A voice echoes through the building. Gently accented German.

"Amerikanisch," I answer. I don't holster my gun.

"English fine?"

"If that works for you."

"English is good. I am practicing."

I follow the voice to the center of the structure. A factory floor, or large warehouse of some kind. Dark but for a single lantern on a solitary table. The man sits in the pool of light, smoking a cigarette. Rain falls through the perforated roof, dribbling on rusted machinery. An empty chair sits opposite him.

"Not much of a space program," I say.

"No," he says. "Sit, please." He gestures at the table, an unlit cigarette pinched between his fingers. "You smoke?"

I remain standing.

"Are you going to kill me?" I ask him.

"You're the one with the gun, amigo. Are you going to kill me?"

"No," I say. "Where is Dr. Heuer?"

"Dead."

"What?"

The dark-eyed man mutters a soft, frustrated curse in Russian. "Gone," he says, slowly. "We killed him. Вы понимаете?"

"Не совсем. Я учусь," I say. "Why?"

"He was a fascist," the Soviet says. "What would we need him for after we captured his rockets? He's been dead since '45."

I sag down into the chair.

"Sorry to bend your paperclip." He grins. "How is my English, by the way?"

"It's good," I assure him. "How's my Russian?"

"Your pronunciation is fine."

"Thank my brother," I say.

"You could continue practicing with me."

The immensity of the offer stuns me. I see a different life, one lonely but wild, in a red world far more ancient than my own. A different tongue, a different set of stars. I am alone, but special.

"I can't do that," I lie.

"Как жаль," he sighs. "OK. Go now."

"Why?"

Distant, mingled with the driving rain: the thud of approaching helicopters.

The Soviet stands, leaving the unlit cigarette on the table.

I run.