The Spymasters (Men at War 7) - Page 113
“And these are being shipped to where?”
“I don’t think I understand . . .”
“If you are manufacturing the high explosive, you must be shipping it somewhere.”
“Yes, of course. These boxcars are locked and sealed here and then taken to the central Frankfurt railyard, where another locomotive takes them—among others—to their final destination, the assembly point. The railcars all look more or less alike, and there are at least twenty departures a day from the central railyard—so who knows which train carries what and to where? You can see why your question at first confused me.”
He went over to the sheaf of papers and flipped through but could not immediately put his finger on what he was looking for, and clearly was embarrassed. He flipped through a second time.
“Aha,” he said, removing the sheet. “And this is the Special Program order from Berlin, under the signature of Field Marshal Milch and General von Axthelm but also with that of Reich Minister Göring.”
He held it out, and Kappler waved it away. Höss looked a little dejected as he put it back in the stack.
“I’ll get to it eventually. Tell me its key points.”
Trust me, Walter, I will read it very carefully when you have left.
Höss went on: “It states that the Luftwaffe requires an additional one hundred tons of high explosive each month. That is to be brought up to five thousand tons monthly by this time next May.”
That’s for just one program?
“Luckily,” Höss went on, pointing out to the floor, “we had begun manufacture of the metal casings to contain the high explosive—they are there to the right—before your steelworks were lost in the Ruhr bombings.”
He paused and looked at Kappler.
“A terrible, unfortunate act,” he added.
“Yes.”
“We were not so fortunate with getting the casings made there for the T-83 material. The Tabun?”
Höss looked at Kappler, who nodded that he was aware of the code name.
“But as we have yet to bring the plant on line for the manufacture of the T-83, we have time to make them at another source. As one might expect of the brilliant Herr von Braun, the requirements are quite exact—with slight modification they are essentially the same as those for the high explosive—and I have full confidence that we will not only meet the production numbers but exceed them. And because the order for T-83 is a fraction of that of the high explosive, we accordingly need only to manufacture a fraction of the metal casings.”
So the plant is being converted to make Tabun.
And for what? What is this Luftwaffe Special Program?
“How much T-83?”
“Not quite half.”
Fifty, sixty tons of nerve gas each month? That is ten times what was used for the howitzer munitions!
This is insanity!
What the hell is this Special Program?
There must be a way to knock out the plant during the transition without there being suspicion of sabotage. . . .
Höss gestured again at the papers he had brought.
“The requirements are detailed in the order, of course,” he added.
Of course they are!
We wouldn’t expect less of “the brilliant Herr von Braun,” would we?
Source: readsnovelonline.net