
Herr Sprache, Kalvin responded with an unlikely surname. Together, the names formed a
key word. As tradecraft it was dreadfully amateurish, but Mainz had called the shots.
Donnersprache, thunderspeak, was still among the unsolved mysteries of Hitler's Reich.
According to the best guesses of spook historians, Donnersprache had pertained to
electronics, probably an aid to eavesdropping, no doubt primitive by modern standards
but still an enigma. No mention of it had ever been found in official records, though the
two men closest to Adolf Hitler had at various times scribbled cryptic references to the
thing, or possibly the person, called Donnersprache.
A hand came out of the greatcoat, wearing a glove, and the Americans shook it. Rapidly,
in German, Kalvin explained that the gentleman beside him did not speak the language.
Was it possible for them to continue their discussion while riding in a BMW sedan with an
excellent heater?
Naturlich, of course, Mainz replied. But permit me to retrieve a traveling bag I left among
the bushes nearby. Later, Kalvin would report the old man's age as nearing eighty, his
speech halting and sometimes vague as might befit a man whose mind had begun to
fail. Kalvin's true impression was that this preternaturally alert little gnome of a man kept
all his mental bricks neatly stacked.
The major clearly loathed his role but accepted it anyway, hurrying off to retrieve their
rented BMW as the old man half-trotted back to the shadows of anonymous shrubbery.
Waiting alone for the car near the
Rechte Bahngasse, Kalvin felt that the old man had still
not decided to trust the Americans. One or both of those coat pockets, he judged, was
full of handgun?an infraction far more serious in Austria than in, say, the United States.
For Kalvin and the major, sidearms were more acceptable; above a certain level of
business such things were taken for granted.
Dieter Mainz returned before the major did, lugging an old leather valise that, Kalvin
presumed, held the secrets of Donnersprache. Kalvin tried not to stare at it, smiling
instead at his companion, who kept jerking his head away from the street to scan the
shadows. I think you need not fear for your life,'' Kalvin said, noticing the old man's
nervous glances. How important can Donnersprache be, in a time when a radio
transmitter can be hidden in the heel of a shoe?
Can that transmitter hypnotize ten million listeners?
Kalvin shrugged. I suppose it depends on what is Mid, he hedged, watching a bulky
shadow stroll into the street two hundred meters away. He tensed as the distant stranger
began to walk in their direction.
This old guy is getting to me, he admitted to himself.
No, it does not matter what is said when the machine makes one's words seem
absolutely true. What matters is the listener's capacity, and desire, to believe in
something. Mainz said it dogmatically, as if lecturing on fundamentals.
Before enlisting to avoid the draft and a rifleman's fate in Vietnam, Walter Kalvin had
been a mediocre student of rhetoric at NYU. The concept of charisma, the overwhelming
power of certain individuals to convince many others, had never seemed so real to him
as it did at this moment.
Maybe old Mainz himself has charisma, thought Kalvin.
He's
sure got my nerves twanging. Lord, what if it's
a kind of force field, and he has one in
his pocket? Chuckling at his own fanciful notion, Kalvin said, Perhaps you will tell me
exactly what Donnersprache is, and what it does. Do you have it with you, Herr Mainz?