The limits...those were my province. The province of the designer, and the engineer, and finally of the workmen who built the car to our specifications. If Bernie hadn’t made a mistake, then someone else had.
I took the train to Zwickau. It was a journey I’d made many times, but there was no sense of déjà vu about it. The train carriage was unheated but crowded, and the condensed breath of the passengers ran in trickles down the windows, smearing the landscape of Saxony. And I carried a weight of anxiety that I’d never had previously, not even before the trials of a new design.
A long journey, but I’d started early, and it was just past two o’clock when the taxi delivered me to the Auto Union premises. These were in the old Horch works, a sprawling brickyard ringed with buildings. It was a weekday and the place was bustling with workers, messengers, trucks bringing in piles of rubber tires and sheet steel, the big trailers for shipping cars clustered outside the plant like a herd of skeletal cows.
I felt the strong pull of the workshops, wanted to wander in and see what was happening, smell the hot solder and the rubber and the metal that was my favorite perfume. Maybe later, I told myself, and instead headed for the white-brick building that housed the main offices.
It was only a couple of months since I had worked here regularly, and the receptionist’s face lit up with pleasure at seeing me.
“Herr Doktor Porsche!” he said. “How nice it is to see you again! I didn’t know there was a meeting today—shall I bring you a coffee?”
I would at that point have sold at least a small part of my soul for hot coffee, but reluctantly, I shook my head.
“Danke, Reinhart. It’s not a meeting. I only wanted to see Dr. Eberan for half an hour. Just to go over some technical things about the Stromlinienwagen.”
His face sobered at that.
“Such a terrible thing,” he said, and shook his head. “Poor Rosemeyer. We couldn’t believe it—but we never believe it, do we, and yet we know it happens, it must happen in this business, nein?”
“It does, alas,” I said. “Can you see if Herr Doktor Eberan is available?” I had thought about sending a telegram to make an appointment but decided against it. I didn’t want Eberan to think about it ahead of time and told myself that if he wasn’t in, I would just poke around, maybe ask some questions of the other Auto Union officials—and the engineers. Eberan’s own car was in the yard, though—a big twelve-cylinder Daimler, dove gray and glossy, with a grille that looked like it was about to eat you alive.
Reinhart gestured me to a chair and disappeared. I didn’t sit, though; I hovered in the doorway, looking down the long, dim corridor. The day outside was rainy, and the patches of light that fell into the corridor from the open doors were pale and insubstantial. It seemed I was a ghost myself, recognizing all the things I saw, knowing them intimately, and yet feeling detached.
I’d worked with Robert for many months; we got along, we worked quite well together—yet we’d never become friends. Part of it was caste; I was a Czech, while his family had been Austrian nobility. They had still been using the name von Eberhorst in his childhood, and one doesn’t forget things like that. I had more than once thought that his dislike of working under me had a lot to do with my departure from Auto Union—though the parting itself was reasonably amicable. And then again, he was an ambitious man. He had his own thoughts on design.
Which was what was bothering me now.
Reinhart flickered into sight at the far end of the hallway, and I ducked back into his tiny office to be discovered looking out of the window when he came in, full of apologies, to tell me that Herr Doktor Eberan was called away, had just left for a meeting in Stuttgart. He would be desolated to hear—
“That’s all right, Reinhart,” I interrupted, and patted his shoulder.
So, plan B. The engineering department was in the same building; I’d need to wait a bit. Teatime was three o’clock; everyone would be going to the canteen and I could slip into the building by the rear entrance, and—with luck—have half an hour alone in the closet that held the files of design notes, plans, and records.
In the meantime, I decided that I might as well stroll by the workshops and see whether anyone I knew was around.
There wasn’t much going on. Only two bays were busy; I didn’t know the men in the first one, but I spotted Dieter Pfizen in the second, with a half-assembled twelve-cylinder head on a stand in front of him.
“So, Dieter, what have you got?” He looked up, surprised at my voice, but smiled.
“Herr Doktor Porsche!” He stepped back, gesturing at the motor. “Nothing much, yet. Checking the oil flow.” There was a strong smell of the kerosene used for cleaning, and I saw small golden dribbles of motor oil on the stand.