“Whatever happens,” I promised, “I support your decision.”

It was an easy promise to make in the dark of night, when we had no idea that the decision had already been made for us.

14

Lizzie

Huntsville, Alabama
1950

Cal was a civilian aeronautical engineer with the Fort Bliss experimental aviation division through the war. After it ended, he was quietly promoted to a classified project so secretive that, at first, he wouldn’t tell me a single thing about it.

I was too easily deterred from pushing him for the details, distracted as I was by Henry’s behavior after the war. The rest of the world was celebrating, but my brother was sleeping at all hours of the day and night, and irritable whenever I tried to encourage him to get out of the house. Then came the drinking, and after that, he started disappearing for days, returning broke or beaten up, or sometimes just beaten down.

After a year, Henry told me he needed to stand on his own two feet, and announced that he was leaving El Paso. I tried to convince him to stay, and Cal tried too, but Henry was determined that he knew what was best for him. We were worried, but he was an adult. We had to let him go.

Only after Henry left did Calvin finally tell me the truth about his new job. He was supervising a handful of highly trained, specialized scientists captured in Germany after the war ended, brought to America under the Operation Paperclip program.

I knew right away that something was rotten about that arrangement. Even if my common sense didn’t tell me that inviting a bunch of German scientists to America was a bad idea, Calvin’s tense, uneasy tone did.

“There’s a dossier on each of them,” he said heavily. “I’ve read them all, and they suggest that these men were geniuses and spent the entire war making scientific discoveries. Apparently their hands are clean.”

“But you don’t believe that’s true.”

Cal pushed his glasses up and rubbed his eyes.

“No one can know what I’m about to tell you, Lizzie. It has to stay between you and me.”

“Of course.”

“It’s just too convenient. I asked Newsome when he was in town last week. At first he insisted the dossiers were completely accurate. Only when I really pushed him did he admit the truth. It seems some…maybe most…of the German scientists we’re working with were active in the Nazi party. He’s even seen evidence that some of the senior scientists were officers in the SS.”

My mouth went dry. I followed the news about the Nuremberg trials so closely it was borderline unhealthy. I knew all too well what kinds of evil the SS had been responsible for.

“Those Germans must have lied to our officials! Our government would never knowingly allow anyone like that to come here,” I whispered sickly.