Free The Metal Man: An Account of a WW2 Nazi Cyborg by Ben Stevens Page A

still hovering on the edge of its consciousness.
     
    Something it was searching for; trying to grasp at with its clinical metal thoughts as it lay there in the whirring darkness…
     
    A name.
     
    It wanted a name.
     
    For that man…
     
    And for all these other faces it was now recognizing…  
     
     
    15
     
     
    Evening had fallen. Reinhardt left the cobbled courtyard ringed by the non-descript buildings, below which was located the secret research bunker, and again began the short walk towards his favorite restaurant.
     
    It was freezing cold; snowing slightly. Christmastime for anyone who had something to celebrate. Reinhardt kept his hands stuck firmly in the pockets of his thick black coat.
     
    He noticed an attractive woman walking towards him, met her eyes and briefly saw the shock and revulsion at his appearance register in her face. He was used to it by now – for he’d been on the receiving end of such a reaction his entire life.
     
    But the terrible facial injuries he’d suffered in that train crash, while still a baby, didn’t mean that he’d never had a relationship. Anyone speaking to him for any length of time soon realized that he was not only an extremely intelligent man, but also modest and caring.
     
    Such character attributes had been enough for Helga to see past his physical imperfections – and for three years they’d been blissfully happy…
     
    As he walked, Reinhardt again blinked back the tears as he remembered her. That smile; the blonde hair. How the hell was it possible that a woman like that, so healthy – never drinking, never smoking – and in her early thirties, could be struck down with cancer?
     
    The doctors had done the best they could, but it had been hopeless from the start. She’d died, stoically bearing the pain that must have been awful in spite of the morphine she was given, barely four months after diagnosis.
     
    That day, something also died in Reinhardt. The idea that this life might ever have some sort of ‘happy ending’. He was a disfigured man whose beautiful, still-young wife had been cruelly struck down with a truly horrible disease.
     
    And now she was dead, along with Reinhardt’s previous sense of happiness…       
     
    He went to her funeral (still visited the grave regularly to lay flowers and such), and now lived for his work. When he was involved with projects of such breathtaking complexity as the Metal Man, attempting to present the ideas of the genius, half-Jewish scientist Schroder to his superiors – to someone like the very Fuhrer himself – then he could, at least for a while, forget that aching void existing inside of him…
     
    *
     
    Inside the restaurant, Reinhardt ordered chicken and then sat thinking. Undoubtedly, Schroder had been completely shocked by what he’d been told – this directive of Adolf Hitler’s that a new Metal Man should be constructed once a week…
     
    Were there even the materials available for such a massive project? To say nothing of the expense – for everyone knew Germany was now on its knees, even if to say this out loud was to invite arrest or worse…
     
    The bell tinkled inside the small, exclusive restaurant as the door opened and Gestapo Major Fleischer entered.
     
    Reinhardt met the small, blazing eyes in the skull-like face, sudden worry but also something like anger squirming in his guts. How the hell had Fleischer even known he was here? Was he being followed?
     
    This was the second time that the Gestapo Major had intruded upon his meal…
     
    ‘My dear Captain,’ lisped Fleischer, waving away one of the waitresses as he sat down at the small table opposite Reinhardt. There was something in the Gestapo man’s face that chilled Reinhardt to the bone. A strange look of triumph …
     
    ‘Major Fleischer,’ he returned, trying (as so many did) to keep his voice even. ‘How can I help you?’
     
    For several moments, the Gestapo man said nothing. Just stared and