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Henrik’s father took the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross out of the velvet box and admired it in the palm of his hand. “You must use the special polish I got for you, not that cheap stuff from Prague. The Knight’s Cross is shiny now, but it won’t stay that way for long. An officer must never wear a tarnished medal. It is an insult to the Fatherland.”
“Yes, father.” Henrik sipped his morning coffee.
The embarrassment of the previous evening had been mostly erased by the excitement that had followed later that night. Schliemann was arrested for murder, espionage and attempted robbery, and Henrik was proclaimed a hero for capturing him. According to Henrik, Schliemann had broken into the treasure room and murdered the two guards with a special silenced pistol, but before he could make off with his loot, Henrik snuck up behind him and knocked him out. With Major Koch, alias Neils Hollingsworth, on hand to corroborate Henrik’s version of the story, Schliemann didn’t have a chance.
It just so happened that Schliemann had a long history of larceny, drunkenness and brutality. In the minds of most of his superiors, it was only a matter of time before he graduated to murder. Even Heydrich seemed unsurprised by the incident, albeit somewhat annoyed. He ordered a full interrogation, which was paramount to a slow and painful execution. And as for Klein, who was found unconscious in the upper hallway, he was promptly sentenced to two weeks in the hold for dereliction of duty.
There was only one weakness in Henrik’s story, and only one man that seemed to be bothered by it—Henrik’s father.
“Tell me again, Henrik. Why were you down in the basement?”
Henrik shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Like I told you before, father.”
“Tell me again.”
“I was sick from bad champagne.”
“The Chancellery has the best champagne in all of Germany.”
“Too much champagne, then. I saw Schliemann going down into the basement and I followed him. That is it.”
“But why did you follow him? Did you have reason to mistrust him?”
“No, not really. I simply wanted the lavatory.”
Kessler Sr. shook his head. “But the lavatory was right outside the ballroom door.”
Henrik shrugged. “I must have missed it. I wasn’t well.”
Kessler Sr. relit his pipe thoughtfully and Henrik braced himself for more subtle interrogation. But then the old man just nodded. Kessler had never really understood his son or trusted him. But he loved him just the same. And there was something more troubling to him than the unusual circumstances of Schliemann’s arrest. He carefully placed the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross back in its velvet case and handed it back to his son.
“It is a great honor,” he said again. “By the way, what did the Fuhrer whisper in your ear when he gave it to you? You must forgive me for asking, but I really must know.”
Henrik sipped his coffee. “I don’t recall.”
“Oh, surely you must remember. After he fastened your medal, he put his lips right next to your ear and whispered something that only you could hear. What was it?”
Henrik knew his father would not let it go. He could hear the sound of the staff car arriving outside. He put down his coffee and stood up. “I think he said, ‘Bring me victory.’ Yes, that was it.”
Kessler Sr. was not satisfied. “Are you sure? I thought he said more than that.”
“No. That was it. Good bye, father.” Henrik stuck out his hand. Kessler Sr. looked at the hand and then stepped forward to embrace his son. It was an uncharacteristic sign of affection that caught Henrik off guard. Kessler had not hugged his son since he was a child.
“Never forget who you are,” he said, his arms still locked around his son’s back. “Never forget.” Henrik didn’t know what to say until at last his father released him.
“Of course, father,” he said, but the colonel had already turned away to retreat into his bedroom. “Good bye, father,” Henrik said again, but there was no response. A horn sounded outside. Henrik turned to leave.
Henrik arrived at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute just after 9:00 a.m. To Henrik, the Institute was the very epitome of modern science, the birthplace of genius. It boasted more Nobel Prize winners than Cambridge or Oxford, more ground breaking experiments than Harvard or Yale. The current head of the Institute was Werner Heisenberg, whose molecular theories had won him the Nobel Prize for physics in 1932. More recently, Otto Hahn conducted the first successful fission experiment at the Institute just before the war. In his youth, Henrik idolized these men of intellect and hoped to follow them into the rapidly changing world of future scientific discovery, but it was not meant to be. The father had other plans for him.
“Lieutenant Kessler, how good of you to come,” Heisenberg was beaming. “It is not very often that we have a genuine war hero in our midst. You must regale us with your tales. But not now. The B8 experiment is about to begin. Please have a seat.”
The professor spoke quickly, like a rapid-fire machine gun, and Henrik could not tell if he was being mocked or praised. He sat down on the well-worn rosewood seat and peered through the observation window. Far below in a pool of cloudy water was a stack of metal blocks about twenty feet high arranged in concentric rings and spaced with thin layers of paraffin. A signal was given and a scientist in a white lab coat threw a heavy electric switch. Sparks flew briefly and after a few minutes, bubbles began to appear in the water. The professor and his team gasped collectively.
“What? Do you not see?” the professor exclaimed with some surprise. “The Geiger counter.”
Henrik peered up at the dial on the wall. The radiation levels rose 90 REM. Henrik shook his head. “It’s not enough.” Heisenberg’s face went red and Henrik hurried to explain. “The fission reactor in Chicago reached 6000 REM.”
“Fission reactor?” Heisenberg looked at Henrik skeptically. “Nonsense.”
“I’ve seen it.”
Heisenberg seemed suddenly angry. He squared his shoulders like an indignant schoolmaster about to reprimand a foolish child for arriving at an incorrect sum in arithmetic. “They told me about you, lieutenant. They told me that you had discovered some great secret in America and now you would be our teacher.” He looked back over his shoulder, inviting his team to join him in the mockery. Some laughed along with him, but some did not.
“What university did you teach at, lieutenant? What degrees do you have? None? And yet you presume to lecture us? What is this big secret of yours? What are we mere scientists doing wrong?”
There was more laughter. Henrik felt like he was back in grammar school. Heisenberg may have been a genius, but he was apparently a genuine jerk as well. Henrik felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up, but instead of backing down, he became suddenly bold.
“U-235,” he said sharply. The laughing stopped and Heisenberg’s eyes widened. “At your present rate of neutron production, you might possibly have enough U-235 to make a bomb in about a hundred and fifty years. I know a better way.”
The scientists looked at Heisenberg with worried faces. Heisenberg seemed to reel with the blow and then shot back with a verbal counterattack of his own. “That is how I know you are lying about Chicago. The Americans could never have produced a reactor nor will they ever make a bomb. We may not have enough uranium 235 yet to support a sustained reaction, but they don’t have any.”
“No, professor, that is where you are wrong. The Allies have gathered the top scientists in the world, many of them Germans, for a top-secret project called Manhattan. The have enormous resources and they have plenty of U-235.”
“Bah!”
Heisenberg waved his hand dismissively, but Henrik pressed on with even more righteous fervor. “Thousands of scientists, millions of dollars all dedicated to one purpose—to build an atomic bomb before you do. That is why I am here, professor. I had hoped, no, I had pr
ayed that your Uranverein was farther along than this. But I see now that we are hopelessly behind. I fear Germany is doomed.”
Heisenberg’s stern face seemed frozen in defiance. Henrik feared that he had said too much. These were the idols of his youth. He should have shown more respect, seasoned his bitter words with sugar. It couldn’t be easy to learn that your life’s work had been usurped by a vastly superior enemy power. Heisenberg’s stern gaze remained locked on Henrik for a moment longer, and then it cracked into a smile.
“Have no fear, my friend,” he said warmly. He reached out slowly and put his hand on Henrik’s shoulder. “This is not the extent of our efforts, but only a mere fraction of them. I’m sorry I had to test you in this way, but I needed to know where you stood. I took you for a simple fighter pilot, at best, at worst just another one of Heydrich’s spies. You see, the obergruppenfuhrer has not always been my ally. But you appear to be an educated man. Where did you study?”
Henrik was still disoriented from the sudden turn of events, but he answered quickly enough. “I didn’t, at least not formally, but I did attend one of Professor Hahn’s fission lectures back in Amsterdam in 1938.” Otto Hahn nodded politely behind Heisenberg.
“One lecture? What a quick study you are. But where have you been? Did the SS recruit you right out of school? What a waste.”
Henrik sidestepped the question and gestured towards the B8 experiment. “Then if this is not your latest effort, what is?”
“Ah.” Heisenberg raised his finger. “All in good time, my friend. All in good time.” Heisenberg turned to leave and Henrik felt a queer sensation in his stomach. He was not lying about the Manhattan Project. Time was running out for Germany and any other country that opposed the Allies and especially America. It was an industrial monster that could not be matched—in tanks, in planes, in guns. And if that industrial spirit were applied to the production of atomic bombs as well, there would be no stopping it. Germany would be utterly annihilated.
But he could not tell them this. They were too proud—all of them. And part of him did not want to tell them. That part still hoped for another life.