by Rick Wilber
A narrow lectern stood at the front of the room. A blackboard on wheels was behind the lectern, and there were two-dozen wooden chairs in tight, perfect rows in front of the lectern. There were no empty seats and an extra dozen people stood against the radiators at the back of the room. Paul Scherrer was there, of course, and nodded and smiled when he saw Berg. Marcus Fierz was there, too, and Gregor Wentzel, Wolfgang Pauli, Ernst Stueckelberg. And up in the front row, at the corner, Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker.
Berg sat in the second row, where he was close enough to get the job done. He’d scored a marksman rating with a service revolver at this kind of distance. That was one reason he was here.
His pal, Paul Scherrer, had managed to get him the invitation to this speech, listing him as an Italian physicist working with Fermi in Rome. Berg felt bad about that, if he did do the job here it would get out soon that Scherrer had been involved. That would be messy; there were Nazis everywhere in Zurich. Berg had told Piet Gugelot, the Dutch Jew physicist, how to follow up on the arrangements to get Scherrer and his family out of Switzerland and down into Italy. From there, with Fermi’s help, they all could get to the States. Berg didn’t expect he’d be able to help with any of that, since he wouldn’t survive more than a few seconds after taking action against Heisenberg. Too many Nazis in the room, all of them armed. Once they realized that that the Italian physicist named Antonacci was, in fact, an American assassin they’d act quickly.
Berg did look like he belonged in this crowd: brown shoes, slacks, tweed jacket. He’d thought about smoking a pipe but decided he wouldn’t look natural enough doing that; but otherwise he fit right in.
He’d earned a little credit, he hoped, by working his way into a couple of the interesting conversations on S-matrix theory that had been going on in the hallway outside before the door opened to the room. Berg liked the elegance of the math and had said so to several people, citing examples. They’d nodded and agreed, the several men then bouncing ideas of one another for a few minutes until the classroom door opened and, along with the others, Berg had walked in and taken a seat.
He crossed his right leg over the left and sat back, relaxed, as the last few stragglers came in, looking for a little space in which to join the others who stood at the back. The last to come through was a tall, very attractive woman. Stueckelberg rose and offered her his seat and she took it.
Berg knew this woman. He was sure it was her; a real looker, tall, thin, black hair, red lips, wearing a very businesslike dress with padded shoulders and a vest. He wondered if there wasn’t a gun hidden somewhere in all that fabric.
He’d seen her now several different times over the past couple of years. He was certain of it; he had a very good memory for such things. The first time, back in ‘41, she’d been sitting in the box seats, front row, behind the home dugout in Comiskey as the White Sox did battle with the Browns on a Sunday in June. Not much of a crowd there, the Sox being all right but the Brownies miserable. Berg had played first that day and had himself an RBI double and then scored on an Alex Irvine single. He’d tipped his cap to the few fans who were cheering after he’d crossed home and was heading toward the dugout. She’d smiled at him. He’d winked back and then had the batboy take a note up to her saying he was staying at the Piccadilly Hotel on Wabash, and he’d be pleased to celebrate the day’s win by taking her out to dinner. He’d look for her at eight o’clock in the lobby. The chophouse had great steaks, but she didn’t show.
The second time, a year later, he’d been in London, at the Claridge, working on Alsos. She’d been sitting in the lobby reading the Times and had lowered it to watch him walk by, smiling at him knowingly. He’d smiled back, but he was already late for the meeting with Carvelli to make the final arrangements for Italy and Fermi, and so he didn’t have the time to do more than smile and nod. She’d nodded back, still smiling. An hour later, when he walked back out through the lobby, she was gone.
The next time, in Paris just a couple of months later, he felt a friendly tap on his shoulder then heard her say, “Bonjour, Monsieur Berg,” as she’d walked by him one evening on the Pont Neuf, where he’d been leaning on the railing, watching a barge go by on the Seine below. He’d turned, embarrassed that he hadn’t noticed her until after she’d touched him, but she was already walking away, half-turning to wave goodbye. He was waiting for a contact and couldn’t leave the spot and had to watch her go. He felt dizzy and nauseous for a moment and when that passed he turned back toward the Seine and the same barge from before was somehow upstream and starting its way down again to go under the bridge, again, as he watched. There was no explaining that and he was afraid to mention it to anyone: they’d pull him out of there and bring him home as a head case, probably, and he didn’t want that.
The last time, six months ago in Rome, he’d been sitting outside under the awning at the Trattoria Monti on Via di San Vito, with Fermi, talking about what Italy had been like under Mussolini before the assassination in ‘38. A dirigible, a fast little Enzo on sentry duty, chugged by overhead. Fifty miles north was the Lateran Line and north of that there were Germans, a lot of them. Here, in Roma, though, the sun was shining and Italy was Italian again.
Enrico was talking when she walked by: “Yes, Moe, all of Italy was ours, but the price was so very high. Spies everywhere (as though there weren’t any now, Berg thought to himself), and one feared for one’s soul.” Enrico smiled. “When the coup d’ etat was successful, we all thought the nightmare had ended; but, of course, it wasn’t so simple.”
She’d been hard to miss in that outfit; blue shorts and a white blouse with a blue scarf and a sailor cap. Her hair was different, red, and she seemed taller somehow, but it was definitely her. And she was stunning.
Enrico had turned to look at her, said “Buongiorno.”
She buongiornoed right back to Enrico, then looked straight at Berg, smiled, said, “Ciao, Signor Berg,” and walked away. Moe winked at Enrico, then rose from the table to follow her, caught up with her by the time they reached the Trevi Fountain, reached out and grabbed her arm so he could finally talk to her and find out what the hell was going. But then he stumbled, went down to his knees, sick to his stomach for a few moments, and when that passed he looked up and she was gone. As was the Trevi Fountain. He was standing next to the Colle Oppio gardens and there, a few blocks away, was the Coliseum. Jesus Christ. He shook his head and started walking back to Enrico. Good thing it was close.
So he wasn’t surprised to see her here, though she was a major complication, and Berg didn’t like complications. He had a job to do here, dangerous work, and if she had been in Chicago, and London, and Paris, and Rome, and now was here, then she was in on it somehow. One side? The other? Some other side completely? He didn’t know. He didn’t like not knowing. He had to ask himself why he hadn’t brought her up with John Shaheen, his handler.
He shifted in his chair, putting both feet back on the floor. He could feel the uncomfortable tug of the athletic tape that held the tiny Beretta tightly against his groin. Well, there was nothing he could do about her right now. He was here, and today was today, and that was all there was to it. He had a job to do.
The door at the side of the room opened again and in walked Werner Heisenberg. There was a smattering of polite applause from the gathered scientists. How do you greet a colleague and friend, and one of the world’s great minds, when he’s brilliant but working for the Nazis? Heisenberg was in charge of Uranverein, the Uranium Club, which is to say, Hitler’s A-bomb program.
But this wasn’t about that: at least for everyone but Berg, so when Paul Scherrer walked to the podium to introduce Heisenberg, Berg sat back in his chair and made sure to look calm and relaxed. Time to listen. Very carefully.
***
September 5, 1943
A dismal season was winding down. Moe Berg had played first-base again and gone 0 for 5 as the Sox lost to the Yankees. Berg’s contribution to the humiliation had been three strikeouts and an
error on a groundball.
In the clubhouse after the game, the air was thick with cigar smoke, grumbling, and Monarch beer to drown the various sorrows. Moe sat, disappointed, on a folding chair in front of his open wooden locker. He was contemplating what an 0-for-5 day can do to your psyche and your season and your career when you’re in your thirties. He heard a throat clear behind him. Damn sportswriters.
He turned and instead of the rumpled, old suit and beat-up fedora that he expected, it was a man dressed in trousers with a tight crease, a vest, an expensive coat and a bowtie; no hat, glasses, smoking a Camel.
“Mr. Berg? Moe?”
Berg shook his head. “I’m not speaking to the press, friend. I made that clear last week. No quotes, no off-the-record, nothing, till this slump is over. Got it?”
The man smiled, and was nice enough to not get into whether a .210 season batting average is still a “slump” or not. “I’m not with the press, Mr. Berg. My name is Huntington, Ellery Huntington. I’m here at the request of a man named William Donovan. He’d like to meet with you.”
Berg frowned. “The Donovan who was a war hero in the Meuse-Argonne? And then the district attorney up in Buffalo? I believe I met him once, a few years ago. We shook hands and I autographed a ball for him.”
“You have an excellent memory, Mr. Berg.”
He did, in fact, have that excellent memory. And an IQ of 180. And a doctorate in classical languages from Princeton and a law degree from Yale. And yet he was playing baseball in Chicago and, mostly, going 0-for-the-day. So: “What would the district attorney and war hero want with a baseball player, Mr. Huntington?”
“Mr. Donovan is no longer a district attorney, Mr. Berg. He now works for the government. He’s more interested in your language skills than your batting average.”
Berg allowed himself a sad chuckle. “That’s a good thing. Have you seen my batting average?”
Huntington smiled back. “Mr. Donovan has looked at those photos you took in Japan during the Sox tour back in ‘37. Those snaps are very good. And he knows you speak French and German. He understands that you are something of a science buff, as well.”
“And Italian. And Spanish. And Hebrew. And a few more. And I read a lot, Mr. Huntington. Science is one of the things I read, along with the sports pages in the newspapers.”
“And the front pages?”
“Yes, and the front pages.”
“We felt certain of that, Mr. Berg. And we feel certain, too, about your patriotism. Mr. Donovan would like to talk to you about that, about your patriotism. He knows you’ve tried to enlist, but the Army wouldn’t take you.”
“Or the Navy, Mr. Huntington. They don’t like the shape of my feet. But if your Mr. Donovan has found a way I can take part, I’m all for it. Do I have time to take a shower and comb my hair?”
Huntington smiled again, and nodded. “Of course, Mr. Berg, take your time. And then we’ll head over to our hotel and you and Mr. Donovan can have that conversation. Does that sound all right?”
Moe thought about his slump. The season wasn’t young anymore and neither was he. And there were guys fighting and dying in Europe and he’d been thinking a lot about how he ought to be involved in that, flat feet or not.
He looked up at Huntington. “Give me ten minutes.”
And that was all it took. Ten minutes, a taxi ride and a five-minute conversation with Wild Bill Donovan.
***
December 12, 1944
Berg watched Heisenberg smile weakly. He spoke in German: “Hello, everyone, it is good to be here, and to see so many of my friends and colleagues from better days. May those days return soon. And for those of you who are students at this fine university, I greet you warmly and celebrate your learning. I will leave time enough at the end of this discussion to answer questions.”
He paused, smiled again slightly. “Please, friends, colleagues: let us step away from the war for just this brief time and focus our attention on the matter at hand, scattering-matrix maths. I will gladly take questions on that afterward, but outside the scope of that discussion I can take no questions. I am sure you understand.”
Berg understood. The Gestapo was here in one guise or another; and there were others in the room, too, no doubt, who would report back to Berlin on what Professor Heisenberg had said, starting with that weasel von Weizsäcker. The Professor was smart enough to stay out of trouble and focus on S-matrix theory, as advertised.
***
August 12, 1944
Lake Maggiore was warm in the shallows and then colder, much colder, the farther out Moe Berg swam with his new pal, Enrico Fermi. They were headed out to the raft anchored near the marker buoys for the swimmers.
It was a muggy day, and after a long bicycle ride together along the Via Roma the two men –Italy’s finest physicist and the American baseball player –had pedaled through the village of Pino and out to the narrow strand of beach along the lake. Just a half-mile away the Via Roma changed names and became the Dufourstrasse on the Swiss side of the border. In a couple of hours they were having lunch with Paul Scherrer, who had asked for the meeting.
They’d risked coming here because the meeting with Scherrer was important to the whole project, though it was fraught with risk. A ferry ride up from Rimini to Venice, skirting the Nazi-occupied portions of Italy, then a long, harrowing flight up to and then through the southern edge of the Dolomites in an Enzo Massimo dirigible that finally got them to Maccagno and the lakeshore. A real nail-biter, that blimp ride, but then it was done and they’d walked into town from the field and found their penzione, had a good meal, rented the bikes for today, shared a bottle of wine and then hit the sack. Now, here they were, within a couple of easy miles by bike of the meeting and with a few hours to kill. A cool swim seemed like a good idea, and then they’d get up to town, cross the border into Switzerland, and hear what Scherrer had to say.
Berg wasn’t himself, paling around here with Fermi, a guy he really liked. Here, for now, Berg was Mario Antonacci, a wealthy industrialist and shipbuilder from Brindisi, a man of substance who had stopped building warships for Mussolini after the coup and had then gone back to building freighters for the Matteotti government, which ran things south and east of the Lateran Line. Strictly neutral, Matteotti and his pals, the only way to stay alive with the Germans in control of the northwest portions of Italy.
Fermi climbed up the ladder of the wooden raft and sat down next to Berg. “It’s beautiful here,” he said in Italian, leaning backward to get his face to the mountain sun.
“Ed è tranquillo,” Berg said, “a separate world, away from the war.”
Fermi shook his head. “Not separate enough, I think. Look there,” and he pointed east. Tiny dots marched across the sky in formation. “Your American bombers aiming for Munich, perhaps?”
“Wiener-Neustadt, I think, near Vienna. There’s a Messerschmitt factory there.”
“Ah.” Fermi stood. He was slightly built, thin, about five-foot-eight. Unprepossessing. But he was a towering figure where it mattered, in physics. Fermi was one of the handful of scientists who could stand next to Heisenberg in matters of intellect. Fermi, Bohr, Oppenheimer, Weizsäcker, Hahn. The list was a short one, and with Einstein’s macabre death in ‘38 had lost its titular head. Now it was up to Heisenberg, or Oppy, to see who’d be the one to change the world. Berg wondered if Fermi realized this. Well, if he didn’t realize it yet he would in a couple of hours. Time to go meet with Scherrer and see about saving the world.
***
December 12, 1944
Trouble was, as the afternoon lecture wore on, when it came to S-matrix theory, or the scattering matrix as Herr Professor called it, Heisenberg didn’t seem to have anything new to say.
Berg had done his homework, reading up on John Archibald Weaver’s paper from 1937, which coined the “scattering matrix” term as it described coefficients that connected the asymptotic behavior of an arbitrary particular solution with the set of sol
utions of a standard form. What Heisenberg had done was taken it farther; using the S-matrix idea to mathematically pick out the most important features of the theory, the ones that he tried to prove wouldn’t change over time. He published this work in the German journals. The OSS had a copy of every article. Berg had read, and understood, them all. There was a reason Moe Berg was the agent who was here, listening, assessing, making a decision, a choice. That reason had nothing to do with being a light-hitting infielder for the Chicago White Sox.
But the sunlit room was warm with everyone packed in, even with the radiators shut off as Switzerland dealt with its coal shortage. And despite the months of preparation, despite the Beretta taped to his groin, despite the lives that had been put at risk to get him here: despite all of that Moe Berg began to drift off, the S-matrix discussion so ordinary that it was lulling, his eyelids growing heavy as he jerked awake sharply once, cursing himself for his foolishness, and then again, before resorting to pinching, hard, the skin between his right thumb and the forefinger.
That worked, and he was focused again on the S-matrix, at least long enough to get to the question period, where he might learn what he needed to know. Was Heisenberg and his team on the right track for an atom bomb? Would the Germans get the bomb before the Allies did? If he thought that was the case, Berg would excuse himself, go to the men’s room and get into a stall, unbutton his pants and drop them, pull the Beretta loose from where it was taped to the groin, re-button the trousers and then walk back into the room, the Beretta in his pocket. There, with no hesitation, before anyone could act to stop him, he would kill Werner Heisenberg, cut off the head of the snake that was the great bomb. A lot of lives, hundreds of thousands of them, maybe millions, would depend on Berg’s aim.