by Bonnie Toews
“I see. You’re right, lad. That is a concern. You never know where someone else’s loyalties lie. Hitler must not learn how close he is to splitting the atom.”
Sir Fletcher cleared his throat. “By the way, we’ve designated our operation Project Amanita, after Quinn’s obsession with the poisonous mushroom.”
He could feel the SD officer’s smile in his tone.
“It seems suitable, sir. I doubt anyone would connect it to nuclear sabotage.”
“Mmm… that’s the only reason I agreed to it.”
Sir Fletcher paused, troubled about what he had to say next.
“Erich, you know how close your father and I were, the respect between us.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I will not endanger your cover unless it’s urgent, but I am concerned about your safety.”
“Why?”
“Someone has been tampering with our records in London. Since I’ve never created a file about you or the music code we developed, no one in London knows you are a British double agent.”
“Then I don’t understand your concern.”
“Erich, where there is a leak, there is risk, so I am not going to use your coding system from this point on. If you must get word to me, you’ll have to use your sleeper agents. No one can trace them because our London operatives didn’t set them up.”
“Understood.”
Momentary silence connected the two men, each deep in his thoughts.
“Sir Fletcher, what if you have to contact me?”
The British spymaster considered Erich’s question. At last he admitted, “I don’t know what I will do. Let’s hope it’s not necessary. You have your orders, lad. Theoretically, there should be no reason to change them.”
“Theoretically,” Erich muttered. “Well, then, Sir Fletcher, I suggest you continue walking through the garden. In a moment, I’ll get up and leave in the opposite direction.”
“Aye.”
Sir Fletcher hesitated, wanting to express his gratitude to the German nobleman, but words failed him.
After trying to persuade Dr. Neilsen about the importance of his mission, Sir Fletcher still couldn’t understand the physicist’s reluctance to cooperate. The man was a conundrum. Erich couldn’t get him to shut up about his work in the company of other scientists, yet to a British ally only interested in saving him and his work, he was stubbornly reticent. The Scotsman found the nuclear scientist’s cluttered lab even more bewildering to the way his mind worked. Stacks of notes were piled on every surface, and mathematical formulas seemed to run in random lines across his blackboards.
“Dr. Neilsen, how do you keep track of your experiments?”
“In my head.”
Sir Fletcher scoffed, “You must keep records. To win the Nobel Prize, you had to prepare reports the scientific community could study and validate.”
Rapid knocking interrupted the physicist’s reply, and Erich charged into the room.
“Turn on the BBC,” he instructed. “Germany’s invading Poland.”
Dr. Neilsen switched on the radio, and Sir Fletcher and Erich moved up beside him to listen. The sounds of shells bursting, plaster falling and air raid sirens wailing splintered the broadcast.
Just before dawn today, German tanks, infantry and cavalry penetrated Polish territory on several fronts. Soon afterwards, German planes began bombarding Poland’s cities. They have been making swift progress in penetrating Polish defenses, which are heavily outnumbered in artillery, infantry and air power.
“That’s Lee Talbot’s voice,” said Erich.
“I know,” said Sir Fletcher.
“Who’s she?”
“An American reporter,” Erich answered Dr. Neilsen.
The cities of Katowice, Krakow, Tczew and Tunel have been attacked with incendiary bombs. Air raids on Warsaw began at 08:45 local time. Communications to Katowice have been broken, but earlier reports say German planes are coming over in squadrons of fifty, every half-hour, and already there are many casualties…
Another bombardment silenced Lee’s broadcast.
Erich excused himself from the room.
After he dashed out, Sir Fletcher bent his head and clicked off the radio.
“Now your work becomes more important,” he said while he wrote on the blackboard behind Dr. Neilsen’s desk.
Do not speak aloud. Ears are listening. I must have your notes on your atomic experiments.
The scientist looked in dismay and picked up the felt brush from the ledge to rub off what Sir Fletcher had written. After a few swift swipes, he used his white chalk to scrawl, Certainly not. They represent my life’s work.
Sir Fletcher tried to contain his impatience and took the chalk from the scientist’s hand. You’re only a stone’s throw from Berlin, he wrote underneath. The Gestapo can fly in and kidnap you.
The scientist’s sharp eyes hardened into steel and he spoke aloud with chilling conviction while brushing off the spymaster’s last comments.
“My work in nuclear energy is for peaceful purposes only. I will never let any of you use my knowledge to make weapons of war.”
TEN
Friday, September 1st, 1939
Plaster thudded down on Lee’s head as a part of the ceiling nearly missed her and landed on her desk crushing her microphone.
“Lee,” Quinn called out, “are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she answered back. “That bloody blast cut off my broadcast.”
“Forget it. Let’s get out of here.”
She didn’t need another invitation. The building was shaking as if consumed by an earthquake. Lee reached for Quinn’s hand.
Out on the street, the mad din reminded her of the bombings in Madrid and Guernica. Panicked people ran every which way. Their screams ripped at her soul, just as they had in the Spanish Civil War. Confusion engulfed her, and she stood rooted to the sidewalk.
Quinn yanked her hand. “This way.”
He ran. She blindly followed.
They dashed down a long stretch of Stone Steps, the Kamienne Schodki that led to Bugaj Street and the Slasko Dabrowski Bridge, which spanned the Vistula River. When they reached the west bank, a Stutka dive-bomber screamed down and machine-gunned throngs of people rushing across the bridge to escape the bedlam of the city center. Wails from wounded victims pierced the mayhem.
“He must be out of bombs,” Quinn observed. “Come on. We can make it across before his next run.”
“Are you nuts?” Lee yelled. “That’s not a footbridge, you know. It must be at least a mile long.”
“I made arrangements with the Resistance to get us out if Hitler invaded Warsaw. They have a safe house in Praga. It’s on the other side. We have to get there before …”
Deep-throated shrieks from two-more Stukas nose-diving the bridge interrupted Quinn. The pair of bombers released their bombs just short of the bridge. Geysers of river spray gushed into the cloudless sky.
“I’m not going,” she screamed. “We won’t make it.”
“We will.”
“We won’t.”
Their wills locked.
“I’ll have to leave you behind.”
“Do it,” she said.
“Confound it, woman! I can’t do that!”
She compromised.
“We can wait. The Luftwaffe’s sending waves about a half hour apart. I timed them.”
“If the resistance can’t get us to the military airfield by four o’clock, the Polish Air Force won’t fly us out.”
“If we make it, we make it.”
He glared at her. Lee saw his decision form. His black pupils enlarged as he grabbed her and hoisted her over his shoulder.
“Quinn, put me DOWN!”
“Over my dead body.”
She pounded his back with her fists, but he broke into a run, and she clung to keep from falling off. His brute strength amazed her.
Overhead, screeching sirens swarmed the skies and swooped down on the bri
dge ahead. Quinn dropped down to his knees and threw himself over Lee. The cacophony of bomb blasts deafened her ears. Eventually, the noise dimmed and the dust settled.
When her fear caught up to her shock, she welcomed the warmth of Quinn’s body on top of hers, and without thinking, reached her arms around him and held him closer.
He lay inert.
She wondered if he had been hurt.
“Quinn?”
He stirred, slipped her arms from his back and raised himself to one knee. His eyes never left her face, and in them, was an expression she couldn’t read.
“Quinn, what is it?”
He gently tweaked her cheek with his right hand, and a hint of a smile cracked his face. His eyes softened before he lifted his head and surveyed the carnage in front of him.
She saw him stiffen and felt him shut down inside as he took stock of the situation. When his eyes returned to her, they were orbs of steel, cold and distant.
“The bridge is gone.”
He stood up and pulled her to her feet.
“Where’s the nearest bomb shelter?”
“The synagogue on Waski Dunaj Street and Zydowska.”
“You’re kidding!”
She shook her head, but when they reached the narrowest street in Old Town, they were greeted with smoking rubble.
ELEVEN
Sunday, September 17, 1939
Lee awoke from a desperate sleep. She felt stiff and groggy as she tried to sit up on her cot. What had awakened her this time? She was so tired and thirsty. Why couldn’t they let her sleep? She fell back on the pillow and pulled the quilt over her head as she rolled over and drew her knees into a fetal position. The grumbling thunder of the Luftwaffe bombings no longer disturbed her, but the strange yak-yak patter of guns and frenzied anti-aircraft fire warned her—the Germans were closing in.
For two weeks, Poland’s capital had endured Hitler’s relentless lightning war, which the Nazis called Blitzkrieg. Already, fifty thousand of Warsaw’s residents had been killed, and large sections of the city’s historic buildings had been damaged or demolished. The only thing still standing in the Market Square was the steel frame of the Prudential Insurance Building where Quinn had set up Lee’s broadcast office on the 10th floor. The Germans had shelled it so many times they had blown away the entire outside structure a chunk at a time.
Thinking about it saddened Lee. Built between 1931 and 1933, the Prudential Insurance Building had been Warsaw’s first skyscraper, and the testament to its outstanding construction was the refusal of its steel skeleton to fall.
To her, the building symbolized the courage of the Poles armed forces. Over one million of them hoped to hold out long enough for the Allies to mount an offensive against the Germans from the west, but they were out matched on every front. Again and again, enemy panzer tanks smashed through Polish lines and isolated pockets of resistance for motorized German infantry to destroy as they either tried to defend their positions or escape.
In the district bound by the Nowy Swiat and Krakowskie Przedmiescie Streets, the Warsaw University had been transformed into a makeshift hospital. Until the blanket bombing of the university yesterday, when the survivors had to move what remained of the hospital and patients to the Holy Cross Church, Lee had helped attend the walking wounded for the over-fatigued nurses. It kept her busy, while Quinn organized escapes for some of the scientists and engineers he had recruited to work with Project Amanita in London. All of them were Jews, and few got through the German lines.
The Germans now encircled Warsaw, and Quinn had moved Lee and his motley band of underground fighters south on the Royal Way to an outpost inside the Palace on the Water, once a city highlight for its Neo-Classical architecture in the magnificently landscaped Lazienki Park.
For Lee, those wonderful yesterdays when she enjoyed sumptuous meals at the overflowing outside cafés along the Krakowskie Przedmiecie had been replaced with never-ending hunger. Now, gaily-striped awnings flapped over the cafés’ boarded windows, and the streets, so filled with rubble they resembled overturned waste heaps, merely provided pathways for bedraggled fighters and orphans searching for garbage scraps.
The Germans had bombed the warehouses and the waterworks, so the Poles’ rations were dwindling and the city’s old wells couldn’t supply sufficient drinking water for the remaining population. Lee’s last full meal four days ago had been stewed sausage and sour cabbage. Sleep was her only refuge from thirst and hunger, while she waited for Quinn to return from delivering his last three atomic scientists to the eastern border. He had provided them with papers instructing the Russians to rescue them and to arrange passage to England.
A commotion outside in the hall forced Lee to rise again.
“What is it?” she called.
Quinn burst through the doorway. Like all of them, his face was soot-covered, but he appeared more disheveled, his rusty matted beard was as shaggy as a buffalo’s, and he was breathing hard.
Alarmed, Lee ran up to him.
“What’s wrong?”
He clutched his chest.
Lee helped him to the wooden chair by her cot.
“Sit, and when you get your breath, tell me what’s going on.”
“It’s terrible news,” he gasped.
“What?”
“The Russians … they’re invading Eastern Poland.”
“Good. They can help us fight the Germans.”
He frantically shook his head.
“No … those people… I took… the Russians… captured them.”
“What? You gave them papers to protect them.”
He shook his head in despair.
“Useless … I took them close… to the outpost… and they went on their own… but I hid in the bushes… I wanted to make sure…”
He bowed his head and groaned. “I speak Russian …”
“You never told me that,” she interrupted.
“I studied it in university… Russian revolution… Irish rebellion … it doesn’t matter,” he snapped.
“I heard enough … the officer laughed and told them … the papers I gave them, worthless… Stalin won’t send them to England … he wants them to work… on an atomic bomb for Russia… The last I saw of them … they were being trucked …”
He heaved a final gasp. “… away.”
More voices rose in anguish in the hallway, and another fighter strode into Lee’s room.
“Leaflets,” he said. “The Germans are dropping leaflets.”
“What do they say, Stanislaw?” she asked.
He handed her one and gave one to Quinn.
“We are surrounded. Russia has signed a pact with Germany. There’s no help coming. The Germans are telling us to surrender.”
PART TWO
“For I am convinced that
neither death, nor life
… will be able to separate us
from the love of God.”
ROMANS 8:38, 39
TWELVE
Saturday, September 7th, 1940
Hitler’s first targets were the East Londoners. German incendiary bombs, relentlessly falling on miles and miles of inland docks, straddled the Thames River in a hellish siege. Like tinder boxes, the seedy mesh of old rundown factories, mills, assembly plants, hastily converted war works and rows of warehouses, which stretched down the river banks for as far as the eye could see, erupted into a lane of monstrous fires. They spread quickly. Vented lethal fumes, leaping ahead of the blazing columns, trapped fleeing workers within their tendrils of gagging death. Shooting sparks caught squalid company houses huddled around the industrial area. In no time at all, hungry flames licked the flimsy dwellings to the ground. Their homeless victims fled to whatever shelters they could find—inside school basements, inside railway tunnels, any place that offered protection from the horrendous nightmare caving in on top of them.
“Those poor devils,” muttered Lord Radcliffe, looking out at the smoked orange crescent rising above the East S
ide of London.
Deep sadness doused the perpetual sparkle filling his hazel eyes. Today he wore casual pants, a tweed sport jacket and his preferred paisley cravat loosely knotted around his neck inside a buttoned-down collar instead of his uniform. Whenever he could, he avoided starched collars and restrictive ties.
Lord Radcliffe had never tried to fit into the inner circle of British aristocracy. Lacking impeccable lineage freed him from their upper crust snobbery. In fact, he enjoyed telling the story of his origin: the first Earl of Chadwick was a handsome peasant soldier named Radcliffe. He received his title and parcel of prime freehold land in the Hog’s Back between Aldershot and Guildford in Surrey from King Charles II after he agreed to marry the king’s illegitimate daughter and remove her troublemaking presence from his royal court.
Sir Fletcher, on the other hand, valued Lord Radcliffe’s loyalty. He not only needed the nobleman’s peculiar blend of intuitive yet analytical brilliance, he also needed his generosity. His financial support was central to the survival of Project Amanita, so while watching the bombing of the East End, he chose this moment to confide his growing concern.
“Lee Talbot and Quinn Bergin have turned up in Moscow. They claim the Russians are after the same atomic scientists we are.”
“To make this bloody bomb, we not only have to race Hitler, we have to race the Russians too?” Lord Radcliffe responded angrily. “Why am I surprised? We know Stalin can’t be trusted. How is Lee?”
“As good as anyone can be hiding out from Nazis for almost a year. She and Quinn joined Polish freedom fighters, and getting to Moscow was an ordeal I understand. When they finally got there, they went to the American Embassy for refuge.”
“Why not British?”
“According to the courier, Quinn doesn’t trust the staff at the British Embassy. He thinks there is a leak in British Intelligence to the NKVD.”
Lord Radcliffe raised his eyebrow.