The One Man

by Andrew Gross

  “It is your move, Herr Wolciek,” she said with a slightly reproving smile.

  “Yes. Of course.” He cleared his throat. “Sorry.”

  He was embarrassed at the sudden stiffness he felt in his pants. Both under the chess table and in his bunk at night. She was the wife of the Lagerkommandant. To her, he could be only a lowly Jew who would not live long. His only value was that he amused her. For all he knew, she had the maid wipe down the very pieces he touched with a cloth after he left.

  Yet, that fifth match, he saw that she was happy to see him. She must have studied up for she played white and tried a new opening. A variation of the Sicilian Defense. It was the kind of passive opening that easily led to a long middle game and went against his standard Ruy Lopez, and Leo resisted a quick exchange of pawns and knights that would have resolved things sooner.

  At some point she asked him where he was from.

  “Lodz,” he said, looking up. “It’s in the center of Poland. We have beer there too.” He smiled and looked down.

  “Polish beer, you say? Never heard of it. How could there be such a thing?” They played on a few more moves. “And your father … What does he do?” Leo looked up at her. “If you do not mind me asking.”

  “He was a lawyer, Frau Ackermann. He represented people in small business transactions.”

  “And he is…?” She hesitated, so that he assumed she either meant dead or even worse, was he here?

  “No, he died, madame, before the war.” Leo moved up his rook to put pressure on her knight. Then he added, “Luckily, I think.”

  Her eyes met his this time. It was the first time he had injected his position and fate into their game, and he was angry at himself because he felt it suddenly separate them. She retreated her knight and the game wound on. Leo glanced at the young guard. He was no more than twenty-two or -three. A private only, but surely this was a plum assignment to guard the wife of the assistant camp commander. Still, one that kept him away from all the “fun and games” going on next door. The way he looked at Leo—narrow, impassive, staring right through him—Leo couldn’t help but wonder just how many of his buddies on the other side of the fence this young private had killed. Emptied his Luger into the back of someone’s head as they kneeled and waited. Or clubbed them senseless with a blow to the head. Or clamped the “shower” door tight and chuckled to his pals at the gagging and cries for mercy coming from within. Maybe put down a few reichsmarks on how long they would last in there. Three minutes? Five? Eight?

  Maybe she saw this in Leo’s eyes.

  “Private, can you please call in Hedda?” she asked. The maid.

  “Of course, Frau Ackermann.” The young private clicked his heels and left.

  She picked up her queen and went to play—to king’s knight six, Leo assumed, uselessly attacking his queen—when she held onto it without placing it down and waited for him to meet her eyes.

  “I know what you must think—what anyone would naturally think, of course. But I am not the monster you may imagine, Leo. I studied economics at the university in Leipzig. When I met Kurt, he was studying for his law degree. He was very dashing,” she said. “Driven. For a young girl, it was…”

  It was what? Leo wondered what she was about to say. Impressive? Irresistible? He looked up and her gaze seemed to lock on his even more strongly now, more resolutely, and this time Leo did not pull his away.

  “Just because I am here, because I am with…” She paused again, short of saying his name. Him. “It doesn’t mean that I endorse…”

  Endorse what…? The hell that was happening day and night that her husband was overseeing just across the gate? Not for the first time Leo saw what looked to be sadness in her eyes. Something vulnerable inside her, from deep inside her heart, coming forth. The look seemed to say I don’t know how long I can save you, Leo. You understand, not forever …

  But all he said back was “Yes, Frau Ackermann.” Though he met her eyes as if to say he understood. Then his gaze shifted back to the piece she still held in her hand. “Your queen, ma’am…”

  “Yes, my queen, of course.” She placed it down on the very spot Leo was sure she would. “Check.”

  At that very moment Hedda, the housemaid, came in. “Can you prepare some fruit and cakes for us, Hedda, please?”

  “Right away, Frau Ackermann.”

  “And please make sure that—”

  No sooner had the words left her mouth than the sound of boots was heard coming up the front steps.

  “Who is that?” She turned, nerves spreading on her face.

  The front door opened. Leo’s heart came to a complete stop.

  It was the Lagerkommandant himself, coming back to his home.

  He turned to face them in the sitting room and took off his hat—dark hair, smoothed back, eyes to match, a jawline as rigid as stone.

  “Kurt…” Frau Ackermann stood up, nervously smoothing out her dress.

  “Greta.” He smiled back—his tone neither warm nor off-putting.

  Then his gaze fell on Leo. Like a heavy weight plummeting deep into the sea. That same smile, but this time, a chill in it, unbending, cold as the wind rattling an open door in winter. Leo felt it remain on him for what seemed an eternity, almost draining the light out of the room. “I see you have a visitor.”

  Leo lowered his eyes.

  “We were just finishing…” Greta said. “We’re in the midst of a competitive game.”

  “Then by all means…” he said, his eyes still fastened on Leo, seeming to indicate play on.

  Leo felt too frozen to even lift a piece. He didn’t know whether to stand up in the presence of the camp commandant, in his own parlor, no less, and with his wife. Or drop to his knees. But his heart would not move a beat. So he just stayed. His throat like sandpaper.

  “Whenever you’re done, of course, darling…” the commandant said, opening the top button of his uniform. Then he continued on into the house, his boots sounding heavily on the wood floor. “Hedda…!”

  “I am sorry,” Frau Ackermann said, still standing, the color still gone from her face. “I didn’t expect him until later. I’m afraid we will have to continue this another time.” Her face was flushed and when she looked at Leo, he saw a combination of apology and nerves.

  “Of course, Frau Ackermann.” Leo stood up too. He went to reset the pieces. He was sure that this was it. That he would never be invited to play again.

  “Please, don’t.” Frau Ackermann reached out to stop him, touching his arm. “Next week, we will pick up from where we are.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  FIVE MONTHS EARLIER

  LOS ALAMOS, NEW MEXICO

  The angular, lanky man in the plaid outdoors jacket and brown fedora went up to the dusty Ford sedan that had made the ninety-minute trip up from Sante Fe.

  A man with thinning white hair, rounded shoulders, a high forehead, and almost sad, deep-set eyes stepped out from the back seat.

  “Bohr.” Robert Oppenheimer went up and put his arms around the celebrated Danish physicist, welcoming him to the most heavily guarded scientific facility in the world, where dozens of the world’s foremost physicists, chemists, and mathematicians were sequestered on a research effort known only to a very few as the Manhattan Project.

  “Robert.” The Dane warmly clasped the American’s hand. Even at fifty-eight, Niels Bohr was still among the most respected theoretical physicists in the world, one of the originators of the quantum theory, and before the war, his Copenhagen Conferences had brought nearly all of the world’s leading physicists to his doorstep at the university there.

  “I trust this trip was a little easier than the jaunt over to London?” Oppenheimer grinned, patting the Dane on the shoulder.

  During the war, Bohr and his family had chosen to remain in his native Denmark, sure that the Nazis dared not threaten one of the world’s most venerable scientists, recipient of the 1922 Nobel Prize. Still, he resisted every effort to cooperate with his
captors. Then in September, barely three months ago, he was tipped off that because of his mother’s Jewish background, he was about to be arrested the very next day and deported to one of the camps, an arrest that would have likely been a death sentence for a man of his age. That very night, he and his wife, with only a single suitcase between them, crossed the Oresund by moonlight to neutral Sweden in a tiny boat, weaving between mines and German patrol boats. Two months later, with a parachute strapped on his back and literally passing out due to lack of oxygen, the world’s most celebrated physicist was secretly shuttled to the U.K. in the empty bomb bay of a British bomber, carrying the mail pouch between London and Stockholm. After such an escape, the winding ride in a Ford sedan up to the top-secret enclave in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains must have seemed like a trip to the shore.

  “Immeasurably, it would be fair to say,” the Dane replied affably.

  “Well, we’re glad you’ve come,” said Oppenheimer. “I think you’ll find some old friends who are awaiting you.”

  An hour later, over lunch in his cottage, Oppenheimer, Richard Feynman, Hans Bethe, and the great Enrico Fermi sat by the fire and brought the Danish scientist up to date on their advances. Bohr had always been concerned about the consequences for humanity of creating such an instrument of destruction, and as he ate his steak listening to his fellow physicists, he suppressed both a theoretician’s thrill at the progress they had made and a feeling of impending worry at the same time. On matters that, only a few years back, were merely the musings of physicists over a cognac at scientific conferences.

  The biggest obstacle they now faced was the separation of U-235 from its weightier and much more prevalent cousin, U-238, and in quantities sufficient to produce a series of suitable chain reactions.

  And, as the clock was ticking, most important in the little time they had left.

  They were eager to question Bohr about where he thought Heisenberg was in this process working for the Nazis.

  They had narrowed it down to three possible methods of separation, which they mapped out for Bohr, sketching on napkins and tablecloths. Electromagnetic bombardment, thermal diffusion, and gaseous diffusion. All were laboriously time-consuming and required enormous outlays of funds. Massive cyclotrons were under construction, vast diffusion tanks in Oak Ridge, Tennessee—one a series of fifty-eight connected buildings, over forty-two acres, all capable of separating and then separating again the lighter, gasified isotope 238 in thousands of stages. Bohr was awed. It was the largest scientific apparatus ever conceived and built by man. And the most expensive.

  Yet it all was trial and error, Oppenheimer bemoaned. At times, since none of this had ever been done, it was much like the blind leading the blind. The materials for these separation chambers had to be incredibly resistant and airtight. Any leak or erosion could cause them to be shut down. New compounds were being constructed. And it was all in a race against the clock, as they feared the Germans were ahead of them.

  And to the winner went the war.

  “This gaseous diffusion process…” Oppenheimer said, lighting his pipe after rhubarb pie. “We are beginning to think that that one is the way.”

  To Bohr, it all spoke of a world of unimaginable and unforeseen consequences. And now Teller was talking about activating plutonium and creating even deadlier bombs. And what of the Russians? They were on it too. Did we share what we knew with them, our supposed allies? And if not, what of the world then when they finally got their hands on the same powers, as they would eventually?

  “Gaseous diffusion?” Bohr said, nodding.

  Oppenheimer took a bite of his pipe. “Yes. But it’s a crap shoot. The quantities are slim. And Bergstrom, as you recall, who knows this process, is now in bed with Heisenberg.”

  “Yes, Bergstrom…” Bohr nodded after a long pause. He complimented the pie; such delicacies he had not been able to procure in Europe for some time. Then, “I may know of someone,” he said between bites. “On this gaseous diffusion process. A Pole. A Jew, in fact. He once worked in Berlin with Meitner and Hahn, you may recall,” he said to Bethe, “on this very thing. Kind of a narrow specialty for such a sharp mind, if you ask me.”

  They all waited. There was too much room for error. They needed someone to shortcut this process.

  “The only problem…” Bohr said, taking another bite of pie, with a disappointed shrug back at Oppenheimer. “I’m not sure he ever made it out of Europe.”

  TWENTY-TWO

  “Leo…” Alfred spotted the young man again in the yard after the afternoon roll call.

  “Professor. Good to see you are well,” the boy replied. “Have you thought up any new brainteasers for me?”

  “Not yet, but have you thought at all about what I asked you?”

  “You mean your physics project? I’m afraid I’ve been a bit occupied.”

  “Playing chess with your new admirer, I suspect. We’ve all heard. Perhaps the rigors of something truly important are just too serious for you right now, as opposed to a mere game.”

  “Chess is no more a ‘game’ than what you do, Professor. And that admirer may just keep my block mates and me alive in this hole a bit longer. But just for argument’s sake, what was it you have in mind? To teach me electromagnetic physics, I think you said. To what end?”

  “Not teach. Let’s talk somewhere for a moment. Just hear me out. I’ll explain.”

  “All right. I guess a few minutes can’t hurt. Lead the way, Professor.”

  They went back to Alfred’s block. Everyone was in their bunks stretched out from their day’s work, awaiting the evening meal. They wove through the block to where there was a small sick bay section in the rear. Six beds, so those who had a fever or dysentery wouldn’t infect the rest. And the latrine.

  “Please sit down, Leo.”

  “Your office, Professor?” Leo leaned back against an empty bunk. “Impressive.”

  “Please, what I have to say is no joke, son. And though I can’t tell you why just yet, I promise, it’s more important than anything you have ever imagined. What I am proposing to do is to go over my work with you. Equations, formulas, proofs. You don’t have to learn it. I just want you to listen to me and to commit it to memory.”

  “To memory…?”

  “Yes. To keep it all locked away in that exquisite mind of yours. Will you do that, Leo? I am old and starting to lose my strength. You can see, my bones are starting to come through. Who knows how much time I have left?”

  “Who knows how much any of us have?”

  “But you, son … you are young. You have a chance to make it out of here. And if you do, what I will teach you will be more valuable than all the chess games ever played. You have to trust me on that. But it will not be easy. It will take a lot of time and concentration, going over things. I promise, even for you. Elaborate proofs and progressions. Things you’ve never heard of and may not understand how they all fit together. But it’s vital. Are you up for it?”

  “Physics…?” Leo turned up his nose like he had asked what was for dinner and been told turnips.

  Alfred nodded. “And math. And much of it very complicated.”

  “So I can do what one day, if I manage to survive…? Teach this?”

  “Physics is a lot more than just formulas and equations, son. It has real-world applications. Things people want to know very badly. For now, and for the future as well.”

  “I don’t know what my future holds.” Leo shrugged. “But right now, chess seems like a better guarantor of it than this.”

  “I need you, young man. In some way, the world needs you. Are you game?”

  “The world? You make it sound like what you have there can win us the war. All right.” Leo took off his cap. “Let’s say I take the bait. Go ahead. Try me, Professor. Lesson One. As long as we’re already here.”

  A smile crept onto Alfred’s lips. He sat down on the cot across from Leo. “You’re going to hear a lot about atoms, boy. And various gases. Things ca
lled isotopes.”

  “Isotopes…?”

  “You’re familiar with the molecular structure of mass?”

  Leo shrugged. “I studied the elements chart in chemistry. Back in school.”

  “That’s a start. Well, atoms of the same element can have different numbers of neutrons. The different possible versions of each element are called isotopes. For example, the most common isotope of hydrogen has no neutrons at all. There’s also a hydrogen isotope called deuterium with one neutron, and another, tritium, that has two…”

  “Deuterium…? Tritium…?” Leo blinked at him hazily. “Must I know all of these in order to save humanity?”

  “Don’t worry about that now. And please don’t mock me, son. So let’s start with something basic. Graham’s Law. It was formulated by a Scottish chemist in the last century. It states that the rate of effusion of a gas is inversely proportional to the square root of either its mass or its density.”

  “Effusion? And just what does that mean, old man?” Leo rolled his eyes.

  “Not ‘old man.’ If we’re going to do this, you can start by addressing me as Professor. Or even Alfred, if you prefer. I’m going to teach you things well beyond what you know or can imagine. So this will be like any class in school. There’s an instructor and a student. And it starts with respect. Respect for those who know more than you. Do you understand?”

  For a moment, Alfred was certain the boy had already tired of him, and would just take his cap and walk out. Go back to the game that was clearly more fun, and had gotten him cakes and chocolates and all the adulation.

  But to Alfred’s surprise, he remained, his eyes shifting from bored and then reproved, to apologetic, and finally even to interested, filled with some contrition at the same time. “I’m sorry, Professor. I didn’t mean to be rude. Please continue.”

  Inside, Alfred smiled. Strip away the brashness, forgivable in such a precocious lad, and inside that perfect brain was an inexhaustible basin ready and waiting and an unquenchable curiosity to fill it with whatever knowledge there was.