by Mattias Berg
And when the chaos was at its height, I made my way out of the base. Above ground, amid the throngs of people: first through the inner gate, then the outer gate. I had been training for this kind of thing for most of my adult life. Navigating even in the most difficult terrain.
So I was able to follow the tall woman and her short companion through the chaos when I caught sight of their familiar movements about a hundred feet ahead of me. I stuck to them, my eyes on their backpacks—new black ones, I noticed—as they made their way along the side of the autoroute. Until we reached the taxi which was waiting in a clearing.
“What the hell happened?” the driver said.
“Can you skip Hasselt and take us straight to Zaventem, to the airport?” Jesús María said.
“How dangerous is it going to be for me, Madame?”
“Who knows, but you’ll probably be O.K., you’ll see. Either way, you’ll get a shit load of money, you know that.”
The driver scanned our motley crew in his rearview mirror: Ingrid, propped up between us, more or less lifeless, sinking fast, and still giving off a distinct smell of burning even though her protective clothing had been fully extinguished. I remained, despite my disguise, vaguely familiar. The ever-baffling Jesús María. When he heard the sirens from the emergency vehicles approaching from the opposite direction, he drove off along the winding forest roads.
When we got to the airport we found a remote corner. Half-dragging Ingrid inside, Jesús María gave her an injection—painkiller, sedative, God knows what else—and looked at me. She seemed almost to be smiling, maybe at my rudimentary disguise with wig, beard and mustache.
“O.K. Erasmo, where to now?”
I stared at her.
“Hasn’t Ingrid said anything?”
“Zip, nada. You know her.”
Jesús María saw my hesitation, or maybe it was horror, glanced at Ingrid and shrugged.
“So. Make a decision, Erasmo. Rise to the occasion.”
I walked thirty or so feet away from her, from the café and the people, from the television screens showing the breaking news from the airbase—mostly material damage, no lives lost but some injuries among the fire fighters. This would make the Nuclear Weapons Scandal stories even harder for our military authorities to contain. I went into the telephone booth. Glanced at the huge clock on the wall outside: 21.12. Closed my eyes, went through the options, made up my mind—or perhaps followed my instincts.
“Erasmus, good Lord, you’re alive!” Sixten said.
“Yes . . .” I said, and immediately pressed the red button, without really knowing why.
For a few moments more I pondered—it felt like minutes but could well have been seconds—looking over toward the two women there in the dark corner of the airport. If anybody else saw them they would not understand what was going on. Two women with bulky packs: even bigger than before, with yet one more large black bag which Ingrid must have been carrying over her shoulder. One of them awake, the other in a deep sleep, just beyond one of the airport cafés outside the security zone, next to the cleaners’ storage area. A brief rest stop before the next stage on a long journey. Nobody who noticed us would begin to comprehend anything of the context.
A large hairy spider dashed across the floor. I knew it could not really be here, at a modern European airport, not that kind of species—yet my arachnophobia now seemed like the only real thing in my life. Not until the spider crept up my wrist, the artery, did I shudder: had to fight to control myself to not try to brush it off or even shout out loud inside the booth. In a cold sweat I looked around. None of the other travelers seemed to be in the least bit interested in us. Ingrid was still unconscious, her head against the wall, and even Jesús María had closed her eyes.
I took the phone, put in a few coins and dialed the number I had memorized, along with everything else.
“We’re coming in. She’s completely under, probably won’t wake up before we reach you,” I said.
Edelweiss breathed deeply at the other end of the line. I must have woken him in the middle of his obligatory 3.00 p.m. power nap.
“So you no longer believe Oskarsson’s stories? That she’s going to short-circuit the whole system,” Edelweiss said.
I heard him pant through the trans-Atlantic static. Calculating, analyzing, weighing his alternatives without exactly knowing what his opponent’s were. The art of war.
“And how can we know, my friend, that you’re telling the truth now? Will keep your own little side of our bargain?” he said.
“How can I know that you will?” I said.
He held back, waited for my next move—which followed:
“Shall I try to get Jesús María to come in too?”
“Yes, do that. That would be good. Seats will be arranged for you on the night flight.”
Silence once more, before his final remark.
“Posterity will be forever grateful to you, Erasmus. And you won’t forget to bring the briefcase, will you?”
“Don’t you have it?” I said, hanging up without waiting for an answer.
When I sat down again, with the anesthetized Ingrid as a barrier between me and Jesús María, she could not contain herself for long.
“So what’s going on, Erasmo?”
I waited, deep in thought, before her next question provided me with an opening: “What did Sixten say?”
“That Washington is the next step,” I said.
Now it was Jesús María’s turn to sit quietly. Her move.
“Why’s that?” she said.
Games of bluff are like chess, or any game of strategy actually: they depend as much on the opponent’s imagination as one’s own.
“He didn’t want to say. But we’ll get the information when we’re there, from Sixten—unless Ingrid wakes up before then.”
“O.K. . . .” Jesús María drew out her answer. “And who’s going to be there, Erasmo?”
“Edelweiss, for sure. Probably Zafirah. Presumably Kurt-or-John.”
She drummed her fingers against the edge of the bench, desperate for a cigarette or driven by those inner demons of hers.
“To hell with it . . . I’m in. When’s the flight?”
5
Substitution
December 2013
Dulles International Airport, Washington D.C.
5.01
She had been drugged to the eyeballs. It was surprisingly easy for us to make our way, with Ingrid in the borrowed wheelchair, through Zaventem airport, where Edelweiss had been pulling strings. The key word was “narcolepsy”, that strange epidemic throughout Sweden which Ingrid had mentioned. According to some, the side effect of the mass vaccinations against swine flu some years ago.
Those who were curious and knew what the word meant needed no further explanation—gave me a compassionate look, some succinct words of advice, a medical tip or two. Those who did not, did not need one either. They avoided Ingrid’s ghost-like sleeping figure: assumed a case of substance abuse.
That was of course Jesús María’s specialty. But on the way to Zaventem, and so far as I could tell during the subsequent flight, she did not smoke a single cigarette. Made not the slightest attempt to break the rules, no quick puff in the restrooms, no risk of everything for the sake of the drug’s temporary solace. So for her, too, the stakes appeared to have been raised dramatically.
For my own part, I was suffering from existential vertigo, the floor swayed, my worlds were colliding. I had made a pact with the Evil One. I was playing for high stakes with the grand master himself—and even kidded myself I could win. Or at least that he would keep to the rules, let me and my family loose in the way we had agreed.
That after they had been given their freedom again, or whatever situation they found themselves in—I hardly dared to think about it—I should be granted safe conduct to the destination of my choosing, and might sink deep under the continental ice. Quite simply let the world of nuclear weapons take its course. Allow you to pas
s your judgments, should you ever get the chance.
Edelweiss had worked quickly after my call, set up the necessary logistics. When the staff at the check-in desk for the night flight to Washington saw my passport, we were immediately shown to the last counter in Terminal D. From there further underground to Terminal X, that secret domain where we were given first-class tickets and new identity documents, each set within its own padded envelope.
According to my new passport I was now Desmond Kern. Yet another witticism from the grand master. He had so often spoken about this during our strategy classes: that we should always identify the main character in the intelligence tangle we were to unravel. Only when all the roles had been assigned would we be able to choose an effective strategy. You have to identify the core of the poodle, he said over and over again.
And the name on my new passport left no room for doubt. What Edelweiss was saying, in coded form, was that Ingrid no longer had the lead role in the complex drama that had been playing out since our escape—rather that it was me. Out on the street Desmond Kern was Des Kern. But it came from the German expression des Pudels Kern, The Core of the Poodle. From Goethe’s “Faust”.
Once our flight had taken off, Jesús María ordered three shots of tequila straight up, no ice, no lime. We had yet to reach cruising altitude. Here in first class nothing seemed impossible. I did the same, hoping to be able to sleep a while, disappear for an hour or two, not have to think. A momentary escape.
Ingrid continued to sleep as deeply as before, and according to Jesús María her pulse would not start to climb until we were closer to landing. So it was the perfect opportunity for Jesús María and myself to rest, stretch our legs in the space the first row afforded—or for me to ask questions.
“What actually happened at Kleine Brogel?” I began.
“Well, whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn’t what Ingrid said. For a while I felt like leaving her stuck down in there, in the collapsed store room: let the Witch burn on her pyre . . . but then I changed my mind. I’ve got some unfinished business. It’d be fucking hard to do it without her.”
Jesús María fell silent, took another mouthful to finish her first shot.
“Twisted, all the same,” she said.
I looked across at her, this opaque woman with a burn on her forehead, now that I looked, as I took my first sip. We had put Ingrid in the window seat, leaning her against the wall—and the cabin crew seemed sufficiently well informed not to ask questions.
“I always thought I’d take John out first. But that’s not how it turned out.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“That it was Kurt on the slope there? For real, Erasmo? Don’t you think I’ve known who was who, ever since this whole shit started, however hard I tried to make them look the same? Seen their birthmarks there before me last thing at night and first thing in the morning. All fucking night long. Each and every day.”
As she paused I glanced at Ingrid’s watch. A little more than seven hours until landing. So I had time to wait.
“Can you imagine, Erasmo, that it was Kurt’s mentor who once saved my life?”
I think I shook my head.
“He killed my boyfriend Enrique in the most grotesque way you can imagine, I swear to you.”
She took a big gulp from her second shot.
“That man was the very best security guard at the base, outstanding and brutal. Then he took two gifted young men under his wing and turned them into something even better, or worse, than himself, their mentor. They stepped into his shoes completely when he retired.”
Silence again while she emptied the glass and started on the third.
“Including the handling of me. Did fucking everything that their mentor had done, just as Enrique once had. Only better—and worse. Even hell has its nuances.”
I stared at her.
“That’s an awful story,” I said.
Jesús María stared back. “Don’t pity me, Erasmo.
Don’t ever do that.”
I shook my head, or did I nod? Waited for the rest—and then it came, almost in one long breath.
“My first job was in some shithole beauty salon at the back of nowhere. The worst kind you can imagine: eyebrows and cuticles, verrucas, the pits. Then a friend from school joined me and used her inheritance to buy the woman out. We shifted the direction of the whole damn business, changed all the signs and the interior, started offering body modification. My friend had been a textile artist too, gifted as hell. So we knew how to sew—and skin was no more difficult than leather or canvas. We were young and pretentious, massively inspired by ORLAN, that French artist. Money came in from people who started to travel to our little place to redo themselves: rich suckers wanting to look like movie stars. We exploited them so we could work at the other end of the scale. Stitch together those who were already in pieces, who’d been blown inside out, I swear to you, Erasmo . . .”
Jesús María gave me a searching look, considering my new blond beard. Trying to gauge if I believed a word.
“Then Enrique got wind of what we were doing. I had to leave my friend there, run for my life. Finally managed to get over the border to the army base—just as they dumped Ingrid there, ripped up after her violent delivery. So I fixed her. Did about the same thing I had always done: mended torn women. After that, Ingrid wanted to become my fucking blood sister and they couldn’t very well let me go. Someone who was so useful to have around, in such a number of different ways. But I had to stay behind the scenes even at the base. Enrique could still sniff me out anywhere. He’s a bastard, I swear to you, Erasmo.”
She knocked back her third tequila, I kept sipping on my first.
“All of that medical crap I had to learn afterward. Which gave me the chance to do a ton of different things, anesthetic optional, but in the end someone always managed to get in the way. A whole posse by the operating table just to stop me from doing what we all actually wanted. Even when I put the chip into Kurt, so we could keep track of John too since they always moved in pairs, Ingrid was standing there cheering me on—but she never let me go any further. Went on about how she was saving me for some bigger assignment, that she didn’t want to waste me in that way, always messing about with her witchery, you know. Erasmo, you know, don’t you, all those fucking mind games.”
She looked at me again, seemed to be driving at something specific. I stared into my glass, downed my second shot while she pressed the button to summon the steward. Her story was almost finished. Only its climax remained.
“I stumbled in on her, Erasmo. As she was digging around in the medicine cabinet, to which only Ed and I were meant to have the key, the one with the really heavy stuff. She was probably thinking of doing the interventions herself. Just imagine: you two wouldn’t have turned out very pretty. But now I made her promise me I could join the flight too. Take down John and Kurt, in that order, when the opportunity arose. Granted me that in the end, after half a fucking life—in return for my silence.”
I sank my third tequila at this point too, so I could order more when the steward came.
“And that must have been why she went skiing on that mountain the other day, like she was offering herself so I could take down Kurt. For my fucking sake, Erasmo. To keep her promise.”
Then she reached into her pocket and brought out the syringe that we always had in our packs: pre-loaded with whatever was necessary to stop us from ever revealing any secrets to the wrong people. With a practiced movement she gave herself a shot in the thigh.
I had no idea what it contained. If it was something instantly lethal or perhaps the opposite: for casual enjoyment or maybe longer-term escape from reality. Whatever it was, Jesús María fell asleep immediately. Leaving me with the rest of my questions.
About her, about Ingrid, Sixten, Lise Meitner. The whole story.
5.02
The established view is that Meitner’s conscience would not allow her to get involved in military research. B
ut a letter in the Stockholm archives paints a slightly different picture.
It is dated January 1915, and is addressed to her friend and colleague of many years, Otto Hahn. When Hahn received the letter, he was working as a field researcher in the German war-gas project. It appears to be a reply to an earlier letter from Hahn, which available sources suggest has been lost, in which he presumably expresses a certain crisis of conscience about his work. This is what Meitner writes:
“I think I know roughly what you are working on and can very well understand your doubts. But on this occasion I am sure you are right. One has to be adaptable. In the first place, you were not consulted. Secondly, if you don’t do this, others will. Above all, whatever helps to shorten this dreadful war is an act of compassion.”
I have had the letter analyzed by a graphologist, to try to confirm Meitner as its author, and he had no doubts. It seems to shed new light on her: the only significant researcher in the field who chose not to join the Manhattan Project and contribute to the construction of the atom bomb. But if Meitner could justify Hahn’s military research effort with this type of argument, saying that it could “shorten this dreadful war” or that other people would do it if he did not, she may have seen the development of the atom bomb in the same light.
What Hahn was working on during the First World War was something that must be regarded as the next worst weapon of mass destruction in history. Namely, ingenious gas grenades with two chemical components—in part a substance which first forced its way through the gas mask and impelled the soldier to tear it off in panic, and also the deadly poison which was then free to enter the lungs and tissue unhindered.
Yet Meitner wrote her letter to Hahn relatively early: at the age of thirty-five. With an enormous passion for science which in her letters in the Stockholm archives often seems to overshadow everything else. The same year, 1915, Meitner expressed herself thus to her closest friend: