by James Lepore
Diebner had now provided the necessary good cause, in spades. A formula to build an atomic bomb in three months, developed in clandestine late night sessions at his lab at the KWI. Astounding. No one would object to Friedeman’s arrest. No one would care what happened to him afterward.
After talking to Jaeger, Himmler had been up late studying dossiers on what he was told were Germany’s top nuclear physicists, those, that is, whose politics were pure. Removing his wire-rimmed spectacles and rubbing the spot on the bridge of his nose where they pinched his skin, he recalled how disappointingly small was their number. Scientists were a tricky lot to decipher, devoted as they were to science, and seemingly uninterested in ideology. Kurt Deibner was a refreshing exception, proud to be a member of the party, and clear-eyed when it came to the remaining Jews masquerading as German scientists. And to Jews in general. A man after his own heart.
When Diebner quietly closed the office door behind him, Heinrich Himmler, the second most powerful man in Nazi Germany, congratulated himself on a good night’s work. He closed his eyes and rested his balding head for a second on the back of his plush chair, then abruptly sat up and looked at his watch—it read 7:15. He rose and strode confidently across the long, richly carpeted room to his desk at the opposite end. There he picked up the phone and dialed the four numbers that would connect him to Hans Becker. When the chief, now an SS colonel, answered, Himmler said simply, “Are you ready?”
“Yes, Herr Reichsfuhrer. My men are in place.”
“Where is he?”
“In the rear building.”
“Arrest him,” Himmler said.
Himmler rarely said goodbye or anything remotely cordial when greeting or taking leave of an inferior. Nothing else to say, he set the phone’s handset back in its cradle. He then turned and swept open the drapes behind his desk. As he did, a blinding flash appeared in the distance, followed a second or two later by a sharp kaboom.
Himmler knew that the bomb alert at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute two days earlier was not real. Goebbels had concocted it as part of the elaborate pretense the Fuhrer believed was necessary to invade Poland. What could this be then? The fire now raging on Berlin’s eastern perimeter, in Dahlem, the section of the city in which the KWI was located, looked very real. Was this Goebbels work? Or was this a real attack by an enemy? No matter, tomorrow Poland would fall, and the second world war of the twentieth century—the German Century—would begin. That is, if the English and the French were to keep their word, which they might or might not. It didn’t matter to Himmler. His portfolio was filled with the Fuhrer’s most cherished priorities. Eliminate the Jews, confiscate their money and treasure, bleed them in labor camps, repress all dissent. And now he had a new one, one that would make up for the Franz Shroeder fiasco. He would hand the Fuhrer an atomic bomb in three or four months, several of them in fact. The so-called world war that was about to start would be over before it really began. London would be in ruins, and perhaps Paris as well. The Thousand Year Reich would officially begin.
Chapter 6
North Oxford, August 31, 1939, 5:00 p.m.
It was rare for all four of Professor John Ronald Tolkien’s children to be home at once. He was pleased, and, more important, he could see how quietly happy Edith, his wife of twenty-three years, was as she worked in and around the kitchen of their modest home on Northmoor Road. If any home with eight bedrooms and a study as spacious as this could be considered modest, the professor said to himself, looking up from his desk and pulling on his pipe. He had had the wall between his old study and the drawing room removed in the spring to accommodate his growing library. Looking around, he felt a familiar tinge of guilt creeping up his spine. Edith had encouraged this expansion, and the rambling old house was certainly no less rambling as a result. Still, he fought regularly with what some modern thinkers were calling the ego, but what he knew as pride and selfishness. Edith accused him of going obsessively to confession. Perhaps she was right. He loved his books; alas, and the pleasure they gave him, and therein lay the rub.
He knew that Edith, an orphan like him, had been abandoned by the little family and few friends she had extant when she converted to Catholicism before their marriage; that the one, perhaps the only, source of true joy in her life was her children. And him, if he might dare think it. She did love him, he was certain. And he loved her, so much so that his mind always turned to Edith, the beauty he met when she was nineteen and he only sixteen, as the model for a half-elven, half-human princess he was beginning to describe in the book he was writing. A book he had turned to with renewed energy when he returned from his travels in Germany the year before.
He neatly stacked the pages of this book that he had written that afternoon, sharpened the pencil he was using, and placed it on the top page of the manuscript on his desk, his ritual for ending his writing for the day. Sitting back, he listened to the sounds of his home—the clatter of china and silverware as Edith and Priscilla set the dining room table, the soft whirring of the lawnmower as John pushed it back and forth across the front lawn, the muted chugging of the model railway he had built for Michael and Christopher in an empty bedroom upstairs. Don’t touch the wiring, he had admonished them, but who really knew what penetrated the heads of eighteen and fourteen-year-old boys. Don’t blow the house up might have been the thing to say.
He had written all throughout the late summer day, relishing the presence of all of the Tolkiens under one roof, not minding the least the one or two times Edith had come into his study to jiggle a window that was stuck. It was a hot, humid day, and she wanted as much air as was possible circulating in the house, especially in his study where pipe smoke tended to gather in the corners. He was about to relight his pipe, but decided against it when he heard her footsteps approaching.
“Dear one,” Tolkien said, when Edith appeared before him, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Ronald.”
“None other.”
“Arlie Cavanagh is here.”
“Arlie Cavanagh?”
“To see you.”
Silence. Then Tolkien said, “I was going to take Chris to see the Cheltenham Flyer on Saturday.”
“Today’s Thursday. Surely…”
“My dear Edith, you know what happened the last time Arlie appeared out of thin air.”
“Oh, Ronald. He’s probably just stopping to say hello. Shall I…?”
“Of course. Send him in.”
Edith nodded, then said, “I’ll invite him to supper. We have plenty.”
Professor Tolkien nodded and smiled. Edith turned and left the room. While she was gone, he pictured the tall, waif-thin, fair-haired Arlie Cavanagh, his former student, now a spy, standing in the foyer in his seersucker suit and repp tie, straw hat in hand, twiddling his thumbs. To Tolkien’s right was a large window, open to the late afternoon sun. Well, he said to himself, gazing out of it, I’ve had one glorious day in my cozy, well-provisioned home in the shire, all the Tolkiens buzzing about. One day at least. What now?
Chapter 7
London, August 31, 1939, 6:00 p.m.
“Welcome to Section D, old man,” said Eldridge White.
“Are we at war?” Ian Fleming asked.
Section D, Fleming knew, had been organized by White’s predecessor, Hugh Sinclair, to engage in political and para-military operations on enemy soil in the war with Germany that Sinclair, and everyone else in SIS, knew was coming. Hence Fleming’s question.
“We’re about to be.”
“Is this about our man in Berlin?”
“No, his son. He’s arriving at Gare de l’Est at eleven p.m.”
Fleming looked around the room. The bartender was polishing glassware, humming quietly. A man in a navy blue suit was talking to a fashionably dressed woman at the bar. Two businessmen-types were having a drink at a banquette in the far right corner. Otherwise the dark, very quiet, exquisitely appointed lounge was empty. Fleming knew that the Caxton Bar was an MI-6 meeting place, that the hotel in w
hich it was located, St. Ermin’s, was rumored to have secret underground tunnels connecting it to the nearby MI-6 headquarters on Broadway. This was, however, his first official invitation here. He had questions of course, but to press the chief of the service, well, that just was not done. Not if he wanted to be invited back.
“His son,” he said, finally. “I see.”
“Age fourteen. Hitler Youth type. He has the formula.”
Again Fleming said nothing.
“Where is Friedeman, pere? you’re thinking,” said White.
“Yes.”
“Do you know the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute? It’s in Berlin.”
“No.”
“It’s where Friedeman works, where this bomb research is being done.”
Silence.
“We’re told it blew up this morning. Quite an explosion.”
Both men were drinking St. George whiskey neat. They looked at their glasses, then sipped.
“Who am I?” Fleming asked.
“You’re still Anthony Harrington, the wine buyer.”
“And the Duke and Duchess?”
“You won’t be gone long. They’ll be in good hands until you get back.”
“What shall I do with him?”
“He’ll be with another lad. There will be a plane at Orly. The same one that will bring you over. The bartender will fill you in. He’s an old Etonian we call Bix. You and the professor stay with the boys. Bring them both to 54 Broadway. Tolkien can start debriefing on the way.”
“Tolkien?”
“Your old friend.”
“Delighted.”
“The thing is,” White said, “the formula’s supposed to be in some secret mumbo jumbo only Tolkien can decipher.”
“Remarkable. What would we do without Tolkien?”
“Quite. It appears Friedeman père wrote the thing with Tolkien in mind. This was conveyed to Einstein, who conveyed it to the Americans, who conveyed it to us.”
“The Americans…”
“They’re not interested. They think it’s nonsense.”
“So the formula will be ours?”
“Yes. It’s worth the candle.”
Fleming smiled and tossed back the remains of his whiskey. He wanted another, but waited for White, who, a second later, did the same and then motioned to the waiter for another round. Thank you, C, Fleming said to himself. “Is Tolkien meeting us here?” he asked.
“No, he’s being briefed and will go over separately. Perhaps you’ll have another story to tell. Amulets, Satan. Explosions in the forest.”
“Not likely,” replied Fleming. “There and back again in a jiffy.”
The drinks came, and both men sipped. Fleming could tell by the set of Ellie White’s mouth, the slight relaxation of his square shoulders, that their business was over, that this second drink was for simple enjoyment. Fleming relaxed as well. This was the second time he had met White. They had met earlier in the year in Prague. Fleming had made the mistake of calling him C then. He wasn’t chief yet, just acting for Hugh Sinclair, who was ill and had since died. White had indeed succeeded Sinclair, but now Fleming knew enough not to call him anything. SIS, the Secret Intelligence Service, of which the Directorate of Military Intelligence, Section Six—MI-6—was a part, did not officially exist. He and old Ellie were an insurance agent and a prospective client having a drink.
“What about our bridge game tonight?” Fleming asked.
“Ah, yes,” said White. “Our cheater.”
“Strange man.”
“You think he’s looking?”
“Yes, the silver cigarette case.”
“Delicate matter.”
“He’ll get the message.”
“Too bad we need his damned nickel alloy plants so badly.”
“He won’t cheat again, I promise, and there will be no spectacle.”
“We’ll do it tomorrow night. I daresay you’ll be home before breakfast.”
“Fine with me.”
“Any questions?”
“No.”
“Good, drink up. You’re expected at Northolt in an hour.”
Chapter 8
St. Dizier, France, August 31, 1939, 10:00 p.m.
Karl Brauer did not have relatives in Strasbourg. He was a boy with a butcher’s skill set and a secret. His deftness with various knives had taken him five years at his father’s side to learn; the secret, also learned from his father, five minutes in a conversation yesterday: he was a Jew.
Karl looked over at Conrad Friedeman and confirmed that he was still asleep, then out the window to the French countryside bathed in moonlight so bright the bales of hay scattered in the pastures cast velvety shadows in the form of perfect parallelograms. He looked at his watch, a gift from his father. St. Dizier was just ahead, then another sixty miles of hay bales and the occasional farmhouse and barn and they would be in Paris.
“I can’t keep it secret much longer,” Karl Sr. had told him as they sat in their small apartment above Karl Sr.’s shop. “Your mother, may she rest in peace, was Jewish, full-blooded. My mother as well. My father was what they now call Aryan. You have three Jewish grandparents. Under German law, you are a Jew. My father’s name, and the help of my lawyer, are what has kept you from being arrested and sent to a camp. Himmler’s race police are bearing down more and more all the time. I have repeatedly lied about you, to school boards, government authorities. If I am caught…If you are caught…”
“Is Conrad also a Jew?”
“No.”
“Then why…”
“He is Hitlerjugend, with papers. His father is highly respected. They will not question you traveling with him.”
“But…”
“You must do as I say. He will sleep for six or seven hours straight. When you meet the man with the white carnation, you will place yourself and Conrad in his custody. He will take you both to England.”
“I don’t understand. Why the sleeping medicine?”
“Conrad thinks he is a Nazi. He must be tricked.”
“He will hate me.”
“He is one person. If you stay here and are discovered, eighty million people will hate you. No doubt you will be sent to a camp. I have told you the things I have heard about these camps.”
“Who is the man with the carnation?”
“I don’t know. A friend of Professor Friedeman, someone who has offered to help.”
Karl glanced at Conrad. Still asleep. The vial of sleeping medicine he had mixed with Conrad’s Coca-Cola when they were an hour or so from Strasbourg had taken effect immediately. He would likely have to wake him when they got to Paris. Papa, he said to himself, recalling his effort to hold back his tears last night as he asked his father the question he did not want answered.
What will you do, Papa?
“I will join you as soon as I can. Professor Friedeman will know where you are settled. I could not pass up this opportunity to get you out.”
Karl doubted that he would ever see his father again. He knew this, in fact, as children know such things. Alone with the sleeping Conrad in the darkened first class cabin, Karl cried. He put his thumb and index finger to his eyes and, a frightened child on a strange journey, cried without restraint.
Chapter 9
Paris, August 31, 1939, 10:45 p.m.
“Albert Einstein. I must say.”
“Yes.”
“Extraordinary.”
“I agree. Quite.”
The two men, J.R.R. Tolkien and Ian Lancaster Fleming, sat on a pew-like, high-backed bench facing the Arrivals platform at Paris’ Gare de l’Est. Overhead they could hear pigeons cooing in the steel rafters that held up the cavernous building’s immense glass roof. Occasionally, one or two flew down and pecked at the pink and gray striated marble floor at their feet. Ignored by the two men, they flew off to their sleeping quarters on high.
“The young chap who flew me over had very little to say,” said Tolkien, who punctuated this remark with a long pull on
his pipe.
“You’ve been briefed,” replied Fleming. “Pilots fly.”
“I sat right next to him.”
“Sound training.”
“I’m amazed, I must say. Einstein. The atomic bomb.”
“We’re strange creatures, we humans,” Fleming answered. “Can’t seem to go in one direction, can we?”
Tolkien smiled and shook his head. Five hours ago he had been awaiting supper with Edith and his children on Northmoor Road. Now he was in a Paris train station, waiting for a fourteen-year-old boy—a devout Nazi, no less—to arrive with a coded formula that only he, John Ronald Tolkien, an obscure professor of English literature, of all the people on the planet, could decipher. He had been trained as a code breaker in the spring at the Government Code and Decipher School in London, but never expected an assignment so quickly; nor one in which MI-6 had had it from the Americans, who had it from Albert Einstein, of all people, that the formula in the boy’s possession would lead to the building of an atomic bomb in just a month or two. What were the odds, Arlie Cavanagh, a gambling man, had said as they were leaving Northmoor Road. Indeed, what were the odds?
“How have you been keeping?” the Oxford Don asked, breaking away from his reflections on the scene at home, his hasty goodbyes to Edith and the children. “You look in fighting form. ”
“I’m a wine merchant.”
“A wine merchant? You were such a good journalist.”
“Better cover.”
“I see. Doing what?”
“Keeping an eye on David and the American girl.”
“Ah, yes, all those Nazi salutes. Depressing. What have they been up to?”
“They go between the Bois and Cap d’Antibes,” Fleming replied. “They’re in London at the moment. David’s being read the riot act, which will have no effect on him whatsoever.”
“Is he really that naïve?”