“You should also know that I’ve taken care of Kammler, Wolf, and von Braun,” Emma said. “As a result, I can say with some confidence that Germany’s plans for a disintegration bomb died with Sicke.”
“My, how far we’ve come together,” Eva said, taking Emma’s hand and breathing in deeply. “Now tell me about Axel, and then I want to give you something.”
“I plan to collect Axel in the days ahead, just before escaping to England. However I decide to move forward,” she said, “I have to cushion the blow for Axel of losing a father who raised and cared for him—while gaining a mother he no longer remembers or loves.”
Eva tightened her grip on Emma’s hand. “If anyone can do this, you can. How lucky to have a child, and for him to have you. I always wanted to have . . .” She paused for several seconds, her throat tightening. “Emma, no one other than Adolf knows this, but I need to share something with you.”
Emma gulped, unsure that she was ready to be confided to in this way. “What is it, Eva?”
“I became pregnant by him not long after he and I first met.”
“And . . .” Emma said, staring at Eva, trying to hide her surprise.
“And he insisted that he was already a father—to Germany,” she continued, “so he couldn’t support another child. Besides which, he said, such a child would make him vulnerable to his enemies, who would have three targets instead of just one, because he and I would be forced to marry. He said he’d leave me if I had the baby, that he’d deny being its father and I’d be left penniless.”
“That’s horrible. I’m so sorry.” As Emma spoke, she tried hard to silence her inner voice. What did you bloody expect, Eva? An enthusiastic, loving father? He’s Hitler, for Christ’s sake! “So what did you do?” she asked.
“I was young. I adored him. I ended the pregnancy.” More tears trickled down her cheeks. “To this day, the guilt overwhelms me. To do such a thing goes against the Catholic Church and against my God. I was only eighteen, but I wanted a child—especially with such a brilliant, sensitive man, creating a bond we could share forever. But, at the time, I felt I had no choice. He was adamant.”
After a brief silence, Eva reached into her bag and pulled out a small leather box. “This is a little gift you may need in the days ahead,” she said. “Go ahead, open it.”
It looked to Emma like a jewelry box. She smiled and lifted the top. Oh, my. The sun reflected off its brilliant, shiny surface, reminding Emma of when she’d first seen it.
She’d been given one by Nash, and had lost it to Berg.
She’d taken one from Sicke as she escaped the destruction in the Ore Mountains—and had felt its weight safely inside the lining of her jacket while she negotiated with Kammler in his office.
And now she was receiving one of Hitler’s gold coins on a third occasion, this time from his mistress.
“Eva, you’ll need this if anything happens to the führer. You should keep it.”
“I won’t need it,” she said. “I know what lies ahead, and, now that I’ve seen you, I’m comfortable with my fate.” This statement puzzled Emma, though she chose to say nothing in return.
“But I already have a coin from Sicke. So I’d have two.”
“Perfect,” Eva said, raising her chin. “If you somehow escape Germany without using one or both coins, in the years or decades ahead—especially if certain forces come after you for the role you’ve played here—you might be thankful you have two.”
Emma squinted. What forces will pursue me if Germany loses the war? From Eva’s tone, she could tell that there was no use arguing.
“Tell me about this coin, Eva. I know its power but little about its source.”
Eva took the coin from the box, placing it in Emma’s hand. The horizon was beginning to buzz as the day’s first bomber arrived to remind Berlin’s leaders that, should they agree to a surrender, they might just receive more favorable terms than would be the case one or two months from now. Both women ignored the noise above them.
“The coins were struck secretly in early 1939, in anticipation of war,” Eva began. “They were to reward anyone making major contributions to Germany’s advancement through either strategic acumen or tactical breakthroughs linked to gases, guns, bullets, tanks, rocketry, and bombs—in particular, a disintegration bomb.”
“So Everett received one for advancing the führer’s understanding of how people influence others in negotiations and conflicts?”
“Precisely,” said Eva. “So we can both understand why, as an American, he’d be so upset about receiving his coin on the eve of war with a note from the führer thanking him for his contributions—one of only eighty-eight Germans recognized this way.”
“Yes, that would be very difficult,” Emma said. “Why eighty-eight?”
“The führer is an artist at heart. He loves creating significance in the smallest of details,” Eva said. Emma recalled that Hitler himself had personally designed his nation’s swastika. Eva told her that because the eighth letter in the alphabet is “H,” two 8s represented “Heil Hitler.” The two 8s also denoted upright infinity signs and the Third Reich’s intention of ruling forever. And last, Eva said, eighty-eight was the atomic number of radium, a by-product of uranium—an element the führer’s scientists believed held great potential for Germany’s weapons.
“Many of the coins’ recipients worked on developing either rocketry or the disintegration bomb,” Eva said. “Roughly a third were Jews—who for some reason made up a disproportionate number of our nation’s leading scientists and thinkers in the 1930s.”
Maybe Hitler’s biggest blunder was not including the Jews in his “grand coalition,” Emma reflected. It’s possible that he undermined all his influence efforts by sending his best scientists—and a competing bomb—into the arms of the Allies.
She shook her head. “Why would the führer give these incredible coins to Jews, who were at the same time being stripped of their rights and sent to die in camps?”
Eva bristled, seemingly unable to understand what Emma had missed. “Some Jews were valuable to him. The führer doesn’t hate them all, despite how they’ve ruined Germany. He once had Jewish friends. He’s a logical man, and was willing to reward anyone so long as they met his needs.” She pointed at Emma’s palm. “And those he valued knew how much this coin was worth—to their status, security, and finances.”
Emma turned it over in her hand.
“The coins are wrapped in gold,” Eva continued, “but inside them lies a precious gem lifted from the state crown once intended for Germany’s kings. So in fact each coin is worth more than most people earn in a lifetime.”
Emma’s eyes widened. “Thank you again, Eva. Your gift is most generous.”
Beneath her politeness, Emma felt unsettled. She wasn’t used to Eva speaking ill of anyone. Of course, she could have assumed that Eva shared Hitler’s outlook with respect to the Jews, but she’d come to like her friend—it seemed impossible that Eva could be so blinded by racist absurdities.
Emma reminded herself of Nash’s edict: Attach yourself to the positive part of people you can relate to—the part that will give you what you want—not the negatives that will divide you and keep you from moving toward your own goals.
Eva relayed how the purpose of the gold coins, hand-signed by the führer, had evolved consistent with the country’s history of using “challenge coins.” Traditionally, such coins, she said, gave each recipient a certain authority and the ability to easily distinguish themselves from their enemies if ever challenged by their own side, allowing them to negotiate their way to safety.
“Not long after this newest coin was issued, whenever a holder was in trouble,” Eva said, “they would show their gold coin and be released, sometimes with the coin—but usually not.”
Emma suddenly felt just a little better about her first encounter with Berg
.
“Word of these ‘mystical’ coins was kept quiet for fear their holders would be targeted by ill-intentioned outsiders and treasure hunters, but the most senior Nazis are well aware of them,” Eva explained. “A belief has even developed that ignoring the rules of the coin will incur the wrath not only of the führer but of the forces of darkness as well, thanks to a series of unfortunate events that befell those who broke the coin’s evolving code. Jews fleeing the country began to pass them on to other Jews before leaving. I heard that even non-Jews like Otto Hahn—who split the atom—gave his coin to a Jew—a poor choice, perhaps, but one he was free to make.”
Eva pointed at the exposed face of the coin. There was a series of overlapping rings etched into its gold, surrounding some specks at the center, with whisps of movement conveyed by the artist. This, Eva said, was an image of the uranium atom Hahn split in 1938, with the support and guidance of Fritz Strassmann and Lise Meitner—the Jew to whom Hahn gave his coin.
No wonder I didn’t know what the hell that was, Emma thought. I’ve never seen an atom before.
Around the coin’s outer edge were interlinking infinity signs and the phrase “Für Immer in Frieden.” Eva flipped the coin over, and Emma knew that these same German words—meaning “Forever in Peace”—would also be found there, encircling Germania’s domed Grosse Halle and the peace swallow flying over it. It was indeed this very illustration that had inspired Emma to have Peter paint a variation of it on the canvas they’d sold to Eva and Hitler at the auction—enabling Kammler to sip daiquiris until he died.
Emma had carefully examined the coin before, but the missing link was the atom. “Do I dare ask the connection between the uranium atom, Germania, the peace swallow, and infinity?” she said.
“Oh yes, the führer strongly believed in the relationship between all these elements,” Eva said, cocking her head. “If Germany could develop the disintegration bomb before the Allies, he believed the war would end almost immediately.”
“Bringing everlasting peace to a world that would be run from Germania?” Emma guessed, once again taking in the soaring swallow’s finely detailed plumage and the Grosse Halle.
“Yes, all fighting would stop and Germania would rule in peace forever. This was once the vision of the führer.”
“That’s an interesting perspective on peace,” Emma said, tongue in cheek, before she could stop herself. Eva either ignored or missed her sarcasm—Emma couldn’t tell which. “Did the führer actually think he’d achieve his vision without dropping so much as one disintegration bomb?”
“I’m not comfortable speaking of the führer’s thinking to anyone,” Eva responded, her hands twitching, her tone changing. “But I will tell you this: when Adolf first described to me several years ago how this new bomb worked, I reacted in horror. A war is one thing, I said. A bomb that destroys the earth for generations to come—whether ruled by Germania or not—is unacceptable.”
“How did he react to that?” Emma asked. She knew that she was testing Eva’s limits.
“He slapped me and called me a traitor,” she let slip, before quickly recovering. “But that was then—and this is now. Much has changed. Given my concerns, as the bomb drew nearer to completion, I contacted Everett in secret.”
Eva said that she and Nash spoke on a secure line in June of 1944, nine months earlier. “He told me the U.S. had almost completed a similar bomb, but that if the Americans had their bomb first they wouldn’t drop it in Europe because of the radiation and the proximity to friendly countries. Plus, the U.S. is far too connected to Europe culturally and economically, including Germany and Italy, and wouldn’t put these nations and their markets at risk—unlike, he said, the situation with Japan. Besides, Everett made it clear to me that with the Allies winning in Europe, they would want to keep playing a conventional game.” Eva paused. “In short, through Everett I confirmed where Germany’s greatest nuclear threat resided: inside my own nation’s government.”
Emma nodded. This was an explanation she’d yearned to hear.
“I told Everett that Germany was close to completing its own disintegration bomb and that if we clearly won the race I believed we’d use it. If both countries completed bombs around the same time, I suspected many Nazis would want to follow through, anyway, daring the Allies to respond. Others, though, might call it a draw and choose not to launch, knowing the Allies would be forced to retaliate and we’d suffer a huge loss of life in our country. I urged Everett to come and negotiate the bomb away from those set on winning the war at all costs.” She shook her head. “I didn’t have the power or the knowledge to act myself. I needed him here in Berlin.”
A week later, Nash confirmed that he would be coming and they arranged to meet on the last day of the month in the Tiergarten at 10:00 a.m. by the lion statue. The original plan was that they would meet in August, shifting to September, then October, if for any reason he was delayed.
“Eva, what a huge risk for you to take—going up against the führer like this.”
“Sometimes a mistress sees things the same as her lover, sometimes she doesn’t,” Eva said, turning away. “And sometimes we simply learn to do the smart thing.”
“And then I arrived instead of Nash,” Emma said. “And you thought, Oh, no!”
Eva laughed. “Maybe at the start, but not for long—which brings me back to why I needed to meet you here at this bench along with my pride,” Eva said, motioning toward the beasts perched on the bronze statue behind her. “Do you have another hour to spare? I’d like us to go for a final walk together through the Tiergarten. I have one more story to tell you.”
“Of course,” Emma said, getting to her feet.
As they made their way through the garden’s largest remaining forested area, Eva shared her own personal story, parts of which she’d never spoken of to anyone other than her sisters—Ilse and Gretl.
Emma listened, having to remind herself at times to breathe.
As Eva spoke, Emma’s mind grappled with the implications of what she was being told. In the end, though, she found herself nodding in agreement, not knowing what else to do, or say, in response to Eva’s extraordinary story—and proposition.
They eventually returned to the bench, and only then did Eva hand over the large envelope she’d carried in her purse.
The two women embraced for several minutes and parted ways, both of their faces tear-stained, both certain that they would never see each other again.
Chapter 48
Monday, March 26, 1945
5:30 p.m.—Berlin
He’s good, she thought.
Emma had been forced to lose her pursuer a second time, on her way back to the resisters’ headquarters, after he somehow caught up with her again as she left the Tiergarten.
A short man in civilian clothes, he wore a low-brimmed hat that made it hard to see his face, and despite his small gait, he’d done well keeping up with her—before she finally managed to throw him off the scent by taking a route that Kurt had once shown her.
Emma found it surprising that Kammler was willing to put his deal at risk by having her followed, which she’d specifically warned against. At the same time, she couldn’t blame him for wondering who the hell she was and whether she’d honor her commitments to him. The attention, however, concerned her—she didn’t want anyone getting in her way as she prepared for her trip to Hamburg.
—
When Emma arrived at the clothing shop this time, Uncle Lukas looked more himself. He told her that Manfred, Maria, and Kurt had returned half an hour earlier. They’d been thrilled to hear that she was back, and her heart leaped at the prospect of seeing the three of them again.
“But, Emma, be patient,” Uncle Lukas said.
Only as she entered the door to their headquarters did she begin to understand why patience would be needed. She could smell the alcohol before she saw anyone
.
It turned out that the trio had been drowning their sorrows for days in a hidden-away bar. Kurt’s freckled face beamed at her, his hair matted to his head, his crooked smile more crooked than usual. His breath smelled as if he’d thrown up just before her arrival. Maria launched herself at Emma for a hug and almost missed, the corners of her mouth crusted with something she’d been drinking or eating. Manfred looked well enough, still handsome through the dense stubble on his chin and cheeks, but he also seemed the most drunk, unable to put a coherent sentence together.
The reunion was bittersweet because of who wasn’t there, and early on it was full of swearing, slurring, drinking, shouted stories, and tears. Emma made tea, hoping to wean them off their bottles. As they sipped their hot drinks, they began to sober up and share the fate of their fallen comrades.
Gunter, Peter, and Ursula had been killed during a desperate effort to assassinate Hitler. The attempt had occurred five days before, as the führer entered his well-guarded Berlin apartment with a blond woman they assumed was his rumored lover. She had apparently been the one who noticed Gunter’s Mercedes-Benz lurking and pulled Hitler to safety while a dozen guards pulverized the passing vehicle and its three armed occupants with bullets. Manfred, Maria, and Kurt had been seconds away from joining the attack by foot, and instead watched in horror from their hiding place—devastated, doused in guilt for having survived, unable to act.
The Gestapo’s Grandt and Berg were off the hook, Emma thought. She wouldn’t have to kill them after all; they hadn’t even been seen since the auction. Word had it, though, according to Maria, that Grandt had so impressed one of his superiors—who happened to share his love of films, acting, and escapism—that the enthusiastic young man had been promoted above the more experienced but unfriendly Berg, who now reported to him.
Emma’s mind flashed back to a concept Nash had introduced her to, one he’d said originated in India.
Now for Berg, she thought, that’s karma.
—
Weapons of Peace Page 43