Chapter 6
Berlin—the Virus House
August 1943
“[Heisenberg] declared, to be sure, that the scientific solution had already been found and that theoretically nothing stood in the way of building such a bomb.”
—Albert Speer, Nazi Minister of Armaments
“German physicists had no desire to make atomic bombs, and were glad to be spared the decision by force of external circumstances.”
—Werner Heisenberg
Gravel crunched under the wheels of the staff car as the driver turned off of the cobblestoned streets. They proceeded to a less-traveled area of the Berlin suburb of Dahlem, then turned down the damp road to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute. The stolid construction of the Institute for Chemistry and the Institute for Physics was overbearing, designed at the turn of the century to please the rigid tastes of the Kaiser. Now, in the August rain, the trees and the flower boxes appeared subdued. Wet streaks ran down the stone walls as water splashed out of rusting gutters.
The driver of the staff car activated the windshield wiper, but it merely smeared a thin film of mud. Ahead of the car rode two motorcycle guards hunched over their handlebars. The motorcycle engines popped and puttered from the alcohol fuel.
Although he now held the upper hand, Professor Abraham Esau fidgeted in the back of the staff car, wondering if he would triumph as planned or if everything would backfire on him. The drive had not been long, but it was uncomfortable. Reichminister Albert Speer sat beside him, straight-backed and silent, staring ahead. The Minister of Armaments must be preoccupied with something other than the secret Nazi research center known as the Virus House.
Beside the driver sat Major Wilhelm Stadt of the Gestapo, dressed in a black uniform with SS armband. Major Stadt was rude, fast spoken, with an air of confidence that bordered on impatience. As did so many of the young officers, the major sported a small toothbrush moustache like Hitler’s and Himmler’s. He had his pale hair shaved severely up around his ears and the back of his neck, making him appear to be wearing an overlarge Jewish skullcap. Esau did not dare make such a comparison aloud; the SS major would not have found it amusing.
Major Stadt spoke to the driver, telling coarse stories and Jewish jokes, acting friendly toward the lower ranks—after all, wasn’t Gestapo head Himmler himself a former chicken farmer? But Stadt’s casual attitude seemed a ploy to Esau, a practiced interrogation technique. Every third or fourth comment, Major Stadt would turn around to look at Reichminister Speer, as if searching for some reaction. Occasionally Speer would nod, or smile if that seemed appropriate, but he said few words.
Esau knew that Speer had never wanted his position as Minister of Armaments—he was an architect who had served Hitler well, but he had been astonished when Hitler promoted him after the previous minister had been killed in an airplane crash. Speer had done his best in the position, but the German war effort seemed to be flagging. Mussolini had been overthrown in Italy, and a humiliating and disastrous Allied bombing raid had just turned the city of Hamburg into a firestorm.
No matter. From Esau’s work here at the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute, both he and Reichminister Speer could become heroes. The firestorm of Hamburg would be nothing compared to the devastation a German atomic bomb could deliver. The other scientists would not be so smug and uncooperative with Speer standing beside him. Esau now had the crowbar he needed to consolidate the nuclear physics research firmly under his own custodianship.
Werner Heisenberg would not be expecting them; Esau wanted that as part of their surprise. Heisenberg lived in Leipzig with his family, but took the train to Berlin twice a week to continue work at the institute. Esau had taken great care to be sure they arrived on a day Heisenberg would be at the Virus House.
The motorcycles ground to a halt. The staff car pulled up in front of a complex of wooden buildings surrounded by a gate and a sagging barbed-wire fence. One guard, wrapped in a rain shawl with a machine gun over his shoulder, stepped forward to inspect the papers of the motorcycle riders, who gestured him toward the staff car. The driver wrestled with the crank to turn down the window.
“This is a restricted area. May I see your papers please?” the guard said, pushing his head in and dripping water on the driver’s shoulder.
When he saw Reichminister Speer and Major Stadt in their respective uniforms, the guard stiffened, but held his ground. For security reasons they had not marked the staff car to announce the ranks of its occupants.
Major Stadt remained silent, and Esau waited as the guard checked them through. Any other behavior by the guard would not have been tolerated. The guard returned the folded papers to the driver, then trudged off through the mud back to his windbreak shelter beside the barbed-wire gate. The two motorcycle riders kicked their engines into life again, then proceeded through the gate. The driver of the staff car kept the window cracked open, allowing damp air to purge the atmosphere inside. They drove into the grounds of the Virus House.
In July 1940 the researcher Karl Wirtz had built a small laboratory on the grounds of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute for Biology and Virus Research, adjacent to the Institute of Physics. All power and water for the new establishment came from the institute’s large virus growth laboratories. But Dr. Karl Wirtz was no biologist. The ominous name “Virus House” was prominently displayed only to keep the curious away, and to mislead any spies about the actual research conducted there.
At the beginning of the war, Reichminister Speer’s predecessor had been skeptical about the nuclear physics program, since it then appeared the Blitzkrieg would give Germany victory over Britain long before nuclear physicists could develop a new weapon. Nevertheless, a research program was set up. The head of the institute, the Dutch experimental physicist Paul Debye, was told that he must either become a German citizen or leave his post, because no foreign national could be allowed to work on a secret military project. Debye had chosen to leave, departing to go on a “lecture tour” to neutral America.
That was in January 1940. The Armaments Ministry tried to install Dr. Kurt Diebner from the military as Debye’s replacement, and this the rest of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute resoundingly opposed. But they had not yet realized how much times had changed. Finally the institute accepted Dr. Diebner as a provisional head, until such time as Paul Debye returned from his lecture tour.
But Diebner’s career had not survived political machinations in the following years. Other scientists, such as Karl Wirtz and Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker had schemed to draw Werner Heisenberg into the institute, where he became titular head of nuclear physics work-subordinate to the Plenipotentiary for Nuclear Physics, of course, Esau reminded himself.
Esau had been to the Virus House on official visits, but he had accomplished nothing. The program remained as scattered and uninspired as ever, the scientists more concerned with maintaining their reputations than with winning the war.
Now, though, Esau was bringing them sufficient inspiration, thanks to Graham Fox.
He allowed himself to smile as they drove into the muddy courtyard outside the wooden barracks. Dark stains showed where rain had soaked through the plank walls. All around, the city of Berlin pressed close, too close perhaps for such dangerous research as this, but it did make a perfect hiding place.
A dim shadow behind one of the windows watched the staff car pull up, then ducked back. Esau hoped the observer would inform the rest of the physicists exactly who had arrived for a visit.
They had come to accuse Professor Werner Heisenberg of treason.
O O O
A week before, when the Reich post had delivered a letter with Belgian postmark, Professor Esau took notice. He held up the stained envelope and frowned; it looked like cheap stationery inside. He did not recognize the bold handwriting on the address with its excessive loops and flourishes. With a letter opener he slashed open the edge.
He recognized the handwriting on the letter inside immediately. Graham Fox! It was impossible, but he could not stop himself from a smile such as he had not worn since his student days at Cambridge. He wondered how Fox had managed to get a letter through the postal blockades to Germany. But none of Esau’s initial astonishment compared to what he felt upon reading the terse but profound message.
O O O
… So, my dear friend, Fermi has achieved a self-sustaining neutron reaction moderated by graphite blocks. By virtue of Germany’s superior physicists, Heisenberg’s group should have come to this discovery on their own—could he perhaps be leading you down the wrong path? After all, no one would question Heisenberg’s claims. I will do what I can here because we must maintain parity. All humanity is at risk. Must count on you, Abraham.
O O O
At that moment Esau’s secretary—the same one who had bungled his invitation to the physics conference, and then bungled his subsequent apology letter—appeared at the door with some inane question. Esau’s shouting fit sent her scurrying back into the hall. Her heels echoed on the tile floor like gunshots.
Esau clutched the letter with sweaty fingers. A nuclear reaction moderated by graphite! Esau was astounded. According to all their careful studies—no, he corrected himself, not careful enough—they had thought heavy water was the only substance that could appropriately moderate a reacting pile. How could they have missed something as simple and common as graphite?
A nuclear reactor could produce a different element, a new element beyond uranium on the periodic table, that could be used as a substitute for the rare isotope uranium-235 in an atomic bomb. In 1940 the American Edwin McMillan, working at the University of California at Berkeley, had artificially created “element 93” by bombarding uranium with neutrons. Since uranium had been named after the planet Uranus, McMillan had decided to call his new element “neptunium” after the planet Neptune.
But physical theory predicted that the next artificial element in the series, element 94, would be a candidate for fission, just like uranium-235. Element 94 did not exist in nature, but in all likelihood could be made in the laboratory. But only if they could keep a nuclear chain reaction going. Continuing the scheme of using planetary names, this element should be named after the newly discovered ninth planet Pluto. Plutonium?
If they could produce enough of this new plutonium, Esau would not need to worry about the incredible difficulties of separating uranium-235 from the rest of the ore. They could have a German bomb sooner than expected.
But for that they needed a working reactor to “cook” the uranium until it became plutonium … and to achieve a functioning reactor, Esau had thought he needed enormous quantities of heavy water, which was exceedingly rare and precious. Even then it remained a matter for conjecture, because they had never been able to obtain enough heavy water to test the theory.
The difficulties continued to tangle worse and worse as the war went on.
Germany’s only source of heavy water had been the Norwegian Hydro Works at Vemork—and the Allies had recently destroyed the plant, bringing all heavy water production to a halt. Allied saboteurs had even sunk the ferry carrying the last few drums of dilute heavy water rescued from the ruined factory.
Esau had seen no future for the possibility of reactor research. It had left them with nothing to try but the impossible isotope separation.
Now, though, Fox’s letter implied that perhaps graphite—simple carbon—could be used instead of heavy water. Esau could not comprehend why his own researchers had ignored the possibility. Especially with the great Heisenberg at the helm.
Feeling his cheeks flush with a growing anger, Esau dug through the files and progress reports describing aspects of his disjointed program. He loathed this clerical work—he could never find anything. Progress reports had been falsified, or not submitted on time, or written in such terse, vague language that he couldn’t understand what the physicists were talking about. He had not unpacked and organized the files completely, and he did not dare risk asking his inept secretary to help him. Some of the files were from Diebner’s tenure over the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute; others had been culled from the Armaments Ministry itself, or even von Ardenne’s work for the post office.
Surely someone must have tested graphite.
He found the records after an hour of searching. He snapped the thin file away from the stack with a brisk gesture that betrayed his own impatience. Outside, an automobile horn blasted three times, and Esau made an annoyed comment to himself. He took the papers back to his desk and spread them out, piling everything else on top of his unopened mail.
Professor Walther Bothe had made the analysis. At Heidelberg, Bothe had used a sphere of high-quality graphite larger than a meter in diameter, submerging it in a tank of water to measure its neutron absorption cross-section. According to Bothe’s test results, graphite was indeed a poor choice, swallowing far too many of the available neutrons. For the nuclear reaction to be successful, the moderator needed to slow down the neutrons to the proper speed so they could cause fissions in the uranium—slow them down, not take them out of the reaction entirely.
But if the Americans had succeeded in creating a self sustaining chain reaction using graphite and uranium, then Bothe’s results must be wrong. Wrong!
Esau squinted and rubbed the scar on his lip. The car honked again below the window, but now he no longer heard it. What if Bothe had not used pure enough carbon? Graphite had a tendency to be contaminated with boron—and other results had plainly shown that boron acted as one of the most voracious neutron swallowers. What if carbon was indeed an efficient moderator, but Bothe’s result had been masked by boron contamination? The pile would then defeat its own reaction, not because of graphite—but because of the boron poisoning.
Carbon was trivial to obtain. Absolute purification would be somewhat difficult, but vastly simpler than manufacturing heavy water or finding some way to separate the uranium-235 from the rest of the natural uranium.
This changed everything.
Esau read Fox’s letter again. This also meant the Americans were far ahead of them. Despite a German head start at the beginning of the war, the Americans had already achieved a self-sustaining chain reaction. That, too, changed everything.
Reichminister Albert Speer did not take either Esau or his nuclear program seriously. But perhaps this news would make him pay attention. If the Americans had jumped headfirst into developing an atomic weapon, could Germany afford not to do the same?
Esau imagined different ways to approach Speer with Fox’s information. Such a simple letter from an old friend, but it would gain him a great deal of respect. It demanded immediate action.
O O O
The two motorcycle guards dismounted and propped their vehicles against the wooden railings. Side by side the two marched up the steps of the Virus House and stood beside the door, waiting for Reichminister Speer and Major Stadt to emerge from the staff car. The driver opened the doors for them. Esau followed Speer, hurrying to keep up with the man’s pace.
Speer was a tall, quiet man, soft-spoken but highly intelligent. He had staged and organized Hitler’s spectacular Nürnberg rallies and had become one of the Führer’s closest companions. Speer bore a superior air, a frowning disregard for Esau. But that would pass. Esau had earned a new reputation for himself.
The guards tracked mud inside the barracks as they led the way. The academics had bemoaned the presence of Nazis in the institute years before. This time, though, the visit would have a different flavor.
Esau stomped his shoes on the mat, then hurried as Major Stadt led them on a snap inspection of the facilities. At first glance the Virus House had an acceptable appearance of austerity, as all good war projects were to have. The physicists and lab assistants, startled from their routine, scurried about, trying to understand what the guests wanted, trying to hide whatever they suspected might be considered wrong. No one actually greeted the visitors.
Stadt opened random doors and peered inside rooms. He seemed uninterested in what he saw, which made Esau realize that the Gestapo major knew nothing about nuclear physics and simply expected to intimidate the researchers into showing some sign of guilt or collusion.
They found blackboards, equations, men arguing about a crude pencil sketch. In one part of the building they found a brick-lined pit two meters deep and filled with water. One abandoned experimental area left its laboratory equipment sitting idle. Idle! Esau fumed. It would reflect badly on his own credibility if his people weren’t even bothering to make a sham of ongoing research. Speer raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
“This is not the only facility where our experiments are being conducted,” Esau said. “Dr. Diebner has another group working at Göttingen.”
“Indeed,” Speer replied quietly. “And is he getting any work done?”
“That is the problem!” Esau tried to master his impatience. “They are scattered and they can play games like this because I cannot watch them all. One of Diebner’s men, Dr. Paul Harteck, wanted to do an experiment with uranium oxide moderated by dry ice. He had secured an entire trainload of dry ice and needed as much uranium oxide as possible—but at the same time Heisenberg insisted on having half of it himself for a different experiment here at the Virus House.” Esau scowled and met Speer’s gaze. The Reichminister didn’t seem to understand.
“You see, with this nuclear physics, it is all or nothing—you cannot have a partial reaction. You cannot split the resources in half. The result was that both experiments failed due to lack of materials.” He cleared his throat and straightened. “That was before I became Plenipotentiary for Nuclear Physics.”
“And now everything has been straightened out completely, I am sure,” Speer said with a maddening lack of sarcasm.
“It will be,” Esau muttered. He now had a blackmail grip on Heisenberg. After bringing the Nobel Prize winner in line, he could begin to get other things done.
As they approached, Dr. Werner Heisenberg emerged from the door of his main office. He bore a false expression of welcome on his face; Esau could see he had made a quick attempt to straighten his clothes. His reddish hair glistened with dampness, as if he had just combed it.
“Welcome, gentlemen,” Heisenberg said, rubbing his hands together, then turned to Speer. “You are the Reichminister? I have seen photographs of your Nürnberg rallies. Most impressive.”
“Will you be offering us tea next?” Major Stadt said. “After all, you don’t appear to have anything better to do.”
Heisenberg froze, as if it had finally occurred to him that he might be in some sort of trouble. Esau wanted to watch him sweat for a moment. It would be good to diminish that ego.
“What can I help you with, Herr Major?” Heisenberg’s voice had a slight edge. Esau felt immediately left out of the conflict.
“We have received some troubling information about your activities, Herr Professor,” Reichminister Speer said. He removed his overcoat. Heisenberg reached out to take it, but Speer handed it to one of the motorcycle guards instead.
“We would like to inspect all of your experimental records,” Major Stadt said. “You will provide them, please. Professor Esau will scrutinize them to determine the accuracy, or lack thereof, in your results.” The Gestapo major’s voice began to grow louder. “We wish to find out if your inability to make progress is a result of simple incompetence or plain treason.”
This appeared to astound Heisenberg. “But Herr Major, I assure you—”
“You can assure us with your records. If you are innocent of trying to sabotage German nuclear research, you should have nothing whatsoever to hide, eh?”
Heisenberg did not answer; there was nothing he could have said.
The silence lasted too long. Esau had just begun to clear his throat when Heisenberg seemed to crumple. “Certainly. Follow me and I will get everything for you.”
In the hall, Esau watched other researchers standing indignant but afraid to say anything. He recognized Dr. Karl Wirtz, the man who had built the Virus House, and Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker, Heisenberg’s brilliant young assistant; the other technicians were unknown to him.
Back in Heisenberg’s office—Esau noted with satisfaction how inferior it was to his own new office—the renowned physicist hesitated beside a scarred safe that looked as if it had survived an Allied bombing raid. He acted more troubled with each passing second.
“Is there any work in particular you wish me to produce?” he asked.
“Everything,” Major Stadt said. Speer gestured vaguely at the safe.
Heisenberg set his mouth and opened the safe. He withdrew stacks of lab reports, handwritten journals, and letters between himself and the other researchers. Major Stadt nodded to one of the guards, who snatched the records from the physicist’s hands.
“Give those to Professor Esau,” Reichminister Speer said. “He will search for inconsistencies, errors, or omissions.”
Heisenberg’s voice carried only a hint of his complaint, but he flashed Esau a look of pure outrage. “I do not believe Dr. Esau is quite of the same … caliber as myself. I doubt his ability to question my competence.”
“In such grave circumstances, Professor Heisenberg,” Major Stadt said, “you would be wise to keep quiet unless specifically answering a query put to you by either Reichminister Speer or myself.”
Esau took the stack of papers, and Speer dismissed him with a casual motion. Esau said, “I shall need all of his derivations for cross-section calculations—”
“Then find an office for yourself. Take the one next door, in fact. Meanwhile, Major Stadt has some other information he would like to discuss with Professor Heisenberg.”
One of the guards opened a leather satchel and withdrew a sheaf of papers bound with a red ribbon. “The Gestapo has compiled its own file on you, Herr Professor,” Stadt said. “Dr. Esau’s new information was the last straw.”
Heisenberg looked truly baffled. “Am I accused of something?” He reached up with a hand to run it through his bristly red hair, but stopped himself.
“Accused? No. Guilty? Most likely.” Major Stadt sat down in Heisenberg’s chair behind Heisenberg’s desk, brushing aside notebooks without regard to what they contained. “You will sit in front of me and you will answer my questions. To cross-check the record, my guards will take notes. Reichminister Speer will ensure that none of your coworkers leave the Virus House until we have completed our investigation.” He snapped a glance over at Esau, still listening by the door. “We would like you to begin today, Professor Esau!”
Esau hurried out of the room as the Gestapo major began his questions …
He found it difficult to concentrate on Heisenberg’s tight, narrow handwriting. Half of Major Stadt’s interrogation was discernible through the walls and through the half-open door of the adjacent office. Esau imagined Reichminister Speer sitting in silence, watching the Gestapo officer ask his questions.
“We have on record your attempts, time and again, to defer scientists from active service in the military. For the betterment of the Reich, you say! To keep technicians working rather than shooting the enemy, you say! And who are you to decide how best we can implement our armed forces?”
Esau took out sheets of clean paper and used a fountain pen to check calculations, trying to unravel Heisenberg’s chain of reasoning. Several times Esau lost the thread of what the physicist meant, what he was trying to show. He paused between written lines, puzzling over how Heisenberg had made an intuitive leap. Back in Cambridge, in the coffee shops, Esau and Graham Fox had played similar games, trying to out-calculate each other. It had been so long since he had seen Fox …
Stadt raised his voice in the next room. “But he is a Jew! I don’t care if he is one of your colleagues—we aren’t interested in Jewish physics here! You were ordered to ignore Jewish physics.”
Heisenberg began to answer, but Major Stadt interrupted him. “We have your attempt on record. Look, here are your own letters, signed by your own hand, requesting that the parents of one Samuel Goudsmidt be released from a concentration camp. Who are you to decide these things? We decide! Himmler decides! You have only one task—to develop a new weapon. And you cannot even manage that!”
Heisenberg mumbled something Esau couldn’t hear. Esau tried to maintain his concentration as he tallied a column of figures. Heisenberg himself had scratched out one answer and written another on top. An attempt to camouflage results? Or a simple mistake?
Reichminister Speer said one word, clearly heard: “Bohr.”
Major Stadt immediately spoke up. “Yes, that brings us to an interesting situation, one of the most damning we have about you. Witnesses say that you left Germany, went to Copenhagen, and met with Niels Bohr, a half-Jew with known Allied sympathies. In fact he is even now believed to be in hiding in America, working on their atomic bomb project. Yet you had a private conversation with him, you were seen together, talking. We have everything on record. Now tell us—what were you doing there?”
“I had a troubled conscience.” Heisenberg’s voice sounded shallow and defeated. “I wanted to ask—”
“Ask? No doubt you wanted to tell him everything about our program, so he could share it with the Americans! We know you are falsifying your own experiments, disrupting progress on our nuclear program, trying to make us lose the war.”
“That is not—”
Major Stadt cracked something hard against the desktop, then lowered his voice below hearing again.
The interrogation went on. Distracted, Esau continued his inspection. He stared at the numbers, at the comments jotted down in the laboratory. He tried to find flaws in Heisenberg’s work. He was too afraid even to get up and find a cup of tea for himself. None of Heisenberg’s fellow scientists were likely to be in a helpful mood at the moment.
Hours later he felt hunger biting at his stomach. The other scientists paced the halls in silence, unwilling to talk to each other. They did no work the entire day, and it had passed the time when they usually went home to their families. Some had trains to catch, but they could not depart until Reichminister Speer allowed them to leave.
Otto Hahn appeared at the door, scowling but looking dapper with his intense and bright eyes set under bushy eyebrows. His graying moustache was clipped so close as to seem a mere smear of stubble on his lip. “Excuse me, Dr. Esau. We were wondering if some sort of dinner might be provided? My technicians have not eaten all day.”
Esau looked up at him, amazed—Otto Hahn had discovered nuclear fission in the uranium atom, and now he stood timid, asking a simple favor of Esau.
“You have no food here in the laboratories?” He had wanted something to eat as well.
“Not with all the uranium we keep, Herr Professor. Many of the things here are highly poisonous. We thought it best to prohibit eating in the area.”
Reichminister Speer and Major Stadt had closed the door to maintain privacy in their endless interrogation. Esau did not dare interrupt them to ask for permission. Then he realized his own foolishness. After all, wasn’t he the Plenipotentiary for Nuclear Physics? Didn’t he have the authority to make certain decisions? Hadn’t he been the one to point out Heisenberg’s intentions?
“Gather some of the workers in the hall,” he said. “I will select one at random and he will go to the commissary of the institute to get enough food for all of us.” Otto Hahn looked relieved and nodded as he backed out the door. Esau had just proved he could be reasonable. That was good, since he would have to make these people work with him.
Later, as he worked red-eyed and far into the night, sipping on the cold dregs of a cup of tea, Esau sat up as Heisenberg’s door snapped open. One stack of laboratory records sat to Esau’s right; a few more, scattered in front of him, still needed to be checked. In front, on a sheet of his personal stationery, Esau had written a list of errors he found. The fountain pen left blobs toward the bottom of the page, when he had been too tired to worry much about penmanship.
Major Stadt stepped out. His black SS uniform looked no worse after his hours of interrogation. “Professor Esau,” he said, “have you finished? What do you have to report? You have found a substantial number of errors?”
Esau stood up and peeled the scratch paper from the desk blotter. “Yes, Herr Major. Here is a list of inconsistencies I have found. I cannot tell if these are malicious mistakes or simple sloppiness.”
Or because my own eyes are so bleary from staring at them so long, Esau thought. He couldn’t tell if he’d made the mistakes or if Heisenberg had.
But that was enough for Major Stadt. His lips made a tight smile. Reichminister Speer came out of the office beside Heisenberg. The great physicist looked defeated, confused. When he stumbled, Speer made no move to touch him.
Heisenberg splayed his fingers on the desk in front of Esau, brushing his own damning lab records aside. Esau could smell the sweat on the man, could see how rumpled his clothes had become.
Major Stadt found a ruler from the desk and smacked it against the wood, then against the doorjamb. He raised his voice to be heard throughout the halls. Speer flinched from the racket.
“Attention! Attention!” Major Stadt called. The two motorcycle guards reappeared, blinking and bleary-eyed, anxious to see what was wrong. The other scientists, no doubt unable to sleep, emerged from their rooms, Carl-Friedrich von Weizsäcker beside Otto Hahn and Karl Wirtz. They continued to stare at the floor; the other lab assistants studiously avoided drawing attention to themselves.
“We will assemble in the courtyard. We have important business to conclude this evening, and I am certain you will all be anxious to return to your research immediately. You have been idle all day!”
The scientists went back to their lockers to get overcoats, to close their offices. Major Stadt grasped Heisenberg’s left arm and ushered him to the door. Esau swallowed the remains of his cold cup of tea.
Reichminister Speer stopped next to him. “Things must change around here, Professor Esau. I am hereby instructing you to consolidate all German nuclear research in this one place. No more competing with separate groups. No more sharing of minimal resources. I want everyone here, everyone working, and everyone cooperating. You will supervise them directly, and you will be housed here yourself, as well.” Speer looked around the unattractive barracks. He scowled in distaste, but made no comment about it.
Esau felt a rush of triumph. He had been pushing for this all along. Now he could get things done. Now he had the authority to make great strides in nuclear research. Perhaps they would even beat the Americans in developing an atomic bomb.
“I will need that in writing, Herr Reichminister,” Esau said. “Von Ardenne should be no problem—in fact, I think he will be glad to be under more appropriate auspices than the Postal Ministry. It will lend legitimacy to his work. But Diebner will not cooperate. He insists on working independently with his own men. I have had trouble with him before.”
Speer seemed unconcerned with Esau’s assessment. “I do not believe Diebner will be a problem. Not after tonight.”
Saying nothing more, he stepped out the door. Puzzled, Esau took a last glance at the laboratory notebooks he had not yet checked, then hurried after the Reichminister to the courtyard outside.
Heisenberg stood by himself on the muddy ground. Esau reveled in his sullen appearance—this humiliation would take the great physicist down a notch or two, make him more cooperative. Perhaps Heisenberg would stop worrying about esoteric theory and concentrate more on practicalities. Esau should find him much more manageable from now on.
Major Stadt had arranged for the floodlights to be switched on, drowning the area in harsh white light. The Virus House and its outbuildings looked like something from one of Himmler’s work camps. The wood siding showed gaps where the uncured lumber had swelled with the spring rains. The barbed wire around the perimeter looked like silver spider webs in the night.
When the other scientists had assembled outside on the spotty gravel walkways, Major Stadt trudged out to where Heisenberg stood alone. His boots made indentations in the soft ground.
“I want you to pay close attention, all of you.” Stadt raised his voice, and Esau noticed from his mannerisms that he seemed to be imitating Hitler. A lot of people were doing that these days.
“This man, your Professor Heisenberg, winner of the highest accolades your profession can bestow, is traitor to his country, to his Führer, and to you all. He has committed grave sabotage against this project, which has the possibility of winning the war. He has delayed work, he has falsified laboratory results, and he has cooperated with the enemy in ensuring that Germany fails to develop an atomic bomb!”
“That is not true.” Heisenberg drew himself up. It was apparent that he had said that same thing countless times to the Gestapo major, to little effect. Stadt ignored him.
“Because of this man’s mistakes, because of his delays, and because of his treason, Professor Werner Heisenberg has caused the deaths of countless thousands of German soldiers. If this weapon had been available for our attack against Stalingrad, we could have captured that city without the loss of a single German life. We could have taken Moscow in a day, instead of months upon months of failure.”
As Stadt spoke he stepped away from Heisenberg, marching back toward the gathered scientists. Esau waited beside Reichminister Speer, watching. He was beginning to think that this had gone too far. If Heisenberg were broken too severely, he might not be useful in further research.
“All of these deaths, all of these failures, weigh on the shoulders of a single man. He is guilty of high treason.”
Stadt turned to the two motorcycle guards and gestured offhandedly to the physicist standing alone on the barren ground. “Shoot him.”
The other scientists stood silent in shock, then muttering filled the air. Otto Hahn took a step forward in outrage. Heisenberg himself blinked in astonishment and stood up straight, but the protests seemed too many to come out of his mouth at once. Even Esau couldn’t believe what he had just heard. That wasn’t the point at all …
But Reichminister Speer just stood in silence, as if he approved.
The guards looked at each other in equal uneasiness. They had apparently never had to kill anyone before.
“Shoot him!” Major Stadt shouted.
One guard brought up his pistol while the other fumbled to pull it out of its holster at his hip. A shot rang out, a thin crack, deceptively small, and then a second shot sounded as the other guard fired.
Heisenberg crumpled to the mud under the harsh floodlights. His face turned away as he fell. The gathered scientists let out an anguished murmur.
“No more uncertainty about your principles now, Herr-Professor,” Major Stadt said.
Esau felt himself trembling. Heisenberg lay motionless on the ground. He had been alive only a second before. All of his thoughts and ideas had vanished. Reichminister Speer spoke up. “Now perhaps the rest of you can make some progress.”
Esau allowed himself to fly into a rage. He saw his chances of rapid success bleeding into the mud. “You just eliminated the most brilliant mind in our entire project! How am I to accomplish a breakthrough when you’ve just shot down the man most capable of doing so? I needed Heisenberg controlled, not destroyed!” He let his voice become icy and he turned toward Major Stadt. “Our task will be much more difficult because of this.”
Stadt’s skin appeared corpselike under the garish light. He smiled as if he had just enjoyed himself. He spoke softly. “Ah, but we have given them incentive, Professor Esau.” He turned to look at the other scientists gawking in disbelief at Heisenberg’s body. “Incentive.”
***