The Solomon Effect (18 page)

Crouched in a narrow space between the seat and the mounds
of potatoes, Stefan pulled the scratchy pile of dusty sacks over his head and shoulders, clutched his lucky piece of amber in one tight fist, and tried not to breathe.

As the wagon drew up at the checkpoint, he heard the old farmer shout, “Another roadblock? Don’t you young men have wives whose beds need warming?”

One of the militiamen laughed. “What you doing out so late, old man?”

“Axle broke. This wagon’s getting too old. Like me.” Stefan heard the clink of glass against wood, then smelled the strong familiar pinch of alcohol. The farmer said, “Like a drink to chase away the chill?”

“Well…I guess a swallow won’t hurt.”

Through a crack in the slat back of the wooden seat, he caught a glimpse of firelight on a man’s ruddy face. Then he squeezed his eyes shut, afraid the militiamen might somehow sense that he was watching them.

“Who’re you looking for?” said the farmer.

“A boy. Sixteen. Dark. Skinny.”

“What’s he done?”

“Murder. Up near the Vistula Lagoon.”

From his place beside the farmer, the dog began to whine. Stefan thought his heart would stop.

“I’ll be sure to keep a lookout for him,” said the farmer, reaching out to scratch behind the dog’s ears. “Can’t be too careful these days.”

The militiamen pulled the barrier out of the road. “Watch yourself, old man.”

The farmer gave a
cluck-cluck,
and Stefan felt the wagon jerk as the mules leaned into their collars.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” said Stefan, emerging from beneath the sacks when the checkpoint had been left far behind.

“I didn’t think you did.”

Altenbruch, Germany: Wednesday 28 October
7:05
P.M.
local time

“I wish I could have been of more help,” said Marie Oldenburg as she followed them out to the sidewalk. The setting sun had slipped beyond the horizon, taking with it the lingering warmth of the evening.

“You’ve been very helpful,” said Tobie. A strengthening breeze rattled the dying leaves on the trees and made her wish she’d pulled on her jacket before they left the car.

Jax said, “Any idea where we might find this Wolfgang Palmer?”

Marie Oldenburg eased the door of the archives shut behind her and turned the key in the lock. “Actually, I gave him a call when Professor Herbolt told me you vere interested in U-114. He says he’s villing to meet vith you this evening, if you like. At a Gasthaus to the northeast of Bremen. A place called Mumbrauer, near Breddorf. At half past seven.”

“We are very interested. Thank you.”

“Good. I’ll tell him to expect you.” Slipping the archives key into the pocket of her skirt, the old woman moved to where a sturdy green bicycle leaned against the trunk of a nearby elm. “You should know that Herr Palmer’s vork is very controversial. He has made many enemies, both here in Germany and in America.”

“Is he reliable?” said Jax.

Marie Oldenburg mounted her bicycle, her gnarled hands gripping the widespread handlebars. “Oh, yes. No one questions what he has found. It’s his conclusions that are debatable.”

“Do you believe him?”

She thrust out her lower lip and glanced downward in a characteristically German gesture of thoughtfulness. “I believe the true story of those six tragic years of war has never been told, and probably never vill be.” She nodded her head briskly and shoved off.
“Auf Wiederschen.”

Tobie watched the slight figure pedal into the gathering gloom. “Wow. I hope I’m that alert and agile when I’m her age.”

“How good are your genes?”

“Not that good.”

“Mine neither.” Turning toward the car, Jax took out his phone and punched in a number.

“Who are you calling?” she asked, watching him. “Matt?”

He shook his head. “Andrei.”

“You know Andrei’s number? Right off the top of your head?”

“Yeah. Why?”

She went to lean against the side of the Jetta. “And you say he’s not your buddy.”

“He’s not my buddy.”

She watched him frown. Andrei obviously wasn’t answering. She said, “And why exactly are you trying to call the Russians?”

He put his phone away. “Because I want to know if they ever checked that damned U-boat for radiation.”

She felt her heart lurch uncomfortably in her chest. “Oh, Jesus. I never thought of that. And you were crawling around in there forever. Do you think you could have been exposed to radiation?”

“Don’t you mean, ‘we’? You think you were that much safer standing on the wharf?”

When she simply stared at him in horror, he said, “Come on. Unlock the car. There’s no point in worrying until we’re sure exactly what kind of material we’re talking about. You never know—it could have been well shielded.”

She fumbled for the Jetta’s key and hit the remote button twice to unlock all the doors. “I don’t think they knew too much about shielding that stuff sixty years ago, did they?”

He opened the door. “No.”

As she tossed her bag onto the backseat, he made another call. “Hey, Matt,” he said, sliding in beside her. “You know that shipment of Nazi gold? Well, it wasn’t gold.”

Bremen, Germany: Wednesday 28 October
7:25
P.M.
local time

The Mumbrauer turned out to be a rustic old Gasthaus on the
outskirts of a sleepy half-timbered village. Inside, it was all dark aged oak and an atmosphere scented by wood smoke and beer.

They found Wolfgang Palmer waiting for them in a paneled booth overlooking the tree-lined parking lot. A big, hairy bear of a man somewhere in his late fifties, he stood up to grasp first Tobie, then Jax in a hearty handshake. “Call me Wolfgang,” he said in an accent that sounded more like Texas Panhandle than the Black Forest. “Please. Sit.”

Sliding in beside Jax, Tobie studied the man’s ruddy-cheeked, open face and plaid shirt. He was wearing jeans with cowboy boots and a big brass belt buckle in the shape of the Lone Star State. She was still trying to push aside every assumption she’d made about this man when Jax said, “Marie Oldenburg tells us you’re a journalist.”

Wolfgang nodded. “I used to be with the AP, but I’m semi-retired now. I’m working on a book.”

“On the Nazi atomic program?”

“You guessed it.”

“You don’t sound nearly as German as your name.”

He laughed. “My daddy’s from Lubuck, and my mama’s from Wichita Falls. My dad was a career Army man. Warrant officer. They were stationed at Wiesbaden back in the fifties, when I was born, which is how I ended up being called Wolfgang.”

A waitress came to take their order. After she left, Jax settled back into a corner of the booth and said, “What can you tell us about the German atomic program in World War II?”

Wolfgang hunched his shoulders and laid his hands together, edgewise, on the scarred wooden surface of the old table. “The first thing you need to understand is that the Germans never had a military industrial complex like we developed at Los Alamos. The U.S. had literally thousands of scientists working on the Manhattan Project, with billions of dollars in funding pouring into it.”

“So what did Germany have?”

Wolfgang paused while their waitress set three enormous beer steins in front of them. “Initially they called it the Uranium Club,” he said, wrapping his big hands around his stein. “Uranverein. It was just a small group of no more than a few dozen scientists—mainly physicists, but also a few chemists and mathematicians. When the war broke out, they ended up under the German Army Ordnance Office. Basically they were looking into three things: uranium isotope separation, uranium and heavy water production, and building what they called a Uranmaschine, or a nuclear reactor.”

“How far did they get?”

“We-ell,” he said, drawing the word out into two syllables, “that depends on who you talk to. By 1942, the German high command came to the conclusion that their nuclear energy
project was unlikely to advance fast enough to make a decisive contribution to the war effort.”

“So they moved away from it?”

“In a sense. At that point, the research became more fragmented. There were something like nine different institutes working on it. The main center for everything was at Berlin, of course, but toward the end of the war even those people were scattered all over, because of the heavy Allied bombing runs. The scientists from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics—men like Werner Heisenberg—moved to Hechin-gen and Haigerloch, near the Black Forest, while Nikolaus Riehl shifted his operations to Oranienburg.”

“What was he working on?”

“Riehl? He tended to concentrate on the large scale production of high-purity uranium oxide.”

Wolfgang leaned back in his seat and waited while their waitress set their plates on the table before them. “Up until recently, there were basically two schools of historical thought on the subject. Some writers, like Thomas Powers, came to the conclusion that German scientists like Heisenberg and Riehl were deliberately dragging their feet—that they didn’t believe an atomic bomb should ever be built by anyone.”

“Do you think Powers got that right?”

The Texan had ordered bratwurst and potatoes. Picking up his knife and fork, he cut a big chunk of sausage. “It’s certainly true that Heisenberg was no Nazi. He was good friends with Jewish scientists like Einstein and Niels Bohr, and he refused to join the Party, even at first when it looked like Germany had won the war. He always remained firmly against the war with the West, although he didn’t oppose the war with Russia.”

Wolfgang chewed for a moment in silence, then said, “Heisenberg was a complex man. He hated Hitler and the
Nazis, but he was a patriot. You have to remember that most of the men who fought for Germany in the War fought for
Germany,
not for Hitler. Not for the Nazis.”

Tobie picked at her own omelet and salad. “So was he dragging his feet, or not?”

“I honestly don’t know. We know he warned his colleagues that the Americans were working on an atom bomb. If the war hadn’t ended when it did, the Allies would have dropped their two bombs on Berlin and Hamburg, rather than on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. How could any man knowing what his country faced not work to avert that?”

Tobie said, “So what’s the other school of historical thought?”

Wolfgang raised his beer stein and drank deeply, then swiped the back of one meaty hand across his mouth. “In the late nineties, another historian came out with a book arguing that the only reason the Germans failed to develop an atom bomb was because they didn’t understand how it could work. Basically, he said Heisenberg was a bumbling idiot.”

“Was he?”

“
Werner Heisenberg?
Are you kidding? You’ve heard of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, right? That’s him. The guy won the 1932 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work in quantum mechanics. Yeah, he made some mistakes, but they all did—even Oppenheimer.” Wolfgang leaned forward. “Among other things, the author of this new book claimed the Germans failed to appreciate the potential of plutonium to be a nuclear explosive.”

“You don’t think he got that right?”

“Hardly. We’ve since found a preliminary patent application for a plutonium bomb written in 1941 by Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker.”

Jax frowned. “Where did that come from?”

“The Russian archives.” Wolfgang laid down his knife and
fork. “You’ve heard the expression, “What’s not in the files didn’t happen’?”

“Yes.”

“Well, up until ten years ago, most of the historical research into the German nuclear project was limited to the Uranium Club, mainly because they’re the only ones whose documents we had. But you see, under the Reich Research Council, the Army was also involved in atomic research—as was the Navy and the Air Force. Like I said, it was all very diversified.”

“So what happened to their documents?”

“All the files from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics were grabbed by the Soviets when they took over Berlin in April and May of 1945.”

“They took them back to Moscow?”

Wolfgang nodded, his mouth full. “That’s right,” he said, swallowing hard. “They weren’t made accessible to the West until 2002.”

“Have you seen them?” asked Tobie.

“I have.” Wolfgang drained his beer stein and set it down with a thump.

“And?”

“And I believe that a team led by Kurt Diebner actually tested a nuclear device in Germany, in Thuringia, right before the end of the war.”

Tobie dropped her fork, the handle clattering loudly against the side of her plate.

“When?” said Jax. “When was this?”

“On the third of March, 1945.”

Jax quietly ordered three more Beck’s beers, although Tobie
had barely touched hers. “What kind of nuclear device?” he asked, his gaze on the Texan’s hairy face.

“It’s difficult to say now, although evidence suggests it was not a standard nuclear weapon powered by nuclear fission.”

“So what was it?”

“Maybe a hybrid-nuclear fusion weapon.”

Tobie picked up her fork. She didn’t have a clue what the difference between nuclear fission and nuclear fusion even was.

Jax said, “Where in Thuringia did this happen?”

“At a place called Ohrdruf. The blast was carried out under the supervision of the SS. Anywhere from several dozen to several hundred prisoners of war and concentration-camp inmates are said to have died in the blast.”

Tobie said, “But surely there would still be evidence of that kind of explosion, even today?”

“There is. Recent test results from the site show elevated levels of radioactive isotopes. The problem is, there’s no way to know for certain if it came from the 1945 blast, or if it’s contamination from the Russian disaster at Chernobyl.”

Jax and Tobie exchanged quick glances. Jax said, “Where does the evidence for this device come from? From the Russian archives, too?”

“A lot of it.” Wolfgang wiped his napkin across his mouth and tucked it beneath the rim of his empty plate. “The thing is, only a small group of scientists was involved, and all relevant documents were immediately classified top secret when they were captured by the Allies.”

When Jax remained silent, the Texan looked from him to Tobie, and gave a wry half smile. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

Jax reached for his new beer. “You have to admit, it is hard to believe.”

“You think I don’t know that? But there’s more. Along with the patent for a plutonium bomb, the Russian archives also contain a report from a Russian spy in Germany. The report was considered significant enough that it was sent on to Stalin. According to their guy, ‘reliable sources’ described two huge explosions in Thuringia on the night of three March.”

“It could have been anything.”

“It could have,” Wolfgang agreed. “Except the East German authorities interviewed a number of eyewitnesses around Ohrdruf in the early 1960s. They reported a bright light followed by a sudden blast of wind. And they all said they suffered from nosebleeds, headaches, and nausea for days afterward.”

Ducking his head, the Texan rummaged around in the tattered knapsack that rested on the bench beside him. “Here. Look at this,” he said, holding out a photocopy of a sketch rendered in blue and red ink.

Peering over Jax’s shoulder, Tobie found herself staring at a drawing of what looked like a big teardrop, or what might almost have been an elongated mechanical bug, with a small head framed by two projecting arms. In the belly of
the “bug” was a big blue circle surrounding a smaller red inner circle.

“What is it?” asked Jax, looking up.

“It’s a diagram of a primitive nuclear weapon. It’s a schematic, mind you; not a practical blueprint. But what’s significant is that it was part of a newly discovered report.”

“Written by whom?”

“We don’t know. The title page of the report was missing when it was found in the archives.” Wolfgang pointed one of his thick fingers at the bulging end of the teardrop. “It’s a fission device, based on plutonium. The report even goes on to discuss a theory for a hydrogen bomb.”

Jax looked up. “I thought the Germans didn’t have a working reactor to produce plutonium.”

“That’s what we used to think. But recent industrial archaeology on the remains of the experimental German reactor in Berlin suggests it did work—in fact, it might have been up and running for several weeks.”

“Long enough to make the material for a bomb?” said Tobie.

“For at least one.” Wolfgang leaned forward. “Some people believe the device exploded at Thuringia was a hybrid—fission and fusion. Others think it was a ‘dirty bomb,’ using enriched nuclear material with conventional explosives.” He lowered his voice even further. “And then there are those who think the bombs the U.S. dropped on Japan were actually German made—seized by the Allies when they overran Germany.”

“That’s ridiculous,” said Tobie.

“Is it? Ever hear of U-234?”

“No,” she said, while Jax nodded.

“It was a Type XB submarine. One of those big mothers.”

“One of the ones originally designed as a minelayer?”

“That’s right. It left Kiel on 25 March 1945, headed for Japan and loaded with everything from a dismantled Me-262
jet fighter to V-2 missile components, and experts on rockets and jet engines.”

“Operation Caesar,” said Tobie quietly. The cargo of U-234 sounded much like the material they’d seen stacked on the wharves in Kaliningrad.

“You know about it?”

“We’ve heard of it.”

Wolfgang nodded. “Well, along with everything else, U-234 was also carrying 550 kilograms of uranium.”

“How many bombs would that make?” Jax asked.

“Of the size we dropped on Japan? Two. Some people think that even if the U.S. didn’t drop German-made bombs on Japan, they used the uranium from that U-boat.”

Tobie said, “What happened to it? The U-boat, I mean.”

“They were still in the Atlantic when the order came through from the German High Command, saying the war was over and that all U-boats were to surface and fly a black flag from their periscopes.”

“So they surrendered?”

Wolfgang nodded. “An American boarding party escorted them to New Hampshire.”

Jax said, “The uranium oxide—where was it stored?”

“You mean, where in the U-boat was it? I don’t know. All I know is it was packed in ten metal containers. When the Americans cut them open with a blowtorch, they found them full of smaller containers, shaped like cigar boxes. A quarter ton of uranium oxide, altogether. J. Robert Oppenheimer himself was supposedly there when they opened it.”

Jax was silent for a moment. Tobie noticed he hadn’t eaten much of his jaeger schnitzel. Finally, he said, “Marie Oldenburg told you about the cargo manifest of U-114?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think it’s possible that submarine could have been carrying an atom bomb?”

“I’d say so, yes.”

Jax sat back in his seat and let out his breath in a long, slow sigh that sounded like
“Fuck.
”

Tobie leaned forward. “You said there were other files—files the Allies seized after the war and that are still kept top secret?”

“That’s right.”

“But why? Why would they do that?”

“Keep them secret, you mean?” Wolfgang pressed his full lips into a thin, flat line. “World War II might have ended over sixty years ago, but it’s still a very controversial topic. A lot of people say Truman and his generals should have been tried as war criminals, for dropping the A-bomb on Japan.”

“It was horrible, yes,” said Tobie. “But it actually
saved
lives, by helping to end the war sooner.”

Wolfgang gave a wry smile. “That’s the argument you always hear. The problem is, Japan was trying to surrender
before
we dropped the bomb on them. They were willing to accept every single U.S. demand, except they wanted to be allowed to keep their emperor.”

Tobie frowned. “I thought in the end we let them keep their emperor.”

“Exactly.”

“But what does that have to do with the Germans developing the bomb?”

The Texan drained his beer stein and set it aside. “Think about what it would mean, if Germany had the bomb but didn’t use it. I mean, the Nazis are supposed to be the biggest baddies the universe has ever seen, right? So what does that say about us Americans, if we dropped a weapon even the Nazis were reluctant to use?”

“I don’t believe it,” said Tobie.

“I have to admit,” said Wolfgang, pushing to his feet, “I don’t want to believe it, myself.”