God's Formula (2 page)

“Fraulein Jaeger, may I help you?”

“Oh, professor, you startled me.”

“I am sorry, fraulein. It is past midnight.”

The tall and buxom Marlene Jaeger, her lustrous, dark brown hair in a bun, had been bending over picking something off the floor of his office when Walter Friedeman appeared at the door. Her drab gray skirt had been hiked up in the back as she bent forward at the waist, revealing the tops of creamy-white thighs and a glimpse of garter belt. She did not, however, seem flustered as she faced him, but composed and smiling. A wonderful smile, she had, the lips full, the teeth white and perfectly even.

“I return sometimes to tidy up,” she said. “Mr. and Mrs. Z have been busy with their daughter. They only clean once per week now.”

“Yes, poor thing.”

“I hope you don’t mind.”

“Not at all.”

“Are you here to work, Herr Professor?”

“No, to retrieve some papers. The bomb alert.”

“Oh yes. A false alarm, thank goodness.”

“We were not allowed back in.”

“Yes, I know. They thought it might have been Polish agents.”

Yes, Friedeman said to himself, we’ll soon have to punish the Poles for all the nasty things they’re doing to us poor, wholesome, God-fearing Germans. Invasion and occupation, that will teach them.

“I will leave you then,” Miss Jaeger said.

“Good night, fraulein.”

“Good night, Herr Professor.”

“Those papers, fraulien, were they on the floor?”

“Yes, professor. I was about to put them on your desk.” In one hand she held a sheaf of lined note papers filled with pencil markings in Friedeman’s hand. What was she clutching in that other hand? Friedeman asked himself.

“No bother,” he said. “I’ll take them.”

She handed him the papers.

“Will there be anything else, professor?”

Walter Friedeman had been officially a widower for only three months, but de facto for fourteen years. His wife Pauline had suffered from dementia since the birth of their only child, Conrad, in 1925. She had died of pneumonia in June. His mind turned for a moment, a rather long moment, to Fraulein Jaeger’s stockinged thighs. You are a mole, he thought, a spy, and a good one.

“No,” he said, “but thank you. Shall I order you a car?”

“No, I have my own car.”

“Good night then.”

“Good night, professor.”

Miss Jaeger’s purse was on Friedeman’s desk. She turned to pick it up, and as she did, she deftly dropped the object in her left hand into it. When she slipped past him he caught a whiff of her perfume, the faint smell of some jungle flower. God in heaven, he said to himself as he watched her walk slowly out of his office and down the long corridor that led to the institute’s reception area.

“So, William, what brings you here?”

“War is coming.”

“Any day now.”

“Roosevelt needs to know your state of readiness.”

“It’s nil.”

“I know. I’ve told him. But that’s not why I called you.”

“I’m all ears.”

Shaded by a large sycamore, Ian Fleming and Bill Donovan sat over tea on the rear terrace of Fleming’s flat in Belgravia.

“Our people in Berlin have been contacted by a German scientist,” the American said, “who wants to defect.”

“Is he important?”

“Have you heard of the atomic bomb?”

“Vaguely.”

“He’s been working on it.”

“You have people in Berlin, certainly.”

“Yes, but that’s just it. Roosevelt says no.”

“You want
us
to do it?”

“Well…”

“Why not
you
?”

“Six months ago…”

“Yes.”

“We thought Friedeman was a Jew.”

“You were approached then?” Fleming asked.

“Yes, by Albert Einstein.”

“And you turned him down?”

“Yes, my government did.”

“You thought it was a Jew looking after a Jew.”

“Something like that.”

“But our man’s not Jewish.”

“No.”

“The ironies abound.”

“The UK has not exactly opened its doors.”

“I agree. And why not
now
?”

“Hitler’s cooking up a reason to invade Poland. We don’t want to give him a reason to declare war on us as well.”

“I see, but Poland is
our
ally, so if we get caught, what’s the difference? We’ll be at war with Germany soon anyway. Is that it?”

“Yes, I’m afraid that’s Roosevelt’s thinking.”

“
Real politique
.”

“Yes. Hard as nails.”

“Are we in urgent mode?”

“Yes, I’m afraid so. Our man believes he is being watched, that he will be arrested quite soon, that his formula will be discovered or tortured out of him.”

“How did you come by all this?”

“In March I asked one of our people—your old friend Rex Dowling—to make contact. He did. Our scientist contacted Dowling last night. I should say early this morning. He’s in panic mode.”

“I’ll run it by the old man.”

Donovan remained silent. Sunlight, filtering through the old tree’s thick branches, cast dappled shadows on the small table’s snowy-white cloth covering.

They sipped their tea and the silence stretched out.

“I’ll be discrete,” the Englishman said, finally.

“Thank you.”

“Did I hear it from you?”

“Yes, but I made no request.”

“You mentioned it in passing.”

“Something like that.”

“What’s the man’s name?”

“Friedeman. Walter Friedeman.”

The two men stared at each other over their teacups, their faces masks of politeness. Then Fleming put his cup down, extracted a Morland’s Special from its packet, tamped it on the table, placed it snugly into its holder, and lit it.

“What’s your interest?” he asked after taking a long drag and exhaling it with obvious pleasure.

“Personally?”

“Yes.”

“Einstein.”

“What about him?”

“He said Friedeman had found a way to make the bomb in three months.”

“Three months. Bloody hell. And you believed him?”

“Yes. He’s Einstein for God’s sake.”

“I thought he was a pacifist.”

“That’s just it. That’s what sold me. He sees disaster coming and has been forced to change his principles. To bend them actually. He thinks the a-bomb would be better off in our hands than in Hitler’s.”

“If we get this bomb…”

“We’re a long way from that.”

“Yes, but if we do.”

“You’ll use it.”

“We’re a small island. Hitler’s a mad man. I daresay we will.”

“As I said, Albert is obviously willing to bend.”

“It’s an old story, Colonel. More tea? A bit of a bracer?” The Englishman had his hand on a bottle of St. George’s.

Donovan looked at his watch.

“Do us good,” said Fleming. “What with war coming and not being ready. Turn to the bottle.”

Wild Bill Donovan smiled and slid his teacup toward his host. “Let me know what Godfrey says,” he said. “I’ll do what I can to help.”

“Conrad.”

“Yes, Papa.”

“We will be celebrating Opa Josef’s birthday early this year.”

“Early? Why?”

“I have a conference next week in Munich. You will leave tomorrow. I will join you the next day.”

“I have Hitler Youth tomorrow.”

“You will have to miss this week.”

Father and son were sitting in worn leather chairs by the fire in their apartment in the Dahlem section of Berlin, near the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, where Friedeman worked. They sat and read almost every evening after dinner. Conrad frowned. “Shall I travel alone?” he said.

“Karl Brauer will accompany you.”

“Karl Brauer? The butcher’s boy?”

“He has cousins outside Strasbourg. His father is thinking of sending him to school there.”

“School? He seems so dull.”

It was Walter Friedeman’s turn to frown. His son was brilliant, his memory photographic. But he was arrogant and condescending to those he deemed beneath him, and worse, much worse, a true believer in Hitler and his insane political and cultural ideology. He said nothing though. The last time he and Conrad had argued, the boy had had an epileptic seizure, his first in many years. That argument had been over Conrad’s insistence on joining Hitler Youth at the ripe age of ten.

“I will not let you travel alone,” Friedeman said. “You will only be with Karl for a short train ride. I have already spoken to Opa. He is quite happy and excited.”

“Of course, Father.” Conrad nodded and turned back to his book.

“You can give Opa his gift,” Friedeman said.

“Of course. What is it?”

“It’s a poem I wrote for him. I think it will be fun if you memorized it and recited it when I arrived.”

Friedeman did not expect his son to be surprised at his choice of gifts for his grandfather’s eightieth birthday, and he was not. Conrad had been memorizing things verbatim, at a glance, since the age of seven, right after his first epileptic seizure.
Traumatically induced eidetic memory
, his physician had called it.

“Shall we do it now?” the boy asked.

Friedeman took several sheets of lined paper from his book and looked at them. Then he looked around the room where his small family had spent so much of their lives together. The fireplace, the sideboard where he made drinks for himself and Hilda every evening after Conrad was put to bed when he was a child. The cushioned chair where Hilda knitted. The radio from Rosenhain’s that she talked back to and sometimes sobbed in front of. The bookshelves with their section for Conrad’s science fiction and fantasy novels. The book in his hand was
The Hobbit
, a gift from Opa Josef, which Conrad loved when he first read it two years ago, and loved more now that it was said to be pro-Aryan and Conrad had become a little Nazi.

“Father,” Conrad said, interrupting these thoughts.

“Yes. Connie. Here.” He handed the boy the papers. “It’s in Elvish.”

“Elvish?”

“From
The Hobbit
.”

Conrad smiled. “What does it say?”

“A stanza for each of Opa’s decades. His life. It will make him smile.”

Conrad stared carefully at each sheet for a moment or two, then handed the papers back to his father.

“I don’t remember so much Elvish in the book, Papa.”

“Oh yes,” Friedeman replied. “I have been studying. I will translate, but first we’ll see if Opa can decipher it. It will be fun to tease him as he tries.”

“The elves in
The Hobbit
represent our Italian allies,” said Conrad, “silly looking, speaking gibberish, but useful to the cause.” His eyes were bright. “Don’t you agree, Father?”

On the wall behind his son was a framed photograph of Conrad and two of his Hitler Youth friends in their absurd uniforms, the single
sig rune
symbol prominent on their sleeves. Blond like his mother, Conrad looked every bit the Aryan superman the HJ was touted to be producing. The boys in the picture, all smiling confidently, each had his right hand on the haft of the standard issue Hitlerjugend knife in leather sheathes on their belts. Three Jew-haters and future killers for the Reich. Could there actually be five million of these boys—and girls, alas—throughout Germany?

“
Don
’
t
you, Father?” Conrad said.

“They’re just elves, Conrad,” Friedeman replied, “conjured up by Professor Tolkien to bring joy to children, to stir their imaginations.”

“I disagree,” the boy said. “But you have not been thinking straight since Mama died.”

You mean I had an excuse all these years for being nonpolitical,
Friedeman said to himself
. And for ignoring the drums of war these past months. The frothing at the collective German mouth.
He said nothing.

“I will have to do something to make up for missing tomorrow’s meeting,” Conrad said.

“Yes, of course,” Friedeman said. “I will call your troop leader to explain.”

“Thank you, Father.”

“Of course, you are making great progress. I understand your concern.”

Conrad nodded and smiled.

Thank God he loves his grandfather, Friedeman said to himself. At least I had no childish Nazi tantrum to deal with. “Your train leaves at seven a.m.,” he said. “Karl will meet you at the platform. He has your ticket. You should pack and get to bed soon. I will be gone before you. I have a meeting at the institute at six tomorrow morning.”

Walter Friedeman, horrified though he was, did not blame his son for his embrace of Nazism.He would have been ostracized by his peers if he hadn’t. Of course, in Berlin society in the late 1930’s, ostracized meant
spit on, pissed on, pummeled,
and sometimes much worse, like disappearing into the black vortex on Prinz-Albrecht-Strasse. And that was for
Germans
, those few brave souls who refused to bear the yoke of
Gleichschaltung
, the doctrinal conformity demanded by the Nazis and enforced by violence if necessary. The
Jews
were simply robbed of all their belongings and then either sent to camps or killed. Thank God his Jewish friends, Einstein and many others, had fled before it was too late.

Lately, Hitlerjugend “troops” had taken to throwing bricks through church windows. This was what earned them their merit badges. Traditional Christianity, with its treasonous love thy neighbor message, was naturally an enemy of the Nazis. Was Conrad among the brick throwers? The German scientist looked at his son, who had turned back to his book. Perhaps your journey tomorrow, Connie, will be the start of a new life, a life where Hitler is a monster and Hitler Youth a group of robotic young cowards. I pray it will be.

As for me, he said to himself, who has done nothing in the face of all this evil—nothing, for example, to even protest, let alone stop the massive effort at my once beloved KWI to produce chemical weapons—well, I will try. Now that I know that I am being spied on, I will do my best to make up for my cowardice all these years.

When Walter Friedeman was certain that his son was asleep, he retrieved his briefcase from his study, drew out the several hundred pages that contained all of his extracurricular research notes compiled over the last fifteen years, and deposited them in the fireplace. Very thick, they were slow at first to burn, but once they ignited, they were gone quickly. For good measure, he threw in Papa Friedeman’s birthday poem.
It
’
s up to you now, Albert
, he said to himself when these were consumed,
you and your friends in America. I have placed the fate of the world in your hands, and in my son
’
s fragile mind.