The Empire of Night: A Christopher Marlowe Cobb Thriller (31 page)

“The war must be making very heavy demands on them,” I said, walking a high wire now with Stockman next to me, trying to lead Haber by rhetorical indirections.

“Carl Bosch, for instance,” Haber said. “At BASF.”

“Excellent idea,” I said.

“Very heavy demands,” Haber said.

He was circling back.

“It frightens me, in retrospect,” I said. “If it were not for your process, our dear Fatherland could be running out of all that it needs.”

I was referring to explosives, of course, not food. Ammunition. Bombs. I kept it vague, to keep Stockman quiet for as long as possible. But Haber instantly knew what I meant.

“We would have run out six months ago,” Haber said.

Stockman jumped in. “We are all frightened of that in retrospect,” he said. “But we have come through. And the subject of explosives falls outside of the story we wish to do.”

He was staying vigilant.

“Sorry, Baron,” I said. “These are emotional issues.”

“I am well aware of that,” he said.

I turned back to Haber.

I was glad to be in my reporter’s frame of mind. I knew if you couldn’t get something out of the guy you wanted to expose, you might at least get him to rail at his enemies. Whose names you made careful note of.

I’d even had a whiff of collegial conflict from that earlier quotable proclamation.

I figured it would take Stockman a little time to assess this line of questioning. And that he wouldn’t hold it permanently against me. It was worth the risk.

“Doctor Haber,” I said, “your fine observation still sings in my head. The responsibility of a scientist during war. Do all of your colleagues feel the same way?”

“Some. Most.”

I could see him stiffening. Not against me. Against somebody in his head.

“I’m sure you of all people could persuade anyone who would waver.”

“Not always.” His face was turning red. Catalysis.

“If they are German,” I said.

“German? Yes, German.”

“And loyal.”

Haber turned to Stockman, put his hand onto the tabletop in his direction. “I’ve spoken to you of this man,” he said.

I could feel Stockman stirring.

This was a touchy issue between them as well.

Haber’s face swung back to me. “Albert Einstein,” he said.

37

This was another scientist whose name I did not know, but from the tone of Haber’s voice I was expected to.

“I myself brought him from exile to the Institute,” Haber said. “I overlooked his personality for the brilliance of his mind.”

Fritz was going red in the face again.

I had to assume Stockman was about to intervene. Haber was in the grip of a powerful desire to talk.

“That exile was self-imposed,” Haber said. “Though he was born in Germany, as was his father and his father’s father.”

He paused, letting this irony sink in.

I looked to Stockman, who was poised to speak. He glanced at me. I furrowed my brow and nodded to him, fleetingly, a gesture of reassurance. I lifted my notebook from the tabletop, while still looking at Stockman, and I turned to Haber and closed the notebook before him and put it back down, making a little show of it, more for Stockman, of course, than for Fritz. Though Fritz took notice.

“How distressing,” I said.

Haber said, in crescendo, “Perhaps you are unaware, from living presently abroad, that ninety-three important figures in German science and culture, ten Nobel Prize winners included and more surely to come—Max Planck, for example—and even including a great figure from the world of your other subject, Isabel Cobb—I refer to Mr. Max Reinhardt—we all signed a manifesto declaring our support for our government and our opposition to the lies and calumny being spread about us abroad. Doctor Einstein was invited to sign. Not only did he refuse. He signed a scandalous counter-manifesto that gave credence to those very lies.”

Haber was nearly shouting now. Shouting and quaking. He stopped. He calmed himself.

“Forgive me,” he said. And then, almost gently: “Albert is fortunate that his position was so ludicrous. Only four of the invited hundred intellectuals signed, and the manifesto was never published. He was spared.”

Haber removed the handkerchief from his breast pocket and patted his head. “I otherwise admire his mind greatly,” he said. “However, for what one may call a cosmological physicist, he knows very little about the real world. How sad.”

“Perhaps,” Stockman said, matching Haber’s abruptly subdued tone, “it is time for us to excuse Mr. Jäger and for you and I to discuss our business.”

Haber pulled a watch on a fob from his vest pocket. He said, “I told Colonel Bauer four-thirty.”

It wasn’t four-thirty yet and Haber clearly had more steam to let off.

But Stockman was getting nervous. “There are a couple of matters to discuss before he arrives. You have enough for the story, Josef?”

It was still critical that I appear eager to obey Albert. I stood up at once. “Of course, Baron Stockman. You know I am here simply to serve you. I can do a fine story with what Doctor Haber has officially given me.”

“Excellent,” Albert said. I remained his man. He even shook my hand at once. This led to Haber’s offered hand and bowings and heel-clickings all around.

And so they were done with me.

The soldier was summoned and I was respectfully but efficiently escorted from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Physikalische Chemie, placed in a waiting Daimler taxi beneath the plane trees, and sent away.

I got out at the Adlon and lingered on the sidewalk long enough for the taxi to drive off. I turned west and walked the three hundred yards to the Hotel Baden. I strode through the lobby and straight into the telephone kiosk. I’d barely gotten the receiver into my hand when somebody knuckled the glass pane directly behind my head.

I turned.

It was Jeremy.

I replaced the receiver and opened the door. “I was just calling you,” I said.

“I supposed,” he said.

“How are things in Spandau?”

“The factories never rest, thanks to your man Haber.”

“They make shells?”

He nodded.

“Are they Krupp’s?”

“Government factories.”

“Your mother is well located.”

“She is. I keep my eyes open. How was your improvisation?”

“That remains to be seen.”

So we sat in the Baden coffee shop, in the corner farthest from the Unter den Linden windows, and I brought Jeremy up to speed, from Stockman at the Adlon reception desk to the taxi at the Adlon front door.

He said not a word till I’d done. Then he went straight to my interpretation of the writing on the second box in Reinauer’s office. “I’ve not seen it used before, but your reading of MDH seems spot on.”

“You agree it’s likely mit
Stockman’s
hand?”

“Seems so.”

“Ever hear of Einstein?”

He shook his head no, even as he tried to think. “I don’t believe.”

“We need to find him.”

“Around the Institute, perhaps.” As soon as Jeremy said this, he shook his head again. “But how to approach him there.”

“And this Colonel Bauer?”

“About him, I’ve got people to ask,” Jeremy said. “Berlin is densely populated with colonels and ‘Bauer’ is common. No first name?”

“It wasn’t spoken.”

“If he’s a third party to Haber and Stockman, maybe we can sort him out.”

“How late can I call your number in Spandau?”

“Very late,” Jeremy said. “My mother takes a long while going to sleep. What’s your next move?”

“I have a hunch I can find Sir Albert tonight.”

38

Jeremy and I went our ways, and I had dinner alone in the Adlon Pariser Platz, the red walnut–walled à la carte restaurant off the lobby, and then I retired to my room to give Albert a head start on his drinking.

At nine I entered Stockman’s favorite watering hole. I strode automatically toward the far corner and in a few steps I could see past the end of the zinc bar to his table of choice. Three strangers in evening suits were confabbing there, two with Willie mustaches and one with a fez.

I stopped, roughing myself up in my head for not trying to formalize a drink with Albert for tonight.

But then a familiar voice said my name. “Mr. Hunter. Join us.”

Even Mr. Hunter immediately recognized Isabel Cobb’s voice.

I looked to my left.

Along the full width of this western wall ran a Bacchanalian mural, an unbroken, dancing, leaping, swooning, embracing flow of naked flesh and diaphanous gowns and goat parts under which were three arrangements for drinkers, two chairs each, their backs to the bar, a table before them, and a two-seat settee against the wall. In the center of these settings, nuzzled up shoulder to shoulder on the settee, were my mother and Sir Albert Stockman.

He was dressed in his evening suit. She was wearing a front-buttoning shirtwaist with intricate sylvan lace inserts and an apricot silk scarf thrown round her neck. She was straight from rehearsal, I presumed.

I approached.

As I did, a man rose from one of the chairs before them.

It was Madam Isabel’s director, Victor Barnowsky.

He turned to me.

“
Herr Regisseur
,” I said.

“Mr. Hunter,” he said.

We exchanged another strong handshake. I was reminded of my first impression of him, how like a roughhouser he seemed.

“Won’t you stay?” my mother said.

“Alas, I must go, Madam Cobb,” Barnowsky said, sounding very formal. I figured they knew enough to hide their stage-star-and-present-director warmth in the presence of her beau. “A pleasure to meet with you, Baron.” Barnowsky bowed to Stockman, who nodded at Barnowsky but said nothing. I figured Albert wasn’t quite buying all this formality between his beloved and this theater director.

Barnowsky vanished and Albert loosened a little and motioned me into the empty chair.

I sat.

This wasn’t going to be easy.

I had a front row seat before a very small stage with two lovebirds snuggled up and a great deal at stake and some messy personal issues in the script.

One of which was:
I may someday need to put a bullet between this guy’s eyes.

Another of which was:
He might need to do the same to me.
Indeed, the only thing that was keeping his finger from squeezing a trigger was his ignorance about me. The only inhibition for me was knowing too much about him. His restraint was more apt to change abruptly than mine. That put me at a severe disadvantage in any likely showdown.

We all looked at each other for a moment in a sort of dazed silence. I didn’t know if I could talk about the Haber meeting in my mother’s presence. Had their intimacy gone far enough for that to be okay? She didn’t know what had transpired between us two men since last night and she was smart enough to let us set the tone and pace. Stockman had his airship überagenda mixing with his jealousy over his woman.

We were relieved by the bartender, whose arrival I realized by Albert’s eyes shifting abruptly up and over my shoulder. He looked back to me. “What are you having?”

I looked down at the table.

It was Sam Thompson again, though if this was still the first bottle of the evening, the two of them were drinking their way forward quite moderately, judging by the amount of whiskey remaining. Their glasses were presently empty.

“There seems to be plenty of rye left,” I said.

“A third glass, Hans,” Stockman said to the bartender.

And we were silent for another moment.

Stockman was going to have to start this.

I took out a Fatima and gestured the pack to the snuggly couple.

Stockman waved it off with a thanks and dipped into his evening suit inner pocket and took out a silver cigarette case, going after his own brand.

My mother also declined the Fatimas, with a little shake of the head and a focusing of her eyes on mine and a surging of something in them that I read as,
Well, here we are, my son, in quite a melodrama together.

Stockman lit his cigarette and offered his match across the table. I bent to it and sat back, as did Stockman, and we blew smoke together.

“I was telling Isabel about our impassioned Jew at the chemistry institute,” Stockman said.

So they’d gone
that
far in their intimacy.

Then he made his more important point: “She has her own Jew to deal with.”

Barnowsky was still weighing heavily on him.

I glanced at Mother. She was no doubt grinding her teeth, but she was a fine actress, after all, and, indeed, since she was already pressed shoulder to arm to hip to thigh against Stockman, she even crossed her free right arm over her body and placed her hand gently on his forearm. While wishing, instead, I would’ve bet, that she could slap him in the face.