Hedy felt her smile slip from her face. “It will work. Look at it again. Please, Ernst. We need to reconvene the committee.”
A muscle twitched in Klein’s jaw. “I’ve seen enough. It’s too impractical. There’s no place in a torpedo for a mechanism like this.”
Hedy’s fury boiled over. She snatched her paper back. “I don’t care what you think. It will work. It is the solution. If you don’t tell der Führer, I will.”
Klein ripped the paper out of her hands and crumpled it into a little ball, which he tossed in the waste paper basket. “You want to know what your idea is worth. That’s what it’s worth. This is too much, Hedy. All this focus on war, and war machines… it isn’t appropriate for a lady. I’ve humored you for a while, but no more. Der Führer wouldn’t be pleased by this. You want to help with the war effort? Go sell your kisses like you did in America.”
Hedy drew back her hand to slap Klein across the face, tears streaming down her cheeks. He caught her arm and for a second they just stared at each other. Then Klein pulled her roughly into him and kissed her. The kiss was breathtaking, tender, and passionate, and as soon as Hedy could regain her equilibrium, she pushed him away and slapped him hard on the cheek.
“I could have you killed for that,” she said.
“Hedy…” he said, his breathing still uneven. He reached out as if to brush one of the bruises on her face.
But she turned and ran back out into the blinding ice rain, not bothering to wait for the umbrella that Soldat Schmitt held out for her.
So all this time, she thought Klein had been listening to her ideas, but he’d only wanted her body, her beauty… It was the only thing men cared about.
* * *
Hitler arrived back at Wolfsschanze in early January, raging about a recently sunken battleship and the murder of some German prisoners of war in Kalavyrta, Greece that had necessitated reprisals. Hedy had grown uncertain about sharing the idea of the piano rolls to operationalize her frequency-hopping idea with him. She’d seen Klein go in to brief him a couple times since his return. Had he told Adolf that her ideas were useless?
She was working up her courage when she came back to her quarters from the mess hall one day to find a heavy book on her desk. Critical Communication and Electronic Inventions of the Modern World read the title. She sank into her chair and started leafing through the book. It contained schematics and overviews of the patents on some of the most important inventions of the last hundred years: the telephone, the radio, frequency modulation, and a wide array of vehicles, tools, and circuits.
Hedy turned the pages in wonder. Who had left her this book? Was it a Christmas gift from Adolf? Her dresses, furs, and jewels had just appeared in her room much like this, as well as a copy of Mein Kampf. But this book seemed too considerate, too out of character. She sat and pulled out a fresh page of paper to take notes.
She was so absorbed in her reading that she almost forgot she had to serve tea at Adolf’s military conference at 12:30. She hurriedly donned her serving dress, a ridiculous green dirndl with a head covering to show her purity, and headed to Hitler’s bunker where the conference was to be held.
She was never permitted to remain for the actual strategy discussions, but discerned enough from the body language, seating arrangements, and murmurs of the men to know that news from the fronts wasn’t positive and some of the senior officers were starting to question Hilter’s determination to continue the war. Gröfaz, some of them called him in hushed tones when he wasn’t in the room. Gröfaz. It wasn’t a German word. She often wondered what it meant, but didn’t dare ask anyone.
But the mood was jovial that day, owing to Göring’s recent victory in the Battle of Cisterna, and a confident banter filled the room. After doing her serving duty, Hedy raced back to her room to continue studying the book. She’d reached the third chapter, which focused on combustion engines, when she saw faint writing in the margin of the book near the spine.
Mathematical equations. So, this was not a new book, not quite a gift, but rather a loan. But from whom?
She studied the writing, hoping to determine the author, but the numbers were nondescript. It was a simple multiplication of two three-digit numbers, as if the reader had a sudden inspiration from the passage. She was about to move on when it occurred to her that the product of the two numbers was incorrect. She redid the math herself in her head. The result, 352, was off by five. Odd.
Hedy turned to page 352 and found another equation written in the margins, again with a mathematical error. Her hands shaking, she flipped from page to page following the trail of equations. It was a message. It had to be. She tried applying the algorithm she’d so carefully learned in America, the one she was to use to pass intelligence on to her contact in Berchtesgaden. But the end result was meaningless. It was a different code.
She struggled with numbers until the gunmetal grey afternoon faded into the black night, until she had to put on a more seductive dress and a smile and join Hitler and his men at the cinema, and until she had to cede part of her soul yet again for survival.
* * *
It took her four weeks to crack the code. When at last the numbers started to make sense to her, the air was tinged with warmth, the German army was on the run in Russia, and Hitler was moving troops to Norway in preparation for an Allied invasion. The code was a sophisticated derivation of the one she’d learned with squares and cubes. It was a mathematician’s code, only decipherable by someone who could do decent math.
The message was simple. “Plan to assassinate Gröfaz. Be prepared.”
Gröfaz. Hitler.
Hedy’s fingers shook. If she ran and told der Führer of the plot, she might be spared, released. If this was a trick and she didn’t report it, she might be killed. Adolf was paranoid enough to lay a trap for her of this nature.
She paced her room for hours, but as twilight descended and she was to dress for another night of listening to Adolf crow about Germany’s military might, she sat again at her desk, drew some simple diagrams of smart torpedoes and worked in a mathematical equation. Her message was simple.
“I will help.”
Her drawing and the book were gone the next day and she spent the next twenty-four hours expecting to be shot at any time. But a new book arrived on her desk a week later with new equations. “War isn’t for women. Just be out of the conference room when the time comes in June.”
June? She had to wait two more months? She might well stick a knife in his side during one of her couplings with Adolf, except that he wore a bullet-proof vest at all times and was heavily guarded every moment of the day, even in the bedroom, and she was always searched before entering his quarters.
She might well stick a knife in her own side.
She drew another diagram, and encoded the word “Please.”
* * *
Allied forces continued to sweep eastward and northward throughout April and May, and bombing of European cities increased in intensity. Wolfsshanze remained quiet save for Hitler’s rages. On June sixth, while Hitler was at Berchtesgaden with many members of the High Command, the Allied forces staged a stunning invasion of Normandy, not Calais as had been expected. Rommel had been away from the front, and the French Underground had jammed German communication systems in France. Over 150,000 Canadian, American, British, and Free French troops made it ashore and the Allied westward push commenced.
Hedy paced her circuit of bunkers in the compound day after day. Surely Hitler would now surrender. But despite the urging of Rommel and Rundstedt, he did not, and he did not return to Wolfsshanze until July. Every day, she combed the book on her desk for evidence of a new message, but found nothing. Perhaps the conspirators had been killed, or caught.
She missed her meetings with Klein more than she could put to words, the twitch of his mouth as he listened, the faint flicker of interest in his blue eyes, their discussions regarding the feasibility of her latest idea, which was usually in Klein’s opinion origi
nal, but unviable. For some reason, she just missed… him. She saw him sometimes en route from his car to the radio building. He’d glance her way and seem to stare for a few seconds, but he never stopped and she never went to him.
On July thirteenth, a new book was on her desk. The message was simple, “Get out on the fifteenth.”
Two days later, Hedy dressed in her dirndl with fingers of ice and a faint patter of hope in her heart and hastened to the conference room. She served tea, watching the movements of all of the men. Himmler and Göring sat to Hitler’s left, and a new officer, a handsome younger man with a missing eye and a stump for one of his hands, sat to Hitler’s right. Jodl occupied his usual seat. She hesitated when she was finished pouring, looking for something out of place, something that she could do to help, but Adolf lifted his eyes and fixed her with a stern glare and she retreated.
She waited in her room for the sounds of explosions, screams, shouts, anything, but the afternoon proceeded as before. Then came the summons to Hitler’s quarters and the walk back across the moonlit compound, her limbs heavy with despair. The book was gone and Hedy sank into her bed. Her stay here would be interminable. The war would be interminable, and the Jewish people would be exterminated.
On the evening of the nineteenth, the book reappeared, and the message “tomorrow help no hand” was encoded in the equations.
The next morning the conference was moved upstairs to the main room of the Wolf’s Lair due to the heat, and Hedy arrived early to set out the cups. The men began to assemble. She lingered in the hall with the hot tea on a tray.
Just before the meeting was to start, the man with no hand, whom Hedy had determined was called Stauffenberg, excused himself to use the washroom, and headed to the one in Keitel’s office, a few doors down from the conference room. A tall, broad man followed him.
Hedy entered the main room and began pouring tea with trembling hands. As she rounded the end of the table, she tripped over the carpet and threw the teapot, which spilled and landed unbroken on the carpet in front of her. The assembled men turned, and Jodl helped Hedy to her feet while another man she didn’t recognize retrieved the teapot.
“I see our Austrian counterparts, while lovely, don’t have the grace of German women,” Adolf said, to the chuckles of the men around her.
Hedy lowered her eyes, her face crimson, and murmured her apologies, indicating she would brew another pot of tea immediately. Then she scurried from the room to see a guard knocking on the door to Keitel’s office, informing Stauffenberg that the meeting was about to start.
Stauffenberg emerged, holding his briefcase in his remaining hand, which had only three fingers. His face was a mask of manic composure. Another man stepped between Hedy and Stauffenberg and offered to take Stauffenberg’s briefcase. Stauffenberg at first refused and then relented, indicating that due to his hearing loss he’d appreciate sitting close to der Führer. The man nodded and carried the briefcase into the conference room with Stauffenberg following behind.
Where was the other man? Hedy opened Keitel’s door a crack. The young man inside, Stauffenberg’s aide, jerked something behind his back. A bomb.
“I’m here to help,” Hedy said, slipping into the room.
The man drew his gun. “It’s too late,” he said. “We didn’t get this one armed in time. If you scream or make a sound, I’ll shoot you.”
“Give me the other bomb,” Hedy said. “I’ll put it in the teapot.”
The man gave her an incredulous look. “It’s going to blow in five minutes.”
“Is the second bomb needed?” Hedy said.
“To ensure the job is completed, yes.”
“Give it to me,” Hedy ordered.
“You’ll be killed,” the man said, his handsome face contorted.
“Give me the bomb. I’ll get out in time.”
She and the man stuffed the bomb in the teapot, and Hedy hurried into the conference room, her heart pummeling against her rib cage. Stauffenberg passed her in the hallway, heading for the exit, his head lowered.
Hedy entered the conference room, choking on her own heart. She set the tray down in front of Adolf, who gave her an annoyed stare.
She poured milk into his cup first, the way he preferred it. “Oh dear,” she said. “I’ve forgotten the sugar. Just one second. I’ll go get it.” She turned to scurry from the room.
“Hurry up,” Adolf snapped, motioning to one of his guards to pour his tea. Hedy turned as the man reached for the teapot. As soon as he touched it, he would know there was something wrong.
She lunged back across the room. “Let me.”
The guard lifted the pot, and his expression shifted in realization.
Something beneath the table exploded, and Hedy was flying through the air once again, her face and arms burning, and her ears ringing. Yells erupted through the room, and everyone except those who had been next to Hedy launched to their feet.
Then the teapot blew up, and Hedy felt her limbs twist and break, and there was only darkness.
* * *
“This one’s dead too,” Klein’s voice. She seemed to be buried beneath an avalanche of limbs, her consciousness punctuated by searing agony.
“Leave them,” came a harsh voice. “Focus only on the living.”
Hedy wanted to raise her hand to identify herself as one of the living, but she couldn’t move it, and she wasn’t sure it was still attached to her body. She wouldn’t be living for long. She thought she might have felt someone’s fingers on her neck on her pulse.
“They’re all dead here,” Klein’s voice again.
Then there was darkness and silence again. The stench of death. And she passed out from the pain and loss of blood.
Suddenly she was being dragged out from beneath several bodies, carried in someone’s arms through the cool air of outdoors, and placed on a hard surface. Two doors slammed and a vehicle started beneath her.
* * *
Hedy awoke to the sound of gunfire. She fluttered her eyes open. Was the compound under attack? Had the Allies come?
Her vision was fractured and blurred and her body ached. But the searing agony was gone. Replaced by a sense of disassociation and strange euphoria. Morphine. She lifted her hands to her face and found bandages on her skin and hands.
“You’re awake, Hedwig.” Klein again. She couldn’t see him. She could only see white. Why was he calling her Hedwig?
“Are we under attack?”
“Those are fireworks,” Klein said. “Celebrating the end of the war. You are in Berlin. Der Führer is dead.” She felt his fingers on her arm. “If it hadn’t been for the teapot…”
“Stauffenberg…” she murmured.
“He’s dead too. Hitler lived for forty-eight hours. Long enough to track down and order the execution of many of the people involved in the plot.” He placed a finger against her lips. “But no more. The ghosts of the Reich are everywhere.”
She pressed her bandaged hands more fully against the skin of her face. “Am I ruined? Disfigured?”
“You’ve lost a leg and you have extensive burns to your face and torso. I’m very sorry. I had to leave you for dead for several hours and then drive you to Berlin in the trunk of my car. They might have been able to save your leg otherwise. I’m afraid it’s unlikely you can return to being a movie star.”
“Why are you here?” she said. Her lips felt scabbed and cracked.
“Because I love you, Hedwig. You and your ideas.”
He loved her. How was that possible?
“But I’m…” She choked on the words as a strange hope flooded her chest. “I’m no longer beautiful.”
She felt him lift her bandaged hand. “It was never your beauty I loved. It was your passion. Besides, speaking from experience, beauty is overrated anyway.”
1956
Hedy studied her reflection, the crisscross of scars that covered her entire face and décolletage, the distortion of her nose and cheekbones. Twelve years and sev
eral surgeries later, it was still shocking to look herself in the eye. She eased her hands into the crutches that would support her weight and drew herself to standing.
She made her way through the house, past the nursery where the children played under the supervision of a nanny, past Ernst’s desk where he sat tinkering with an old radio. She paused and placed her hand on his shoulder. He covered it with his own and gave her the warm smile that still made her heart float.
Then she crutched down the hall past the one framed photo from her Hollywood days, to her desk in the sunlit study where she sat in front of her typewriter and began to type on cream letterhead: “Patent Application from Klein and Kiesler Designs.”
A Word from Jennifer Ellis
Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Kiesler, is one of those people whose life seems stranger than fiction, and her story has always intrigued me. What could she have done if she had been encouraged to be an inventor, if she hadn’t been so beautiful? All of the aspects Hedy’s life presented in this story prior to the point of divergence, which occurs when Hedy decides to pay Commodore McCandless a visit, are true. Born in 1914 to wealthy Jewish parents in Vienna, Hedy decided at an early age to become an actress. She was the first woman to appear nude on screen in the controversial movie Ecstasy in 1933. Later in 1933, she married Friedrich Mandl, an Austrian arms dealer who hosted parties at which Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were present.
Mandl objected to several scenes in Ecstasy and tried to purchase all of the copies of the movie. While it is unknown whether Hitler had a copy, Mussolini was believed to have one, which Mandl did not ask him to part with. It is possible that Mandl forced Hedy to have a sexual encounter with Hitler during Mandl and Hedy’s short marriage. The encounter is referred to in one of Hedy’s biographies, and Hedy did possess a cigarette case with a diamond Swastika as described in the story. Hedy also accompanied Mandl to many business meetings with scientists and experts in the field of military technology, and claims he kept her a prisoner in their home.
Alt.History 102 (The Future Chronicles) Page 4
