by Bonnie Toews
“Where’s Nielsen now?” demanded Churchill.
Unconsciously, Sir Fletcher steepled his finger tips together in prayer-like form.
“In Copenhagen.”
“STILL!” Churchill’s shock resounded through the room. He dropped his chin in an effort to control his anger. The chin’s half-moon shape retreated into his jowls.
“We have no choice,” he said at last, and pulled his afghan up more tightly to cover his chest. “The man has become a critical liability. With the Germans toughening up their policies in Denmark, it’s clear he faces imminent arrest and interrogation. Under torture, who knows what he might tell.”
“The Gestapo won’t resort to torture. They’ll use drugs,” Sir Fletcher pointed out.
Churchill glowered. “Of course they will. We’ve waited too long.”
Sir Fletcher glanced at Saunders for support.
“His lab should be destroyed too.”
“Why?” asked Saunders.
“The Americans are close to producing their own atomic bomb. Nielsen’s test results are no longer significant.”
“The risk of atomic information falling into German hands has to be weighed against the danger of reprisals following the destruction of his lab,” cautioned Saunders.
“The SS are liquidating entire communities anyway. We can’t help that,” countered Sir Fletcher.
“We don’t have to encourage it unnecessarily either,” Saunders objected evenly.
“Granted,” Sir Fletcher almost smiled, “but we can take advantage of any counteractive retaliation the Nazis initiate against the Danes to galvanize the spirit of the resistance movement amongst local partisans. Without constant provocation, support for our secret armies will surely die.”
Churchill nodded. “The tactic which brings an ally into the field is as serviceable as that which wins a great battle.”
Sir Fletcher pulled out his pipe from his jacket, pointed the mouthpiece away from himself and jabbed the air with its tip. “Exactly my point. I personally do not see the danger of reprisals as a strong enough deterrent to refrain from blowing up Nielsen’s lab.”
Morgan Saunders leaned forward in his chair.
“Suppose Nielsen’s papers are never found.”
He let them think about that before he continued.
“If we blow up his lab, are we not sending a signal to the German scientists he’s been on the right track all along?”
“True,” Sir Fletcher conceded.
Reaching for a cigar on his bedside table, Churchill deliberated as he slowly lit it. “Well, gentlemen, what do we do about this tricky situation? We don’t want Hitler speeding up production.”
He stuck the loathsome thing between his lips. His cheeks bloated as he drew smoke in and out like bellows. Puffballs of acrid smoke spewed into the air above his head.
While Sir Fletcher packed his pipe with tobacco from a pouch tucked in his jacket pocket, he used the guise to study Saunders unobtrusively. Other than he was an American, he knew nothing about the OSS chief. Lately, Churchill had been making him privy to all the subversive British operations being run inside the Third Reich, and it irked Sir Fletcher. He drew on his pipe as he lit it. Before he stuck his neck out, he wanted to hear what Saunders had in mind.
“I see it as a game of bluff,” Saunders said. “If we first rescue Nielsen and then leave his lab intact, we may fool Hitler’s scientists into thinking his test results are worthless.”
“To do that, we would have to countermand Watchdog’s orders.” Sir Fletcher kept the pipe in his mouth.
“Who is Watchdog?”
“A plant inside Nielsen’s lab,” he replied, watching Saunders mentally sift this information.
“What are his orders?”
Sir Fletcher smiled. “You’re assuming Watchdog is a man.”
Saunders’ emerald eyes cooled. “Then let me rephrase my question. What are Watchdog’s orders?”
“If the Germans decide to interrogate Dr. Nielsen, our agent is to terminate him and destroy the lab.”
“Aren’t you assuming your agent will get prior notice of Holback’s’ arrest?”
“I’m not assuming anything,” said Sir Fletcher smugly. “Prior notice is a surety.”
“I see.”
A frown pinched Saunder’s forehead.
“How do we contact Watchdog?”
“Our agent has operated with complete anonymity,” said Sir Fletcher. “He…”
“He?” Saunders noted. “So, your agent is male.”
A twinkle flickered in his eyes.
Sir Fletcher affixed a cold glare on the OSS chief as if he were an errant school boy. “He uses sleepers to run courier for him. He never sees nor talks directly to them. This way there is no trail leading back to him. Neither can the sleeper decode the message he carries because he doesn’t have the key.”
“Sounds like he is highly placed in the German Command.” Saunders’ lips tightened, and his twinkle faded. He peered back at Sir Fletcher as they locked wills.
“That only explains how he contacts you, not how you contact him.”
“We haven’t.”
Sir Fletcher watched the whites of Saunders’ eyes widen, and his brows rise.
“You’ve never contacted Watchdog since you activated him?”
“Aye, that’s right,” said Sir Fletcher. “Well, to be more precise, not since the day Germany invaded Poland. Any information he has sent us has been based on our need to know. There’s been no reason to jeopardize his cover by contacting him.”
Saunders sat in silence, but the Amanita director sensed his mental energy weighing and balancing everything he heard.
Churchill fidgeted restlessly. “Would you gentlemen care for a mulled wine? This living like a mole underground chills me to the bone.”
Saunders nodded absent-mindedly. Sir Fletcher agreed heartily.
Churchill rang for his valet. When the attentive servant opened the private door of his chamber, Nelson, Churchill’s black cat, darted inside and pounced on Churchill’s bed. He padded up the thick outline of his master’s body to sit on his portly stomach and looked expectantly into the Prime Minister’s face.
“Nelson, boy, have I been neglecting you?”
Churchill stroked Nelson’s silky ears and coat until the cat purred with contentment as he settled himself down in a half-circle ready to snooze. When the valet tried to shoo him away, Churchill held up his hand. “Leave him,” he ordered. “He’s keeping me warm.”
The chastised valet quickly withdrew, and Churchill returned his attention to the two men. “Well, gentlemen, what do we do? Rescue Nielsen or get rid of him? Demolish his lab or leave it to Providence?”
Saunders spoke quietly. “We have no choice. Rescue Nielsen and forget his lab. The faster the better.”
Churchill fastened his gaze on Sir Fletcher.
“Is that how you appraise the situation?”
He cleared his throat and nodded.
“Aye, Morgan makes sense. Leaving Nielsen’s lab intact may put the Germans off long enough to give the Americans the lead in their production of the atomic bomb.”
“Which brings us back to this Watchdog of yours. How do we contact him?” Churchill asked Sir Fletcher.
Sir Fletcher hesitated. Both Churchill and Saunders noticed.
“There is only one courier he would trust.”
Churchill and Saunders leaned forward, their postures demanding WHO?
“Lady Grace,” said Sir Fletcher.
“No!” Churchill’s left eyebrow shot up in a lopsided scowl. “You don’t mean Lord Radcliffe’ daughter.”
“Aye, I do.”
“Good grief! Is there no one else you can send? She’s the king’s cousin, for goodness sake!”
“She’s three full generations away from the throne,” Saunders argued, surprising Sir Fletcher with his support.
“That’s not the point,” Churchill thundered. “If she’s captured, the N
azis can hold her for ransom. Lord only knows what kind of tradeoff they would use against us. Politically, her capture would ruin me.”
“Do we have any other choice?” Saunders asked Sir Fletcher.
“Anyone else we send, Watchdog will suspect is a Gestapo plant.”
To calm his agitation, Churchill unconsciously stroked the back of his sleepy Nelson, evoking a loud steady purr from the cat curled up so peacefully atop his broad belly.
“There’s another factor,” continued Sir Fletcher. “She’s one of the few people Dr. Nielsen knows and respects. She was in Copenhagen in ‘39 at the Danish king’s awards dinner for celebrities and scientists. They set next to each other throughout the meal. I’m told she made a lasting impression on him. She’s also related to King Christian through royal marriages.”
Sir Fletcher made his final point. “If Nielsen has any last-minute misgivings about leaving Copenhagen, she can put them to rest. We must move quickly, and we must move now.”
Churchill’s jowls folded as his chin sank more deeply into his chest.
“May I suggest you familiarize King George with the situation, Mr. Prime Minister, and find out his reactions before we proceed,” Saunders urged.
Churchill’s head shot up. Considering each man carefully, he pursed his lips and finally nodded his assent. At this point, the valet entered with a tray of mulled wine, and the three men downed its spicy warmth gratefully.
At midnight the same night, Churchill conveyed the king’s prayers for the success of his cousin’s mission to Saunders and Sir Fletcher. Lady Grace would be sent to Copenhagen at the earliest dispatch.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Monday, September 27th, 1944
After many shipyard strikes, the sabotage of Copenhagen’s rifle manufacturing plant in June and two five-day general strikes— one from June 30 to July 4 and the other between September 16 and 21 protesting the Germans’ mass deportations of Danes—Waffen-SS troops stormed Copenhagen. They broke into homes in the middle of the night and carried off whole families to cattle ships anchored in the harbor destined for Germany.
At Gestapo headquarters in the heart of Copenhagen, in a building that once served as the Shell Oil Company’s main European office, SS Colonel Erich von Lohren read the arrest order for Dr. Bernhard Nielsen and angrily flung it down on his desk. The security commander, SS General Ludwig Ketmann, had signed it.
Since the takeover of Denmark, the purebred officer with the title of Baron had used every ploy imaginable to entangle the nuclear scientist’s reports in such a web of bureaucratic muddling they either became lost or so bogged down they never reached the right analytical departments, where the true progress of his daily experiments could be recognized. The Nazis’ obsession for documenting everything made them tolerant of clogged paper channels. Nothing seemed amiss with more irregular tie-ups.
Hitler’s own attitude towards academics served as Nielsen’s best protection. He hated teachers and especially theorems developed by Jewish scientists. Since Nielsen’s work evolved from Albert Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, a Jew’s physics rather than a German’s, Hitler didn’t take the doctor’s findings seriously. But, someone in the German High Command was growing impatient with Nielsen, and Erich suspected it was Himmler. It seemed the Gestapo intended to force Nielsen to speed up his trial runs with the heavy water cyclotron in his lab. He was trying to bridle the spontaneous energy released by nuclear fission, but he was taking too long fiddling with more variables in the experiments. Hitler needed monster weapons immediately… the atomic bomb, rockets with atomic warheads and jet fighters… to turn the tide of the war back in his favor. They were all on the drawing board.
To everyone’s disappointment, the few prototype jet planes produced were failing their initial tests dismally. As a result, every scientist under the Third Reich, including the massive number employed at the top-secret rocket base at Peenemunde 120 miles east of Copenhagen on the Baltic Sea, was assigned a personal SS monitor. This way the pressure to produce was sustained and leaks in information as well as sabotage efforts were discouraged. As Nielsen’s SS liaison officer, the arrest order on Erich’s desk questioned his loyalty and competence as much as the scientist’s.
Erich hadn’t seen Ketmann since Kristallnacht in Berlin. As he had risen in Himmler’s favor, Ketmann was assigned to the Einsatzgruppen, a formidable force of combined SS, SD, and Gestapo Special Action groups. They were the official executioners, the Death Squads, who slaughtered tens of thousands in mass reprisals or secret ‘disinfections’ ridding the Third Reich of its ‘sub-humans.’
Ketmann’s reward for a job well done in Poland was to be appointed security commander of the Norsk hydro plant in Norway. According to this arrest order, it showed Ketmann had also been promoted to general in his new assignment to Copenhagen.
Erich quickly figured. If Nielsen were arrested and forced to talk, he would not be able to conceal he already knew how to harness the atom’s mega force. With this information, Hitler could produce the elusive power to enslave the whole world. There was no doubt in Erich’s mind Germany was equipped to build an atomic bomb faster than the Allies could. The Nazis had intensive slave labor, which was necessary to achieve it. For them, it would be like assembling a toy. This had to be prevented at all costs, even if it meant the scientist must die.
In the meantime, he might be able to negotiate one more delay. His own chief, Brigadier General Schellenberg, headed the combined secret services. He had since the July plot, when Admiral Canaris of Military Intelligence had been arrested as a suspect in the assassination attempt on Hitler’s life. The Admiral’s active operations had been quickly absorbed by Schellenberg’s SD—Sicherdienst or Secret Police. Everything else had been dismantled. Erich was banking on his ability to persuade Schellenberg to postpone Nielsen’s arrest. It would give the scientist his last chance to escape.
He picked up the phone and asked the operator for a free line to Berlin. His fingers drummed impatiently on the desk, while he waited for the connection. “Herr General?” He listened to the other end and muttered, “Iche verstehe. Danke.”
Walther Schellenberg was the only cultured Nazi leader in Hitler’s elite circle. He used stealth to ply the truth from unwilling minds, minds, like pockets, which did not feel ‘picked clean’ until it was too late. He better than anyone understood Germany’s desperate need to develop atomic energy. Next to Heinrich Himmler, who still controlled the whole SS organization, he held power over a dying monster. From the outset of the war, he had conspired to achieve a breakthrough, which was why he had assigned Erich to watch Dr. Nielsen for the duration of the scientist’s research.
The refined voice of Walther Schellenberg came on the line.
“Herr General,” Erich said, “es ist Standartenfuhrer von Lohren im Copenhagen.”
“Ah, Erich, it is good to hear from you. What news do you have for me?”
“I have good news, Herr General.”
In this moment, Erich reverted to the righteous code of Hitler’s elite, who learned to use euphemisms, such as the ‘Final Solution’ to placate Hitler’s need to appear as a gentleman while gratifying his pathological desire to kill all Jews and those he deemed less than human.
“From the gleam I see in Dr. Nielsen’s eyes, he cannot contain his excitement. He is close, very close to the end of his search, and being a man with such an inquiring mind, he cannot hide the final realization of his dream from me so easily.”
“Gut! Gut! How much longer do you think he will take?”
“Days,” Erich assured him. “At most, no more than a few weeks. Since he received the requested supply of heavy water, he has made remarkable progress with his experiments.”
Erich deliberately referred to the heavy water, reinforcing the Third Reich’s failure to provide the essential supply for the doctor to continue his work sooner rather than Nielsen’s failure to work faster. “That’s why, sir, this arrest order seems rather untimely.”
“What arrest order, Erich? I know of no such order. Who authorized it?”
“General Ludwig Ketmann has signed it. He wants Dr. Nielsen arrested immediately.”
“Ah, I see. It is a mistake, I’m sure. He does not know Dr. Nielsen is my own pet project. Reichsfuhrer Himmler has assigned him to direct the mass deportation of Jews and dissidents to Germany and to suppress the ground swell of resistance rising in Denmark,” he explained. “Ludwig Ketmann is a consummate man at his task. You will no doubt meet him shortly.”
Erich sincerely hoped not. He and the Gestapo officer had already crossed destinies in Berlin, and because of his attraction to Lady Grace at her recital, may suspect a connection between him and the British.
“I look forward to meeting a fellow officer, Herr General,” he lied, “especially one who comes so highly recommended. I will explain your purpose for intervening on this matter to him then.”
“And I will forward your authorization by dispatch. It can only be a wise move to keep the shadow of our influence distant a while longer, since it is the scientist’s own belief in the sun that makes his creative genius shine so brightly.”
Schellenberg continued speaking in this convoluted style the SS and SD had mastered, partly to appease their baser need to rationalize ruthless deeds as well as to emulate their Fuhrer in a game of perceived intellectual supremacy.
“It would be a pity to close the shades on his gentle soul just as he is so close to the end of his search. I would not like to see him withdraw into the darkness and harden against us, stubbornly holding back on what he would have willingly given us anyway.”
“This was also my concern when I read the order, mein General. A humble genius quite often has an inflexible core, and like steel, will not break, even when it is pressured.”
“There is no doubt in my mind, Erich, that, although the gentle soul of Dr. Nielsen can sometimes seem a fool, he is never a coward. He would die before he would yield his own principles. We don’t have time for a contest of wills, not if we expect to win our race with the Allies to produce the first atomic bomb.”
