by Andrew Gross
“I’m not sure, Pop.” His daughter shakes her head too. “From what I heard, I think you both were.”
“I don’t know…” Her father sits back. “But I did give him the greatest honor I could think of…” He takes her hands. “And that was to give his name to you, pumpkin. At least I can finally tell you who you got your name from. Natalie.”
A sensation of pride surges through her. Her eyes glisten. She had never known. Natalie. After Nathan. Her uncle. “Thank you, Daddy.” She nods.
“I’m so sorry…” He shakes his head again as a tear winds down his cheek.
“Sorry for what?” She squeezes and kisses his hand.
“Sorry that all these years I couldn’t tell you what was in my heart. What was always here. Every day.” He taps his chest. “In here.”
“That’s okay.” She grabs a tissue to dab his eyes. “You did now.”
“We made a pact, your mom and I. I never picked up a chess piece again. And she … Well, as you know, maybe she played a little piano over the years. The clarinet…” He shrugs. “It just reminded her of everything she felt responsible for and wanted to leave behind. She did bring this back, though.” He reaches inside the cigar box and takes out the two halves of the Mozart Clarinet Concerto, which had been taped back together. “So now you see, they’re one. Seventy years it sat in there…” He looks at her and smiles. “You know that he was the real love of her life, her brother, not me.”
“That’s not true. She adored you, Pop. You know that.”
“Well, she used to say that I had my own heartthrob too…” He picks up the white chess piece and holds it in his hand. “You know, there hasn’t been a day when I haven’t thought of her. When I haven’t been heavy in my heart. All these years. That’s the reason. You understand what I’m saying, don’t you?”
She nods, tears welling in her own eyes. “Yes.”
“She said to me, ‘Good wins out, Leo … Even in here.’ Even in that hell we came out of. ‘Live out your life,’ she said. ‘If only just for me.’ And I have.” He looks at his daughter. “I’ve been a good father, haven’t I, sweetheart?”
“Of course you have, Daddy. The best.”
“And a good husband?”
“Yes.” She takes his hand. “Sixty years.”
“And I provided for you all? We built a family. You, Greg, and the kids…”
“A beautiful one, Pop. You did.”
“That was the vow I made. In that plane. And I tried to live up to it every day.” He looks at the picture of the pretty blond woman in the boat, the rim of her white sailor’s cap folded up and that beautiful smile. “None of us would have been here if it wasn’t for her. You never would have been born. All the good things in my life would never have happened. I would have died there. So I guess she was right, in the end, about good.”
“Yes.” His daughter looks at the dog-eared photo. “She was right.”
“Here. You can keep this all now.” He hands her back the photo and the chess piece. “Maybe you’ll tell the kids one day. When I’m gone. But now I’m a little tired. I think I’ve earned that nap. I think this is the latest I’ve stayed up since your mom and I took that cruise to the Caribbean and I won twenty-eight hundred bucks in the ship’s casino.”
“I never heard about that one.” His daughter laughs with surprise.
“Your mom was mad. Never let me near a casino again.” He curls a smile. “But I always could count the cards pretty well.”
He tries to stand, and she takes him by his arm and helps him, a step at a time, over to the bed, where he eases onto his back and lets out a satisfied sigh. “Just move it down a little for me, pumpkin. The switch is over there. You know, when I finally get out of this place”—he winks at her—“we ought to pick up one of these for the house.”
“Of course, Pop. We’ll put it on the list.” She depresses the lever and gently eases him back down.
“That’s good.” He closes his eyes for a second. When he opens them, he catches her staring at him. “What?”
“It’s just that I’ve loved you every day of my life, Daddy. But I’ve never been prouder of you than I am now.”
He nods, a satisfied smile creeping onto his face. “It’s good to hear you say that, pumpkin. But now I’m gonna get my beauty sleep, if it’s okay.”
“Of course it’s okay.” She bends down and gives him a kiss. “I’ll be back tomorrow.”
She takes her things and puts everything neatly back in the cigar box, staring a second at the photograph of the woman in the boat, whom she now had a name for, one last time. “Thank you,” she whispers to her softly.
Then she puts the photograph into the box with everything else and closes it, closes the story that their lives had sprung from, and goes to the door. She stops before turning out the light. “So I have to ask one more thing, Pop. Was it true?”
“Was what true, pumpkin?” he asks with his eyes closed.
“About your memory. We always knew you had a good one. I mean, you could certainly recite the entire Illinois Code of Civil Law by heart.”
“Was it true? Well, let me see now … As I recall, you were born on January twenty-second, 1955.” He puts his fingers to his forehead. “That was a Saturday, I think.”
“Of course it was a Saturday, Pop. I heard a million times, how I kept you from going to the Cubs game that day. You had front-row seats.”
“Oh. All right, all right … Guess I’ve gotten a little rusty in my old age.”
She smiles, about to reach for the light. “And you didn’t tell me about all the formulas you brought back. Mendl’s work. What happened to all that? Did it have the impact they hoped for?”
“Did it have the impact…?” He shrugs. “They said it changed the course of the war. History, for that matter. At first they were a little unsure what to do, what with Alfred and Nathan not being there. They brought me out to this place in New Mexico and I just started rattling things off … They had a staff of people taking things down fast as I could say them. Turns out, in the end, however, the Germans weren’t quite as close to a bomb as anyone thought. Still, you know what, honey…?”
“What, Pop?”
Her father turns to her. “I never understood a single thing that old man said to me. I just took it all down and put it in here.” He taps his head. “Gaseous diffusion … Never made a lick of sense to me. Now, tax law, that I understand.” His words begin to grow faint. “Trusts, wills … Those things make sense. Know what I’m saying, hon…?”
She stands at the door for a while and he closes his eyes. In a few seconds he is asleep.
“Yes, Pop.” She turns out the light. “I think I know.”
EPILOGUE
On the wall of the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos, New Mexico, there is a large plaque, just behind the life-size statues of General Leslie Groves and Robert Oppenheimer, in his iconic, soft brimmed hat, commemorating the scientists who as part of the Manhattan Project helped oversee the development of the atomic bomb and changed the course of modern history.
There are 247 names on the wall. Some are names everyone knows who has studied this chapter of history. Einstein. Fermi. Bohr. Teller. Others, Kistiakowsky, Morrison, Neddermeyer, Ulam: theoretical physicists, chemists, mathematicians. People of uncommon brilliance, whose contributions were essential yet whose names are not widely known.
Of all the names, only one never actually worked on the Manhattan Project. He died in Europe during the war, in a concentration camp, far from the laboratories of Los Alamos or Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the circumstances of his passing are cloudy. But his contribution, on the matter of gaseous diffusion, brought back by people of uncommon bravery, was thought by those who erected this tribute to be just as vital to the project’s success as that of those who toiled every day in Los Alamos.
You can find him, if you kneel down, between McKibben and Morrison near the bottom of the third row.
Alfred Mendl.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
My father-in-law, Nathan Zorman, was raised in Warsaw, Poland, and, in a shift of fate that no doubt saved his life, he left in early 1939 to come to the United States, just months before the war.
He never heard from anyone in his family again.
In 1941, when America entered the war, he enlisted in the U.S. Army and, because of his knowledge of languages, was placed in the Intelligence Corps.
Sadly, he died months before this novel’s publication, at ninety-six, but like many survivors, never spoke a word about his experiences either during the war or while he was growing up in Poland. Bringing to mind the faces of the family he never saw again was simply too painful. Over the years, he never even made an attempt to find out his family’s fate. I always wanted to find a way to put his anguish in a book—the grief and the loss—the guilt at having survived, which, I thought, in spite of many blessings in his life, had left him detached from inner happiness for seventy-plus years.
Much of the story you have read was based on truth. Alfred Wetzler and Rudolf Vrba were indeed real, and their depiction of Auschwitz after their remarkable escape was circulated in the highest channels of the U.S. government and brought the horrors there out of the darkness. The meetings with President Roosevelt and his war cabinet on this very subject were based on truth, as his war chiefs reviewed several proposed plans to stop the genocide, such as raids on the camps or bombing the railway tracks leading into them, but ultimately rejected them all. The compelling saga of the Vittel Jews with their forged Latin American identity papers is true as well, as was their fate—after being betrayed by a Jew from the Warsaw ghetto, they were all shipped to Auschwitz in January 1944, all 240 of them, and never heard from again.
While looking into my father-in-law’s past, I came across the massacres that took place in Lvov, Poland (now part of Ukraine), in June–July 1941 under the German occupation. At the time Lvov had a thriving university and the third-largest Jewish population in Poland. In what was termed an act of “self-purification,” the university there was brutally purged by both Nazis and Ukrainians, and thousands of Jewish intellectuals—professors, scientists, and artists—were rounded up and either shot on the spot or sent off to the death camps of Treblinka, Sobibor, and Auschwitz. From there, it wasn’t too much of a leap for a novelist to ask: What if one of these esteemed thinkers carried some kind of vital knowledge that could change the outcome of the war or, even beyond that, the course of human thought? Something that needed to get out, or would, like a buried secret, die along with him.
It was with this idea in mind that I came across the figure of prominent Danish physicist Niels Bohr. Considered one of the founders of atomic theory, Bohr was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1922 and was among the most revered scientific figures of his time. In the book I describe his harrowing escape from Denmark literally a day before he was to be arrested and likely sent off to a death camp and his even more harrowing voyage to London strapped into the bomb bay of a British Mosquito. A year later he was a member of the British mission to the Manhattan Project in Los Alamos. In addition to being a father figure to many of the other physicists there, as late as 1945 Robert Oppenheimer credited Bohr with making an important contribution to the modulated neutron initiators that were crucial to the bomb’s triggering device. Bohr’s vast knowledge never assisted the Nazis, but it was not too much of a stretch to imagine how, had Bohr been sent to the camps or even forced to succumb and aid the German war effort, the course of the war might have been decidedly altered or, at the very least, the outcome delayed.
Sadly, Alfred Mendl is not a real figure (and his mention in Los Alamos is fictional too). But the science he taught Leo—the gaseous diffusion process, whereby highly enriched uranium-235 is separated from its more common and nonfissile cousin, U-238—did become the most efficient separation method for the first atomic bombs. It was also not a European physicist who was at the forefront of this process in 1943 and 1944 but scientists from the University of Minnesota and the University of California at Berkeley. For that research I am highly indebted to several books (listed in the bibliography), but principally Richard Rhodes’s compelling and monumental study, The Making of the Atomic Bomb. It was also very helpful to speak with Robert Kupp, a chemical engineer who actually worked on the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge.
While researching this book, I also came across the real-life story of Denis Avey, a British soldier captured in North Africa and sent to a POW camp in Poland, who actually snuck inside Auschwitz for a night and then back out to tell a firsthand account of the horrors there. His remarkable story can be read in his memoir: The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz (Da Capo Press, 2011). So it was not such a leap to imagine that Nathan actually could have gotten in and out.
I’ve tried to remain as true as possible to the actual history around the events described in this book. (Filip Müller’s testament, Eyewitness Auschwitz, Ivan Dee Publisher, was one of several indispensable firsthand accounts.) Never for a second did I think of writing the definitive book on Auschwitz—the atrocities there have already been ably recorded on far more graphic and personal levels than mine. Still, the subject matter is sacrosanct, and as a Jew, I respect that history as much as anyone. But I did take what I hope will be seen as a few small liberties with the actual truth in the following areas: One is that after 1942, the women’s camp was situated at Auschwitz’s sister camp, Birkenau, a mile and a half to the northeast. And although my story takes place in 1944, the train tracks leading through the gates of Birkenau were already completed by then. Other than that, I tried to remain as accurate as possible in my retelling of the place and the acts there. Several people, especially Morris Pilberg, recounted personal stories of their experiences that are included in the narrative. I was also lucky that my neighbor, Joanna Powell, shared two extraordinary memoirs of her family members’ Shoah testimonies to draw from on Jewish life in prewar Poland and then under the occupation. Their stories helped me enormously. Lastly, the Abwehr Intelligence Command was always a thorn in Hitler’s side, the upper ranks populated by non–Nazi Party members. The Abwehr was believed to have been involved in several assassination attempts on Hitler’s life and possibly in unauthorized negotiations with the Russians. Hitler finally shut it down in February 1944 (and its head, Admiral Wilheim Canaris, was arrested)—literally during the timeline of this book, in the months between the deportation of the Vittel Jews to Auschwitz and the bulk of the action that takes place at the camp. Therefore, I decided to push the date forward just a couple of months for the sake of the narrative, and I do hope you’ll forgive me for this slight.
As I said, once the United States entered the war, my father-in-law enlisted in the Army and, because of his facility with languages, was placed in the Intelligence Corps. As with his upbringing in Poland, whatever it was he did in the service has never been spoken of to any in his family. What you’ve read is my story, not his. But if I could somehow have pushed through his pained and brooding expressions when urged to speak about his past; through his inability to articulate the long-held-in burdens of guilt and loss; if he was able to tell his own story, the whole tale, of his past in Poland and the role he played during the war, I always imagined it would read something like this.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When you do something people don’t expect from you, something way beyond the margins of your resume, one thing you learn quickly is who will come along for the ride and who will take a pass. One of my favorite quotes, from Henry Ford, is, “Some people think they can and others think they can’t, and they’re probably both right.” This book, one so close to my heart, yet so different from anything I’ve ever attempted before, represents about the 6,532nd time I’ve asked people to take that ride along with me over a handful of careers. I guess I’m just one of those who perpetually think that they can—and I hope this book, in the humblest of ways, bears that out.
There are many to thank, some already mentioned in the Author
’s Note, who have helped make this effort seem far more accomplished and well-researched:
Robert Kupp, a nonagenarian in his own right, and who was a chemical engineer assigned to the Manhattan Project, for talking me through the tricky edges of atomic science, someone who barely muddled his way through eighth-grade Earth Science.
Joanna Powell, my neighbor, for digging into her boxes and sharing two extraordinary family memoirs, which painted a rich tableau of Jewish life before and during the war.
Steve Berry (and his wife, Liz), who made it clear at their kitchen counter in Florida that this was the next book I needed to write. And for his patience and plotting acumen in nursing it through a couple of early outlines.
My friend Roy Grossman, who always adds enough clarity that I seem to keep putting my Work in Progress back in front of him.
The many people over the years who have shared their Holocaust stories, especially Auschwitz survivors Magda Linhart and Morris Pilberg, whose harrowing tale of the gun that kept jamming at the back of his head I used in the book. I pray I’ve done some small justice to all of them.
My agent, Simon Lipskar, who challenged me over and over to firm up the background and historical antecedents to the story. And who didn’t do a half-bad job of finding the right home for it.
To my new team at Minotaur Books and St. Martin’s Press—my editor, Kelley Ragland, Andy Martin, Sally Richardson, Jen Enderlin—for seeing the virtue in an outline when many didn’t and for giving it the kind of enthusiasm and unity of effort an author rarely feels from his publisher. I pray that outline has become an even better book.
