by Mattias Berg
“I love physics, and have difficulty in imagining it not being a part of my life. It is an almost personal passion, as if for another human being. And I am, despite the fact that I otherwise have a strong moral sense, a woman physicist without the least guilty conscience.”
For a long time she and science seemed to be made for each other. In 1905 Meitner had become the second woman to defend her doctoral thesis in physics at Vienna University. Then the first woman to be allowed to attend Max Planck’s lectures in Berlin, after a few more years his assistant as well, and in 1926 the first female professor in Germany when appointed to that post in Berlin. Her colleague in the field, Albert Einstein, used to call her “our Madame Curie”. In 1935 Meitner and Hahn together became responsible for the prestigious Transuranium Project at the Kaiser Wilhelm Research Institute in Berlin.
After that, things started to go downhill. Some researchers have seen it more or less as classic treachery. It was, however, undoubtedly Hahn who got Meitner—who was of Jewish descent—to leave the research institute in Berlin in 1938, possibly after direct pressure from the German government. In addition, Hahn accepted the fact that he alone would receive the 1944 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, for the discovery and explanation of the process of nuclear fission, and not share it with Meitner.
Soon after the discovery of the neutron in 1934, Marie Curie died of the consequences of her experiments with radioactivity. Meitner became the only woman left on the Parnassus of nuclear physics.
At the time it was a position not without problems. For instance, she seems never to have been fully accepted in Sweden after her flight there: according to most interpretations, her colleagues in fact worked in direct opposition to her. Possibly because she was the only woman among all these men. Maybe even due to an element of anti-Semitism.
In any event even her own boss in Sweden, Manne Siegbahn—who had received the Nobel Prize in Physics as early as 1924—seems to have been anxious that Meitner should not be given a position senior to his own. Siegbahn also seems to have had a part in ensuring that she was not allowed to share the Nobel Prize with Hahn.
In the letters, Meitner’s descriptions of her situation in Sweden during the war often have a melodramatic streak:
“Scientifically I am totally isolated, for months I have not spoken to anybody about physics. I sit in my room and try to keep myself active. You can’t really call it ‘work’.”
But this does not seem to be the whole picture. One could view things in a more positive light: an Austrian top physicist succeeds in fleeing to Sweden via Holland in 1938 and there, placed at her disposal, were more than adequate resources. Siegbahn’s brand new research institute “for the promotion of nuclear research and the facilitating of the production of medically usable radioactive nuclides”, according to the specifications for the generous financial support offered by both the Nobel Foundation and the Wallenberg Foundation.
According to the guest book from the apartment at Brahevägen, close to her work at Tekniska Högskolan, Meitner’s friends flocked to her home. The wife of Prime Minister Tage Erlander, Aina Erlander, was a close acquaintance. The guests’ comments are often delighted exclamations about the delicious food and mention the deep discussions which had taken place about war and peace.
In the spring of 1946, Meitner was offered the post of visiting professor at Washington D.C.’s Catholic University and was still often referred to as “The Mother of the Atomic Bomb”. During her time in the U.S. she received hundreds of letters from admirers, was chosen as “Woman of the Year” by the National Press Club, gave seminars at Princeton and had intensive discussions with Einstein. But despite this triumphal procession, Meitner still chose to live in Sweden rather than in the U.S. Concluding her guest professorship, she therefore left her close friends in senior scientific circles, declined all of the grand proposals put to her by Einstein and others, and returned to Stockholm.
There her circumstances had improved after all the international attention paid to her. Half a year after the American journey she got a personal professorship and an experimental laboratory in her own name: the “Meitner Laboratory”, only loosely connected to Tekniska Högskolan.
But the atomic bombs were obviously casting their shadow over Sweden. Not even this small country far from the world scene could ignore what might happen, whether it be the risk of being attacked with the new super-weapon or the possibility of constructing one. Prime Minister Erlander’s diary note from September 1945 is telling:
“The construction of the atom bomb can no longer be kept a secret, but the purely technical conditions necessary for such a project are missing in all countries except the U.S. It will take at least five years before the Russians catch up with the Americans. These five years will be decisive for the fate of the world. If the Russians’ isolation and mistrust can be broken, peace is possible. If not, we must prepare ourselves for catastrophe.”
It is hard not to think of Meitner in this context. That her friend Aina Erlander could simply have passed on an informal message to her husband, who then agreed to meet Meitner for a cup of tea somewhere. That such a prominent researcher—within this very field—might at least have been consulted in an initially non-committal discussion about the possibilities of, and difficulties in, creating a Swedish atom bomb.
But despite all my searches in the Stockholm archives, I have found no empirical support for such a hypothesis. Nor the least notation about a meeting with the Prime Minister, no suggestive line in a letter, which might point to Meitner having had a concrete involvement in the Swedish nuclear weapons program.
Yet the uncertainty remains. We have essentially no knowledge about Meitner’s last eleven years in Sweden. The decade when the hydrogen bomb began to be both mass-produced and deployed, which created the global nuclear weapons system in its current form. The trail ends with her becoming a Swedish citizen in 1949. In those sources which are available, Meitner’s activities are mostly summarized as having consisted of being active in the F.O.A. and Tekniska Högskolan, where she participated in the expansion of the country’s first experimental reactor, R.1.
To repeat: for all of these paradoxes I have been unable to find any more precise a description than “Lise Meitner’s Secret”. In the final chapter of this dissertation I will revert to its deeper implications.
5.03
I was woken by voices very close to me. Not just Jesús María’s—but also Ingrid’s. She looked at me, rosy about the cheeks, miraculously restored as so often before.
“Erasmus, my treasure, wonder of wonders, you can’t imagine how happy I am to see you! That you managed to survive, after everything you must have been through up in Jukkas . . . what happened? What did they do to you, my friend? You must tell me everything, in your own good time.”
I stared at her: this superwoman with her ability to endure pretty much anything and then rise from the ashes. I looked around the plane. Glanced behind me, across the aisles, toward the sleeping passengers in the dimmed light of the cabin. Checked for the air stewards who could still appear at any moment. Looked at the clock, still a few hours to go before our scheduled arrival.
“Yes, in my own good time . . .” I said.
“Then I can also tell you what we’ve been through. How we managed to catch up with them there in the forest, the whole commotion, before Jesús María and I escaped and made our way to Kleine Brogel in time for Spotter’s Day.”
Ingrid must have seen my anxiety, how I was still looking over my shoulder toward the economy class section, and in front of me toward where the cabin crew would be coming from. Yet she just kept on going—having switched into Swedish and lowered her voice significantly but still not enough.
“And I must really thank you for all your care on the way here. I could scarcely have been in better hands.”
On Ingrid’s fold-out table, as on Jesús María’s, stood an almost empty glass. It did not appear to be her first tequila either, which might explain the flush
on her cheeks. The sudden recovery. The miracle cure.
“Jesús María has told me about your wild plan. To take out John as well, right there in the lion’s den, play with the fire. Show Ed who has the upper hand: the finger on the button. How big the risks we’re prepared to take, both for ourselves and for the world. And then to vanish again, like the wind.”
I nodded cautiously, tried not to look at either of them.
“That’s it. That’s the idea.”
“I’m impressed, my treasure.”
She stood up, got her new black bag out of the overhead compartment, and laid it on the floor in front of me. Continued in little more than a whisper in Swedish. It came back to me, everything she had taught me of this too, the language, during our dissertation sessions. Jesús María was showing no interest at all—had fallen asleep again, now assisted by the alcohol as well as the effects of the injection—seemingly like everybody else within earshot. The stewards were still somewhere else, the whole plane dimmed and in night-flight mode.
Ingrid seemed wholly reliant on Edelweiss’ arrangements. Was content for him to keep pulling the strings, making sure nobody stopped us from walking into his lair.
“By the way, you might like to have this back . . .”
She gave me a strangely amused look and nodded at the black bag—so I leaned down and opened the zipper half-way. Saw the briefcase lying there. At least from this distance it looked the same as it had when taken from me in Suite 325.
“It’s still functional. Retrieving it was top priority. We caught up with them in the forest, after fighting them off in the room of your martyrdom, Erasmus, and we were persuasive in our methods that led to its surrender. But they escaped. Not only Zafirah, also John. And the poor hotel guide, their dupe for Sixten. Whatever they paid him, it was not enough, my treasure. We chased after them in the snow—he was tired, struggling—Zafirah was not kind to him in the end, our weaver of unicorn tales.”
She bent and opened the bag a bit more. Just so I could see more of its contents: my field knife, cell phone, watch, crunch cookies, notebook, medical pack and my weapon.
But no key. The one that Sixten had given me in Ursvik: to Meitner’s laboratory under the red trap-door.
“You see, it’s all here!” Ingrid said triumphantly.
I zipped the bag shut, let it stay there at my feet, under my watchful eye. Had another sip of the tequila. Took a deep breath—and asked yet another of my questions.
“So why did Sixten give us away?”
Ingrid looked at me first, then gazed out of the window, into that black void.
“Did he?” she said. For a second she did not move. “They had Lisa, his kryptonite. Evidently took her as some sort of hostage after our swoop at Estrange.”
The answer was like so many others with Ingrid. Little more than something leading to new questions, new inadequate replies. I tried another tack.
“And what happens now?”
“You’ve no doubt seen the headlines, my treasure: THE NUCLEAR WEAPONS SCANDAL?”
She turned from the window, looked into my eyes. I nodded.
“So Ed’s therefore been made harmless for the time being. I’ve instructed my informants to release what we know to the media bit by bit, only as much as is necessary at each stage so that heads will roll—as in a medieval painting. Today, for example, the Secretary for Defense is going to have to go. And Ed knows that we still hold the trump card. That the next step is to disclose the existence of NUCLEUS, his own role, the unbelievable secret of our hidden mandate.”
Ingrid paused. Continued in English.
“And even after that we still have an ace up our sleeves. Because the day you and I go public, my treasure, not even the President will survive for long. That two individuals, the Carrier himself and somebody who calls herself Alpha, had the entire nuclear weapons system in the palms of their hands for so many years—and have now taken off with their finger still on the button. That the future of the world is literally in the balance.”
Jesús María woke up again, yawned, while Ingrid kept whispering in my ear. Her warm voice right into my mind. Her deepest secrets. Whispering, but still in a melodic voice that someone close by could detect.
“Besides that, Ed now knows that I’ve planted everything necessary—codes, structure, instructions down to the tiniest detail on how to complete the arrangements with a normal computer—with one unknown person. In case something should unexpectedly happen to us. Chosen one single person out of the seven billion who still populate the earth. And Ed will never be able to find that one small person, my ‘Needle in the Haystack’. I call it Plan B: our common insurance policy.”
Jesús María gave me an odd smile.
“No need to worry, Erasmo. I’m not the Needle. Me you can kill whenever you want.”
I stared at Ingrid.
“Yes, Jesús María is the only one who knows. She helped me with the practicalities, in Ursvik. Tattooed all of the information in coded form onto Aina’s body, a place where nobody looks: not even somebody who loves you more than anyone. That was why it took us such a long time in the main bathroom, if you remember. And that was why Aina had to pour so much champagne into herself so quickly. To cope with the pain—and on her birthday too: she who never otherwise drinks a single drop! But she didn’t hesitate for one second to sacrifice herself for the cause.”
I was overrun by a cascade of bad memories. The messages from Edelweiss that I picked up while inside the smaller bathroom, that image of Zafirah with the jerry can, the fire, our escape.
“So we’ve got Jesús María to thank for that. And for what happened out at the base this evening. She had to play your part, in the heat of the moment.”
“Yeah. Hot as hell it was,” Jesús María said.
“Yes, I simply don’t understand what went wrong. The assignment, nothing more complicated than a distraction, had been perfectly set up by my helpers—did you notice the nuclear symbol on the dummy bomb?—and Jesús María helped me to get everyone looking in completely the wrong direction for a moment. But with the pyrotechnics—”
“Oh, give me a break. We’ll all be dead and buried soon anyway.”
Jesús María cut off the discussion and the mood turned tense, stifling. So I broke the silence with another of my questions.
“And why did you sacrifice Falconetti first?”
Ingrid turned away, stared out of the window into space. As if looking back in time. Then leaned even closer to me and revealed everything in one long-whispered fairy-tale.
“For a long time he was my only playmate. Eventually the one who gave me the job of creating an entirely new security unit after 9/11, free hands. That was when I contacted your old teacher from West Point, Ed—who else?—and asked him to put together a tight little team which would be unlike anything under the sun. But the whole time it was Falconetti, our four-star general, the most senior operational commander of the nuclear weapons system, who was the missing link between the President and me.
“He was so inspired by General LeMay in the 1950s, you see, that whole Cold War mentality. For Falconetti too we were always on a war footing. He insisted that we had to be ready at all times both to strike and to strike back, in full scale, have the tools to hand.
“And to be honest it was Falconetti, not me, who first formulated the vision of being able to direct the whole nuclear weapons system even when Centcom and the Commander-in-chief had been knocked out. On the run, fully mobile. But also in a situation like that we had to follow the basic outlines of our rigorous security arrangements: “No Lone Zone”. Insure ourselves against a single madman—so that no-one would ever be alone with the decision, the ceremony for launching our weapons.”
Ingrid paused, perhaps for effect, and Jesús María got up and went to the bathroom, just a couple of feet from the front row. I could hear her violent vomiting, the result of the drug she had injected herself with, or the tequila or both. Then Ingrid said: “But for two m
admen we left the field open.”
I swallowed, felt the nausea welling up. Possibly from having heard the sounds from Jesús María in the bathroom. Or because of the situation we all found ourselves in.
“So when the time came I needed you, my treasure. And had to throw Falconetti to the wolves—as well as Goldsmith, who always defended him. A few well-placed calls and some leaked e-mails was all it took. I let it all trickle out after their attack in Ursvik, as a small revenge.”
5.04
When at last I managed to fall asleep in my seat, after another straight tequila, both women sleeping in the seats on either side of me, I dreamed that I was the last survivor of the crew of the Enola Gay and had suffered a serious heart attack while on a holiday in Tokyo. Beside me in the little hospital room sat my very old doctor—a woman long past retirement age—and she wanted to tell me before it was too late how it had actually been. Because she did not give me many more days to live.
She began by saying that there was nothing special about her story. That she had seen that light like all the others, the silver flash, the ghostly glare. That she was in other words not one of the seventy thousand people who died on the spot, which she had regretted for the rest of her life, every minute, she said. Nor one of the same number who died from the secondary effects, which meant that half of the city’s inhabitants were killed by the bomb.
Instead she became one of the many hibakusha, the tens of thousands of survivors who after the war had become invisible. “Most people can neither see nor hear us,” she said. “Can you?” she asked with a serious look, curious and determined. As if she really did wonder.
I countered with my experience of the event. That as the plane’s navigator I had been responsible for getting us to the exact place that was selected just prior to take-off, more or less by chance, one of several possible targets. The random choice prevented information from leaking out. The choice happened to fall on her city and her life.
