The Berlin Project

by Gregory Benford

  “Make it just ‘sufficient,’ okay? Then get up and leave. I’ll give you five minutes to get to the train station.”

  “Why?”

  “Because then I’m going to shoot him.”

  • • •

  They walked through Zurich to get a feel for the city. It felt relaxed and softly welcoming, compared with wartime London. All the streets curved, following old cow paths. Karl realized that he had lived most of his life among straight streets, and to him their right angles said City, like New York and London. Zurich was busy saying Country, so the boulevards looped and swooped about gracefully like noodles.

  Karl memorized the route from the Hochschule to the Bahnhofplatz and saw he could walk there to a train within ten minutes. It felt odd to make such a calculation. If he needed to use this route, he would be on the run, and so should bring his baggage to the Hochschule as well. He saw an older, majestic building from the Austro-Hungarian Empire days, whose pinnacle had the color of old copper pots left in the sun. Taxis waited at its broad entrance. Take a taxi there, then, for the Bahnhofplatz. Leave the luggage. But after that, what?

  Moe spoke casually in French as they walked along the lake, both of them figuring that they needed the practice. Moe had learned to round his vowels from Marthe, and it helped Karl as well. French had its sublime facets, and Karl remembered fondly those “training” dinner parties, with their daughters staring in wonder, trying to grasp why their parents and this big stranger were saying things they could echo but not grasp.

  “I got a lot of intel from that Goudsmit guy. Seems that in August 1939 our Heisenberg was a member of an Alpine reserve unit. Something he did to get along with the party, I suppose, in a minor way. He’s in his forties, not a likely conscript. But because of that, Goudsmit says, he was called up and assigned to work on the German bomb program.”

  Karl stopped to view the majestic granite mountains across the lake as a cool breeze swept down from them, caressing his cheeks. A sweet tang of coming autumn wafted on the wind. “I doubt even the Nazis would ‘assign’ a Nobel winner, just like that.”

  “Yeah, does make you wonder. I think our Goudsmit has a chip on his shoulder about Heisenberg. He met him, says his English is pretty good. He’d have been brought into the Uranverein, but respectfully.”

  Karl noted that Moe got the German accent right in rendering the “Uranium Club” and hoped he would be able to follow Heisenberg’s lecture. Karl’s German was weak as well.

  Moe brooded, eyes down. “It seems Heisenberg functioned as a kind of roving ambassador for German science, starting in 1941. The government gave him that freedom and funding, so why not? He visited several cultural institutes—the Hochschule here was his favorite.”

  “This canton favors the Reich. Heisenberg must feel at home here. But he shows different cards at different times too. In his visit in 1943 to Holland he explained—according to an eyewitness, an agent who reported to OSS—how history had legitimated Germany to rule both Europe and the world.”

  This shocked Karl. “He went along with the party.”

  “Sounds like he had to deliver a script,” Moe said this flatly, like a disinterested prosecutor talking his way toward a death sentence.

  Karl tried to retrieve his memories of his time traveling across Germany in 1936, just a few days. “I heard about some trouble Heisenberg got into, back when the Nazis started casting out ‘Jewish physics’—the Deutsche Physik movement. It was in the papers. Heisenberg had been lecturing to his students about relativity, invented by that notorious Jewish scientist. In an editorial, Himmler, the Nazi propaganda guy, called Heisenberg a ‘White Jew,’ whatever that is. Said he should be made to ‘disappear’—sent to a camp, I guess.”

  To Karl’s surprise, Moe took up the story with assurance. “Right, so Heisenberg’s mother visited Himmler’s mother to help bring a resolution to the affair. Turned out they were old friends.”

  “Your newspaper reading—you recall a lot, don’t you?”

  “Part of my job. Always liked it.”

  “So how do we approach Heisenberg, if he gives nothing away in his talk?”

  Moe leaned forward intently. “Then I don’t shoot. No grounds to. Can you ask a solid physics question after he’s done? To break the ice?”

  “I can try,” Karl said uncertainly. “Then what?”

  “We go to the reception after.”

  “You can get us into that?”

  Moe’s eyes twinkled with mirth. “I have a few tricks.”

  “I did some background reading in London on our Werner. He got some money from the Reich Ministry for Armaments and Ammunition—Goudsmit showed me the OSS report. For what, we don’t know. And I checked the German journals. In 1943 he published papers on his S-matrix quantum method in Zeitschrift für Physik. That’s the method he got his Nobel for, really—it’s a calculation that describes only observables, the before and after of quantum events. No talk about wave functions or anything—a ‘just the facts, ma’am’ kind of thinking.”

  Moe furrowed his brow, not following. “So now he’s spending his time on abstractions?”

  “Some, at least. But that could be a cover.”

  “Maybe he’s just a true patriot. Goudsmit invited him to visit in 1936 and he came. He refused an invitation to emigrate to the United States, went back home.”

  Moe stood. “Y’know, I don’t want to hang around here all day. Let’s—what do they say in gangster movies?—case the joint.”

  3.

  The notice outside the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule said that Heisenberg was visiting since yesterday. So the man and his escorts were here somewhere. The entrance was formidable, and along the grand corridors Moe knew how to find his contact’s office.

  Walking there, Karl’s eyes flicked over every face, trying to guess if they were German agents, even Gestapo.

  Einstein had trod these corridors, he realized, half a century before. Einstein had walked, where they now stalked.

  In 1900 Einstein had gotten a mere teaching diploma, not a research degree. Then he spent seven frustrating years as a patent inspector in Bern, but managed to publish the “miracle year” papers in 1905. Finally he used one of those papers to present his thesis and get his research PhD in late 1905, from the University of Zurich nearby. Despite having published brilliant papers in quantum mechanics and inventing relativity theory, he had been stuck at the patent office. He could not get a teaching position until 1908, and then in Bern, not Zurich.

  Paul Scherrer had an anvil jaw and the sage, weathered look of a well-dressed gentleman in his fifties. A plaque said he was principal of the Physical Institute, and his ample office even had a coffee setup. Karl let Moe do the introductions and explanations, to which Scherrer simply nodded. His English was excellent, and he nodded at each of Moe’s questions. Yes, Heisenberg was not here, but would be at his talk. The Gestapo escort kept close to Heisenberg, but Scherrer would see about getting them into the reception. Scherrer glanced at Karl, obviously puzzled about this silent stranger—but said nothing.

  They were out in less than two minutes. Scherrer did not want to be closely identified with them. Rightly so, Karl thought, if Moe had to kill Heisenberg.

  • • •

  They decided to make lunch substantial. They might be on the run or worse later, and calories were scarce, even here. People were starving in much of Europe, and Karl knew it; but they were here, in a peaceful island. Moe was a fount of never-ending cash, especially a wad of Swiss francs.

  So Karl ordered at their hotel a tangy roast pork with sauerkraut and caraway seeds, plus smoked goose breast with plum sauce. He had a charming local red wine with it while Moe, with a pheasant, gave a real-life illustration of a term Karl had heard of in novels.

  Moe discussed his bird, as gourmets used to say of people eating lamb chops. He was quite absorbed in dissecting the bird for every morsel as he said, in answer to Karl’s questions, “When the Office of Special Serv
ices hired me, I learned safecracking, bridge blowing, lock picking, codes and ciphers, hand-to-hand combat—that was all delightful! And I ran through the OSS fun house with its narrow halls, sudden drops, traps, bangs, and shrieks. They gave us a surprise meeting with a Hitler picture too. We were to shoot him in the head on sight.”

  Moe sat back and admired the view from the veranda. “Hope I get the chance to do the real thing!”

  Karl said, “Maybe this next ‘gadget’ will do the job.”

  “If we can find him, yes. It’s like chess now, with Hitler the most valuable piece, the king.”

  “You play?”

  “My older sister taught me. After a while, I spotted her pieces. Then I began playing myself—Berg versus Berg. Mostly I won,” he said with no trace of humor. “But to get Hitler, we have to know what square he’s on.”

  Karl took a last look at the lake and mountains. The placid waters fed by great rushing waterfalls, meadows sloping in green majesty, the endless fragrant pine forests with their tang of turpentine—here was where nature and myth fused to shape the Germanic soul. That had led to such wonders in music, science, philosophy . . . and now to horror. He breathed in the silky air and despaired.

  In their room, he watched Moe Berg eject the magazine from his pistol. To Karl, having never handled one, a gun was just a gun. Moe held the pistol down between his legs and thumbed ten brass rounds from the magazine. He inspected each one, saying, “Looking for rust. Salt air gets to these.” Looking down the sight, he snapped the action and trigger several times. He studied the ejector and firing pin and then slid the rounds back into the magazine and slipped it into the pistol butt. “All ready. Only get one shot, probably, better make it good.” He oiled the mechanism and carefully put the pistol into his leather briefcase.

  Karl said, “I think I should sit a few chairs away from you.”

  “Fine. I may act freely, then.” Moe paid careful attention to his suit and tie as they got dressed. Karl wore a jacket and tie with a gray fedora. He was supposed to be a fellow scientist, with little German—which was true. “Surprise is everything. In training, I heard stories about real gunfights in the Old West. An ancient survivor of seven barroom shootouts described how he’d done it. He had a holster—many didn’t—and when he saw that shooting was about to start, he’d reach down and pull the trigger. The bullet would go into the floor, of course, but the main point was the noise. While his opponent tried to figure out whether he’d just been killed, this guy would in leisurely fashion draw his revolver and shoot him dead.”

  “Your first shot will be into Heisenberg.”

  “Yeah, and the Gestapo guys, they’ll go for me. Get away then.”

  “But—”

  Moe waved away further talk. “Before I went into a ball game, I always took five minutes to focus. Let’s walk slowly.”

  Werner Heisenberg (left) and Niels Bohr

  4.

  In the lecture hall, the tall-backed benches for students were as dignified as church pews. A hushed murmur stirred, and they surveyed the room. “No Heisenberg yet,” Moe whispered. “Those three down in front look like classic Gestapo. One’s got Obergruppenführer insignia, so it’s a high-level escort.”

  The three were in stiff suits with bulging vests, plainly armed. They were hatchet-faced, wary, eyes turned to the gathering crowd. The Swiss didn’t allow German military to parade around in their garb, but Nazi Party uniforms seemed allowed. The Obergruppenführer’s flinty gaze was unmistakable.

  Moe and Karl went in separately, down to the first row. They sat three chairs away, not looking at each other. Karl thought, I might never walk out of this room.

  Moe settled in with his small briefcase and took out a notebook, looking as scholarly as he could. In the briefcase was the pistol and what Moe called an “L”—a lethal cyanide capsule. He would take it as a distraction while Karl escaped in the chaos—if it happened. Moe would be dead inside a minute.

  Karl tried to carefully pay no attention to anyone, on Moe’s advice. But one fellow caught his eye, in a formal suit and constant stare forward, his eyes sunk into dark sockets. He had a jerky tension in him, as if anticipating something, or maybe everything, that was coming. Karl recognized him from Goudsmit’s photo gallery of scientists at the Kaiser Wilhelm. This was Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, a firm Nazi and high-level physicist. The big gang was here, all right. For what?

  A moment later Heisenberg came in through a side door, unheralded. Karl felt a bit of a shock, as though a deadly contest had started. The audience applauded and the great physicist nodded with a thin smile. Compared to his photos, the man was frail, five foot six, thin in a worn, dark three-button suit. Food was scarce in Germany. He was just forty-two, but wrinkles crowded his eyes as he started setting up a blackboard, with Paul Scherrer’s help. With a quizzical smile, he dutifully awaited Scherrer’s introduction and began speaking in a whispery voice. He paced, his right hand in his coat pocket, his heavy eyebrows shadowing the bony cast of his face.

  Moe was deftly taking notes and even sketching Heisenberg with a Parker pen. This caught Heisenberg’s attention, a move Moe had told Karl to anticipate. Where Heisenberg looked, the Gestapo would too.

  Karl was focused on Heisenberg’s quick German, sifting through terms from quantum mechanics, searching for telltale words for neutrons or isotopes or fission. None. Heisenberg dashed down equations on the blackboard, his chalk clacking. They were transition probabilities, Karl saw, which might apply to anything, including fission. But then the quick hands drew matrices in rectangular frames, and Heisenberg was off into arcane details of how to calculate quantum rates. Had he described fission in terms of his own formulation of quantum mechanics? Karl felt a tremor of alarm. Heisenberg’s rapid German might blow right by him and conceal vital clues.

  He had arranged with Moe to indicate a clear nuclear sign by placing his gray fedora on the chair next to him, in case there wasn’t a chance to use the word “sufficient.” He held the fedora in his lap and didn’t pretend to take notes at all. His heart thumped and concentrating was hard.

  Karl followed Heisenberg’s pacing, and out of the corner of his eye saw movement. The three Gestapo men had moved into the row of seats behind him. Firm faces, eyes intent. They didn’t pretend to follow the discussion, just sat and watched him and Moe. If Karl gave his signal, he would leave his seat after a coughing fit, get well away, before Moe acted.

  So went the plan. Moments ticked by. Karl felt his chest tighten.

  Heisenberg’s notations crowded across the blackboard. He stopped to erase them, talking rapidly. Karl could catch maybe half the content, at best. Heisenberg’s chatter swelled as he got to his main points, animated, shooting forth clipped German words like darts.

  Karl felt his hands tremble and thrust them together in front of him. He was breathing too fast, wind wheezing through his nostrils. Never before had he felt this tension squeezing his chest, bringing a metallic taste in his mouth. The room seemed now to be hot, the chalk smell choking, a prickly scent of leather from the Gestapo, so near.

  He made himself follow the darting, rasping German words. Partikel . . . wissen . . . Ansatz . . . wir haben . . . multiplicitiv . . .

  An urge to get up and leave came over him. He fought it down, though his feet were now itching on their own, twisting in his shoes. Flight or fight? He wanted neither.

  Heisenberg turned and looked directly at Karl, still talking but eyes curious. Did the man suspect?

  Karl’s made himself think carefully, clearly. The quick, rough German words did not come from nuclear theory. He could barely make sense of the elaborate equations and soon lost the flow, just listening for telltale words. Rank . . . Hierarchie . . . Kollision . . . Querschnitt . . . Heisenberg started describing how a hierarchy of particles came out of his analysis. Lösung . . .

  Suddenly Karl knew the man wasn’t leading up to some original nuclear ideas at all. The thrust of it was a new theory of mesons, particl
es of baffling complexity.

  He sat back, breathed deeply. His hands stopped their jitter, feet went still. With a sigh he turned so Moe could see him give a broad smile. Heisenberg caught this and crinkled his brow, puzzled. Karl didn’t care.

  The rest of the talk was a relief. Karl sighed and felt a weight pass from him. They had come all this way for nothing. Now they could get out of here and he could get the hell out of this war.

  5.

  It was not quite a mansion and yet not quite anything else. This was what polite pretension looked like. A pricey private home, site of the reception.

  An early-evening moon stood sentinel over them, lucid in a sky rich in stars. Karl thought about the immensity hanging above them. They were small things crawling here beneath the silvery starlight, clashing in a war that was microscopic on the scale of stars. Some of the twinklings he saw across the raw abyss had been launched long before humans even evolved. They shone by nuclear processes and cast silver light into the solemn black universe around them. The banks of the lake were silent and slumbering, the fields of some mere planet. A low waft of fragrant pollen rose in the night air. But instead of pondering immensities, he was struggling in a mad battle.

  Karl and Moe approached the swanky private residence with Paul Scherrer at their side. Moe had seized the chance to talk to Scherrer after Heisenberg’s talk, which had apparently meant as little to the audience as it had to Karl.

  “Werner told me much more than he ever has. It’s all going to pieces, so he talks—at last,” Scherrer said with an urgency Karl could hear in his short, sharp gasps for breath as they both kept up with Moe’s long strides. “Werner’s moved his family, and the program he’s running, to a small Bavarian town outside Munich.”

  “And his program?” Moe shot back. “The one he didn’t talk about today?”

  Scherrer shook his head in dismissal. “It’s not much, he says. They’ve brought it from the Kaiser Wilhelm—got out before the Berlin bomb. They’ve got that nuclear work around Hechingen, the town his family’s in.”