God's Formula

by James Lepore

  “Naïve? Talk to Churchill.”

  “I doubt he’d take my call. Is there something afoot? Regarding our former king?”

  “We hear the Germans would like to see him in Berlin, more or less permanently, use him as a propaganda tool.”

  Tolkien had been following the doings of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor since the Duke, then King Edward VIII, abdicated the English throne in 1936. The following year, during a visit with Hitler at his mountain retreat in Bavaria, David, as the Duke was known in the royal family and among the monarchy-mad public, had gone around giving full Nazi salutes, pictures of which appeared for days in the British press. No one, not even obscure, pipe smoking Oxford dons, could miss seeing them. Had the fair haired David learned his lesson by now? Surely he wouldn’t aid the Nazis voluntarily. Rumors of their atrocities were spreading everywhere.

  “You don’t mean kidnap him?” Tolkien said.

  “There’s hard evidence.”

  “My goodness, one thing does lead to another.”

  “Yes,” Fleming said, “my kingdom for…”

  “For what?” Tolkien asked.

  Fleming had stopped in mid-sentence and was grinning mischievously. He lit a cigarette from the one still burning and took a long drag on the new one. “Let’s be kind and say for love,” he replied after exhaling smoke up toward the glass ceiling.

  The professor remained silent. He knew what that mischievous grin signified. He had heard the rumors.

  “You’re not impressed,” said Fleming. “I’m surprised, I must say.”

  More silence as Tolkien smoked his pipe.

  “I thought it would be just the thing,” said Fleming.

  “You mean for a professorial type like me?” Tolkien replied. “Awash in sentimentality.”

  “Well…What would impress you?”

  “What if the duke was immortal?”

  “Immortal?”

  “Yes, it means to live forever, never dying.”

  “I know what it means.”

  “I daresay you do, what with Eton and Sandhurst.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Well, if our David was immortal and had to give that up for his fair lady, his fair mortal lady, then I would be impressed.”

  It was Fleming’s turn to be silent. “I apologize,” he said, finally.

  “It’s just a thought,” Tolkien replied, embarrassed by the apology, a bit ashamed by his sarcasm. More than a bit. Thank God for the confessional.

  “A writer’s thought?”

  Token nodded.

  “And you?” Fleming said.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, how have you been keeping.”

  It struck Tolkien now that, though they had been thrown together in a micro war the year before, and had shared intimacies in only the way soldiers in battle could, he and Fleming knew very little of or about each other. They were, after all was said and done, still strangers, separated by the highest and strongest walls in England, the walls of class.

  “Lecturing, three meals a day, smoking my pipe, stout at the Bird,” the professor replied. Andthe writing? Why leave that out, John?

  “The family?”

  “All well.”

  The Billie Shroeder affair was short-lived. That’s what Arlie Cavanagh had told him during his post-Berlin debriefing last fall. It didn’t end well for old Ian. Steer clear, John Ronald.

  “Is there a new novel?” Fleming asked.

  “I’m flattered, but not yet I’m afraid.”

  “Some day you’ll have to tell me how you do it.”

  “I say, are you thinking of writing something?”

  “The thought’s crossed my mind.”

  “What I write is quite outré.”

  “That’s the ticket, then.”

  “Ian?”

  “Yes.”

  “This formula. Can it really be…?”

  “Changing the subject, are we?”

  “No.”

  Silence.

  “I suppose I am,” John Ronald said. “I apologize.”

  “Don’t think I could pull it off?”

  “You’re a man of action.”

  “I’ll slow down one day. Live vicariously.”

  “Hell is empty and all the devils are here.”

  Silence, and a smile from Fleming.

  “Shakespeare,” said Tolkien. “That’s the one and only piece of writing advice I’ll ever give you.”

  “Merci.”

  “Rien. And the formula?”

  “It’s true,” Fleming replied. “Enrich uranium in a couple of months. Atomic bombs at the ready.”

  “In the hands of a fourteen-year-old Nazi.”

  “Strange but true.”

  In the near distance, Tolkien heard the rumble of an incoming train and then two short blasts from its air whistle.

  “Speaking of,” said Tolkien.

  “Stay,” said Fleming, on his feet now and adjusting the white carnation on the lapel of his navy blazer. “I’ll get him.”

  Chapter 10

  Paris, September 1, 1939, 7:00 a.m.

  Dazed, his body and head aching, dozing off and jerking awake at irregular intervals, Conrad Friedeman sat handcuffed to the arm of a wrought iron bench in a corner of the cobblestoned courtyard of the German Embassy on Rue de Lille. He had no preconceived notion of what a German embassy in a foreign country was like, but he was alert and astute enough to know that what he had seen since his arrival was not normal. It could not be. The giant black steel doors that gave access to the narrow Rue de Lille were barricaded by a large truck, on the roof of which sat two German soldiers manning a mounted machine gun. The truck had to be moved several times as numerous Werhmacht officers and men in suits arrived and required entry. More soldiers crouched on the austere concrete building’s roof, behind its low parapet, training rifles on the street below. Every light was on in the three-story embassy. Its double-wide front door was guarded by two soldiers with machine guns. A full colonel paced the courtyard, occasionally giving orders to the troops on the roof and those on the truck. It was this officer who had allowed him to enter and then immediately ordered him detained when he banged incessantly on the giant black doors at six a.m.

  The boy had had a harrowing night—jumping from the train as it approached Gare de l’Est, fighting with Karl, placating him until the moment came to strike—but now it was over. The sergeant who had marched him to the bench was civilized, even friendly, and had been almost apologetic about the handcuffs. He had taken his Hitlerjugend identification card. Soon he would be greeted by someone of importance, his cuts and bruises attended to, given something for his throbbing headache, and shortly thereafter, thank God, be on his way back to Berlin.

  Chapter 11

  The British Embassy, Rue du Faubourg

  Saint-Honoreé, Paris, September 1, 1939, 7:30 a.m.

  “He wasn’t on the train.”

  “What of the second boy?”

  “No second boy either.”

  “No matter, Germany has just invaded Poland.”

  “The devil, you say.”

  “Three fronts, a million men, perhaps two million. Waves of armored vehicles. Thousands of them. Stukas in the air. The first reports are hard to believe.”

  John Tolkien remained silent. Fleming talked enough for several men, and the ambassador’s military attaché, a mustachioed young captain with a ruddy complexion, had not looked very happy to see them. In no mood for tales of two boys who had a secret formula to blow up the world. Now he knew why. England and France had mutual defense pacts with Poland. The second world war in the professor’s lifetime was about to start. No more time, or effort, for fairy tales.

  “Churchill will likely send an expeditionary force,” said the captain.

  “And the French?” Fleming asked.

  “They’re still fighting each other. Out of chaos comes defeat.”

  “Do we have orders?” Fleming asked.

  �
�Yes. You’re to stay on the Duke and Duchess watch. The professor will be flown to London.”

  “What about the boys, the formula?” said Tolkien.

  “New priorities,” the captain replied. “Everything we do will be in aid of defending France.”

  “Yes,” said Fleming, “but there’s Monsieur Maginot’s famous line. All that concrete. Surely…”

  “There’s a new word,” said the captain. “Blitzkrieg. Lightning War. Why not go around all that concrete, as you put it? Pick up Belgium and the Netherlands along the way.”

  “Surely,” said Tolkien, “there has been some preparation.”

  “No one’s prepared,” the captain replied. “Us least of all. Aside, that is, from pestering the Americans. Begging is more apt.”

  “How long?” Fleming asked.

  “The Polish air force is in ruins. The cavalry is at the ready.”

  “Well,” said Tolkien. “Armor against armor.”

  “No, professor,” said the captain. “The Polish cavalry is the old fashioned kind. Lots of horses, and men with swords. I will be surprised if Hitler is not in Paris in the spring. So beautiful here then.”

  A large scale map of Europe hung from the wall behind the captain. Tolkien and Fleming gazed at it, focusing on the black letters, Strait of Dover. The captain, seeing their eyes, turned to look at the map. They all knew their geography, and their history, the unavoidable and often painful connection of England to France via this strait, a scant twenty-one miles in width.It was not France, but England that the three men in the room were worried about.

  Chapter 12

  Paris, September 1, 1939, 7:00 a.m.

  Karl Brauer stood on a dustbin in the well of an apartment building across Rue de Lille from the German Embassy. To his right was a bakery, his left a garage. Both seemed closed. A few feet above his head, through an open window, he could hear the radio broadcast of Germany’s invasion of Poland, spoken in rapid, staccato French. The words Lightning War, Defense Pact, Maginot Line, Mobilization leaped from the announcers mouth so sharply that, to Karl, they had the force of gunfire, the first shots, as it were, of a new war. He had been standing there for an hour now, ever since—delirious, his head bleeding—Karl had watched Conrad Friedeman go through the embassy’s tall iron gates. In that hour, history had pivoted. In a day, two at the most, Germany would be officially at war with France and England. The announcer had made this clear.

  Young Karl had heard the constant radio broadcasts in Berlin of the supposed atrocities the Poles were committing against Germans living in its border towns. On the train last night there was talk of an attack by Polish soldiers on a radio station in the German town of Gliewicz. War is coming, his father had said, the lies are piling up. Still, he was astounded, and frightened, by the broadcast he had just listened to. It did not escape him that, secret Jew or not, he was a German citizen on French soil. A German citizen who had escaped Germany and now had nowhere to go.

  Hearing music now from the radio above him, Karl took a moment to assess himself. He was a mess, his suit and shoes smeared with mud, his necktie gone, his shirt ripped. Worse was his physical state. His shoulder ached from its impact with the ground when he leaped after Conrad from the train. His face throbbed from the blows that Conrad had landed as they rolled, fighting, on the gravel that covered the area near the tracks. He reached back and gingerly touched the back of his head. What had he been hit with? No matter. The gash was still open, but no longer bleeding. His spine was sticky from the blood that had run down his back under his shirt. His entire head throbbed as though it was about to split in half.

  He then felt the inside of his suit jacket, where his father had sewn a leather pouch containing a set of butcher knives into the lining. The heft of these highly honed tools gave him an odd comfort. Papa, what are you doing? He had asked. You will need them, his father had answered, one way or another, and then added, looking him directly in the eye, do not let Conrad return to Germany. He is your only way to England, to freedom.Yes, Papa.

  Chapter 13

  Paris, September 1, 1939, 8:00 a.m.

  “I leapt from the train.”

  “So my assistant tells me. You leapt from the train.”

  “Yes,” Conrad answered, trying his best to imitate the dry monotone voice of the pale young man sitting at the desk across from him, impressed by what he saw as his professionalism, his objectivity. “It was clear that I had been drugged, kidnapped.”

  He is strictly business, Conrad thought, which is as it should be. This is how our embassies are run, as examples to the world of German competence and diligence. We do not waste time on emotion, not after Versailles, not with the whole world against us and our very existence at stake.

  “You hid in a coal shed.”

  “Yes, Herr Schmidt, that is why I’m so filthy.”

  Conrad, having seen all the soldiers in the courtyard, had expected to be greeted by one, an officer of course. Herr Schmidt was no soldier and had not said exactly who he was, but he was obviously a high ranking embassy official. The sergeant who had escorted him in had been extremely deferential, even frightened, absurd as that might seem.

  “And your kidnapper?” Schmidt asked. “Where is he?”

  “I don’t know. Good riddance.”

  “His name is Karl Brauer, you say?”

  “Yes.”

  “How did you get here from the station?”

  “Karl jumped after me. We fought, and then rested in a coal shed in the train yard. He had betrayed me. But he denied this. He said my father had arranged for me to escape. That the British would help us get to London. A man with a white carnation was to meet us at Gare de L’est. Utter nonsense, of course. There is no reason on Earth for me to leave Germany, the fatherland. I saw how determined he was, how hard it would be to escape him, so I pretended to believe him. We slept for a few hours. At first light, we found the nearest metro entrance. We agreed that we would go to the British Embassy. I told him I knew where it was. I, of course, knew where the German Embassy was—on Rue de Lilles—it is part of our Hitlerjugend training to know these things. We got off at the Assemblée Nationale station. When we got in the neighborhood of the embassy, I smashed Karl with a milk bottle I picked up from a doorway and ran here.”

  “Did you knock him out?”

  “I don’t know. I ran.”

  “Your lip, did he bite you?”

  “My lip?” Conrad replied, putting his fingers involuntarily to his mouth, which he now realized was sore and swollen.

  “It looks like you were bitten,” Schmidt said.

  “He must have,” Conrad answered, remembering now the dreamlike quality of the night he had spent in the dark and cramped coal shed, the acrid taste in his mouth when he woke up.

  “It certainly looks like it,” the pale German said. “Unless you bit yourself.”

  “I…that would be absurd.”

  “There was no sign of this Brauer. We searched.”

  “I…”

  “No blood.”

  “I…”

  “You both had tickets through to Paris, we checked.”

  “I—I did not know. I never looked. Karl held the tickets.” Does he doubt me?

  “I will tell you something, young Friedeman,” Herr Schmidt said, his voice now animated in a way that startled Conrad. “You are lying. You are an enemy of Germany, as was your father.”

  Conrad did not answer. He had, of course, cited his excellent standing in his troop, had even mentioned proudly that just last week they had smashed the windows at a local Lutheran church known to host anti-Nazi gatherings. He was confused. He had heard the word surreal, but did not know its meaning until now. He looked down to see if the floor beneath him was actually falling away. He was Hitlerjugend, his father was an important scientist…Then one word from those spoken so harshly by his interlocutor leaped clear from the jumble of others in his mind. Was.

  “Was…?”

  “He blew up the K
aiser Wilhelm Institute this morning. A large portion of it, shall we say. He’s dead. But you are alive and will be going home, where we have many questions for you. And for your friend, Karl Brauer, when we catch him, a Jew whom you were clearly helping to escape.”

  “Herr…”

  “I should tell you one last thing, Herr Friedeman. Germany invaded Poland this morning. In a day or two, we will be at war with France. You were caught on French soil. Traitors are hung. By their necks.”

  Chapter 14

  Paris, September 1, 1939, 8:30 a.m.

  Karl Brauer was, luckily, used to being on his feet for long periods of time. This was what a butcher did. He had turned the dustbin over and was able to pump his legs up and down from time to time on its sturdy surface to keep his muscles from tightening. Thank God the weather was good. The morning sunshine was already warming him. He looked at his watch, and then to his right in the direction of a ringing bell. A boy his own age, in short pants, a light shirt and rubber shoes was ringing the bell of the bakery. Leaning against the building was a bicycle that had not been there before, a delivery bicycle with a heavy-duty, oversized rear basket. As Karl watched, the bakery door opened and the boy went in. At the same moment, the gates of the German Embassy began to swing outward and a large, shiny-black automobile to nose its way out. Karl was about to duck, but something stopped him, a face in the back seat of the monstrous car. Conrad’s face. Without thinking, he leaped over the well’s railing and took hold of the bike. The car was turning now onto Rue de Lilles. In the bike’s basket was a white vest with the bakery’s name in red script on the right breast. La Boulangerie Arsenault. A cap as well, with the same inscription. He quickly removed his suit jacket and tossed it into the basket. Then he just as quickly donned the vest and cap. I am sorry, Monsieur Arsernault, Karl said, jumping on the bike, and taking off after the car.