Weapons of Peace

by Johnston, Peter D. ;

  “How enchanting,” Emma whispered back, joining Paula in her attempts to catch another glimpse of the bird.

  “Yes, enchanting,” Paula said. “Many believe the disappearance of this peace swallow years ago signaled a long and bloody war this time around—and they were right.”

  “Are you sure the bird we saw was a peace swallow?”

  Paula smiled. “Maybe, maybe not. Maybe I just wanted to believe it was.” Emma’s contact stared into the trees with a small smile on her face, then turned back to the trail.

  “You were telling me about Kammler’s three scientists,” Emma said.

  “Yes, of course. In anticipation of seeing Everett, I quietly learned whatever I could about this bomb and its creators,” Paula said. “The uranium is prepared by a scientist named Erhard Wolf in a remote place south of Berlin. It is Maximilian Sicke’s responsibility to create a housing for the new bomb that will allow Wolf’s uranium to be ignited by multiple fuses simultaneously.” Paula cleared her throat. “I’m told Max Sicke is one of the brightest men on the face of the earth, yet so unstable that he should be committed to one of our insane asylums.”

  Emma gulped. “And the third?”

  “Finally, there is Wernher von Braun. Like Sicke, he is based in Berlin.” Paula grinned. “I’ve met von Braun. He is suave, brilliant like Einstein, and looks like a model. He is in charge of the rockets.”

  “Rockets! That’s possible? The bombs won’t be delivered by plane? From how far away?”

  “I have no idea,” Paula said. “What I do know is that each of these men will do whatever he is told by Kammler. You need to get to Kammler first.”

  “Kammler is definitely our main target, but I think Everett would say there is a choice here: do I approach the mighty lion first, or those around him?” Emma said. “If I were to pursue his scientists, who would most likely turn on Kammler and help me instead?”

  Paula shook her head. “Impossible. They live in fear of Kammler. They see him as their means to survival and scientific accomplishment. They won’t turn on him.”

  Emma paused, looking up in thought. “Let me put it another way. If each man was put at risk of losing something that meant everything to him, what would he never want to lose?”

  Paula’s brow furrowed. “Well, they all have egos. Their brilliant reputations are important to them.”

  “That’s a start, but I’m looking for something more specific for each scientist.”

  Paula went silent for several more seconds. “From what I’ve heard, Sicke would never risk his life because, more than anything, he wants to see this new weapon unleashed on the enemy—even if it’s the last thing he does.”

  “Terrifying, but helpful,” Emma said, eyes wide. “What about von Braun?”

  “Oh,” Paula said, smiling, “he wouldn’t risk his dream of building a rocket that can land on the moon.” Paula raised her hand to her mouth to suppress a grin.

  “Seriously?” Emma said. “On the moon?”

  “Seriously. He only supports the war effort because it supports his ultimate dream.”

  “Good,” Emma said. “Now, tell me what Wolf would never risk.”

  “That’s easier. Believe it or not, I don’t think Erhard Wolf would put his values at risk, even during these difficult times. He sees himself as a good man caught up in a bad war, and I’m told he still believes that ‘his’ bomb will help bring this war to a close, peacefully, without ever needing to be used.”

  “Perfect,” Emma said. “That’s all I need for the time being. Thank you.”

  “You’re most welcome. And now, unfortunately, I must head back to another meeting—in a less relaxed setting.”

  The pair briskly retraced their steps to the lions. Paula showed Emma where she and Nash once left messages for each other, in a small hiding place under one of the lion cubs’ paws. They agreed to use this same hiding place to arrange their meetings and exchange information.

  “Three final questions,” Emma said. “Will Kammler’s trio be with him at Rügen Island?”

  “Of course, none of them would want to miss it—or be allowed to miss it.”

  “As I assumed,” Emma said. “Which leads to my second question: why wouldn’t I take this opportunity to have all three scientists killed at the same time?”

  Emma immediately regretted being so direct. What would Paula think of her as a negotiator after she’d asked such a question so brazenly? She was about to apologize when her contact began to answer her, seemingly unfazed.

  “Given the protections in place, many of them unseen, that would be a risky strategy. Besides, I believe their most critical work is complete. If anything were to happen to them now, their underlings could still make the launch happen,” Paula said. “And your last question?”

  “How soon can you get me Erhard Wolf’s itinerary for Rügen Island?”

  Chapter 26

  Saturday, September 30, 1944

  4:00 p.m.—Berlin, Germany

  Emma glanced around the deserted, pockmarked street, trying to appear as casual as possible as she rubbed her arms to stay warm.

  When she was confident that no one was watching her, she turned and made her way into a musty, secondhand clothing shop. It was cozy inside, a welcome break from the wind. She walked up to the front desk—rucksack in hand, having retrieved it after saying goodbye to Paula. She tapped a tarnished old bell to signal that she needed help. Moments later, a spectacled man, hunched over and probably in his late seventies, pushed aside a long curtain, closed it again behind him, and greeted her.

  “I’m looking for something to keep me warm, preferably in plaid,” Emma said.

  “Ah,” he said with a friendly smile. “For a beautiful young woman like you, I think I have just the thing. My name is Lukas. I’m happy to serve you.”

  He unlatched a gate blocking customer access to the back of the store and ushered Emma through the curtains to a room full of clothes. She gazed in amazement at the floor-to-ceiling array of dresses, suits, belts, shirts, and shoes, some older and worn, but most appearing to be almost new. The man asked her size and disappeared into the plaid section, returning with a short plaid women’s jacket and a white blouse.

  “Here, try these on,” he said gently, guiding her into the changing room as she thanked him. He closed the door firmly behind her.

  Once inside the tiny room, Emma hung the clothes he’d given her on a brass hook fastened to the back of the door.

  She turned toward the long mirror on the wall, caught a glimpse of her windblown hair, and looked up and down to the right of the mirror. She found what she was looking for—another brass hook, this one harder to reach. Extending as far as she could on her toes, she tried to pull the hook downward.

  It wouldn’t budge.

  She made a second attempt, this time pulling harder. The hook flipped down, she heard a click, and the wall in front of her, the one that held the long mirror, popped open and toward her slightly. She pulled at its edge, swinging it outward.

  Brilliant, she thought. Just as they described it.

  She walked through the doorway that had suddenly appeared in front of her and looked for a switch. It was on the wall to her left. She pushed it up. The light was dim, but she could still make out the top of the stained-wood stairs. The smells of rust, mold, and dampness enveloped her and, for some reason, made her feel safe. She closed the door behind her and made her way down, into the depths of Berlin.

  —

  “Gottfried, what kind of meat is this?” Emma asked as they enjoyed a candlelight dinner, the meat’s sharp scent filling the air around her.

  “I like to call it hoof-and-whisker stew.”

  Everyone laughed.

  Her mouth opened wide in disbelief. “Beef and cat?” she guessed.

  “That’s close, Emma,” Kurt said, trying
to catch his breath as he laughed, and looking more his age now. “Try a little bigger—and a little smaller!”

  Emma glanced in confusion at Gottfried, who shrugged. “It’s a mixture of horse and rat,” he said. “I find the two meats complement each other rather well, don’t you?”

  The corners of her mouth turned down. Given the devastated state of the city above her, Emma reminded herself that she was lucky to have something, anything, to eat or drink.

  “So, Gottfried, does this mean I’ll run faster now?” she asked, trying to recover. “Or will I soon be growing whiskers?” More laughter.

  As the group of eight continued to eat, Emma learned how Gunter had years before decided to place these underground headquarters below Perfekt—the perfect cover for covert operations. There was a steep, narrow staircase connecting the gallery to the group’s hideaway, but the nearby secondhand clothing store, run by Ursula’s great-uncle Lukas, allowed the resisters to come and go without drawing attention to themselves or to the gallery.

  The clothing store was actually two blocks away and in an area that was much less busy. As Emma had learned on her way out with Kurt earlier in the day, the shop was connected to their headquarters by abandoned or damaged subway tunnels and bunkers, as well as by the city’s sewer and water systems.

  These passageways also allowed the resisters to move undetected around Berlin, usually by night, with the help of small dots and thin strips of white fluorescent paint that Gunter’s team had placed in selected spots throughout the underground.

  “I want to toast all of you for your help in finding Red Hat, especially Kurt, whose planning and willingness to put himself in harm’s way were critical to our success,” Emma said, holding up a glass of red wine, pilfered from one of the best Nazi cellars. Kurt acknowledged her with a nod. His legs and face had been bandaged by Maria after he returned. Emma continued, “This was my first expedition as a member of your team, and I can’t wait for the next one.”

  Everyone toasted their collective success in establishing contact with what they agreed was quite possibly one of the highest-ranking sources they’d ever had in the Nazi regime.

  What the group couldn’t agree on was Paula’s identity or motivation.

  Ursula thought she was probably the wife of a very senior Nazi official who opposed the bomb’s creation. Gunter suspected that Paula might be acting for one of the scientists who’d lost to Kammler and was bent on sabotaging his rival’s success. Kurt, who’d seen Paula, guessed that she might be a slim male leader in disguise who couldn’t risk sending anyone on his behalf. Emma found this laughable. Maria wondered if Paula was an executive secretary to a senior official who had Hitler’s trust, since she seemed to know details others wouldn’t.

  “Well,” Emma added, “Everett always said not to overlook secretaries as sources. He called them invisible gatekeepers, because they are the unseen, unappreciated logistical coordinators for most leaders, yet much more accessible.”

  The discussion eventually shifted to Emma sharing the details of her talk with Paula.

  “My instinct is to start our influence efforts with Wolf, because he’s the most isolated of the three scientists,” she told the group. “He’s also the most concerned about right and wrong—no doubt a rare trait in the Nazi ranks. If any of these men is vulnerable to being pried away from Hitler’s team, it’s him.”

  “Sure, that’s what Paula told you about Wolf,” said Manfred. “But what if she’s wrong? What if he’s as connected and bad as the rest of them, or even worse?”

  “Then we’ll have to be nimble in adjusting our plan,” Emma said. “But I do trust Paula’s people instincts—and, besides, this is all we have to go on right now.”

  “There’s one thing I’d want to know from Wolf to test the credibility of any claims about this new weapon,” Gottfried said. “Where the hell are they getting their refined uranium? I’ve been told by people much smarter than me that this stuff is incredibly scarce. And to process it into a pure enough form that can be weaponized, you would need a big facility that’s immune from Allied bombing—a luxury the Nazis simply don’t have.”

  “I’ll try to find out,” Emma assured him.

  “What did Paula say when you brought up your son?” Ursula asked, reaching across the table to pour herself another glass of wine.

  “I didn’t mention Axel at our meeting.”

  Ursula pulled back in surprise. “Why not?”

  “Because Axel didn’t come up, and we had more important things to talk about. Right now, I’m much more concerned about this first test of the bomb.”

  Ursula nodded, looking around the table at her colleagues: Emma had apparently come through on her commitment to them about her priorities.

  “Now,” Emma said, “we have less than two weeks before the test. I have some ideas for handling these scientists, starting with Wolf.”

  The group listened silently as Emma laid out a broad plan for how things might unfold in the weeks and months ahead. When she was through, all eyes turned to their leader.

  Gunter nodded and opened his arms to the table. “Emma, I want you to make use of all the unique abilities and resources at your disposal. We, as a team, will be right behind you. Let me tell you a little more about those of us you don’t yet know as well,” the spindly leader said.

  He started with his story, telling Emma how he’d been trained in both the fine arts and architecture. When his parents died, he inherited the art gallery. In the late 1930s, when he saw weaker elements of German society being “weeded out” and killed—including the handicapped, Gypsies, and gays—his heart told him to stage an open revolt to topple Hitler.

  “But my head dictated a better plan,” Gunter said. “I decided to run a quiet revolution from my gallery’s basement. I kept buying artwork, much of it from the Nazis and stolen from German citizens or occupied countries. And I kept finding buyers in Germany and abroad who would pay me a high multiple of my costs. But now I would pour my profits into financing an élite team of resisters.”

  Gunter turned to his right and eyed Peter.

  “Peter is a forger,” Gunter explained, “and was one of the first to join me. We met when he tried to sell me a magnificent fake he’d painted of a famous Renoir—one depicting nude bathers on a beach—”

  “So if he’s that good,” Emma interrupted, as she wrapped her sweater around her shoulders, “how did you know the Renoir wasn’t real?”

  “Because I already owned the real one,” Gunter said. Peter blushed. “Anyway, I decided that having an expert forger on our team would be helpful. He is undoubtedly one of Europe’s premier counterfeiters of documents and paintings, despite losing his right eye as a child to a bully’s stick. He’s worn that eye patch ever since.”

  Gunter gestured toward Manfred, pointing out that his blond, clean-cut hair and baby face made him appear trustworthy.

  “In fact,” Gunter said, “Manfred is a former financier who acts as our group’s chief banker and thief—able to crack safes, manipulate bank accounts, and wire funds worldwide. He was recommended by another resister outside our group as someone who hated the Nazis even more than I did.” Gunter paused. “Manfred’s fiancée was raped and murdered by German soldiers one night while he was out getting bread.”

  Emma looked at Manfred. “I’m so sorry,” she said. He grimaced, raising a hand to stop her from saying anything else.

  Gunter shifted his focus to Ursula.

  “Ursula was trained as a costume and makeup artist. Whenever needed, she draws on a hidden cache of disguises for us—from her great-uncle’s clothing store,” Gunter said. “Before the war, she worked for Dehomag, International Business Machines’ German subsidiary—and the Nazis’ main source of computing, census, and people-tracing expertise. Because of her time there, she has the ability to track almost anyone down and ferret out the smallest detai
ls about their lives. Fortunately, an old friend of hers still works at Dehomag and loathes how Hitler has used her company’s records to hunt his enemies, including Jews and dissidents. This friend often helps Ursula access confidential files, even though the two haven’t worked together for years.”

  The group’s ringleader had one more person to talk about.

  Gunter turned toward Gottfried, on his left. “And lastly, Gottfried is our chauffeur, our expert in combat weapons—and, more recently, our absolutely terrible cook,” Gunter said. He leaned over Gottfried’s chair and kissed him on the forehead. “He’s also my greatest love, despite the fact that Maria and I masquerade as a married couple. That’s one of the trade-offs we’ve had to make, Emma. I didn’t think the Nazis would appreciate my making so much money off their art while also flaunting that I’m gay. After all, one of the first things they did after taking power was destroy the research institute here in support of gays, which happens to have been founded by Dr. Magnus Hirchfeld, the same lovely man who first introduced me to Gottfried.”

  Emma tried not to appear surprised—but she was.

  There had been clues. Maria certainly hadn’t gone on about the bliss of marriage or talked about her husband in a way that lovers often would. But kind, husky Gottfried and the cerebral older art dealer being a pair for life? She hadn’t seen that coming. Maria shot her a glance across the table, smiling and shrugging.

  “Working as one with our far-ranging skills, there is nothing we cannot accomplish as a team,” Gunter concluded. “And that includes killing the führer himself!”

  The group roared its approval and raised their glasses again.

  As Gunter rose to gather up the dinner plates, Gottfried launched a burned bun at him. “That’s for the comment about my cooking!” The bun missed and bounced into a nearby corner, where it was quickly hauled off by a hungry rat.