A Thousand Suns (34 page)

Chapter 52

Mission Time: 20 Hours, 10 Minutes Elapsed

10.15 p.m., the Führer’s bunker, Berlin

Dr Hauser sat uncomfortably on a wooden chair in the ante-room outside the Führer’s small study. Eva, his wife of only a few hours, was with him inside. The door was closed, but through it he could hear the murmur of her voice, soothing, consoling like a mother to a child. Every now and then he heard his voice, deeper, but high as a man keening. It sounded like he was crying, whimpering. Every time he heard this, her voice quickly followed, swiftly saying whatever it was she needed to say.

Hauser felt his stomach churn, he felt nauseous.

It disturbed him that this magnificent man could sound so frail, so vulnerable. Germany needed him to continue being strong, especially now. It was not the time for tears. The man had the strength of a lion; surely it wasn’t possible for these mewling noises to be coming from him, the same whimpering sound that the Jew Schenkelmann had made on his knees.

Hauser had arrived only half an hour ago. The journey up from the airfield had taken much longer than he had anticipated and it had been touch and go as to whether he would be able to safely make it inside the bunker. The few dozen men left of Hitler’s Leibstandarte and a pathetic company of boys in oversized Wehrmacht uniforms had been pulled into a tight defensive knot around the ruins of the Reich Chancellery. Hauser’s driver had only managed to get the truck within a mile of the bunker, and from there, accompanied by the six SS guards he had brought with him from the airfield, he had picked his way through the ruined maze of buildings towards the bunker. More than once, they had been shot at in the dark and Hauser and his men had had to call out that they weren’t Russians. The soldiers guarding the Reich Chancellery had attempted to turn Hauser away, telling him that no one else was being permitted access to the bunker. Hauser had eventually managed to convince one of them to call through on the entrance phone, and after a few minutes’ delay he was told he could make his way down below and into the bunker; his SS guards ordered to help the others defend the perimeter.

The bunker seemed far quieter than he remembered from his visit just over a week ago. As he passed by the Goebbels’ rooms he caught a glimpse of the man, recently promoted to General Plenipotentiary for Total War, sitting beside a bed where his wife lay sleeping fitfully. Goebbels had turned to look at him briefly, a drawn look of futility and resignation on his face.

In the second room he could hear the voices of their children talking quietly. This time there were no games going on, no chatter, no laughing. He had noticed, as he had been led towards the Führer’s study, that the bunker was starting to look less ordered. He passed in the hallway two generals seated opposite each other in a nook, clearly drunk. They stared in bemusement at him as Frau Jüng led him by. Hauser could only stare back at them with contempt.

The young woman had seated him in the ante-room. She said Hitler had been expecting him since lunchtime to join him in celebration. It was clear from the puzzled look on her face that she had no idea what it was Hitler was planning to celebrate. Now, listening to the murmurings through the wooden door, the Führer’s mood seemed to have swung from a positive demeanour only a few hours ago to one of desperation.

Ahead of him he could see through an open door into Eva Braun’s sitting room. The German Shepherd he had seen last time was on the bed again, asleep without a care in the world.

He heard movement from inside Hitler’s study, and a moment later the door opened, and Eva Braun emerged. She smiled politely at Hauser and then turned and put her head round the door. He heard her inform Hitler that Hauser was waiting outside, and then she drifted past and walked into her sitting room.

‘Blondi, out, please,’ she muttered, roughly pushing the sleeping dog off and closing the door behind her as it stepped sluggishly outside.

Hauser waited a further minute or so before he heard Hitler mumble, ‘Come in.’ He stood up and cautiously entered the study.

Hitler was sitting behind his small desk; the light from the desk lamp shone across his tired face and picked out puffy, red eyes. He gestured with his trembling left hand, clearly no longer attempting to conceal it, towards the guest chair opposite the desk.

‘Please, sit down.’

‘Thank you, my Führer,’ said Hauser dutifully as he sat down.

This time Hitler was wearing his uniform, the formal tan tunic Hauser had seen his leader wear in countless movie reels, but it looked scruffy and crumpled with several faint food stains down the front.

‘I was hoping we would have received word from the Americans some time this afternoon,’ he said, his voice wavering slightly.

‘Yes, it would seem they are cutting things a little fine, my Führer.’

Hitler nodded. ‘It seems they haven’t taken my threat seriously.’

‘Then they soon will, I assure you.’

Hitler rubbed his eyes and sighed deeply. ‘I think not. They wouldn’t leave such a thing to chance. This can only mean they have intercepted the plane . . . it’s all over.’ He absent-mindedly stroked the decorative braiding on one of his cuffs. ‘We shall not be celebrating anything this evening, it seems.’

It was then Hauser realised that Hitler had dressed up for the occasion, worn his finest formal uniform ready to receive the telegram from the Americans. Hauser had little doubt that bottles of champagne lay ready in the pantry, unopened. Hitler looked pitifully like a child dressed for a cancelled birthday party, unwilling to change out of his party-best into his normal workaday things.

‘The plane may have been delayed across the ocean; it could even arrive a couple of hours after the deadline, depending on the weather. We will have to -’

‘I think you are deceiving yourself . . . if they haven’t responded by now it is because they know there is no more threat. They must have intercepted the plane. Your bomb is no longer a threat to them.’

Perhaps he’s right.

Hitler inhaled deeply and smoothed down his tunic, aware that as he’d been wearing it all afternoon, it must now look untidy and creased.

‘I believe there is a small buffet laid out in the map room; feel free to help yourself,’ he muttered. ‘Please leave, there are things I need to attend to now.’ He dismissed Hauser with a limp flick of his wrist.

Hauser stood up uncertainly and saluted. Hitler barely acknowledged him, staring with lifeless and empty eyes at a small-scale architectural model of Speer’s on the corner of his desk. Hauser nodded curtly and backed out of the study, pulling the door closed behind him.

Frau Jüng was waiting for him in the ante-room, her eyebrows raised curiously. ‘How is he?’ she asked.

Hauser merely shook his head, unsure of what to say, what to do next, where to go.

‘There are spare cots in the Stumpfegger’s rooms if you wish to stay, Dr Hauser. I’m not sure it’s wise to go outside again -’

Frau Jüng’s words were interrupted by a raised voice coming from down the main corridor. The young woman stepped angrily out into the corridor to see what the disturbance was all about. A junior officer approached her, walking briskly down the main corridor holding a single sheet of paper in his hand. ‘Frau Jüng, I have a telegram for the Führer.’

‘He’s not to be disturbed. That’s what he told me.’

‘It’s in English, you speak English do you not?’

‘Well, yes, a little. Give it to me.’ She took the sheet of paper from the officer and read it briefly.

‘Oh my . . .’

‘What is it?’ asked the officer.

Traudl Jüng looked up at him and snapped angrily. ‘It’s addressed to your leader, not you!’ She stared challengingly at the officer until he turned on his heels and headed back up the corridor towards the telephone exchange room. She angrily muttered something about the slipping standards of discipline around the Führer as she turned smartly around and knocked lightly on the door to Hitler’s study. Hauser heard him call her in, and she disappeared inside.

Hauser remained where he was, standing in the small ante-room, staring at the door and straining to hear what was being said beyond. Both Frau Jüng and Hitler must be talking quietly, whispering even. He could hear nothing.

A minute passed before finally the handle of the door turned, and the door swung open, revealing Adolf Hitler. He had changed his tunic to a similar one, freshly laundered. He smiled at Hauser.

Chapter 53

Mission Time: 21 Hours, 20 Minutes Elapsed

4.25 p.m., EST, fifty miles off the east coast of America

He awoke with a start.

‘Max, wake up, we’re nearly there,’ said Hans, jabbing his arm insistently.

Max felt the world quickly invade the warmth and comfort of his dream. It faded all too quickly. He hazily recalled images of a long dining table, Lucian beside him, his eyes as wide as saucers staring at the feast arrayed before him. It was a Christmas dinner, and Lucian must have been only seven, nearly eight; it had to have been Christmas 1933, perhaps ’34. He had been eighteen that year, and back from his first term at university. Max smiled; what a wonderful time that was, enjoying the novelty of his new life away from home. But he had been surprised at how much he’d missed Lucian during his first term. He had spent some of the money he had saved for several raucous nights down the local beer cellar to mark the end of term on a present that he knew would make that little porcelain face light up with ecstasy . . . a small army of painted soldier figurines. All through that meal he’d teased his brother about what surprise lay within his parcel beneath the Christmas tree.

‘Pieter said I should wake you up,’ Hans said apologetically.

He would have given anything for another five minutes back there, back then. ‘That’s all right, Hans,’ he said, stifling a yawn, ‘I need to prepare the bomb.’

He turned to look at Stef to see the boy was still unconscious. He lifted the blanket to check his leg wound and found several small patches of wet blood soaking through.

‘He’s still losing blood.’

It looked like a slow trickle of blood, but it was still leaking out of him. If they could find him some medical attention as soon as this was all over, he would pull through. The lad had lost a fair bit, but he guessed he still had a chance. It was more likely he was simply sleeping from exhaustion than passed out from lack of blood.

Good, let him sleep. If he’s moving around less, the tourniquet will do a better job
.

‘Hans, what’s our position?’

The gunner shook his head like a horse trying to shake off a bridle. ‘I don’t know, Pieter just told me it was time to wake you up.’

Max pulled the blanket off and stood up stiffly. He plugged into the interphone beside the port waist-gun and lifted his mask. ‘Pieter, what’s our position?’

‘Ahhh, good afternoon Max,’ he replied cheerfully. ‘We’re about forty minutes off the coast.’

‘You kept to two-fifty-five degrees?’

‘Yeah, and cruising at two hundred and fifty.’

That was fifty miles per hour faster than the minimum cruise speed; the burn from that extra speed had been unnecessary. Fuel, not time, was the important variable. Max wondered anxiously what their reserves were. There couldn’t be much left. ‘What’s the fuel look like?’

‘Don’t worry, Max; we’ve probably got an hour, maybe two, of fuel left. Looks like we’ll make it with some to spare.’

Max checked his watch: if they hadn’t drifted too far north or south they might actually make it to New York after all. He smiled. Not only did it look like, against the odds, they would actually make it, but it looked like they were going to arrive more or less on time. As the hour of midnight struck in Germany, they would be dropping the bomb over New York.

Pieter had done well, flying a little faster than they’d needed to bring them in on time. Max trusted his co-pilot would have calculated the fuel burn before making that kind of decision, and he had calculated well, so it seemed. Drift and head or tail wind would, of course, affect any dead reckoning Pieter could make, but at 5000 feet altitude that wasn’t going to throw his reckoning off by too much.

‘Well done, Pieter.’

Hans was looking longingly at the thick grey blanket wrapped around Stef.

‘Jump in under the blanket,’ he said to the gunner, ‘it’s quite warm under there.’

Hans nodded eagerly and slid along the wooden-panel floor to sit beside Stef. He pulled the thick grey blanket up over himself, up to the chin.

‘Keep an eye on that wound, though.’

‘Yeah.’

Max climbed through the bulkhead into the navigation compartment, and then through the second bulkhead into the bomb bay. The bomb hung at the bottom of the rack before him, cradled in its metal frame. He sat down on the floor and dangled his legs over the narrow walkway into the darkened bay below. When the bomb bay doors were open, that area would be a dazzling bright abyss. Max was surprised at how little protection there was either side of the narrow walkway, perhaps only eighteen inches wide, and the open space above the bomb bay doors. It would be perilously easy to misplace a foot and fall through. But then he reminded himself that the space above the doors normally would be packed full with 600lb bombs, stacked one above the other in the racks, allowing no room for a clumsy crew member to slip through and fall to his death. He also recalled reading in the manual that while the bay doors were open, the bomb bay was off limits to the crew.

He felt inside his tunic pocket for the envelope and pulled it out. Major Rall had used a normal, unmarked envelope, no insignia. Against his better judgement, Max felt himself injecting this moment with portentous significance. He was about to open the most important envelope in the world. Curiously, it seemed poetically right that such an envelope would be so unremarkable - plain, white, small. He pulled off a leather glove and put a finger under the flap, sliding it along and opening it up.

So, here we are
.

He reached in and felt a single sheet of paper and pulled it out. He unfolded it and scanned the words on the paper. It was letter-headed stationery from the Ministry of Armaments, from Albert Speer’s office no less. Halfway down the page was a short paragraph and a diagram indicating how the altimeter detonator should be set up. Max glanced down at it. The detonator could only be reached by lining up the correct six-digit code on a thick locking bar that ran over the top. The digits could be set by rotating a series of cylinders with numbers on the side. It reminded him vaguely of the code wheels on an Enigma machine. He looked back at the piece of paper and found the code number at the end of the paragraph.

One . . . five . . . zero . . . eight . . . two . . . seven
.

He reached down to the locking bar and carefully rotated each of the number wheels to arrange the six numbers in a line. With the last digit set, the locking bar clicked, and Max lifted it away from the altimeter display.

He glanced back at the paper. The bomb was to detonate 1000 feet above the ground. He wondered why it would be set to explode at such a height. Perhaps the scientists who’d put this weapon together had become paranoid that it might land with a thud on the rooftop of some Manhattan skyscraper and remain there, unexploded indefinitely, undiscovered amongst the rooftop detritus of pipes and boilers.

The altimeter had a similar display of
five
number wheels. He read the instructions one more time before turning the wheels carefully until they displayed: 01000.

One thousand feet.

The last act now was to press a button to the right of the five number wheels, a single blue button. Pressing this would engage the air pressure sensor in the altimeter. Once this was engaged, if the air pressure around the bomb increased to an amount equivalent to that found 1000 feet above sea level, the bomb would detonate. Max would press the blue button, only at the last moment before the bomb was to be released. There would be all manner of localised fluctuations of pressure around the bomb when the bay doors were opened; so they would be opened first, and only then could the bomb be activated safely.

He pulled back from the small device slung within its metal cradle, relieved that the process of preparing it had been simple and straightforward. He folded the paper up, pulled the envelope from his pocket. It was as he was about to place the code back in the envelope, that he noticed another folded sheet of paper nestling inside.

A note from Rall wishing good luck, perhaps? A note even from the Führer, maybe?

Perhaps . . .

He reached in with his ungloved hand, pulled it out and unfolded it. It was the kind of paper you would see in an exercise book or on a writing pad, not the sort of stationery you would expect the Führer to write on. He unfolded it to find a paragraph of handwriting, oblique, spidery strokes. It was the writing of a man in a hurry.

To the one responsible for arming this weapon,

This is a confession from the man who has built this bomb. This device uses a new energy called atomic energy. We are using a new science that is attempting to harness the energy that holds the very atoms of this world together. The weapon I have made will unleash this energy in a way that cannot be predicted. It has either the potential to destroy a whole city, or, if God has no mercy for us at all, the whole world.

We have taken a dangerous shortcut with this new science to deploy this weapon ahead of the Americans. There is an even chance that this bomb will destroy most of this world, perhaps all of it. The risk of this happening is too great.

I implore you, whoever you are, to understand the terrible gamble you are about to take in arming and dropping this bomb. Think for a moment, what good is there in winning your war if there is no one left alive to inherit the ashes of victory?

Max stared in silence at the note, his mind momentarily locked in confusion. His first fleeting instinct was to suspect the note to be a poor attempt to sabotage the mission. Some disgruntled technician, perhaps even an anti-Nazi? God knows, there were very few Germans left who would proudly announce allegiance to the swastika. It was a person who had hoped that the note might bring an end to this endeavour. Misinformation like this at a crucial moment in time could just be enough to throw someone off their guard long enough that it might make a difference. That was most probably what this was. There had been plots before against Hitler, many in fact, and Max, not a Nazi, never a supporter of the National Socialists, might so easily have been one of those unfortunate men who had been sucked into any one of those conspiracies, if he had been approached.

It was possible, Max deliberated, that this might even be the handiwork of one of those in the highest echelons of power . . . Himmler, Göring, Goebbels? Perhaps an act of sabotage to buy themselves clemency from the enemy after this war was over.

He looked down at the note once more.

But we’re dropping this bomb for Germany, not Hitler.

That was why Max had agreed to carry out the mission. Not for that insane bastard who had brought this insanity down on all of them.

I volunteered for those of us poor wretches who are left, not the bastard who put us here.

It was their last chance to fight for a truce, that’s why he had volunteered, and for no other reason; not for glory, not for vanity. Whatever the motive behind the note, whoever had managed to ensure it had made its way to the last man to lay hands on this weapon, Max decided, the attempt had been in vain. The mission had to go on. He and his men had managed to fight their way across France and the Atlantic, he owed it to his men, to Schröder and his pilots, to the millions of civilians across their homeland who would die if the war didn’t come to an end right now.

He began to ball the note up in his hands.

And stopped.

What exactly
is
the risk of using this weapon?

He recalled those few words; words he had not been meant to hear. The door had closed on the answer, but the question, Major Rall’s question, he had heard.

What
is
the risk of using this weapon?

The civilian, Hauser, had answered quietly, the murmur of his reply for the Major’s ears only. Rall had heard the answer to that question only a short time before they had assembled outside the hangar ready to take off.

And how odd the Major had been.

Max recalled those few awkward moments, standing in front of the bomber, watching Schröder and his men climbing into their fighters and preparing to take off . . . and the Major’s unusual, uncharacteristic behaviour. And then Max recalled the Major had tried to say something, urgently, insistently, quietly.

He was trying to warn me.

Major Rall had attempted to warn Max of something. He had thought the Major was warning him to be careful handling the bomb; that Hauser had imparted to him at this late stage some element of risk that the Major felt in all fairness should have been relayed directly to Max. That particular rationalisation of the Major’s odd, hurried last exchange had made sense to Max as he had replayed it in his mind in the few moments he’d had since taking off to reflect upon the matter. The Major, he thought, had been trying to convey one last cautionary piece of advice, but in the haste, the moment, the noise, it had been lost and cast aside as Max had focused on the mission itself.

But this note . . . and those overheard words, and the Major’s hurried, desperate last-ditch attempt to warn him, interrupted, he now recalled, all too hastily by Hauser . . . all of those things gave Max a reason to pause, to unscrew the paper in his hand. He looked once more at the note, rereading the scribbled lines.

The Major must have been informed by the civilian, Hauser, of the bomb’s true nature. The discussion he had overheard a mere snippet of was just that: Rall’s discovery of the real danger, for the first time. And now, Max replayed those final moments on the airstrip - the haunted look on the Major’s face, his distracted demeanour and the final desperate look of anxiety on his face as he had tried to warn Max with a carefully phrased sentence.

And then there was that civilian, Hauser, his speech . . . perhaps, as he revelled in the moment, he had let slip more than he had intended.