The Swiss Courier: A Novel (16 page)

Kassler rubbed his temples again. This was getting nowhere. Just when he thought he had exhausted all leads, however, an idea came to mind. A good idea.

“Becker, call the motor pool. There’s someone I want to visit.”

“Who would that be, sir? Can I make an arrangement?”

“That won’t be necessary. I prefer to drop in unannounced.”

Joseph’s hands, bound by handcuffs in front of him, zipped up his trousers and yanked on the chain to flush the toilet. He nodded to his “guard” as he exited the single-seat WC.

After a night inside a boxed tomb on the flatbed truck, he was glad for fresh air. He lifted his arms and attempted to stretch the knot in his left shoulder that attested to the discomfort of sleeping on a heavy blanket of hay. The pain drew his thoughts to hundreds of thousands of men his age, maybe millions, who’d huddled in a ditch last night to the sounds of pounding artillery in the distance.

Through the night, as the peace of the Lord settled upon him, Joseph realized he didn’t have it nearly as bad. Maybe these men wouldn’t hurt him. Wouldn’t kill him.

“Help yourself to an apple.” One of the guards held a pewter bowl out to him. It contained a half-dozen Graven-steins, which were in season. “You can take two. We have a bit of a journey ahead.”

By now, Joseph knew better than to question their plans. He cleaned both red-skinned apples against his shirt, a bit awkward with handcuffs, but not impossible. The first crispy bite of fruit released a burst of salivary juices. Then he ravenously devoured both apples.

“Hungry,” he said after wiping his mouth with his left shirtsleeve.

The leader from the night before, dressed in dirty work-clothes like the others, stepped out of a side office. “Arrangements are made. We leave in five minutes. And take the handcuffs off. I don’t think he’s a candidate to run anywhere. Am I correct, Professor Engel?”

Joseph extended his arms to Wilhelm, who brandished a half-dozen keys on an oversized brass ring. He didn’t want to lie, so he didn’t answer. Instead, he smiled as the handcuffs were pulled from him.

“Thank you,” he said, wringing his hands to boost blood circulation.

“Don’t thank me yet. You can thank me when you’re safe.” The leader jerked his head toward the flatbed truck, and like a well-drilled team, four men sprang into action. One jumped into the cab and coaxed the engine to turn over, while another sprinted to the entrance bay to keep watch. Wilhelm beckoned Joseph, who eagerly went along to the rear of the truck.
When you’re safe
. . . the words brought him some measure of comfort, but it still didn’t relieve his mind of questions.
Who? Why?

“Up you go.” Wilhelm and a colleague lifted Joseph onto the flatbed. Wooden slats had been added to hold in the load of hay. As simply as if they were taking a hayride into the countryside, Joseph turned and gave his sleeping partner a hand up.

On the wooden deck, Wilhelm dusted his hands on the rear of his pants and then moved several bales around like oversized chess pieces. “I’m just doing a little rearranging in case the authorities start poking around. Got to make things tighter. Gives us a better chance to get through any checkpoints.”

Joseph ran a hand down his face, feeling the pounding of his heart increase again. Even though he still had no answers, he was beginning to feel a measure of safety with these men. But the Gestapo . . . the real Gestapo. He doubted he’d ever feel safe with them.

“I thought random checkpoints happened after curfew.” Joseph’s voice cracked as he spoke.

“The fact that you’re missing has the Gestapo swarming like hornets. We’re expecting blockades on every route out of Heidelberg,” Wilhelm declared matter-of-factly. “We do our best, but sometimes . . .”

Wilhelm let the thought hang, and Joseph’s unease mounted. He didn’t know why he had been kidnapped or by whom—but his fate was now tied to these enemies of the Reich. Which, by virtue of association, made
him
an enemy of the Hitler regime.

“So what happens next?”

“Herr Engel, we pray for God’s protection. That’s the only way I can explain why we are still alive today. But first, we have some work to do.”

Wilhelm crawled into the hole to rearrange their hiding space. When he was done, Wilhelm exited on all fours. “Okay, in you go.”

“Wait a minute—don’t forget this.” One of Wilhelm’s colleagues had fetched Joseph’s satchel—a satchel filled with papers, notebook, and personal identification—from the escape car. Joseph didn’t know they’d grabbed it, but he accepted the leather valise with a smile. Then he got on his knees to scoot into the cramped cubbyhole.

Joseph inched on his hands and knees into the tight crawl space. There was just enough room for the two of them to recline side by side on the itchy hay.

Two colleagues neatly packed several hay bales at the entrance. “Stack it high,” someone said before they wrapped the entire load with rope. From their entombed confinement, Joseph heard a solitary voice direct the driver to get going.

As the heavy truck careened into traffic, Joseph urged his active mind to go elsewhere. He forced his thoughts to turn to his parents . . . his work . . . even classes with Professor Heisenberg.

Yet each time the truck rolled to a stop, panic tightened in his throat. And he waited—almost expected—at any moment for a sharp bayonet to pierce the hay and tear into his skin.

The Mercedes sedan accelerated through a cobblestone street running parallel to the Rhine riverbank, and Bruno Kassler tossed Professor Werner Heisenberg’s medium-thick file onto the seat between him and Becker.

Outside the car window, Heidelberg’s Gothic architecture— which could trace its roots back to 1196—appeared untouched. For reasons unknown to him, Allied bombers had so far spared the city from destruction. Yet outside the medieval downtown proper, four-engine B-24 Liberators and RAF Lancasters, laden with 500-pound bombs, had issued a pattern of death and devastation in rail yards and factories. If only they’d known the scientific knowledge within the city—especially focused on the wonder weapon—they might have chosen their targets more wisely.

The University of Heidelberg was Germany’s oldest university, founded in 1386, and had attracted scholars from all over the continent for hundreds of years. Known as a bulwark of the Reformation, the University provided for the studies of philosophy, theology, jurisprudence, and medicine. Its only dark days had been in the 1890s when the University became a repository of liberal thought—bitter seeds that sowed the Russian Revolution of 1917. As the Mercedes swung into the main courtyard, Kassler detected the faint whiff of Communism.

Kassler trusted the academicians perched in their golden sandstone towers as much as he trusted Jewish bankers. Yet the University had operated with a certain amount of local autonomy for reasons related to two factors: (1) propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had earned his doctorate in literature and philosophy from the University back in the 1920s, and (2) the University was home to important military research projects, including the one headed by Dr. Werner Heisenberg.

The Gestapo chief opened the file one last time to review Heisenberg’s curriculum vitae. Born in 1901 in Berlin, the scholarly Heisenberg netted the Nobel Prize in 1932 for his theory of quantum mechanics and the discovery of allotropic forms of hydrogen. He was most famous for the eponymous “Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle,” which stated that it was impossible to determine at the same time both the position and velocity of the electron; therefore, he suggested, the laws of subatomic phenomena should be stated in terms of observable properties, such as the intensity and frequency of radiation.

Kassler stroked his chin. He had no intention of delving into subatomic particles with someone who could talk circles around him. He was here for another reason.

The black Mercedes ground to a halt in front of the Faculty of Physics, a four-story stone building a block east of the main student square, and Kassler noticed a handful of students walking purposely to their appointed rounds. None turned in his direction, but the Gestapo chief was used to people averting their eyes whenever he came into view.

“Becker, where am I supposed to go?”

Kassler’s aide looked at his watch and consulted his notes. “Doktor Heisenberg’s office is on the first floor. Room 124. If you’ll follow me.”

Within a few minutes, Becker led Kassler to Heisenberg’s empty office. Becker waited just inside the door as Kassler quickly scanned the piles of papers, books, and research notes. Then Kassler turned his attention to an authoritative voice filtering in through an open door to the right.

“Let us review our calculations,” the voice boomed. “For critical mass to occur under this model, the neutron cross-sections must travel a relatively long distance before striking another U-235 nucleus and triggering a new fission . . .”

Kassler pushed the door open with his foot, and then peered into a windowless classroom with walls of pale yellow. A gangly man, early forties with sandy hair combed straight back, wielded a piece of chalk. Around him, a dozen physicists jotted notes from their wooden desks. Kassler stepped into the room, and the sight of the Gestapo major in full military dress brought the class to a screeching halt.

“Doktor Heisenberg?” Kassler crossed his arms over his chest.

The man at the blackboard stared at Kassler. His frozen glare was one Kassler had seen a hundred times at least—a look that said,
What have I done?

The Gestapo chief fully intended to play off the power of his office. He straightened his shoulders and slowly neared the professor. “Doktor Heisenberg, I need a few moments of your time.”

The physicist set the piece of chalk on a wooden tray underneath the blackboard. “Excuse me for a moment.” He nodded to the class and followed Kassler into his office.

Kassler grimly closed the door behind them, and then, spotting a radio in the corner, turned it on. The sounds of classical opera filled Heisenberg’s office—an antidote to any eavesdroppers. Kassler didn’t trust anyone, especially a pinheaded professor of quantum physics.

The lilting music immediately improved Kassler’s countenance and offered him a chance to make small talk. He knew one of the best ways to get information was to build a rapport. And it was far less messy than the alternative.

“Ah, Richard Wagner.” Kassler turned to the professor. “This must be from ‘The Flying Dutchman.’ There’s something about Wagner’s layers of texture, rich chromaticism, and elaborate use of leitmotifs that makes him one of Germany’s most revered composers. Would you not agree, Doktor Heisenberg?”

Heisenberg walked around to his desk and extended his arms for Kassler and Becker to have a seat in the two wooden chairs. He then sat himself. “Wagner, revered composer, yes, if you insist,” the physicist replied hurriedly. “Although I’m sure the reason for your visit is not to discuss the artistic merits of Richard Wagner. So if you would kindly get to the point. And you are—”

“Kassler, Bruno. Sturmbannführer of the Heidelberg region.” The Gestapo chief returned to his feet and regarded a bookshelf crammed with volumes. Then he turned to the blackboard over the professor’s shoulder. A rat’s nest of consonants, numbers, and Greek letters was scribbled across the board, including the following:

Professor Heisenberg noted his gaze. “That’s an S-matrix equation, which is causing all sorts of fits these days. We think that removal of the divergent self-energy of the electron is accomplished with a hybrid version of the subtraction physics, but one of my colleagues here is paradoxically opposed to the finiteness of the S-matrix because the whole theory is built upon a Hamiltonian formalism with an interaction-function that is infinite and therefore physically meaningless.”

Silence filled the professor’s cluttered office.

“Yes, very well. For the good of the Reich, I hope you can untangle everything,” Kassler dryly remarked. “I’m sorry, but my visit isn’t to discuss your latest finding—however interesting that is. Instead, you’ve heard the news about one of your colleagues, a certain Joseph Engel?”

“Yes, I received a distressing report this morning: Doktor Engel was arrested by the Gestapo last night.” Heisenberg leaned forward in his seat. “What has he done?”

Kassler stepped away from his chair as he contemplated the question. He pulled a book from the shelf and pretended to be transfixed by its title:
Physics Today
by Niels Bohr.

Kassler knew his movements were a signal to the esteemed professor that he controlled the space they were occupying. He also hoped the professor knew that no matter how many friends Heisenberg had in high places, they would never trump his superiors in Berlin. If he read Heisenberg’s face correctly, the professor believed the Gestapo had abducted Engel. Kassler would do nothing to dispel the image of an all-knowing, all-powerful secret police network.