The Trinity Paradox

11 Dachau Concentration Camp December 1943

A white plywood sign inside the barbed-wire fence proclaimed in bright red letters, arbeit macht frei—but it looked as if no amount of work could set free the skeletal Jewish prisoners who moved about like stunned marionettes.

Esau felt his body tremble with revulsion. No wonder Reichminister Speer had warned him to avoid the concentration camps. “How can you stand the smell?” he whispered. He couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Major Stadt, in his black SS uniform, wrinkled his nose and nodded. “Yes, they stink, don’t they? Jews! They smell when they’re alive, they smell when they’re dead, they even smell when they’re cremated. We killed seventeen thousand of them at Majdanek camp just last month. You should come here in the summer heat if you think this is bad!” He shook his head. “And they’re all crawling with vermin. The delousing stations can’t possibly keep up. I wouldn’t get too close if I were you.”

Professor Abraham Esau had no intention of getting too close.

Under the direction of Reichminister Speer, the SS had brought workers to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute to dismantle the experimental graphite pile. They took all the components—the carbon bricks, the uranium oxide, the uranium cubes, the neutron source—to erect a larger-scale pile, using more uranium procured from someplace Speer would not identify. After a month and a half of heavy Allied bombing, Berlin was no longer safe.

The SS had kept careful notes and drawings so they could rebuild the reactor where the production work could continue under absolute security, and where they would not need to worry so greatly about the safety of other citizens. Reichminister Speer had asked Esau to appoint an administrator to the project, someone who could supervise the reactor and deal with the uncertainties that were bound to arise.

“But I wouldn’t suggest you pick anyone you like,” Speer had said. “The reason will become obvious if you ever visit the site we have selected.”

“Where is it?”

Speer had raised his eyebrows and looked far away, as if troubled. “Near Munich, on the Amper River. A place called Dachau.”

“I believe I’ve been there. I like the area around Munich. It’s rather scenic.”

“It is not scenic there,” Speer answered, “no, not there.” He would say nothing more.

Esau had made the obvious choice for administrator. Dr. Kurt Diebner was delighted with his promotion and even said kind words to Esau, for the first time. Esau congratulated him and silently hoped the job would be as miserable as Speer had promised it would be. For the past month, Diebner had been in the Dachau camp, overseeing the construction of the new reactor building and the reassembly of the critical pile. When Esau had commended him for the speed of his progress, Diebner sent a cryptic answer via telegram, no shortage of labor here.

Major Stadt walked ahead down the main thoroughfare and snapped his fingers for Esau to follow. All the snow had been swept away, and puddles of slush had refrozen. Esau’s nose felt red and cold. The sky looked too blue and bright for the barren sore of the camp.

Major Stadt swept his hand to indicate the masses of people huddled together like animals in a corral; others worked hauling buckets, cleaning up after the prisoners, doing menial tasks as guards stood by, shifting their rifles from shoulder to shoulder. Towers ringed the outer electrified fence, with men pointing machine guns down at the prisoners. One guard kept pointing his gun as if pretending to shoot people at random.

Esau had seen films of the resettlement camps for the Jews, showing hardworking people making uniforms for German soldiers and growing food under spartan but livable conditions. He had never imagined anything like this.

“Most of them are out on work details, repairing roads, manning munitions factories, cleaning up,” Stadt said, smug. “The Jews forced us into the war, you know. It’s only fitting that they should help repair the damage they’ve done. We’ve taken films of them at hard labor. Good Germans want to see them doing an honest day’s work for the food we give them.”

They passed the administration building, which was surrounded by more barbed wire and had bars on the windows. Esau tried taking shallow breaths, but the brittle air was thick with the stench of excrement and burning corpses. He hoped Stadt would take him into the main building so he could sit in a closed room, let his watery knees stop shaking for a minute.

Major Stadt, noticing Esau’s nausea, jokingly clapped a hand on his shoulder. “You’ll get used to it. You can get used to anything, you know.” Stadt brushed at his sleeve and strolled along. “When Himmler himself visited one of the camps, he stood too close to a line of prisoners about to be executed. Got brains splashed all over his jacket and face! Even he looked about to be sick then, but he got over it. Anybody can. Cheer up!”

Shots rang out from the other side of the camp. “Ah, and it looks as if we’ve got some executions today too. Happens usually on Thursdays, I believe. Your timing is lucky.”

Esau had forced himself not to notice, but now he squinted. Somehow a trench had been chopped out of the frozen ground. Prisoners filed into the cut and faced the earthen wall. The guards shot them. Even as the bodies crumpled, another row of prisoners shuffled in to take their place, nudged by bayonets.

“Why don’t they fight? Why don’t they resist?” Esau asked. “Are they so stupid?”

Stadt shrugged. “Where are they going to run? They are animals, like cattle in a slaughterhouse.” He kicked at the hard ground, knocking loose a small rock with the tip of his boot. “Look at this, ugly barren dirt. They’ve killed every blade of grass, every bush. This used to be a nice camp when we kept only political prisoners here. But once you start adding the homosexuals, the Gypsies, the Jews—well, look at what happens. It’s no surprise, really. It’s a good thing we’re purging them from our society.

“Would you like to see the crematoriums? Those trenches are more for show, not quite as practical. They fill up too fast. Now that you have a title of your own, Herr Plenipotentiary, I’m sure you’d like to observe other efficient operations.” He looked at Esau, then narrowed his eyes.

“You must treat such people as resources, nothing more. And because of the war, we must make the most of our resources, all of them. We make use of the spectacles they wear, the hair from their heads, the gold from their teeth, everything.”

Esau knew Stadt meant only to taunt him for the squeamishness he had shown, so he snapped, “I am not here as a tourist! I must make sure my reactor is running properly. Please confine your remarks to pertinent topics. Now, show me the nuclear pile.”

Stadt stiffened at being addressed in such a manner. But then Esau noticed the major was frightened of something else. “Professor Esau, I will explain the operations to you, but I refuse to go there, not inside and not much closer either. Right now we are upwind—that’s why I had you enter through the side gate.” He added self-defensively, “Even Dr. Diebner spends very little time actually in the reactor building.”

Esau felt outraged. “And why not? That is why he’s here!”

Stadt straightened the black SS hat on his head. “We constructed the reactor building in record time, Professor, and in bad weather yet. We had the pile functioning in a few weeks. We had no time to incorporate protection measures— shielding, Dr. Diebner calls it. It is not healthy for us to go near the place. The doctors know the radiation is dangerous, but they are running tests to determine exactly how dangerous.”

White steam boiled from four narrow smokestacks on the large building on the far corner of the camp. The steam looked insignificant compared to the black plumes from the massive crematoriums. Stadt had stopped walking and stood staring.

“We had work crews construct a canal from the Amper River, to bring water here which circulates in pipes through the pile to keep the components cool. The water is radioactive, and we use it for the prisoners, for showers and for drinking purposes.”

Esau nodded. Hahn had suggested the cooling system so the pile could run continuously. “And someone is keeping records of all this? The effects of radiation in the water and air, on the prisoners, I mean? The information could be valuable from a medical standpoint.”

Stadt brightened. “Oh yes, we have many skilled doctors here, and they are finding very interesting effects from massive doses. In fact, the radioactive poisoning seems to be nearly as effective as our firing squads, but costs us no bullets. The prisoners themselves think it’s just a cholera epidemic. Nobody understands what’s going on here.”

Stadt took two steps closer to the reactor building, but stopped again. “Obviously, the prisoners are expendable. We have them maintaining the pile, fixing the cooling system, performing routine measurements. We’ve just received a new shipment of processed uranium from the metallurgy plants near Joachimstal in Czechoslovakia. Every few days we have the prisoners disassemble the pile, remove the irradiated uranium slugs, and add fresh pieces. The irradiated uranium gets shipped off to a processing plant nearby, which is also operated with labor from Dachau.” He seemed very proud of that.

The uranium that had been cooking in the core of the reactor would be chemically treated to extract the small amount of plutonium created by the nuclear reactions. The rest of the uranium could then be reprocessed and returned to the reactor. Many of the other fission by-products were deadly poison and extremely radioactive, which posed a problem for storage.

Esau considered every concern to be secondary to producing the new element plutonium. The tiny grains slowly added up. Soon Esau’s researchers at the Virus House would have enough to perform macroscopic measurements, a major step in the progress toward a German atomic weapon. It was only a matter of time.

“If it is so radioactive in there, how do you get them to work so willingly? This is a precision installation, Herr Major. Sloppiness could ruin everything.” Esau looked at the reactor building, but he too avoided going closer. Let Diebner take the chance from now on, he decided.

Stadt peeled down his black glove and glanced at his wristwatch. “Almost noon. You’ll see in a moment. We are conscious of the radiation risk to our own guards too. All crews get rotated out after three weeks in the vicinity. Only a few of us know the real reason why.”

“What about the commandant? Doesn’t he remain here?” Esau asked.

Stadt frowned. “He has fallen out of favor for some private remarks he made about Himmler and the Fuhrer. He doesn’t even know it himself. We consider him expendable, and if he dies in the line of his duty here, then it avoids a messy court-martial, and saves us time and effort.”

Over by the reactor building many of the skeletal prisoners clung to the fences in their corrals, making unintelligible noises. They didn’t appear human anymore, naked and filthy, with wild eyes. But they seemed excited about something. The tall doors to the reactor building opened.

“Ah, here we are. Look how happy the rest of them get. It keeps a spark of hope burning, lets us squeeze a little more work out of them.”

Five men shuffled out of the reactor building doors. White steam continued to pour from the smokestacks, so the pile was continuing to function. Esau frowned. The men could barely walk, but they wore tattered overcoats and carried a single valise each. He realized they were prisoners too, near starving and very sick, but they appeared determined. They proceeded along the main thoroughfare with a drunken, stumbling gait, intent only on making their way to the barbed-wire entrance.

“Any man who volunteers for a week of work in the reactor building is set free afterward. We give him an overcoat and a valise with a change of clothes and official release papers. We let them walk out of the camp.” Stadt crossed his arms over his chest.

Esau looked around at the carnage and couldn’t believe Stadt would do such a thing. “You actually set them free?”

The men had reached the front gate. Two guards opened the gate and stood out of the way as the skeletal men moved more rapidly. One prisoner tried to run, but he fell, then crawled his way to his feet. Up in the watchtowers the man with the machine gun aimed at one, then another, then another of the freed prisoners, but the gun remained silent.

“Why not?” Stadt answered. “They are dead already. They receive a lethal dose of radiation within a few days. Many sicken inside and need to be replaced. The hardiest ones who do survive a full week in the reactor building barely last another day or so out of here.” He put a gloved finger on his lips. “I suppose we could have teams out of sight down the road to shoot them, but why should we trouble ourselves? Wastes bullets and effort, so we settle for shooting only the nonvolunteers.”

Esau shook his head, scowling. “Why would anyone volunteer for a job like that?”

Stadt narrowed his eyes and looked at him. “Look at them all, Professor. What other chance do they have? We have enough volunteers to keep us going for twelve years already.” His voice picked up a thick layer of sarcasm. “But I trust you will have your bomb finished before then?”

Esau began to respond, but the SS major turned to a guard approaching them. The uniformed man hurried and kept shoving his rifle back to its position on his back. Steam came from his mouth in spurts as he panted. “I am looking for Professor Esau!” He glanced from Stadt to Esau. “Are you the professor?”

“I am.”

The guard spoke, but he found himself out of breath and had to begin again. “Reichminister Speer has just arrived in his car. He requests that you meet him outside the camp. His driver is waiting for you.”

Esau frowned in confusion. Major Stadt let out a snort. “Speer refuses to come inside any of the camps. He doesn’t want to see what’s inside, although he knows as well as anybody does. He’s afraid. I bet he’d puke out everything he’d eaten in the past month.”

The guard shifted from one foot to the other, looking at Esau. “I can escort you right now, sir.”

Major Stadt waved at Esau. “Go on. I’ve told you about the reactor operations here. You can see everything’s going well. If you’d like to meet with Dr. Diebner or if you’d like to take a tour inside the reactor building itself, I can arrange that.”

Esau swallowed. “That won’t be necessary.”

“I didn’t think it would be.”

Esau hurried off behind the guard, anxious to be leaving the camp. He heard another line of distant shots in the trench. Major Stadt stood staring at the prisoners, then at the reactor building with its gushing smokestacks.

The guard stopped at the gate, and Esau walked under the towers with their machine guns. The practice-shooting man swiveled the barrel toward them, but then seemed to realize Esau was not another one of the Jews released from the reactor building. He tilted the gun up and directed a quick salute at the professor.

Reichminister Speer’s long black car waited in the gravel road that led from the town of Dachau to the camp. Esau could see a dim form in the backseat, silhouetted from the light of the grayish winter sky. A driver sat behind the wheel.

Esau approached the car and opened the back door, then climbed in beside Speer. The Reichminister said “Go” to the driver, who turned the car around, driving up on the packed snow beside the road. As the car picked up speed away from Dachau, Esau noticed the long gash of tire marks on the white ground.

Speer sat in silence. He had kept all the windows rolled tightly shut, making their edges fogged with steam. He had smoked several cigarettes.

“You stink,” Speer said, finally cracking open his window as they moved farther from the camp. A narrow stream of chilly air slid into the car.

“It’s that place,” Esau said. “No wonder you advised against going there if I didn’t have to.”

“I just want you to accomplish your task.” He lowered his voice even further, as if he were terribly weary. “That is the only important thing.”

Esau brightened, talking to distract himself from what he had seen in the camp. “I am happy to report much progress, Herr Reichminister. The large-scale pile is completely constructed and functioning. After the uranium components have been irradiated in the reactor, we can chemically separate out small amounts of element 94. We have samples to send back to the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute, where our teams can perform experiments to determine its physical properties. Already we have confirmed that it is indeed fissile.”

“What does this mean?”

“It means that we can use it to make our weapon. As soon as we get enough of it. It is only a matter of time now.”

Speer fell silent and stared out the window. The driver took them down a narrow road bordered by snow-clad pine trees on both sides. Small lanes branched out, most showing only a few tracings of tire tracks in the snow. The driver continued aimlessly, letting the staff car take up most of the road. They passed an old tractor abandoned near a clearing. Esau could see no other people around.

“Time is no longer a luxury for us.”

Esau felt some of his enthusiasm wane upon hearing the flat tone in Speer’s voice. “But we are making such good progress—”

“I know you are working very hard, Herr Professor. But let me remind you about the rest of the world. You do remember the war? Two months ago Italy declared war on Germany. The Russians have retaken Kiev and now they are launching a tremendous offensive. The winter looks bad for us again, and our soldiers are not well-supplied. I don’t have months and months to wait.” He turned toward Esau. His pale eyes looked watery and bloodshot. “I need your weapon now! Or, at the very latest, within two months.”

“Two months! That is impossible. Everything is progressing without problems, but we cannot possibly have enough plutonium by then.”

“Have your men work harder. What else do you need?”

“I need time! It is not a question of working harder. We have only so much processed uranium. That uranium needs to be exposed in the reactor for a long period of time before we can extract any plutonium at all, and each time we get only a tiny amount. The plutonium will add up, to be sure, but certainly not enough in two months.”

Reichminister Speer sagged back against the leather-covered seat in the car. The spark of hope had gone out of him. “Then it is lost. We have few supplies. We cannot continue this war much longer. If we strike soon with a superior weapon, while we can still convince ourselves we are winning, then we can press the advantage. If we wait longer, it will be too late.”

He continued to stare out the window at the snow and slush. “The Fuhrer will have my head for this.”

Esau felt his mind spinning. His project had progressed so nicely. He didn’t want this to cast a long shadow over his accomplishments, not now when he had success in his hand. And if the failure ousted Speer, would not the repercussions trickle down to himself as well?

“I knew it was too much to hope for,” Speer continued. “I had no choice but to gamble on fairy tales. Magic bombs and secret weapons. Why do I allow myself to be fooled so easily?”

“Excuse me, Herr Reichminister…” Speer glared at him. Esau continued. “I may know another way. Not as spectacular as our atomic bomb idea, but it will certainly be deadly, like nothing else the Allies have ever seen.” When he smiled, the scar on his lip tingled. “And we can do it right now.”

Speer sat up straight in his seat. “What? What is it?” The driver continued along the slippery road, but Esau noticed the other man’s head cocked sideways to eavesdrop.

Esau folded his fingers together and stared over the seat ahead of him to watch the road stretch out between the trees. “When we process the uranium from the reactor, we extract the element 94, but we also end up with a great deal of other fission products. They are highly radioactive and deadly poisonous. We have them stored very carefully—they are quite dangerous.”

“And?” Speer said.

“Let us say this radioactive waste were loaded into bombs. Conventional bombs. I believe we have succeeded in developing proximity fuses that are somewhat accurate? Well, if bombs were to be detonated in the air over a large Allied city, the explosions would spread this deadly dust over an extended area, killing many of the enemy.”

Speer looked hard at Esau. “So it is just a poison? Like a poison gas?”

“Much more than that. A poison gas kills people initially, then blows away on the winds. This radioactive dust would settle around the target and it would be spread around by the winds. Our measurements of some of these fission by-products suggest half-lives of dozens of years. That means the target would remain poisonous perhaps into the next century. Lower levels of the radioactivity would drift away and contaminate farmlands, destroy crops. It is a poison that continues to work long after the bomb has been dropped. Far more devastating than a simple gas canister.”

Seconds passed as Speer digested the implications. His eyes widened, then he struck his fist into the flat of his other hand. “This dovetails with another one of our secret weapon projects! It could make both research groups practical immediately!”

Speer slapped the seat behind the driver’s head. “Driver! Take us to the Munich rail station. Professor Esau, I want you to take a trip. You will go immediately up north to a place on the Pomeranian coast. I have another research station at Peenemtinde.”

Esau blinked and thought of the enormous trip. “Pomerania? That will require a full day or two on the train! Shouldn’t I take time to plan? What will happen in my absence?”

“That’s why I want you to leave on the very next train. While you get your ticket, I will write you a letter of introduction.” Speer’s eyes glittered with relief. “You will be interested in their work, I believe.

“I want you to meet General Dornberger. And a man named Wernher von Braun.”

12 Los Alamos December 1943

Elizabeth knew where she would run.

Graham Fox lived alone in a small apartment in the bachelor scientists’ complex. An important researcher in the explosives preparation section, Fox was accorded the fringe benefit of having space to himself. He had never invited Elizabeth there, but she knew he would not turn her away.

It took her most of the day scrambling on foot along the mesa to make her way back to Los Alamos. Her skin prickled with sharp stings of cold, and the winter air caused her to shiver. She had not dressed properly for overland hiking. The horse blanket around her shoulders kept most of the chill away, but it made running difficult.

The horse had pulled away from where she had tethered it at the top of Frijoles Canyon. Elizabeth stood panting, wanting to crumble to her knees as she stared at the empty spot. Hoof prints plunged off through the whiteness, back toward the stables. The clear snow showed no other paths ahead of her.

Somewhere below, Oppenheimer must have located the rangers by now. They were hunting her, finding her tracks. The gunshot had echoed between the narrow rock walls—how well had Oppie managed to determine the direction? Wouldn’t the rangers think to look in the ruins under the cliff overhang?

They would find where she had waited in ambush. Where she had failed her mission. She had not been able to get up the nerve to do what she had to. But Elizabeth was not a killer, no matter how well she could rationalize it in her mind. Logic could not decide such things. Even her emotional decision, while sitting beside Jeff’s grave, could not make her pass the moral wall she had erected.

Oppenheimer’s head had been in the rifle sight. She had intended to pull the trigger and splatter his brains on the snow. She had thought she would feel justified at the great victory she had accomplished.

She had tried to commit murder. I am become death…

The Los Alamos rangers would find her boot prints on the path up the canyon wall. The day looked blue and clear; snow would not cover her tracks for quite some time. She needed to get back to the chaos and well-traveled pathways of the site. She had to hide, she had to think, she had to snap herself out of this shock and self-loathing.

She avoided open spaces, fighting through low junipers, striding under tall ponderosa pines. Melting snow trickled from the branches, but everything else remained silent. She heard no sound of pursuit, no horses, no barking dogs, no gunshots.

What if she had lost the rangers? She didn’t consider herself skilled enough for that. But what if Oppenheimer hadn’t even reported the incident?

She paused and stood under a tree as the sun hovered on the Sangre de Crista mountains to the west, tinting them orange and magenta, not quite the deep red Christ’s blood for which they were named. She thought of what Oppenheimer had seen and heard that morning.

He had been riding alone. A single shot had sounded in the canyon, then nothing more. Oppie had fled on his horse—but he could not know the bullet had been aimed at him. Indeed, when Elizabeth dropped the rifle, the shot probably had not passed within a hundred yards of the intended victim. Other Project workers rode out to hunt jackrabbits and deer—didn’t it make sense to go hunting in the morning after a fresh snowfall?

Oppenheimer would never believe someone had tried to kill him. He seemed too naive. Easier to make up some other explanation.

Elizabeth plodded through the snow, approaching the outskirts of the town. That changed nothing. She had tried to kill a man. Her stomach tightened at the thought.

Dizzy, cold, and bedraggled, she walked past the women’s’ dormitory at dusk. She did not want to face the questions or concern of Mrs. Canapelli at the moment.

In the cold, she walked down A Street. The bustle of the Project took no notice of her as it wound down at the end of the day. A jeep drove by, splashing mud, but the driver did not turn to look at her. Nobody acted differently around her. She wondered if Oppenheimer had returned to his office after his morning’s ride, opened his door and gone about business as usual.

Elizabeth couldn’t think of that now. Her mind was a blank, scoured clean by her horror and astonishment.

She found herself at the outer door to the bachelor scientists’ quarters. She had walked with Graham Fox to the porch, but had always left. Now she looked on the weathered index card tacked to the posts on the porch, staring at the list of room numbers and names. Not caring if anyone noticed, she climbed the wooden stairs inside and found his door.

It was after dinner. She knew Fox ate early or late, never at the “normal” time—a carryover from his British upbringing. He might go back to his lab later or he might stay in his room, reading or scribbling notes. She prayed he would be in his room; she needed to be with someone.

Elizabeth stood at the door for a long moment, trying to get up the nerve to knock. Did she really want to see him? She felt afraid to depend on someone, afraid to open herself up and become vulnerable. She meant to be strong. Why should she be afraid of Graham Fox?

A man with thick glasses came out of another room down the hall and threw a glance at her. Without hesitation, Elizabeth took one more step forward and knocked on Fox’s door. The other man raised his eyebrows, but walked down the steps.

Fox opened the door and took a complete step backward upon recognizing her. “Elizabeth!” Then he paused again and his eyes widened, seeing her condition. She pictured herself with mussed hair, shell-shocked eyes, and drawn features. “What happened?” He looked around and narrowed his eyes. “Come in.” Touching her elbow, he applied gentle pressure that drew her inside, and he closed the door.

She was afraid Fox would ask a barrage of questions to ferret out what she had done”. She didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t want to admit it to anyone. She just wanted to be beside another human being, not necessarily to say anything, just to feel invisible support, companionship.

Fox surprised her by not asking any questions. He seemed to have his own suspicions of who Elizabeth was and what she was up to, but he did not want to confirm them.

Elizabeth turned away from him, frightened to meet his eyes. Fox’s room looked pathetically barren, with a bed, a chair, and little other furniture. No pictures hung on the wall. A radiator ticked under the window and sent enough heat into the room that Elizabeth began to sweat again, though she couldn’t stop herself from shivering. A hot plate with a steaming pot of water sat on a small tabletop. From the books scattered on his bed, Fox seemed to prefer lying down to study rather than working on the cramped surface of the table.

“May I get you some tea, Elizabeth? I believe I have an extra mug.” She nodded, but didn’t really have any taste for tea at the moment.

Fox continued to say nothing, but it felt like a comfortable silence. He waited for her, not pressuring her to talk. If he did learn about the assassination attempt—if Oppenheimer himself reported it—he might figure it out for himself anyway.

He plunked a tarnished silver tea ball into her cup. Tea was strictly rationed, and his tea leaves had been used before, but he dunked the ball repeatedly until the water turned brown.

Elizabeth took the cup, looked down and saw her reflection between the ripples in the tea. Without drinking, she set the cup down beside the hot plate on the table, turned to Fox and took a step toward him.

She put her arms around his waist. Fox’s body tensed, but he did not pull away. She closed her eyes and pushed her face against his chest. He wore his usual white shirt, but had unbuttoned the top button and let his tie hang loose around his neck. She wondered if he considered that to be casual attire.

Fox patted her shoulder in a paternal way, but then something changed and he ran his hand along her back. “Hush! It’ll be all right,” he said quietly, “whatever it is.”

Elizabeth felt herself trembling. She wanted to explode with what she had done—the pointing rifle, Oppenheimer’s floppy cowboy hat in her sights, steam coming from his horse’s nostrils, and the snow all around, clean and white like a drop cloth to cover such a dirty deed.

“Just hold me a minute.” She squeezed him tighter.

Fox bent down to kiss the top of her head. Elizabeth blocked out all thoughts of Jeff and of her obsession with Oppenheimer. She and Jeff had made love only three times since he came down from Berkeley. It had been all too brief. She had not held anyone close in so long, had not felt herself moving beneath a lover, felt him inside her as their passion grew, building toward a release that could drown out all the anger in her life. It had been half a year.

She groaned deep in her throat and tilted her head up. Reaching with one hand to pull Fox’s face close to hers, she kissed him. His eyes went wide, but she closed hers and she kissed him again. He responded this time. She let her teeth fall open and touched out with her tongue, probing between his lips. Fox made a thin sound and pushed his body closer to hers.

Then he straightened and pulled himself away from her. She looked up at him, waiting for him to say something else, but he remained quiet.

“It doesn’t make any difference,” she said.

Fox looked down at her. His thin face and his big eyes gave him an intense puppy-dog expression. She found it charming, very attractive. Pressing her hips against his, Elizabeth pulled off his loosened tie and unbuttoned his shirt.

Fox kept his own hands moving, but seemed a little shy. Elizabeth remembered many fumbling but passionate moments with other physics nerds she had dated in college. Being one of the minority of women in the curriculum, she had never had trouble getting men to go out with her. Something about Graham Fox reminded her of that shyness. She took his hand and guided it to her breast.

It seemed to release a restraint in him, and he made another one of his cooing sounds. He kissed her more deeply. “You’re not wearing a brassiere.”

Elizabeth tilted her head back. “Scandalous, isn’t it?” she mumbled around his lips. “I guess I’m just ahead of my time.”

Fox kept his eyes closed for the most part. Elizabeth watched him make the most delicious wince of pleasure when she slid her hand down the front of his pants.

Caressing, she made herself move carefully and slowly. She didn’t want to excite him too much. She wanted—no, she needed this to last a long time.

Elizabeth woke, shivering, in the middle of the night. The sweat had dried on her body, and now she felt stiff and grimy. She needed a hot shower. Fox lay next to her, but he had pulled most of the single blanket over his own shoulders. She smiled and felt the remnants of afterglow.

Elizabeth slid out of bed. The mattress springs creaked enough for Fox to mumble and roll over, partially awake. She went to the table and sipped the cold tea she had not touched before. After steeping all night long, it tasted bitter.

She stood next to the radiator, hoping for more warmth, but the heat had been shut off for the night.

Fox sat up in bed, blinking. Upon seeing her, his face carried an expression of pleased surprise. She wondered if he thought it had all been a dream. “Something the matter?” he said.

“Nothing.” She came back to sit next to him, brushing the sheets before she sat down. He rolled over and put his arms around her waist. He kissed her.

“You never told me what was bothering you when you came.”

“When I came?” She raised her eyebrows, but she didn’t think he understood her comment.

“When you came to my door.”

Elizabeth frowned. “I’m not sure I want to.”

Fox nodded. “Then you don’t have to.”

They sat in silence in the dimness. A bluish-white glow from the floodlights outside crept through the blinds.

“Why are we doing this?” Fox asked in a quiet voice that implied he had rehearsed the words to himself many times. “Why are we here? Why are we working on such things when we know what will come of it?”

Elizabeth clenched her fist and said nothing, reminded again of what she had tried to do, and how she had failed. One fraction of a second to pull the trigger, to change the whole world, and she could not do it. She still didn’t know if she had made the right decision. Who was she to decide things like that?

But didn’t every person have to act on their own conscience, to follow their moral imperative? It was not good enough just to brush aside the responsibility to someone else.

“You gotta do what you gotta do,” Ted Walblaken had said, “and damn the consequences.”

Fox sat up in bed and leaned over, slipping both hands around her. “This is life. We’re alive,” Fox continued. “Why are we working to bring about so much death, just to show off what we can do with our physics?”

“Is that what you really think I’m working toward?” Elizabeth asked. Her throat grew dry. She was leading him on. She hadn’t the nerve to do what she herself had decided to do.

“Do you—” Fox hesitated, swallowed, and then continued, as if he couldn’t restrain himself from asking anymore. “Do you have some sort of plan? I wish I knew who you were.”

She considered long before answering. “You can’t listen to anybody else when it’s your own conscience at stake. Do what you have to do. Damn the consequences.” Feeling like a hypocrite, she got up and began to get dressed in the dim light.

“Must you go?”

“You don’t want your colleagues to see me coming out of your room in the morning, now do you?”

He grinned, and she thought he was probably blushing. “Might I see you again?”

She shrugged and kept her back turned toward him so he couldn’t see her smile. “It’s a small town. It’s going to be kind of hard to avoid you.” She stood at the door and blew him a kiss. “Good night.”

“Yes.”

Elizabeth left as quietly as she could, already trying to decide which story would make the best excuse for Mrs. Canapelli.

13 Peenemunde Experimental Rocket Station December 1943

The white cuffs of the Peenemunde estuary reminded Esau of the chalk cliffs of Dover. Graham Fox had taken him there one humid day when they were students at Cambridge. They had made a picnic on the grass, listening to the distant crashing surf, arguing esoteric points about the nature of the universe….

The cold wind of winter removed the charm from the Baltic coast, made Peenemunde look harsh and hellish—a perfect place to be building a secret weapon of destruction. Esau imagined that the waters of the bay here would also be quiet in the summertime; the brown and broken reeds he saw now would be green, a place for ducks to gather. Above the low hills on the mainland side of the Peene River, he could see the red-brick tower of the Wolgast Cathedral and rooftops of the nearby village.

Across the Peenemunde experimental site Esau located dozens of craters; some from failed rocket launches that had fallen back and exploded near the test stands; others from the Allied bombing raid of the previous August.

Esau had not slept well on the long train ride to the northern coast. He never could relax in the crowded closeness of other passengers, the rattling movement of the train, the drafts whistling through the windows. People were not meant to sleep while war-torn scenery rushed by during the day, while villages came and went, some lighted and some dark, all through the night.

His mouth still carried an onion-and-sausage aftertaste from the meal he had eaten during a long stop at Leipzig. When the train pulled into the Berliner station at midnight, Esau longed to disembark and go home, change clothes, clean himself, and get a good rest. He could take another train the following morning.

But Speer would find out. The Reichminister had given him very clear orders. So Esau remained on the train, staring out the window with sleepy eyes at the echoing, uncrowded station, knowing he had to arrive in Peenemunde as soon as possible. He asked the conductor for another blanket, but it failed to warm him from the winter chill.

Somewhere out there, people were trying to ignore the war and get ready for Christmas. Esau had no wife or children to bother about such things, and all those whom he might call his friends were merely colleagues, and colleagues did not treat each other for holidays. Especially not in times like these.

He drank several cups of tea the next morning and ate a croissant. The train arrived at Stettin just after sunrise, and Esau transferred to a different train. They reached Wolgast an hour later. After the conductor’s announcement, Esau stood up, took his valise from the rack overhead, then moved his aching body off the train.

The island of Peenemunde lay on the northern coast near Rugen, just across the water from Bornholm and the Swedish mainland. The island, about ten miles long, looked like a splayed chicken’s foot, with three toes on the southward end pointing into the wide Oder Lagoon, while the narrow top half of the island extended into the Pomeranian Bay in the Baltic Sea. The island lay next to the German mainland, separated by a channel of water.

In the adjacent city of Wolgast, Esau found a ferry to take him across the half-frozen river to the restricted area on the island. Children skated on the ice shelves near the mainland, as if nothing could possibly be wrong with the world.

Barbed wire and slatted-wood fences bordered the edge of Peenemunde. A railroad extended from the ferry landing to various parts of the island for delivering supplies and equipment, but Esau found no train in sight.

As the ferry landed and he disembarked, shivering in his overcoat and carrying his own valise, a team of guards came out to meet him. He let them inspect his papers from Reichminister Speer, and one of the men took him in a car along the bumpy gravel roads of the island. Esau felt too sleepy and grumpy for conversation, and the guard drove without looking at him.

They passed dunes and thick stands of dark fir trees, a desolate-looking frozen lake, and small army settlements on the island—Trassenheide, Karlshagen, and various buildings obviously used for research or construction. At Peenemunde village, the guard let him off and sent Esau toward a set of small office barracks, telling him to ask for General Dornberger.

It took him another half hour, with his voice gradually rising in anger and impatience, before a lieutenant finally accepted his demand for the unscheduled meeting with the head of the research station. Apparently, Reichminister Speer had not telegrammed or telephoned ahead.

“The general is preparing for this morning’s test shot out at Stand X,” the lieutenant said. “We have orders not to disturb him during the final stages. Would you care to wait for him?”

Esau, feeling ruffled, stood his ground. “I would love to rest, change clothes, and eat a decent meal. But I cannot afford the luxury, and neither can General Dornberger. Reichminister Speer ordered me to see the general immediately upon arrival. I have been on a train all night. Don’t you have any inkling of who I am? I am the Plenipotentiary for Nuclear Physics for all of Germany. You will take me to General Dornberger—now!”

Esau seethed in the front seat of the battered car when they finally departed to find the general. Despite the winter cold, the lieutenant kept his window rolled down as they drove across the island to the preparation areas near Test Stand X.

General Walter Dornberger, when they finally found him, looked harried and focused entirely on the rocket test in progress. “Another one?” he said, assessing Esau. A gray-haired man with a boyish face, Dornberger’s build appeared slight in his gray uniform. He was not imposing or commanding, but Esau recognized a hard and practical intelligence behind his eyes.

“I am here on orders from Reichminister Speer—” Esau began, reaching into his overcoat for the detailed letter Speer had given him.

General Dornberger motioned for him to follow. The general’s smile and comfortable attitude displayed his pride in the project, and his familiarity with showing it off. “I’m sure you’ll be impressed with the test. Follow me, and we can answer questions a little later.”

“I have a letter from the Reichminister,” Esau said, holding out the folded note. “Here it is.”

“Only a handful of minutes left Professor, uh, Esau, was it? Let me try to explain everything as we finish the preparations.” He indicated a man beside him, “This is my colleague and our brightest hope, Dr. Wernher von Braun. He is of prime importance to this project.”

Von Braun stood tall and impressive, dapper in his dark suit and clean overcoat; he wore a tie that looked oddly incongruous in the rough conditions of the rocket test area. Most of the other people standing around wore Army uniforms, but von Braun seemed proud of the fact that he was a civilian. Von Braun’s dark hair was slicked back and neat even in the chaotic moments before the test.

“This one will work,” von Braun said. His eyes held a spark of defiance as he turned to Esau. “You’ll see.”

General Dornberger smiled. “Dr. von Braun is an optimist, and he occasionally forgets the difference between reality and his wild ideas.” Dornberger clapped a hand on the scientist’s shoulder. “He is also, though, usually right in whatever he says.”

“Today I am right,” von Braun said. He glanced at his watch. “Ten minutes remaining. We should get to our observing posts.”

Dornberger disappeared through the door of a bunker. Esau and von Braun followed him down five concrete steps.

They went through a long underground corridor that led from the measurement room beneath the wall of the arena to the test stand itself. Double and triple rows of thick, heavy measurement cables ran along the corridor, making Esau feel as if he were hurrying down the gullet of some prehistoric beast.

They passed through a long room beside another tunnel. “This is a blast tunnel,” General Dornberger said, running his fingers against the concrete-block walls. “Those cooling pipes are four feet in diameter and can pump water at 120 gallons per second. They’re made of molybdenum steel. This wall is three feet thick. Even during a test, you can feel very little heat through it.”

Von Braun looked at his watch again and cleared his throat. “Five minutes.”

In an observation room, technicians studied readings from their instruments, monitored by red, white, or green indicator lights. Dornberger gestured rapidly, speaking so fast that the words made little sense. Esau got the impression that the general had done this tour many times before. “Those are voltmeters and ammeters here, frequency gauges and manometers over there. We need to check every aspect of the firing. You never know where something might go wrong.”

Two telephones rang at once. The technicians talked among each other. The general moved on. “This morning we’ll observe from outside. It’s more impressive that way.”

Dornberger hurried along the rising corridor through the pumping house and into the open air. Water tanks on wooden towers, twenty-five feet high, stood built into the sand wall surrounding the test arena. “We use these towers to recool the water after a test,” the general said.

“I picked up another pair of binoculars,” von Braun said. He passed them over. “For you, Professor Esau.”

General Dornberger stood beside the heavy sand wall. “Yes, we’ll be able to see just fine from here.”

Esau looked across to Test Stand X. A dune covered with skeletal pine trees rose from a wide sandy plain beyond which lay the choppy Baltic Sea. The trees themselves had been stripped and scarred from the repeated blasts, and the dune lay under a dark blanket of cinders. Fresh concrete aprons, wooden test stands, and cleared patches of dirt dotted the dune surface. Meillerwagens— long metal rigs for hauling the rockets—waited in their positions.

But the sight that gripped Esau was the towering rocket poised on Test Stand X. Strings of fuel lines, steaming white with residual liquid air, sprawled on the ground. A small service car spun at a reckless speed away from the stand.

The rocket itself looked surreal, painted in alternating sections of black and white for proper heat distribution during reentry. Like a giant javelin it waited on the test stand, ready to leap into the air, with external aerial vanes like the feathers on a gigantic arrow.

“We call it the A-4, for Aggregate Rocket Model Four,” General Dornberger said, “though the Fuhrer wants us to change the name to V-2, for Victory Weapon Two. A different rocket concept, launched more like a “catapult projectile, is called the V-1, but that was developed by a second team. We have one V-1 catapult on the northern tip of Peenemunde. But this… “He sighed and looked at the shining rocket swathed in white vapor tendrils on the test stand. “This is where our real interest lies.”

“It’s got alcohol and liquid oxygen for fuel within the cylindrical center section, along with a hydrogen peroxide tank,” von Braun said. “The fuse and the warhead are on top. We will load the rockets with explosives during actual attacks. Right now we are still trying to perfect the rocket flight itself.”

An announcement rumbled over the intercom system linked around the buildings throughout the site. “X minus three minutes.”

“We have a different way of measuring time here,” General Dornberger mused. “We call them ‘Peeneiminde minutes’—the clock measures them as sixty seconds long, but they seem so much more interminable than that.”

Esau kept his eyes on the rocket towering alone and dangerous on its concrete pad. The general tapped his shoulder. “Those big buildings over there under the camouflage netting are our Development Works and the oxygen-generating plant. We hung the camouflage only on the north side, where planes would see it coming in. On the other side are the hangars for the Luftwaffe section, then the chimneys for the harbor power station.”

“X minus two minutes,” the voice on the loudspeaker said.

“How much do you know of our work here, Herr Professor?” von Braun asked after a brief silence.

“Very little. I don’t even know what this is all about.”

General Dornberger frowned. Von Braun straightened his overcoat to hide a disappointed expression. “Then why exactly did Reichminister Speer send you here to observe this test?”

“He didn’t send me to observe the test! I am here to confer with you about the deployment of another weapon my team of researchers has developed.”

Dornberger’s smile became suddenly forced. “And what type of weapon is this?”

“I’ve been trying to show you this letter—”

The white steam curls vanished from the sides of the rocket, like gusts of breath from a sleeping dragon. Von Braun pointed at it. “Venting valves have closed. Oxygen pressure will start building up.”

The loudspeaker blared again, “X minus one minute. Regular counting will progress.”

The general and von Braun turned back to observe the test stand. “Tell us afterward.”

Esau settled down to watch.

“Forty-five seconds.”

Unable to squelch his tour-guide tendencies, Dornberger spoke over his shoulder at Esau. “The steering gyroscopes are now running inside the rocket. Only a few seconds more.”

A small shell hissed into the air, sending a streamer of green marker smoke across the sky. Esau couldn’t figure out what it was for. To test wind direction?

“X minus fifteen seconds.”

Esau realized he was holding his breath. So, he could tell, were General Dornberger and Wernher von Braun. Even the wind seemed to have dropped away in the overcast winter sky.

“Ignition!”

Clouds gushed from the nozzle at the bottom of the rocket. A rain of sparks built from the nozzle, splashing off the blast deflector and bouncing along the concrete launch platform. A sound like a gigantic blowtorch burned through the air as the sparks gathered into an arm of flame, pushing beneath the black-and-white rocket.

“Preliminary stage!” von Braun shouted.

Smoke billowed up from around the rocket’s bottom, obscuring the view. Esau squinted through his binoculars. Debris, wood chips, sand, and blasted chunks of cable flew through the air. Diagnostic wires fell from the sides of the rocket. Esau could feel the tension building.

“How much more is it going to take?” he shouted.

Then the rocket heaved itself from the ground. Casting-off cables dropped from the smooth white sides. The flame suddenly redoubled in strength as the main stage ignited. The rocket rose and picked up speed, climbing into the sky. Esau followed it with his binoculars. Behind on the test stand only a whirling dust cloud remained.

He flicked a glance sideways to see General Dornberger grinning like a child. Von Braun continued to stare through the binoculars with one fist clenched at his side. His face carried an expression of intense seriousness.

The jet of flame extended yellow and orange, longer than the rocket itself. The black-and-white patterns did not change as Esau watched, meaning the rocket was not rotating.

“Plus five seconds,” the loudspeaker announced. Esau found that incredible. Surely more time had passed than that! He remembered what the general had said about Peenemunde minutes.

“It’s beginning to tilt,” von Braun reported without taking his eyes from the binoculars.

The rocket flew out in a graceful arc over the Peenemunde estuary, toward the small green hook of another island.

“Sixteen… seventeen… eighteen… ” the loudspeaker continued.

“At twenty-five seconds the rocket will go faster than sound,” von Braun said. Dornberger concurred.

A “boom” startled the watchers. The loudspeaker voice said, “Sonic velocity!”

The rocket grew smaller and smaller as it sailed on. Esau thrilled at the power and grace of this weapon. He could understand Speer’s excitement. “Brennschluss approaching. Five seconds,” von Braun said.

“What?” Esau grabbed the general’s sleeve.

“The end point of combustion. The primary flame will go out.”

Von Braun shouted. Esau flicked up his binoculars and searched for the rocket in the field of view. He found white mist spewing from the side of the rocket.

“Did it happen again?” Dornberger demanded. “No, that’s just the oxygen vent opening! It has to be.”

Suddenly an explosion split the rocket, silent over the great distance. In a flash the metal javelin had vanished into a cloud of debris, flame, and steam.

General Dornberger muttered to himself. The loudspeaker made one last announcement, “Forty-three seconds. Forty-three seconds total flight time,” then fell silent. Von Braun brooded down at the ground.

“This is terrible. We must try again and again and again. We must learn to make it work properly!” The general kneaded his hands together.

Esau lowered his binoculars and stared at the spreading cloud of steam, smoke, and debris dispersing over the choppy sea. The lumpy scar on his lip itched when he smiled so broadly.

“No,” he said, startling them. “It is splendid just as it is.”

Both Dr. von Braun and General Dornberger spoke no more about the rocket’s failure that morning. They addressed Esau’s ideas with growing enthusiasm.

“We did develop a prototype rocket to be launched from a German U-boat, but we determined it would not be feasible for actual deployment.”

“Until now,” Esau corrected.

“I am still not convinced,” General Dornberger said. “We shelved the submarine rocket proposal because of the effort it would require and its low potential for payoff. We would have to specially modify a U-boat to carry the rockets, and even then the boat could carry no more than three on each journey.”

Dornberger removed his hat and laid it on the scarred old tabletop. Inside the dim barracks conference room, cold breezes pushed through ill-fitting window frames and wall joints.

“It just does not sound worthwhile. To modify a U-boat and send it on a journey across the Atlantic to strike a target with only three bombs? Unexpected, to be sure, but the destruction could not justify the effort. I would rather continue work on the V-2 program here.”

Von Braun sat impatient in his wooden chair, then he got up and paced the room. Esau began to speak, but von Braun interrupted him and stood directly in front of Dornberger.

“You don’t understand, General! If this radioactive dust is as effective as Professor Esau claims, then three rockets would be enough to… to subdue an entire city. For many years!”

“Yes,” Esau said, “it makes all the difference! Conventional explosives don’t cause sufficient damage in a case like this. But with radioactive dust, we can take a greater toll in a single attack than a hundred bombing raids.”

“And you believe Hitler intends to strike against America with this weapon? Why not Britain?”

Esau went to the chalkboard, picked up a piece of chalk, but didn’t know what he wanted to draw. “We are not certain what will happen with this poison. If we release the dust and contaminate London, the dust might spread and actually reach Normandy, perhaps even to the German Lowlands here. In America, though, we need not worry. It will be a perfect test case. We can see exactly how effective the weapon is.”

He raised his eyebrows and looked back at the general and the rocket scientist. “It will also strike fear in the Americans. We will surprise them in a way they will never forget.”

General Dornberger ran his fingers along the inside brim of his hat. “And Reichminister Speer is enthusiastic about this?”

“Very much so. He wants to use the weapon within two months.”

“Two months!” von Braun said.

The general placed his hat back on his head and stood up. “Last March, Hitler had a dream that convinced him none of our rockets would ever reach England. We nearly lost all support then, but in July he changed his mind and gave us top priority. And now you are speaking of striking not England, but America. We can convince the Fuhrer his dream was right. If we can make your idea work.”

Dornberger’s tour-guide smile had returned to his face. “Very well, Professor. We should try to find a suitable U-boat and begin modifications. This could win the war for us.”

14 German U-Boat 415 April 1944

Breakers hitting the gray steel hull of U-415 sent fine spray over the superstructure. The first watch officer and the executive officer stood out in the open air, breathing the tang of the Atlantic. Though cold, wet, and miserable in their oilskins, with wadded Turkish towels around their necks to absorb intruding water, they preferred this duty to the dimness and foul smells below in the interior.

“Captain on deck!” someone called from below.

In the conning tower Captain Werner stepped up the aluminum ladder, poking his head out. Werner paused halfway out into the air, closed his eyes, and took a deep breath. The captain had the watch sparsely manned, though it went against everything he had been taught at the Naval Academy in Kiel. The submarine was not on a normal hunt this mission. U-415 had known its target from the moment they used their silent electric motors to leave port in occupied France.

“You are relieved, Leutnant Gormann, if you wish to go below,” Captain Werner said to the exec.

Gormann pressed his chapped lips together and used a gloved hand to wipe spray from below his eyes. Sunburn and windburn had turned his face raw and red. “Aye, sir.” He tossed a sodden cigarette butt over the railing into the water. A swell crashing over the deck sent a bucketful of water inside with him as he descended the ladder.

Captain Werner said nothing to the first watch officer, who stood at attention, focusing his concentration through salt-smeared binoculars. The man’s name was Tellmark, and he had joined the U-boat just before they set out on this mission. Werner knew little about him, other than that he was an untested cadet who had never before gone into battle. His reddish-blond hair left him with a sparse, patchy beard after a week out from port.

Tellmark swiveled to stare at the gray-blue emptiness that extended to the horizon. The surface of the sea showed nothing. The captain pulled his white Navy cap tighter over matted dark hair; only the commander could wear such a cap on board. With the salt spray and the dampness inside the submarine, a green-blue tarnish of verdigris already coated the brass ornaments. His long jacket of light gray leather had been stitched with heavy yarn and remained warm despite the abuse of the weather; his seaman’s braid epaulets were bleached white from exposure to harsh salt air.

By now, days out from port, his leather boots, wrinkled pants, blue sweater—even blue knitted underwear—felt like a part of him. Unable to wash, with too-few changes of clothes to be worth anything, Werner had already gotten into the submariner’s mindset of ignoring how filthy and smelly he felt.

Their journey westward across the Atlantic continued all day and all night. They kept a straight course; not a zigzag search pattern to locate and destroy Allied ships, but a distance-eating pace that would take them to the American coast. As U-415 rode on the surface, Werner swayed on the conning tower, listening to the thump of diesels and the splash of waves against the hull.

The submarine’s protective undercoat of red paint showed in streaks through the gray outer layer. Rust blossomed everywhere, even on the greased 8.8-centimeter gun on the foredeck. A green scum of algae glistened on the wooden deck overlaid on the steel hull. But this was Werner’s boat, and he allowed no flaws to diminish his pride.

Tellmark paused in his scanning. He kept his eyes to his binoculars, then extended his left hand. “Shadow bearing three-two-oh. Looks like a freighter. No, several of them.”

Captain Werner snapped around, got his bearings, then raised his own pair of binoculars. He could see the shadows approaching at an angle. As U-415 continued, the paths converged. “Looks like that convoy the radio informed us about.”

“Do we attack, sir?” Tellmark appeared excited.

The exec popped his head back out of the conning tower. “Sighting, sir?”

Captain Werner nodded in the direction of the approaching convoy, which was now visible to the unaided eye.

“Alarm!” the exec called down into the hull. “Battle stations!”

“No!” Captain Werner shouted. “Tell the radioman to transmit our position and summon all other U-boats in the area. We must leave the hunt to them. We are going to dive and avoid contact.”

“Sir?” the first watch officer said.

“Go below, Tellmark.” The captain motioned with his hands, following the man down the hatch. He slid down the aluminum ladder and hit the deck plates. On the bridge the other crew members looked at him in anticipation. The exec scowled.

“Captain, we do have three other torpedoes in addition to those new rocket weapons we had installed in Brest. We can make our strike and get away. We’ve done it a thousand times before! There can be no danger to us.”

“Secure all hatches. Prepare to dive. One hundred seventy meters. Engines, all stop.” Werner spoke into the long, echoing dimness, then turned to answer Gormann. “We will not attack. We have strict orders not to engage the enemy, no matter what opportunities present themselves. I don’t like it myself—but those are my orders, directly from Admiral Donitz and Reichminister Speer. Those three rocket weapons in the forward compartment may win the war for Germany.”

Donitz was the man who had conceived and led “wolfpack” warfare in the Atlantic, using U-boats to hunt down and destroy supplies to Britain; as of the year before, he had become commander-in-chief of the entire German fleet. The experimental modifications to U-415 had been pushed through by the Reichminister of Armaments himself. Other U-boats went out to plant mines, or hunt down ships and convoys, but U-415 had a greater mission.

Captain Werner hissed through his teeth. He grabbed the periscope and felt the motor’s vibration through his fingers. Outside, he watched the helpless ships approaching. Two destroyers flanked the convoy, but that would not have bothered Werner; it was all part of the risk. Sinking a few enemy vessels and adding to their tonnage score always relieved tensions aboard the submarine.

But not on this mission. He had to keep repeating it to himself to dampen his own frustrations. “Dive!” Werner said again, “One hundred seventy meters! Do it before they see us.”

The captain grabbed a conduit with one hand and steadied himself against the periscope handle as the submarine canted downward. Waves gurgled outside, then all grew silent as the hull sank beneath the surface. The pounding diesel engines stopped, leaving only the gentle hum of the electric motors.

“Submerged, sir. Approaching a depth of sixty meters… seventy meters.”

Captain Werner felt the air tighten around his head as the pressure of the water squeezed the hull. “Let me know when we get to one hundred seventy.”

Underwater everything seemed quiet and wonderful, free of the knocking diesel engines and the uneasy swaying of waves. Once each day the captain ordered his boat to do a routine trim dive for practice and maintenance. It allowed the crew to eat without lurching back and forth, to relax and recuperate for an hour or two. Now U-415 moved underwater with glorious grace beneath the approaching convoy. The only sounds were the hum of electric motors and the patter of water droplets condensing from overhead and splashing to the floor plates.

A distant pinging sound echoed through the hull, growing louder second by second. “Asdic pulses, sir,” the third mate said.

“I can hear them myself,” said Werner.

The British “asdic” defense—named after the Antisubmarine Detection Investigation Committee—used ultrasonic waves to search the waters for nearby U-boats that might be hiding like wolves in the water. The asdic pings struck the hull of the boat like metal arrows. Each burst set the men on edge. No one moved more than he had to.

“Depth is one hundred seventy meters, sir.”

“Maintain. Continue silent running. No unnecessary noises—everybody keep still. I don’t want them dropping depth charges on us, especially not before we can sink a few of their ships.”

“Listen to the destroyers, sir,” the soundman said. “Not like one of the freighters.”

They heard the sound of propellers and bows cutting the water above. The destroyers cruised overhead, loaded with canisters of death they could drop at any moment. The passage of the convoy sounded like distant thunder echoing through the steel hull.

“Directly above us,” the radioman called out.

“Keep steady. Nothing to be afraid of.” The thought seemed ludicrous as Werner considered it. Nothing to be afraid of? Two years ago, maybe, but not now.

In 1942 the German U-Boat Force had sunk 1200 Allied ships, seven million tons! Those were indescribable days of glory. But in March 1943 everything had changed. The Allies had brought to bear a battery of new weapons: small aircraft carriers, fast escort vessels, and a new radar device. They wiped out forty percent of the German U-Boat Force in a few weeks. A few weeks!

Captain Kretschmer, of U-99, the reigning tonnage king who had sunk 325,000 tons on his own, was captured on March 17, 1941. The very same day Captain Schepke, in U-100 with a tally of 250,000 tons, was killed when a British destroyer blew U-100 to the surface, then rammed her. No one could keep track of all the German losses anymore. The bottom of the Atlantic held as many U-boat corpses as it held sunken freighters.

The sounds of the ships passing overhead dwindled in the distance. Captain Werner continued to stare at the ducts and pipes on the ceiling, eyes half shut. Nothing to be afraid of? Hardly.

“I believe that’s the last one, sir,” the radioman said.

Werner nodded. His beard felt stiff from salt spray, and itched with unwashed sweat. “We’ll keep running submerged for another hour. Continue present heading at four knots.”

He drew in a deep breath of air filled with the sweat and bad breath of fifty men. He could sense their restlessness. They wanted to attack the convoy that had just passed. U-415 had built up a respectable record of sunken Allied tonnage, which they displayed proudly on pennants strung from the superstructure whenever they came near a German refueling vessel.

“Executive Officer, take command. I’ll be in my bunk.”

Werner went forward, ducking low to avoid a pressure gauge that protruded from the wall in just the wrong place. He would make up for the crew’s resentment when they released their special weapons and caused a greater toll on the enemy than all other U-boats combined.

The submarine hummed as it cut through the water toward its destination, New York harbor.

Captain Werner moved forward, with unconscious care in every movement. Being on board the U-boat felt like living inside a narrow steel corridor with fifty men, cramped on both sides with pipes and ducts, handwheels, anything to bang your head on. A sensible person would have considered even a day aboard the mold-ridden, urine-smelling coffin to be an inhuman punishment; but Werner had been aboard submarines since the war’s beginning, first serving on U-557 as an ensign with Captain Paulssen, then transferred to U-612 as executive officer only a month before Paulssen and his entire crew went to the bottom.

In the intervening years, and countless missions, carefully tallied kills, and endless faces of old crews and new crews, Werner grew proud of his duty aboard the submarines. His clothes never dried beyond clamminess, and every metal surface he touched felt cold and slimy. He no longer smelled the stench of close-packed sweating and frightened men.

Regulations demanded that no one bring shaving kits aboard, since the precious fresh water had to be used for drinking and cooking. Werner looked with fondness upon the usual collection of personal belongings held dear by every member of the crew—toothbrushes, writing materials, books, snapshots of family and sweethearts.

Moving forward in the bottleneck, he ducked through the low round hatches in bulkheads that separated each compartment, acknowledging greetings from his men. Many of the off-duty seamen took advantage of the silence and peace of underwater travel to sleep in narrow berths with a swing-up aluminum guardrail that sandwiched them between the edge and the closest wall.

The aft compartment held the machinery and electrical equipment, the air compressor, and three torpedo tubes. Two diesel engines capable of driving the boat at nineteen knots on the surface smelled of fuel oil and grease. Beside them the two electric motors, with their giant storage batteries, now drove the boat while it was submerged. The batteries would need to be recharged after a few hours, and that could be done only by running the diesel generators, which meant returning to the surface. The convoy would be far out of sight by then, and U-415 could continue in peace.

The galley, a single washroom, and the petty officers’ quarters were located between the aft compartment and midships. Werner smiled when he thought of the first time, as an ensign aboard U-557, he had attempted to use the washroom, trying to master the ballet of opening and closing pressure valves in their proper sequence.

The control room in midships was overloaded with pipes and ducts, valves and hand wheels, gauges and switches. The captain had been aboard U-boats long enough to be intimately familiar with everything there, the pumps, the freshwater producer, the periscope, the magnetic compass. A covered lamp let a soft glow fall on the maps on the chart table, but the navigator had left them unattended. U-415 was on a straight course.

Captain Werner undogged the round hatch into the forward section. He nodded to the radio operator, who had nothing to do while they remained submerged; all the other bunks were occupied. One man snored loudly, and the noise echoed in the otherwise quiet boat. The captain’s corner, with a green leather mattress and a green curtain for privacy, lay up front. Executive Officer Gormann no doubt assumed Werner meant to take a nap.

Instead, he wanted another look at the deadly rockets.

The foremost compartment normally held four standard torpedoes. Now the captain stopped and stared at the sleek, ominous rockets. They had been installed in a submarine bunker at Brest on the Normandy coast. The modifications had taken months, but no other U-boat in the German fleet had weapons such as these. If he could succeed in this one mission, Captain Hans Werner and his U-415 would be remembered long after the end of the war.

The rockets, painted with alternating red and black triangles that arrowed toward the snub nose, looked similar to torpedoes, but much larger. Stabilizing vanes made of dull black carbon angled outward. The forward compartment seemed cramped with only three of them and the machinery for launching the missiles.

Captain Werner had never seen such devices fired before, though he and the exec had been tediously briefed on their operation. Werner remembered the frustrated-looking man in his gray civilian suit walking among the construction bays in the echoing submarine bunker. He had introduced himself as Professor Abraham Esau. Esau had steel-colored hair oiled back neatly, and his face looked as if it did not know how to smile. An ugly scar twisted his upper lip into a threatening expression. Professor Esau made sure he had Werner’s attention and began explaining how the weapons worked and what they would do to the enemy.

The front third of each missile had been filled with deadly radioactive dust. Neither Werner nor Executive Officer Gormann understood the details about nuclear physics, but the captain also knew that Germany had claim to the most brilliant scientific minds in the world. Germans had repeatedly won Nobel prizes for their astonishing successes. Werner could not doubt they might use their new discoveries to develop a weapon that would terrorize the Allies into immediate surrender.

His U-boat would launch that weapon.

The captain had not commanded U-415 in its previous mission, when his predecessor had narrowly escaped destruction from British depth charges. The boat had been undergoing routine structural repair in dock when Admiral Donitz forwarded the order from Reichminister Speer. U-415 would undergo new modifications, for a new mission. Professor Esau had stood on the quay at Brest, looking across the dock to where U-415 lay under the arms of two cranes lowering steel plate down to its deck.

“These three rockets will fill the enemy with terror beyond anything seen in the Blitzkrieg, or even in your earliest days with the U-boat wolfpack.” Esau spoke without turning. The exec scowled at what seemed to be an insult, but Captain Werner waited for the professor. Sounds of construction reverberated in the long bunker, and gentle lapping waves splashed against the metal hull of the submarine. Dim light slanted through the narrow windows along both walls of the bunker.

“This assault will be invisible and deadly. The Americans will have no way to defend against it, no place they can hide. It will continue its effects for years to come. A fitting lesson, don’t you think?” Esau asked.

“If it works,” Captain Werner answered.

“It will work—if you get it to your target intact.”

Now, in the foremost compartment of U-415, the rockets took up space that would normally have been filled with smaller torpedoes. As it was, since these rockets would not be launched until they reached New York harbor, the crew members did not need to keep the area ready for firing; they could use the precious storage space for piling supplies that would otherwise have cluttered the rest of the ship.

Special compartments held shells for the 8.8-centimeter cannon and the two-centimeter antiaircraft gun, but the foodstuffs could go up front with the missiles. This also meant that the crew could free up the second washroom, which was usually used for storage until midway through the mission, when the supplies had been consumed enough to clear it out. The opening of the second washroom normally provided a minor celebration after weeks at sea, but Captain Werner felt the overall morale would be better if his crew had use of both washrooms from the beginning of the voyage.

The rotting smells of damp bread and fruit hung in the air, mixed with the oil and grease of mechanical parts in the new front section. Cans, barrels, and crates of food were wedged along the wall and placed alongside the radioactive warheads. In a locked front compartment, to which only Werner had a key, were stored the most precious supplies such as butter, whipped cream, coffee, and tea, beside a strictly-against-regulations bottle of brandy, which Werner planned to open after they had successfully launched the rockets. From pipes above the rockets hung smoked hams and rolls of salami. For weeks the loaves of bread had escaped the feathery blue mold, a fact so remarkable that some of the seamen considered it a miracle.

Werner ran his hand over the rounded warhead of the black-and-red rocket. The metal felt warm to his touch. He drew back, but then checked all three rockets. Each nose emanated heat that hinted at the boiling power trapped inside. He saw the external paint beginning to show signs of blistering along the edges.

He was glad the submarine had nearly reached its destination. The captain wanted to be rid of these strange new weapons.

U-415 slid into calm New York harbor under cover of darkness. The sky was smeared with a whitish-gray overcast of spring clouds, under lit by the glow of New York City. Splashes of black night and glittering stars showed through where the overcast cleared.

Executive Officer Gormann joined the captain on the conning tower as soon as the hatch opened. Water ran off the wood planking and steel plates of the submarine’s hull. Moving under the silent power of electric motors, they had crept up the Lower Bay after sunset, through the Narrows, and emerged into the Upper Bay under full darkness.

Captain Werner drew a deep breath of the cool air and surveyed the skyline. Everyone in the city would be calm, resting, unsuspecting. The U-boat would escape out to the ocean before anyone could understand what had happened.

The exec took out his binoculars and began scanning the glittering silhouettes of lighted skyscrapers. They had only a sketched map of the area, but the landmarks were obvious. “That is their Statue of Liberty ahead,” Gormann whispered. “She is staring right at us.”

The greenish-yellow glow around the statue made it look like a leviathan guarding the way. “In a moment we will give her something more interesting to watch,” Werner replied.

The submarine glided ahead. In the distance the running lights of a small ferry boat cut across the water; U-415 kept all her lights off.

The captain thought of the last time he had headed into a port—Lorient. A minesweeper had met them at a predetermined point to lead them through the deadly labyrinth to a safe berth. Captain Werner had hoisted white pennants on a line fastened to the periscope, proclaiming the total tonnage he and his crew had sunk during their previous mission. All the crewmen had changed into their last pair of clean fatigues and combed their beards, ready to celebrate. They were coming into port, with fresh food, fresh clothes, and fresh women. A band met them on the quay; nurses and other ladies waited in crowds, holding flowers.

Their reception in New York harbor couldn’t have been more different.

Captain Werner stood beside the radar-detection gear; Gormann stared through his binoculars. “I wonder which one is the Empire State Building.”

“The tallest one, I’m sure.”

“That must be it. Do you think I can see King Kong on top of it? King Kong is Hitler’s favorite film, you know.”

“We did not come here to be tourists, Leutnant Gormann,” Werner said.

“Understood, sir.” Gormann leaned down to call into the hatch. “Prepare to stop!”

“All stop,” the captain said.

“All stop!” the executive officer repeated.

“Open rocket bay doors. Let us see if this thing works.”

Gormann nodded. “It’ll be a long, embarrassing trip back if it doesn’t.”

The seamen below unsealed the hatches, and the forward deck section of U-415 split in half, letting the red dimness of the submarine’s interior show through. The opening widened as the seamen cranked open the bay doors, sliding the deck plating aside so that the rockets sat exposed in the shadows below.

“Use the hydraulic motors,” Werner said. “Raise the first rocket. Watch what you’re doing now. We’re going to have to launch the other two in rapid succession, then get out of here. Make certain everything goes properly.”

“Aye, Captain,” one of the men said from below.

A grinding hum came from the interior as the metal platform for the first rocket rose up to the deck. The rocket itself was longer than a man, tilted up at an angle.

“Exec, will you adjust the aim point? Elevation sixty-three degrees is the optimal angle, according to our instructions.” Captain Werner looked at his sketched map of the New York area, then he pointed to three different locations. “I want them to strike approximately there, there, and there. If these weapons do what Professor Esau claims, we should wipe out Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn.”

Gormann walked unsteadily down to the narrower end of the deck. The harbor waters remained calm as the exec cranked the stand. “Sixty-three degrees. Captain, the front end of the rocket is very hot.”

“I know. The professor told us not to worry about that.”

Gormann adjusted the blast shield to protect the wet wooden deck, then climbed back to the conning tower. Werner called into the submarine. “All clear below. Prepare for firing.”

He heard men scrambling below in the open bay. “Exec, you may fire when ready.”

Gormann adjusted the binoculars around his neck, then bent to the controlling device installed there. He depressed the activation switch for the preparatory stage that would pressurize the fuel chambers. “You might want to duck below, sir. We don’t know how serious these flames are going to be.”

Captain Werner crouched behind the metal wall of the conning tower; the exec bent beside him. Werner said, “I am going to stay here and watch. I’ve had a few singed hairs before.” After a pause, he nudged Gormann. “What are you waiting for?”

“Firing now,” the exec said. He pushed the launch button.

A roar like a thousand blowtorches blasted the submarine’s deck. Captain Werner saw the orange glow of the flames, then he and the exec raised their heads to peep over the shielding wall just as the rocket heaved itself off the stand and rose into the air, graceful and ponderous at the same time.

Heat washed over the captain’s face, but he stood and stared as the missile rose from the U-boat and climbed into the night sky, picking up speed as it arced toward the skyline. Werner looked at his pocket watch. He could not remember when the rocket was set to detonate. Already, people on the shore must have noticed. He wondered how long it would take a patrol boat to come investigate. Werner wasn’t too worried about that, though; he knew how to man the antiaircraft guns, which would make short work of any curious vessel.

“Ready second rocket!” Gormann called down. Silence no longer mattered so much.

Werner looked at the heat shield, saw it glowing a deep red from the rocket’s exhaust flames. Even with the protection, the wet, algae-covered deck had been scorched. “Wear your gloves, Gormann.”

The exec had already pulled them on and scrambled away from the conning tower over to the rocket bay as the second missile emerged from the dimness below.

Captain Werner watched the red-orange flame of the first rocket streaking toward the skyscrapers, riding high over the Empire State Building. Suddenly, in an explosion whose sound did not reach them until a full five seconds later, the rocket burst in midair, spreading its radioactive payload in a broad yellow cloud of glittering dust. The debris continued to spread and glow like embers, crawling across the sky as the poison seeped over the city.

Some bystanders might be killed by falling shrapnel from the detonated rocket casings, but the rest would believe they had survived. They would learn in a few days how mistaken they were.

Werner continued to stare at the cloud until the executive officer interrupted him. “Second rocket ready to fire, Captain. This one is targeted on Brooklyn.”

“Good,” the captain said. “Let’s finish our work and get out of here. We have made history here tonight, Leutnant Gormann. We will return home victorious.”

The executive officer launched the second rocket.

Then the third.

U-415 had submerged and slid unseen through the Narrows before the harbor patrol could find them.

In the locked supply cabinet below, Captain Werner took out his bottle of brandy. The men were in a festive mood.