Scott Turow - Ordinary Heroes

"At OSS, when they learned in April 1945 about Martin's attempt at Hechingen, the meaning was regarded as patent: the Soviets had recognized that they would not get to Hechingen first and had dispatched Martin to destroy the facility to prevent the scientists and their research from falling into American hands. Game, set, and match on the issue of whether Martin was a spy. Within the agency, a small faction led by Colonel Winters maintained that it was dubious to believe the Soviets would have supported such an improbable effort. According to the physicists at Hechingen, Martin had assembled a ferry-rigged device made of unexploded artillery shells, was traveling in an American jeep with a short-circuited ignition, had no visible collaborators, and was done in because he'd not yet mastered the striking of a match with one hand.

"When the autopsy turned up in June, showing that Martin had suffered a cruel death in Soviet custody, it renewed the controversy within OSS concerning Martin's loyalty. Winters began to theorize that Martin might have been on a solitary crusade to enforce his expressed belief that this new weapon ought to belong to no nation. As a result, the agency redoubled its search for the SS officers who'd taken custody of Martin at Hechingen. Early in July, two of them were located in their hometowns on opposite sides of Germany, both with their uniforms burned and lengthy cock-and-bull stories about how they'd never served in the German Army. The Americans quickly loosened their tongues, and the two officers told roughly parallel tales.

"The SS installation which had been guarding Hechingen had been delighted to lay hands on Martin, but not for his intelligence value. By mid-April, they knew the war was over. However, an American OSS officer figured to make a valuable bargaining chip in securing the SS men's freedom, once the Americans got there.

"For that reason, they claimed they did not interrogate Martin. Rations were short and at first when he refused food or water, they thought nothing of it. He claimed to have a severe intestinal infection and they took that at face value, because it made no sense to think the man would prefer starvation to being returned to his army."

"But Martin knew we'd hang him, right?" I asked.

"Certainly that's what your father had told him. At any rate, the SS abandoned Hechingen a day before the Americans entered, and carried Martin off with them. German forces were falling back from the Oder in hopes of breaking the Soviet siege of Berlin which had begun. The SS men followed, and once they were surrounded by the Soviets, decided to see if they could buy their freedom with the same prize they were going to offer the Americans: a U. S. OSS officer.

"Many historians have puzzled about why Stalin was willing to lose the thousands and thousands of troops he did in besieging and conquering Berlin without the assistance of the Allies, especially since he eventually honored his promise to share the city after it fell. Some speculate that the Soviets wanted the unfettered right to wreak vengeance on the Germans, which they surely took. One hundred thousand German women were raped during the Russians' first week in Berlin, Stewart." Bear took a second to wobble his old head over one more of the war's disgraceful facts.

"But the foremost theory today, bolstered by documents found in KGB archives, is that Stalin wanted to reach Berlin alone because the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute there held the only pieces of the German nuclear program that the Americans had not already laid hands on. Indeed, the Soviets discovered stores of uranium oxide at the Institute with which they ultimately revived their flagging atomic program.

"Once the SS officers made contact with the Soviets, and revealed the circumstances under which they had captured Martin, they found Soviet Army intelligence quite willing to let the SS men go in exchange for telling all they knew about Hechinger and turning over the American. Upon learning he was being handed off to the Soviets, Martin, who was now very weak, asked the Germans, as gentlemen, to shoot him. When they refused, he attempted to escape, despite his condition. He never got through the door. That was the last the SS officers saw of Martin. In the custody of the Soviets, sixty miles outside Berlin."

"And why would Martin prefer to die in German rather than Soviet hands?"

"One can only assume. Given what he'd said to your father, it's clear that Martin realized the Soviets would be desperate to learn whatever they could about American knowledge and suspicions concerning the A-bomb. For Martin, it would not be an appealing prospect to die while having every American secret he knew extracted by torture." Bear and I both were silenced for a second, contemplating that.

The other thing that puzzled me at that moment was how Bear had learned all this. Some, he answered, had come through Teedle. More of what he knew was the product of his lingering curiosity about my father's case. He had read the histories as they emerged over the years. But he had also stayed in touch with Colonel Winters, Martin's OSS commander, who eventually became a senior intelligence officer at the CIA.

"After Bryant retired from the Agency in the early 1970s, I saw him for a drink at the Mayflower. Winters told me he'd had an intriguing exchange a few years earlier with a Soviet counterpart who said he'd been involved in Martin's interrogation in Berlin, an event which the Russians officially deny to this day.

"Martin had refused to talk, of course. This Soviet officer acknowledged that they would have tortured him, but Martin was so weak from his hunger strike that they suspected his heart would stop. The only way they found to pry more than Martin's name, rank, and serial number from him was purely accidental, when they called in a doctor, who proposed putting Martin on intravenous. At that point, the Major agreed to answer questions, if they would allow him to die. They interrogated Martin for an entire afternoon. Two days later he was gone. And, of course, it turned out that every word Martin had spoken, while compelling, proved an absolute lie."

Bear stopped to wipe his lips. I thought this might have been too much talking for him, but he insisted on continuing. He'd worked too long to learn all of this not to pass it on.

"Over the years," he said, "I've thought often of Martin at the end. He was disfigured and in great pain from his burns, while the nation in whose service he had suffered these wounds was intent on hanging him. Yet he would not betray us. Instead, he accepted death as his only honorable option. Dying in the hands of the Soviets, ironically, ended up reestablishing his bona fides at OSS, especially once they'd heard from the SS officers. They now saw Martin as lost on a frolic and detour, but not a Soviet spy, one of many men who'd broken under the strain of war rather than a true turncoat determined to aid America's enemies."

I sat awhile digesting what Bear had told me. It was interesting as far as it went, but I had a hard time connecting any of this to my principal remaining curiosity, namely how my father had escaped his prison sentence. I said as much to Bear, who responded with his abbreviated off-kilter nod.

"I understand that it's far from obvious, but these events in fact paved the way for your father's release. OSS had learned of all of this-the autopsy and the SS account of Martin being handed over to the Soviets-by July 1945, only a few days before Truman, Stalin, Churchill, and Attlee met to discuss postwar arrangements at Potsdam. Robert Martin ended up figuring in those discussions, because our diplomats had realized they could use his fate to our advantage. It was an incendiary notion that our Soviet allies would hold an American OSS officer and, rather than repatriate him, interrogate him about our secrets and starve him to death. It showed that Stalin was not an ally at all, but was in fact preparing for war with us. The Russians continued to officially deny that Martin had died in their hands, but the medical evidence was clear and the circumstances of the Major's death kept the Soviets on the defensive. Furthermore, the proof of their desire to acquire the A-bomb pointed the way for the ultimate revelation of Potsdam, Truman's announcement to Stalin that America had in fact perfected the weapon. I don't want to exaggerate the importance of Martin's death, but it was a clear note in an Allied chorus aimed at forcing Stalin to observe the agreements of Yalta about national boundaries and troop demarcations-and thus, ironically, in avoiding another war.