C. Graham - The Solomon Effect

“Well…I guess a swallow won’t hurt.”

Through a crack in the slat back of the wooden seat, he caught a glimpse of firelight on a man’s ruddy face. Then he squeezed his eyes shut, afraid the militiamen might somehow sense that he was watching them.

“Who’re you looking for?” said the farmer.

“A boy. Sixteen. Dark. Skinny.”

“What’s he done?”

“Murder. Up near the Vistula Lagoon.”

From his place beside the farmer, the dog began to whine. Stefan thought his heart would stop.

“I’ll be sure to keep a lookout for him,” said the farmer, reaching out to scratch behind the dog’s ears. “Can’t be too careful these days.”

The militiamen pulled the barrier out of the road. “Watch yourself, old man.”

The farmer gave a cluck-cluck, and Stefan felt the wagon jerk as the mules leaned into their collars.

“I didn’t kill anyone,” said Stefan, emerging from beneath the sacks when the checkpoint had been left far behind.

“I didn’t think you did.”

Altenbruch, Germany: Wednesday 28 October

7:05 P.M. local time

“I wish I could have been of more help,” said Marie Oldenburg as she followed them out to the sidewalk. The setting sun had slipped beyond the horizon, taking with it the lingering warmth of the evening.

“You’ve been very helpful,” said Tobie. A strengthening breeze rattled the dying leaves on the trees and made her wish she’d pulled on her jacket before they left the car.

Jax said, “Any idea where we might find this Wolfgang Palmer?”

Marie Oldenburg eased the door of the archives shut behind her and turned the key in the lock. “Actually, I gave him a call when Professor Herbolt told me you vere interested in U-114. He says he’s villing to meet vith you this evening, if you like. At a Gasthaus to the northeast of Bremen. A place called Mumbrauer, near Breddorf. At half past seven.”

“We are very interested. Thank you.”

“Good. I’ll tell him to expect you.” Slipping the archives key into the pocket of her skirt, the old woman moved to where a sturdy green bicycle leaned against the trunk of a nearby elm. “You should know that Herr Palmer’s vork is very controversial. He has made many enemies, both here in Germany and in America.”

“Is he reliable?” said Jax.

Marie Oldenburg mounted her bicycle, her gnarled hands gripping the widespread handlebars. “Oh, yes. No one questions what he has found. It’s his conclusions that are debatable.”

“Do you believe him?”

She thrust out her lower lip and glanced downward in a characteristically German gesture of thoughtfulness. “I believe the true story of those six tragic years of war has never been told, and probably never vill be.” She nodded her head briskly and shoved off. “Auf Wiederschen.”

Tobie watched the slight figure pedal into the gathering gloom. “Wow. I hope I’m that alert and agile when I’m her age.”

“How good are your genes?”

“Not that good.”

“Mine neither.” Turning toward the car, Jax took out his phone and punched in a number.

“Who are you calling?” she asked, watching him. “Matt?”

He shook his head. “Andrei.”

“You know Andrei’s number? Right off the top of your head?”

“Yeah. Why?”

She went to lean against the side of the Jetta. “And you say he’s not your buddy.”

“He’s not my buddy.”

She watched him frown. Andrei obviously wasn’t answering. She said, “And why exactly are you trying to call the Russians?”

He put his phone away. “Because I want to know if they ever checked that damned U-boat for radiation.”

She felt her heart lurch uncomfortably in her chest. “Oh, Jesus. I never thought of that. And you were crawling around in there forever. Do you think you could have been exposed to radiation?”

“Don’t you mean, ‘we’? You think you were that much safer standing on the wharf?”

When she simply stared at him in horror, he said, “Come on. Unlock the car. There’s no point in worrying until we’re sure exactly what kind of material we’re talking about. You never know-it could have been well shielded.”

She fumbled for the Jetta’s key and hit the remote button twice to unlock all the doors. “I don’t think they knew too much about shielding that stuff sixty years ago, did they?”

He opened the door. “No.”

As she tossed her bag onto the backseat, he made another call. “Hey, Matt,” he said, sliding in beside her. “You know that shipment of Nazi gold? Well, it wasn’t gold.”

Bremen, Germany: Wednesday 28 October

7:25 P.M. local time

The Mumbrauer turned out to be a rustic old Gasthaus on the outskirts of a sleepy half-timbered village. Inside, it was all dark aged oak and an atmosphere scented by wood smoke and beer.

They found Wolfgang Palmer waiting for them in a paneled booth overlooking the tree-lined parking lot. A big, hairy bear of a man somewhere in his late fifties, he stood up to grasp first Tobie, then Jax in a hearty handshake. “Call me Wolfgang,” he said in an accent that sounded more like Texas Panhandle than the Black Forest. “Please. Sit.”

Sliding in beside Jax, Tobie studied the man’s ruddy-cheeked, open face and plaid shirt. He was wearing jeans with cowboy boots and a big brass belt buckle in the shape of the Lone Star State. She was still trying to push aside every assumption she’d made about this man when Jax said, “Marie Oldenburg tells us you’re a journalist.”

Wolfgang nodded. “I used to be with the AP, but I’m semi-retired now. I’m working on a book.”

“On the Nazi atomic program?”

“You guessed it.”

“You don’t sound nearly as German as your name.”

He laughed. “My daddy’s from Lubuck, and my mama’s from Wichita Falls. My dad was a career Army man. Warrant officer. They were stationed at Wiesbaden back in the fifties, when I was born, which is how I ended up being called Wolfgang.”

A waitress came to take their order. After she left, Jax settled back into a corner of the booth and said, “What can you tell us about the German atomic program in World War II?”

Wolfgang hunched his shoulders and laid his hands together, edgewise, on the scarred wooden surface of the old table. “The first thing you need to understand is that the Germans never had a military industrial complex like we developed at Los Alamos. The U.S. had literally thousands of scientists working on the Manhattan Project, with billions of dollars in funding pouring into it.”

“So what did Germany have?”

Wolfgang paused while their waitress set three enormous beer steins in front of them. “Initially they called it the Uranium Club,” he said, wrapping his big hands around his stein. “Uranverein. It was just a small group of no more than a few dozen scientists-mainly physicists, but also a few chemists and mathematicians. When the war broke out, they ended up under the German Army Ordnance Office. Basically they were looking into three things: uranium isotope separation, uranium and heavy water production, and building what they called a Uranmaschine, or a nuclear reactor.”

“How far did they get?”

“We-ell,” he said, drawing the word out into two syllables, “that depends on who you talk to. By 1942, the German high command came to the conclusion that their nuclear energy project was unlikely to advance fast enough to make a decisive contribution to the war effort.”

“So they moved away from it?”

“In a sense. At that point, the research became more fragmented. There were something like nine different institutes working on it. The main center for everything was at Berlin, of course, but toward the end of the war even those people were scattered all over, because of the heavy Allied bombing runs. The scientists from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Physics-men like Werner Heisenberg-moved to Hechin-gen and Haigerloch, near the Black Forest, while Nikolaus Riehl shifted his operations to Oranienburg.”