Ned Beauman - The Teleportation Accident

‘Oh, Hans, come on, don’t go! I haven’t seen you in fifteen years!’ I knew he wouldn’t be so self-assured as to leave after I’d asked him to stay. And sure enough he sat down again. ‘How did you get out of Germany?’ I said.

‘In that last April of the war, we were evacuated from the laboratory. We ended up hiding in the mountains. We weren’t under guard any more, but we were terrified that the SS would shoot us all just so no one else could have us. The next worst thing would have been the Russians. They might have taken us straight back to Moscow for torture. The British or the French would have been all right. But it was the Americans. They made us some good scrambled eggs. After that they put us in a barracks for a few weeks, and then on a plane to Boston, and then a train to New Mexico.’

‘And now you’re working for the State Department?’

‘Yes.’

I wondered how different I, too, might have found America if my first years there had been arranged for me in detail by some government office — and then as a sort of toy theodicy I tried to imagine the baffling aims that such an office would have to have had in order to arrange my first years there as they actually were. ‘Is Cordell Hull making you read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft?’ I said.

‘Who’s H.P. Lovecraft? Anyway, no, Hull’s not there any more. He resigned a few years ago. Sarcoidosis.’

‘So what are you doing for them?’

‘I’m sorry, Loeser, but I’m sure you understand that I can’t say anything about that.’

‘Presumably the same sort of thing as you were doing for the Ordnance Department,’ I said. ‘That’s why you’re valuable. But what did the Ordnance Department care about theoretical physics? Was it anything to do with the atomic bomb?’

‘No.’

‘What, then? Are you going to make me guess? That’s no use. I spent a few years at CalTech but I don’t know anything about the state of the art. Apart from ghosts and robots and that fellow trying to build a machine for making eel congee out of electric eels that was itself powered by electric eels, all I ever heard about back then was …’ I leaned forward. ‘Oh my God. Teleportation. You were working on teleportation, weren’t you? The Nazis were trying to develop teleportation as a weapon of war.’

This time Heijenhoort held my gaze. ‘Yes, Loeser. That’s right. And we didn’t do so badly. Why do you think the Soviets pretended Hitler’s remains were burned and buried?’

‘God in heaven, you’re telling me Hitler teleported himself out of the bunker?’ I shrieked. ‘So he’s still alive?’ There were puzzled looks from nearby booths.

‘Yes, Loeser. That is the world-shaking secret I am telling you, here in this coffee shop.’

‘Oh, are you being sarcastic?’

Heijenhoort got up again. ‘I’m sorry, Loeser, but I must be going.’

‘When did you become capable of sarcasm?’

‘Things happen in war.’

‘Hey, listen, they must have told you a lot of secrets in New Mexico?’ I said.

‘Not really. We’re still Germans.’

‘But do they know what happened to Bailey?’

Heijenhoort nodded as he put down a quarter-dollar for his coffee. ‘They spent almost a year studying his device after they removed it from CalTech.’

‘And?’

‘Goodbye, Loeser. I’ll see you around.’

‘Come on, you have to tell me! Did Drabsfarben rescue him from the chamber, or did he accidentally teleport himself into the Pacific?’

‘The answer is not what you think.’

‘But I haven’t told you what I think. Heijenhoort, stop! Come back!’

But he was gone. And I don’t suppose I’ll ever see him again. I hope the stenographer won’t have too much trouble with the punctuation of dialogue. Can I read my statement now?

The Chairman:Not yet.

The Chief Investigator:When did you discover the real nature of your summons to Washington?

Mr Loeser:I didn’t go straight up to the room when I got back to the Shoreham with a pair of stockings. Instead, I went to the bar and sat down on my own and ordered a whisky. All the way to Washington, I’d been praying for some sort of miraculous reprieve, but now there was only about seventeen hours left until I was due to testify here and I couldn’t see where it could come from. I was going to have to tell Mildred that her husband had been caught planning to steal a book called Midnight at the Nursing Academy from the national library of the United States; that he was going to be humiliated in front of the press and public; that he was probably going to be deported. I’d just finished my drink and was deciding whether to order another when Stent Mutton walked into the bar. I hadn’t seen him since the summer of 1943. That July, there was the first really caustic smog in Los Angeles, thick enough to humiliate the sun, as if Wormwood the Skunk had died and rotted up in the roof of the world, and naturally everyone assumed, just as I had a few years earlier, that it was an attack from some unseen enemy. No. Just cars.

‘Loeser!’ He wore a white suit with coral buttons. ‘Are you staying here too? I didn’t think I’d see you until tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ I said.

‘Yes. I’m testifying in the Caucus Room right after you. But you know that, of course.’

‘For the defence or the prosecution?’ I asked.

He smiled. ‘Very funny.’

But I was quite serious. ‘Do they think you were in on it somehow?’

‘“In on” what?’

‘ Midnight at the Nursing Academy . The Library of Congress. The heist.’

I won’t bore you with the untangling that followed, or the relief that I felt. But before long, Mutton was explaining that there would be no need for me to conceal any facts when I testified today about his relationship with Drabsfarben. My account of the truth would not incriminate him (or me) any further.

‘But what about you?’ I said as his drink arrived. ‘What are you going to tell them?’

‘That I never knew Drabsfarben was a spy and neither did my wife. They can’t prove otherwise. Dolores and I have had so many hours of practice at telling that particular falsehood that we could enter some sort of conservatoire. And the final proof: how on earth could we have lived in that house if we’d had anything at all to hide?’

‘So when did you really find out?’

‘Loeser, I knew Drabsfarben was working for the Russians from the first time he came over for dinner.’

‘That’s impossible. Just before I left Los Angeles, your wife told me you’d never even suspected she was working for the Comintern.’

‘So I should hope. I never let her know that I knew.’

‘But she was manipulating you. You had to go to Russia and write all those articles about how puppies love Stalin.’

‘That wasn’t so hard. You must understand, I had a choice. Either I was a little dumb and a little blind but I still thought my wife was a perfect goddess. Or I wasn’t so dumb and I wasn’t so blind and I found out my wife had been fooling me to keep Moscow contented. My marriage survived the former but it could never have survived the latter. I would have forgiven Dolores anything. But I don’t think she would have let herself be forgiven. You’re married yourself now, Loeser, you understand what it’s like. You must have made some unspoken bargains of your own.’

Yes, perhaps I have. ‘You were prepared to keep all that up for ever?’ I said.

‘No. But I could tell Drabsfarben wouldn’t last that long in Los Angeles. He didn’t cast the right sort of shadow. Did you know Dolores and I have a six-year-old son? My wife fell pregnant only a few months after Drabsfarben disappeared.’