“True enough, but not that many that were specifically mentioned in communiqués, from Hitler himself to General Rommel.” He withdrew a telegram from his inside pocket and handed it to Lucas. “We intercepted this reply about a week before you were sent to the mine.”
Even with his rudimentary German, Lucas was able to read enough to understand its gist. Rommel was reassuring Hitler that the sarcophagus was safely hidden, and that he’d issued orders for it to be forwarded to the Eagle’s Nest under special guard as soon as the rail lines were secured.
But Lucas was still puzzled. “What do you expect to learn from it?”
“That’s your job,” Macmillan said, leaning back in his chair. “You found it — now we want you to tell us what makes this thing so special. If Adolf wants it that bad, we want to know why.”
“May I add something?” Dodds said, glancing at the colonel for the go-ahead. Once he’d gotten the nod, he said, “Are you aware of Professor Delaney’s work with radio isotopes?”
“I am.” Now Lucas’s suspicions were confirmed; Delaney’s work was being underwritten by the War Department.
“Good,” the colonel interjected. “I don’t profess to understand exactly how it’s done, but I’m told he’s developing something called radiocarbon dating that might also tell us something about how old the sarcophagus is, or how old its contents — whatever they turn out to be — are. Between the two of you eggheads, we want an accurate picture of what’s inside it, and if there’s any way we can use it in the war effort.”
“It’s not a weapon,” Lucas ventured. “It’s just a kind of casket. Probably about two thousand years old.”
Macmillan waved his words away. “Hitler may not know that. The son of a bitch is crazy, believes in all kinds of occult mumbo jumbo. He’s got an astrologer on staff, and I wouldn’t be surprised if he kept a crystal ball by his bedside.”
The idea that the Allies were up against a lunatic was even more terrifying than the prospect of battling a rational, though supremely evil, foe. At least you could try to outsmart a rational man; you could guess his next move and try to counteract it. A madman, on the other hand, couldn’t be relied upon to act in even his own best interest. “As far as this sarcophagus is concerned,” Macmillan said, “so long as he thinks it’s got some kind of voodoo attached to it, then let’s humor him, right?”
Lucas gave him a weak smile, but couldn’t — wouldn’t — speak what had just crossed his mind. He was a practical man, an empiricist, one who eschewed anything unfounded and unscientific. But he’d never forget his first sight of that box, or the way it had seemed to suck the very light out of the area around it.
“Let’s see if we can’t find a way to exploit that bastard’s lunacy,” Macmillan said, slapping his own thigh.
“Not that you would be asked to participate in any of that skulduggery,” Dodds quickly put in.
“Absolutely not,” the colonel agreed. “You just tell us what we’ve got. We’ve got people at the Pentagon who’ll do the rest.”
An awkward silence fell.
“When would you like me to start?” Lucas asked.
“The installation should be done shortly,” Dodds answered, “but we’re also making some modifications to the conservation rooms.”
“Courtesy of Uncle Sam,” Macmillan said.
“We’re reinforcing the floor,” Dodds continued, “reframing some windows, improving the lighting. Shall we say, first thing tomorrow?”
Although he had a morning lecture, now was not the time to mention it. “Fine.”
The grandfather clock on the staircase bonged the hour.
“We’re counting on you,” the colonel said, leaning forward in his chair, his several medals dangling from his uniform as if in emphasis. He extended a rough and meaty hand.
“Glad to do it,” Lucas replied, wondering how he’d feel about it tomorrow. “Sir.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Is the poor man going to be out there all night?” Einstein said, staring down into the backyard, where one of Robert Oppenheimer’s two bodyguards patrolled the area around the garage and alleyway. The other one was stationed in a parked car, in front of the house.
“Yes,” Oppenheimer replied. “That’s his job. Now will you please stop worrying about his welfare, and focus on our work.”
The work, Einstein thought; yes, the work. It had been one thing when his work remained theoretical, and its purpose was simply to extend the borders of human knowledge and crack the codes of the universe. It was altogether another when, as now, it was being driven by the exigencies of war, and when its goal was not elucidation but annihilation.
That, however, was where things stood, and it was the reason Oppenheimer had left his colleagues in Los Alamos, New Mexico — a place Einstein pictured as a desert waste — to consult with the man whose discoveries had unwittingly ushered in the Atomic Age. For hours now, they had been holed up in the professor’s upstairs study while Oppenheimer, in between finishing one cigarette and starting another, had shared with him the latest, and most secret, news of the Germans’ efforts to develop nuclear energy and thereby create an atomic weapon. It was possible that the Nazis had come a long way.
“The Reich minister for armaments and war production, Albert Speer, has reorganized their nuclear power project from top to bottom,” Oppenheimer was saying. “That intelligence is solid. Bernhard Rust is history, and he’s been replaced by Reich Marshal Hermann Göring.”
“So, they have replaced a scientist with a soldier. That is good news for us, no?”
“No, it’s not. It means that they’re getting serious again. Hitler trusts Göring — the son of a bitch has done a bang-up job with the Wehrmacht — and putting him in charge proves that he’s serious about getting the job done, and getting it done faster.”
“Ah, then, perhaps he rues the day he instituted his ridiculous Deutsche Physik.”
“Who cares what he rues? And by the way, I don’t think he’s ever rued a day in his life.”
Because the Nazis considered theoretical physics and quantum mechanics too abstruse and “Jewish,” they had replaced them years before with a more homegrown and homespun curriculum — the rudimentary Deutsche Physik—and as a result of the switch, half of the country’s nuclear scientists had been relieved of, or driven from, their posts. A plethora of the continent’s brightest lights had also taken flight. Not just Einstein, but Hans Bethe, Max Born, Erwin Schrödinger, Eugene Wigner, Otto Stern, Lise Meitner, Robert Frisch, Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller, Maria Goeppert-Mayer — the list went on and on.
“We could waste our time trying to figure out why he does what he does,” Oppenheimer observed, “but what would be the point? Personally, I’d say he’s off his rocker. But it looks like he’s finally figured out his mistake. Now he knows that he’d better get the bomb before we do.”
That prospect, Einstein recognized, was unthinkable. A weapon created through fission would wreak havoc beyond anyone’s imagining. When the war first broke out, the Nazi party had swiftly annexed the Berlin Institute of Physics, which had, before the purge, done pioneering work in nuclear physics and isotope separation; that was one of the first warning bells of Hitler’s intentions. By the summer of 1939, Einstein’s friend, the Hungarian physicist Leó Szilárd, had grown alarmed by the Nazis’ sudden, and suspicious, halt to the exportation of the uranium ore they had acquired from the mines in occupied Czechoslovakia; there could only be one reason for stockpiling uranium, a mineral essential to the creation of an atomic bomb. For fear that they might also get their hands on the huge deposits located in the Belgian Congo, Szilárd had come to Einstein with an urgent request. He begged him to write a letter to President Roosevelt, alerting him to the threat.