The Hess Cross (11 page)

"This is Jones, or so I was introduced by Smithson. I'm told Jones is a crack shot."

Kohler ushered the group into a back bedroom. It was sparsely furnished with a cot, a chest of drawers, a well-worn leather easy chair, and a sink.

"We'll keep Hess here when he's not being questioned. The bars over the window are set back a foot from the glass, and a light mesh screen covers the window. It's impossible to tell from the alley that the window is barred. We replaced the bedroom door after Jones displayed how weak it was by rapidly putting his fist through it three times. The new one is solid oak and has two throw bolts that lock from the outside."

The procession followed Kohler downstairs into what had
been a kitchen. Here another agent sat in front of a bank of phones. He quickly took his feet off the table and put a novel down as Kohler entered. The man wore a revolver in a belt holster.

"The phones connect all positions in the house. And there is an outside line." Kohler lifted a U.S. Army two-way radio out of its backpack and continued, "We also have a walkie-talkie communications to our two men on the street, who hopefully you didn't see as you approached."

"I looked and didn't find them," Crown said. "I usually do."

"Very impressive, Peter," Ludendorf said. "This house is more secure than our EDC headquarters in London."

"Once again, most of it is Smithson's work. When does Hess first see Mr. Fermi, John?"

"On Monday. I have an appointment with Fermi tomorrow at his laboratory."

They entered the office, where Rudolf Hess sat in an overstuffed chair. The commando leisurely rose as they entered. His submachine gun lay on the desk, and he kept a hand on the stock. Hess was humming a tuneless drone and did not appear to notice the group until Kohler said, "Herr Hess, are you so ill-mannered that you do not rise when a lady enters the room?" nodding to the uncomfortable Heather.

Hess stopped humming and slowly came to his feet, not looking directly at anyone. The deputy führer was the picture of abject humility. His fall from Germany's high inner council to a prisoner had stripped him of all vestiges of pride. He was as crumpled as a piece of scrap paper. One side of his shirttail hung out of his pants. Both shoelaces, given to him for the transatlantic trip only, were undone and lay twisted on the carpet. The leather tongue of his left brogan was jammed to the side of the shoe, and the sock
hung limply around his ankle. Hess stooped like an old man, making his tall, husky frame appear worn-out and fragile. A flash of pity passed through Crown.

"Professor, Heather, I'll drive you to your hotel rooms," Crown said. "You'll take care of Hess for the evening, Peter?"

"With pleasure," Kohler replied with a hint of malice. "Herr Hess will find his Chicago stay both interesting and . . . uh, exciting."

Crown thought the strong-man act was carried too far, particularly during Hess's first hour in Hyde Park, but then, Ludendorf and Kohler were the professionals. If anyone could get the full story of the German atom-bomb experiments from Hess, these men, with the help of Enrico Fermi, could.

Josef Ludendorf put his hand on Hess's arm and said, "Now, don't worry about a thing, Rudolf. I'll be back first thing in the morning." He turned quickly to Kohler and said in a stage whisper, "Peter, I want you to take Rudolf to his room and bring him dinner. That is all. We can talk to him tomorrow."

"Of course, Professor."

They trailed out of the office. Only Peter Kohler remained with Hess.

On the sidewalk, Heather touched Crown's arm and said quietly, "I feel sorry for Hess, alone with that Kohler."

"Kohler knows what he's doing," Crown said. "Hess is in the best of hands."

"Nevertheless," Heather persisted, miffed at Crown's insensitivity, "I don't like Kohler's eyes. And you've seen how Hess cowers when Kohler talks to him. Someone else should be with Hess."

Crown opened the Ford's rear door, and Ludendorf climbed in. Crown stopped Heather and said, "You don't know the full importance of what we are trying to get from
Hess. His comfort can't interfere with our work. I hope you understand this, Heather."

Her glare conveyed anything but affection for Crown. She entered the car without saying anything further. No, she did not understand.

Rudolf Hess stared blankly at the wall as Crown's Ford pulled away. Kohler sat in the chair vacated by the commando. He looked anxiously at Hess. Kohler's authority had disappeared.

When the sound of the car faded, Hess's eyes snapped from the wall to Kohler, who jerked back in his seat as if he had been slapped in the face. Hess whispered in German, "Is this room clear?"

"There is no sound equipment here, Herr Reichsführer."

"The German bear has escaped." Hess said the code words.

"No cage could hold him," replied Kohler, who sprang from his chair into a rigid stance with his arm held upright in the fascist salute. "
Heil Hitler!
" he said fervently.

The despair and humility and fear disappeared from Hess as he rose from the chair. His eyes focused and his face lost its morose puffiness and regained the chiseled angles of decision and importance. He stood erect, with his shoulders back. Here was the Hess who had been Adolf Hitler's closest counselor for almost two decades, the Hess who could rouse a hundred thousand Germans to fever pitch with a few words, and who had overseen the German invasions of Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. Hess raised his hand in the sloppy salute permitted from only the highest echelons of power and said, "
Heil Hitler!
"

Kohler remained at rigid attention as Hess said, "The Führer was right, as always, Kohler. We have duped them all. The British and Americans are youngsters at these games." Hess allowed himself a thin smile, not the smile of
the idiot, half-crazed Hess in Maindiff Court Hospital, but the searing smile of a man with enormous life-and-death power.

"Herr Reichsführer, may I say how good it is to see you." Kohler choked with emotion.

"Thank you, Kohler. You have done your work well and will not go unnoticed by the Führer." Hess's eyes gleamed under the thick brows. "The next few days will tip the balance, Kohler. The next few days."

VI

S
ECURITY
at the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory was the tightest in the United States and perhaps the world. It took two forms: secrecy and protection.

Enrico Fermi's experiments had the highest secrecy rating given by the U. S. government, higher than the rocketry experiments in Los Angeles, the bomber factories in Seattle, and the tank plants in Detroit. Fewer than forty-five people knew the existence of the Fermi experiments, and only eleven—Fermi and eight other Chicago scientists, the president of the United States, and General Leslie R. Groves, coordinator of the bomb project—were authorized to know the purpose of the tests.

Secrecy was maintained by a strict division of labor and knowledge. Suppliers often asked the reason materials were ordered, but never received an answer. It was discovered that the graphite dust from the pile had a negative effect on the reaction, so it was decided to assemble the huge structure inside an airtight balloon. One of Fermi's
young scientists visited the Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company in Akron, specialists in the manufacture of military balloons, and asked for a square balloon the size of a squash court. Because he could not disclose the purpose of the square balloon, it took him two hours to convince the Goodyear people he was in earnest. Goodyear argued there was no such thing as a square balloon, but they saw his letter of authorization and they produced the four-cornered balloon.

Contractors were equally perplexed. August Knuth, an expert cabinetmaker from Local 1922, was hired to put three-quarter-inch holes in graphite blocks. He almost went mad drilling twenty-two thousand holes at the rate of one hundred holes an hour. No one would tell him why they needed pure graphite blocks, much less blocks with holes in them. For his trouble he received the union wage and a warning that he would be swiftly imprisoned without public trial if he discussed his work with anyone. Each night that month his wife asked Knuth why he was leaving a thick graphite film on her shower walls every night after work. His story that he was sharpening pencils at the union hall was not well received.

Protection was intense. A dozen armed guards discreetly surrounded the lab, which was located on Ellis Avenue across the street from the Stagg Field west stands. The lab and the field were in the heart of the campus, so the guards easily camouflaged themselves by dressing like students. If anyone noticed the unusual number of older students carrying pool-cue cases, long objects loosely wrapped with Christmas paper, and, in the best of Chicago traditions, violin cases, they did not mention it to school authorities.

Students wandering into the lab building were politely turned away by a desk man who referred them to other labs, other professors, or anywhere else. Persistent students saw the initially courteous man quickly become
angry, a tactic which always drove them away. Stray tourists were given a handful of pamphlets about amoebas. If that did not satisfy them, the desk man launched into a calculatedly boring speech about food vacuoles, contractile vacuoles, and other amoeba body parts. Only the hardiest tourists lasted more than five minutes.

One minute into the amoeba speech, Crown and Heather showed the desk man their identification cards.

"Thank God," the man said. "I've set a record for that speech this week. One old lady with nothing else to do checked out a book on single-cell animals from the university library and now comes here once a day to argue with me." He waved them through the double doors.

A pudgy man wearing the monotony of his job on his face sat behind a card table in the vestibule near the double doors. He pressed Crown and Heather's left thumbs and index fingers on the ink-smeared glass plate, then onto print paper. He shoved the paper through a slot in the wall. Two full minutes passed before the heavy door squeaked open.

Five uniformed army soldiers sat on a bench behind the black door. The soldier who had opened the door, a gangly youth whose head was shaved almost to the skin, asked Crown and Heather for their identification cards. He strung a thin cord through the hole in each card. Anyone in the building who was not wearing his card around his neck or on his belt was immediately arrested.

"Who's expecting you, sir?" he asked as he handed the identification cards to them.

"Enrico Fermi."

They followed the soldier down the brightly lit, sterile hallway, turned right, and continued at his heels. Other guards were stationed at corners, so the hallways were under constant surveillance. All office doorways were closed and had no numbers or names on them. Every fifteen paces
or so, a small alarm was attached to the wall. Crown supposed each office would have a similar alarm.

The soldier stopped in front of a door identical to all the others and knocked twice, paused, and knocked twice again. Several seconds later an electronic throw bolt clicked, and he swung the door open.

Fermi was not there, so Crown and Heather waited in steel chairs facing his desk. The office was a disappointment to Crown, who had expected the working quarters of the famous Nobel laureate to reflect his status. The predominant fixtures were wall blackboards covered with meaningless hieroglyphics. Behind the desk, two portable blackboards on rollers hid the boarded-up windows. A waist-high bookshelf stood to the left of Fermi's desk. The desk was covered with loose papers, a telephone, the alarm box, several slide rules, and a hand-crank calculator. The only nonacademic item in the office was a pair of cross-country skis leaning against one of the blackboards. Crown looked in vain for the Nobel plaque.

"Sorry to keep you waiting, Mr. Crown," Enrico Fermi said as he entered the office through a side door and walked to his desk. He was a small man, perhaps five feet, five inches. His hairline had receded almost to the back of his head. He had a sharp nose, and his sideburns stopped at the top of his ears. He was wearing a herringbone sports jacket without a tie. The identification card was stuck on the front of his belt buckle. His pants looked as if he slept in them, and judging by the cot near the back wall, he frequently did. His Italian accent was just noticeable. "Sometimes I think the security measures are taken a bit too far. Each morning I'm given photographs of those who have appointments with me. Whenever anyone knocks, I must adjourn to the side room, click open the front office door with the switch there, and wait until they are seated, so I can look at
them through a one-way mirror in the door. They don't want me to be surprised by a visitor."

Fermi leaned across the desk and shook hands with Crown and Heather and said, "I'm glad you could come, Miss McMillan. You'll have an easier time transcribing the interviews if you know a little about what's going on in this lab."

He sat down and asked, "How was your trip from England?"

"No problems. Hess is safe in a house in Hyde Park right now."

"General Groves described how you got him here. You must have been worried about the trip."

"We aren't sure of Hess's status with the powers-that-be in Germany, whether they've forgotten him or whether they want to get rid of him," Crown said. "There are enough German agents in England to have caused us problems if they wanted to."

Fermi leaned back in his chair, lifted a leg up on the corner of his desk, then glanced at Heather as if he had forgotten she was there, and quickly lowered his leg to the floor.

What impressed Crown most about the Italian was not his suitably professorial appearance, but the energy Fermi emitted. The taut lines around his eyes; the rapid tapping of his fingers on the desk, the chair arm, or whatever they came in contact with; and his darting eyes—all were symptoms of the man's tremendous energy. Crown guessed it was only with massive willpower that Fermi remained in his chair and did not pace the room.

"You are making a bomb?" Heather asked abruptly.

Fermi glanced at her and smiled. Fermi's grin involved his entire face and set his eyes at a delightful angle. He was a man who enjoyed smiling.