“My, don’t you both look beautiful.”
Hans Schäfer stood at the far end of the table in a dinner jacket, at the centre of an array of silverware and crockery. At first Sarah thought he was polishing everything, as she had often done in the springtime with the maid when she was little. Then she realized they were expected to use it all. There were three chairs. There were to be no other guests.
The dining room matched the rest of the house. It was almost as big as the hall at Rothenstadt with a ceiling so lofty that it couldn’t be seen without hurting your neck. The walls were filled with portraits of disapproving relatives and their horses.
Footmen guided the girls to their seats.
Sarah felt exposed. Her dress felt too fine, too figure-hugging. Now that she was apart from her double, it didn’t feel like there was enough material between her and nakedness. She felt watched. Looked at.
Professor Schäfer pulled out Sarah’s chair, then his daughter’s.
“You look tremendous, really. It must be a relief to be out of those uniforms, I expect?”
“Oh, yes, Father.”
“There’s something to be said for all looking the same, though,” said Sarah.
Shut up, dumme Schlampe.
“Why would you say that, Ursula?” the Professor asked.
“We’re ein Volk, one people, rich or poor.” She felt there was something amiss with the Schäfers’ attitude, or with what it should have been.
“You’re an excellent National Socialist. I’m pleased. But here, well, this is a place of learning, of science. We make a huge contribution to the Reich. So we may also enjoy the fruits and rewards for our work,” he pontificated. “That’s fitting, don’t you think?”
Sarah thought it was hypocritical, but said nothing.
Elsa changed the subject. “Ursula’s father flew in Spain with the Condor Legion.”
“Then you yourself are worthy of reward,” he enthused. “Did he fly in Poland too?”
“I’m sorry to say he was killed in Spain,” Sarah said quietly. Take that.
His face changed immediately, showing guilt and then sympathy. He reached out and took her hand. His was warm and he smelled of good soap and a touch of musky aftershave.
“I’m so sorry, little one.” He sounded bereft. “You’re too young for that to have happened.”
You have an advantage. Push it home. Cry. Cry now.
“Is it not a worthy sacrifice for the Reich?” She let her voice crack just slightly.
“No one so sweet should have to suffer so.” His voice was soft and comforting. “Not for anyone.” No adult had been this caring towards Sarah for many years.
Sarah drew a brave smile on her face. He patted her hand and didn’t let go of it. She accessed a shaft of her real loneliness and grief, then rode its dark troughs and cold peaks, allowing his unexpected warmth to point to a brighter, less dismal destination in the range of her misery.
She looked over to Elsa. Shame. Sympathy. Disgust.
“Well, for sadness, God created wine.” Professor Schäfer gestured to the footman. “The Führer himself does not partake, but he has an extensive cellar for his guests, as I myself have discovered,” he boasted, before he smiled indulgently at Sarah. “So this bears the stamp of approval of the highest authority, Fräulein.”
“I’m too young for wine, surely?” Sarah frowned. “Nonsense. In Paris children drink wine every day.”
“Aren’t the French degenerates?”
He slapped the table and chuckled. “Not when it comes to wine.” He had the footman fill Sarah’s glass to the top.
Elsa took a giant gulp of hers and then gestured to Sarah, who put the glass to her lips. The chilled wine was creating condensation on the rim and it smelled not the least bit fruit-like – in fact, it reminded Sarah of her mother’s breath. She overcame this and finally took a sip.
The sourness caused her to suck in her cheeks. Her teeth ached and her throat protested, but somewhere on her tongue there was the hint of something sweeter and less aggressive.
Elsa laughed. “You get used to it.”
The ache in Sarah’s cheeks receded but didn’t disappear. It became strangely pleasant, along with a warm sensation in her chest.
The meal proceeded under the guise of a banquet, courses rolling into the room with a team of servants. There was horseradish, mustard, breads and sausage, as Sarah’s glass was refilled. The vegetables were crisp to the bite and succulent inside. Meats were juicy and rich. Fried marinated herring followed before the wine changed colour to a dark, bloody draught that smelled of a wood fire and spices. There was a thick gamey soup of wild boar, stocky and warm like a hug. Sarah’s glass emptied and filled as a venison sauerbraten slid down, with potatoes so creamy they dissolved on the tongue.
Sarah couldn’t remember being so sated. Hans Schäfer asked her a constant stream of questions and took an interest in all her answers. While she found constantly divining what Ursula Haller would think and feel tiring, the attention was comforting. Desirable. She wondered if this was how normal children felt, living in a world that was attentive and curious.
Elsa was unusually quiet throughout.
“You’ve met the Führer?” Sarah asked, fascinated.
“Indeed, many times,” Schäfer enthused.
“What is he like? In person I mean.”
“He is a very sweet and thoughtful man, excellent with children. But he is also passionate and loves to talk, even in the middle of movies.” He leaned on one elbow, as if confiding a great secret. “I’ve watched one Gary Cooper movie with him several times and he always talked all the way through. I still don’t know how it ends!”
He laughed and Sarah giggled. His story wasn’t that funny, but the mirth seemed inevitable, as if everything he said was hilarious. Everything seemed that extra bit shinier, tasted that extra bit better. Even Elsa’s growing frown seemed increasingly amusing.
“So what do you do for the Reich, then?” Sarah assumed a theatrically serious voice. Big questions to ask.
“Very important work.”
“Boring work,” Elsa spat.
“No, really, what exactly?” Secret questions.
“I’m not sure you’d understand.”
“Try me, I’m very, very clever, a really smart little girl. No, wait that’s a secret, shhhhh.”
Hans Schäfer smiled indulgently. His face had stopped making sense to Sarah. “I study nuclear physics,” he said self-importantly.
“Oh, oh I know what that is…it’s…it’s…” Thought gone. “What is it?”
“Everything is made of tiny atoms, each of these atoms is made of smaller particles. They can be persuaded to change or swap atoms, to great effect.”
“My uncle mentioned that once.” Careful. “He read it in a really dull magazine he gets. One that looks like a book with no cover.”
“What does your uncle do?”
Yes, what does he do?
“He makes wireless sets, everyone has one of his radios. But he says one needs to know about the latest discoveries that we could use to…you know, win.”
“He’s a smart man.”
What were you asking? Really important.
“So, what exactly are those effects? And why should anyone care?”
Shut up now, dumme Schlampe.
Shut up, yourself.
You are not thinking clearly.
“It’s going to change the world.” He was suddenly serious.
Sarah’s thoughts were like cats, darting away from her as she bent to pick them up. “Wow, that sounds exciting. Elss-sa, you said it was boring.”
“It is boring. Night after night with his big machines, making tiny, tiny amounts of something you can’t even touch or it’ll make you sick,” Elsa ranted. “It’s stupid.”
“Alas, I don’t think my daughter is destined to be a scientist.” He sounded sorrowful.
“All we’re taught to do is hate Jews and have babies. I don’t think any of us are going to be scientists,” Sarah complained.
“Well, that’s where the Führer and I differ. I would love Elsa to understand me better…” There was a sadness to his voice that cut into Sarah’s heart.
“Oh, you want to understand your father, don’t you, Elssa?”
Elsa’s frown deepened further. “I’m not sure I ever want to truly understand him.”
Sarah looked from the fuming Elsa to her impassive father. Why would she say that? She wanted to fix it, to make her happy.
Stop talking.
She pressed on. “Well, tell me and then maybe I can explain to Elsa what you mean.”
“Oh, he’ll tell you, don’t worry about that. Don’t worry one bit.”
Venomous. Really, really upset with someone.
Sarah was confused. Everything was very brightly lit but seemed to be on the other side of a piece of curved glass. Her thoughts were foggy, a little like having a fever. Her back was itching so she began squirming against the embroidered chair.
“Let’s not argue. Look, here comes dessert,” said Professor Schäfer.
Into the room rolled the largest Black Forest cake that Sarah had ever seen. It filled a vast silver salver, its frosted cream sides like an alpine mountain, the cherries the size of golf balls. Hungry. Something sweet.
“Look, Elsa! I bet this one doesn’t have rancid cream and rotten cherries.”
“You ate that? That’s a First Year mistake.” Elsa seemed happy again. Good.
The cake was every bit as moist as it looked, with fruit that was tart and sweet at once and the thickest cream. When she’d finished her piece, Sarah looked down to see a visible swelling under her silk dress, a dress that – of course – had food spilled down it. She showed Elsa.
“Told you. So, Herr, Professor, Doctor…Schäfer, are you going to show me your experiment…lab…thing?”
“I’m afraid it’s all very secret.” No! Serious voice.
“Not fair! Elsa’s seen it. Come on. Want to see.” Sarah let a petulant tone slip into her voice. She was enjoying this far too much.
“Not tonight.”
“Ah, you mean not at all.” She slumped in her seat. Her back was hurting now.
“I think you should take her, Father. Alone, of course, as I think it’s all really dull.”
The Professor watched his daughter for a few seconds, then came to a decision. “More wine first, then.” He clapped his hands together.
Sarah felt as if the floor was rolling like the deck of a ship. Professor Schäfer tried to guide her.
“Stop jostling me, Professor.” Sarah giggled.
This part of the building was gloomy with bright pools of light to guide the way. As Sarah weaved through one of them, he stopped her.
“What happened to your back?” He sounded shocked. He held her shoulders and examined the welts in the lamplight.
“Oh, I wouldn’t let one of the teachers at Rothenstadt beat a weaker student. She beat me instead,” she said grandly. I’m a hero. A Werwolf. Shhhhh.
“That’s barbaric.” He ran a finger down her back.
“That’s the school you send your daughter to. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”
“I had no idea.” His finger reached the small of her back.
Sarah squirmed and faced him, almost losing her balance. “Well, we’re all really happy about your ignorance, Professor.” Something had made her really angry and she couldn’t turn it off. “You and all the other Nazis, happy to see your children starved, beaten and generally abused. Many thanks for that.”
“You talk about the party as if you aren’t part of it,” he said in a very different tone.
Suspicion, exposure, capture. Fix it, dumme Schlampe.
“Well, you know – I’m just a little, little girl. I don’t care whether – you know, our misery makes Germany great or not. I know I should, but—”
“Shhh…it’s all right.” He reached out and stroked her hair.
“Careful, you’ll mess it up.” The danger had passed. “Elsa spent ages on it.”
“I know, it looks just like hers. Just a few years ago,” he said, so softly that Sarah almost missed it.
“Come on.” She bounced crookedly down the corridor. “I want to see all the experiments. Tell me what you do again. Properly, this time.”
Careful.
Why? This is working!
Something…
Professor Schäfer caught up with her as she reached a thick steel door. A sign on it read Zutritt verboten.
Sarah had nearly walked into the guard sitting on a stool next to it, only seeing him as he shuffled to his feet and saluted.
“Good evening, Max, and merry Christmas,” Professor Schäfer said, returning the salute.
“Merry Christmas to you, sir.” He was deferential and cautious.
Schäfer produced three keys and opened three locks, top, middle and bottom. “Are you off tomorrow with all the others?”
“Yes, sir. You’ll still have the perimeter, obviously.”
“Well, give my love to your family.”
“Yes, sir.”
Sarah grew bored and hopped from leg to leg. She thought she might need the toilet. The Professor pushed the massive door handle up and the door swung open.
“Sir? Are you bringing the girl with you?”
“Yes. I am.” He was brusque.
The soldier fidgeted. “Yes, sir.”
“You get off back to barracks, now.”
“Yes, sir.”
Come on, get on with it.
He saluted and marched away down the corridor. Professor Schäfer turned to Sarah. “Well, Fräulein Haller. You wanted to see the science? Step into my office.”
It was pitch-black. Sarah thought they had gone outside, but this place was warm like a summer evening. It must have been a vast space, judging from the echoes as they clattered down the steel staircase. A legion of competing buzzing, pumping, rattling machine noises rose to meet them.
“There is an element called uranium,” he began. “It is common and can be pulled from any colonial dirt hole. If you hit it with a fast-moving neutron, one of the individual atoms will split apart.”
His voice was soft and warm. Sarah let the familiar words wash over her, thinking about the Captain and the bits, spit, split. He’ll be so proud, she thought. She leaned into the Professor for support.
“You get two new elements, three new flying neutrons and a burst of heat and light. A Jewess from the Institute wanted to call it fission, a dull word to describe something so powerful and violent. It’s like Odin releasing his ravens to start the end of all things and calling it flap-flap.”
Sarah found this increasingly hard to follow. She was getting tired. She hoped she’d be able to recall anything important later.
“Then each of those flying neutrons can hit another atom and start the process all over again. Three times, then nine times, then eighty-one times – the energy just grows and grows…”
They stepped off the stairs on to a rough floor, as if they had stepped into the woods. This made no sense to her.
“In fact, all it takes is for you to bring together enough uranium, with enough violence, and this reaction will just spread out like a web and every atom will split simultaneously.”
“That sounds like a bomb,” Sarah interjected. She felt woozy. Now she was here, she began to doubt she was capable of…whatever was needed of her.
“Exactly. Now, everyone thinks the amount of uranium you need is thirty tonnes, or something equally ridiculous.” He let go of Sarah’s shoulders and began turning a switch Sarah couldn’t see. “Some people, like that fraud Heisenberg, think you need to wrap it in carbon or heavy water. No – all you need is the right kind of uranium…”
The lights began to flicker on.
“All you need to make that is space…”
They were in the enormous greenhouse. The white pillars that supported the glass domes gleamed in the faint, sickly light, wrapped in pipes and wires.
“And power…”
The entire structure was filled with gas tanks, pipes and humming machines, the same huge structure repeating over and over, lining the wide tiled avenues that travelled off into the distance.
“And patience.”
But it was not the vast machines that caught Sarah’s attention. Between the grey steel machines, across the floors, around the columns and in the crumbling flower beds, the greenhouse’s vegetation had remained, wizened, brown, and rotting.
“Everything’s dead – all the plants,” Sarah whispered.
Among the chemicals, grease, oil and smell of electricity, there was the thick funk of death. Sarah began to feel queasy.
“You’re missing the point, dear,” he went on excitedly. “None of that is important. Let me show you what is.”
He guided Sarah along the machines, arm around her waist, waving at different parts of the machine.
“I push the uranium gas into these tanks through a membrane and all the good stuff separates out. The secret is the cooling. I’ve used the greenhouse’s natural gas heating system to create electricity right here. I do this again and again and finally…”
Membrane…gas heating… Sarah wanted to stop listening.
They came to the end of a long row of devices. He pulled on a pair of rubber gloves that went up to his elbows and picked up a small, dull silver rock. To Sarah, it looked utterly banal.
“This is pure uranium-235.” His voice lowered to a whisper. “Or as I call it, Ragnarök…the end of the world, when even the gods themselves will burn.”
She took an involuntary step back and he laughed.
Sarah felt dizzy, as if she had spun around in the centre of the nursery and wandered out into the grown-ups’ part of the house.
Why am I here?
To ask questions.
No, yes – but why am I allowed in here?
What does that mean? Ask your questions.
“So you’ll build a bomb using this?”
“Better than that,” he said enthusiastically. “Come with me.”
He slid a wide metal door slowly to one side and revealed a laboratory, all white tiles and new concrete, shining contraptions, dials and pipes. At one end there was a furnace and a milling machine, but Sarah didn’t see any of this at first, because the room was dominated by something that chilled her through the room’s heat.
It was a long black metal tube, maybe three metres long and a metre thick, rounded at the ends, with fins and a tail.
It was clearly a bomb.
It had been opened lengthways to reveal the inside. Sarah walked towards it like she was approaching a tiger at the zoo, without being entirely convinced the cage door was properly closed.
Her head began to throb. This was it, the purpose of everything. She had to tell the Captain… No, she had to do something herself. What was she doing here? Questions…
“You’ve built it,” she managed. “Is it ready?”
Professor Schäfer sat at a bench and opened a thick and much-repaired notebook. He jotted something down.
“Not quite. If it fired now, it would…what would the Jewess call it? Fizzle. Probably like a powerful explosive…but very soon it will be the greatest weapon the earth has ever seen. Only a small amount of 235 is needed now.” He returned to her side. “See? Here, conventional explosives fire a pellet of uranium down this tube – it’s an artillery barrel, the whole thing is – until it hits this ring of uranium, here. When the two pieces are together, that much 235 undergoes a chain reaction and…Götterdämmerung! The twilight of the gods.”
Sarah couldn’t remember what he had just said. She wasn’t even sure how she had got here. Her mouth was filling with saliva. She held onto him for balance. Questions.
“What happens when this goes off?”
“Theoretically? The energy trapped inside, the mass of the metal multiplied by the speed of light squared, will appear all at once. There will be a flash so bright and hot that anyone within a kilometre of the explosion will simply disappear.” He stood, both hands in the air, smiling. “Everything within two kilometres will burst into flames. Everyone within three and a half kilometres will be dead instantly as the blast wave expands across the target…”
Sarah began to shake. Questions.
“What happens when everyone has these bombs?”
He came over to her and put his arms round her. She realized she didn’t want to be touched. “No one does. Not even the Reich knows about this yet,” he said soothingly. “We’ll use it to destroy our enemies, and it’ll never be needed again.”
Our enemies. Sarah knew what they looked like. What it felt like being one.
“I bet the first human to pick up a big stick said something similar,” she said without thinking.
“You’re an unusual girl, Ursula Haller.” He pointed at his notebook. “I just added something to my records.” His voice sounded like he was singing a song. “Tonight, the twenty-third of December, I found something more brilliant and more beautiful than my Ragnarök.”
Sarah closed her eyes and swayed. “What?”
“You. You are so clever – and so, so beautiful.”
Sarah twisted out of his arms and retched violently, a thick red, stinking vomit. She continued to heave long after her stomach was empty and Elsa was carrying her to her room.