The Empire of Night

37

This was another scientist whose name I did not know, but from the tone of Haber’s voice I was expected to.

“I myself brought him from exile to the Institute,” Haber said. “I overlooked his personality for the brilliance of his mind.”

Fritz was going red in the face again.

I had to assume Stockman was about to intervene. Haber was in the grip of a powerful desire to talk.

“That exile was self-imposed,” Haber said. “Though he was born in Germany, as was his father and his father’s father.”

He paused, letting this irony sink in.

I looked to Stockman, who was poised to speak. He glanced at me. I furrowed my brow and nodded to him, fleetingly, a gesture of reassurance. I lifted my notebook from the tabletop, while still looking at Stockman, and I turned to Haber and closed the notebook before him and put it back down, making a little show of it, more for Stockman, of course, than for Fritz. Though Fritz took notice.

“How distressing,” I said.

Haber said, in crescendo, “Perhaps you are unaware, from living presently abroad, that ninety-three important figures in German science and culture, ten Nobel Prize winners included and more surely to come — Max Planck, for example — and even including a great figure from the world of your other subject, Isabel Cobb — I refer to Mr. Max Reinhardt — we all signed a manifesto declaring our support for our government and our opposition to the lies and calumny being spread about us abroad. Doctor Einstein was invited to sign. Not only did he refuse. He signed a scandalous counter-manifesto that gave credence to those very lies.”

Haber was nearly shouting now. Shouting and quaking. He stopped. He calmed himself.

“Forgive me,” he said. And then, almost gently: “Albert is fortunate that his position was so ludicrous. Only four of the invited hundred intellectuals signed, and the manifesto was never published. He was spared.”

Haber removed the handkerchief from his breast pocket and patted his head. “I otherwise admire his mind greatly,” he said. “However, for what one may call a cosmological physicist, he knows very little about the real world. How sad.”

“Perhaps,” Stockman said, matching Haber’s abruptly subdued tone, “it is time for us to excuse Mr. Jäger and for you and I to discuss our business.”

Haber pulled a watch on a fob from his vest pocket. He said, “I told Colonel Bauer four-thirty.”

It wasn’t four-thirty yet and Haber clearly had more steam to let off.

But Stockman was getting nervous. “There are a couple of matters to discuss before he arrives. You have enough for the story, Josef?”

It was still critical that I appear eager to obey Albert. I stood up at once. “Of course, Baron Stockman. You know I am here simply to serve you. I can do a fine story with what Doctor Haber has officially given me.”

“Excellent,” Albert said. I remained his man. He even shook my hand at once. This led to Haber’s offered hand and bowings and heel-clickings all around.

And so they were done with me.

The soldier was summoned and I was respectfully but efficiently escorted from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institut für Physikalische Chemie, placed in a waiting Daimler taxi beneath the plane trees, and sent away.

I got out at the Adlon and lingered on the sidewalk long enough for the taxi to drive off. I turned west and walked the three hundred yards to the Hotel Baden. I strode through the lobby and straight into the telephone kiosk. I’d barely gotten the receiver into my hand when somebody knuckled the glass pane directly behind my head.

I turned.

It was Jeremy.

I replaced the receiver and opened the door. “I was just calling you,” I said.

“I supposed,” he said.

“How are things in Spandau?”

“The factories never rest, thanks to your man Haber.”

“They make shells?”

He nodded.

“Are they Krupp’s?”

“Government factories.”

“Your mother is well located.”

“She is. I keep my eyes open. How was your improvisation?”

“That remains to be seen.”

So we sat in the Baden coffee shop, in the corner farthest from the Unter den Linden windows, and I brought Jeremy up to speed, from Stockman at the Adlon reception desk to the taxi at the Adlon front door.

He said not a word till I’d done. Then he went straight to my interpretation of the writing on the second box in Reinauer’s office. “I’ve not seen it used before, but your reading of MDH seems spot on.”

“You agree it’s likely mit Stockman’s hand?”

“Seems so.”

“Ever hear of Einstein?”

He shook his head no, even as he tried to think. “I don’t believe.”

“We need to find him.”

“Around the Institute, perhaps.” As soon as Jeremy said this, he shook his head again. “But how to approach him there.”

“And this Colonel Bauer?”

“About him, I’ve got people to ask,” Jeremy said. “Berlin is densely populated with colonels and ‘Bauer’ is common. No first name?”

“It wasn’t spoken.”

“If he’s a third party to Haber and Stockman, maybe we can sort him out.”

“How late can I call your number in Spandau?”

“Very late,” Jeremy said. “My mother takes a long while going to sleep. What’s your next move?”

“I have a hunch I can find Sir Albert tonight.”