didn’t want people to know what he was working on.’
‘That’s very interesting.’ Orlov rubbed his chin as he considered Leskov’s report. ‘Oksanna, based on Wolff’s letters, do you think his work might be of value to our competitors?’
‘Absolutely. Wolff’s thinking is highly unconventional, and his insights into quantum reality could provide the keys to understanding how Sandstrom’s device works.’
‘Then we must acquire these notebooks, even if only to deprive our competitors of them. Dmitri, make the necessary arrangements.’
‘ Da, Victor Ivanovich.’
28
Langley, Virginia
When Bart Cooper entered his office, he found a thick manila envelope resting on his desk. He sat down, undid the clasp tie, and extracted the contents; it was the information he’d requested from Connie. The first few pages laid out a chronology of Johann Wolff’s abbreviated life, starting with his birth in Dresden and ending with the discovery of his remains a few days ago.
After the chronology, Cooper found a synopsis of the information about Wolff dredged from a classified report regarding the wartime activities of German scientists issued in September of 1948.
• 10/1947: Workmen clearing rubble in West Berlin uncover a cache of files in the basement of a collapsed building. The building was used by the Reichsforschungsrat – the Reich Science Council. • The files identified research projects on which prisoners from German concentration camps were used as slave labor and test subjects – projects that included Wernher von Braun’s V-2 ballistic missile program at Peenemunde. Johann Wolff’s name was listed among those responsible for conducting a horrific series of experiments on prisoners. • Investigators were able to confirm, through witnesses and secondary documentation, most of the war crimes alleged in the files. • Since several of the more prominent German scientists named in the recovered files were working on classified U.S. military projects, no action was taken to prosecute them for war crimes. • 9/1948: The recovered files and investigative reports were reviewed by the congressional oversight committee and classified.
‘And three months after the files were suppressed, Johann Wolff was murdered in Ann Arbor, Michigan,’ Cooper said with a sigh.
Cooper recalled hearing rumors about the recovered files, but only the most senior intelligence officers were assigned to work with them. He also remembered the anxiety he felt over the possibility that a war criminal might have entered the United States because of something he missed on the background check.
• Review of the still-classified report reveals that investigators were unable to confirm the allegation that physicist Johann Wolff participated in any scientific experimentation on prisoners. Further, other sources deemed reliable contradict the allegations. • The evidence found appears to support information provided by Johann Wolff during his interviews with the OSS. Wolff spent the entirety of the war in Berlin, at the Kaiser Wilhelm Gesellschaft, where he was a junior member of the Uranverein – the Uranium Club. The Uranverein was responsible for the German nuclear-research program for both civilian and military applications. This group’s work was primarily theoretical, and there is no evidence that Wolff, or any other member of the Uranverein, was involved in human experimentation of any kind. • Further investigation into the discrepancy regarding Wolff reveals that the Reichsforschungsrat files were intentionally altered by a Nazi scientist named Gerhard Strauss. Strauss essentially traded professional identities with Wolff to cover up his wartime activities. Strauss was killed during the Red Army attack on Berlin.
‘My God, he was innocent,’ Cooper said, his doubts vanishing as he read on.
• As the war in Europe came to an end, Soviet and U.S. forces aggressively sought to acquire German scientists and technology. A few members of the Uranverein were captured by the Soviets, along with a significant amount of research documentation. • Interrogation of the German scientists revealed the truth about their failure to build an atomic bomb. None of the scientists wanted to construct an atomic bomb for the Furhrer, but they also truly believed that the job was impossible. When the Uranverein presented their nuclear-research proposal to the Reich, they said that building an atomic bomb was at best impractical and, at worst, impossible. Their conclusion was based on hard numbers that had been painstakingly calculated by hand. These scientists stated that their data had been checked and double-checked by the best mathematician on their staff – Johann Wolff. • Following the successful detonation of atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, NKVD transcripts indicate that the German scientists were dumbfounded as to the reason for their failure. Using the files captured by the Red Army, the scientists reconstructed the mathematics on which they based their claim that an atomic bomb was theoretically unfeasible. • After careful review of several years’ worth of original calculations, it was the opinion of the German scientists and their Russian counterparts that a number of subtle errors had been introduced into the equations – errors that doomed the German research effort to failure.
Cooper reread the last section and came to an inescapable conclusion. ‘They were sabotaged.’
• The review uncovered a deliberate pattern of miscalculation on the part of Johann Wolff. After correcting for Wolff’s subtle errors, the Germans realized how close they had come to determining that the atomic bomb was feasible. They also realized that in order for Wolff to have undermined their research efforts so perfectly, he must have known the truth. It was the opinion of the German and Russian scientists that Johann Wolff single-handedly prevented the Germans from building an atomic bomb.
Cooper slumped back in his chair, his face now ashen. He felt a tightness in his chest and, for a moment, wondered if he was having a heart attack. He vividly remembered the day he learned that Wolff, a man he’d cleared to immigrate into the United States, might have been a war criminal. Germany was swarming with rumors then – secret projects, hidden Nazi gold – and it was often hard to separate truth from lies. Rivers of disinformation flowed out of Western and Soviet intelligence services as the Cold War began to set in.
He remembered hearing rumors about a secret cache of files, about records of who did what, and further rumors about how those files were suppressed for reasons of the highest national security. Cooper saw the death camps firsthand and could not fathom how a nation could find any security in harboring men capable of inflicting such horror.
Then there were those who would not tolerate such an injustice, men and women bent on seeking retribution – the Nokmim. Cooper sympathized with them, exchanged information, and occasionally turned a blind eye when the Nokmim became a court of last resort for war criminals who found refuge under the Cold War umbrella of political necessity. Some of the more radical members of the Nokmim were less interested in due process and reasonable doubt than in vengeance.
‘I am responsible for the death of an innocent man,’ Cooper admitted, acknowledging something he’d feared since his first contact with the Nokmim regarding Wolff. ‘Not just an innocent man, but a hero who prevented Hitler from building an atomic bomb.’
The information he’d had back then was incomplete, but both he and the Nokmim knew that Wolff’s name was in the files. At the time, that seemed enough, but now the enormity of that error in judgment bore down upon him.
Clipped to the last page of the report, Cooper found a note from Connie. FYI. It appears you aren’t the only one interested in Johann Wolff. According to the Russians, two search requests were made for information regarding Wolff. That’s the reason they responded to my inquiry so quickly; they’d just finished the same search for someone else.
‘What the hell?’ Cooper’s mind raced as he reread the note. He then checked his watch. ‘Well, I guess it won’t hurt to ask.’
He pulled a tattered address book from the top drawer of his desk and flipped through the pages until he
