Chapter II: Part V
Chapter II: The Gambit of the West
Part V
February 17, 1936
Fr. Martin Kappel gazed out a third-floor window of the IG Farben Building. Frankfurt twinkled below in the gathering dusk. There was such contrast between the harsh lighting of the offices and the living, breathing metropolis.
“Herr Schmidt?” It was his host, IG Farben senior scientist Artur Weinstadt.
“The city is beautiful tonight, Artur.”
“It is, it is.”
“Tell me, Artur. Are you religious?”
“Not particularly.”
“Do you ever wonder why you are here on Earth?
Weinstadt sighed. “It would only drive me mad to wonder about a thing that I cannot know.”
Kappel turned from the window, looking deeply into the scientist’s eyes. “Your children, Artur. How old are they now?”
“Six, eight and eleven.”
“In seven years your eldest will be a soldier. Do you really think peace will wait that long?”
“I always believed, Herr Schmidt, that the war would be over by the time my family was sucked into it. After all, even the World War lasted less than four and a half years.”
“You remember our talks, though, Artur. Hitler is not a Kaiser or even a Bismarck -- he is a Bonaparte. Napoleon’s ambition plunged Europe into fifteen years of war and brought France to total ruin.”
“It’s too dangerous. I cannot do it again.”
“Walk with me.”
Weinstadt turned off the office lights and locked the door, followed into the hallway by the man he knew as Paul Schmidt. Weinstadt raised an eyebrow, but Kappel shook his head. They reached the end of the corridor and took the paternoster lifts to the building’s opulent lobby. All but a few of the IG Farben employees had already gone home, and each footfall echoed on the fine marble floor. Weinstadt presented his credentials to the doormen and the two men passed under the large portico and onto the wide lawns of the complex.
The IG Farben Building, constructed in 1930, was the largest and most modern office building in Europe.
Kappel led him to a stone bench on the deserted grounds. “Artur, I realize the risks that you have run. Of course I do. But as you well know, you have already extended yourself fatally far. Another step will not change things for the worse now, but has a real chance of saving everything.”
Weinstadt lit a cigarette. “What went wrong with the first batch?”
“I have no better idea than you do. One thing I do know is that the package was assembled by a man with no experience of such matters.”
“What do you mean?” The scientist eyed Kappel darkly from behind horn-rimmed eyeglasses.
“I mean someone who had never handled so much as a firecracker.”
Weinstadt flung the cigarette to the ground. “I risked my life for that! My family!”
“Keep your voice down,” hissed Kappel.
“Alright. I risked my life to get exactly what you needed. The theft could be discovered at any hour of any day, and so I run that risk again and again and again.”
“Next time, someone with more experience will assemble the package. I promise.”
“Can’t you get some other kind of explosive?”
“Not readily, and not for what we need.”
Weinstadt buried his face in his hands. It was almost fully dark. “I’m sorry. What you’ve said is right, but it is simply too great a risk. Didn’t you see what happened to the people that tried to kill Hitler at Berchtesgaden? Shot!”
In truth, Weinstadt had run a far greater risk than even he could imagine. In fabricating his bomb, Lössner had packed the highly powerful PETN-13 loosely into a heavy paper shell along with primary explosive and an improvised fuse. When the bomb fizzled, Kappel had learned, Sicherheitsdienst agents set about dissecting it, trying to trace the materials back to their source. The precious kilograms of high explosive had contained chemical fingerprints directly traceable to IG Farben companies. Kappel had learned of the discreet SD searches and interrogations at a munitions plant, but chosen not to share this information with Weinstadt, as it would only frighten him.
Kappel clenched his jaw, deliberating whether to tell Weinstadt that the man who had assembled the bomb inexpertly had paid with his life at Konradshöhe. He decided to err on the side of caution. The aftermath of Operation Brutus had been too devastating to allow such carelessness. Still, the explosive was too important.
Putting a man in fear is no sin.
“Artur, if you do not want to go further I will have to understand. However, you are a risk to us for what you already know. Believe me when I say that I want no harm to come to you, but if you do not act, eventually they
will catch you. When they do catch you, they will torture you in ways that you cannot even imagine. You will tell them everything you know about me -- all the things I trusted you with. From this, many men other then yourself, and many families other than your own will be destroyed. Why should we risk that?”
“Is that a threat?”
“I hope not, Artur.”
The scientist had a distant look in his eye. “I will give you what you need.”
“Good. When can you have it?”
“A month. Maybe more. I will try.”
“Thank you, Artur.”
Weinstadt spotted the still-burning cigarette on the ground and stamped it out. Without another word, he slipped off the bench and was swallowed up by the darkness of the grounds. Alone once more, Kappel looked into the night sky and breathed a silent prayer for the man who would again risk everything for him.
(or we should know).
