She’d gone to the university that first time, not to his house. What had she been hoping for? News of K?the, for sure, but some sign, perhaps a ghostly remnant of his affection for Martina herself that might cause him to sponsor her. None of that remained.
He’d shown no interest in whether K?the survived the war or not. Perhaps it was guilt for doing so little to help the child. K?the had been a sullen little girl, using no arts to attract him on the days Martina took her to the Institute. He didn’t want to bring K?the when he left for America, although Martina pleaded for her child. He apparently hadn’t wanted Martina, either, his brightest student, his ablest colleague as he’d once called her. Had it been Ilse who slammed the door on them, or his own fears or indifference?
Tonight her business is just that: business. She speaks to Benjamin in German; it’s easier, she doesn’t have to organize and reorganize sentences in her head.
“The Memler surely told you she saw me. You must have been expecting me.”
“You can’t speak to me here,” he hisses at her in English.
“I will speak to you anywhere,” she says coldly, still in German. “Do you wish to take me inside? Do you want a moment to call the FBI? Do you know what the Memler did at Innsbruck? Does it matter to you that people were dangled in cages above smelting ovens, that she watched, smiling, while prisoners roasted to death? Or that she had prisoners put in chambers filled with nitrogen to see how they would burst apart? I saw her more than once laughing at the spectacle of a naked prisoner in shackles being raped and then beaten to death. Men as well as women.”
He tries to stop the flow of words but she won’t be quiet.
“And now I find her here, with unfettered access to planes and money, working on a computer whose designs she stole, and I am told that I must not grieve for the past but commend her for being a warrior against Communism. Listen to me, du, I have been in Nazi camps and in Communist camps, and one is not different from the other, except that in the Soviet Union no one tried on purpose to murder me.”
Ilse comes to the front door. “Benjamin! Is that you? Is someone with you? Julius and I ate dinner two hours ago. Everything is cold now.”
“Yes, I know, I’m sorry. We ran late at Argonne,” he shouts back. “I’m just finishing a conversation. I’ll be in right away.”
He turns back to Martina. “What is it you want?”
“I want the rights to my computing machine. I want the Memler denounced as a war criminal and sent to prison or even executed. I want a place in a top lab. I want my daughter. I want American citizenship. My wants are enormous, Benjamin, and I will find a way to satisfy them. I only start with you, I don’t end with you.”
Ilse is still in the doorway, her body a square silhouette, Brünnhilde, ready to slaughter those who wound her, even her own husband. She calls again to Benjamin, who fumbles in his wallet.
“Do you have money?” he whispers to Martina. “Go to the Shore Drive Motel; it’s only a few blocks away. I’ll call you there.”
“I no longer sit in apartments or hotel rooms waiting for policemen to arrive so that I can be led to the next deportation station. We talk now, you and I, or not at all. Believe me, my next conversations will be with Edward Murrow and Walter Cronkite. Even if you and my department head in Nevada have no interest in the Memler’s war crimes, I believe Mr. Murrow will pay the story some attention.”
Ilse starts down the front steps. “Who is it who’s talking to you, Benjamin? Is it a beggar? Shall I call the police?”
A youth appears behind her in the doorway. “Who is it, Mama?”
Dzornen thrusts Martina into the backseat of the car, calling to his wife and son, “It’s someone from Nevada with an urgent message. I’m driving her over to Breen’s house. I’ll be back in half an hour.”
He climbs into the car, slamming the door shut to signal his fury. “You cannot blackmail me over your child. You never came to me during your pregnancy; for all I know, any man in G?ttingen could be your child’s father.”
“Oh, that is beside any point,” Martina says. “I am not here tonight because of my daughter, but because of this Memler monster stealing my machine and giving it to your friend Edward Breen. He has built it and claimed it for his own, and you, you are using it to build a heinous weapon that can kill every mother’s child on this planet. I can control nothing in this world, or very little, so I cannot stop you prostituting yourself for money or power or whatever it is you get from prancing around with men like Edward Teller. But I can stop the Memler from making one more schilling’s profit off my back. That I will do.”
Breen lives only four blocks away; the rest of the short ride is spent in silence. When Benjamin pulls the car over to the curb, he asks Martina what she proposes to say to Breen.