The Memler has forgotten none of Martina’s criticisms of her vulgar manners. The Memler delights in tormenting Martina, and in addressing her with the familiar du. You thought you were something important, you thought a Jew could critique my methods. Well, see where that has brought you, Jewess Martina.
Martina has suggested that an automated computing machine could aid in the calculations their group is making. Fr?ulein Memler bristles: Martina was brought here to see whether carbon could be made pure enough to substitute for heavy water as a fissile material, not to question the methodologies of the high command. Martina argues, once only, in exchange for a beating and twenty-four hours with no rations.
Martina knows that any success she helps Uranverein 7 achieve will support Germany’s war effort, but she can’t help it: the problem of whether you can harness the energy released in the fission of an atom is so absorbing that she can’t help studying it. It’s her weakness, her strength, to burrow so deep into the understanding of nature’s secrets that she forgets the world around her.
14
EYE ON THE PRIZE
YOUR BROTHER SAID you were the person who knew the most about your family’s history.”
Herta Dzornen Colonna eyed me warily in her doorway. I’d sent the doorman up with one of my cards and a note that said I was investigating a matter that involved her father. That simple message got her to agree to let me in, but the doorman lingered in the entryway, making sure I wasn’t going to assault her or smash any of the highly polished statues that dotted the apartment.
Herta was at least ten years older than her brother. Her white hair stood out from her head like a medieval wimple, showing the same high forehead as her brother, the same round pale eyes. Her khaki dress was cut in a boxy, bush-jacket style, but the fabric was soft, the kind that drapes nicely and sets you back a couple of grand at the nearby Oak Street boutiques.
“I’ll be all right, Gordon,” she said to the doorman. He left reluctantly, telling her he wouldn’t shut the outer door so he could hear her if she needed help.
Limping slightly, Herta led me through an archway into her sitting room, the one with the view of the lake. It was dusk now; you could see running lights on the boats out on the water. Herta seated herself on a nubby white couch. Only a very clean and tidy person could sit on furniture like that.
She darted a glance at me, uneasy, almost fearful, then looked away, at a glass étagère whose shelves were filled with photographs. It was an involuntary sideways look, as if she was afraid for the safety of the pictures. Of course, that made me stop to inspect them before I sat down.
Most were contemporary, children, grandchildren—a daughter with three children who’d all inherited the family’s high-domed forehead. A son who looked like the sandy-haired man in Herta’s wedding photo. There were a number of older pictures as well, several showing two little girls in the short, cap-sleeved dresses popular in the 1920s and 1930s, the little girls sitting on ponies, the little girls and a giant hound following their mother. Both girls and the mother were carrying rifles. I glanced at Herta: she might be lame and elderly now, but she knew how to shoot.
A photograph of Dzornen in white tie bowing to the King of Sweden caught my eye. His actual Nobel medal, mounted on navy velvet in a shallow box, stood next to it. I bent to stare at it. There’s an aura to that prize, not because of the gold, although it glowed in the darkening room. I supposed this was the shrine that Julius had mentioned.
Herta coughed loudly behind me. “You said you had been talking to Julius about our family.”
I straightened up and joined her near the window. There was a tubular chair, black leather, chrome arms, in one corner. I pulled it over near her—I didn’t want to leave mud or sweat or something human on the white upholstery.
“Yes, I went to see him about Martin Binder. Martin’s grandmother has hired me to find him, and I know you knew her in Vienna. Back when she was K?the Saginor.”
She sucked in a breath. “Why did she tell you to come to me? To us, I mean?”
“She didn’t,” I said. “But your families’ histories intersect; her mother was your dad’s student. Ms. Binder thinks he was her father.”
“Has she been telling you that lie?” Herta knotted her fingers in a way that reminded me of Kitty twisting the cabling in her heavy sweater.
“Is it a lie?” I asked.