A timid knock at the door interrupted his thoughts and he looked up as a lovely dark-haired girl of about nineteen carried a tray into the office.
‘Your coffee, Herr Direktor.’
‘Thank you, Hannah, that is kind of you.’ He smiled. She truly was beautiful. Even wearing the dowdy, striped grey shift, Hannah Schulmann radiated a kind of inner tranquillity that always made him feel at ease with himself. And she was as talented as she was pretty; he had never heard the piano played more movingly than when her supple fingers moved over the keys. Her presence in his bed had made the last few months almost bearable.
The girl flinched as a guard dropped a box of files and he stood up and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder. ‘Don’t be frightened, my dear. You must go and join the others now.’
He watched her leave and experienced a painful twinge of what, in another man, might have been conscience.
It had been the late summer of 1941 before he had felt confident enough to approach Himmler with his findings. He found it difficult to think of Heini as the bogey man who had terrorized Europe. The intense, myopic stare and the unnatural stillness could be unnerving at first, but the Heinrich Himmler he had come to know was an affable dinner companion who called him by the familiar du and had always shown a genuine interest in his work. Himmler, who delighted in anything mysterious or enigmatic, had been fascinated by the Changthang casket, and when Brohm presented the paper outlining his discovery’s possible potential the owl’s face shone with excitement. As the panzers probed the suburbs of Leningrad, threatened Moscow and completed the encirclement of Kiev, Brohm received a call telling him to report to Templehof aiport. Two hours later he was on a Junkers 252 transport to Rastenburg for a personal interview with Adolf Hitler at his Wolf’s Lair headquarters. It was the only time he had met the Führer and he had emerged both hugely impressed and hugely disappointed. With the war all but won, Hitler had been at his most affable. In person, he had none of the enormous presence he projected at the great rallies Brohm had attended, but the scientist found himself mesmerized by the aura of power surrounding the man. To meet him was to truly believe. Hitler had clearly been well briefed on the subject and had immediately grasped its potential, but, just when Brohm believed he had received agreement to proceed, the Führer had called a third man into the room. The moment he recognized the visitor, Brohm realized he had been outmanoeuvred. Six years earlier Werner Heisenberg had been involved in a scientific scandal that had brought him into conflict with Himmler. Brohm had supported his chief and Heisenberg had been fortunate to survive. Now he was back in favour and Brohm knew he was in trouble.
Heisenberg went over the arguments for and against Brohm’s project and then pointed out the potentially catastrophic consequences of an error. Brohm had been forced to acknowledge the hazards and argued that no scientific experiment was without risk, but he knew he had already lost the battle. The Führer had brusquely shaken his head, too timid to truly appreciate the capabilities of what Brohm was offering. He left the meeting in a rage. Hitler had cost him his place in history.
But he had underestimated Heinrich Himmler.
When he met Himmler two weeks later, the Reichsführer-SS had been at his most charming. Since the launch of Operation Barbarossa, the Führer had a great deal to occupy his mind and could not be expected to oversee every tiny detail of national policy. Brohm’s project would go ahead, but under the auspices of the SS-WVHA, the economic and main administration office of Himmler’s vast organization. It was only now that Brohm was given an insight into just how vast. The SS had developed from Hitler’s bodyguard into a state within a state and with the financial power to match. After years of fighting for funding and laboratory time, Brohm now had everything he wanted, and more. More staff and more funding meant he could make greater progress, which in turn increased the project’s importance. When the bombs began to fall on Berlin the scientists and engineers had been evacuated to the bunker, the most advanced research facility in the world, and Brohm had been able to experiment on a scale that would previously have been unimaginable. And with each experiment he moved a step closer. Closer to harnessing the power of the stars.
And just as he had it within his grasp, it was over.
He felt a surge of anger that restored his resolve. His work was too important to stop now. Much more important than petty considerations like nationhood.
‘The Sun Stone is ready to be transferred, Herr Brigadeführer.’
Brohm looked up at his aide, Ziegler, in the doorway. He nodded. ‘Good, and you have my personal documents and records?’