“I suspect we can converse someplace more private?” the professor asked.
Lee kept his curiosity quiet for the moment. This man already had too much information going in; no need to give him any more. He gestured to the door of the offices and the quieter and much cooler spaces beyond.
“Mr. Hamilton, will you join us, please? Right this way,” Lee said as he held the door open.
As they walked in, several women typing at their desks looked up as their machines went silent. Colonel Lee knew that every one of them had a free hand soothing the handle of a Colt .45 in a holder just below the level of their desks. The two men standing by a watercooler looked shocked as one of them even allowed the water in his conical paper cup to spill from his hands. Lee knew these two men were also on the highly secret detail to bug the scientist’s car and phone. Lee looked at them until the better part of valor made them shy away. The large American escorted his guest into his office and was followed by young Hamilton, who rolled his eyes at the secretaries, who weren’t secretaries at all, and the two men he had been assigned with the night before. He knew they were all probably going to end up in the Pacific Ocean after the colonel was finished with them. The old man took a seat, and Lee noticed the satchel was still pinned to his chest.
“Coffee, or something a little stronger, Mr.…?”
“Colonel—you know very well who I am. After all”—he looked up at Hamilton, who saw himself and his ineptitude reflect off the man’s glasses—“your men here practically informed me of your interest. By the way, young man, always check the door for tape across the door’s jamb, a simple trick for sure, but one that informs very well that your private property has been entered… how do you Americans put it? Oh yes, ‘on the sly.’”
“All right, I’ll bite. Yes, we do know who you are, sir. You were being watched as an enemy agent of not only the United States but of the people of Argentina. You are Professor Arnold Wentz, climatologist and oceanographer. You’re sixty-one years old, from Dortmund, Germany. Fell out of favor with certain elements within the Reich and was sent into what amounts to permanent exile in South America. In the United States’ economic parlance, you make forty-seven dollars and fifty-two cents a week in salary. Not very appreciative of a man with so many letters following his name.”
The Nazi remained silent. His guess as to who these Americans were was now confirmed. He also knew that since this Colonel Lee exposed everything to him, he would either be able to convince him of his sincerity or he would be found floating facedown in the River Platte. German agents within these borders had confirmed beyond doubt the large man knew his business.
“Now, we seem to know each other, Professor. What can I help you with?” Garrison asked as he placed his size 15 shoes up on the desk and waited.
Finally, the old man lowered his satchel and took a deep breath. Treason was not a thing to be taken lightly, especially against the Gestapo and the death dealers of the Third Reich. He opened the case and removed an item, and then, with untrusting eyes at both Lee and Hamilton, he opened a map and spread it out.
“Six years ago, in the spring of 1937, I was employed by the Reich’s Marine.” He looked back at the tall and thin Hamilton. “That’s the German Navy.”
Hamilton rolled his eyes and was about to say something when Lee’s raised left eyebrow stopped his retort.
“The project was called”—Wentz smiled embarrassingly—“of all things, Operation Necromancer. This was a joint effort by the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht, and the navy to find a feasible way to cloak machines of war from enemy radar, which was mostly theory at the time and not a practical application. Most of us thought it was pure speculative theory at the time. Now all the world powers have embraced radar as a tried-and-true science. Operation Necromancer was an attempt at a new science called the unified field theory. It combines the sciences of electromagnetic radiation and gravity. To put it more simply”—again, the look back at an already irritated Hamilton—“uniting the fields of electromagnetism and gravity into a single sustainable blanket field.”
Lee removed his fedora and tossed it on his desk. He placed his hands behind his head and fixed the Nazi weatherman with a glare as if the man were wasting his time. “Invisibility.” Lee had read an article from the London Times about the theory, and the article was distributed to all station chiefs across the world. Lee thought the theory had far too many holes in it to make it work. But then again, he was a former politician with no mind toward the sciences. The ceiling-high bookcases filled with science periodicals in his office attested to the fact that Lee was trying to change his ineptitude in that regard.
“Correct, Colonel. I can see you have heard of this theory before.”
Lee didn’t respond; he just waited.
Wentz cleared his throat, unable to gauge the temperament of the giant American before him. The younger agent was easy; he was an eager beaver as the Americans called it. But this man was one of experience and something perhaps a little darker than any man he had ever met.
“Our first attempt at this science was using field generators the size of which were unheard of before this. The test would take place on board the obsolete battle cruiser Schoenfeld. A vessel chosen for its size and space. Of course, these generators were the most powerful German science could obtain and implement at sea. The final product of this attempt would be that these field generators would make it possible to bend light around an object via refraction so that the object became completely invisible to the naked eye. It also could achieve the desired effect of rendering the ship in question completely invulnerable to radar systems. This was gained through the use of capacitors arranged around the steel hull of said ship. In essence, gentlemen, it allowed the radar waves to pass harmlessly around the object.”
“Comic book stuff,” Hamilton mumbled, drawing a look and raised brow from Lee.
“Young man, I believe I explained the process is attained through built-in transducers disbursed throughout the ship’s exterior hull, designed so that it wasn’t noticeable to the casual observer. Basic science.”
Hamilton again rolled his eyes, and Lee caught it but said nothing, simply because he was also inwardly doing the same thing as the kid: not believing a word the professor was saying. Maybe an obvious ploy to get American sympathy and a free pass to the States for his own personal protection. But, of course, the young Hamilton couldn’t hold his tongue.
“Buck Rogers crap if ever I heard.”
Professor Wentz turned and once more looked at Hamilton. “Buck Rogers, yes, exactly. Your disbelief was and is to our main advantage in developing this science. So fantastic that no intelligence agency or military in the world would ever commit resources to stopping it.”
“Okay, so you were working on a cloaking device that would, if it were successful, make ships invisible to visual detection and defeats radar. What happened, Professor?” Lee asked.
“The project was stopped in its tracks by the party and Adolf Hitler personally.”
“This is going to take one hell of a long time, Professor, if you don’t stop with your dramatic pauses.”
“The ship, the battle cruiser Schoenfeld, was lost with all hands. Five hundred and thirty-seven men just vanished, never to be seen again, or so we thought.” The professor looked down at his worn shoes and then removed his glasses, which Lee noted were cracked in the left-side lens.
“Continue.”
“The experiment not only rendered the Schoenfeld invisible to our primitive radar systems of the time. It physically vanished from the view of over a thousand eyewitnesses. Just vanished.” Wentz reached down and brought six black-and-white photographs out of his satchel. Each was stamped in German in big red letters that Lee was educated in — TOP SECRET. “The reason I accepted this so-called banishment to this hot and miserable country was the fact that this experiment has to be stopped at all costs. One of the flaws in our system was in sustaining the energy needed from the power generators. They just weren’t powerful enough — that is, until a very distinguished man came up with the novel application in using what we now know as industrial-grade blue diamonds, found only here and in South Africa. Very rare and very valuable. I was sent here not because I fell out of favor but because I am tasked with finding these very elusive diamonds.”