Daniel Danser
The God Particle
For my wife Paula
‘Lord, grant that my work increases knowledge and helps other men.
Failing that, Lord, grant that it will not lead to man’s destruction.’
PROLOGUE
The Professor’s anxiety manifested itself as a small, involuntary tic above his left eye as he waited in the anteroom to be summoned.
It had been much worse as a child. The constant eye-blinking, mouth twitches and facial grimaces had elicited derision from his classmates and frustration from his parents, who were referred to one physician after another in an attempt to cure his affliction. By the time he’d reached puberty, he was an introverted loner, preferring to study in the seclusion of his bedroom, avoiding any and all social interaction with his peers.
His disorder seemed to lessen by itself as he moved into adulthood, but the years of reclusiveness had taken its toll, making him feel awkward around people his own age. He was much more at ease with his teachers; they were only concerned with his academic ability, which was bordering on genius. He was always the top of his class in every subject, which compounded the alienation he received from his fellow pupils; however, it also gave him a sense of self-worth, an inner resolve to rise above the taunts and jibes, the mimicry and the mockery.
As a young man, he was able to control the twitches almost completely using the techniques taught to him by the psychologists he’d seen over the years. Whenever he felt an attack coming on, he would take a deep breath and think of something that was comforting, a secure place that he created in his mind.
As an adolescent, he would project his mind back to when he was a child and focus on the times his mother would wrap her arms around him. Nestled in the warmth of her bosom, she would gently rock him backwards and forwards, reassuring him that it would be alright. But, when she died, the memory became too painful, feeling only grief whenever he thought of her. It took years of uncontrollable tics before he was able to regain a mental image that worked as successfully. The contentedness he felt through the loving embrace of his wife was a strong enough panacea in all but the most extreme of situations. This was one of them.
He wasn’t daunted by the individuals in the next room; he had dealt with their kind for most of his life. They were, quite simply, bullies. They had achieved their status through fear and intimidation, removing any individual that was a threat to their authority by whatever means was available to them. That meant, certainly for two of the people next door, having them arrested on trumped-up charges and shot.
No, his nervousness was for the lie he was about to deliver and whether they would swallow it. His life, the lives of the select number of people whom he had taken into his confidence, and those of millions of others, depended on it.
He had worked at the Vemork Heavy Water Facility since it was re-commissioned by the Nazis following the invasion of Norway in 1940. Prior to that, he’d been Director of the German nuclear energy project Uranprojekt, informally known as the Uranium Club, based in Leipzig, where he met his wife Clara, who was working as a research assistant there. She was the only woman, other than his mother, that had seen the person behind the affliction. She accepted his twitches for what they were. She hadn’t reacted the way most people did on first meeting him, embarrassed to make eye contact, but had made light of his involuntary facial tics in a playful way.
‘Are you winking at me, Professor?’ she had teased. He’d reddened, and started to give her his practised formal explanation of the condition, when she laughed that mischievous laugh of hers, disarming him instantly. A brief courtship ensued and they were married in the following spring.
It had been over two years since he’d last heard that laugh and he missed it, and her, every waking moment. He wrote to her at least once a week but was never allowed to post the letters; such were the restrictions surrounding his top secret research. External contact was limited to fellow academics that could assist him in achieving his goal, and only then if they had been fully vetted by the Gestapo.
‘They’re ready to see you now, Professor Reinhardt,’ the woman dressed in a khaki green knee-length skirt, beige shirt and black tie, said expectantly, holding the door open for him.
He promptly gathered his files together, brushed past her and entered the room. She followed him in, closing the door behind her and took up a seat in front of a typewriter in the far corner.
The room was brightly lit and dominated by a large, polished mahogany table, around which sat his audience dressed in their full ceremonial military regalia uniforms adorned with their medals. It was clearly a display of machismo. He felt decidedly underdressed — a peahen amongst competing peacocks. He recognised most of the faces — some he had met before, others he knew by reputation only. He had been given a list of attendees by his secretary that morning; it read like a who’s who of the upper hierarchical tier of the Third Reich.
Reichsmarschall Göring was the most senior of the dignitaries and was, therefore, chairing the meeting at the head of the table. To his right sat Generalfeldmarschall Keitel, Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces and, to his left, was Heinrich Himmler. Reinhardt had never met the man before and wondered whether he was there in his capacity as Minister of the Interior or, more unsettlingly, in his other guise as Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel, otherwise known as the SS. Sitting next to him was Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and Munitions and, opposite him, was Philipp Bouhler, Chief of the Chancellery of the Führer.
The final two Reinhart knew well, having worked with both of them before the war. The first was Paul Harteck, director of the physical chemistry department at the University of Hamburg, but today acting as an advisor to the Heereswaffenamt, the Army Ordnance Office. The second was Abraham Esau, head of the physics section of the Reichsforschungsrat, the Reich Research Council. The latter two were obviously invited to verify what Reinhardt was about to deliver. The only person missing was the main man himself. However, as he made his way to the projector, the Professor noticed a hastily-hung picture of Mein Führer looking down at him from the normally bare grey wall.
‘I trust we can dispense with the formalities, Professor Reinhardt?’ Göring’s voice boomed from the far side of the table, filling the room with a rich, baritone resonance.
‘Er, yes, by all means,’ the Professor replied, nervously pulling the steel-rimmed glasses to the edge of his nose and peering at the bull of a man over the top of them. The beads of perspiration had started to multiply on his forehead as though someone had just switched a shower on. He took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow and ran it over his balding pate. ‘Does anybody mind if I open a window? I find it a little stifling in here.’
He was referring to the immense pressure he was under to convince the people around the table to abandon the project, but he knew they would take it as a benign comment about the stuffiness of the room. Nobody objected, so he went over and slid the window up. The cool breeze of a September morning wafted over him, giving him a slight respite and enabling him to clear his mind for the task in hand. He thought of his wife — her hair, her eyes, her mouth, her laugh, her embrace — and hoped he was doing the right thing. If he succeeded, he would feel her arms around him again soon; if he failed, they would probably execute her, along with the rest of his family.
He returned to the projector and faced his inquisitors. ‘Gentleman, as you are all aware, this facility was set up with one purpose in mind — to establish the feasibility of using nuclear fission as a weapon against our enemies. I am here today to tell you that it is scientifically possible.’