41 Shearwater Place

Newport Beach, CA 92660

Cadorman@prodigy.net

(949) 413-3848 H

(714) 796-0119 W

June 15, 2002, Boston

"I don’t expect anyone to believe this story." Those were my grandfather’s words and they're still true

For me, it all started with the damn apartment in Manhattan.

I don’t know why my father never mentioned the apartment before. I guess it’s because it belonged to my Grandfather Stephen and Grandmother Lisa. Father rarely mentioned either of them, even though he was their son. It was like some kind of cloud hung over my grandparents. It wasn’t shame; I always had the feeling that my father was proud of his parents. But something about them made father afraid, as if he didn’t want to know too much about them. I guess that’s why he ignored the apartment, leaving it vacant for more than thirty years.

I wouldn’t have known about the apartment at all except I’d just turned twenty-three and my father, me, and Bill Driscoll, father’s attorney and long-time family friend, were celebrating my recent graduation from Brown and my admission to graduate school in literature at Columbia. We were sitting in the lounge at Father’s club, the Algonquin, on Beacon Street across from the Public Garden, starting on our third bottle of Mouton Rothchild Medoc. For one of the first times in my life I was witness to my father getting drunk. The three of us were getting drunk.

"Why not let the boy use that apartment of your fathers?" Bill Driscoll said, slurring his words.

If my father’s looks could kill, Bill Driscoll would have been a dead man.

Since I was already tipsy, I ignored my father’s obvious discomfiture.

"What apartment, Dad?" I asked.

investment property, Richard. Nothing that concerns you."

apartment is doing nobody any good sitting there vacant like that. With Richard going to school at Columbia, it’s a natural. Your parents both taught at Columbia, if I’m not mistaken."

"You mean you’ve been keeping Grandma and Grandpa’s apartment vacant for thirty years?" I asked.

My father was bent over his wineglass. I was afraid he’d passed out. Finally, he raised his head.

He heaved a sigh. "After what happened to them, they wouldn’t have wanted me to rent it." He shook his head. "I should have sold the apartment. It’s no good to our family."

"After what happened to them? Do you mean their car accident?"

Father didn’t look like he was listening. He reached for his glass of wine and took a long sip, then stared at the top of the table.

"A car accident? I thought your parents…" Bill Driscoll began.

"Shut up, Bill" My father said, cutting the lawyer off. "Richard knows about the car accident…that’s all."

"What do you mean, that’s all?" I asked. "I thought grandpa and grandma died in an accident while they were on vacation."

Father was clearly drunk. He took another long sip on his wine and stared at the glass. When he looked up he had a sad expression. "The hell with it. You’re old enough to know the truth, so I’m going to tell you."

"What truth?" I was feeling uneasy. My father looked like he might cry.

"You sure you want to talk about this right now, Arthur?" Bill asked, putting a hand on father’s arm.

Father patted Bill’s hand. "It’s alright. There’s no point keeping family secrets."

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"Your grandparents died when I was eighteen," father began. "I was away at Brown… my first year. I got the call in the middle of the night."

"About the accident?" I asked.

"Your grandmother and grandfather didn't die in an accident, Richard. They were murdered in their apartment in New York."

"Murdered?" I felt a thrill of excitement. I had never known my grandparents. They had always been distant figures from a past that preceded me. Grandpa Stephen was a psychiatrist and Grandma Lisa was a physicist. Both of them taught at Columbia. That was all I really knew.

‘They never found out who did it," Bill said. "It must have been a robbery or some random maniac. Maybe someone trying to get drugs from your grandfather. His office was downstairs from the apartment."

Father poured us all more wine. "It was no robbery and it was no random nutcase, Bill. It was the damn government…or Russian spies."

"Spies?" I was dumbfounded.

"What the hell are you talking about, Arthur?" Bill said.

Father looked around the club lounge, as though he was making sure no one was listening.

"I heard my parents talking. They thought I was asleep or couldn’t hear. When I was younger they talked about it openly. They thought I didn’t know what they were talking about."

"Talking about what, Dad?"

After another perusal of the lounge, father leaned forward. Bill and I leaned toward him.

"They worked for the CIA," father said in hushed tones. "They had something to do with the H-bomb."

"The hydrogen bomb? I thought Edward Teller invented the H-bomb." I said. I thought the wine must be clouding my father's judgment.

"Shh!" father said, casting a suspicious glance around the room. "They didn’t invent the bomb, but they had something to do with it. And with Russian spies. That’s all I know. Except they always had a fear that someone would come after them."

"Someone…who?" Bill asked, his skepticism obvious.

Father straightened up. "I don’t know. The Russians, I guess. Or the CIA."

"Jesus Christ, you’re serious about this aren’t you?" Bill said.

Father nodded. "I think that’s why they were murdered."

"Did the government investigate?" I asked. "What did the police say?"

Father nodded again. " The police came up with nothing. They made a show of looking into things, then dropped the case. No one in the federal government acknowledged any ties to my parents, except that my mother had worked for Oppenheimer back in the late forties."

"Grandma worked for Oppenheimer? J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the A-bomb?" I asked, not able to conceal my awe.

"She was his research assistant for a couple of years. That was at Princeton after he was finished with the A-bomb work."

"Your mother must have been brilliant," Bill said.

"She was," father said, a faraway look in his eyes.

"But why didn’t you sell or rent their apartment? " I asked.

Father gave me a thin smile. " I didn’t want to go back there at first. When I finally visited I had this strange feeling that whatever reason led to their murder was connected to that apartment. I had no idea what it was. I was eighteen and I wanted to get on with my life. I hadn’t been raised in that apartment anyway. Mother and father only stayed there when one or the other of them worked late in the city. The house on Long Island was home for me."

"I want to live there," I said, emphatically.

Father raised his eyes to mine and gave me a long, hard stare. "I can’t have you living where my parents were murdered, Richard."

"That was thirty years ago, Dad. Nobody’s even been in there in thirty years!"

"There’s something about that place, Richard. I don’t know what. I can’t help feeling as though that apartment holds the secret as to why mother and father were killed."

"Whatever they were killed for, it’s not going to be a factor anymore, Dad. We aren’t even at odds with the Russians anymore. Christ, they just joined NATO. The Cold War is over."

"He’s right, Arthur," Bill said. "Letting Richard live there might help you get over your feelings about the place…and put some closure on your parents’ death."

Father had that faraway look again. Finally, he looked at me and raised his glass. "O.K. Richard. I’ll put my parents’ ghosts to rest. And their secrets, too. You can stay in the apartment. Let’s consider it a graduation present from my parents to you. They’d be proud to have another Columbian in the family."

Located in a mid-eighties block of Park Avenue, the apartment was worth nearly a million dollars on the present market. The office that had been my grandfather's psychoanalytic practice was directly below on the ground floor and occupied by a lawyer who was unaware that the apartment above his head had once been connected to his space. The stairway leading from the ground floor to the living quarters above had been sealed off by a solid wall, leaving no trace of the stairway’s presence. Fortunately, there was a back entrance to the apartment on the second floor. The tarnished key that my father gave me opened the small door leading in from the narrow second floor hallway.

I expected that the apartment would be just as my grandparents left it the day they were killed, but of course my father had removed their clothing, their papers, and so forth, leaving only the furniture. I scanned the floor for bloodstains, though I knew that my grandparents had been shot in their bed. The bed was still there. I had a creepy feeling, staring at the bare bedframe.

The furniture was old and European looking. It was a wonder that no one had stolen it in the thirty years it sat dormant in the unoccupied apartment. I began moving my meager belongings into my new home. After living in an undergraduate dormitory for four years, I had very little other than books and clothes. I quickly finished unpacking and pulled the large overstuffed chair close to the window and opened a beer, surveying my new home.

I mused about my grandparents and their possible connections to the CIA and Russian spies. I wondered what dark secrets the walls around me held. If my grandparents were murdered because of their CIA connections, perhaps the clue to their deaths was still here, somewhere within the confines of the apartment. Everything I looked at in the apartment seemed perfectly ordinary. Then it occurred to me that I had not seen any sign of the stairway that had formerly led to the office below.

I got up from the chair, and still holding my beer, began to examine the walls in the area where I assumed a doorway should have been.

break in the wallboard the size and shape of a doorway.

I began removing wallpaper.

Beneath the paper, a large piece of wallboard had been glued into a break in the wall. I ripped the wallboard away with one horrendous tug. Behind the spot where the wallboard had been was a wide door made of solid oak. I tried the handle. The door was unlocked.

A wide staircase led to the darkness below. I felt around until I found a light switch, but nothing happened when I pressed it. Returning with a flashlight, I inched my way down the dust-covered stairs. The air in the staircase smelled old. I held a hand in front of my face to ward off cobwebs.

The stairway ran flush into the wall of the office below. The wall was solid, being held up by sturdy two-by fours and stuffed with insulation. Retracing my steps, I noticed a small alcove off to the side of the stairs that I had not seen on my descent. I swept the beam of the light into the alcove and, in the dim shadows, saw an old metal filing cabinet, the front of which was bent as though it had been forced open. I reached down and opened the top drawer. The drawer was empty.

The second drawer had been damaged. Someone had broken the locking mechanism and the door wouldn't close properly. Expecting to find nothing, I gave a not very hopeful tug on the handle and peered inside. The drawer was filled with files. They were my grandfather's clinical cases for the years 1946-49. Using the flashlight, I leafed through the first couple of charts.

Grandpa Stephen kept copious notes. I was fascinated. Gathering as many charts as I could carry while still holding the flashlight, I started to leave when the light fell upon a thick folder lying at the bottom of the drawer. I pulled the folder from the drawer and scanned it with the light. The title of the document was "The Prisoner’s Dilemma: A story that can never be told."

I left the patients’ files behind and took the folder upstairs, then returned to the refrigerator to get another beer, sat back down in my chair, and began to read. With each page I became more amazed at the contents of the document…and it’s importance. The more I read, the more I became convinced that it was this story that led to my grandparents’ murder.

Stephen and Lisa Mendelsohn died trying to add a page to the history of the cold war. The page they wanted to add would have frightened all those who read it. That was their purpose. I have no choice but to present the story to you, the reader, exactly as I read it that fateful morning in New York. These are the words of my grandfather…

* * *

April, 1970, New York

I don’t expect anyone to believe this story. In fact, I don’t expect anyone will ever read it. I am telling it in the third person, but it's my story - my wife, Lisa’s and mine. Over the years since we lived through the experiences detailed in these pages, we've been able to piece together the whole story. It's not been easy to learn the truth. There are many people in power, both on our side and on our enemy's, who don't want the world to know how close they brought us to annihilation.

When I finish writing this, the manuscript and the clinical records that support it will be sealed behind a solid wall. Lisa and I have made a pact. We are going to tell what we know to whomever will listen. We will start with those who are in power and who need to know. If they won’t listen, we will tell the public. It is a story worthy of public interest, but not one that will flatter our leaders. If we are prevented from telling our story, by whatever means those in power use to prevent us, our hope is that whoever finds this story, years from now, will make it public. If not, it may never come out.

It is a story that needs to be told.

I begin the story with Fritz Houtermans. Fritz is a key to the plot that unfolds in these pages. He is tragic figure and a hero. When I finally met Fritz and he told me his story, I was overjoyed to hear that he was both alive and that his book, detailing his imprisonment in Russia, had been published. Fritz' tale is a fitting place to begin. Fritz Houtermans is one of the many remarkable people who shaped the world we now live in. In these pages you will meet many of the others.

S.M.

The Prisoner's Dilemma: A story that can never be told

By Stephen Mendelsohn, M.D.

1937, Kharkov, USSR

Alexander Weissberg kept up his relentless pace despite the stabbing pain in his side and the searing bite of the icy January air in his lungs. He silently cursed his flaccid, middle-aged muscles as he moved awkwardly, half running but careful not to slip and lose his balance, across the wide, empty, thoroughfare. He could not afford to slow until he reached the protective shadows of Potemkin Street - shadows that would shield him from the revealing glare of the lights on Lenin Prospect. A half-hour earlier he had passed two NKVD officers who had questioned him but let him go. He knew that they might be following him and if they saw him now, after curfew, he was finished.

It was more than the fear of the secret police that kept the streets deserted. Stalin had ordered the Moscow purge trials to be broadcast over the radio and everyone with a set was home, tuned into the proceedings. Radek and the other suspects were accused of plotting to kill Molotov, using his chauffeur to lure him to what would have been a grisly fate if the driver hadn’t refused. Weissberg knew that, like himself, the defendants were mostly Jewish - Bolshevik revolutionaries who were being weeded out of the party, using trumped-up charges like the present one, their fate usually death. Weissberg was no revolutionary. He was a physicist who had immigrated from Berlin to escape Nazi persecution... one of the first to flee in order to free himself from the Nazi terror. Now, a new terror had taken its place.

He scurried from one dark doorway to the next until, rounding a corner, he spied his destination. The upstairs windows of Fritz Houtermans’ apartment bathed the street in pale yellow light. There was a jumble of still-fresh tracks in the snow outside the door. Houtermans had the largest apartment among his émigré colleagues, making his house a favorite meeting place for the expatriate scientific community. Weissberg stamped the snow off his shoes and removed his heavy wool greatcoat, shaking it dry and creating his own small snow flurry before entering the door. There was no reason to alarm the others by telling them of his morning’s visit from the NKVD, but he must warn Fritz. Fritz was the one in danger.

The tinny voice of the state broadcaster could be heard echoing from Houtermans’ rooms at the top of the stair. Alex climbed the dark stairway with its single dim bulb, which created more shadows than light. He shuddered to think how easy it would be for the police to surprise them all. The others still didn’t appreciate the danger that hung over their heads.

Fritz "Fizzle" Houtermans detached himself from the tight-knit group around the radio. The huge German physicist, more than six feet tall and barrel-chested, threw his thick arms around Weissberg, wrapping him in a bear hug.

"Glad you could make it, Alex," Houtermans thundered. "Fix yourself a vodka and grab a seat. Muralov has already confessed."

Weissberg declined the vodka. The news of the confession raised his anxiety even further. He bent his head close to Fizzle's. "Have they said anything about their being Jewish?"

Houtermans looked surprised. He gave his friend an indulgent smile. "Of course not, Alex. This is Vychinsky’s trial and he has proven that he will protect Jews" Houtermans was referring to a sensational case of the previous year in which Andrei Vychinsky, Stalin’s grand inquisitor, had prosecuted two anti-semitic workers for murdering a Jewish physician. The case had been broadcast throughout the country as proof of Stalin’s benign attitude toward the Jews.

The other scientists who were huddled around the radio hushed Alex and Fizzle so they could hear the official newscaster describe the day's events and the prosecution’s case against the alleged plotters. The news report was liberally sprinkled with polemic against the "subversive forces" at work in society, especially the foreigners. At the mention of the word "foreigners," the scientists exchanged nervous looks.

"They are talking about us. It’s Germany all over again!" cried Hans Eisenstein, the gaunt, neurotically anxious physicist who worked for the ministry of defense. Since the day of his arrival, six months earlier, Eisenstein had been forecasting doom, as though his own effort to save himself by leaving a prestigious post in Wurzburg had overwhelmed him with morbid fear. He paced back and forth, wringing his hands. "We will all be rounded up and put in prison."

Houtermans slapped the man jovially on the back. "Have a glass of vodka, Hans. It will calm your nerves. You all must stop panicking."

The remaining guests muttered among themselves as they donned their heavy coats, mittens, and hats in preparation for leaving. Houtermans poured himself another vodka. He wasn’t going to let the others’ panic destroy his good mood. He wandered into the kitchen area, looking for crackers to go with his drink. Weissberg edged up beside him.

"I was questioned this morning, Fizzle"

Houtermans’ eyes widened in surprise." What are you talking about? Questioned by whom?"
"The police."

"What did they want?"

"They asked me about my relatives in Germany and in Poland. They asked if I was writing to them. They wanted to know who else in the department had relatives in Germany, and who remained in contact with them."

Houtermans face blanched. "What did you say, Alex?"

Weissberg looked around to be sure he wasn’t overheard. They were alone in the kitchen. "I told them only about myself. My mother’s sister and her children are still in Berlin. I’m sure they knew that already. I said nothing about anyone else."

"And they believed you?"

"They called me a bourgeois. They said I was protecting my German friends because Jews always stick together. They said they would be back. They asked me about you."

"Me?"

"They asked if you were still in contact with your friends in Germany. I told them no, but I don’t think they believed me. I think it ‘s too late for me, Fizzle, but not for you. You must leave Russia immediately."

"Leave? My friend, where would I go?"

"Back to England. You worked there once. Or maybe to America. Oppenheimer is at Berkeley. You and he were thick as thieves in Gottingen. "

"That was many years ago, Alex. You really think it will get that bad, here?"

Weissberg hung his head. Then he raised his face and looked his friend in the eye. "I think I was followed tonight."

"Tonight? You mean coming here?"

"I was stopped by the NKVD on the street. They asked me where I was going and I said I was going home. I think they followed me, but I lost them before I got here...at least I think so."

Fritz Houtermans gulped down the rest of his vodka and emptied the last of the bottle into his glass. His good-natured joviality had been drained along with the vodka. He tipped his glass and swallowed long and hard. "Fuck them, Alex. They offered us a haven from the Nazis, and now they turn on us. Stalin is not an anti-Semite, though. Molotov is the one we Jews should fear. I wish Radek had been successful."

Weissberg’s face showed his alarm. "Shh...Fizzle. You can’t say that."

"What does it matter now, Alex. If they have decided to purge their science of Jews, they will, regardless of what I say."

Everyone else had left. Weissberg headed for the door.

"Just a moment. I’ll walk you down, my friend." Houtermans quietly opened the door of the bedroom, looking in on his two sleeping children. His wife lay in bed, reading. She smiled and he blew her a kiss. "I’ll be right back," he mouthed to her, trying not to let the worry show on his face.

The two physicists walked side by side down the stairway in silence. When they reached the door Weissberg stuck out his hand. "Take care," he said, looking his friend in the eye.

Fizzle bear hugged the smaller man, again. "Be careful, Alex."

Closing the door against the icy blast of air, Houtermans wearily climbed the shadowy stairway. He felt sick. He had left Germany because of the rising tide of anti-Semitism and because his Communist leanings had brought him under even more scrutiny from the newly empowered Nazis. From there he and Charlotte had gone to Cambridge, but he quickly became bored with the dry British scene. He had decided to join his old friend Weissberg in Leipunski’s department at Kharkov. For nearly three years he had worked and lived more or less contentedly. But increasingly he began to hear of mysterious disappearances. He and his wife hadn’t known what to make of such stories. The Russians were prone to seeing plots in all sorts of places, and rumor, myth, and fact were constantly intermingled in tales told by everyone from housekeepers to newsreporters. He had grown insensitive to the rumors. He guessed he should have listened more closely.

Reaching the top of the stair he picked up his half-full vodka glass and switched off the lights. He stood for a moment in front of the window, watching the snow fall silently in the soft light from the gas lamp on the corner. The bent figure of Weissberg was just reaching the circle of light, his head down as he hurried through the deep snow. Suddenly two men stepped from the shadows. It was clear that they were police, with their long dark overcoats and heavy boots. Weissberg ran directly into one of them, his head lowered so far that he couldn’t see them standing in his path. Fizzle watched his friend’s pitiful attempt to flee. The police caught him by the collar and threw him to the ground, each of them delivering a vicious kick to his writhing body. Then each man took one of Weissberg’s arms, dragging him roughly toward Lenin Prospect. He had been arrested!

Houtermans continued to stare in disbelief long after the three figures had disappeared into the swirling shadows. Then he quietly slipped into the bedroom, holding his shoes in one hand and his drink in the other. His wife had fallen asleep, her book across her chest, the heavy down comforter pulled up tightly beneath her chin. She looked to him more vulnerable than usual. Silently he undressed down to his underwear, then crawled into the bed. Charlotte opened her eyes and smiled, sleepily.

"How was your gathering?" she asked.

He looked at her face, trying to memorize each feature and crease that he loved so much.

She smiled back at the warmth that shone in his eyes.

"You and the children must leave," he said softy. "Alex has been arrested."

A week later Fritz Houtermans was in Moscow, standing in the long line of hopeful travelers at the Customs House. He and Charlotte had traveled to Moscow under the pretense of a vacation, but his real motive was to secure permission to ship some of their most precious belongings to England. If he had gone to the Customs House in Kharkov, it would have aroused too much suspicion. The only danger now was that he would be recognized. Two days earlier he had been picked up on the street by the police and taken to the dreaded Lubyanka Prison for questioning.

The policeman who had stopped him had known exactly who he was. The questions had seemed pointless, having to do with people he hadn’t known except as names and faces in the university. Then, to his horror, they brought in Alex Weissberg, looking disoriented, perhaps drugged. He didn’t even seem to recognize Houtermans. The young sergeant went through the same list of names again, and asked if Houtermans had ever seen any of them with Weissberg. Fritz was emphatic that he had not.

The line took one step forward. Fritz looked up and saw three NKVD agents moving toward him. To his dismay, one of them was the same policeman who had picked him up for interrogation! Fritz turned away, scanning the room for another exit. He saw only a river of people, quieting into a pool of motionless terror as they eyed the approaching police. Turning back, he panicked when he saw that the three agents were only a few feet away from him. He ducked his head to avoid the eyes of the one who knew him, but it was futile. In front of him a small man, dressed in a trim, cheap, suit and looking like a bookkeeper or secretary, was looking wildly about, clutching a large package wrapped in brown paper and string. Turning, the man ran directly into Fritz, almost knocking them both to the floor. All three NKVD officers stared at the two of them. The familiar sergeant looked puzzled for a moment, then the light of recognition slowly spread across his face.

"Aha, our professor!" the mustached young policeman exclaimed. His two older colleagues, an overweight, sweating, bear of a man in his fifties, and a small dark

captain of about forty who seemed to be in charge of the three, fastened their eyes on Houtermans. The mustached sergeant whispered something in the ear of his swarthy superior, who eyed Fritz as though he was freshly bagged game.

" Professor Houtermans. Only here for a vacation, yet visiting the Customs House. Not planing to leave the country, are you professor?"

The mustached policeman grasped Fritz’ arm, pulling him from the line.

Fritz struggled. He was big enough to overpower the young policeman and his smaller superior. With a mighty lunge, he knocked them both to the floor, managing to stay upright himself, and bolting blindly away from the line in a direction he hoped was toward the door. He could see the end of the line, snaking through the opening to the street. He caught a glimpse of the bright, gray sky outside, the promise of freedom only fifty feet away, then suddenly, his vision exploded and he felt himself, as from a distance, falling in slow motion toward the floor. The older heavyset policeman had caught him full force on the left side of his face with the stock of his rifle, swinging it like an ax as Fritz had run by.

Fritz could feel the warm blood gushing from the inside of his mouth, tasting slightly salty and, oddly full of lumps. Lying with his face on the cold marble floor, he realized that the lumps were his teeth, dislodged by the force of the blow from the gun butt. He was sure they would shoot him, right there, in the pool of blood flowing from his mouth, unless he could get away. With a final reserve of energy, he pushed himself up on all fours, poised to resume running. He didn’t even see the fat policeman’s heavy boot coming. It caught him on the side of his face, level with his eye, crushing the orbital bone into tiny fragments and slicing through the eyelid. He felt nothing beyond the first surprising shock of the massive blow. Then he was no longer conscious of the policemen, the line, or the Customs House.

Inside the Lubyanka, Fritz awoke to the smell of his own blood. There was a roaring in his ears and the whole side of his head was throbbing. He reached up to touch his cheek and jerked his hand away; his face tender to his touch. With his tongue, he felt along the inside of his mouth, and could detect no teeth at all on the left side. His left eye was completely shut and the side of his face around it was swollen like a roasted potato, ready to burst. The pain was too much for him. He felt himself getting sick and when he hung his head off the edge of the cot on which he was lying, and threw up, he could feel the teeth coming back up in his vomit. Getting sick had exhausted him and he dragged himself back on the cot and closed his good eye, drifting back into unconsciousness.

When he awoke again, Fritz lay without moving. His face felt worse, but the pain no longer made him sick and his head was clearer. He listened to the sounds around him. No one talked. Every so often one of the prisoners on his cell block was taken past him, on his way somewhere. He heard the screams that followed, and saw the lifeless-looking prisoner dragged back to his cell, afterward. Fritz knew that sooner or later it would be his turn. He had no idea what they would ask him, or what he could reveal that could be of value to the state. He waited, lying in the dark, hoping the pain would go away.

When the door to his cell opened, he expected to be greeted by one or both of the guards, coming to take him to the interrogation room. Instead, he was faced by just one person; a small, cruel looking man, wearing a police uniform.

"My name is Lavrenti Beria. I am used to prisoners rising when they talk to me,"

the little man said, sneering at Fritz with contempt. Beria peered over a thick pair of glasses, which, combined with his plump physique and mostly bald head, would have made him look like a clerk, except for the hard, cold look in his eyes.

Fritz struggled to stand up. When he finally got to his feet, he towered over the other man, but he knew better than to act anything but deferential. Beria might be his executioner. "What do you want from me?" he managed to get out through the blood and swelling inside of his mouth.

"Whatever we want, we will get, I can assure you of that, Professor Houtermans. I am here to bring you to meet someone. You have a visitor and it would be unbecoming to ask him to meet with you in this filthy cell." Beria looked around with disgust at the blood and vomit on the cot and the floor.

"Come"

Fizzle tried to anticipate who his visitor might be. He desperately hoped it was not Charlotte. It would be foolish for her to try to see him and she would only be alarmed at his condition. He prayed that she was staying out of sight until Peter Kapitza, the influential Moscow University physicist, could get her out of the country. Beyond, Charlotte though, there was no one else in Moscow who would come to see him, unless it was Kapitza, himself.

He was ushered into a room not much larger than the cell that he had just left. To his surprise, Beria remained outside. The room was sparsely furnished with three chairs and a small wooden table. He collapsed into one of the chairs and waited. For almost half an hour he sat there, his face throbbing while he teetered on the edge of consciousness. Finally, the door opened.

The man who entered was tall, dressed in a worn suit and wearing a full beard, which reached to his chest. He took one look at Fritz and gasped. "My God, what have they done to you?" His eyes were filled with horror...and fear. He quickly sat down and put his head near Fritz’s, speaking softly in his ear. "Professor Houtermans, I am Igor Kurchatov from Joffe’s Institute at Leningrad."

Fritz fought through his pain to remember...then it came back. He hadn’t met Kurchatov, but he had certainly heard of him. He was reputed to be the rising star in Joffe’s lab. He had built the first cyclotron in the Soviet Union and had published extensively, gaining a reputation well beyond the borders of their country. Houtermans raised his head inquiringly at his visitor. "I don’t understand. What are you doing here? You have word from Kapitza? " He suddenly became anxious. "My wife! Something has happened to my wife?" He reached out and grabbed the sleeve of Kurchatov’s coat.

Kurchatov pried Houterman’s hand loose from his sleeve.. He glanced up at Houtermans briefly, trying to avoid looking at the man’s ruined face. " I’m afraid I know nothing of your wife. You must accept my apology. I wish the circumstances of our meeting were better for you."

"But then why are you here?"

"I must ask you about your work."

He looked up at Kurchatov with his one good eye. "My work? But why ask me? Kapitza is well aware of my work. Joffe is close to him, is he not? Kapitza is more accessible than I."
Kurchatov lowered his voice. "He is not so accessible. Kapitza is under house arrest. But it is not about your recent work that I want to hear."

"What then?" Fritz was confused

Kurchatov took out a pencil and a small pad of paper, placing them side-by-side on the table in front of him. "Your work at Gottingen. Your theories about nuclear fusion."

"The fusion theory? I have not thought about that in years"

The door opened abruptly, interrupting him before he could continue. The man who entered was tall and strikingly handsome, dressed in the uniform of a Red Army Colonel. He surveyed Fritz slowly, appraising him and the damage that had been done to his face. He nodded curtly to Kurchatov, then sat in the third chair, pulling a cigarette from his coat pocket. His cool, intelligent eyes stared at Fritz while he slowly lit the cigarette. There was something vaguely familiar about him.

"I am sorry to interrupt, Professor Kurchatov," the Colonel said. He smiled ever so slightly at Fritz. "You may continue your discussion of physics in just a moment, Professor Houtermans. I only have one or two questions for you. I am Colonel Pavel Sudoplatov from Army Intelligence."

Suddenly Fritz knew why the man had seemed familiar. The Colonel’s official duties were never acknowledged, but his name and face were known to many

Russians. He had been a hero in the foreign service of his country. Now he was rumored to direct the most vicious extension of the country’s international arm: the bureau in charge of assassinations. It was said that he had orchestrated the deaths of many foreign enemies of the Soviet. He was known as The Maestro. But what could such a man want with Fritz?

"Like Professor Kurchatov, I also am interested in your years at Gottingen, Professor. But I am less interested in your theories than in your friends, particularly one friend. I need to know everything you can tell me about him, his habits, his vulnerabilities...whether he can be approached as a friend."

"Which friend do you mean?" Fritz asked.

"Why your closest friend, of course. Professor Oppenheimer."

* * *

January, 1944, San Francisco

There was no perceptible breeze, yet the phalanx of gray fog marched steadily up Nob Hill, depositing a thick film of moisture, which soaked everything in its path. Within minutes the gently scalloped red tile eaves began to drip their excess beads of liquid, like slow and occasional raindrops, splattering the cleanly swept sidewalks below. Behind the wheel of his glistening black Packard, Yuri Rakolnilov extended his thickly muscled right arm and with a twist of his wrist, brought his car shuddering into life. He let the car idle for less than a minute, working the windshield wipers to remove the shroud of fog. The effort was futile, for within moments the car’s front window was covered with an opaque sheet of water. Yuri rolled the side window down, the dampness of the evening caressing his face like a cool cloth as he peered at the well-kept brown-brick apartment building across the street.

The two women stood talking in the mist. Despite the distance and the poor visibility, Yuri recognized his target. She was young and tall, with hair piled high on her head, her slim figure appearing lithe and fragile in the mantle of fog which wrapped itself around her. Her companion was older, more sturdily built, hatted and wearing a shiny, yellow, plastic raincoat. The older woman was preparing to leave. Soon, Yuri would be able to carry out his instructions from The Maestro. He had been waiting nearly a week...until her male friend, the young scientist, and now this woman who had followed close behind him, had both come and gone.

Yuri knew perfectly well who the scientist, Robert Oppenheimer, was for he had explicit orders not to harm him. Rakolinov’s victim would be the slim young woman he was watching from across the street; the woman whose only faults were that she knew too much and that the American authorities had discovered her. All traces of Oppenheimer’s connections to the Communist party must be eliminated - whether they were innocent or not.

After a final embrace, the older woman turned and crossed to the driver’s side of the green Chevrolet parked at the curb. She fired up the engine, running the wipers vigorously, her headlights poking feebly into the thick night air. As she pulled slowly away from the curb, the younger woman raised a hand to her mouth and threw a kiss toward the departing vehicle.

Jean Tatlock shivered. Whether she was reacting to the cold or to the flood of loneliness which washed across her with a frigid chill, she didn’t know. Now that she was alone, she became aware of her fear. Without Robert, the world felt dangerous. He would not be back. He had said so himself, and now Elizabeth had delivered the final confirmation. The FBI had discovered their liaisons and ordered Robert to put an end to them. He had no choice. If he disobeyed, he would lose his security clearance and his job. Robert loved her, but his job was more important; they both knew that. They had known this time might come. So long as she was with Robert, her contacts with Elizabeth Zarubina and the other members of the Communist Party had seemed exciting, even noble.. Now those same contacts felt sinister and frightening.

Opening the gate, she traversed the narrow walkway to the front door of her apartment building. She heard a car door close, and again, she shivered, turning to see who had arrived. The fog rushed at her and settled in tiny wet pinpoints on her face. No one was in sight. She could see only a few feet past the gate to the empty space which Elizabeth had just vacated. In the mist beyond, she thought she could see someone standing in the street, but the outline of the figure dispersed with the moving fog. She could feel her anxiety rising, tensing her body and creating a mounting panic, which she shook her head to keep under control.

Clenching her teeth and resolving not to let her fear get the best of her, she turned back to the door and inserted her key... only to find that the door was unlocked. She stiffened. Had she forgotten to lock the door when she left? She bit her lip. It was just the newness of Robert’s absence she was feeling. She reminded herself that she had often been alone. Tonight was no different from any other night. She stepped inside.

Her apartment was on the top floor. There were just four floors and no elevator. Someone, no doubt one of her neighbors, was on the stairs above her, for she could hear the footsteps. With only a dozen apartments, she could pretty much tell who might be about on the stairway by listening to which floor they were on. Whoever it was, was near the top. It must be Mr. Soames or one of the Wilkinsons, her closest neighbors. She felt reassured. Perhaps one of them would be up and out in the hall. She might invite them in for coffee. Anything to relieve her loneliness would help.

She switched on the lights in her apartment. Why had she left it so dark, she wondered? Bolting the door she crossed the living room floor, kicking off first one shoe, then the other. In front of the living room window she stopped. This is where she always waited to see Robert’s familiar figure walking up the hill...as though he was coming home. She began to cry. "Damn me!" she said softly, then again louder..."Damn me...and damn you too, Robert Oppenheimer!"

She thought she heard someone sigh.

She froze. She stopped her breathing and listened. Her lungs began to hurt from holding in her breath. There was nothing...just her fear. She was trembling. She had no one...no one to call...no one to run to. That’s why she was frightened. She bit her lip and balled her delicate hands into defiant fists. She wouldn’t let her fear overcome her.

In her stocking feet she moved toward the bathroom. Her steps were more brisk now, more resolved. She swept into the bathroom and walked to the tub, turning on the faucets, bending for a moment to test the rushing water, then crossing to the counter and taking a tissue, dabbing at her eyes, then blowing her nose. She stood, staring at her tear stained image as the mirror slowly clouded over with steam. Slowly, she began to unbutton her blouse.

Yuri stepped from behind the door...an ominous shadow in the misty mirror.

Her heart stopped in terror. Staring into the mirror with wide, imploring eyes, she pleaded for mercy. Yuri’s powerful hands gripped her around the neck, then in one deft motion, twisted her head sideways, cracking her spine, compressing and shearing the thousands of nerve fibers coursing from her brainstem to her spinal cord, leaving her terrified awareness floating disconnectedly, without sensation or movement.

He carried the woman’s body, the lolling head no longer connected to the muscles of the arms and legs, into the living room and to the window. Cradling her like a child in one arm, he reached down and unlatched the window, raising it above the level of his chest. Peering over the sill, he looked down at the sidewalk, four stories below. No one was beneath the window. Without looking at the limp body in his arms, he stretched his arms over the sill and dropped her, her body slowly spinning, end over end, her eyes looking out in terror, her arms and legs flopping unnaturally, until she struck the concrete below with a hard, wet thud. No one came out to investigate. The next morning her neighbors would wonder how they had missed the signs of potential suicide in their tragic, but uncommunicative neighbor. The newspapers would focus, briefly, on the problem of urban isolation, and Yuri would await his next assignment.

* * *