Henrik whipped his gaze to the older man.
“And it will be us.” Koppel ground one meaty fist into one meaty palm. “That was a warning, boys.”
A warning?
The bombers wheeled back toward England.
The British could hunt those ships on the seas. Or they could prevent them from ever reaching the seas by bombing shipyards.
Unless the Danes stopped building ships. Or sabotaged them.
An urge billowed inside to find ways to thwart the Germans without detection, to boost the men’s courage. To take charge.
But Far’s office building loomed above him.
Henrik could never lead.
He couldn’t be trusted with power.
4
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY5, 1943
Adozen prisms lined Else’s bedroom windowsill, their colors extinguished by the blackout curtains.
Else sank into her chair, picked up a triangular prism, and angled it toward her desk lamp. She needed a stronger source of light. She needed the sun.
Dad had bought her this prism after Mary Sherwin shattered Else’s first prism—and their lifelong friendship.
“We’re in high school now,” Mary had said, a hiss in her voice. “You scare away the boys. No one likes an egghead girl.” She’d snatched Else’s prism from her hand and hurled it into the street.
How could Else stop being who she was?
For the sake of physics, she’d forsaken what most people considered normal high school and college years. Apparently she’d done it so she could be Sigurd Mortensen’s errand girl.
Else stood, shrugged off her suit jacket, and pulled on the comfort of a muted green sweater with cobalt blue eight-pointed stars circling the yoke.
An assistant was meant to ... assist. To participate in discussions and experiments, to write rough drafts of papers. But Mortensen had her doing cleanup, secretarial work, and errands.
That morning, the team had asked Manfred Gebhardt, the new graduate student from Germany, about the current work of GermanNobel Laureate Werner Heisenberg, who had once been Niels Bohr’s close friend.
Since Heisenberg’s visit to Copenhagen in September 1941, Bohr wouldn’t speak of the man. Rumors were, Heisenberg had told Bohr he was working on atomic weapons. Other rumors said Heisenberg believed such weapons weren’t feasible.
Just as the conversation grew interesting, Mortensen had sent Else on an errand.
Later, Mortensen had asked the team a question about the cyclotron. Else had worked not only with the institute’s cyclotron but also with Ernest Lawrence’s cyclotron at Cal—the first in the world. She’d answered Mortensen. He’d ignored her. Answers flew by, all wrong, until Gebhardt answered correctly.
“Excellent!” Mortensen had said.
Something petty and prideful in Else had wanted to spit out, “That was my idea!” But everyone would have seen her as a harpy.
She knew better than to complain to Wolff. “Solve it yourself,” he’d say. But it didn’t matter. Eventually her amiability and good work would speak for themselves.
The silence of the bedroom pressed on her. Although Laila and her family weren’t observant Jews, they kept the tradition of Friday night dinners.
Might as well help Fru Riber prepare dinner.
Downstairs, Else passed through the living room and dining room and entered the kitchen. Hearty smells of roast pork greeted her. Fru Riber ran ahyggelighome—cheerful and cozy.
