you, Professor. That will be all,” the prosecutor concluded.
Von Sievers, however, added one more rather unexpected statement which, by order of the judges, was stricken from the record at the defense lawyers’ request. Nevertheless, the statement did appear in the transcript Bacon received from the Office of Military Intelligence, and the lieutenant studied it closely, as it was highlighted in red ink. It said: “Before any funds could be released, each project had to be approved by Hitler’s scientific adviser. I never did find out the identity of this person, but according to rumor, it was a well-known figure. A man who enjoyed a prominent position in the scientific community, and who operated under the code name Klingsor.”
A few days later, on August 20, the courtroom was packed, a sure sign that Hermann Goering, the Great Actor in this theater of justice, was to make his appearance. He arrived dressed in a white jacket—in his glory days, he had been known for wearing this uniform. Ruddy-faced and volatile, Goering was the heart and soul of the trials. Acerbic and straightforward, he had that special kind of impertinence that comes from years of giving orders without ever hearing a single protest. He faced his interrogators as if he were dictating his memoirs. In his best moments, he displayed an acidic, penetrating sense of humor, and in his worst, he was like a caged monster, ready and waiting to take a bite out of anyone, even Otto Stahmer, his own defense attorney. Stahmer was responsible for directing this short scene:
“Did you ever issue an order to carry out medical experiments on human subjects?” he asked. Goering took a deep breath.
“No.”
“Are you acquainted with a Dr. Rascher, who has been accused of performing scientific research on human guinea pigs at Dachau, for the Luftwaffe?”
“No.”
“Did you ever issue an order authorizing anyone to carry out unspeakable experiments on prisoners?”
“No.”
“As president of the Research Council of the Reich, did you ever order plans for the development of a system of mass destruction?”
“No.”
Sir David Maxwell-Fyfe, the British prosecutor, rose from his seat.
“You were a great pilot,” he said courteously, “with an impressive service record. How is it possible that you cannot remember those experiments, which were performed so as to verify the resistance of the uniforms used by the air force?”
“I had many tasks to attend to,” Goering explained, with the same civility as his interrogator. “Tens of thousands of orders were issued in my name. Justice Jackson has accused me of having ‘fingers in every pie,’ but it would have been impossible for me to keep track of all the scientific experiments undertaken by the Third Reich.”
Maxwell-Fyfe then presented as evidence a series of letters between Heinrich Himmler and Field Marshall Erhard Milch, Goering’s right-hand man. In one of these letters, Milch thanked Himmler for his assistance in facilitating Dr. Rascher’s experiments with high-altitude flights. One of these experiments involved a Jewish prisoner who was flown to twenty-nine thousand feet without oxygen. The subject died after thirteen minutes.
“Is it possible,” continued Maxwell-Fyfe, “that a high-ranking official directly under your command—such as Milch—could have been aware of these experiments even though you were not?”
“The areas under my control were classified in three categories,” Goering explained, almost smiling. “‘Urgent,’ ‘Important,’ and ‘Routine.’ The experiments performed by the medical inspector of the Luftwaffe fell under the third category and did not require my attention.”
Never again was mention made of the scientist whose job was to approve the Third Reich’s scientific projects. Never again was Klingsor’s name mentioned. Goering certainly didn’t bring it up, and Von Sievers himself, upon a second interrogation, denied ever having uttered the name. This one dubious mention was all Bacon had to go on.
The lieutenant slammed the dossier shut.
HYPOTHESES: FROM QUANTUM PHYSICS TO ESPIONAGE
HYPOTHESIS I: On Bacon’s Childhood and Early Years
On November 10, 1919, the New York Times ran the following front-page headlines:
LIGHTS ALL ASKEW IN THE HEAVENS
Men of Science More or Less Agog Over Results of Eclipse Observations
EINSTEIN THEORY TRIUMPHS
Stars Not Where They Seemed or Were Calculated to Be, but Nobody Need Worry
A BOOK FOR 12 WISE MEN
No More in All the World Could Comprehend It, Said Einstein When His Daring Publishers Accepted It
Albert Einstein was forty years old, and this was the first time his name had ever appeared in the New York Times. His first article on special relativity, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” which included the famous equation E=mc2, had been published fourteen years earlier, in 1905, and four years had passed since his last revision to the general relativity theory. Nevertheless, this was the moment when the public first became aware of Einstein and his significance. Einstein would become something of an oracle, the symbol of a new age, and almost every word he uttered would hereafter be recorded and reprinted by newspapers all over the world. The Treaty of Versailles had been signed only a few months earlier, putting an end to the Great War, and the world was now a different place. People everywhere seemed to sense that humanity was at the dawn of a new era, and Einstein was its prophet, a man whose advice and wisdom should be heeded. In a letter sent to his friend Max Born (one of the first interpreters of the relativity theory), Einstein actually lamented his newfound circumstance, with the modest self-confidence that he was famous for: “Just like the fairy-tale hero who transforms everything he touches into gold, everything I touch turns into scandal for the newspapers.”
From 1916 to 1917, Einstein had been developing a proof that could establish the validity of the general relativity theory. Unfortunately, there were few methods that could conclusively prove his assumptions were accurate. One of them was to gauge the curvature of light as it moved closer to a sufficiently large object, but this could only be done during a solar eclipse. Unfortunately for Einstein, Europe was mired in war at the time, and communications between German scientists and the outside world had come to an abrupt halt. As such, few physicists even knew of Einstein’s project, and he was forced to wait for the war to end before he could find someone who would be able to confirm his findings.
Long before the Great War started, Einstein had struck up a correspondence with Sir Arthur Eddington, and once Einstein was able to resume contact after the war ended, the illustrious English physicist immediately jumped at the chance to test the relativity theory in an experimental setting. They quickly set the date: May 29, 1919, just a few months after the armistice was signed. On this day, they would be able to observe a spectacular solar eclipse from any point close to the equator. In early 1919, Eddington secured the necessary
