Page 114 of Code 6
“He’s risking his life to protect technology that is of vital interest to the nation,” he said.
“That’s about the size of it.”
“The kid’s a fucking patriot.”
“In my eyes, he is,” said Kate.
Enrique’s expression turned deadly serious. Kate had never served, but she recognized that special “no soldier left behind” resolve when it was right in front of her.
“We’re going to get that boy out of here,” he said like a man on a mission. “I guarantee it, Kate.”
Chapter 52
A package arrived for Christian Gamble at his home that evening. It was from Kate.
He was worried about her, as any parent would be. He trusted Enrique with his own life—literally—but entrusting anyone with the life of your daughter was another level entirely. He went to the study, slit open the large envelope, and peered inside. Papers. It was perhaps a sign that he was more worried than he would have liked to admit, but his first thought was that she’d left a Last Will and Testament.
Calm down,he told himself.
He took a seat on the couch and slid the pages from the envelope. A cover letter was on top, and it occurred to him that he could count on one hand the number of handwritten letters he’d received from his daughter in his lifetime. Actualletters, not store-bought Father’s Day cards with a signature and hand-drawn heart. His mother, he’d learned after her death, had kept every letter he’d ever written to her. Technology was good. But not all good.
Dear Dad,it began, and he hoped this letter would be from Kate’s heart, something he’d have reason to cherish, unlike the envelopes of information he’d sent to his mother,classes are good, I got a new car, it’s been snowing a lot. None of the things he wished he’d said were in those letters, but somehow his mother had divined his intentions and kept a shoe box full of letters not worth keeping. Maybe Kate, in similar fashion, had finally come to understand and even appreciate the “tough love” that, in anger, she’d described as “no love at all.” His hand shook as he read on, but only because Kate’s first sentence was completely untrue:
I know you think it’s a waste of my time to write a play.
Wasthattheonlymessage he’d been sending? He couldn’t have been more proud of her, and he’d been trying to convey that in his own way, but he wanted her to have options and make good choices. How could there have been such a disconnect between what she heard and what his heart was saying?
“I’m not a heart reader or a mind reader,” Elizabeth had once said to him. “I suppose you never stopped loving me, but it would have been nice to hear it.”
He continued reading. The pages were from Kate’s play, but she wasn’t sharing them for his approval or comment.
I just want you to understand that Patrick and I have no intention of revealing vital company secrets. I want you to know what we mean by “Code 6.”
The letter explained how she and Patrick had learned about the world’s first personal information catastrophe. How technology drove the Nazi concentration camps. And how the last thing a Jew wanted to be was “Code 6.”
After the war, there were trials. At Nuremberg, the world witnessed a complete absence of remorse. The verdict was just. The death sentences were carried out. But Nuremberg was the exception, not the rule. In some places, there were no courtrooms. There was no trial. Sometimes men just... disappeared. One of those men was Herman Rottke. He was the general manager of IBM’s subsidiary in Berlin. Rottke knew what Code 6 was. This is my imagining of things, but here’s everything I can tell you about Code 6.
He put the letter aside and picked up his daughter’s script. Actually, she’d sent only a portion of it. Act two, scene three. He read, and he saw, exactly as Kate had imagined: Mr. Rottke’s last moments on earth,as he sat with his head down and hands bound, bathed in the hot light of an interrogation lamp, facing a Red Army interrogator somewhere in the Soviet-occupied sector of Berlin in 1946.
“Do you mourn for your friends who hanged today?”
Rottke was silent, his gaze fixed on the floor. The Russian interrogator leaned forward, forcing the prisoner to look him in the eye.
“You knew these men, didn’t you?”
“Some of them.”
The officer resumed pacing. “Wilhelm Frick. Minister of the Interior. Author of the Nuremberg Race Laws. You knew him?”
“I met him.”
“Ernst Kaltenbrunner. SS leader. Head of Secret State Police. Commander ofEinsatzgruppen. Hans Frank. Governor-general of Nazi-occupied Poland. Your company did business in Poland during the war, did you not?”
Silence from Rottke. The interrogator removed a short stack of Hollerith punch cards from a folder and fanned them out like a poker hand before Rottke’s eyes.
“My men sacked the Nazi Labor Service Office in Warsaw. We found thousands of Hollerith punch cards like these. Tell me, Mr. Rottke. Why would the Labor Service Office need so many Hollerith cards?”
Rottke looked up with disdain. “I have no understanding of how they were used.”