A Thousand Suns

by Alex Scarrow

  Mark nodded. ‘Great, well that’s that covered, then.’

  Chris grinned nervously. ‘We’ll get that old boy . . . and then he’s going to spill it all even if I have to pull his fingernails out to get him talking.’

  A thought occurred to Mark. ‘They may have already got to him.’

  And if they had, Wallace surely would already be dead. If Chris, with the little that he knew, was a liability worth silencing, then Wallace most definitely was.

  ‘We’ve got to try, though, Mark. I can’t think of anything else to do.’

  ‘We could go to the police.’ Mark puffed out air. ‘This is some heavy-grade shit you’ve walked into, Chris.’

  ‘Don’t I know it.’

  They sat in silence, the only sound the waves from the sea pounding the beach a few hundred yards away, and the gentle idle of the Cherokee’s engine.

  ‘And anyway, I’ve still got this,’ said Chris, lifting his hand up so that Mark could see from the moonlight what he was holding.

  ‘Sheesh! You got the safety on?’ said Mark, reaching out for the weapon and tilting it away from his head. ‘That’s a Heckler and Koch you got there, and -’ his fingers sought out the safety control lever on the left-hand side ‘- now the safety is on.’

  Chris drew in a gasp. ‘It was off? Shit, I’ve been fondling the bloody thing since we left my room. Lucky I haven’t shot a hole through my bollocks.’ He laughed anxiously.

  Mark nodded. ‘Very lucky. HKs have a light trigger.’

  Chris looked at the gun in his hand, wondering if he had the guts to use it. He hadn’t fired back at that hitman in the motel, but then he hadn’t even been aware that he’d still been holding on to it until now.

  Mark must have read his mind. ‘No point taking it unless you’re prepared to use it. You wave that thing around in front of guys like that, and they will take you down in a heartbeat.’

  Chris felt the cold, dead weight in his hands, and the odd, overpowering sense of comfort it gave him. ‘I’ll use it if need be.’

  ‘You ever trained with weapons, Chris? Ever fired a gun?’ Mark asked. ‘I’m not sure this is one of your better ideas.’

  Chris flicked the safety lever upwards and downwards. ‘Okay. Safety on . . . safety off . . . right . . . that’s me trained up. We should go now, before I chicken out.’

  Mark looked sternly at Chris. ‘Grab him and we run?’

  Chris nodded. ‘Grab him and run, that’s the plan.’

  Chapter 41

  Mission Time: 5 Hours, 42 Minutes Elapsed

  7.47 a.m., 2 miles outside Nantes

  ‘We’ve definitely got a damned leak,’ said Max, studying the fuel gauge.

  Pieter tapped the glass of the display hopefully with his finger; the dial remained resolutely still.

  ‘Shit, that’s nearly three-quarters of it gone,’ growled Pieter.

  Three-quarters of it gone, and we’ve flown about one-fifth of the distance.

  ‘We must have taken some damage to the internal tanks and we’ve been leaking fuel since.’ Max could have kicked himself; he should have spotted this earlier. If it had been the familiar cockpit of a Heinkel he would have.

  ‘We haven’t got enough, Max.’

  ‘I know that,’ he answered testily.

  There was not enough fuel left to complete the mission. The choices on how to proceed were limited. Either the mission was going to have to be aborted or they were going to have to go down with the fighters to refuel.

  ‘I don’t think we’ve got a lot of alternatives here, Pieter.’

  ‘We abort or we refuel?’

  Max nodded. ‘If we abort, you know what that means, don’t you?’

  Pieter knew. Major Rall had instructed them both very carefully on this potential outcome. If damage to the plane meant they would be unable to reach America, they should arm and drop the bomb anyway. At the very least, the detonation of the bomb, albeit not on the required target, would still demonstrate to the world that the Germans had got there first and had a massive destructive capability. That alone might still be enough to cause the Americans to think things over.

  ‘What do you think about refuelling?’ asked Pieter.

  ‘Let me think, let me think.’

  They were approaching the last waypoint before Nantes; from there they should be able to navigate their way by eye to the airfield. It didn’t give him much thinking time. Going down with the fighters to refuel hadn’t been a part of the plan. It seemed the Major hadn’t considered what they should do if fuel became an issue. The extra tanks had been internal. Rall must have assumed they were safe from damage there.

  Now Max was alone in having to make the risk assessment of doing this. If they were overrun while they were on the ground, the bomb could fall into the hands of the Americans.

  ‘It’s risky, Pieter. They could get their hands on it.’

  Max pushed the mask to his face and switched to the radio frequency for their men on the ground.

  ‘Medusa calling, what is your status?’

  He was about to call again when a reply came back.

  ‘Medusa we are ready for you now, come in as quickly as you can.’

  ‘How long can you hold there?’

  There was some delay in the answer; when it finally came, it was a different voice that answered. ‘Half an hour, possibly as much as an hour if we’re lucky.’

  ‘It’ll take about twenty-five minutes to refuel the plane, if we forget the extra tanks,’ said Pieter. ‘Would that get us there?’

  Max let his mask fall away again, so that their conversation remained between them. ‘It should do, this plane has a 4000-mile one-way range without them. It should get us there, with very little to spare, though.’

  He heard Stef’s voice over the interphone. ‘Approaching waypoint seventeen.’

  Pieter looked at Max. ‘Come on, we can’t throw it away now.’

  Time was running out, and Max felt the enormity of this tactical decision resting squarely on his shoulders. He cursed Rall for not anticipating this scenario and giving him a brief for it.

  ‘If we go down, we should refuel first, the fighters will have to wait.’

  Pieter sure as hell didn’t have a problem with that. ‘Fuck . . . yeah, of course.’

  Stef was on the interphone again, asking Max to confirm he’d heard the last navigation call.

  Pieter shrugged, ‘Max? What are we going to do?’

  Time is running out.

  He tried to visualise Rall, to imagine what the Major would advise him under such circumstances. For what he knew of him, the Major seemed a cautious man, a meticulous planner, Max made a guess that he would reluctantly advise them to return home if they could make it, or if not, to drop the bomb right there. But then he could see Rall’s ruined face; a rakish smile on the good side suggested the man had gambled once or twice before in his life.

  ‘If we’re overrun, I’ll have to detonate it on the ground,’ said Max.

  Pieter nodded with reluctant agreement. ‘You’ll have to.’

  ‘You understand what that would mean?’

  Pieter nodded. ‘Yeah. There are worse ways to go.’

  ‘Fine, we’re going down, then.’

  Max had made his decision; his hands loosened around the control yoke. He was relieved, almost elated to have cut through the last few moments of indecision.

  ‘All right, Pieter, let’s get ready.’

  He pulled the mask to his face and spoke into the interphone. ‘Stef, Hans . . . we’ve got a fuel leak, which means we’re landing alongside Schröder and his boys so we can get a top-up.’

  Chapter 42

  Mission Time: 5 Hours, 50 Minutes Elapsed

  12.55 a.m. EST, the White House, Washington, DC

  Truman stared silently at those members of his war cabinet and the Joint Chiefs of Staff who had been recalled and able to attend at such short notice. Many of them, with the exception of Donovan and Wallace, looked as if t
hey had been dragged out of their homes, their beds, or reluctantly from some social function.

  ‘Little more than an hour ago, I was informed of something very disturbing, gentlemen, an intelligence report from our people in Europe. Colonel Donovan, will you please . . . ?’

  Donovan nodded and picked up a piece of paper; he read from it. ‘At 2100 hours, Eastern Standard Time, we received a wire from our OSS operation in Germany. Yesterday, a platoon of our airborne troops discovered a partially destroyed laboratory on the outskirts of Stuttgart.’ Donovan looked up from his sheet of notes. ‘I should stress that, although these boys passed on news of their discovery promptly to the intelligence people over there, it took them a little time to work out what it was they had, and for the information to make its way back to the OSS over here. So this is nearly twenty hours old. Anyway, the laboratory appears to have been used to refine uranium, a cyclotron was discovered there and -’

  ‘Would you explain to us all what a cyclotron is?’ asked Truman.

  Donovan turned to Wallace, who stepped forward to address the men at the table. ‘A cyclotron is a machine that magnetically separates U-235 from U-238. It’s an efficient way to refine on a small scale. We tried it over here, but it was too slow a method, requiring frequent cleaning of the magnetic heads.’

  ‘So then it appears that the Germans have been at it,’ interrupted Truman.

  The response from around the table was one of quiet discomfort.

  Truman nodded at Donovan to carry on.

  Donovan cleared his throat and resumed reading his notes. ‘One of their technical team was taken prisoner near the lab; he had been wounded. This technician spoke briefly to a field medic before being taken to a field hospital, where he died a few hours later.’

  Donovan looked up at the men around the table and finally to Truman. ‘The medic reported that this technician talked about working on atomic weapons, and that a bomb had been moved from this installation in preparation for imminent deployment.’

  This time, there was only silence from around the table. Truman’s face hardened as he studied the faces of his cabinet members and the Chiefs of Staff present. This assembly of middle-aged and distinguished faces around the conference table, faces that still poorly concealed a disapproval of him, cast judgement on him as the man who could never replace Roosevelt. They all remained impassive, poker faces, none prepared to offer the vaguest gesture of support or encouragement as he continued to fumble his way through this problem, alone it seemed. None of these wise men seemed to have any advice for him now. He turned to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Leahy. ‘Do you have any thoughts on this?’

  The Admiral cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘That does sound like we’re talking a whole new ball game, sir. Perhaps Donovan’s young man can let us know if he still thinks it impossible for the Germans to have built at least one of these atom bombs.’

  ‘Mr Donovan, your technical adviser, Mr . . . ?’

  ‘Wallace, Mr President,’ Donovan obliged.

  ‘Wallace, you informed me at our last meeting that it was highly unlikely that the Nazis could make an atom bomb due to the amount of this stuff, uranium, that they would need. That is correct, isn’t it?’

  Wallace nodded. ‘Yes, sir, Mr President.’

  ‘So if this is an accepted fact, then this new intelligence report withstanding, it remains impossible the Nazis have a bomb. Am I correct again?’

  Wallace felt cornered.

  There is a remote possibility, one that hasn’t been discussed.

  ‘Mr Wallace?’

  Bill Donovan looked up at him and frowned, urging him to answer the President. Donovan would be expecting him to confirm the President’s assertion. But then Donovan wasn’t a physicist, he wouldn’t know about . . .

  ‘No, sir. It is theoretically possible, although very unlikely, that they could have built a bomb.’

  Both Donovan and Truman looked sharply at Wallace. ‘How come?’

  Wallace felt the eyes of all of them boring into him. He should have at least made a mention of this in the previous meeting, no matter how unlikely it was, if only to cover himself. Now it was going to look like he’d deliberately kept information from them. Or that he was simply incompetent.

  ‘It could be a fast-cycle emitter,’ he uttered reluctantly.

  ‘Fast-cycle -? What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

  ‘It’s a theory, sir. A proposal that accelerating the very start of the nuclear chain reaction and specifically shaping the discharge of neutrons will release enough energy to extend the reaction beyond the fissionable material. Thus much, much less U-235 would be required to produce a bomb, but of course the danger would be that the chain reaction doesn’t eventually burn out, but carries on indefinitely.’

  Truman shook his head, irritated by the unwelcome return of techno-babble to the conversation.

  ‘In other words, sir, if the theory stands, a bomb made in this way could potentially . . . uhh . . . destroy everything sir. A doomsday weapon of sorts, Mr President.’

  Truman paled.

  ‘It’s just a theory, sir,’ Wallace added. ‘There are many men working on the Manhattan Project who have already debunked it as impractical.’

  ‘But it seems the Germans have taken this theory more seriously?’

  ‘Yes, sir, it would have been the only way they could have proceeded. If their physicists had dismissed the theory as ours have done, they wouldn’t have even begun the process of making a bomb. They would know that the resources they’d need to muster for a single atom bomb would be well beyond their grasp. So it looks like their people believe the fast-cycle process can work, Mr President. But I must reiterate, sir, that the theory is considered flawed by all of our physicists working with Dr Oppenheimer, including Dr Oppenheimer, who has already described it as a load of nonsense. Any bomb designed along this principle will almost certainly fail to detonate.’

  Truman stared long and hard at Wallace. ‘And why didn’t it occur to you to mention this to me yesterday?’

  ‘It is a flawed theory. It’s simply wrong, sir.’

  ‘How certain are you of that, Wallace?’

  Wallace swallowed nervously.

  ‘Give me something I can understand . . . one chance in ten, in a hundred, a thousand?’

  ‘It’s impossible, sir, to give you a figure like that. All I can say is that it is very unlikely that this kind of bomb will work at all.’

  ‘Unlikely,’ repeated Truman.

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Not “impossible” . . .’

  ‘Highly unlikely, sir,’ Wallace added.

  ‘And given they need much less of this uranium to make one of these fast-cycle things, is it possible they could have made more than one?’

  Wallace nodded. ‘If they have taken this theory on board, then yes, sir . . . needing much less uranium than one hundred and ten ounces, it is possible they may have acquired enough U-235 to have made several of these bombs. But I must stress that it is highly improbable -’

  Truman raised a finger, ‘But, you cannot reassure me and say impossible.’

  Wallace swallowed nervously as the men around the table studied him intently.

  ‘No, sir, I cannot give you that assurance. No atom bomb has yet been tested. In truth, we cannot know for certain what will happen when we eventually test our bomb, nor the Germans’ much smaller device. As it stands, the science is entirely theoretical, sir. We have only our arithmetic to guide us.’

  The colour continued to drain from Truman’s face; he was shaken by this young man’s reply. The fellow had been unprepared to utter the word ‘impossible’, leaving Truman to draw small comfort from the young man’s assurance that it was highly improbable.

  ‘I think from this point on I would like us all to consider that the threat issued by Adolf Hitler might be a genuine one . . . and given his demand for unconditional surrender expires today, I’d suggest we had better start working out w
hat we’re damn well going to do.’ His words had started out calmly, but a slowly emerging sense of panic and frustration had driven him to shouting by the end of the sentence. The men around the table shuffled awkwardly under his steely gaze.

  He looked at his watch. ‘If our deadline started from zero hundred hours yesterday, I’d guess we have sixteen and a half hours until it expires. For now, I will presume that this deadline will be when he intends to explode this bomb.’

  Chapter 43

  Mission Time: 6 Hours, 1 Minute elapsed

  8.06 a.m., an airfield outside Nantes

  Max cast a quick, anxious glance at his wristwatch; fifteen minutes had passed since they had landed. He checked the pump gauge on the side of the fuel truck; it showed a reading of just under 3000 gallons. They needed to fill the main tanks at least - they took about 3600 gallons. The extra tanks inside the fuselage towards the rear of the plane were useless. Several gashes, caused undoubtedly during the skirmish with the Mustangs, had resulted in their losing the entire load. The gashes were so bad they couldn’t even consider patching them. Hans had reported that the back of the plane near the tail-gun reeked of aviation fuel.

  Pieter was leaning out of the pilot’s window and periodically calling out the fill readings for their tanks, but his attention was caught by movement near the entrance to the airstrip.

  ‘Max!’ he shouted down. ‘It looks like something -’

  The pizzicato rattle of gunfire from the barricaded entrance to the airstrip made both of them jump. It was a quick exchange, no more than a couple of bursts from two different guns. A moment later Koch jogged across the grass field towards them from the direction of the guard hut.

  ‘What’s happening?’ asked Max.

  ‘It was a jeep-load of American soldiers. They drove up to the barricade and my men opened fire on them.’

  ‘Did they get away?’

  ‘Yes. So, I expect we’ll have some more company very soon.’ Koch studied the fuel gauge and turned to Max. ‘How much longer do you need?’