by Howard Fast
“Go ahead, Clancy,” the Commissioner said.
“Well, sir,” I said hopelessly, “I don’t want to presume on what you already know—undoubtedly as well as I do—”
“Take it that we know nothing, damn it!” Comaday snapped. “That’s not far from the truth. Just talk about the bomb you are going to make and how you would go about it.”
“Very well.” I looked from face to face. The Senator was smoking, so I lit a cigarette. Heaven knows I needed one. I also needed a stiff drink, but that was not available. “I’ll try not to be too lengthy,” I said, “and to talk simply.” The Senator smiled, as if to say, “This I would like to see.” I went on.
“We’re talking about a process of fission—that is a chain reaction within the structure of the atoms of fissionable material. The result is an explosion of enormous heat, speed, and force. Thereby the bomb. I mentioned the first step, a large industrial process to produce the two fissionable materials we work with, uranium 235 and plutonium 239. Considering that we have these two elements—either one of them—what now? Well, the explosion itself, which we cause by inserting an extra neutron into the atomic structure of the fissionable material. I’m trying to be brief and clear—”
They nodded, watching me intently.
“Now what happens in the explosion is this: we’ll think of the fissionable atom as a sort of motor, running at very high speed. If we can cause a neturon to enter that motor and remain within it, we overcharge it, so as to speak. It becomes unstable and tears itself to pieces with tremendous force and immediately transmits the instability to the atoms around it. This is a chain reaction and an atomic explosion. The fact that this happens makes it plain why these two fissionable elements are found unconcentrated in nature. They are too unstable. The air around us is full of stray neutrons—”
“I’m not clear on the origin of these stray neutrons you talk about,” the senator said.
“Yes, sir. Cosmic radiation for one thing. Radioactive substances in soil, stone, water for another. Bricks emit neutrons. I would guess that this room contains thousands right now. That is central to the problem. If we had on this table in front of us a piece of uranium 235 the size of a lump of sugar, we would be in no danger. That is because the mass of such a piece is too small to block a stray neutron, to capture it, and to set it in what they call ‘resonance’ with the fissionable atomic structure. In other words, the neutrons plunge right through this small piece of uranium 235 without triggering it. Then such a small piece of fissionable material would be called a non-critical mass.
“To be critical—that is to be large enough to insure the trapping of a neutron and the subsequent explosion—a piece of uranium 235 would have to have a diameter of at least ten centimeters, or about two inches. But of course a two-inch cube or ball of uranium 235 can exist only theoretically, since at the instant of its existence, it ceases to exist and becomes an atomic explosion.”
“Yet they do exist,” the Mayor said.
“Yes—if you can think of existence in terms of one ten-thousandth of a second. As a matter of fact there is the problem of the bomb. I have read that when plutonium or uranium 235 are produced at the plant, they are manufactured in thin sheets of less than critical mass, and that these sheets are separated by insulation of cadmium or boron, both of which have the property of trapping stray neutrons. If these packages were immersed in heavy water, I imagine that the danger factor would be reduced to zero, since heavy water also traps neutrons. But you give me the problem of making the bomb. Well, let us suppose that I have sixteen cubes of uranium 235, each cube one half inch square. I could lay them out around this table, four cubes to a side, but I would not have an explosion. 1 would have to push them all together before I could have an explosion.”
“It sounds simple enough,” the Senator said.
“No, sir—not at all, if I may say so. It’s not simple. In the first place, this is highly radioactive material, and if I played with it carelessly, I would be injured beyond recovery. Secondly, if I just spread my arms and pushed the lumps together, I would get a partial explosion, enough to kill me and wreck this building—but no more than that. You see, once the fission begins, the released neutrons involved in the chain reaction move at a speed of about eight thousand miles a second. Since these neutrons have to cover only the few inches where the uranium is, the process is to all purposes instantaneous. It starts and finishes quicker than we can measure time, and it will start the moment any part of the mass becomes critical. In other words, if I pushed the lumps together, I would achieve only a partial explosion and a small one in atomic terms—no matter how quickly I moved. Not to mention the fact that I would kill myself.”
“Why wouldn’t the chain reaction leap to the other cubes of uranium?” the Mayor asked.
“Because the blast blows them away even quicker. The point is that the non-critical masses must be united in the same fraction of a second. That is why I couldn’t make the kind of a bomb you could drop from an airplane. I would want a machine shop and a staff of expert technicians for that. But while I’ve been talking here, I have been trying to think of what kind of a bomb I could make. I’m not sure. I would want a lot more time to think about it. But just off the top of my head, suppose one took twenty non-critical masses and loaded them into shotgun shells. Then suppose one mounted the shotguns so that they were fixed on a single short-range target, say inside a room like this. Then it would only be a question of a technical problem—how to fire the twenty shotguns simultaneously. I think that might be a bomb—I’m not absolutely certain because I have been talking about this only in the vague general terms I remember. It’s not a comfortable thought.”
“No, it’s not a comfortable thought,” the Mayor agreed.
They asked a few more questions before Commissioner Comaday said,
“Then it wouldn’t surprise you, Clancy, if I told you that someone claims to have made a bomb?”
“It would surprise me, yes. But I’ve thought of it.”
“What do you mean, you’ve thought of it?”
“That someone might make that bomb,” I replied, thinking that of all the things on God’s earth, I hated that bomb most and feared it most.
“You make it sound too simple,” Fredericks said, and I told the F.B.I. man,
“It’s almost as simple as I make it sound.” Then I added, “Providing you have the fissionable material.” There was a little while of silence then, and after that, Comaday said,
“What I am going to tell you now, Clancy, is a particular kind of secret. It may stop being a secret tomorrow or the next day or next month; but until it stops it’s a rotten, miserable secret, and you will regard it as such. Do you understand?”
I nodded.
“All right,” he continued. “We begin with a man named Alexander Horton, a physicist—not a terribly brilliant man, not over-talented in terms of bis discipline. But a man of education, competence, and conscience.”
“I would hardly call it conscience,” Jackson interrupted. “Treason, disloyalty——”
“I am not indoctrinating Detective Clancy,” Comaday said angrily. “I am attempting to give him a necessary picture of a man, and we’ll all be better off if I give him that picture and get it over with. Ill thank you not to interrupt me again. If you want to tell the tale your way, you can have your turn.”
Jackson waved a hand and said, “Go on, go on—as was pointed out to me, I am here only by sufferance.”
“I said conscience,” Comaday turned back to me. “Other things as well—a touch of paranoia, perhaps, emotional instability, a depressed person. Consider all of these things. Alexander Horton, forty-one years old, five feet ten inches, blue eyes, slim, almost emaciated, physically in poor health if not worse, graduate of M.I.T., doctorate at Cornell, postgraduate work at Princeton, two years in the service—and then detached to work on the Manhattan Project. Then, after the war, five years at Oak Ridge—during which time he contracted a form
of radiation sickness. He was hospitalized and convalescent for two years. When he had recovered his health sufficiently to work again, he did not return to government service but found a place on the science faculty at Knickerbocker University, here in the city—”
I had my notebook out, but he shook his head fiercely.
“No notes. Just remember what I am telling you. It will stay with you. If you have any questions, throw them at me.”
“Please go on, sir,” I said.
“Any questions. Don’t worry about notes.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now we come to last summer. Last summer Horton spent four weeks in Great Britain. During those same four weeks, a delegation of Soviet physicists were being entertained in England as guests of the Royal Nuclear Society. You know the organization?”
“I know of it,” I nodded. “Sir Julian Bell.”
“That’s right. Bell is the chairman. Now understand that Horton is not without reputation in scientific circles. He was invited as a guest to a banquet of the Royal Society given in honor of the Russians, and he was seated next to a Russian physicist, Academician Peter Simonovsky. Evidently, they developed an immediate rapport. Simonovsky’s English is excellent, and they were able to talk without the intervention of a translator. When the banquet had finished. Simonovsky left with Horton. They went to Horton’s hotel room, where they spent most of that night talking. During the subsequent two weeks, Horton and Simonovsky met on six different occasions, and at least once they spent an entire day together.
“Now about Simonovsky. He is fifty-three years old, a tank commander during World War II, decorated for gallantry and with a record of impeccable loyalty to the Soviet State. He was one of the key figures in the development of Soviet atomic weapons. Like Horton, he has no close relations. His parents died in a Nazi concentration camp. His wife and three children were killed by a bomb in Kiev during the war. He is described as a thoughtful, quiet, and deeply unhappy man.
“Very briefly, Clancy—but you now have the background to our problem. The problem itself came to light a week ago, when three identical letters were delivered by mail. One was addressed to the President of the United States. The second was addressed to the Secretary of State. The third was addressed to the Mayor of New York City. Later on, a copy of this letter will be furnished for your careful inspection. Since it is a long letter, I have summed up the first part in what I have just told you. The letter was written by Alexander Horton.”
“And mailed where?” I asked him.
“In New York City, Morningside Station. I am now going to read a part of that letter. I quote:
“‘The result of all my discussions with Mr. Simonovsky was a decision to go ahead seriously with what we had first considered as an improbable mental game. I think the factor that decided us was our ability to lay hands on the fissionable material. A careful check through the files at Oak Ridge will reveal the discrepancy between inventory and manufacture—a super-critical quantity of uranium 235. I have managed to obtain this critical mass, through circumstances I naturally cannot reveal. Mr. Simonovsky has been equally successful. When you receive this communication, both mechanisms will be in existence, mine in the heart of New York City, Mr. Simonovsky’s in the heart of Moscow. A short discussion with any competent physicist will remove any doubts concerning our ability to construct these explosive mechanisms. And I assure you that in each case, the explosive mechanism is powerful enough to wipe out the entire heart of the city.
“‘So at this point, gentlemen, the fate of the two largest cities in the two most powerful countries in earth, lies not with ambitious, querulous, and irresponsible politicians, but with two men of science. You may reasonably doubt that this improves the existing impasse. We feel that it does.
“‘We feel that the situation previous to our intervention was intolerable and ultimately dangerous to all life on earth. We also feel that since we were at least in part responsible for creating that situation, our responsibility for dealing with it continues. We make no choice or preference between two sets of intractable rulers. We make no resort to ethics, for the only ethics we see at work are the ethics of power. Therefore, we have resorted to power on our behalf.
“‘We are now possessed of the power to destroy New York and Moscow. Forty days from the date of this communication we shall exercise that power and destroy both cities—unless before the expiration of those forty days the United States and the Soviet Union come to some agreement for the banning of all atomic weapons.
“‘You will obviously doubt our abilities and oar determination. But we believe that where the test of our sincerity is so costly, you will choose to accept our declaration. We devoutly hope that you will.
“‘A letter similar to this one is now being read in Moscow.’”
The Police Commissioner paused and laid the letter aside. “Signed, Alexander Horton. There it is, Clancy. The day it was posted, Mr. Horton disappeared. Mr. Simonovsky also disappeared.”
So that was how it began, and from that time to the time I brought one hundred and fifty thousand dollars down to the Commissioner’s office, fifteen days had passed. Before that, between the time they received the letter from Horton up to the time they had me into the Commissioner’s office to convince me that I ought to give my all to save mankind—or at least two cities to which mankind was somewhat attached—seven days had passed. Fifteen and seven add up to twenty-two. Eighteen days were left.
I am telling the story as best I can. If it moves backwards and forwards, it is because that’s the way Clancy moved. It makes sense to me to go back to the beginning at that time when I had returned to my apartment one hundred and fifty thousand dollars poorer than when I had left it. I made fresh coffee, lit a cigarette, and reflected upon the way it began. Now, telling the story, it seems to me to be the appropriate moment to go into the beginnings. There is also another factor, however; we live generally and at ease with the smaller and larger lunacies of mankind. We are devoted to the proposition that we are sane and that most of our actions are the actions of sanity; this is because we forbear to look at ourselves or our world objectively. I had withheld that objective point of view until the night of the bribe. Then I was forced into it, and I found myself sitting in an empty room and laughing. If I were a woman, I would have been weeping; and inside it felt the same.
And peculiarly, I had no regrets for the money, even though I sensed that the money might be the price of my life as well as other things. I was not yet in possession of what they were paying me for, and I might never be in possession of it; but let them find out what I had done with the money, and the life and future of Tom Clancy would hit a new low.
As to why I had acted the way I did, that too rested in the depths of Clancy. John Comaday, a wise man, had not embraced me for my honesty. Honesty is a loosely descriptive term. So is conscience, which Comaday had used descriptively concerning Alexander Horton. At the root of the matter was the fact that I did not want the money. I never joined hands with it. It stayed aloof from me, as so many things have remained aloof since Helen’s, death. I didn’t want to sleep under the same roof as that money, and I brought it downtown.
Now even though I had never met Comaday, the Police Commissioner, before that day of the gathering in his office, Comaday probably knew something about me. A man in his position can ask and will get answers, and here and there were people who worked with me and knew me, at least a little. They might have told him that Clancy was less brave than careful; possibly, he wanted that. They might also have told him that I never waved a flag or a platitude if I could help it, and possibly that too was something he wanted. In any case, he trusted me enough to tell me what he told me; and then he sat back and looked at me for a while before he said,
“No questions, Clancy?”
“Questions. I don’t know where to begin, sir.”
“You heard it. You were pretty damn sure that you could make a bomb when we put it to you. Do you believe Hor
ton?”
“Well, sir,” I said, “it’s not a question of believing him. That puts it on me, which is meaningless. One would have to know a great deal about Horton and how his mind works. One would also set them to taking inventory at Oak Ridge or whever they keep mat damn stuff and see what’s missing.”
“It’s missing.”
“How much?”
“The equipment for one large fission bomb—that is, the uranium.”
“How?” I began, but he interrupted and almost snarled,
“Don’t ask me how, Clancy! You were in the Army, weren’t you? You know how they run things? They’re not even sure it’s missing! They’re also not sure it’s not missing! They just seem to be short the arming of a bomb!”
“I hardly think that’s called for,” the Senator said mildly.
“No, sir? I think it is, by God!”
“And in Russia? You’ve been speaking to them?”
“Speaking to them? Indeed, Clancy. We share a mutual sense of idiocy and a mutual case of jitters. Possibly it’s cheering to know that they are as irresponsible as we are. They will not admit that uranium or plutonium is missing; they also refuse to state that it is not missing. They love their secrets, so they prefer to keep their secrets but confess their very bad case of nerves.”
“They have not found Simonovsky?”
“No, indeed. They have not found Simonovsky. We have not found Horton. For seven days we have been using every shred of experience we possess in the art of finding a missing person. We have not found him. That’s not hard to understand. If we were to publicize this business, we would have a major panic on our hands. Major is a small word. We would have a first-class disaster. Try to imagine the consequences of depopulating the metropolitan area!—granting that it can be done. Where do you house ten million people? How do you feed them? No, it’s not even that—it’s the breakdown of everything that goes with it! That’s what we have to contend with in our search for Horton. It has to be a quiet search, a silent search—yes, a secret search.”
