Rumors rained down. Not content with the sensationalistic newspapers, people made their own truths and spread them.
Even within the secrecy community, tales slid like snakes, with a venom of their own. Szilard was still talking to people in Washington, DC, about demonstrating the bomb rather than using it on a military or political target. This bothered many at Columbia. From Urey came firm arguments he tried on Karl and Fermi and others. So armed, he took a train to Washington, DC, to counter Szilard.
In his staccato style, Urey rapped out his points. The bomb was not certain to work. A demonstration would alert German defenses. Maybe they would move prisoners of war into likely target zones, especially Berlin. No conceivable way of showing off the bomb could be as dramatic as real use against a big concentration of, say, German armaments, or a city.
When Urey returned, everyone gathered around him in the big basement lab and listened to him tell his stories. He read aloud a letter of Teller to General Marshall, quoting: “ ‘Our only hope is in getting the facts of our results before the people. This might help convince everybody that the next war would be fatal. For this purpose actual combat-use might even be the best thing.’ ”
“Will this be enough?” Karl asked.
“I think it’s pretty clear that FDR feels as we do,” Urey said with a smile.
• • •
Carefully, Karl read the letter Groves had just handed him.
FEDERAL BUREAU OF INVESTIGATION
April 7, 1944
To: WHITE HOUSE
Recently, in connection with the operation of a radio station of a German agent under control of the Federal Bureau of Investigation but which station the Germans believe to be a free station, an inquiry was received from Germany containing the following questions regarding the status of atomic explosive experimentation in the United States:
First, where is heavy water being produced? In what quantities? What method? Who are users?
Second, in what Laboratories is work being carried on with large quantities of uranium? Did accidents happen there? What does the shielding protection against Neutronic hazards consist of in these Laboratories? What is the material and the strength of coating?
Third, is anything known concerning the production of bodies or molecules out of metallic uranium rods, tubes, plates? Are these bodies provided with coverings for protection? Of what do these coverings consist?
We have already advised the appropriate authorities in the War Department concerning these German inquiries.
I thought the foregoing would be of considerable interest to the President.
With best wishes and kind regards,
Sincerely yours,
J. Edgar Hoover
Groves took back the copied letter from Karl and Moe and put it into a thick HIGHEST SECURITY folder. “Seems like I hear more bad news all the time,” he said gruffly. “This one’s the worst.”
“At least Hoover found it,” Moe said. “I didn’t know we still had counterintelligence radio stations running.”
Groves glowered. “You’d be shocked at how many agents the Krauts had through that German-American Bund of theirs. We got a bunch in ’41, but FBI and OSS got the Krauts to believe there were more who had gone underground and—get this!—had shortwave radios. We’ve been feeding them fake data, and they come back with more questions. This one’s the first from Germany about atomic stuff.”
Karl got up and looked out the window of Groves’s New York office at the usual traffic jam. No enlightenment there. “So what’ll you do?”
Groves beamed. “I did this.”
WAR DEPARTMENT
Office of the Chief of Engineers
Washington
22 March 1944
MEMORANDUM TO THE CHIEF OF STAFF
Radioactive materials are extremely effective contaminating agents; are known to the Germans; can be produced by them and could be employed as a military weapon. These materials could be used without prior warning in combating an Allied invasion of the Western European Coast.
It is the opinion of those most familiar with the potentialities of these materials that they are not apt to be used, but a serious situation would occur should any units of an invading Army be subjected to the terrifying effects of radioactive materials.
It is recommended that a letter similar to the draft enclosed be dispatched to General Eisenhower.
L.R. Groves
Major General, C.E.
Incl: Draft
22 March 1944
General Dwight D. Eisenhower
Dear General Eisenhower:
In order that your headquarters may be fully advised of certain materials which might be used against your Armies in a landing operation, I have directed Major A. V. Peterson, who will be in England on temporary duty in the near future, to report to your office and to acquaint you, or such officers of your staff that you may designate, with the problems involved. The matter is of the highest order of secrecy.
Faithfully yours,
Chief of Staff
Groves said after they had read both letters, “I appointed a committee—Conant and two Nobel guys, Urey, Compton—to study the ‘death dust’ idea. They think it’s probable. We know the Germans got tons of uranium out of Czechoslovakia. They could spread it from the air, contaminate a whole damn landing area. General Marshall agrees, it’s a threat.”
Moe Berg said quietly, “There’s no defense, yes?”
Groves gave them abrupt, impatient nods. “I’ve had the Victoreen Instrument Company built rugged Geiger counters for teams to carry ashore. They can carry sheathed packets of photographic film too, to expose and see if they get fogged from local radiation.”
“GHQ UK knows this?” Moe Berg said casually, crossing his legs.
“They’re on it, sure. I sent memos to the chief surgeon to look for radioactive exposure symptoms.”
Karl said, “So you think a sea invasion, as planned?”
Groves sat on his desk, legs dangling, an unusual position for him. “Look, you guys I can talk to straight. Rest of the day, I gotta keep up the whole general thing.” He took out a chocolate, popped it in his mouth as Karl and Moe stayed quiet. Groves was clearly exhausted and frustrated, off his game. “Yeah, that committee in DC—they report right to the president—they think so too. But there are plenty of unknowns.”
“I don’t see my role in this,” Moe Berg said.
“You’re a fine intelligence guy, Moe,” Groves said. “We’ll need you in the days leading up, and probably after. We know Heisenberg’s key to this, but we don’t even know where he is.”
“Neither do I.”
“But we know he’s scheduled to give a talk in Switzerland in a few months. Some physicists, like that guy Wigner, suggested we assassinate him.”
“What?” Karl blurted this out without thinking. Killing scientists because of what they knew?
Groves gave him a weary look. “It’s a military decision, not for the scientists, Karl.”
Moe said with a light air, as though this was just a new social engagement, “This means we’re moving?”
Groves grinned. “Right. I’ve got to send a team to do preliminary work on getting the bomb set up, ready to deliver. Pretty big crew. I need guys I can trust to report back the straight scoop, what’s really happening. You can’t believe how many dull reports I read! Fat ‘Top Secret’ documents that take forever to get to the point. Not you guys—you’re straight.”
Karl blinked, uncertain. “This is far from my qualifications—”
“You’re a physicist or something, right?” Groves browbeat him. “You’ll fly in the following plane, measure the blast. But first you’ve got to work with the deployment team.”
A silence. Moe Berg said carefully, “I see no role for me in—”
“You’re a great spy, and I need one who’ll do what I want. Not go through OSS—though you’ll get paid by them. Just for me.”
“I still don’t—”
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Groves chuckled, a deep bass growl. “You don’t get it. You’re going along to guard Karl, Moe. He’s a classified asset.”
“So’s Moe,” Karl shot back.
“Yeah, right. So Moe, if it looks like the Krauts could grab Karl, shoot him.” Groves laughed, but no one else did.
PART VII
* * *
SIGHTING THE SHORE
You can never cross the ocean until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.
—Columbus
1.
April 2, 1944
When Karl awoke, Marthe’s arms were draped across him. A last grab to keep him here.
When he had to tell her, a week after Groves delivered his bombshell, she had burst into tears. To his astonishment, he had too. All his suppressed fears came out. This war was a meat grinder, worse than any in history, and he had been ordered into its maw.
She had argued the obvious—that he had two children, was too old, thirty-one. But guys that age were getting drafted every day, he argued. And anyway, he had been ordered. “But you’re not in the army!” she had shrieked.
True, and he stumbled through rehearsed phrases about his obligation to this, this thing, this weapon that could end it all. The most disturbing, embarrassing moment of his life. He had prepared for it more than he had for his thesis examination, and his logic came apart in seconds.
She fell into a deep silence then, not talking at all. Martine and Elisabeth noticed this and came to him, worried at the mysterious silence. He had waited until after they were asleep to deliver the news, and the silence descended the next day, so they had no clue. He said their mother was suffering from a touch of bronchitis, “a no-talk sickness,” he added. They weren’t fooled.
Both girls frowned and fidgeted, and he took them out on Sunday for a walk in a park that luckily had a Ferris wheel. The heights and views and clanking machinery struck them with wonder. Then they lunched in a shop featuring ice cream, and he introduced them to a banana split, another wonder. It worked. Spring had brightened the world, and blossoms everywhere made the distant dying that wrapped around the planet seem like a bad dream, gone. By the time they got back to the apartment, Marthe had lost her stony face and greeted them with glad cries. But her eyes were red, and she avoided looking at him.
So now the day had come, and he lay beside her in the gray dawn. Pinned, savoring the swoosh of her lovely breath. In a moment he would have to awaken her and get his clothes on, seal his bags, snatch some coffee and eggs, and be gone.
He clung to the last moment with her. Soon he would have to hold the worried daughters in his arms and assure them that he would be back, all right, pretty soon, really. He had traveled a lot to Oak Ridge and lately to Los Alamos, working with the bomb builders, so the girls were used to trips of a week or more. Still, they sensed something.
That would be the hardest moment. They would believe him, and his betrayal would become obvious only weeks later, when he did not appear. Months, more probably. This war was a persistent horror, now in its fifth year.
He did not let himself think that it could be even more years. The bombs were coming. He felt in himself a cold resolve that he would gladly work toward slamming more and more bombs into the Reich. Szilard and the others who wanted a nice demonstration did not feel the slow-burning anger he did, at things they could not see, far over the horizon. That every few seconds, someone died in this damned war. That it must be over. Not someday. Now.
• • •
In the gray Manhattan light, the cool stone buildings rose like giant grave markers. There had been an odd cold snap. Walking along with his luggage, he heard tree branches cracking as they warmed, sharp reports like distant pistol shots.
The good-byes had been a bit hasty and he played it as nothing unusual to the sleepy girls. Kisses, hugs, a longer one at the door with Marthe, then he was out into the city, lurching along with two suitcases.
He walked alone. Going with Moe meant he lost his escort, Eric Thompson. Eric had been occasionally useful, escorting him and Marthe when they went out evenings. She sent him on errands when Karl was just staying home to calculate, too. It would be a relief to be rid of him; Moe was more fun.
Near Times Square he met the ordinary rattling green bus that took him out to a military air base, one he hadn’t even known existed, in New Jersey. It began raining as they pulled out, setting his mood. He stared out the window at dreary streets. As he got off the bus crowded with men in uniform, he looked around the wet landing field. Moe Berg was there, sporting two stylish leather bags and a waterproof fedora. Karl realized he had forgotten to bring an umbrella.
The airplane was a fat Douglas with big engines. Amid the damp and roar of bustling groups, everything had to be shouted. The other men—all men, no women—were engineers he vaguely knew and some physicists from the new Los Alamos place, probably specialists in the design of the bomb everybody was calling Little Boy as though it were some toy. There were a few officers in uniform, too, in case anyone had forgotten that this was after all a war.
He had tried to steel himself for this whole “adventure,” as he had once, stupidly, called it to Marthe. She refused to go with him when, thinking of it as training, he went back to the Newsreel Theater.
There he saw the reality of this warscape world in sharp images: infantrymen running, doubled over; mortars bursting like dirty flowers across a mud landscape; airplanes spiraling down, smoke tracing their dying curve; chaplains kneeling for last rites beside wounded; seas in flames; troops crouched beside shattered bridges; pillars of dirty orange fire coiling up from oil fields; stretchers with torsos like sacks of something, scarcely like men at all; marines raising their rifles above the surf as they waded ashore, eyes anxious. Misery without end. The real world outside his own serene research bubble, where clear, clean calculations dwelled.
It had not helped settle his mind. Neither did the flights.
The seats were sack buckets, really. You could snuggle down in them, but it was a strain on the back. The reading lamps were dim, the air smelled of hot metal, the food was K rations. The food was crammed into a tan-colored card-stock box with black lettering. The feast was canned meat in a sausage, an apple, biscuits, a commercial sweet Hershey’s chocolate bar, toilet tissues, a four-pack of Camels, and chewing gum. Everybody smoked the cigarettes; Karl gave his away.
He had read that the war had made millions into smokers, and now he saw why. The tobacco companies were getting the military to do their recruiting. A private handed out more small packs of cigarettes, this time Lucky Strikes. Everyone puffed on them eagerly. Some of these men were no doubt headed for battle, Karl thought, so why not indulge a few bad habits? No alcohol, of course. In all, not much worse than the few flights he had taken with Groves to cut the commute time to Oak Ridge.
They hopped up to Botwood, Newfoundland, then to Greenland, on to Scotland, all to refuel. Top speed seemed to be around 125 miles an hour. This would take a full day, with the refuelings. Then they headed at last for London. They were on the great circle route Charles Lindbergh had pioneered. The airplane was reliable, but its drone drove him to stuff cotton into his ears. The cotton was in a cardboard box as they came onto the airplane. When he went to the restroom and peered down into the toilet, he saw whitecaps not far below.
Still, the worst part of it all was the breaks when they landed. They got out, joints popping and muscles yearning to get stretched, and milled rather than marched into a canteen. The refueling and checking for failures in engines, lines, wheels, and other gear took hours. These airplanes had been built fast and sturdy, but punishing use had brought them low. Their flight had some priority, which meant safety was number one. “We’re more valuable,” Moe said. “Our whole team is dispersed among flights. If we lose some, not so bad.”
Karl sat with Moe and Alvarez—“Call me Louie,” he said the second time Karl respectfully addressed him by his last name. An experimental physicist with some flying expe
rience. In the canteen they talked amid the dense raw smoke, prickly smells of frying meat, acrid coffee, junky big-band music on tinny speakers, and incessant calls for numbered flights to get back onboard.
Worse, the talk surrounding them was eternal gossip about the war. Everyone knew this was the biggest event in world history and they were part of it and it was all up for grabs, so whaddya think?
Compared with the distant perspectives of the physicists, who at least knew geography and so maybe a bit more about military possibilities, the war chatter was just noise.
Plus fistfights. A big man in a navy uniform dragged a private out of his chair and started pounding him, shouting, “Think so? Think so?” as he slammed big, meaty hands into the man. Some MPs rushed in and dragged them off. Applause all round. Everybody lit up fresh cigarettes, mostly Lucky Strikes, and the jabber ran on. They were all in this together and sure it was dangerous, but jeez, this was some damn war, wasn’t it?
They were all worn out by the time the Douglas droned toward London. Karl arranged to sit next to Luis and engaged the lanky, casual man in muted talk about the problems with Little Boy, the gadget’s code name. It had to be shipped in separate flights, to be assembled in England. The army sent three complete assemblies, in case some flights didn’t make it. German air interceptions were rare now, but still the gadget guys took the longer route through Greenland to avoid the risk. Karl’s major job was figuring out whether the “gun team” had done their job right. They had been assigned to make sure the whole shebang slammed together at the speed of a rifle bullet, but weighing fifty thousand times more.
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