“We’ll find out soon enough.”
“Find out, how?”
“They’re going to test it. And before you ask, by test I mean detonate the thing.”
“Here?”
“Not here, numbnuts.” The tension in Kuznetsov’s mouth eased at the obtuseness of Vasin’s question. “They test the devices up in the Arctic. Don’t they tell you anything in Moscow?”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“For some.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning—let’s hope so. The farther away that thing is from me, the better.”
Kuznetsov fumbled another cigarette into his mouth and testily struck a match.
“And the deceased…?”
“Fyodor Petrov was a key member of the RDS-220 team.”
“Ah.”
“Yes. Ah. An assistant to Professor Adamov, no less.”
“The Director?”
“The Director. The Tsar and God of Arzamas. Father of RDS-220.”
“So what do you think happened to Petrov, exactly?”
“You read the file.”
“I want to hear your version.”
Kuznetsov exhaled smoke through his nostrils like a cartoon demon.
“I don’t have a version, Vasin. The boss, Major General Zaitsev, is going to lay it out for you chapter and verse. A words-of-one-syllable man, our Zaitsev. Tomorrow, 0900 at the kontora.”
Kontora. Literally, the office, and one of the more respectful slang words for the KGB. Vasin had heard plenty of others.
“Very good. And what have you been asked to lay out for me, Kuznetsov?”
“Oh, you know. Bed linen. Towels.”
Kuznetsov cracked a smile, holding Vasin’s eye.
“You’re funny.”
“So they keep telling me.”
“Seriously, though.”
“Seriously? That’s a good word. Shit here is serious, Vasin. Which is why I find myself thinking that it may not be my most natural habitat. What I need to lay out for you is this: We do not wish to see Fyodor Petrov’s colleagues unduly distracted.”
“Because nothing interferes with the project. I understand. Thanks for filling me in.”
“Pleasure. That’s what I’m for. To fill you in.”
“And Petrov’s body?”
“Spot the ex-detective. Central Clinical Hospital, I assume. Ask the General tomorrow.”
“Address of the deceased’s apartment?”
“No idea. Zaitsev’s in charge.”
Probably a lie. But Vasin smiled nonetheless. The address was somewhere in the summary report he had brought from Moscow.
“I’m keeping you up, Kuznetsov. It must be getting late.”
“For Moscow, maybe. Not for the busy bees of Arzamas. We’re going out.”
“Out?”
“To a lecture at the All-Union Scientific Research Institute of Experimental Physics. Also known as the Citadel.”
Vasin glanced at his watch.
“A lecture? At eleven at night?”
“Science never sleeps, Comrade. Professor Adamov has something to tell the assembled brains of Arzamas. Which probably does not include us. Sorry. I mean me, at least. But we’re going anyway. Come, or we’ll be late.”
II
It took them less than five minutes to drive through the empty streets of Arzamas and swing into the broad expanse of Kurchatov Square. A freezing mist was rising. The main building of the Citadel loomed like an ocean liner in the thickening fog, its illuminated windows piercing the night. A colonnade of bare concrete pillars supported a jutting roof. It reminded Vasin of a mainline railway terminus.
A row of turnstiles divided the high-ceilinged lobby in half, a more solid version of the entrance of a Moscow metro station. Kuznetsov flashed his red KGB identity card to the sergeant on duty, and Vasin followed suit.
The lecture theater was crowded to overflowing. Whispering apologies, Kuznetsov pushed his way into the darkness. A couple of young uniformed men shifted up to allow him and Vasin to sit on the carpeted stair. A single table lamp on the raised stage provided the only light, illuminating a lectern. Professor Adamov’s gaunt face, lit from below, looked to Vasin like a speaking skull. He wore an old-fashioned black Party member’s tunic, buttoned to the collar, with three Hero of the Soviet Union stars pinned over his heart.
“…First and foremost, of course, we must be careful. I promised the General Secretary that we would not…” Adamov paused, wheezing a little, as he worked up to the punch line. “That we would not crack the earth like an egg!”
The Professor looked up from his notes and squinted through small glasses at the attentive young faces arranged around him like disciples. He stretched his thin mouth into something like a smile, authorizing a ripple of awkward laughter to spread around the hundred men in the overheated hall.
The Professor’s smile widened, even as his mind seemed to turn inward. Silence deepened. It seemed to Vasin as though Adamov was suddenly too busy thinking to acknowledge the outside world. Every other function of his body except breathing appeared suspended while the brain raced at full speed. Vasin glanced left and right, but Adamov’s pause seemed to excite no surprise in his audience. Was the quiet filled with racing calculations? Or was Adamov’s silence within himself—just silence?
And then, just as abruptly as it had left, animation returned to Adamov’s eyes. He peered into the hall at his students and colleagues and examined them, one by one. The faces were eager, open, the eyes shining with intelligence. A few tried to hold his stare, at least for a moment. Some looked brave, some hopeful, most fearful. And then they looked down.
“Every one of you has been chosen.” Adamov’s voice was so quiet as to be almost inaudible, as though he were speaking half to himself. “Chosen for some aspect of your minds that the Motherland has found useful. Or interesting. Or just uselessly unusual. In physics one always has to keep the useless results in mind.”
Another dry joke? If so, this time nobody laughed. Adamov stepped toward a large box that stood at the front of the stage and flicked a switch, illuminating a white square of light on a large screen. An overhead projector, the first Vasin had ever seen.
“Every day newcomers arrive to assist in the final assembly of RDS-220. To them, welcome. And I have an announcement to make to all of you. After receiving the reports of all the laboratory heads, I have concluded that all is in place to finally set a date for the test that we have all been anticipating so eagerly. The date is October thirtieth. We have reached the final stage of preparation. Nine days from now, the world will see the might, the glory, and the genius of peace-loving Soviet science.”
A low murmur ran through the hall. Adamov stabbed the whispering down with an icy glance.
“As I was saying. For the newcomers, and for all of us, a reminder of our fundamental questions. This device has some…new features. The consequences of this test will be hard to predict.”
He began writing formulas with a scarlet marker on a transparent sheet on the projector’s screen, tapping the point on the glass for emphasis. “It. Is. Our. Patriotic. Task. To. Calculate. Them…There are great unknowns we have yet to grasp. Consider the work of Dr. Smirnov on fusing hydrogen nuclei with their heavy brothers tritium and deuterium. The behavior of superheated plasma, gases hotter than the heart of the sun, during the milliseconds after core detonation. The consequences of scaling up the tried-and-tested thermonuclear reactions to a hitherto unknown scale. What happens when we double it? Multiply it by ten? A thousand? At this kind of scale, gentlemen, we encounter new parameters: the solidity of the earth’s crust. The behavior of the atmosphere in different thermoclines. The point at which we may ignite a chain reaction in atmospheric water. And this is the po
int that we address today. But first, for the benefit of the newcomers, we remind ourselves of some ancient history. Our old friend RDS-100. Back in 1951.”
There was a squeak as the lectern light was dimmed. A film projector clattered into action. A bright white rectangle flung a series of numbers onto the screen, counting down.
“So, colleagues.” When Adamov spoke loudly the pitch of his voice also rose. “We will remind ourselves of the terrible forces that we believe are under our command. We watch. And we are humbled. You will see the film at one-twenty-fourth speed, frame by frame, so that we can visually establish the detonation stages of this device from ten years ago.”
A rumble began in Adamov’s chest that sounded like the start of a phlegmy smoker’s cough. The Professor rooted in the pockets of his tunic, drew out a crumpled packet of cigarettes, and struck a match.
The view from the hatch of an aircraft flickered onto the screen. In one corner, a tail fin intruded on the shot. Below, a landscape of whiteness. Sea ice, the outline of a sweeping bay with indistinct shapes on the horizon. An ungainly black shape tumbled earthward, neatly deploying a parachute a couple of seconds into its descent, then gaining stability as it drifted gently down. For nearly a minute, there was nothing but the projector’s whir. Then, a sudden flash, making the screen an almost perfect blank for several seconds.
“Now. Slow, please.”
On the screen, as the flash died, smoke rippled centrifugally. A small vertical blast of debris, as from a conventional shell, burst upward. Then a second horizontal ripple, and a third, each raising a ridge of earth and snow as it hurtled out across the landscape. A column of smoke rose and thickened, obscuring the detonation point. Light flashed inside the column as it rose. Then came another detonation, inside the cloud this time and far above ground zero, making the rising smoke suddenly bulge. The frames clicked by. The blast wave reached the aircraft and caused it to lurch crazily for several seconds before recovering. The cloud was level with the aircraft now, and climbing, and spreading. The cameraman pulled the focus back to encompass a vast mushroom of debris spread across the sky.
Vasin found no words for what he was watching. He turned to Kuznetsov, but his companion’s attention was still rooted to the now-static final image on the screen, transfixed as a child’s at a scary movie.
The lights in the hall at the lecture’s conclusion robbed Vasin of the anonymity of darkness. Plenty of the men were in uniform, mostly with the crossed-hammers insignia of military engineers. But Vasin’s KGB sword-and-shield badges immediately marked him out as an intruder.
The crowd on the stairs shuffled aside to allow Adamov to pass. Vasin felt the Professor’s eye catch on the telltale uniform, the officer’s bars on his collar, his face. The old man’s pale face momentarily creased with distaste.
The Professor moved on up the stairs. Vasin slipped into his wake. He heard Kuznetsov call something after him, and ignored it. Pushing forward among the bodies crushing through the doors with a skill learned on the Moscow metro, Vasin squeezed into the corridor and raced after the retreating figure of the Professor and his entourage of assistants.
“Professor Adamov? A moment, please.”
Vasin’s raised voice was enough to stop Adamov in his tracks, if only because it was clearly unheard of for anybody to shout the Professor’s name in the halls of the Institute. Catching up with Adamov, he felt the full weight of the Professor’s outraged glare.
“Major Alexander Vasin. State Security.”
Adamov did not speak, but stood motionless, waiting for one of his acolytes to interpret his silence. A white-coated youngster consulted a clipboard.
“Professor, there was a letter from the Kommandatura this morning. Major Vasin is here to investigate Dr. Petrov’s accident.”
Vasin saluted.
“My apologies for the disturbance, Professor. But I hope you understand….”
Adamov raised a long-fingered hand in front of Vasin’s face, as though stopping traffic. The gesture was imperious.
“A terrible tragedy. But I have spoken to one of you already. Major…Efremov? There we are. Thank you. Goodbye.”
Adamov turned to go, his palm still raised rudely in Vasin’s face.
“Sir?” Vasin flung the word hard enough to stop Adamov in his tracks once more. “I am afraid that there will have to be more questions. I have been sent from Moscow on the personal orders of General Orlov to conduct an independent assessment of the case.”
Slowly, Adamov turned back.
“General Orlov.” Close up, Adamov’s face was gaunt as a corpse’s. He spoke slowly, and there was menace in his voice. “Now if only we had as many hours as we have generals. And what is it that your general needs from me?”
“Thank you, Professor. May I have the honor of speaking to you in private?”
An indecent hiss escaped the Professor’s dry lips.
“What will cost me less? Arguing with your generals, or making time to talk to you?”
“Professor, you answer your own questions so succinctly. Talking to me should take no time at all.”
The Professor’s mouth clamped tight as a trap. His pale blue eyes filled with fury.
My God, thought Vasin, his eyes connecting for a long moment with Adamov’s wrathful stare. This is a man who can hate.
“Perhaps. After the test.”
Adamov turned his back on Vasin and strode onward.
Vasin felt a strong hand gripping his upper arm. Kuznetsov pulled him to the side of the corridor with enough force to make a point. Young scientists and engineers streamed past them, chatting animatedly. Kuznetsov’s voice hissed into his ear.
“What the fuck was that?”
Vasin pulled his arm free and turned to his host. His handler.
“I wanted to make an appointment. Is there a problem?”
“A fucking appointment with Professor Academician Yury Adamov? Yes, there is a problem.”
“Is he not a witness in the Petrov case?”
“Vasin. So you’re a big shot from some top-secret cubbyhole of the kontora’s top floor. Orders from above. I see. But Adamov…”
The crowd spilling out of the lecture theater pushed them apart for a moment before Kuznetsov could continue.
“…Adamov is Arzamas. The program is his. He is…”
“Above the law?”
“He’s off-limits to you. To everyone.”
“To you, Kuznetsov. Maybe he’s off-limits to you.”
Vasin saw a red flush of anger boiling up from Kuznetsov’s tight collar like a rising storm. But the man forced it down, like a child fighting to control a tantrum. Kuznetsov exhaled deeply, twice, and when he spoke again his voice was impressively calm.
“Vasin. Alexander. Or may I—Sasha? Sasha, listen to me. This place is not like other places. It’s not like anyplace you’ve ever been.”
“You don’t know the places I’ve been.”
“Nowhere in our broad, glorious Union is like Arzamas. Different rules.”
“I believe you. But would you be surprised to know I’ve heard that before?”
Kuznetsov raised his eyes to the heavens in a pantomime of exasperation.
“I give up. You really need to speak to Zaitsev.”
“I didn’t think I had a choice in the matter.”
The two men stared at each other. The corridor had finally emptied. The only sound was the distant clatter of a Teletype machine and the fading chatter of the departing crowd.
Vasin broke the tension first.
“That film was…”
Kuznetsov threw him a low glance.
“Terrifying? Yes.”
“You’ve seen it before?”
“It’s Professor Adamov’s favorite. It is why I broug
ht you along.”
“And the bomb he’s building now. It’s…”
“Bigger than that. Hundreds of times bigger. See, I wanted to fill you in on what they do here. They make machines to kill the planet.”
CHAPTER TWO
SUNDAY, 22 OCTOBER 1961
EIGHT DAYS BEFORE THE TEST
I
Early the next morning Vasin turned up his mackintosh collar against the rain and mist that drifted down the broad boulevard outside Kuznetsov’s apartment building. The sky was heavy with low, dawdling clouds. The slow weather of deep Russia, where seasons follow each other like a procession of steamrollers, trundling and relentless. Autumn was a dripping season of sweet rot and the sound of running water in hidden places.
Kuznetsov’s jeep shuddered reluctantly into life. He gunned the engine to attract Vasin’s attention.
“Come on, old man. Big shots are waiting for you.”
Kuznetsov dropped him off in front of Arzamas’s KGB headquarters, a stubby modern block screened from the street by a row of fir trees. In the forecourt stood a bust of Felix Dzerzhinsky, founder of the Soviet secret police, his bronze face glistening in the rain.
In the lobby secretaries carrying files clicked on high heels across the marble floor. Even on Sundays and holidays, night and day, the kontora worked on. A boy-sentry entered Vasin’s name in a ledger with painstaking formality. The place had the same thick smell of floor polish and wet overcoats as his office in Moscow. Somewhere two typewriters clicked in busy disunison. A telephone rang, unanswered.
General Zaitsev’s secretary had buttery blond dyed hair and a face that seemed to have been disfigured permanently by constant lying.
“The General has been delayed,” she told him archly. “Wait.”
“Very good. Please tell the Comrade General that I shall take the opportunity to visit the canteen. Downstairs, I imagine?”
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