Rip the Angels from Heaven

by David Krugler

  “You forgot a third fact,” I said, trying again to push those what-ifs out of my mind.

  “Did I?”

  “Oppenheimer.”

  “Yes, you said ‘they’ think you’re here to interrogate him. Identify them.”

  “Army intelligence and the F.B.I.”

  “Why aren’t they doing the interrogations—why you?”

  I glanced at my watch. Jesus—I’d already wasted two of my five minutes. “I haven’t got the time to tell you why. Here’s all you need to know: I’m one of you.”

  “One of what?”

  “Don’t play dumb, Brode!” My urgency wasn’t feigned, and my surging panic at running out of time finally dispelled the worry about Oppenheimer being a spy—I could only deal with that potential snafu if I persuaded Brode to believe me. “Did you hear that Gary Ackerly’s been arrested?”

  “Of course.”

  “I arranged that to keep the Bureau busy. While Special Agent Slater’s raking Ackerly over the coals, I’m free to meet with you, but we’ve only got a few minutes. Latham sent me here to trick you into believing I’m a Red spy so that you’ll make a copy of the diagram you delivered to your contact in Washington. Your contact disappeared after that meeting, and so did the diagram. What Latham doesn’t know—what no one knows—is that I’m with the Russians too, I have been for years. Latham’s going to have the replacement diagram you give me doctored, and I’ll deliver it to the Russians. Before he does that, I’ll make sure I have a true copy to hand over.”

  There it was, in one dense paragraph, the entirety of everyone’s scheming: the N.K.V.D. and their spies; U.S. military intelligence and the F.B.I.; above all, me. So much information, so swiftly delivered, would cow and confuse even a smart man, who would sputter questions. What happened to the original diagram? What happened to my contact? How did you fool Latham, how did you get orders to come to Site Y? How much does the F.B.I. know? Can I really trust you?

  But Brode only had one query:

  “What was their penultimate question?”

  For a split second, I was lost—he’d given me no context. What was he asking? Then I got it. They meant the Party’s spy recruiters, who’d screened me, and, of course, him. We all went through the rigorous testing and interrogations alone, but the process was too organized to be ad hoc. What I was asked, he was asked; if I answered correctly, he would know, without any further corroboration, that I, too, was a Red spy. And the penultimate—that is, second-to-last—question had been—

  “Are you ready to say good-bye to your family forever,” I answered Brode in an even voice.

  “Very good, you pass. Now I have a surprise for you, Lieutenant Voigt: I’m going to arrange for you to be part of the arming party.”

  That was a surprise—a shock, even—but I checked the urge to ask why. I sure as hell wasn’t as smart and sly as Brode, but I sensed his reason: he wanted the N.K.V.D. to know just how important he was to the Site Y project. He wanted an eyewitness to his part, either to protect himself from the Russians or because of his vanity. Maybe both.

  His motive didn’t matter, I reminded myself. Being a part of the arming party, whatever its duties, helped me. Such evidence of Brode’s trust would convince Latham and his subordinates that I had succeeded, and that would help keep Slater at bay a little while longer.

  As I slipped out the door to return to Latham’s office, I couldn’t help but remember the last question my communist recruiters had asked me and Brode: Are you ready to die for the Party?

  “HE SAID WHAT?” LATHAM EXCLAIMED.

  “He wants me to be part of the arming party,” I repeated.

  “Jesus Christ,” Jarowsky swore.

  Meacham and Foley looked equally unhappy. After leaving Brode, I had returned to the office. As Jarowsky had instructed me, I had said nothing until we heard Brode leave the room next door and go down the hallway. The silence had seemed interminable, though it had only lasted a few minutes. Seated at their desks, the four men had tried to keep working, their attention directed toward papers and folders spread out before them, but they were just as edgy as I was.

  “There’s no reason for you to be in the arming party,” Meacham said. “Everyone has a specific purpose, all highly specialized tasks, and Voigt isn’t—well, he’s just not qualified for anything they’re doing!”

  “Let’s not worry about that for the moment,” Latham said. “Why does he want you there, Voigt?”

  “As an eyewitness, sir. Either out of caution or vanity, probably both, he wants me to tell the Russians everything I saw him do. This will show how vital he is to the project.”

  “My God, you can’t be telling the Russians what you saw!” This from Foley.

  “Of course I won’t do that. All I’m gonna do is, I’m going to hand over the doctored diagram to my contact in the N.K.V.D. without saying a word.”

  “Will they let you do that?” Jarowsky asked.

  “Sure. Once I tell them the F.B.I. is watching my every move, they won’t wanna come near me.” Volunteering a reminder that the Bureau didn’t trust me was risky, but I needed Latham to agree to put me in the arming party.

  “What if they try to contact you later for a face-to-face?” Foley asked.

  “After I deliver the doctored diagram, Captain, believe you me, I’m getting outta this operation for good. My job will be done, and I’m coming out from under my cover.” Speaking the truth, even if my listeners didn’t know the full truth, was a relief.

  “Colonel, I think it’s a good sign Brode wants Voigt by his side—it shows he trusts him,” Jarowsky put in. I silently thanked him—having him make this observation rather than me gave it added validity.

  “Brode bought your line about being here to question Oppenheimer?” Latham was watching me closely.

  I had to answer carefully. After Brode was arrested, his interrogation would go over every detail of our encounter. Given how hard Slater was charging at me, I couldn’t risk leaving holes in my story. Better to tell the truth—at least a part of the truth that would help keep my secret buried.

  “I started to tell him, then I changed direction.”

  Latham grunted his dissatisfaction.

  “Five minutes wasn’t enough time to sell that story, sir. Instead I told him flat-out that no one knows I’m actually a Red spy and that I’m here to get another copy of the diagram he delivered in May.”

  “Goddammit, Voigt, we went over this—Brode’s too smart to believe that! He’ll just think you’re posing.”

  “That’s why he challenged me straightaway. And what I said satisfied him that I’m really a Red spy.”

  “What did he ask?” This from Jarowsky.

  “He said, ‘What was their penultimate question?’”

  “D’hell does that mean?” Foley asked.

  “He was referring to the second-to-last question the Party asks of its spy recruits as they come to the end of their screening. The question is, Are you ready to say good-bye to your family forever?”

  “How do you know this?” Latham asked.

  “O.N.I. had a source, a former communist spy, who revealed this to us. It’s also something I’m sure the Bureau knows.”

  Latham nodded slowly. Would he verify this detail about communist spycraft with Slater? Despite the obvious hazards to myself, I hoped he would. Once again, I recalled the story of the mountain climber who had survived a fall into a dark, icy crevasse by wriggling through it backwards. That true-life adventure had inspired me to convince Commander Paslett to let me get picked up by the N.K.V.D. after I’d spent desperate days on the lam from them. Only by tunneling deeper into my secret could I escape it. It was as if I was turning my real identity inside out: by constantly asserting that I was only pretending to be a Red spy, I could make the assertion true.

  But was I being too clever? O.N.I. did not have a former communist spy as a source, unless you counted me. Upon my return to Washington, I would have to fabricate such a document,
predate it, and slip it into our central files. And if I didn’t make it back to Washington, the fictional report wouldn’t matter—because that would mean I’d been exposed.

  “All right, let’s set it up,” Latham announced. He looked at Meacham. “Dwayne, you better tell Doctor Bainbridge he’s a got a new member of the arming party.”

  CHAPTER 37

  WE FOUND BAINBRIDGE IN THE LIVING ROOM OF THE RANCH HOUSE. He looked about forty, maybe older, his thin brown hair combed back from a broad forehead. He wore a khaki work shirt and brown trousers. A quiet but intense conversation with another man kept him from noticing me and Meacham, who finally cleared his throat and said, “Ken?”

  He looked up from the chart both men had been looking at. “Yes?”

  “Lieutenant Voigt”—Meacham ticked his chin at me—“has been added to the arming party.”

  I braced for bluster, for protest, but Bainbridge’s doleful expression didn’t change. “Oh?”

  “Colonel Latham thinks it would be helpful.”

  “Of course.” Bainbridge looked at me, his thin lips pursed. “Can you drive?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’ll be our driver.”

  This distressed Meacham. “This is Lieutenant Voigt’s first visit here, he doesn’t know the site, maybe he should—”

  “Dwayne, there’s only one road where we’re going—he can hardly get us lost.”

  Meacham shook his head unhappily but didn’t argue. “Is the schedule still the same?”

  “Yes,” Bainbridge said. “You better—”

  “I know, I know,” Meacham interrupted. He motioned for me to follow him. We went out the door and into the yard. A light rain still fell. The lights burning in the house and outbuildings only made the night appear even more oppressive. No stars, no lights in the distance, just depthless darkness.

  “The car’s right here,” Meacham said, pointing to a late-model Plymouth coated in wet reddish grit. The windshield was clean only where the wipers reached, which irritated Meacham.

  “Goddammit.” He yanked a rag from his back pocket and tried to swipe away the grit, to little effect.

  “Look, Meacham, why don’t you leave that alone, the windshield’s fine.”

  He wheeled around, glaring. “Do you have any idea what’s about to happen here? Everything is planned down to the last second, everything must be done exactly right, there’s no margin for error. None! Yet here you are, being assigned to drive the arming party to the tower when you have no clue what’s going on! You don’t even know the way!”

  Meacham wasn’t so much angry at me as he was overwhelmed by weeks of stressful work and anxiety over what was about to happen. I let him rant, nodding sympathetically. What is going to happen? I wasn’t supposed to know—Latham had been very clear about that when I arrived at Site Y—but wasn’t the cat out of the bag now?

  “Let’s check the car, Meacham,” I said when he finished. “We’ll check the fuel and temp, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  We got in and shut the doors. We left the windows up. The engine fired right away, and I turned on the dome light so we could see the gauges. The tank was full, the temperature and electrical gauges were both normal. I shut the engine off.

  “See? All good.”

  “We should check the tires. If you were to get a flat—”

  “We’ll check the tires. But first I need you to tell me what’s going to happen, what I should expect.”

  Meacham looked stricken. “You’re not cleared for that.”

  “I’m not asking for a full report, I just wanna know where we’re going and when. Just give me what I need to know so I’m not wondering what the hell is going on while I’m also trying to accomplish my task with Brode.”

  “All right.” He looked at his watch, sighed deeply. “At oh-four-twenty, the arming party will leave for the zero point, which is two and a half miles north. Lieutenant Jarowsky, Doctor Bainbridge, Doctor Kistiakowsky, and Doctor Brode make up the arming party. Once you reach the zero point, Bainbridge, Kistiakowsky, and Brode have several jobs to do at the tower. We’ve estimated it will take them fifteen minutes to finish. Jarowsky will have a field telephone in case communication is needed with us. You should remain in the car and leave the engine running.

  “Once the arming party is ready to leave, you’ll continue up the road to Shelter A, which is thirty thousand feet northwest of the zero point. Colonel Latham will be there—if there’s anything else he wants you to do, he’ll tell you. Zero time is oh-five-thirty.”

  My mind raced. Shelter A, our final destination, was more than five miles away from the zero point. I was no Einstein, but this problem only required simple deduction. A weapon—a bomb—was in place at the zero point, most likely at the top of the tower Meacham had mentioned. The arming party—three physicists—would activate the detonation sequence. Either the firing was set to a timer or controlled remotely—either way, we had plenty of time to get from the zero point to Shelter A. Even though it was more than five miles from the point of detonation.

  Five miles plus! What kind of bomb was this? Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg—we’d pounded those cities into rubble, but the destruction had required thousands upon thousands of sorties, waves and waves of Flying Fortresses and Lancasters delivering kilotons of ordnance. The bombing of Dresden—carried out on a single night in February—had produced horrors that would make even Dante flinch: Fires so powerful that their oxygen draw swept children and the elderly off their feet and hurled them into the maelstrom; civilians boiled alive in the city’s canals; broken bricks still warm to the touch weeks after the bombing. But even this hell, unleashed by untold numbers of bombs, hadn’t come close to touching people five miles away from Dresden.

  If I was guessing correctly, Trinity was testing a single bomb. I keenly remembered Colonel Latham’s admonishment to stifle my curiosity if I wanted to avoid suffering, but the enormity of what Meacham had just told me couldn’t be ignored.

  “What in God’s name is happening here?” I asked in a hushed voice.

  Meacham said nothing. After a moment, he reached into the back seat to rummage in a box. He held up a square piece of dark glass in a plain wooden frame.

  “At the shelter site, you’ll be told to lie flat in trenches with your feet pointed toward the zero point and to hold one of these over your eyes. Not everyone will—some of the scientists will stand and face the zero point—but I’ll be in one of those trenches, holding one of these, and I advise you to do exactly the same.”

  “Jesus Christ.”

  “Jesus Christ, indeed. Are you religious, Voigt?”

  “No.”

  “Me neither. Even if I were, I sure wouldn’t count on Jesus Christ, God, or the Holy Ghost being anywhere around here this morning.”

  I didn’t respond. So far, my complicated scheme to save myself had taken all my energy and attention, but for the moment, dread about Trinity caused my heart to race and my mouth to go dry. What forces of the universe had Oppenheimer and his mad geniuses harnessed and bottled into a single bomb? We were going to be more than five miles away, and yet still lying in trenches with dark glass over our eyes. No wonder the Russians had put so much effort into infiltrating Site Y. Consideration of what the Russians could do with such a bomb was even worse than imagining the bomb test itself.

  Meacham snapped me out of my nightmarish thoughts. “Only ten minutes til you leave,” he said, tapping his watch. “Let’s move that box”—he motioned at the back seat—“to the trunk and check the tires.”

  THE PLYMOUTH’S ENGINE DRONED AS I STEERED THE CAR DOWN A NARROW asphalt road. The rain had stopped and the eastern sky had begun to lighten, though the sun hadn’t yet risen. Jarowsky rode in front with me; the three physicists shared the back seat. The headlights captured the smooth, unmarked pavement and scrub brush.

  “Look!” exclaimed Bainbridge, who was seated directly behind me.

  The others turned their heads to look out
his window as I glanced at the driver’s side mirror. I caught a flash of several animals’ hind legs, bounding away into the darkness.

  “Antelope,” Jarowsky said.

  “Poor bastards,” Bainbridge murmured. None of us asked what he meant.

  No one said anything more for the rest of the drive. I stole a look in my rearview mirror. Bainbridge’s head was bowed, while Kistiakowsky—a serious-looking man in his fifties—chewed absently on an unlit pipe. Brode, who sat in the middle, stared back at me, his expression steady and sure.

  When we reached the tower, Bainbridge directed me to park the car so the headlights shone on the tower’s base. He and Kistiakowsky had a brief exchange about whether or not the Plymouth cast enough light.

  “Let’s just see, shall we, George?” Bainbridge said good-naturedly.

  Kistiakowsky shrugged and they exited, the doors clattering shut one after another. Meacham had told me to stay in the car with the engine running, but Jarowsky didn’t repeat this instruction, so after a moment I engaged the parking brake and got out, leaving the engine running. Bainbridge was standing close to the tower, a clipboard in his hand.