Rip the Angels from Heaven

by David Krugler

  “Like I’m their mailman with that morning’s post, sir. No fanfare.”

  “The general is wondering if it will get a close look in your presence.”

  “M’sure they’ll look at it, sir, but will they have an expert with them? I doubt it. Anyone who can tell them what that diagram means is in Russia. Even if they have someone they can use in the States, they wouldn’t risk letting me see his face.”

  “Okay. Now, about what you’ll say to the Russians about what you saw this morning. The general and I talked about it, and we decided it’s advantageous for us if you don’t hold back.”

  “We want them to get excited,” I said. Latham didn’t need to spell out the reason why: We wanted the Russians to spend a lot of time and money building their own bomb the wrong way.

  “Exactly. As for you, are you going to stay undercover, Voigt?”

  That sounded like his question, not Groves’s, but there was no reason not to answer honestly.

  “Nosir. I’ve been under too long already. This business with the F.B.I. offers me the perfect exit—I’ll tell the N.K.V.D. there’s too much heat on me. They won’t take my word for it, of course, but when they check up they’ll see I’m telling the truth.”

  “What are you going to do about Slater? He seems awfully persistent.”

  I tried to sound unworried. “Slater’s just an attack dog for J. Edgar, who’s had it in for O.N.I. for years. Smearing a lowly officer like me is just part of their mission to take over some of our operations once the war’s finally over. Bureau’s doing the same thing to O.S.S.”

  “About them, O.S.S. Have you heard anything from Commander Paslett about their interest in this case since you arrived here?”

  A strange question—Latham had to know I’d had no contact with Paslett since leaving Washington. But I wanted to get out of Site Y without any more complications, so I shook my head.

  “All right, the last thing we need to talk about is what happened at Trinity today.”

  “What’s Trinity and what happened there today, sir?” I asked evenly.

  “Excellent response, Lieutenant.” He took a regular-sized envelope from his desk drawer and slid it across the desk. “Oppie and Doctor Fuchs finished this just before you arrived. No doubt I don’t have to tell you not to let this leave your person until the delivery.”

  “Understood, sir.” I considered wishing him luck with his interrogation of Brode, then thought better of it. I stood. He returned my salute and I started to leave.

  “Voigt?”

  “Yessir?”

  “I appreciate what you did here.” Translation: Thank you for nailing Brode.

  I shrugged. “Thanks, sir.” I stopped myself from saying Just doing my job, for the cliché would have tasted like ash in my mouth. Instead:

  “Sir, do you know this quote: ‘Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds’?”

  He gave me a strange look. “Where did you hear that?”

  “I’m not sure. It was a while ago.”

  He clearly didn’t believe me, but he still answered. “It comes from the Bhagavad Gita, an ancient Sanskrit text. The title translates as ‘Song of the Lord.’”

  I thanked him and left.

  THE FLIGHT TO WASHINGTON WAS BUMPY AND LOUD. THE DRONING engines of the Douglas C-47 inhibited conversation, as did the seating layout: the other six passengers and I had strapped ourselves into metal seats welded parallel to the port and starboard sides of the fuselage. Wooden crates were stacked and belted to the two tracks in the center of the deck. PHOTOGRAPHIC EQUIPMENT—HANDLE WITH CARE was stenciled onto the crates. So were a lot of TOP SECRET warnings. Fitting, I supposed, that as a witness to the Trinity test I was now unofficially escorting the photographs of the detonation and its aftermath to Washington. I couldn’t help but wonder what the developed film would show. As much as I had seen, how much of the bomb’s beauty and horror had I not seen? I didn’t recognize any of the other passengers, but it was a safe guess that some, if not all, were the technicians who had set up and operated the cameras at Trinity.

  But I had more important subjects to mull over. Would Paslett agree that I must break cover and end this operation? Yes, I had conceived of it and I had convinced Paslett to authorize it, but he was still my C.O. Its success might well whet his appetite. What else can we get from them while they trust you? I could practically hear his eager voice. To save myself, however, I really did have to make a clean break, I had to tell the N.K.V.D.’s American agent, the professor-type who had overseen my interrogation and torture in Washington, that I had no choice but to hibernate because of the F.B.I.’s suspicions of me. I was confident they’d believe me once they checked out my story, as I’d told Latham; but what about Paslett? What if Slater’s persistence, and the circumstantial but still troublesome evidence the Bureau had uncovered in Chicago about Delphine and her communist father, started nagging Paslett? He hated the Bureau, sure, but not so much that he’d turn a blind eye to a thick file of documents that cast suspicion on my loyalties and actions. If Slater and the Bureau persuaded Paslett to distrust me, if they convinced him to participate in a full investigation into my past, I was finished. But I had to tell Paslett about Slater’s suspicions. There was no way to keep them secret, after Slater had waylaid me in New Mexico, and wouldn’t an innocent man immediately tell his C.O. that he’d been falsely accused?

  Then there was the problem of what I’d said to Brode to convince him that I, too, was a Red spy. How would I explain to Paslett how I knew the Russians asked every recruit whether or not he was willing to say good-bye forever to his family? As soon as possible, I needed to forge and backdate a document detailing how I’d learned this detail from a previous investigation. It would have to be misfiled, to explain its absence from the main file, but that was a manageable challenge.

  Another urgent task was to check on Kenny Newhurst and his recovery from the shooting. My throat went dry just thinking about seeing him and his parents, but I had to know he was all right. I had to ask for his forgiveness, and for the forgiveness of his parents. I wouldn’t dare tell them that Kenny’s sacrifice and pain had been expended for a greater good—since I couldn’t tell them the truth, I couldn’t lie, either. If I was still wretched, at least I could try to redeem myself from one of the consequences of my scheming.

  Not that I was yet free of my own entanglements. I had to learn what had become of Mara. Her ability to withstand an interrogation after our encounter in Santa Fe still amazed me. Holding fast to her cover was quite a feat, but what had happened to her after her release? For sure, the Bureau would have placed a full tail on her to see where she went after Santa Fe. Did she shake it? Even if she had, the Bureau would check up on the family she supposedly had in Ohio. Had the Russians conjured such a deep cover that fellow travelers, duly rehearsed, would convincingly answer the field agents’ questions when they came knocking?

  As the flight dragged on, my worries about Mara mounted. I’d never told Paslett about her—what if he learned about her role on the Russian side of the operation? What if the Bureau took a crack at her and this time she broke? No way I could explain away my hiding of my contact with her. Paslett would drop me, Slater would have me; all my machinations would collapse like a tower of toothpicks. I’d planned everything so carefully, and I was so close to succeeding, but Mara could doom me.

  Foolish me: I’d thought I could get some sleep on the flight.

  PART 3

  Redemption?

  Washington, D.C.

  July 16–17, 1945

  CominCh File

  FF1/DR

  OFFICE OF NAVAL INTELLIGENCE

  Sabotage, Espionage, and Countersubversion (B-7)

  NAVY DEPARTMENT

  SECRET     Washington, 25, D.C.     16 July 1945

  From: Commander Burton Paslett

  To: Rear Adm. Leo H. Thebaud

  Subject: O.N.I. mission, New Mexico

  Army Intelligence report
s Lt. (j.g.) Ellis Voigt has identified security breach at site as Dr. Mason Adams Brode, son of Senator Harrison Wright Brode. Dr. Brode is currently detained and being questioned at site. F.B.I. involvement unavoidable but manageable (see below). Greater problem for O.N.I. concerns Senator Brode given his assignment Naval appropriations subcommittee. O.S.S. investigation now significant and urgent yet presents opportunity for O.N.I. All signs point to dissolution O.S.S. pending Japanese surrender.

  Recommendations

  1. O.N.I. should reconsider O.S.S. offer to continue joint mission. O.N.I. will carry on mission after expected O.S.S. dissolution.

  2. F.B.I. Director will insist Bureau handle continued interrogation of Dr. Mason Adams Brode. We should expect President to defer to Director but Chief of Naval Operations must argue necessity O.N.I. leading investigation of Senator Brode.

  3. Chief of Naval Operations should request letter of support from Major General Leslie Groves detailing O.N.I. vital part in identifying Dr. Brode as Soviet agent.

  CHAPTER 41

  WE LANDED AT BOLLING FIELD, ALONG THE POTOMAC IN SOUTHWEST Washington, at 1910. During our banked descent, I occasionally glimpsed the nighttime city through the portal window across from me. Cars and trucks moved in fits and starts, the capital’s distinctive lattice of diagonal avenues, straight streets, and expansive traffic circles precisely illuminated by streetlamps. (The blackout had ended months earlier.) This yellowish light, added to the penumbra of countless business, government, and apartment building lights, gave the city a theatrical appearance, as if it were nothing more than an impossibly elaborate and miniature set design for a never-ending play. Had I returned from Site Y just one night earlier, I would have marveled at this sight, my first aerial look at Washington. But now the incandescent vista filled me with dread as I imagined the beautiful horrors of Trinity smothering the city. What Lot’s wife had seen had turned her into a pillar of salt, and what we of Trinity had witnessed had transformed us into speechless prophets, burdened with top-secret visions of another Apocalypse. Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

  My O.N.I. partner, Terrance Daley, was waiting for me in the run-down Chrysler we always seemed to get from the motor pool. He was leaning against the driver’s door, a cigarette poking from his meaty hand, his hat high on his broad forehead. Was he still angry with me for withholding the details of my undercover assignment? To my relief, he broke into a big grin when I approached, my duffel slung over my shoulder.

  “Well, look who got a nice suntan.”

  “D’hell you’re talking about?”

  “Take a look.” He stepped away from the car and I leaned to peer into the side mirror. Sure enough, my face and neck were red—I’d been so exhausted when I shaved earlier that day that I hadn’t even noticed. I should have used the suntan lotion after all.

  “Damn! You know that comes from hard toil under the blazing desert sun,” I told Terrance. It took a lot of effort to sound carefree.

  “Sure it does. Get in.”

  During the short drive to the Navy Building on the Mall, we avoided the subject of my assignment and the work Terrance had done in my absence, instead chatting about his wife, Marie, and their kids, and how much of a chance the Senators had to win the American League. But as we parked, I couldn’t help but ask a pressing question.

  “How’s Paslett?”

  “Dying to see you. An early morning cable from General Groves riled him up but good, and he can barely keep still waiting for you to stroll in. But you wouldn’t know anything about what that cable said, would you?”

  The edge to his voice told me his resentment hadn’t fully faded. I resolved to repair my relationship with my partner as soon as possible. After I saw Paslett, after I made the delivery and broke ties with the N.K.V.D., after I checked to see how Kenny Newhurst was doing, after I determined what had become of Mara. But would after become later, would later become never, as was so often the pattern of my behavior? No, things are different, I told myself. From now on, I’m a new man.

  COMMANDER PASLETT WAS INDEED IN AN AGITATED STATE.

  “Jesus H. Christ, what did they do down there?”

  A question I wasn’t supposed to answer. To hell with Latham’s order to keep quiet, I decided. If Groves had cabled the commander, then he knew the test was successful; knowing the details wouldn’t compromise the secret. And Paslett might be more amenable to releasing me from my undercover work if he fully appreciated what had happened at Trinity.

  So I told him. I described the spindly tower that had held the gadget and how I’d driven the arming party to the shelter more than five miles away; told him of the MPs who had lain in trenches with their feet pointed toward the zero point and the pieces of darkened glass we were all issued; described the scientists who had assembled behind the shelter to witness their creation. And I described the creation, the gadget being born: “Sir, it unleashed the light of heaven and the heat of hell, and even five miles from the detonation, the blast knocked us all down and gave me this sunburn.” I pointed at my face. Then I told him about the unnaturally colorful clouds that issued forth, enveloping the predawn sky, and the three rings that had ascended.

  “Holy motherfucker,” Paslett whispered when I’d finished.

  The curse startled me. The commander wasn’t averse to swearing, but I’d never heard him use that epithet. Yet it was apt. Who could deny that Trinity had spawned one hell of a holy motherfucker?

  “Commander, believe you me, the Japs are finished for sure when we start dropping these bombs.”

  “Do you know how many lives will be saved?” he asked in an awe-filled tone. “If we can get these bombs in theater pronto, there’ll be no landings.”

  I nodded energetically. “Gonna be a lot of happy Marines and G.I.’s.”

  For a moment, he said nothing, his gaze directed toward his window and the darkened city visible through it, lost in his thoughts. I lit a cigarette and tried to push Trinity out of my head. I needed to focus, needed to get the commander’s support for the endgame I’d plotted.

  “Sir … ?”

  “Right, sorry, Voigt. Groves cabled me you succeeded—let’s hear it.”

  I kept my account brisk, concise. Covered the interrogations, the identification of Mason Adams Brode as the spy, and the reason why we couldn’t arrest him immediately. Paslett nodded approvingly as I explained how I’d arranged for an innocent scientist to be arrested to lull Brode into a false sense of security. As I detailed my conversation with Brode in the car at Trinity, I pulled out the envelope from my jacket pocket and laid it down on the desk between us.

  “Two physicists doctored the diagram Brode drew for me.”

  “It’s all set for you to hand over, then.”

  “Yessir.”

  “How did you get him to trust you as a fellow Red?”

  “He challenged me with the second-to-last question the N.K.V.D. apparently asks Americans being recruited for espionage.”

  “Which is?”

  “‘Are you ready to say good-bye to your family forever?’”

  “Lucky you knew that.” Translation: How do you know the question?

  “I’ll say. It came up during that case we had a while back involving the Navy Yard provost guard.” We’d had a couple cases involving provost guards, which made it easier for me to type up and backdate a document for the file in case the commander checked. I hoped Paslett wouldn’t ask for details now; fortunately, he was eager to move the debriefing along.

  “Who’s handling the interrogation of Brode in New Mexico?”

  “Colonel Latham and, believe it or not, our old friend Clayton Slater.”

  He stared at me. “You gotta be kidding me! When did he show up?”

  “Right after I got there, sir.”

  “He had to have G-2’s blessing to be there,” he said. Army intelligence. “So why did Latham …” He trailed off as the answer occurred to him. “Slater claimed you couldn’t be trusted and Latham heard
him out.”

  “Bingo. Slater had the Bureau’s Chicago field office dig up dirt from when I was a kid. Interviews with classmates, teachers, neighbors. All he got was, a gal I briefly dated when I was in high school, turns out her pop was a commie.”

  “For the love of Mike, that’s what he presented?”

  I took a long drag and exhaled the smoke over my shoulder. Time to address the real reason Slater was gunning for me: He believed that I had framed someone else for the murder of Logan Skerrill, whom the Bureau had run as a double agent. At all costs, I had to keep Paslett from learning that Slater’s hunch was correct, that I had killed Skerrill under orders from Himmel and had then framed an innocent man and killed Himmel to protect myself.

  “Sir, remember how Slater told you and Daley that Philip Greene, the commie who did Skerrill, says I framed him?” At his nod I continued. “Slater flat-out told me the Bureau’s digging, and digging deep, to use his phrase, til they find something. That’s why he came in waving affidavits from people I haven’t seen since I was a kid. He wanted Latham to sideline me and put him in charge of finding the spy.”

  “Obviously Latham saw right through that B.S.”

  “Sure, he knows Hoover wants to take security operations away from Army. A’course, he also needed me to make the I.D. of Brode since I know what his voice sounds like. But he did let Slater take part in the lineup.”

  “Did Slater come to Trinity?”

  “Nosir. I convinced Latham that Slater should be the one to arrest the innocent scientist and question him during the test while I made contact with Brode.”

  “Good move. And once you make the delivery”—he tapped the envelope—“and we write up our full report, the Bureau will come out looking like sore losers.”

  “Speaking of sore losers, sir, have you had any additional trouble from O.S.S.?”

  He gave me a strange look. “Why do you ask?”

  “M’sure it’s not important, but during my debriefing at Site Y Colonel Latham asked if I’d heard anything from you about O.S.S. while I was there, at Site Y.”