Winter of the World

by Ken Follett

  The boy saw Greg first, and said: "Look, Mommy, there's a soldier!"

  Jacky looked at Greg, and her hand flew to her mouth.

  Greg stood up as they mounted the steps to the stoop. A child! She had kept that secret. It explained why she needed to be home in the evenings. He had never thought of it.

  "I told you never to come here," she said as she put the key in the lock.

  "I wanted to tell you that you need not be afraid of my father anymore. I didn't know you had a son."

  She and the boy stepped into the house. Greg stood expectantly at the door. A German shepherd growled at him, then looked up at Jacky for guidance. Jacky glared at Greg, evidently thinking about slamming the door in his face, but after a moment she gave an exasperated sigh and turned away, leaving it open.

  Greg walked in and offered his left fist to the dog. It sniffed warily and gave him provisional approval. He followed Jacky into a small kitchen.

  "It's All Saints' Day," Greg said. He was not religious, but at his boarding school he had been forced to learn all the Christian festivals. "Is that why you went to church?"

  "We go every Sunday," she replied.

  "This is a day of surprises," Greg murmured.

  She took off the boy's coat, sat him at the table, and gave him a cup of orange juice. Greg sat opposite and said: "What's your name?"

  "Georgy." He said it quietly, but with confidence: he was not shy. Greg studied him. He was as pretty as his mother, with the same bow-shaped mouth, but his skin was lighter than hers, more like coffee with cream, and he had green eyes, unusual in a Negro face. He reminded Greg a little of his half sister, Daisy. Meanwhile Georgy looked at Greg with an intense gaze that was almost intimidating.

  Greg said: "How old are you, Georgy?"

  He looked at his mother for help. She gave Greg a strange look and said: "He's six."

  "Six!" said Greg. "You're quite a big boy, aren't you? Why . . . ?"

  A bizarre thought crossed his mind, and he fell silent. Georgy had been born six years ago. Greg and Jacky had been lovers seven years ago. His heart seemed to falter.

  He stared at Jacky. "Surely not," he said.

  She nodded.

  "He was born in 1936," said Greg.

  "May," she said. "Eight and a half months after I left that apartment in Buffalo."

  "Does my father know?"

  "Heck, no. That would have given him even more power over me."

  Her hostility had vanished, and now she just looked vulnerable. In her eyes he saw a plea, though he was not sure what she was pleading for.

  He looked at Georgy with new eyes: the light skin, the green eyes, the odd resemblance to Daisy. Are you mine? he thought. Can it be true?

  But he knew it was.

  His heart filled with a strange emotion. Suddenly Georgy seemed terribly vulnerable, a helpless child in a cruel world, and Greg needed to take care of him, make sure he came to no harm. He had an impulse to take the boy in his arms, but he realized that might scare him, so he held back.

  Georgy put down his orange juice. He got off his chair and came around the table to stand close to Greg. With a remarkably direct look, he said: "Who are you?"

  Trust a kid to ask the toughest question of all, Greg thought. What the hell was he going to say? The truth was too much for a six-year-old to take. I'm just a former friend of your mother's, he thought; I was just passing the door, thought I'd say hello. Nobody special. May see you again, most likely not.

  He looked at Jacky, and saw that pleading expression intensified. He realized what was on her mind: she was desperately afraid he was going to reject Georgy.

  "I tell you what," Greg said, and he lifted Georgy onto his knees. "Why don't you call me Uncle Greg?"

  iv

  Greg stood shivering in the spectators' gallery of an unheated squash court. Here, under the west stand of the disused stadium on the edge of the University of Chicago campus, Fermi and Szilard had built their atomic pile. Greg was impressed and scared.

  The pile was a cube of gray bricks reaching the ceiling of the court, standing just shy of the end wall, which still bore the polka-dot marks of hundreds of squash balls. The pile had cost a million dollars, and it could blow up the entire city.

  Graphite was the material of which pencil leads were made, and it gave off a filthy dust that covered the floor and walls. Everyone who had been in the room awhile was as black-faced as a coal miner. No one had a clean lab coat.

  Graphite was not the explosive material--on the contrary, it was there to suppress radioactivity. But some of the bricks in the stack were drilled with narrow holes stuffed with uranium oxide, and this was the material that radiated the neutrons. Running through the pile were ten channels for control rods. These were thirteen-foot strips of cadmium, a metal that absorbed neutrons even more hungrily than graphite. Right now the rods were keeping everything calm. When they were withdrawn from the pile, the fun would start.

  The uranium was already throwing off its deadly radiation, but the graphite and the cadmium were soaking it up. Radiation was measured by counters that clicked menacingly and a cylindrical pen recorder that was mercifully silent. The array of controls and meters near Greg in the gallery gave off the only heat in the place.

  Greg visited on Wednesday, December 2, a bitterly cold, windy day in Chicago. Today for the first time the pile was supposed to go critical. Greg was there to observe the experiment on behalf of his boss, General Groves. He hinted jovially to anyone who asked that Groves feared an explosion and had deputed Greg to take the risk for him. In fact Greg had a more sinister mission. He was making an initial assessment of the scientists with a view to deciding who might be a security risk.

  Security on the Manhattan Project was a nightmare. The top scientists were foreigners. Most of the rest were left-wingers, either Communists themselves or liberals who had Communist friends. If everyone suspicious was fired there would be hardly any scientists left. So Greg was trying to figure out which ones were the worst risks.

  Enrico Fermi was about forty. A small, balding man with a long nose, he smiled engagingly while supervising this terrifying experiment. He was smartly dressed in a suit with a waistcoat. It was midmorning when he ordered the trial to begin.

  He instructed a technician to withdraw all but one of the control rods from the pile. Greg said: "What, all at once?" It seemed frighteningly precipitate.

  The scientist standing next to him, Barney McHugh, said: "We took it this far last night. It worked fine."

  "I'm glad to hear it," said Greg.

  McHugh, bearded and podgy, was low down on Greg's list of suspects. He was American, with no interest in politics. The only black mark against him was a foreign wife: she was British--never a good sign, but not in itself evidence of treachery.

  Greg had assumed there would be some sophisticated mechanism for moving the rods in and out, but it was simpler than that. The technician just put a ladder up against the pile, climbed halfway up it, and pulled out the rods by hand.

  Speaking conversationally, McHugh said: "We were originally going to do this in the Argonne Forest."

  "Where's that?"

  "Twenty miles southwest of Chicago. Pretty isolated. Fewer casualties."

  Greg shivered. "So why did you change your minds and decide to do it right here on Fifty-seventh Street?"

  "The builders we hired went on strike, so we had to build the damn thing ourselves, and we couldn't be that far away from the laboratories."

  "So you took the risk of killing everyone in Chicago."

  "We don't think that will happen."

  Greg had not thought so, either, but he did not feel so sure now, standing a few feet away from the pile.

  Fermi was checking his monitors against a forecast he had prepared of radiation levels at every stage of the experiment. Apparently the initial stage went according to plan, for he now ordered the last rod to be pulled halfway out.

  There were some safety measures. A weight
ed rod hung poised to be dropped into the pile automatically if the radiation rose too high. In case that did not work, a similar rod was tied to the gallery railing with a rope, and a young physicist, looking as if he felt a bit silly, stood holding an axe, ready to cut the rope in an emergency. Finally three more scientists called the suicide squad were positioned near the ceiling, standing on the platform of the elevator used during construction, holding large jugs of cadmium sulfate solution, which they would throw onto the pile, as if dousing a bonfire.

  Greg knew that neutron generation multiplied in thousandths of a second. However, Fermi argued that some neutrons took longer, perhaps several seconds. If Fermi was right, there would be no problem. But if he was wrong, the squad with the jugs and the physicist with the axe would be vaporized before they could blink.

  Greg heard the clicking become more rapid. He looked anxiously at Fermi, who was doing calculations with a slide rule. Fermi looked pleased. Anyway, Greg thought, if things go wrong it will probably happen so fast that we'll never know anything about it.

  The rate of clicking leveled off. Fermi smiled and gave the order for the rod to be pulled out another six inches.

  More scientists were arriving, climbing the stairs to the gallery in their heavyweight Chicago-winter clothing, coats and hats and scarves and gloves. Greg was appalled at the lack of security. No one was checking credentials: any one of these men could have been a spy for the Japanese.

  Among them Greg recognized the great Szilard, tall and heavy, with a round face and thick curly hair. Leo Szilard was an idealist who had imagined nuclear power liberating the human race from toil. It was with a heavy heart that he had joined the team designing the atom bomb.

  Another six inches, another increase in the pace of the clicking.

  Greg looked at his watch. It was eleven thirty.

  Suddenly there was a loud crash. Everyone jumped. McHugh said: "Fuck."

  Greg said: "What happened?"

  "Oh, I see," said McHugh. "The radiation level activated the safety mechanism and released the emergency control rod, that's all."

  Fermi announced: "I'm hungry. Let's go to lunch." In his Italian accent it came out "I'm hungary. Les go to luncha."

  How could they think about food? But no one argued. "You never know how long an experiment is going to take," said McHugh. "Could be all day. Best to eat when you can." Greg could have screamed.

  All the control rods were reinserted into the pile and locked into position, and everyone left.

  Most of them went to a campus canteen. Greg got a grilled cheese sandwich and sat next to a solemn physicist called Wilhelm Frunze. Most scientists were badly dressed but Frunze was notably so, in a green suit with tan suede trimmings: buttonholes, collar lining, elbow patches, pocket flaps. This guy was high on Greg's suspect list. He was German, though he had left in the mid-1930s and gone to London. He was an anti-Nazi but not a Communist: his politics were Social Democrat. He was married to an American girl, an artist. Talking to him over lunch, Greg found no reason for suspicion: he seemed to love living in America and to be interested in little but his work. But with foreigners you could never be quite sure where their ultimate loyalty lay.

  After lunch he stood in the derelict stadium, looking at thousands of empty stands, and thought about Georgy. He had told no one he had a son--not even Margaret Cowdry, with whom he was now enjoying delightfully carnal relations--but he longed to tell his mother. He felt proud, for no reason--he had made no contribution to bringing Georgy into the world apart from making love to Jacky, probably about the easiest thing he had ever done. Most of all he felt excited. He was at the beginning of some kind of adventure. Georgy was going to grow, and learn, and change, and one day become a man, and Greg would be there, watching and marveling.

  The scientists reassembled at two o'clock. Now there were about forty people crowded into the gallery with the monitoring equipment. The experiment was carefully reset in the position at which they had left off, Fermi checking his instruments constantly.

  Then he said: "This time, withdraw the rod twelve inches."

  The clicks became rapid. Greg waited for the increase to level off, as it had before, but it did not. Instead the clicking became faster and faster until it was a continuous roar.

  The radiation level was above the maximum of the counters, Greg realized when he noticed that everyone's attention had switched to the pen recorder. Its scale was adjustable. As the level rose the scale was changed, then changed again, and again.

  Fermi raised a hand. They all went silent. "The pile has gone critical," he said. He smiled--and did nothing.

  Greg wanted to scream So turn the fucker off! But Fermi remained silent and still, watching the pen, and such was his authority that no one challenged him. The chain reaction was happening, but it was under control. He let it run for a minute, then another.

  McHugh muttered: "Jesus Christ."

  Greg did not want to die. He wanted to be a senator. He wanted to sleep with Margaret Cowdry again. He wanted to see Georgy go to college. I haven't had half a life yet, he thought.

  At last Fermi ordered the control rods to be pushed in.

  The noise of the counters reverted to a clicking that gradually slowed and stopped.

  Greg breathed normally.

  McHugh was jubilant. "We proved it!" he said. "The chain reaction is real!"

  "And it's controllable, more importantly," said Greg.

  "Yes, I suppose that is more important, from the practical point of view."

  Greg smiled. Scientists were like this, he knew from Harvard: for them theory was reality, and the world a rather inaccurate model.

  Someone produced a bottle of Italian wine in a straw basket and some paper cups. The scientists all drank a tiny share. This was another reason Greg was not a scientist: they had no idea how to party.

  Someone asked Fermi to sign the basket. He did so, then all the others signed it.

  The technicians shut down the monitors. Everyone began to drift away. Greg stayed, observing. After a while he found himself alone in the gallery with Fermi and Szilard. He watched as the two intellectual giants shook hands. Szilard was a big, round-faced man; Fermi was elfin. For a moment Greg was inappropriately reminded of Laurel and Hardy.

  Then he heard Szilard speak. "My friend," he said, "I think this will go down as a black day in the history of mankind."

  Greg thought: Now what the hell did he mean by that?

  v

  Greg wanted his parents to accept Georgy.

  It would not be easy. No doubt it would be unnerving for them to be told they had a grandson who had been concealed from them for six years. They might be angry. On top of that, they might look down on Jacky. They had no right to take a moralistic attitude, he thought wryly: they themselves had an illegitimate child--himself. But people were not rational.

  He was not sure how much difference it would make that Georgy was black. Greg's parents were laid-back about race, and never talked viciously about niggers or kikes as some people of their generation did, but they might change when they learned there was a Negro in the family.

  His father would be the more difficult one, he guessed, so he spoke to his mother first.

  He got a few days' leave at Christmas and went home to her place in Buffalo. Marga had a large apartment in the best building in town. She lived mostly alone, but she had a cook, two maids, and a chauffeur. She had a safe full of jewelry and a dress closet the size of a two-car garage. But she did not have a husband.

  Lev was in town, but traditionally he took Olga out on Christmas Eve. He was still married to her, technically, though he had not spent a night at her house for years. As far as Greg knew, Olga and Lev hated one another, but for some reason they met once a year.

  That evening, Greg and his mother had dinner together in the apartment. He put on a tuxedo to please her. "I love to see my men dressed up," she often said. They had fish soup, roast chicken, and Greg's boyhood favorite, peach pie.<
br />
  "I have some news for you, Mother," he said nervously as the maid poured coffee. He feared she would be angry. He was not frightened for himself, but for Georgy, and he wondered if this was what parenthood was about--worrying about someone else more than you worried about yourself.

  "Good news?" she said.

  She had become heavier in recent years, but she was still glamorous at forty-six. If there was any gray in her dark hair it had been carefully camouflaged by her hairdresser. Tonight she wore a simple black dress and a diamond choker.

  "Very good news, but I guess a little surprising, so please don't fly off the handle."

  She raised a black eyebrow but said nothing.

  He reached inside his dinner jacket and took out a photograph. It showed Georgy on a red bicycle with a ribbon around the handlebars. The rear wheel of the bike had a pair of stabilizing wheels so that it would not fall over. The expression on the boy's face was ecstatic. Greg was kneeling beside him, looking proud.

  He handed the picture to his mother.

  She studied it thoughtfully. After a minute she said: "I'm assuming you gave this little boy a bicycle for Christmas."

  "That's right."

  She looked up. "Are you telling me you have a child?"

  Greg nodded. "His name is Georgy."

  "Are you married?"

  "No."

  She threw down the photo. "For God's sake!" she said angrily. "What is the matter with you Peshkov men?"

  Greg was dismayed. "I don't know what you mean!"

  "Another illegitimate child! Another woman bringing him up alone!"

  He realized that she saw Jacky as a younger version of herself. "Mother, I was fifteen . . ."

  "Why can't you be normal?" she stormed. "For the love of Jesus Christ, what's wrong with having a regular family?"

  Greg looked down. "There's nothing wrong with it."

  He felt ashamed. Until this moment he had seen himself as a passive player in this drama, even a victim. Everything that had happened had been done to him by his father and Jacky. But his mother did not view it that way, and now he saw that she was right. He had not thought twice about sleeping with Jacky, he had not questioned her when she had said airily that there was no need to worry about contraception, and he had not confronted his father when Jacky left. He had been very young, yes, but if he was old enough to fuck her, he was old enough to take responsibility for the consequences.