by Len Deighton
We spent the first few hours looking around the project. An army major with an amazing memory for facts and figures went around with us. The bomb to be exploded was a ‘fractional crit bomb’, the major explained to us. ‘Uranium, when enough (that is a critical mass) of it comes together, explodes. But if the density is squeezed, the same explosion can come from a smaller quantity. So high explosive is placed round a small sphere of U-235, or plutonium. This means that only a fraction of the critical mass is needed, hence “fractional crit bomb”.’
The major looked at his audience like he expected applause and went on to explain about ways in which it had become possible to dispense with tritium and with refrigeration, so making the bomb cheaper and easier to produce. He left me back there with the ‘fractional crit’ stuff, but we let him go on.
We flew out to the island where the detonation was to take place. The whole island was a mass of instruments, and it coruscated in the bright tropical sunshine. The major pointed them out to us. He was a short thickset man with rimless glasses and a blue chin who looked like Humpty Dumpty in his white helmet liner with ‘Q’ painted on it, but then perhaps we all did. There were the photocells, photo-multipliers, ion chambers, mass and beta ray spectographs. Standing in the middle of this sandy arena, surrounded by machines, with dozens of human attendants, in godlike splendour, was the shot tower. A great red-painted metal tower 200 feet high. Round the base of the tower were huge notices reading ‘DANGER’ and under that, with not so typical American understatement, the words ‘High Explosives’.
The sun sets and goes out like a flash-light in the tropics and it was low in the sky as we clattered along the hardboard corridors of Main Block Three. It was the third conference of the day and the ice-water was slopping around inside me like the documents in an untidy brief-case — my briefcase for instance. We got there before the meeting had begun and everyone was standing around giving each other the old stuff about retreads, PTA meetings, and where to go for a good divorce. I could see many people I knew. From ONI; from State Dept Intelligence, and the many separate US Army Intelligence departments. Standing alone in the corner were three young crew-cut collegiate men from the FBI — pariahs of the US Intelligence Organization — and not without reason.
Against the shuttered light of the window I saw a couple of colonels I remembered from a stint with the CIA Bankrolls — thicker, hair thinner and belts longer. ‘Skip’ Henderson had made major, I noticed — one of the brightest Intelligence men I knew. His assistant, Lieutenant Barney Barnes, wasn’t with him today. I hoped he was around somewhere. Barney and Skip were people who listen a lot, tell you that you are a sensation, and at the end of a couple of hours you begin to think it’s true. Skip gave me the high sign. Dalby was well into a finger-stabbing duel with Colonel Donahue. Jean was sifting through her shorthand notes, and pencils to separate them from skin food, wych-hazel, eyebrow pencils and lipstick. Before I could edge round to Skip, the chairman, Battersby, the US Intelligence Department’s logistic king, made coughing noises. He felt he’d left enough time between the late arrivals — us — and starting the motors, to save us embarrassment. We sat down, all fourteen of us round the long mess-hall table; in front of each of us stood some white paper, a Zippi Speedball pen, a book of matches that said, ‘Pestpruf roofing’ followed by an address in Cincinnati, and a clean drinking-glass. In the centre of the table four plastic jugs held cold American water in vacuumstoppered frigidity. We all waited for Battersby to kick off.
‘Well, we’ve all had a tough day, so we won’t…say — get one of those guys outside to fix these darn fans, will you?’
Someone slid across to the door and held a whispered conversation with the Air Policeman outside. We all tried to listen to both conversations at once. A white plastic helmet liner looked round the door. He wanted to make sure that a roomful of people without fans really existed. Battersby saw the movement.
‘Just get some fans on in here, son, will you?’ he boomed, then turned back to us. ‘Try to get a little agreement round here. Guess all you people know each other.’ This was a cue for all those healthy well-laundered Americans to politely display thirty-two teeth at Jean. I shifted uncomfortably in my drip-dry shirt that had become a bundle under my arm-pits.
The little information officer who had been showing us the set-up went to the blackboard and drew a circle; inside it he wrote ‘Uranium 235 (or Plutonium)’. He tapped the circle with his chalk. ‘Hit this with a Uranium 235 bullet and you get fission — a self-sustaining reaction.’ Over on the right-hand side of the board he wrote ‘July 16, 1945.’
‘Exactly the same principle gave us the “thin man” bomb. Hiroshima.’ The major wrote ‘August 6, 1945’ under the first date. ‘Now for the “fat boy”. That took out Nagasaki.’ He added August 9 to the list and drew another circle. ‘This,’ he made the circle very thick with the side of his chalk, ‘is made of plutonium with a hollow centre; you implode it. That is to say let it collapse on to itself like a burst balloon by having it surrounded with something that gives you a big bang forming,’ he wrote ‘crit mass’ in the centre of the thick circle. ‘A critical mass. OK?’ He wrote ‘August 28/29? 1949’ and turned to face us again. ‘We are not sure of the exact date.’ I’ll bet Ross could tell you, I thought, and I felt a little glow of vicarious pride.[14] The major went on, ‘We think that is the sort of bomb the reds exploded in 1949. Now then we get to the Eniwetok blast.’ He wrote ‘November 1, 1952’ under the other dates.
He drew another circle on the board and wrote ‘deuterium’ inside it. ‘Also called heavy hydrogen,’ he said, tapping the word deuterium. Alongside the first circle he drew two more. Missing the centre circle he wrote the word tritium into the third circle. ‘Tritium is also called super-heavy hydrogen,’ he said, tapping it. ‘Now what happens in a hydrogen blast? These two fuse. It is a fusion bomb which creates a chain reaction between these two: heavy hydrogen and superheavy hydrogen. It heats them by a trigger of what?’ He turned to write the answer into the centre circle. A colonel said, ‘Super-duper heavy hydrogen.’ Humpty Dumpty turned round and then laughed, but I wouldn’t have cared to be a captain that said it.
The major drew a chalkline connecting the earlier diagram with the centre circle. ‘The trigger is an atomic bomb. Making it a fission-fusion device. Now in the larger bomb we use a different substance. Uranium 235 is expensive, but Uranium 238 is cheaper but needs a lot more get-up-andgo to be triggered. You surround the trigger with a layer of 238,’ he drew a diagram. ‘But this tends to give a lot of fallout as well as a big energy release. Now you can see that all these bombs, including the red H-blast…’ he wrote ‘August 12, 1953’ on to the list…‘These bombs all have a standard primitive A-bomb centre and are called fission-fusion-fission bombs. OK?’
The major was stabbing the air with his chalk like a medical student with his first thermometer. ‘Now we come to our little blast-off here at Tokwe. We have a standard 238 bomb, but here,’ he tapped the centre of the inevitable circle, ‘here we have a trigger of an entirely new pattern. The only purpose of the trigger is to get extreme temperatures. OK? Suppose in here we put a king-size shot of TNT and get enough temperature to flash the bomb. Right?’ He wrote ‘TNT’ into the centre of the chalk circle. ‘Then that would be what we call a “high explosive to fusion reaction”.’ He wrote ‘H.E.-fusion’ under that drawing. ‘We haven’t done that and nor has anyone else — in fact it’s probably impossible. Practically all the little countries have got their labs working on this because if they ever do it bombs will be a dime a dozen.’ He rubbed out ‘TNT’ and tapped the blank space. ‘So what do we have here? I’ll tell you. Not a thing.’ He paused while we were all registering appropriate types of surprise. ‘No, we have nothing inside the bomb, but we do have something here.’ He drew a small rectangle at the extreme edge of the board (he could draw any shape, this boy). Inside the rectangle he wrote ‘SVMF’. ‘Here there is the Super Volt Micro Flash mechanism, the SUV
OM which for a millionth of a microsecond builds up enough voltage to trip the mechanism. Now as you see, this power is taken into the bomb,’ he drew a long squeaky chalkline joining the bomb to the mechanism, ‘by the umbilical cord. Without the A-bomb trigger there will be no fallout. This will be the first entirely clean bomb. OK?’
The major carefully picked himself a fresh piece of chalk and I sneaked a look at my watch. It was 6.10 P.M. ‘Size,’ he said. ‘What size bomb is this one we have here? This is a fifty-megaton bomb.[15] In terms of the destructive area, this is a bomb that would take out a whole city and make the “thin man” look like a dud. We expect Type 2 destruction — that is to say everything flammable gone and severe damage to metal and brick across a thirty-five-mile radius.’ Someone at the other end of the table said, ‘Diameter,’ and Humpty Dumpty said, ‘No; radius!’ There was a low whistle. I guessed that the officer who said diameter had been asked to do so, but it was quite a statement just the same. The major pressed on. ‘In terms of territory it means that a bomb in Bernalillo brings Type 2 as far as Santa Fé and Los Lunas (these were towns in New Mexico near Los Alamos which almost everyone knew in terms of flesh, food, and furlough). There were more exclamations. ‘Or to take another example, from Sacramento right the way down to Redwood City, and that includes the Sheraton Palace.’ It was a private joke and someone laughed at it. The little major was quite enjoying his lecture now, what with everyone being awake and all. ‘For the sake of our guests, I’ll give you another demonstration that may help. Think of Type 2 from Southend to Reading.’ He pronounced it Reeding. He looked at me and I said, ‘If it’s all the same to you I’ll think of it from Santa Fé to Los Lunas.’
The little major gave me a millionth of a microsecond smile and said, ‘Yes — sir, we had to select a jumbo size atoll for this baby. We’re not commuting between here and the shot island every day for the ride. OK?’ I said it was OK, by me.
Next, Battersby stood up and the little major collected his notes together, lit up a two-bit cigar and sat down while a provost lieutenant came in with a little compressed air machine and sprayed water over the blackboard before giving it a thorough cleaning. Other officers told of detection methods used to judge the size and positions of explosions, and how they intended to jam the Russian detection devices like the radar that detects changes in the electric charges in the ionosphere, and the recording barometers that record air and sound waves and produce microbarographs, and the radio signals that are picked up from the release of radio energy at the time of the explosion. The standard and most reliable detection system of analysing fallout residue to find the substances from which the bomb had been constructed was ruled out in this case because it was to be a ‘clean’ bomb.
Battersby told us the structure of the security arrangements, the echelon of command, the dates the firing was likely to take place, and showed us some beautiful diagrams. Then the meeting broke up into sub-meetings. I was to go off with Skip Henderson and a Lt Dolobowski and Jean, while Dalby went into secret session with Battersby’s assistant. Skip said that we may as well go across to his quarters where the fans worked properly and there was a bottle of Scotch. A few of the eager beavers down the other end of the table were destroying notes they had made, by burning them with Messrs Pestpruf’s matches.
Skip had a comfortable little den in the section of camp that came nearest to the sea. A tin cupboard held his uniforms, and an old airconditioning unit sat astride the window-sill beating the air cold. On the army table were a few books; German grammar; Trial by Ordeal, by Caryl Chessman; two paperback westerns, Furnace Installation — a Guide, and A Century of Ribald Stories. On the window-sill was a bottle of Scotch, gin, some assorted mixes, a glass containing a dozen sharpened pencils, and an electric razor.
From the window I could see a mile or so up the beach one way, and nearly half a mile the other. In both directions the beach was still encrusted with debris, and a flimsy jetty limped painfully into the water. The sun was a dark red fireball, just like the one we were trying to create on tower island a few miles north.
Skip poured us all a generous shot of Black Label, and even remembered to leave the ice out of mine.
‘So that’s the way it is,’ he said. ‘You and this young lady here decide to catch a little sunshine at John Government’s expense?’ He waited for me to speak.
I spoke. ‘It’s just that I have so many unsolved crimes on my hands that I have become the unsolved crime expert — anyone with an unsolved crime on their hands, they send for me.’
‘And you solve it?’
‘No, only file it.’
Skip poured me another drink, looked at the dark-eyed little lieutenant, and said, ‘I hope you’ve got a large family economy size file with you this trip.’ He sat down on the bed and unlocked his brief-case. I noticed the steel liner inside it. ‘No one can tell you the whole picture because we haven’t put it together yet. But we are in a spot; the stuff we are getting back from EW 192 is verbatim stuff we are putting in our files. Verbatim. No sooner is a discovery made in our labs than it is broadcast to the other side of the world.’
The CIA numbers its rooms with a prefix telling which wing it’s situated in. Room 192 in the East Wing is really a large suite of rooms and its job is relaying information from the heart of foreign governments. It deals only with agents getting stuff from sacrosanct crevices available to highest-level foreign officials. It would certainly be the best possible way of checking the US’s loss of its own information.
‘It’s from labs? It’s strictly scientific information then?’
Skip pinched his nostrils. ‘Seems to be at present.’
Jean had made herself comfortable in the nonarmy-style wicker chair. She had that quiet, composed, rather stupid look that I had noticed before. It meant she was committing the bulk of the conversation to memory. She came back slowly to life now.
‘You said “at present”. I take it the volume of this stuff is increasing. How fast?’
‘It’s increasing, and fast enough for the whole department to be very worried — can I leave it at that?’ It was a rhetorical question.
Jean asked, ‘When did you first suspect there was a multiple leak? It is a multiple?’
‘A multiple? I’ll say it is — it’s a multiple multiple. It’s from a range of subjects so vast there isn’t one college, let alone one lab, that could have access to it.’
The dark-eyed Dolobowski went for some more ice from the fridge. Skip produced one of those vast cartons of cigarettes and talked Jean into trying a Lucky. He lit his own and Jean’s, and the darkeyed one gave us more ice and Scotch all round.
‘The first leaks,’ Skip mused. ‘Yes.’
Dolobowski sat himself back in the chair and it was suddenly clear to me that he had some sort of authority over Skip. That was why he’d said nothing while the dark-eyed one was out of the room. He was here to make sure that Jean and I came away with just the amount of information we were allowed. I didn’t blame anyone for this, after all we hadn’t told the Americans that we were having the same problem. In fact, goodness knows what cock-and-bull story Dalby had cooked up to get along here. Skip was staring defensively into space and blowing gently on the ember of his cigarette.
‘With these international conferences it’s difficult,’ the dark-eyed one had decided to answer. His voice, pitched low, came from far away. ‘Scientists use the same sort of jargon, and anyway, discoveries tend to run parallel. We think that eight months cover the broad front leaks. Before that there may have been the odd thing here and there, but now it covers the whole scientific programme — even non-military.’
You could see that the non-military bit really hurt; that was below the belt.
I said that I wouldn’t mind if it was a small one, but that then I had better go, no really — perhaps another time. We fenced off a few questions about leaks in the UK, to persuade them that we didn’t know what was happening. It wasn’t difficult. Skip saw us off down to
the little white-painted fence by means of which a considerate army enabled him to feel he had never left New Jersey. He was going back to the States the next day — I said to give my regards to Barney, and he said he would, and did I have plenty of cigarettes. We shook hands and I remembered Skip Henderson as he used to be; with hair to spare for barbers, and a fund of stories upon which every barman in town would refuel. I remember him carrying his old camera, and stopping every pretty girl he saw, saying he was from Life magazine, and how he hoped they didn’t think him rude for speaking to them without being introduced. The pictures he took with that old camera, ‘And now perhaps a really sophisticated shot in case we make the cover again this week.’ I don’t think Skip knew how the film fitted into it even. Everyone in town knew that Skip was always good for a laugh and a couple of dollars.
‘I’m sorry,’ Skip said, ‘for not having sherry. I mean I know you hate whisky before dinner really.’ Skip kicked the toe of his elegant, hand-tooled Italian pointed non-army brogues in the sand. I knew that Skip knew that I knew who dark-eyes was.