“Banishment,” said Isenberg. “It can make an ordinary man a great man or it can destroy him. Garibaldi, Sun Yatsen, Lenin, Victor Hugo—they all grew to greatness in exile. But poor Kościuszko and Stefan Zweig—they were ruined.”
Brennan smiled thinly. “I’m afraid I’ve not found exile an inspiring condition. It’s made me something of a paranoiac. Not a happy state, as you can imagine. But you mentioned Paris. I came to Paris because I saw a possibility that I might be able to clear my name.”
“Your name—Mon Dieu, that was a crime,” said Isenberg, glowering. “That was a filthy crime to force one with your intelligence and talent to waste energies clearing a name that needed no clearing to begin with.” He shook his head. “No, my friend, you are not a paranoiac, because you are not suffering from delusions of persecution. You have, in fact, been persecuted.” He leaned forward through the smoke, placing his sharp elbows on the desk. “I volunteered that old interview of mine because, from afar, I could dispassionately observe the deceit reflected in those Congressional hearings in your country. I could see you were being as victimized as my old, dear friend, Oppenheimer, had been earlier. I could see that if you were sacrificed to ferocious political tyrannosaurs, to sate their electorate, then all of us, the remaining thinkers, were vulnerable, too. So I spoke out. I wish my words could have had more effect. I am afraid they fell on deaf ears, because your prosecutors would hear only what they wanted to hear. But you heard my protest, and I was touched by your letter.” He wagged his head again. “I have not altered my opinion since. I would repeat the interview today, were I not a delegate to the Summit and hence restricted by security from speaking. If a mistake was made, it was not made at your level in Zurich but at a higher level in Washington. Professor Varney’s confused political idealism was no secret. I knew his work. Brilliant man. But his political sense I had always questioned, as I always questioned Bertrand Russell’s behavior whenever he tried to save mankind instead of individual man. If there must be blame for Varney’s not surprising defection, it should have been placed on those who appointed him. Once appointed, once sent abroad to deal with the Chinese, he obviously was entirely free to behave as he wished, unless he had been sent manacled or in chains. But all of that, my dear Brennan, is begging the real issue. For the real issue was, and remains, the simple truth that—in fact—your Varney’s defection was a matter of little importance. I hinted at that in my original interview, if you recall. Varney’s going—or not going—to China could not have changed or deterred by one iota the course of Chinese evolution or world history.
Varney did not give the People’s Republic of China the neutron bomb. He did not give them the means of delivering the bomb. They already possessed the knowledge for constructing both. He could do no more than confirm designs for, or speed along, what was already being accomplished in China. In short, my dear sir, you could not be charged with being an accomplice to a crime when there was no crime. You see?”
Brennan, listening attentively, enjoyed a feeling of exhilaration. He had been waiting to hear Isenberg deliver a verdict on his guilt or innocence, or on the degree of his culpability, and instead Brennan had learned that there had been no transgression against public good because there had been no homicide. It was as if the iron weight of unfair guilt, crushing and trapping him, had been made of papier-mâché and was no more.
“You’re really sure that Varney gave them nothing they didn’t already possess?” Brennan asked with wonder. “Everyone says that because Varney got away from us, went over to them, China was able to become the power and threat that she is, and bring on the present crisis, even forcing a Summit meeting whose entire agenda concerns only one subject—human survival. Yet, you really think that’s not all Varney’s doing?”
Professor Isenberg plucked the meerschaum from his mouth and shook his head, laughing. “Brennan, Brennan, I give you my sacred word it is not so.” Sobering, he wagged his pipe at Brennan, spilling ashes, tobacco, live sparks over his desk. As one hand put out the sparks on his blotter, Isenberg said, “Listen to me, my fine fellow. Red China exploded her first atomic bomb back in October, 1964, near Lake Lop Nor in the Chinese Takla Makan Desert. It was a real bomb and a strong one, as powerful as your Hiroshima bomb. How was China, so backward and industrially underdeveloped, able to create that first atomic bomb? I will answer. The Chinese have always had a genius for science. Before Christ, they constructed the colossal Great Wall that was 2,500 miles long, the only man-made object on earth, I am told, that might be seen from the planet Mars. Over a thousand years ago, the Chinese invented printing. Then, and hear me, as many years ago, they invented gunpowder, and they invented the rocket, filling a bamboo stalk with powder, lighting this fire missile and sending it off against enemies.
“Today, my dear Brennan, the same pool of native genius continues to exist in China. In our time, China has developed a corps of the finest nuclear scientists on earth. I speak of Dr. Chien San-chiang, who graduated from the University of Paris and was trained by Madame Curie in our Paris Laboratoire Curie. I speak of Wang Kan-chang, who studied in Germany and Russia and was deputy director of the Russian atomic research center, Dubna Institute, in 1959. I speak of the many Chinese nuclear physicists trained by 10,000 Russian scientists and technicians who visited China between 1950 and 1960. I speak of the 60,000 Chinese who were trained in the Chinese Academy of Sciences and similar schools. I speak of a new Chinese nation, one with great uranium resources that were mined at Tachang, in Sinkiang Province. I speak of a nation able to build gaseous diffusion plants at Sanchow and plutonium-producing reactors at Paotow. I speak of a nation so ambitious and determined that it was prepared to sacrifice the welfare of its population—the average man still earns only 500 francs, or less than $100 a year—in order to devote one and a half billion dollars to develop its first atomic bomb in an effort to win the respect and fear of a world that had so long despised and exploited it.”
“Then you think the Chinese developed their first atomic bomb entirely on their own?” asked Brennan.
“No, no, not quite. Eventually, they would have developed one, but they did so as quickly as they did because Russia and the United States helped them along. When Stalin thought of using Mao Tse-tung as a Communist puppet heading a Russian Communist satellite, he started China along the nuclear road. He gave the Chinese a heavy-water nuclear reactor and accelerators—intending these for peaceful uses—but China developed its first chain reaction in that reactor in 1958. In 1951 Stalin almost gave the Chinese a sample atomic bomb, but changed his mind. Still, Russia went on sending nuclear scientists and raw materials into China, even giving the Chinese jets and supersonic bombers until that day when the Soviets realized that China was determined to become Russia’s equal as a military power. But your own United States, Brennan, also contributed to China’s first bomb, long, long before the Varney incident.”
“You mentioned that before,” said Brennan. “Do you really mean it?”
“I do. At Los Alamos, where the United States developed history’s first atomic bomb, one of the members of your trusted team of scientists was Dr. Klaus Fuchs. Later, it was learned Dr. Fuchs was a traitor who had passed your secrets on to Russia, who in turn filtered many of these secrets down to Red China. Another traitor, Bruno Pontecorvo, worked in England with your nuclear secrets, and in 1950 he defected to Russia, and your secrets again became known to Communists in Moscow and Peking. You see, Brennan?”
“Yes.”
“The rest was easy. I put it this way. Once an aggressive man has seduced a virgin, she, the mademoiselle, has no more mystery or secret to keep from him. He can go on and on in his conquest of her, in developing her love in many ways. But it is the original penetration of secrecy that is the important one. So it was with China and the bomb. Once the Chinese had solved the first mystery, their further wooing and seduction of more complex nuclear secrets came easier. Your Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Urey, predicted at that time that Communist
China would quickly ‘produce hydrogen bombs by a comparatively secret process.’ He was correct, of course. With experience and growing confidence, with vital information pieced together from the reports of a network of embassy spies, from defectors, from studies of your tests and Russia’s tests, and, again from the genius of their own scientists, China easily produced the H-bomb. The necessary next step was the N-bomb.”
“Did Chairman Kuo Shu-tung really need the neutron bomb? I’ve never been sure—”
“To become a respected member of the Nuclear Club, yes, indeed yes. Consider the strategy. If China had the hydrogen bomb alone, they could devastate an enemy country but would have nothing left afterward to go in and occupy. Destruction, but not real victory. But to possess the neutron bomb would be to possess the most sophisticated and sensible annihilation weapon in history. Consider this weapon. The neutron bomb is a pure-fission clean device that is triggered by electromagnetic means instead of by fission detonators. It is a lightweight bomb capable of wiping out every human being in a target area, yet capable of leaving buildings and terrain untouched, intact, habitable. So, due to the many diverse factors that I have mentioned, China was already well on its way to the final development of this N-bomb when your nuclear savant, Varney, defected and moved over to Peking. You have my word, dear Brennan, that Varney could do little more than confirm for his hosts that they were on the right track. To believe that Varney handed China the entire N-bomb, and accuse you of complicity in this act, is absolutely ridiculous.”
Brennan felt as he had once felt in his boyhood, when he thought that he had gravely sinned and his father had absolved him, and he had looked upon his father as the reincarnation of St. Peter rescuing him from Hades. “You’re extremely kind to tell me all that, Professor Isenberg,” he said.
Isenberg seemed surprised. “I tell you only facts. These are the facts. And there are more. Varney was also blamed for helping China complete a delivery system for its nuclear warheads. Thus, you were condemned, secondarily, for letting him do this. That is another ridiculous fiction. China’s delivery system, crude as it is, was developed by Chinese. To begin with, the Chinese had samples of early Russian rockets to analyze. Then China was able to purchase precision-made electronic parts from manufacturers in countries like Germany and Sweden, from friends in Czechoslovakia and Japan, and from nations who recognized them like France. But China’s most valuable rocketry gift came from the United States. This gift was in the person of a Chinese named Tsien Hsue-shen. He went from China to your country to study. He obtained a master’s degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate from the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Tsien became professor of jet propulsion at Caltech. He contributed greatly to America’s nuclear rocket program. He even worked as a consultant to your Navy. But overnight, Dr. Tsien was accused of being a Communist and although he denied this charge, your country deported him in 1965—and presented Red China with one of the world’s foremost rocket experts. Not long after, the Chinese were testing missiles on their 700-mile range at Chiuchan. Going from these medium-range missiles to long-range intercontinental ballistic missiles was a shorter step than you imagine. As Dr. Cheng, an authority on Communist China who had been at the University of Michigan, once told us, Chinese leaders always compensate for material scarcity by employing a greater use of intelligence and by inspiring in their people a determination to work harder. He said that powerful rockets could be produced without a big industrial base. He said, as I recall his words, ‘If one uses the Western standard to measure the Chinese capacity for producing bombs and rockets, one easily commits the error of underestimation.’ Personally, I have never underestimated the Chinese. I have always known they did not need your Varney to develop their ICBM’s. And so now they have their missiles that can cross an ocean, they have enlarged their submarine fleet from thirty to ninety underwater craft in a decade, they have their imitations of the token Soviet TU-4 bombers that were once loaned to them, and they have the delivery system for their nuclear warheads. And, as a result, we have been forced to bring them to the Summit.”
“Do you think we can convince them to disarm along with us?” Brennan wondered.
“That is the problem. If America and Russia insist on a nuclear ban, with freezing of present-day stockpiles, with policing by an international army of neutrals, I think China will refuse to accept the conditions and the Summit will fail. Because, first, our stockpiles are greater than theirs and they would remain inferior, and because, second, they do not trust us, especially an America who has so long contested them in Southeast Asia and who still rings them with bases having nuclear-armed aircraft and missiles and Polaris submarines. But if America and Soviet Russia and the other powers will agree to total nuclear disarmament, including not only destruction of every nuclear weapon stockpiled, but destruction of every facility for producing such weapons, then I suspect that China will go along. Because nations will be left to face each other with conventional weapons and ground soldiers, and China will emerge slightly superior, with its three million armed men in its People’s Liberation Army.”
“But would they really compromise in working out disarmament agreements?” asked Brennan.
“Perhaps. I am not certain.” Professor Isenberg had emptied the gray ashes from his meerschaum pipe, and thoughtfully, he packed it with fresh tobacco. After lighting it, he said, “There are two Chinas, as there are two Russias, and it will all depend on which China is speaking in the Palais Rose You saw how Red China modified its aggressive ambitions after Mao and the angry and vengeful men had gone, and the moderates led by Chairman Kuo Shu-tung took over. Under Mao and the old leaders, one way or another, China finally won back or regained control over their ancient imperial territories in Tibet, Burma, Indochina, and they managed to control most of Southeast Asia and to neutralize Taiwan. Having won such controls as those the Russians exercised in Eastern Europe and the Americans exercised in its own offshore islands and in Central and South America, China’s feeling of pride and security was somewhat restored. And their present Chairman could afford to adopt a milder attitude toward the West and agree to treat with us at the Summit.”
“Milder attitude?” said Brennan, remembering that he had made this same protest to Neely. He was curious to see if Isenberg would have a different reaction. “It was that dangerous incident in India, and the exposure of the fact that the left-wing attempt at a coup d’état in Japan had been financed and directed by China that really brought on the Summit.”
Professor Isenberg smiled. “Yes. But that is pertinent to the point I am making. Chairman Kuo Shu-tung is really a man of peace. I believe, but he is also shrewd. He may have staged those recent crises in India and Japan to gain him more respect at the bargaining table, to make us prepared to compromise. On the other hand, those crises may have represented something else. I told you there were two Chinas, and the second China is composed of the sons of the Maoists, the hotheads, the diehards, the ones who pay homage to Lenin and the world revolution, the ones who are eager to show their muscle, or even to use it, in order to continue spreading Marxism and make Communism the dominant ideology on earth. If they are running China, and merely using the moderates like Chairman Kuo Shu-tung as figureheads, then we must expect trouble. But I doubt it. I think the Maoists are only a relatively small dissident group. I think Chairman Kuo Shu-tung’s program to go along with us in ending nuclear competition and the threat of war, and to join us in creating a peaceful world, in diverting military expenditures into bolstering domestic economies, is the real China that prevails in the Palais Rose. At least, that was the impression I took away from Peking two years ago, and this feeling has been reinforced by my meetings the last few days with my Chinese counterparts in the Palais Rose.”
Brennan uncrossed his legs, and sat up. “You were in Peking two years ago?”
“Yes, yes. There was a convention of nuclear scientists. We were treated in grand style. I had a wonderful room in
the Hsin Hsiao Hotel. Our Chinese hosts took us on a tour. They can be the most gracious and charming of hosts, especially when they are not trying to propagandize, and that’s my point. They weren’t. I heard hardly a word about American imperialism, or about Russian revisionists becoming a capitalistic pawn of the democracies. My Chinese hosts were confident, proud, and really quite friendly.”
“Did you hear anything about Professor Varney?”
“I was coming to that,” said Isenberg. “I wondered whether the West’s most famous defector was still around, whether he was alive or dead. I was curious to chat with him and learn his opinion of his adopted homeland after two years there. Also, quite honestly, I remembered your hearings and wanted to ask Varney about you and, if he was agreeable, see if I could get an affidavit from him that would clear your name, Brennan.”
“That was thoughtful of you, and I’m thankful.”
“Nothing to thank me for, because nothing happened. When I asked to see Varney, my Chinese hosts said that he was too senile and ill to receive any visitors. But from other things I heard, I doubted that Varney was that senile or that ill.”
“What things did you hear?”
“Oh, there was considerable talk about a new Nuclear Peace City—reactor-powered factories with their own community—that China is having private industry from West Germany come over to build for them. And since this new nuclear project involves advanced fission techniques that the Chinese scientists are not yet trained to handle, it was evident to me that they would need a foreigner capable of directing or managing the project. They can’t use a German for the single top job, because he has to be someone who is a Communist or is sympathetic to Communism. They can’t use a Russian, because they have fallen out with Russia. Although, to my surprise, there were a number of Russian scientists at our convention in Peking. Well, I suppose that was understandable, since scientists like to think their world is one without national frontiers. Anyway, I had the feeling when I was over there that if Varney was actually alive and healthy, he might head up the project. I wish I’d—”
The Plot Page 56