The Incidental Spy

by Libby Fischer Hellmann

  “Irving, you know me. What do you think?”

  A long pause followed. Then, “I’m sorry, Lena. It’s just this—all of this—is so alien to my whole being. My parents said I could move back in with them. But how can I? It—it would be admitting failure. If I can’t work at Met Lab, I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  “You are not a spy, Irving. We both know it.” She continued in a rush, grasping for something to say. “For all we know, Collins may be anti-Semitic. It wouldn’t be surprising.”

  He sighed. “Anti-Jew Pro-Jew, who cares? It could be anyone… Sonia… you.. me… even Compton, for Christ’s sake. A cloud of suspicion can fall on anyone these days.”

  “Irving, stop!” What had she done to this wonderful young man? He was a shadow of what he had once been. A despondent, sad shadow. And it was her doing.

  “Lena, I want to see you tonight. Please. Can I come over?”

  She covered her eyes with one hand. She was meeting Hans that evening. She couldn’t risk the two running into each other. She was just about to suggest the next night instead when he cut in.

  “I understand.” He’d mistaken the silence as her answer. “Goodbye, Lena.”

  “No, wait, Irving. That’s not—”

  But he’d hung up.

  CHAPTER 26

  Lena went through the next few hours like one of those zombies in a Bela Lugosi horror film. During the meeting with Hans in a coffee shop, she told him about Irving, how she’d been using him to get the sketch of the Pile, and how it had backfired.

  “You have to do something,” she said, her voice full of anguish.

  Hans shrugged.

  “Please. I’m begging you.”

  “You are sure he doesn’t know anything?”

  She looked down, recalling Irving’s question about whether there was anything he should know about her.

  “What is it, Lena?” Hans sounded irritated.

  She looked up. “He doesn’t know anything. I’m sure of it.”

  “I see.” Hans’ eyes narrowed. She knew he didn’t believe her.

  * * *

  Lena was surprised that no one at work talked about Irving. Or at least they didn’t talk to her about him. She supposed people knew they’d been seeing each other and weren’t sure what Lena’s feelings were. In a way it was a blessing. She tried to concentrate on her work, but every time Collins came in, he’d stop to ask if she had any news, or make a comment that meant hurry up and get me something. She started to bite her nails, something she’d never done before. Headaches came and went. She lost her appetite, and had trouble sleeping. Even Max couldn’t chase away her bad moods.

  A week later, towards the end of October, Lena came into work early, ostensibly to catch up on paperwork. She thought about photographing a letter or two, but decided it was too risky. She never knew when Collins would show up.

  It was a good decision; twenty minutes later Collins swept into the office. His usual bluster wasn’t apparent; in fact, his facial muscles were stretched taut and his eyes radiated distress.

  “Did you hear?”

  Lena’s pulse sped up. Collins rarely brought good news.

  “There’s been a terrible fire.”

  Lena jumped out of her chair, ran to a window, and looked out. No flames. No smell of smoke. “Where? I don’t see anything.” She turned around.

  “Not here.” He planted his hands on his hips. “Are you sure you haven’t heard?”

  “Colonel, I have no idea what you’re talking about.” Her heart pounded in her chest. “What—where is it?”

  He paused for just a fraction of a second, then said, “Your beau. Irving Mandell. His parents’ home burned down last night.”

  Oh, Mein Gott!” Lena screamed. Her hands flew to the sides of her head.

  “The fire department said a Halloween candle in the window somehow ignited the curtains beside it.”

  “But—but—” She sputtered. “That cannot be.” Irving and his parents didn’t celebrate Halloween. Irving had told Lena more than once that his family was observant. They would have considered Halloween a pagan ritual. Someone had deliberately set the fire and covered it up.

  Collins went on. “Luckily, Mr. and Mrs. Mandell were not at home.” He cleared his throat. “But Irving was.”

  Lena started to pull at her hair.

  “He didn’t make it, Mrs. Stern. He’s gone.”

  * * *

  It didn’t take long for the staff at Met Lab to start discussing the cause of the fire. Shock and horror quickly led to discussions about Irving, the abrupt end to his career, the rumors about espionage. Lena wasn’t sure who first speculated that his death might not have been an accident. That Irving, morose and despondent at losing his job, had set it himself. Others pointed a finger at Collins and wanted him fired. They were sure Collins had somehow “arranged” the accident.

  Lena knew better. Irving was distraught and depressed, but he would never have killed himself. And Collins didn’t have the guts to make someone disappear. He was a bad man, a fount of fear and suspicion, but he wasn’t a killer.

  She knew who had set the fire. And why. And with that knowledge, the last bit of her composure snapped. The situation was out of control. She had to protect Max. And herself. No matter what.

  The following Saturday morning Lena told Mrs. M she had an errand to run and asked Mrs. M to look after Max. She took the bus over to Chinatown, got off at Cermak and Wentworth and headed south. At the corner of 23rd Street, she turned right. Chen’s Gun and Surplus occupied a shop in the middle of the block. Lena pushed through the door. Thirty minutes later she left with a Smith and Wesson .22 revolver and a box of bullets.

  CHAPTER 27

  November, 1942

  Lena didn’t know how she got through the month of November. Spying for both Hans and Collins, and reporting to Lanier as well, was nearly an impossible balancing act. And it was a performance—for Hans, Collins, even for Lanier. She felt like an actor playing three roles, and she had to keep track of what she said to whom. If she dropped just one line to the wrong player, she would be exposed, even possibly killed, faster than Superman’s speeding bullet.

  At least with Hans, she didn’t have to worry about a physical copy of the intelligence she passed, genuine or not; the film from the Minox was a lifesaver. But Collins and Lanier required actual documents. She normally used carbon paper for the copies she typed, so she added two more sheets, but when the copies weren’t perfectly aligned, they jammed in the roller and looked messy. Occasionally Lena would glance over at Sonia, afraid that that the girl would see what she was doing, but Sonia was preoccupied with her husband’s return and seemed oblivious.

  Incoming letters and memos had to be copied by hand. She started to sneak documents into her bag to take home to copy once Max was asleep. She was careful to disguise her penmanship, in case someone from the department might link it to her. Of course, it was easier to alter the documents that way. But there was also the problem of passing the materials. Collins maintained he had a top security clearance. But when she asked Lanier, he’d told her the man was lying. Still, she had no choice. She had to deliver the intel.

  The first piece she passed Collins was a letter from Compton to the Army with an analysis of the latest news from Berkeley, California. J. Robert Oppenheimer was supervising the work of a group of theoretical physicists that included Felix Bloch, Hans Bethe, Edward Teller, Robert Serber, and John H. Manley from Chicago’s Met Lab. The group decided they would need twice as much fissionable material as they’d previously estimated to build the bomb. In a letter Compton had reserved judgment until the Pile yielded results.

  At lunchtime Lena folded the letter, threw on her coat and gloves, and told Sonia she was going for a walk. Before going downstairs, she stopped in the ladies room and slipped the copy of the letter inside one of her gloves. Outside, she bumped into Collins as they’d planned, and casually dropped the glove on the ground. Collins bent over and pic
ked it up.

  That afternoon, he showed up in the office. “Ladies.” He waved a red glove in Sonia and Lena’s direction. “Do you have any idea who this belongs to? I found it outside.”

  Sonia looked over at Lena. “Isn’t that part of the pair you just bought, Lena?”

  Lena looked up in surprise. “Why, yes. It is. Thank you, Colonel. I must have dropped it when I went to lunch.”

  * * *

  That night Lena stayed late to finish her work. She had just put on her coat to leave when Collins appeared at the door. She hated how he seemed to slip in and out of the shadows.

  He flashed her a suspicious look. “How did you know I want intel on Oppenheimer?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t.”

  His eyebrows arched.

  “Colonel, I assume you want any information on the Manhattan Project that seems relevant. And to which you are not otherwise privy,” she couldn’t help adding.

  He stiffened. “Well then,” he cleared his throat, “Fate has intervened. I want whatever you can find on Oppenheimer. What he thinks, what he does, how much money he has, what he spends it on. When he takes a shower or cheats on his wife. Anything and everything.”

  Lena didn’t reply.

  “You know who he is,” Collins went on.

  “He’s a colleague of Professor Compton’s and a brilliant physicist.”

  “He is also known to associate with Communists, and we have a strong suspicion he is one himself. In fact, he is the reason I’m here. This man may well become the leader of the Manhattan Project when construction begins. We must keep a close eye on him.” He paused. “Good work.”

  Lena walked home slowly. She couldn’t do it any more. This was insanity. She would certainly be exposed and the retribution, from the Nazis or Collins or even Lanier, would ruin her. It had to end, one way or another, despite what the three men wanted. Fortunately, she had an idea how to stir things up, perhaps push events towards a speedy conclusion. When she got home she signaled for a meeting with Hans.

  CHAPTER 28

  “There’s been a complication,” she told Hans when they met the next day.

  “What?” Hans asked.

  She told him about Collins. “I wanted to tell you before, but I have been afraid. I do not know how much he knows about my—our—situation. I wanted to be sure before I came to you.”

  Hans’ face was unreadable. “What have you been passing to him?”

  “Pretty much the same thing I’ve given you.”

  Hans grunted. “Make sure you tell me exactly what material he gets from now on.” He appraised her. “Does he have any idea about our arrangement?”

  “That’s why I waited. He does not know. I am sure.”

  She expected Hans to be suspicious, to threaten reprisals, to punish her in some way. To her surprise, though, he smiled. “Well, well, this could actually be quite useful. Make sure you continue to update me on him.”

  Update him? That was all? Lena tensed. Hans really did seem unconcerned. But they’d had Irving killed for getting in the way. Her plan wasn’t working. “How can you say Collins might be useful? He’s a serious threat.”

  “What makes you believe that?”

  Lena felt her anger build. “Hans, look at the situation. You have me spying for the Germans. Collins has me spying on the Communists. If he finds out, I am finished. Especially now that Hitler has invaded Russia.”

  “Lena, do not worry.”

  He was trying to soothe her. Badly, she thought. “You seem to forget it is my life at stake.”

  “You are doing a wonderful job.”

  She took a deep breath. “No. This cannot continue. I want out. That’s why I told you about Collins. It has become too dangerous. I cannot do this anymore. Genuch ist genuch.”

  Hans nodded. “I understand. It will not be long now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We all know that when construction begins, the Manhattan Project will relocate to other places. You will, of course, remain here. The only question is when the move will take place. We will reassess your options at that point.”

  “But what about Collins? What are you going to do about him?”

  Hans seemed unperturbed. “Nothing. He’s—what do the Americans say? ‘Small potatoes.’”

  Lena knew she would go straight to hell for thinking it, but she couldn’t wait for the bomb to be built. At least she would be free.

  If she was still alive.

  CHAPTER 29

  December, 1942

  The moment everyone at Met Lab had been working toward happened at 3:30 PM on Wednesday, December 2. One of Fermi’s assistants moved the last control rod into place, and at 3:25, the core began to feed on itself. At 3:30, Chicago Pile #1, the mountain of graphite, uranium metal, and uranium oxide, produced the first self-sustaining nuclear chain reaction. The power level was only half a watt, but nobody cared. The reactor worked!

  Compton immediately called James Conant, the National Defense Research Committee Chairman, and, speaking in code, said, “the Italian navigator has just landed in the new world.”

  “Were the natives friendly?” Conant asked.

  “Everyone landed safe and happy.”

  * * *

  The celebration at a nearby bar was long-lived and raucous, if a group of physicists could be called raucous. No one was happier than Lena. The next phase of the bomb’s development would begin, but her work would end. She couldn’t wait. She was going to quit her job and find something completely different: a position at an insurance company or a manufacturing plant. She’d had enough of science she didn’t understand, as well as the duplicity she understood too well. The money would be a loss, but the chance to regain her self-respect would more than make up for it.

  Over the next few days, Met Lab scientists raised the power inside the Pile to two hundred watts to make sure the chain reaction hadn’t been a fluke. That afternoon one of the scientists came out of the Pile with burns on his arms. Lena didn’t say anything, but she knew that radiation, a byproduct of the chain reaction, was dangerous. Three days later, that scientist became ill; by the end of the week he was dead. It was a devastating blow. In a way Lena was glad Irving was no longer with them. He would have died for the Manhattan project, too. In fact, he had.

  CHAPTER 30

  A few days later, Lena was filing a top-secret memo to Compton from Groves. In her impatience to photograph it, she almost missed it, but the word “Germany” drew her attention. Groves reported something they’d suspected and now had confirmed. The Germans had given up serious atomic research at least a year earlier. Possibly more. Hitler simply did not have the resources or manpower to experiment. Finances were a huge drain now that the Nazis were fighting a two-front war. Every available Reichsmark had been allocated to the Wehrmacht.

  Lena’s eyes widened. For the past six months she, like everyone else at Met Lab, believed Nazi Germany was an existential threat to America. That German scientists were working furiously on atomic weapons development, and, in fact, were ahead of the US. Now, it appeared the opposite was the truth. What she and everyone else had been told was just propaganda. Lies. A way, perhaps, to get the Americans to work longer, harder, faster.

  She finished photographing the memo on her Minox and slipped it into the dead drop on the way home. She knew it would trigger a reaction. She was ostensibly spying for the Germans. The same Germans who were not working on an atom bomb. So if the Germans weren’t making a bomb, why was she spying for them? True, they might want information anyway, but why the urgency? The cloak and dagger meetings and signals? Moreover, if the Germans were designating every mark for the Wehrmacht, where did the money she’d been given come from?

  She thought back over the events of the past year, starting with Karl’s death last December. A death that had never been resolved. Then Max’s kidnapping in April, which had not been solved either. Irving died in a mysterious fire that October, after she’d made him sho
w her the Pile. Three tragic events in twelve months. They weren’t all coincidence. She’d known that, deep within her subconscious, but she hadn’t wanted to admit it.

  But now she had to. Her survival depended on it. Hans and his Nazi companions had orchestrated everything. Killing Karl was the first step. It made her penniless and vulnerable. Then they abducted Max, returning him only when she agreed to work for them. Finally, they got rid of Irving—he was a complication they didn’t need.

  And now they would be closing in on her. When they figured out she knew it had all been a ruse, what would they do? She recalled how vague Hans had been about her future once the Manhattan Project moved. What if she had no future? What if she was nothing more than a pawn in their operation? Unimportant. Expendable.

  A wave of hot emotion rolled over her. She explored it. Tasted it. For once it wasn’t fear. It was anger. An anger approaching fury. After everything that had been done to her and her loved ones, how could she let them make her superfluous?

  When she got home, she fixed dinner, then played Lincoln Logs with Max until bedtime. Once he was asleep, she tried to come up with a plan. She could go to Collins and confess she was a double. Expose Hans and his people. But Collins had never trusted her, despite the fact she was passing him intelligence. He would accuse her of treason, and he’d be right. He wouldn’t understand the desperation of a mother forced to protect her child. She would certainly spend the rest of her life in prison. She might even be executed.

  She slumped on the sofa, head in her hands. Lanier was no guarantee of safe passage, either. He’d hadn’t made any promises. He’d simply said that, in return for her compliance, he would try to “back her up.” She was truly gefickt.

  She went to the closet and retrieved the .22. She brought it back to the living room, and raised it in the air. Then she aimed it an imaginary target. Could she do it for real? Her throat closed up. She wasn’t sure. All she knew is they would not—could not win. Not this time. She knew something else too. Her days as a spy were at an end. No more deception. No more duplicity.