The Hammer of God

by Tom Avitabile

  The brothers Brodenchy were stunned but the younger observed to himself, “Strength, decisiveness, no mercy is the key to survival.” The young scientist-in-training had just learned a lesson he would never forget.

  Kasiko’s plan was to travel by night on the back roads and forests that the Russians did not yet control; the group would then rest at two farms over two nights before finally crossing into the Alps on the third night by railcar. Kasiko’s uncle, a railroad foreman, had pre-arranged their meeting at a watering station.

  Kasiko had little discussion with the men entrusted to him; he didn’t want to be distracted. Every sense he had was tuned to danger. He could almost smell the Soviets on the wind if they were close.

  Kasiko’s arms waved downward in big sweeping arcs as the seven men behind him silently lowered themselves to hug the ground. After a minute, the freedom fighter came to the center of them and whispered, “There are Hungarian Home Guards up over that ridge. Wait here.”

  As he scampered off in silence, the last thing the men saw was Kasiko reach inside his jacket. They could only imagine what type of terrible knife he was about to dispatch the Home Guard with. Each avoided the other’s stare, no doubt feeling guilty that their presence meant the death of more men. A minute passed and they saw Kasiko waving them on from the top of the rise. No one wanted to go first. They all feared the gore and blood surely awaiting their eyes. One more emphatic wave from Kasiko got them moving. As they reached the rise, the first to go over looked back in shock to the six straggling behind. Soon those six came across the same scene.

  Kasiko was dolling out bread and wine from the guard shack to the scientists with the help of the Home Guards. Each man took a bottle and two loaves of bread. When the guard shack was well behind them, Dr. Ensiling asked, “Were those men partisans?”

  “No, Doctor, just open to being bribed. What did you think I needed your money for?” Kasiko moved up front to his lead position.

  Dr. Ensiling breathed his first deep breath that evening. Maybe he wasn’t such a bad sort, this Kasiko.

  The rest of their journey was blessedly uneventful until they reached the watering station. They had arrived three hours ahead of the meeting time. Kasiko’s uncle had seven workers ready to disembark the train so that the six men and Kasiko could assume their places and sleeping bunks for the two-day train ride through northern Europe. Unexpectedly, Soviet troops had descended on the railroad siding. The reason became apparent as the men watched the tracks from a berm two kilometers off. A Russian armament train with troops, tanks, trucks, and even folded-wing airplanes stopped to fill its water tanks at the tower.

  “We wait for the freight train,” was all Kasiko said to his charges.

  Four hours later, the anemic whistle of the northbound freight echoed through the valley. Kasiko led his men to within fifty meters of the track. To his eyes and nose, there were no Soviets near. The old train rumbled into the yard area. His uncle was hanging off the end carriage of the train waving a lantern, signaling the engineer. Kasiko approached him cautiously.

  “Uncle, are we still going to Antwerp?”

  “Yes, my nephew. The train is a little behind schedule, but we are. Do you have your packages?”

  Kasiko whistled and waved his scientists onboard. As they entered the crew van at the rear of the train his uncle said, “Kas, you said six. I count seven. I only have cover for seven including you.”

  “I know. There was a change of plans. I’ll stay behind.”

  “You can’t. Those soldiers you shot are all the news. They are looking for you, my nephew. They have searched this train twice. That’s why we are delayed.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “No, I will,” Dr. Brodenchy said. “I am the one who forced you to bring my brother. I am responsible and I will stay.”

  Kasiko took in the scientist. “Your brother, is he a scientist?”

  “Yes. He just graduated as a physicist. He was visiting…”

  “I know; he was home from school…he is as good as all of you. It is I who am expendable here.”

  Brodenchy was intrigued. The last thing he expected from this coarse and gruff freedom fighter was chivalry.

  “Now, now, nephew,” Kasiko’s uncle said, “no one has to be sacrificed. I’ve got an idea.”

  ?§?

  The train started with a slam, then jolted and started chugging down the track with some very odd, soft-handed, white-skinned, and manicured crewmen. Meanwhile, some very well dressed railroad workers waited in newfound overcoats and suits for the railroad employees’ bus to take them back across country to their freight yard. Kasiko tried out his hidden place in an upper berth in this old sleeper car that was now the crew’s rolling home.

  Two days later, and without incident, the train arrived in Switzerland.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Lights And Switches

  Six years later, in 1962, young Peter Remo came home from P.S. 21 with a note from his second grade teacher:

  Your son

  Peter

  is expected to have a project for the science fair this Monday.

  When Tony got home, Anna showed the boy’s father the note. The next night Tony came home with a grape box and a bag. After dinner, young Peter watched as his father went to the closet and got the hammer. Using his foot and the claw of the hammer, he pried the box apart. The sides of the box were 5/8” clear pine and had a label across the face. He took one of these sturdy ends and flipped it label-down. He put the wood on his knee and looked at his son. “Ever hear about the cobbler who worked on his knee?”

  Peter watched as his dad nailed little things onto the board in his lap, and then fitted a battery and a small light bulb to it. When he finished, he said, “C’mere.” Tony opened his arm above his knee, which Peter knew meant, “Hop on.”

  The board was on the table as Tony told his son what it was. “This is the battree, this is the light bulb, this is the switch. When you trowe the switch, the juice goes from the battree, through the switch to light the bulb. Here, it’s your science project, take it to school tomorrow.”

  With that, Peter walked away marveling at the invention in his hands. He spent all night in his darkened room closing and opening the knife switch and lighting the bulb. Eventually he found his way under his covers and now had an illuminated tent. The simple working circuit was mesmerizing to the little boy. So much, in fact, that it completely rewired his brain.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Gifts Large And Small

  Many Hungarian immigrants settled in Jackson Heights in Queens. So it was no surprise that one day, when a big box from Budapest arrived at Kasiko’s apartment, the kids and neighbors all crowded into his place. It had been a year since he had arrived in the United States after traipsing around Europe. He was thankful that he was able to get his mother out of Hungary and she was now with him in the apartment. He opened the crate and couldn’t believe his eyes. Coffees, cakes, condiments, clothes, jewelry, and one very special box. “The gifts of a grateful nation,” the card read. Kasiko was a true Hungarian hero. Even if Hungary was behind the Iron Curtain, his countrymen made him know he was in their hearts. When the crowd left the apartment, Kasiko opened the special box. In it was a scribed egg on a beautiful gold-spun stand. It was of the deepest blue color and the etching on it was like a fine lace masterwork. He proudly placed it on the mantle.

  In 1968, the United States was in the midst of volcanic upheaval. Anti-establishment lava flowed from college campuses down the main streets of cities big and small, igniting passions and inflaming politics. To be young then was to be in a perpetual state of rebellion. In a previous generation’s movie, the sheriff of a town invaded by young Marlon Brando’s motorcycle gang asked the brooding teen what his group was rebelling against. Brando’s answer, though uttered in an earlier decade, summed up the social/political movement of the ’60s: “I dunno, what do you got?” In the latter part of that decade, that sentiment was now, literally,
on drugs. Whatever could be revolted against was. Whatever could be protested became a cause celebre. Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll made it all sweeter. Revolution hung in the air like marijuana smoke.

  All of the ’60s dissonance, clamor, awakenings, and infamous moments were mere background noise to Peter. He was so focused on his current project that his friends on the block hardy ever saw him. No stickball, no ringolevio, no hot beans, no king queen, no box ball, none of the street games. Not even two-hand-touch football. The reason for Peter’s self-imposed exile went back to the great blackout of ‘67 when he quickly concocted several of the devices his father made for him for the second grade science fair and placed them at the landings of the stairs in the pitch-dark tenement. Those little lights stopped many tenants from taking a tumble down the marble steps while the electricity was out. So grateful were the neighbors that they started giving him wires, phones, radios, even televisions to tinker with. This sudden windfall of electronic parts started Peter on his greatest project ever. At fourteen, he was going to build a computer.

  The estimated amount of money the computer would cost was a small fortune for a boy his age: almost $35. There was no way that kind of money was going to come from an allowance of fifty cents a week. Undeterred by the financial challenge, he started to improvise. He read up on all manner of early computer science and found out about the new transistor that was rapidly replacing tubes in electronics. He started to make his own basic building blocks of computers from old salvaged parts and a discarded knock hockey set he found in the lot. The Masonite playing surface became the material he drilled to make circuit boards. He copied wiring diagrams from a 1960 article by Ronald Benray in Electronics Illustrated on making a digital computer. It showed the basic schematic for the “E-J Flip Flop.”

  Then he discovered “radio row” in lower Manhattan. It was in the old Port Authority Trans Hudson terminal, later shortened to PATH. Many old Jewish and Italian merchants who started to specialize in electronic junk had little stands and stalls there. They would buy/sell/trade their wares. It was the trade part, however, that enabled Peter to build his computer. He would find an old TV set in the lot that someone had thrown out. For a fifteen-cent token, he dragged the TV onto the IRT and schlepped the thing all the way downtown, then up the stairs and to the feet of one of the guys on Vesey Street. Often he’d walk away with a few 2N554 PNP power transistors or some 1N34 diodes. All precious gems in the collection that would become his DEMIAC 256.

  A race with the clock started when he learned that all the old guys down on radio row — his friends Sol, Manny, Vinny, and Izzy — were on their last days. The entire Hudson Tubes Terminal was going to be knocked down to make way for some big old thing called the World’s Trading Center or something like that. Peter had to hurry to find, drag, and swap as many electronics carcasses as possible to have enough parts to finish his computer.

  The seven scientists that Kasiko had gotten out of Hungary went on to find places to do their work. Some with governments, some with private industry. All in all, things were going well. Hardly a day went by that Dr. Brodenchy didn’t say a silent thank you for his luck. Many times, he thought of Kasiko and his surprise when they had reached Switzerland and Kasiko handed them back all the money he had taken minus the amount to bribe the officials and to feed them. Not a forint for himself. Just as often, he thought of his father and three sisters. They were all killed by the Russians. His father and two sisters were shot trying to “escape” to a mosque on a Friday. His other sister, Afifah, was raped then shot. If not for Kasiko leading them out of Hungary, he and his brother, all that were left, would have suffered a similar fate.

  Dr. Brodenchy was thinking just this as he awaited a car to pick him up from the Idlewild Airfield in New York. He was on his way to a meeting at the United Nations. He had heard that Kasiko had settled in New York and if there was time, he intended to look him up.

  Demiac 256 soon became a rare thing in the world. It was actually one of the first digital electronic computers not made by IBM, Honeywell, Control Data, or Burroughs, the big four computer mainframe makers of that day. Peter had taken the initial simple design and created a true operating environment by adding a tape drive utilizing sequential access. It involved a Craig portable reel-to-reel tape recorder, (thank you Mr. Cantor in apartment 3B) that he modified with a second “address” track. Added to that were some relays and stepping solenoids (thank you Mr. Catugno in 6A) from which he created an electro-mechanical operating system. He also added a card reader, which he built from other scrap parts and a wire scrub brush (thanks Mom, when you weren’t looking). Being influenced by James Bond movies and “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.” TV series, Peter built all his units inside attache cases (thank you Pat from Palumbo’s Music on Gunhill Road).

  Once it was all hooked up and working, Peter took the CPU he built in the attache case with him and jumped on the downtown IRT. The outside of the case had a huge “1” in the computer-styled numbers of the day with the word PREMO underneath it. Each attache case that made up Demiac 256 had a huge number on the side of the case, like his favorite show, “Thunderbirds Are Go,” in “marrionation,” where each of the amazing vehicles the marionettes used to save the world each week had big numbers on them. The Premo was his signature contraction made from his first initial and his last name.

  Peter planned to show the guys down on Vesey Street his project. But when he got there, the wrecker’s ball had started taking whacks and big chunks out of the Hudson Tubes terminal. Those guys, and an era, were gone. He started walking north, for what seemed like hours. Eventually, he found himself at Grand Central Station. From here, he could take the subway home. But he had another idea. The Union Carbide building was around the corner on Park Avenue. They were the company that sponsored the science fairs. Maybe a little advance publicity would be good for this, his mother of all science fair projects.

  The lobby was daunting. It was so huge. The elevators only went to certain floors and a directory took up an entire wall. He scanned it and his eyes locked on “Computer Dept. NYRCC. 47th floor.”

  He found the 35–50 bank of elevators and got on. The only elevator he had ever been on was the one in his cousin’s house in the “projects” that moved slow but still beat walking up the six floors of the subsidized housing complex. His stomach reacted as if he were on the Dragoncoaster at Rye Beach Playland as the elevator sped straight up. It was his first time in a Manhattan skyscraper. When the doors opened, he walked around a little and then saw a door that said, “Authorized Personnel Only.” So, of course, he walked right in.

  He walked up an incline to a raised floor. There were computers humming, buzzing, and blinking everywhere. Dozens of big red tape drives and big rectangular cabinets with flashing lights and colored knobs crammed the entire 50th floor. Inside this computer room, the air was crisp and cold. It smelled sharp and acrid. There was the whirring and an occasional swooshing sound as tape drives rewound and their power windows opened. He was taking all this in when a hand came down on his shoulder.

  “How did you get in here?”

  Peter looked up and saw the scowling face and grim demeanor of a man in a blue shirt and yellow tie.

  “You can’t be here, kid. I’ll walk you out.”

  Thinking quick, Peter said, “Er… I built a computer.”

  “That’s nice, son. Aren’t you supposed to be in school?”

  “No, really. I have it right here in this case.”

  That stopped the man. “Show me.”

  “Can I put this down over there?” Peter pointed to a return table off the CPU of the IBM mainframe that was currently one of the twenty computers operating at Union Carbide’s New York Regional Computing Center. The man who collared him, Ed Cortez, was a director. Peter plopped down the attache case and popped the latches. As he opened it, he saw Mr. Cortez’ eyes widen and jaw drop. Whose wouldn’t? There before him in a nineteen-inch wide by eleven-inch deep attache was an impressive arra
y of light bulbs, switches, red-and-black binding posts, jeweled power lights, and a big telephone dial. Peter hit the power button and then the reset button. The light bulbs, which were randomly lit across two rows, all reset to the lower row. He then dialed a ten, and as the dial turned, the lights jumped and flashed in a special order that only a computer scientist would recognize. The number he dialed in was transformed into on-off-on-off, or the number “10” in binary code.

  Peter further ingratiated himself to Mr. Cortez by pointing out that the bank of register lights in the attache case — 1,2,4,8,16,32,64,128 — was the same as the register monitor on the IBM SYSTEMS 360 — 65 CPU main panel. In short, he just equated his thirty-five dollar science project with the six-million dollar machine that was one of the biggest operating anywhere in the world.

  Soon, many C.E.s, programmers, and operators were gathered around the pimply-faced kid with the suitcase computer. So much so, that in time the big blue machine went unattended and that brought out Ed Ryan, Chief of NYRCC. Although Ryan started out hard-assed, soon the little kid and his science project had the same “Gee Whiz” effect on him. To many of these computer engineers — among America’s business computing elite — this was the son they wish they had. And like good stepfathers, they showered him with gifts. Manuals, schematics, power supplies, and coveted circuit boards — with the gold contacts still on them! Sol and the boys at Vesey Street would have given him the whole store for one of these, just for the gold. This new paternal group offered him a summer job, but more than he could ever imagine was about to come.

  Meanwhile, at the UN meeting, Dr. Brodenchy was about to walk out of the room. He was sure that the Undersecretary General of the U.N. for Economic and Social Affairs must have been drinking. Otherwise, he was insane. Either way Brodenchy didn’t want any part of it.