The Manhattan Deception

by Simon Leighton-Porter

  ‘Oh, nothing to worry about; I think he must’ve been having a bad dream. Kept going on about having to send his gold back to England.’ She laughed. ‘Your uncle wasn’t a pirate, was he?’

  James did his best not to show the alarm he felt and made a half-hearted attempt at a laugh. ‘Not that I know of, unless it was a sideline – I suppose that would explain the parrot and the eye-patch. But there is one favour I’d ask.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘If he does say anything halfway sensible, you’ll let me know?’

  ‘Of course.’

  James stayed by Bill Todd’s bedside until about five in the afternoon. He’d read all the newspapers from cover-to-cover, finished his paperback and was going slowly crazy with the kind of guilty boredom that only hospital visits can create. The two other men in the room were in a similar state to his uncle and apart from a few cursory hellos and goodbyes to their visitors, the only conversations he’d had were with the nursing staff.

  By the time he returned to the Lodge that evening, the Hammonds had gone down the hill to their cottage and he had the house to himself. Opening the door at the top of the steps, he turned on the cellar lights and went down into his uncle’s workshop. After about fifteen minutes he found what he was looking for: one of the alloy tubes held a series of documents – an inventory of the paintings and the four letters, just as Bill Todd had said. Each letter bore an identity photograph in the top right-hand corner and multiple official-looking stamps, including one from the International Red Cross. He emptied the tube and carried the contents up to the study where he drew the curtains and turned on the lamp that stood on the leather-topped desk.

  The format of the letters was the same, only the names, personal details and the photos were different. In English, French and German the bearer was guaranteed safe conduct across allied lines. The text went on to promise safety thereafter in the US, UK and allied nations and to demand that all possible assistance be given to the bearer, by the order of the two governments.

  None of the names or the individuals’ personal details meant anything to him: three men; one in his fifties, another in his forties and one in his twenties; and a dark-haired, vacant-looking woman of thirty-three. Each letter bore a small photo, presumably of the bearer, held in place by two brass rivets to prevent the addition of substitute photos and overlain with an embossed US government stamp, obviously for the same purpose. James tried to remember where he’d seen the face of the oldest of the four – a tired-looking man with thick-rimmed glasses who looked as though he had been in a fight and lost. His balding pate and dense, straggly beard made him look far older than the date of birth on the letter suggested – but no clues came to mind. Finally, below each photograph was a fingerprint of the bearer.

  James got up from the desk and fetched himself a glass of whisky. Scrupulous to the last, with the exception of tea and milk, he’d bought all his own provisions rather than using his uncle’s. All around was silent and without Bill Todd’s presence, the house seemed lifeless. Returning to the book-lined study, he set down the glass and examined the four letters again. Taking a closer look at the names below the signature block, he saw, just as Todd had described, that each letter bore the signatures of both Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt. He nodded in admiration: if they were forgeries, as his uncle had suggested, they were certainly good ones.

  James then moved on to the inventory of the paintings and their provenance. He sat open-mouthed, scarcely daring to believe what was in front of him. The inventory, written in his uncle’s regular hand, was arranged into three columns: artist, work and collection. He read:

  Artist

  Work

  Collection

  Monet

  Street Scene (14 juillet)

  Göring

  Vermeer

  The Alchemist

  Hitler

  Watteau

  The Guitar Player

  Hitler

  Pissarro

  Tuileries Gardens

  Göring

  ditto

  Cows in a Stream

  ditto

  Snyder

  The Hunt

  Hitler

  Boucher

  Nymph at the Spring

  Hitler

  In all, the twenty alloy tubes held over fifty paintings, in addition to the letters of safe conduct.

  That night James lay awake into the small hours, trying to work out the significance of the letters and most of all, their link to the stolen artworks that had sat for nearly sixty years in his uncle’s workshop. The most likely explanation seemed to be that the art and the gold were somebody’s ticket to post-war prosperity, but that an aircraft accident had prevented the hoard from reaching its intended destination. The rest he knew: honest, straight-backed Bill Todd had stumbled across the loot and kept it for himself.

  But who were the thieves? Clearly the paintings had originally been stolen by the Nazis for the collections of Hitler and Göring if the inventory was anything to go by. So then what was the role of the three men and the woman whose grainy, black-and-white features stared back at him from the letters? And if they were the thieves, how had they spirited away the paintings from the personal collections of the Reich’s two most prominent Nazis?

  He mulled the four names over in his mind; sleep was a long way off. He’d have to research them when he got back to London. None of it made sense. Why had the individuals to whom the letters referred allowed themselves to be separated from the one piece of paper that could keep them alive? Unless they were all in the crashed aircraft and Todd had missed the bodies. That seemed the most likely explanation until he remembered that his uncle had described the crashed aircraft as an Me-110. He’d made a plastic kit of one of those when he was little, and, from what he remembered, there were only two or three crew and certainly no room for an additional four passengers.

  So where were they? Three of them would be dead for certain, given their dates of birth, and the fourth, if he was still alive would be in his nineties, so that was no use. The more he thought about it, the more he invented fantastic conspiracy theories with FDR and Churchill in the role of art thieves, their dirty work having been done by a gang of ill-assorted burglars on the run from a vengeful Nazi hierarchy: a good plot for a thriller he decided, but highly unlikely.

  The following morning, James returned to St Catherine’s and waited patiently by his uncle’s bedside. He appeared to be asleep or maybe unconscious, James didn’t know so, on the off-chance that Todd could hear him, he started talking: a long rambling monologue about nothing in particular; the weather, how the garden was doing, Hammond’s plans for the summer bedding plants. Just as he was running out of inspiration he became aware of a figure by his side: it was the doctor. He smiled at James and held up his hand, ‘Do carry on. Please don’t stop on my account.’

  James turned in his seat and looked up at him. ‘I don’t suppose he can hear me, can he?’

  ‘We’ve no idea whether they can hear and understand at this stage, but they say that the last of the senses to go is hearing. There’s plenty of evidence from coma patients reporting they’ve heard everything that was going on around them, but whether that applies in your uncle’s case, only he could tell us and he’s way past that now.’

  ‘So he’s not going to wake up?’

  The doctor put a comforting hand on James’s shoulder. ‘Not now. His system is shutting down. The morphine will make sure he’s in no pain and he’ll just drift away. It won’t be long.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘I’d say no more than twenty-four hours. The usual time for them to go is between two and four in the morning when the body’s at its lowest ebb. If you want to stay, I’m sure the staff will be happy to make a bed up for you.’

  ‘That’s ok, thanks. I’m happy to sit with him for now. I’ll pop out for a bite to eat and a leg-stretch and then I’ll come back later in the evening. I’d like to think he knows there’s somebody
holding his hand and that he’s not alone when the time comes.’

  ‘Would he like a priest?’

  ‘I don’t think so. We had a C of E chap come round earlier: very decent sort and said all the right things, but I don’t think my uncle was much of a church goer – just weddings, christenings and funerals from what I can gather.’

  At about five, James drove back to the Lodge, somehow expecting things to look different under the circumstances, but all was normal, with Hammond pottering about in the garden in the afternoon sunshine, just as he’d done for most of his working life. James found the gardener’s presence reassuring: a sign that things were the same as they had ever been and that nothing would change. He walked along the gravel pathway, bordered on each side by a neatly trimmed yew hedge, to where Hammond was tying up the stems of the last of the year’s daffodils. At James’s approach he stood up and touched the peak of his cap, ‘Afternoon, Mr Atkinson. Any news of Mr Todd?’

  James was temporarily disorientated by the gesture of deference – he’d only seen people touch their caps in old films or comedy shows – but here at The Lodge, it was still 1950, which clearly suited everybody rather well. ‘Afraid it’s not good news, Mr Hammond. It’s unlikely that he’ll still be with us this time tomorrow.’

  Hammond stood in silence for a moment then took off his cap and looked down. ‘I’ll tell Mrs H, sir. She’ll be as sad as I am – see, we’re both very fond of Mr Todd, he’s been a very fair employer, a good man, and there aren’t many left like him I don’t reckon.’

  James nodded and leaving Hammond to his daffodils, wandered back to the house. After a shower and a change of clothes, he was about to start making himself something to eat when the phone rang. It was the hospice. Bill Todd had taken a turn for the worst and would he come right away.

  Twenty minutes later, at about eight o’clock, he left the Audi in the hospice car park and ran up the front steps. The receptionist greeted him as he signed his name in the visitors’ register for the second time that day and made his way into Frobisher ward. The two other elderly men in the ward were both asleep, but around his uncle’s bed was a set of screens. As he approached, a nurse came out from behind them and approached him, shaking her head. ‘I’m very sorry, Mr Atkinson, you’ve just missed him. He went just after we phoned you. I am so very sorry. He was a brave man, you should be proud of him.’

  Not for the first time since he’d left London, a demonstration of simple kindness was too much for him and he felt his eyes pricking with tears.

  The funeral was poorly attended. James, the Hammonds, two people from the village and the GP stood in the rain at the grave-side to pay their respects to Bill Todd. Only one of them knew that the deceased had pulled off the most spectacular art heist in history.

  Chapter Ten

  Flight to Rapid City Air Base. Landed in thunderstorm. Frightened. Then by car. Countryside spectacular: mountains and forests made us think of home. Very remote. Saw one small town – straight from a western, then kilometres of nothing but trees. Can’t believe this: our new home is a shack in the woods by old mine-workings. Called “Breakheart”. Well named. Dirty, cold. No electricity, well water. Told us it is only temporary. Hope I can believe them.

  *

  Santa Fe, New Mexico. April 1945

  To Max Standfluss, the journey from Washington DC to Los Alamos seemed to be taking for ever. He’d realised the importance that his old friend had assumed in the project when Oppie casually let slip while on the train to Santa Fe that on Presidential orders, he wasn’t allowed to fly anywhere unless there was no other means of transport and that his road journeys were to be kept to a minimum.

  At that moment however, Standfluss had other more pressing concerns: memorising his cover story of how he’d been kidnapped by US forces on his way home on leave from Haigerloch, taken to England, interrogated at a country house called Farm Hall, near Cambridge and then flown to the US in a long-range B-24. From the hundreds of photographs, coloured drawings and floor plans he’d been forced to memorise, he could have given a guided tour of Farm Hall, described the staff and their foibles, all without ever having set foot in the place. Reiss had been given a similar script to follow and both scientists were left in no doubt that any deviation from their story would lead to their immediate disappearance.

  From the Santa Fe railroad station a US Army staff car took them downtown to a nondescript office in a long, single-storey building at 109 East Palace for identity photographs and security processing. Forty-five minutes later, Standfluss, weary, hot and thirsty, was led back to the car and they set off once more.

  Not far outside the town, the metalled roadway gave way to unmade tracks and the car rattled and shook over the uneven surface. With the windows wound up against the dust, the heat became intolerable – a situation not improved by Oppenheimer’s chain smoking. After an hour of this they neared their destination and the unpaved road gave way to a ribbon of newly-laid blacktop. In front of them stood a row of towering cliffs and the road snaked between them, winding its way up the rugged hillside to the broad expanse of mesa on which stood their destination known simply as Site Y.

  At the east gate the car stopped at the security post and Standfluss produced his newly-acquired pass. As they drove through the site, Oppenheimer gave a running commentary of which building housed which teams, but he was too tired to take any of it in. To their left was the main technical site behind its coils of barbed wire and shortly after passing it, the car turned right to run in front of a series of buildings entirely constructed from logs in the pioneer style but on a scale he’d never imagined possible.

  Finally, they came to a halt outside a log cabin: he’d only ever seen them in Westerns and its presence in the middle of a scientific complex only served to increase his mounting feelings of unreality. ‘There it is, Max, Bathtub Row,’ said Oppenheimer proudly. ‘VIP accommodation.’

  Standfluss looked perplexed, ‘Bathtub Row? What does that mean?’

  ‘It means that the guys that you’ll be working with will be very jealous. The houses along here are the only quarters with their own bathrooms: everyone else has to share. I live just a bit further up, on the corner of Peach Street. You see, we’re neighbours again after all these years.’

  The best Standfluss could manage in reply was a weak smile. A cold drink, something to eat and then a lifetime’s sleep were all he could think of right now.

  Over twelve hundred miles away, Standfluss’ former colleague, Georg Reiss, had already arrived at his new home, the uranium enrichment plant at Oak Ridge Tennessee and had gone through the same process of learning his cover story by heart. Despite Reiss’s concerns, his delicate gas centrifuges had survived their journey intact and his first working day was spent examining the building on the K-25 site that had been prepared to receive them and the many others that would be manufactured to his design.

  He settled in to his new life and was soon exchanging ideas on the blackboard with such luminaries as Lawrence, Urey and Fermi. After only a few weeks’ work, an excited Oppenheimer sent an encrypted message to General Groves. In it he stated that, thanks to Reiss’s work, he estimated having enough weapons-grade uranium to create a gun-type bomb by June and enough plutonium Pu239 to test an implosion weapon in July, provided the race to develop a trigger mechanism was complete in time. Manhattan was back on course.

  At Los Alamos, Standfluss soon developed a profitable working relationship with his new boss, George Kistiakowsky, the Ukrainian-American scientist who headed up the Implosion Department. It was his team’s task to develop the reliable implosion trigger that would allow the use of plutonium as a safe fission source. To do this they would have to avoid the inherent dangers of the gun-type firing mechanism that was planned for the first uranium bomb.

  As Standfluss had worked out for himself, the trouble with a uranium weapon using a gun-type trigger was that in the event of an accident, there was a major risk of sending its two uranium U235 masses
critical, thus causing detonation. Even dropping the bomb on the floor, or allowing it to get wet could cause it to explode: if the aircraft carrying the weapon were to crash or catch fire, that too would be likely to set it off. If ever there was a case for a “handle with care” sticker, this was it.

  Just like Reiss at Oak Ridge, Standfluss was in his element at Los Alamos. Kistiakowsky’s Implosion Department came under the Theoretical Division, headed by the brilliant German-American, Hans Bethe; so not only was he working with the best scientific minds in the world, but for most of the time he was able to do so in his own language. Even the eccentric and grumpy Edward Teller, whose arrival was always announced by the sound of his artificial foot crashing on the wooden floor of the hut, spoke his mother tongue, as did the German-born Briton, Klaus Fuchs, whose shy and self-effacing demeanour hid an analytical mind second to none.

  However, there were two dark clouds on his personal horizon. Firstly, from the day in March 1945 when he had been taken from the lab at Haigerloch by the Gestapo and driven non-stop to Berlin, he had received no word from his family in Munich. The second was the inevitable defeat and surrender of Germany in May, but he kept his feelings on this to himself.

  ***

  On 16 July 1945, both Reiss and Standfluss were in “Baker” the “South 10,000” dug-out, about six miles from the detonation site for the Trinity test: the world’s first nuclear explosion. The atmosphere inside the earth-covered wood and concrete bunker, was electric. Around twenty people were present, including the key figures on the Manhattan Project and a handful of enlisted men from the Special Engineer Detachment. Also present were representatives from Oak Ridge and from the Hanford Site in Washington State where two vast nuclear piles worked day and night to create plutonium, the fissile element in the Trinity weapon.