“So if we deliver one big slam, what happens?”
“We have been wondering that. Of course, the higher-ups”—Freeman raised his expressive eyebrows sardonically—“will decide the target.”
“But you think . . . ?”
“Cut the head off, yes.”
“But with ten percent or so shot down—”
“We must be careful. This is a wholly new thing. A Lancaster bomber can barely carry it.”
“Give the plane a big escort.”
“That might just attract attention.”
“So how do we get the gadget there safely?” Karl realized that using “safely” in the same sentence with the gadget was an odd irony.
“I’m unsure. We all are.” Freeman gave him another arched eyebrow and a wry smile. “The way I see it, since we have got ourselves into the business of bombing cities, we might as well do the job competently and get it over with.”
In the RAF
• • •
After a dinner of decent beef and a crusty Yorkshire pudding with cardboard peas, “courtesy of the Yanks, oddly” as one officer remarked, Karl walked through the London night with Freeman in tow. For a major city it was eerie to see the swath of stars silhouetting the steepled buildings. Occasional German bombers still got through the English air defenses and struck, so the blackout held. In small pubs they passed, he could see, through the occasional opened doorway, dimly lit crowds lifting glasses and talking nonstop. Tension was gathering as the invasion of France neared.
He wondered if this war would bring fundamental changes in the Europe he so much enjoyed, especially Paris. He was starting to like London a great deal, hearing its many accents and oddities. There would always, he supposed, be men with pencil-thin mustaches whiling away rainy afternoons, smoking odd cigarettes and talking about the war that had dwarfed all others before. Or could there be another cataclysm up ahead, after this one? For him to talk over, maybe in some European bar, when he was old?
He had already been in several meetings throughout the afternoon, and noticed the difference in tone. The English had personal experience with injury and death, coming from the sky and in the news, every day. He and the others Stateside had worked with the best equipment they had ever seen, doing the sort of things they had always wanted to do—science, technology, enticing problems. His war had been far away, a “nice” war. It was embarrassing to recall that only a week or so ago he had gone to see newsreels to prepare. The people around him now had been in those films and needed no pep talks. No. Just results.
Freeman spoke softly as they strolled along the Thames in mild spring air. Looming out of the mist that shrouded the sleepy old streets were the hazy towers of St. Paul’s Cathedral. “Let’s go in,” Freeman said.
Once inside, the dark clasped him in its moist fist, yielding gradually to the faint light through the tall side windows. Looking up, he saw the immense columns leading his eye up to the arches. The corbelled roof supported effortlessly the enormous weight of the nave, all shrouded in gauzy gray light. Stone pillars rounded with age led his eye to turrets, gargoyles, statues and ornaments to the otherwise clean lines of architectural grace. Then a defense spotlight suddenly streamed in through the stained glass, spattering everything with rose and blues and subtle purples, all in watery flickers.
He and Marthe had gone to Chartres, which matched this ethereal majesty. He had been to London, too, whose thronged streets already churned beneath the 1937 threat of war. Now he wondered how much of Europe’s soaring splendors would survive this war.
Freeman said nothing and together, with one nodding agreement, they mounted the stairs to the very roof of all this stack of majestic stone. Karl felt eager, not even puffing as he climbed up into a suffused sprinkling of city light. Freeman said, “The continuing survival of St. Paul’s means everything for morale.” He pointed to an array of heavy wooden beams bracing an outer wall. A thin smile. “Parts have to be propped up by scaffolding—for renovation, officially. Wouldn’t do to admit that it had suffered any damage from near hits, you know.”
Abruptly the great bells sounded. He felt the notes peal through him, in wavelengths comparable to his body size—a sensation of immanent meaning, if only he could fathom it. The bells rang solemnly, mournfully, bringing crows cawing into the air, wheeling black against a gray moonlit cloud. A gargoyle leered nearby, tongue hanging down toward the hunched, huddled houses far below. Out of the squalor and filth of the Middle Ages, he thought, the brute labor behind wooden ploughs, the black plagues, all came still this. The religious impulse endured. Even Dark Ages can yield some light.
And these were dark times indeed. He wondered if the gadget would make their century even darker up ahead, in the decades beyond the most terrible war that had ever been.
3.
April 30, 1944 MEMO
SECRET
Use of Radioactive Material as a Military Weapon
From Drs. Conant, Compton, Urey
To Brigadier General L. R. Groves, Manhattan District, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
Our key points are:
1. As a gas warfare instrument, the radioactive material would be most dangerous when inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small. We have estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person’s body would be fatal.
2. There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty. It cannot be detected by the senses. It can be distributed in a dust or smoke form so finely powdered that it will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be extremely damaging.
3. Radioactive warfare can be used to make evacuated areas uninhabitable; to contaminate small critical areas such as railroad yards and airports; as a radioactive poison gas to create casualties among troops; against large cities, to promote panic, and to create casualties among civilian populations.
4. Areas so contaminated by radioactive dusts and smokes would be dangerous as long as a high enough concentration of material could be maintained. They can be stirred up as a fine dust from the terrain by winds, movement of vehicles or troops, etc., and would remain a potential hazard for a long time.
5. These materials may also be so disposed as to be taken into the body by ingestion instead of inhalation. Reservoirs or wells would be contaminated or food poisoned with an effect similar to that resulting from inhalation of dust or smoke. Four days production could contaminate a million gallons of water to an extent that a quart drunk in one day would probably result in complete incapacitation or death in about a month’s time.
6. Note that some feel this weapon would violate international treaties on chemical weapons, though the dust effect is nuclear, not chemical.
Luis Alvarez tapped on the memo and said to Karl and Moe, “What’s this got to do with our work, huh?”
They were in a cramped office inside the Admiralty Citadel, with the door propped open for ventilation, despite security regulations. Passing British officers occasionally eyed them with polite curiosity.
Moe Berg gave Luis a thin smile. “General Groves sent it in a high security pouch for us to read. He also cabled Eisenhower’s office, saying this memo is based on animal exposure studies done Stateside. We just get the summary conclusions. We’re his boys over here, with time to look into it more.”
Luis shook his head. “I’m busy with assembling the gadget. Plenty of work. The Royal Air Force guys are working with our boys to get a Lancaster into shape for delivering it. I’m assembling the diagnostic packages to drop near the target. We’ve got plenty to do!”
Moe nodded sympathetically and sipped at his tea. They were in a secure building with office space and even a driver assigned. Karl had been reviewing the gadget assembly too, looking into details. This meeting had come as a surprise. “Groves sent over a guy named Sam Goudsmit to look into all the Brit intelligence on the German radioactives program. He’s sifted it through and thinks they have a lot of uran
ium from Czechoslovakia. If they haven’t got a bomb, maybe they’ll use the uranium for dust.”
Karl said, “We should talk to Goudsmit.”
“Huh!” Luis snorted. “I don’t like to get deflected away from the main job.”
Moe shrugged. “Nobody does. But Groves also ordered us to double up on tasks. He thinks you professional smart guys could screw up, if you’re left to do things alone.”
Karl disliked all the jockeying around of jobs. He liked to concentrate on a linear path and get things nailed. “We’re shorthanded here,” he said.
“There are supposed to be more guys coming in soon,” Moe said.
Karl said, “Oak Ridge barely gave us enough to be sure the gadget will work.”
“The invasion pressed the schedule forward,” Moe said.
Luis gazed skeptically at Moe. “Seems like you’re Groves’s mouthpiece.”
“Seems to be,” Moe said with an ironic lift of eyebrows.
• • •
Sam Goudsmit
Sam Goudsmit was a short, stocky man who radiated intensity. He wore civilian clothes but had a military bearing, jaw jutting just a bit. His office was one floor above Karl’s, and Goudsmit offered Karl and Freeman tea, the ritual everyone picked up here. None of them smoked, and his office was free of the pervasive cigarette stink that irritated Karl’s nose nearly everywhere he went. Sam was careful to shut the transom above his door, to avoid being overheard. Maybe to keep out the smoke, too.
Karl and Freeman introduced themselves, and they spent some moments kicking around connections with friends. Goudsmit was Dutch born with parents now in a concentration camp, but his English had a clipped American tone. In London, accents told you a lot. Karl always thought of this acoustic signature as like animals sniffing each other out. Every technical person knew of Bohr and Fermi and the pressing job to be done. Sam got down to work right away. “Y’know, Groves left it to me to pick a meaningless name for our group, so I made it ‘Alsos’—which means ‘groves’ in Greek.” Sam chuckled at this small deception.
Plainly he felt the same as Karl did about the blustery military miasma. “We’re to look into the German bomb, if there is one, and this ‘death dust’ thing too.” Sam said this with deepening disdain. “Imaginary, I’d say—dust as weapon! Absurd.”
“You’ve read the latest Groves memo on it?” Freeman said politely.
“I’m more a bomb guy. Worked on some of that at MIT, about assembly. That must’ve been due to you guys, right?” He peered at Karl. “Bombs are sure a much better weapon for a concentrated enemy.”
Karl said, “You know we’re about to have one. The ‘gadget’ is nearly assembled.”
“Yeah, I know. Can’t come too soon, for me. I’m from the Netherlands. I’ve got parents somewhere in the Hague, hiding from the Krauts. I want this war over.”
Goudsmit’s face compressed and his voice thinned with bitter passion. Karl thought of his own relatives in the Ukraine and Poland, from whom no one had heard in years. Millions like them were in eastern Europe, vast bloodlands now locked in a battle to the death between Germany and the USSR. He knew little of the damage rolling through those dark territories, but everyone knew the vast armies struggling there, bringing ruin by the day. Every day.
“We all agree,” Freeman said quietly.
Goudsmit gave them a dire look and said, “Look, I’ve gone over all the intel on the German program we have, gotten from all around Europe. By the time Szilard got to Einstein, who got to Roosevelt, the Germans did have a fission project going—heavy water moderation.”
Karl said, “Heavy water to slow down the neutrons in a reactor that uses U-235. That’s what Moe parachuted into Norway to find. The RAF blew up that plant.”
Goudsmit nodded. “I think they’re still trying for a reactor, though. We have spotty intel saying so.”
Freeman asked, “What are the chances they’ve worked forward enough to have a bomb?”
Goudsmit shook his head. “Not good. The German style for this sort of thing is to set up a lot of separate projects doing different things, which all compete for resources. Not our style.”
Karl thought of his battles with Dunning and the English, who wanted to roll the dice on the diffusion method, despite not knowing how to do it. “We’ve had our problems, sure. We’re building reactors now to get plutonium, but Oppenheimer and company out in Los Alamos don’t know how to build a bomb with it either.”
Goudsmit gave Karl a look of respect. “I hear you’re the guy who kept pushing for the spinner method?”
Karl nodded, not letting his smile quite show how pleased he was, and Goudsmit went on. “So while there were other projects in the US, my impression is that you got it together in one big effort, run by this general. Must’ve been fun.”
Karl allowed his smile to convey a lofting, sardonic humor. “Fun,” sure . . .
While Freeman brought Goudsmit up to speed, Karl reflected on how word must have spread here about the American program, despite all the security rules. Physicists loved the new, the brilliant, and could not keep quiet about it. They would invent perfectly plausible reasons to tell others, and find ways to work in the field, if at all possible.
Now Dunning was working on one of the reactor teams under Fermi. Reports said he was doing a very good job. Dunning liked working with Fermi, who many thought was the world’s best all-round physicist. Karl knew he had beaten Dunning by getting enough private money to tinker with the spinners. A sidestep that had gained advantage. Now time and hard work had delivered the right results.
Dunning was quite right, too, to work with Fermi. The man was an inspiration, smarter even than Teller. Fermi had gently suggested to Karl that he help lure Dunning away from Columbia in 1942—and “lure” was the word he used, too. Karl had instantly known this was the smart way to go around the whole Brit faction that favored gaseous diffusion of U-235. He still remembered the moment. Fermi had leaned against a blackboard, ignoring the white chalk swaths on his shirt and pants, and said, “He will not stop pushing his ideas, you know.”
Karl had nodded—this was a swerve in the conversation, which until that moment was mostly Fermi outlining a calculation Karl could barely follow. He had been too embarrassed to take proper notes, even if he could have—Fermi wrote fast and talked faster, once he had the idea in place. “I know,” Karl had said. Fermi gave him a significant, savvy glance, and they had gone on with the calculation.
And Fermi had then orchestrated Dunning’s move away into reactor work. Only later did Karl realize that the delicate tipping point of influence had turned on that pivotal moment.
Karl shook his head, banishing the memory. People were talking loudly and he had lost track. . . .
Goudsmit spoke forcefully, looking at the faces around the table. “So they’ve got a lot of uranium from Czechoslovakia. What’re they doing? Going for a reactor?”
No one knew, of course. Goudsmit leaned over the table, finger stabbing the air. “The Brits got intel in 1943 that the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute people were building a reactor. The real brains of the German ‘uranium project’ is Werner Heisenberg. Plenty of data on that. Heisenberg was a professor at the Kaiser Wilhelm, with von Weizsäcker and Hahn himself, who started it all back in 1938. That Berlin group was only one of several that began working on the nuclear program. Hamburg’s got one. Plus Munich, Heidelberg, Kiel, Vienna. All of them small, it seems.”
“Heisenberg is young,” Karl said. “Can he run a program like that?”
Goudsmit gave Karl a steady look. “Hey, he’s older than you, right? Midforties. He’s an odd guy. I’ve met him, back in prewar days when he came to the USA. Smart! That Nobel and all kinda puffed him up, though. Keeps up on the all rest of physics. He goes now and then to Switzerland to give talks. That’s the only other country the Nazis let scientists go to, since it’s neutral. I’ll bet he’ll come down sometime this year for some R and R on the lakes. Every time he’s there, he’s talke
d about quantum theory, no nuclear stuff at all.”
“Which is suspicious,” Moe said.
Goudsmit snapped his fingers with delight. “Right! Look, I know he’s heading up their nuclear work. We checked it in a funny way—or mostly, the Brits did. They guessed, or I suppose maybe ‘concluded’ ”—he raised his eyebrows—“from limited intelligence that there was no bomb crash program in Germany. They got that pretty clear, when Professor Peierls was pushing that gaseous diffusion thing—you know him, right, Karl?”
Karl sat up to get some height and project his voice more, a cue he had learned the hard way in many committee meetings. Very carefully he kept his face blank. “We fought Peierls for two years, against that”—he could feel his throat tightening, voice hardening, but couldn’t stop—“damned, no-show, gaseous diffusion idea. Peierls pushed that along with Dunning, and they lost. Look, sure, he’s a good physicist, but wrong. We’re all wrong sometimes, right?”
He looked around the room and knew his face was no longer stiff and blank, but he did not know what it looked like now, and something told him not to try to find out.
Goudsmit visibly decided to let that pass, shaking his head slightly as if to clear it. “This guy Professor Peierls, he told me that he was convinced the Krauts didn’t have a big, coherent program. See, he got hold of catalogs of courses in German universities. He compared them with those from past years, hunting them up in the Cambridge University library. He saw that the usual people were teaching the usual physics courses. So no big central project to take them away, use up their time.”
Nods greeted this around the room. Moe gently nudged, “Back to Heisenberg?”
Goudsmit blinked. “Oh yeah. Reports say he’s never referred to the nuclear program, in all his Swiss talks. Not even in casual after-dinner discussions. We know, ’cause we double-checked it with some of the Swiss who were there.”
The Berlin Project Page 22