A Thousand Suns

Chapter 26 Truman

He recalled those days vividly: the day that the ultimatum arrived, and then the chaotic days that followed.

James Irlam Wallace had been plucked from obscurity, studying for his post-doctorate in theoretical physics at Stanford, in his own little study. One day, out of the blue, several stern-faced men in plain suits had entered his study and, with little in the way of an explanation, had escorted him to Washington and the offices of the OSS to meet with Bill Donovan, then the head man of the recently restructured wartime intelligence agency.

Bill Donovan had recruited him then and there in the name of national security. And that had put an end to his academic career. From that point on, James Wallace was an intelligence asset.

There had been disturbing intelligence reports from Europe that the Germans, under the technical direction of Professor Werner Heisenberg, were going for the atom bomb. Donovan had explained to Wallace, after he’d signed a clutch of documents that threatened death and damnation should he utter a word of anything that was about to be revealed to anyone, ever, that they had only small pieces of the puzzle coming over as intelligence on the subject. The OSS needed someone with a keen mind, but more importantly a knowledge of the subject, to pull it all together and answer with some confidence whether the Germans had the capacity to make one yet. Donovan had added that Oppenheimer himself had mentioned Wallace’s name as a suitable candidate to analyse and summarise the German atomic effort, in lieu of providing one of his own team, now working at breakneck speed on Trinity, none of whom he could spare.

And so, after a hurried induction process, Wallace found himself answering directly to Bill Donovan and working in isolation, once more in a study of his own, on the tiny fragments of information that had been acquired thus far on Heisenberg and his team, and their progress.

It was six months after Wallace had started in this job that the event in question occurred. It was in the early hours of 27 April that he was roused by a phone call from Donovan and told to meet him at the White House, where he would be waiting with an emergency security pass to walk him through to meet with the President.

Wallace recalled that particular day with such clarity, the day he met Truman, the man who had been President for only a matter of days, a man who was struggling to find his feet in a role that had been thrust upon him with little preparation or notice in the wake of Roosevelt’s untimely death.

Truman came in and sat down at the conference table without a word. He took a moment to compose himself and then held the telegram in his hand shakily and began to read it aloud:

The men around the conference table were initially as shocked as the President. After a few moments to absorb what the President had read aloud, Truman’s cabinet, all of them, began talking at once.

‘Stop, gentlemen, quiet please,’ Truman muttered, unheard by everyone in the room. His assembly of wise men looked like little more than a class full of unruly children. He steadied himself, breathing deeply.

Here’s the crunch, Harry… now it’s time to act like a leader.

‘QUIET!’ he barked with a voice unused to being raised. The men around the table were instantly silent, finally aware that they had broken rules of conduct and behaviour that they would never have broken in Roosevelt’s presence.

Truman sipped some water to settle his voice, and buy time to steady himself. ‘Now, I need us all to think this through one step at a time. I have no idea what the potential capability of Germany is to produce a super-weapon. I had thought with all the bombing we’ve done in recent months, they were now incapable of producing anything,’ he said, looking pointedly at General Arnold, the Air Force Chief of Staff, then around the table, studying the brass name-holders on the conference table in front of each attendee.

He focused on Donovan.

‘Colonel Donovan, you are head of our Foreign Intelligence. What do we have? What can you tell me about this?’

‘Well, Mr President, sir, we do have a lot of information on this. Our aerial photos of the Rhineland show approximately ninety per cent of her manufacturing base is beyond repair. Germany does have other industrial areas, but these are piecemeal and many have already been overrun either by our troops or the Russians, sir.’

‘So you’re not convinced by this threat, then?’ asked the President.

‘I’m not saying that, Mr President, but I can’t see there would be many places left in the country where a significant industrial process could be carried out… assuming of course that the threat being referred to required a significant industrial process.’

‘Hmm, I see.’ Truman steepled his fingers and looked around the table for another candidate to extract information from.

Wallace was one of the junior attendees and stood a few feet back from the table behind Donovan, as did several other assistants and advisers to the various department heads present. As the room remained silent, Truman took the time to familiarise himself with the names and faces around the table.

Donovan leaned back and summoned Wallace over.

‘Sir?’ whispered Wallace.

‘You may need to present right now what you’ve put together so far, lad. Are you ready for that?’

‘I… I’m not sure I—’

The whispered conversation between them wasn’t missed by Truman.

‘Young man, if there’s information to be had, then I’d prefer it first hand.’

Wallace’s face coloured as everyone in the room, older, senior military men and statesmen, stared at him.

‘Given the severity of the situation, I really don’t think I have time for opinions to filter their way through the correct channels. Please.’ Truman spread his hands, inviting him to speak.

Donovan twisted round in his seat and looked up at Wallace, who was now swallowing nervously, his almost pre-pubescent Adam’s apple bobbing like a cork. Donovan nodded and in a deep voice quietly said, ‘Go on, son.’

Wallace felt the crimson in his cheeks suddenly drain away and his scalp prickle as an even greater wave of anxiety swept through him.

‘Mr President… the ahhh… we believe the Germans could conceivably have a number of projects for weapons capable of mass destruction still in process. These projects could be small in scale, requiring modest industrial support, sir.’

Truman nodded. ‘Go on.’

‘There is… some evidence they have advanced biological weapons. Um… plagues, viruses that could plausibly be released by an agent or added to municipal water supplies, for example. Also they have developed some nasty chemical weaponry. But I believe there is another possibility to consider, though I hasten to add that it is unlikely, sir.’

Truman shrugged and raised his eyebrows.

‘We know they have been trying for an atom bomb, sir.’

The announcement caused most of the men around the table to stir uncomfortably. The President, however, remained unperturbed, if a little bewildered.

‘What the blazes is an atom bomb?’

Wallace looked back down at Donovan for help, eager that his department head be the one to explain why such a significant subject should have wholly bypassed Truman while he had been in the role of Vice-President.

Donovan spoke up. ‘Mr President, I think with respect to you, sir, this briefing should have come a little earlier. Under the former President’s instruction, an enormous research effort known as the Manhattan Project has been put together. It’s a programme to produce an atom bomb.’

‘Ahh… I see, something else that I’ve yet to be brought up to date on. Colonel Donovan, I might have been informed of this a little sooner.’

Donovan was subdued in his response. ‘Yes, sir, it was on a list of briefings you were due to receive over the next few days.’

‘So then, enough of that for now. Donovan, tell me what the hell an atom bomb is please.’

‘An atom bomb is a form of explosive device that is in the order of millions of times more destructive than conventional explosive materials. Although I’m no scientist, sir, I know the destructive potential of one atom bomb is far greater than, for example, all of the combined air raids so far carried out by the 8th Bomber Group in England.’

‘My God!’ Truman’s mouth dropped open. He looked back up to Wallace. ‘And young man, you think the Germans have some of these things?’

Wallace cleared his throat.

‘No sir, I don’t think so. But I know they were attempting to build one. Our troops recently discovered a research laboratory in Strasbourg, and a German scientist called Heisenberg is in our hands. We know from debriefing him that the laboratory was their main research strand, and that this Heisenberg was their leading physicist on the project. At the risk of complicating this with science, I can attempt to explain how we know they can’t possibly have an atom bomb.’ Wallace raised his eyebrows, a little more relaxed speaking before them all, now that he was approaching familiar territory.

Truman pursed his lips and then nodded. ‘Continue. I’ll try my best to follow.’

‘Okay.’ Wallace took a moment to consider how to explain the concept simply. ‘Mr President, sir, you know what an atom is?’

Truman frowned. ‘Of course, young man, it’s those little ball things we’re all made of, isn’t it?’

Wallace smiled, the President was essentially right. ‘Yes, sir. Well… we know from scientific work carried out in 1939 that splitting one of these releases an immense amount of energy. We also know that some molecules—’ Truman frowned ‘—that some substances have atoms that are easier to split than others. One such substance is called uranium 235, or U-235 as we call it for short. Now, to take this idea and turn it into a bomb, one needs to split a whole lot of atoms very quickly. The way one does this is by creating what is known as a chain reaction. When one splits the first atom it sheds energy and a couple of particles known as neutrons. These neutrons in turn smash into neighbouring atoms, split them and release more neutrons. This happens repeatedly, with every new atom that is split two more neutrons are released, and pretty quickly you have billions of neutrons splitting billions of atoms, thus releasing a lot of energy. That is a chain reaction. Are you with me so far, Mr President?’

Truman nodded. ‘So far. Keep it like you’ve just done, as non-scientific as you can.’

‘So… that is the chain reaction, sir. However, as I mentioned earlier, only one type of substance, U-235, can have its atoms easily split this way, and it is very, very rare and must be very carefully refined and purified. To give you an idea, sir, of how much it has to be refined, it would take five hundred tons of mined uranium ore to produce one ounce of uranium; of this only about one per cent is U-235 while the other ninety-nine per cent is U-238, useless to the process. So, as you can see, sir, it takes a lot of work to produce the raw material for a bomb. We have been refining uranium now for nearly a year and I believe we have only just managed enough to make our first bomb.’

‘I see,’ said Truman. ‘But then could they have produced enough of this material for a small bomb?’

‘A very good question, sir. And the answer is that there needs to be a minimum amount, mass, of the substance in one place to enable the chain reaction. This is referred to as the critical mass. Once a block of U-235 is put together that exceeds this mass, the chain reaction happens pretty much automatically.’

‘Good grief! Do we have more than this amount of uranium? Is it kept apart? Separately, I mean?’

Wallace smiled at the President’s alarm, charmingly naive, but a sensible concern.

‘I believe we have in excess of that amount, and yes, it is stored carefully, sir.’

‘So what is this amount? Is it a lot, tons?’

‘The critical mass required to produce the chain reaction is calculated as one hundred and ten ounces sir.’

‘Ounces!’

‘Yes, sir, perhaps about the weight of a saucepan full of water, and about the size of, say, a baseball.’

‘Good God, that doesn’t sound like a lot! Are you sure the Germans haven’t been able to make that amount of the stuff?’

‘We are pretty certain, sir.’

‘Very certain, sir,’ Donovan added. ‘The discovery of the laboratory in Strasbourg showed they had only managed to refine much smaller amounts. And as yet, the German scientist, Heisenberg, has not relayed news of any other nuclear research projects. As far as he is concerned, his was the only atom bomb project.’

Truman took a moment to digest the information. He directed his attention towards Wallace. ‘Well, thank you, son, what’s your name?’

‘Wallace, sir.’

‘Thank you, Wallace, for bringing me up to date. I’m surprised that I actually understood your description. Well done.’

Wallace took a step back behind Donovan, aware that his moment of glory had passed and his contribution to the conference was more than likely complete.

‘I presume that means we can rule out the possibility that the threat is one of these atom bombs, then,’ Truman said, displaying a little relief.

Donovan awkwardly corrected the President. ‘Not rule out, sir, but it seems highly unlikely.’

‘Noted, Colonel Donovan.’

Wallace looked around the men at the table. All of them seemed to some degree comforted by the information he had imparted. One of them, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Leahy, stirred.

‘Mr President, there appears to be another issue we can perhaps debate here.’

Truman shrugged curiously. ‘Yes?’

‘Maybe this might represent an opportunity to… ’ the older man scratched the end of his nose awkwardly ‘… turn the war around against Russia, sir.’

Silence met the end of that sentence. Wallace could see many of the men around the table holding back their reaction to the comment, waiting to see Truman’s response and, as important, the response of others around the table. Wallace suspected by the silence that passed, that mixed opinions were waiting to emerge.

‘Well sir, I think I know what my predecessor would have made of that suggestion,’ Truman said, breaking the silence.

Wallace wondered what the President had meant by that comment.

‘So…? You gentlemen have opinions on this?’

Admiral Leahy decided to further the discussion. ‘Mr President, I think Colonel Donovan will agree that the communist state of Russia will be our enemy after Germany is defeated. Maybe not this year, maybe not next year, but pretty soon we’ll be fighting in Europe again, this time against Stalin.’

‘Donovan?’

Donovan continued. ‘He may be right, sir. Strategically, this may represent an opportunity to curtail that possible outcome. Pushing the Germans back over the last two years has drained their military resources, if — if — we were to turn this around and declare war on Russia, we would probably win, and win quickly.’

Truman nodded as he listened to him and contemplated his words in silence for a full minute before speaking again. ‘If we were to do that — and of course, gentlemen, I am speaking completely hypothetically, as I’m sure we all have been — if we were to do that, we would be extending this war by how long, would you suppose?’

There were no answers.

‘A month? A year? Several years?’

Wallace watched the military men at the table shuffle uncomfortably. Years, that’s what they’re thinking.

‘In all honesty, this hypothetical debate has run its course. Our people are simply not ready to send their children into the meat grinder for another war. I think I understand the strategic thinking here, and perhaps we need to schedule a briefing to bring me up to date on postwar strategic issues concerning our Russian friends.’ Truman directed a firm look towards the generals grouped together at the far end of the conference table. ‘But right now this nation is tired, Europe is tired, the world is tired. Perhaps… perhaps if this atom bomb threat from Germany was a realistic possibility, this might have been an avenue for discussion. But for now I suggest we can treat this communication as nothing more than a futile attempt at a bluff.’

Truman turned to Donovan. ‘Have your man there, Wallace, put together a complete report on the Germans’ efforts to make one of these bombs. They may not have been able to make one, but I’d like to be sure they haven’t left something that the Russians can pick up and use, especially if they are likely to be a worry in the future.’

Donovan nodded and made a note.

Then the meeting was adjourned. Wallace watched as Truman dismissed them all, and they filed out of the conference room in an awkward silence.

Wallace’s eyes focused on Chris as his mind swiftly travelled sixty years back to the present.

‘Are you all right there?’ asked Chris.

Wallace smiled tiredly. ‘I’m just tired.’ He looked back down at the photographs he still held in his liver-spotted hands. ‘A bit of a shock seeing these, and, I’m on some pretty strong medication. It takes it out of you.’

‘So what is this all about?’ Chris asked, frustrated that the old man had yet to reveal anything that he hadn’t already known.

‘Are these all the pictures you have?’ Wallace asked, looking up from them and ignoring Chris’s question. ‘Some of them are not very clear.’

‘It was very muddy down there, but yeah, I’ve got others. I’m going to do another dive down there and see if I can get some better shots. But, of course, it would help if I knew what to get better shots of.’

‘Yes, I understand. But you need to be careful, Chris. Very careful. There could be people watching me, following me. I’ve been very careful, coming down to meet you, and I’m sure, for now, we are alone. But we do need to be discreet.’

‘What people?’ asked Chris.

Wallace put a finger to his lips. ‘Just be careful who you talk to for now.’

The old man looked down at his watch. It was nine o’clock.

‘I’m sorry, but I’m feeling pretty beat up and tired. I’ve done a lot of travelling today and I could do with some sleep. I think the excitement has taken it out of me.’

‘What? You can’t leave now!’ blurted Chris.

‘I’m sorry. I’m tired and I find it hard to concentrate these days when I’m tired. My mind isn’t as sharp as it once was.’

Chris looked at the old man’s face and noticed for the first time how pale and unwell he looked. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, and he wobbled uncertainly as he pushed the chair back to stand up. Chris found himself instinctively helping him out of the chair and up onto his feet as if he were a dutiful grandson to the old man.

‘My legs get so stiff if I sit down for too long,’ he muttered in a voice that sounded weak and thin.

‘Well, can we meet tomorrow for breakfast then?’ Chris asked as he helped the old man into his windcheater.

‘Yes, yes of course. I should like to come out on the boat with you, if you’re planning on another dive… you know, to see where she went down.’

‘Okay, sure. I’ll organise that, but we can do breakfast tomorrow?’

‘Of course. I’ll be a little more with it, I hope,’ Wallace said with a worn smile.

‘So, where are you staying?’

‘I booked into a place just along up the street. A nice little place, Joe and Jan’s I think it’s called.’

Chris knew of it. It was a quaint boarding house with an old-style colonial porch on the front.

‘Okay then, Mr Wallace, I’ll come by and pick you up tomorrow morning and we’ll go and find somewhere quiet to have something cooked.’

Wallace nodded. ‘Don’t come knocking before nine o’clock.’

Chris would rather it be earlier. As it was, he was going to have a hard enough time waiting for the rest of his story.

‘Nine it is, then. Can I help you out—’

Wallace shook his head. ‘I’m fine, I’m fine. Just a little stiff and tired is all. I’ll see you tomorrow morning.’

Chris watched Wallace leave the bar. He noticed Wallace studying the street outside in both directions before finally shuffling out into the night. The old guy seemed genuinely twitchy. Chris wondered whether he should have warned him about the two men he had spotted down by the jetty, but then decided the old man looked anxious enough. Giving him something extra to worry about would probably finish him off, by the look of him.

‘Not a well man,’ Chris muttered.