A Thousand Suns

Chapter 42 Mission Time: 5 Hours, 50 Minutes Elapsed

Truman stared silently at those members of his war cabinet and the Joint Chiefs of Staff who had been recalled and able to attend at such short notice. Many of them, with the exception of Donovan and Wallace, looked as if they had been dragged out of their homes, their beds, or reluctantly from some social function.

‘Little more than an hour ago, I was informed of something very disturbing, gentlemen, an intelligence report from our people in Europe. Colonel Donovan, will you please…?’

Donovan nodded and picked up a piece of paper; he read from it. ‘At 2100 hours, Eastern Standard Time, we received a wire from our OSS operation in Germany. Yesterday, a platoon of our airborne troops discovered a partially destroyed laboratory on the outskirts of Stuttgart.’ Donovan looked up from his sheet of notes. ‘I should stress that, although these boys passed on news of their discovery promptly to the intelligence people over there, it took them a little time to work out what it was they had, and for the information to make its way back to the OSS over here. So this is nearly twenty hours old. Anyway, the laboratory appears to have been used to refine uranium, a cyclotron was discovered there and—’

‘Would you explain to us all what a cyclotron is?’ asked Truman.

Donovan turned to Wallace, who stepped forward to address the men at the table. ‘A cyclotron is a machine that magnetically separates U-235 from U-238. It’s an efficient way to refine on a small scale. We tried it over here, but it was too slow a method, requiring frequent cleaning of the magnetic heads.’

‘So then it appears that the Germans have been at it,’ interrupted Truman.

The response from around the table was one of quiet discomfort.

Truman nodded at Donovan to carry on.

Donovan cleared his throat and resumed reading his notes. ‘One of their technical team was taken prisoner near the lab; he had been wounded. This technician spoke briefly to a field medic before being taken to a field hospital, where he died a few hours later.’

Donovan looked up at the men around the table and finally to Truman. ‘The medic reported that this technician talked about working on atomic weapons, and that a bomb had been moved from this installation in preparation for imminent deployment.’

This time, there was only silence from around the table. Truman’s face hardened as he studied the faces of his cabinet members and the Chiefs of Staff present. This assembly of middle-aged and distinguished faces around the conference table, faces that still poorly concealed a disapproval of him, cast judgement on him as the man who could never replace Roosevelt. They all remained impassive, poker faces, none prepared to offer the vaguest gesture of support or encouragement as he continued to fumble his way through this problem, alone it seemed. None of these wise men seemed to have any advice for him now. He turned to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Admiral Leahy. ‘Do you have any thoughts on this?’

The Admiral cleared his throat awkwardly. ‘That does sound like we’re talking a whole new ball game, sir. Perhaps Donovan’s young man can let us know if he still thinks it impossible for the Germans to have built at least one of these atom bombs.’

‘Mr Donovan, your technical adviser, Mr…?’

‘Wallace, Mr President,’ Donovan obliged.

‘Wallace, you informed me at our last meeting that it was highly unlikely that the Nazis could make an atom bomb due to the amount of this stuff, uranium, that they would need. That is correct, isn’t it?’

Wallace nodded. ‘Yes, sir, Mr President.’

‘So if this is an accepted fact, then this new intelligence report withstanding, it remains impossible the Nazis have a bomb. Am I correct again?’

Wallace felt cornered.

There is a remote possibility, one that hasn’t been discussed.

‘Mr Wallace?’

Bill Donovan looked up at him and frowned, urging him to answer the President. Donovan would be expecting him to confirm the President’s assertion. But then Donovan wasn’t a physicist, he wouldn’t know about…

‘No, sir. It is theoretically possible, although very unlikely, that they could have built a bomb.’

Both Donovan and Truman looked sharply at Wallace. ‘How come?’

Wallace felt the eyes of all of them boring into him. He should have at least made a mention of this in the previous meeting, no matter how unlikely it was, if only to cover himself. Now it was going to look like he’d deliberately kept information from them. Or that he was simply incompetent.

‘It could be a fast-cycle emitter,’ he uttered reluctantly.

‘Fast-cycle — ? What the hell is that supposed to mean?’

‘It’s a theory, sir. A proposal that accelerating the very start of the nuclear chain reaction and specifically shaping the discharge of neutrons will release enough energy to extend the reaction beyond the fissionable material. Thus much, much less U-235 would be required to produce a bomb, but of course the danger would be that the chain reaction doesn’t eventually burn out, but carries on indefinitely.’

Truman shook his head, irritated by the unwelcome return of techno-babble to the conversation.

‘In other words, sir, if the theory stands, a bomb made in this way could potentially… uhh… destroy everything sir. A doomsday weapon of sorts, Mr President.’

Truman paled.

‘It’s just a theory, sir,’ Wallace added. ‘There are many men working on the Manhattan Project who have already debunked it as impractical.’

‘But it seems the Germans have taken this theory more seriously?’

‘Yes, sir, it would have been the only way they could have proceeded. If their physicists had dismissed the theory as ours have done, they wouldn’t have even begun the process of making a bomb. They would know that the resources they’d need to muster for a single atom bomb would be well beyond their grasp. So it looks like their people believe the fast-cycle process can work, Mr President. But I must reiterate, sir, that the theory is considered flawed by all of our physicists working with Dr Oppenheimer, including Dr Oppenheimer, who has already described it as a load of nonsense. Any bomb designed along this principle will almost certainly fail to detonate.’

Truman stared long and hard at Wallace. ‘And why didn’t it occur to you to mention this to me yesterday?’

‘It is a flawed theory. It’s simply wrong, sir.’

‘How certain are you of that, Wallace?’

Wallace swallowed nervously.

‘Give me something I can understand… one chance in ten, in a hundred, a thousand?’

‘It’s impossible, sir, to give you a figure like that. All I can say is that it is very unlikely that this kind of bomb will work at all.’

‘Unlikely,’ repeated Truman.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Not “impossible”…’

‘Highly unlikely, sir,’ Wallace added.

‘And given they need much less of this uranium to make one of these fast-cycle things, is it possible they could have made more than one?’

Wallace nodded. ‘If they have taken this theory on board, then yes, sir… needing much less uranium than one hundred and ten ounces, it is possible they may have acquired enough U-235 to have made several of these bombs. But I must stress that it is highly improbable—’

Truman raised a finger, ‘But, you cannot reassure me and say impossible.’

Wallace swallowed nervously as the men around the table studied him intently.

‘No, sir, I cannot give you that assurance. No atom bomb has yet been tested. In truth, we cannot know for certain what will happen when we eventually test our bomb, nor the Germans’ much smaller device. As it stands, the science is entirely theoretical, sir. We have only our arithmetic to guide us.’

The colour continued to drain from Truman’s face; he was shaken by this young man’s reply. The fellow had been unprepared to utter the word ‘impossible’, leaving Truman to draw small comfort from the young man’s assurance that it was highly improbable.

‘I think from this point on I would like us all to consider that the threat issued by Adolf Hitler might be a genuine one… and given his demand for unconditional surrender expires today, I’d suggest we had better start working out what we’re damn well going to do.’ His words had started out calmly, but a slowly emerging sense of panic and frustration had driven him to shouting by the end of the sentence. The men around the table shuffled awkwardly under his steely gaze.

He looked at his watch. ‘If our deadline started from zero hundred hours yesterday, I’d guess we have sixteen and a half hours until it expires. For now, I will presume that this deadline will be when he intends to explode this bomb.’