Bomb (14 page)

Haukelid skied back across the border and rejoined the resistance. He would continue battling the German army until the end of the war.

*   *   *

L
ESLIE
G
ROVES WAS PLEASED
by the news from Norway. Pleased, not satisfied.

Yes, he'd managed to deny key material to the Germans. But the bottom line was this: He still had no idea what was going on inside German weapons labs. “We were truly in the dark then about their progress in atomic development,” Groves later said.

The biggest danger, Groves figured, came from world-class German physicists. “Unless and until we had positive knowledge to the contrary,” he explained, “we had to assume that the most competent German scientists and engineers were working on an atomic program with the full support of their government.”

Groves talked it over with Oppenheimer and other scientists at Los Alamos, many of whom had studied and worked in Germany before the war. Groves wanted to know the names of the most brilliant German physicists—the ones most likely to succeed in giving Hitler an atomic bomb.

They all agreed on one name: Werner Heisenberg.

“The position of Heisenberg in German physics is essentially unique,” Oppenheimer said. He'd be at the head of any serious German program.

The German-born physicist Hans Bethe even had an idea of what to do about it. “Kidnapping Heisenberg,” said Bethe, “would greatly limit the German project.”

Groves considered the idea. Kidnapping was not part of his job description, but he was ready to do whatever it took to win this race. He passed the suggestion on to a fellow general, asking the man to raise the subject with Army Chief of Staff, General George Marshall.

Marshall's reply came back: “Tell Groves to take care of his own dirty work.” Groves took careful note of the wording. Marshall didn't want to know about Groves's dirty work.

But he didn't tell Groves not to get dirty.

*   *   *

T
HIS WAS A JOB
for a new top-secret government agency, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS). Specifically, it was a job for Colonel Carl Eifler.

The thirty-seven-year-old Eifler already had a reputation for reckless bravery. Wounded by flying metal scraps earlier in the war, he'd pulled out his pocketknife and dug the steel from his thigh. His idea of fun was to shoot cigarettes out of his friends' mouths.

In late 1943, Eifler was working for the OSS somewhere in the jungles of southeast Asia. Fighting behind Japanese lines, he organized hit-and-run raids on enemy troops. He enjoyed the work and was disappointed to receive a mysterious order: “On or about 9 December 1943 you will proceed from Nazira [India] to Headquarters Office of Strategic Services Washington, D.C., for temporary duty.” Eifler flew to Washington, wondering what he could possibly do so far from the action.

Soon after arriving, he pulled a clean uniform over his muscular 250-pound frame and drove to the OSS building. He walked in and was headed toward the director's office when he spotted a man he knew, a young lawyer who'd once dared to criticize Eifler in an official report.

Eifler lunged at the small man, seized him by his jacket, lifted him off the floor, and smacked his back into the wall. Eifler leaned in close, glaring in the man's eyes.

“Listen, you son of a bitch,” he growled. “If you ever interfere in my activities again, I'll kill you.”

Eifler set the lawyer down, turned, and walked to his meeting.

*   *   *

H
E WAS GREETED
by Major Robert Furman, General Groves's top intelligence officer.

“What can you tell me of my new assignment?” asked Eifler.

Without getting into specifics, Furman explained that the United States and Germany were racing to make a new kind of bomb. If the Germans won the race, they'd win the war. At this point, said Furman, the most dangerous tool the Germans had was between the ears of a physicist named Werner Heisenberg. Eifler had no idea who Heisenberg was and didn't ask.

Instead he said, “You want me to bump him off?”

“By no means,” said Furman. “Our purpose is to deny the enemy his brain.”

Eifler waited for more.

“Colonel Eifler,” began Furman, “do you think you can kidnap this man and bring him out to us?”

“When do I start?”

“By God!” shouted Furman, banging the table, “That's the most refreshing thing I've heard in this whole damned war!”

Several days later Eifler was back at OSS headquarters, meeting this time with director General William Donovan and two of his top officers.

“Carl,” said Donovan, “this new operation will not even be given a code name. It is one of the biggest items of the war to date. We cannot even tell you much about the men you will be working with.”

Eifler raised no objection.

Colonel Ned Buxton asked, “Well, Eifler, have you selected a plan?”

“Yes, sir,” said Eifler. “I have.”

Buxton gestured for Eifler to continue.

“I will go in through Switzerland,” said Eifler. He explained how he'd sneak across the border into Germany, grab Heisenberg, and drag him back to Switzerland. From there, said Eifler, “I'll take him to a certain airport where you will fly him out.”

Buxton pointed out that the Swiss, who were neutral in the war, would raise a stink at having their territory used this way—well, he said, they'd just have to get over it. He agreed to send in an army plane to pick up Eifler and Heisenberg and fly them over the open Atlantic Ocean.

“Once clear of the European coast,” said Buxton, “you and the scientist will be dropped to one of our submarines, which will take you aboard for return to the United States.”

“If the timing of the plane and submarine are off,” said Eifler, “or the submarine is being chased by German subs, or a hurricane is blowing when we get ready to ditch—what of these possibilities?”

Buxton and Donovan exchanged glances, smiling. “Eifler,” said Buxton, “you're the last person in the world to be talking of risks.”

Eifler conceded the point. But he did have one tactical question.

“I've kidnapped this man and smuggled him safely back to Switzerland,” he said. “Now suddenly I'm surrounded by Swiss police and can't get him to the airfield. What are my orders?”

“Very simple, Colonel,” said Buxton. “You are to deny Germany the use of his brain.”

“The only way to do that is to kill him,” said Eifler. “So I kill him, and the Swiss police arrest me—what then?”

“Then we've never heard of you.”

SECRET CITIES

CARL EIFLER FLEW FROM WASHINGTON TO LONDON
in early 1944. From there he would make his way to Switzerland.

Oppenheimer did what he could to assist, helping the OSS find recent photographs of Heisenberg. Beyond that, the German bomb project was beyond his control. All Oppenheimer could do was build his own bomb as quickly as possible.

By 1944 the stress of the race was taking a visible toll. He was smoking more than ever, as much as four or five packs a day. Violent, purple-faced coughing fits punctured his sentences. He shed more weight from his bony frame, dropping to an almost skeletal 115 pounds.

And yet, somehow, the pressure was making him stronger. He spent long days pacing the Tech Area, popping his head into labs long enough to help solve problems, dropping into offices to join the ever-raging debates.

“It was clear to all of us,” remembered Hans Bethe, “that he knew everything that was important to know about the technical problems of the laboratory, and he somehow had it well organized in his head.”

When he asked scientists for updates, they'd hand him fifteen- or twenty-page technical papers, dense with formulas and calculations.

“Well,” he'd say, “let's look this over and we'll talk about it.”

He'd flip through the pages for five minutes—then lead a discussion on the paper's key points.

“He had a remarkable ability to absorb things so rapidly,” said the physicist Lee Dubridge. “I don't think there was anything around the lab of any significance that Oppie wasn't fully familiar with.”

“Each of us could walk in, sit on his desk, and tell him how we thought something could be improved,” remembered Joe Hirschfelder, a chemist. “We all adored and worshipped him.”

Robert Wilson expressed a theme echoed by many at Los Alamos: Oppenheimer inspired them to do things they didn't think they could. “In his presence, I became more intelligent,” Wilson said, “more vocal, more intense.”

“He brought out the best in all of us,” agreed Hans Bethe.

Everyone worked day and night, Monday through Saturday. Oppenheimer insisted people take Sundays off to rest and recharge. Scientists fished for trout in nearby streams, or climbed mountains and discussed physics while watching the sunrise. “This is how many discoveries were made,” one scientist said.

Oppenheimer unwound by jumping on his horse, Chico, and taking long rides in the hills. Armed guards rode two steps behind.

*   *   *

W
HEN
O
PPENHEIMER CALLED
Richard Feynman into his office, the twenty-six-year-old Feynman must have thought he was in trouble again. Several times already he'd been ordered to the office of the army censors. Censors read all incoming and outgoing mail, to ensure it contained no secret information. Feynman drove them crazy by having his family write to him in code. He enjoyed cracking the codes. Army censors did not.

Then he found a new hobby: picking locks on filing cabinets around the Tech Area and removing top-secret documents. “Whenever I wanted somebody's report and they weren't around,” confessed Feynman, “I'd just go in their office, open the filing cabinet, and take it out.”

When he was done, he'd hand the papers back to the scientist and say, “Thanks for your report.”

“Where'd you get it?” they'd ask.

“Out of your filing cabinet.”

“But I
locked
it!”

“I know you locked it. The locks are no good.”

This kind of stuff infuriated Leslie Groves. “Here at great expense,” he moaned to Oppenheimer, “the government has assembled the world's largest collection of crackpots.”

“He caused a lot of trouble,” Oppenheimer's secretary said of Feynman. “But,” she added, “Oppie made allowances.” Even in a city of geniuses, Feynman's brain stood out. And now Oppenheimer needed him for an urgent job.

By 1944, Los Alamos was just one small part of the Manhattan Project. The government was also building a massive factory at Oak Ridge, Tennessee—a secret city with eighty thousand workers living in trailers around the plant. It was their job to prepare the uranium for the bomb being designed at Los Alamos.

But there was a serious danger, Oppenheimer told Feynman. The army liked to keep everything secret. So the Oak Ridge workers knew very little about uranium—and almost nothing about how to handle the stuff safely. Feynman would have to go there, inspect the factory, and help them prevent a catastrophic nuclear accident.

“Now, the following people are technically able down there at Oak Ridge,” said Oppenheimer, naming scientists Feynman should talk to. “I want you to make sure that these people are at the meeting, that you tell them how the thing can be made safe, so that they really understand.”

“What if they're not at the meeting?” asked Feynman, feeling suddenly overwhelmed. “What am I supposed to do?”

“Then you should say, ‘Los Alamos cannot accept the responsibility for the safety of the Oak Ridge plant!'”

“You mean me, little Richard, is going to go in there and say that?”

“Yes, little Richard, you go and do that.”

Feynman collected top-secret reports on uranium and strapped the papers to his back, under his shirt. Then, for the first time in his life, he boarded an airplane.

“I really grew up fast!” he said.

*   *   *

F
EYNMAN INSPECTED
O
AK
R
IDGE.
Conditions were worse than Oppenheimer had feared. Feynman wrote up a report about the safety problems and how to solve them. The next day the Oak Ridge directors gathered to hear his findings, but right before the meeting an army colonel warned Feynman not to discuss any secret information about how the atomic bomb might work.

“It's impossible for them to obey a bunch of rules unless they understand how it works,” objected Feynman.

The colonel repeated his order.

Feynman's mind flashed back to his talk with Oppenheimer. He took a deep breath and shouted, “Los Alamos cannot accept responsibility for the safety of the Oak Ridge plant!”

The colonel was silent for a while.

“All right, Mr. Feynman,” he said finally. “Go ahead.”

Feynman explained the basics: how uranium atoms split when hit with neutrons, how they give off energy, how a chain reaction could lead to an explosion. It wouldn't work with just any uranium, though. The nucleus of a uranium atom usually has a total of 238 protons and neutrons. It's called U-238. When hit with a speeding neutron, U-238 does not fission. It's useless to bomb makers. But a small percentage of uranium atoms—about 1 out of every 130—have a total of 235 protons and neutrons. This is U-235. When U-235 is hit by neutrons, it
does
split and release energy. The incredibly difficult job of the Oak Ridge plant was to separate U-235 atoms from U-238 atoms, sending just the U-235 to Los Alamos.

Feynman explained how much uranium could be brought together before it became dangerous, and how to use cadmium to absorb neutrons and stop a chain reaction. “All of this was elementary stuff at Los Alamos,” he recalled, “but they had never heard of any of it, so I appeared to be a tremendous genius to them.”

The Oak Ridge directors agreed to redesign the factory with this new information in mind. “That was good,” said Feynman. “The plant would have blown up if nobody had paid attention.”