Bomb (15 page)

*   *   *

O
AK
R
IDGE CONTINUED
producing U-235, but very slowly. If everything went well, by the summer of 1945, they'd have enough fuel for just one atomic bomb.

Determined to build a bigger arsenal, Leslie Groves ordered the construction of another secret city, this one in Hanford, Washington. The Hanford plant was based on something else scientists had learned about fission. When U-238 atoms are hit with flying neutrons, they
absorb
the neutrons. That is, the neutrons stick in the nucleus of the uranium. This causes the uranium to change into an entirely new element, one that doesn't occur in nature—scientists named it plutonium. Plutonium, they discovered, will fission even faster than U-235, so it could also be used for building atomic bombs. The Hanford plant was created to produce plutonium as quickly as possible.

Between Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Hanford, and other secret labs around the country, the Manhattan Project was employing more than 300,000 people. The government was spending hundreds of millions of dollars—yet the project was so secret, President Roosevelt chose not to tell Congress where all the money was going.

A senator from Missouri named Harry Truman began to get curious. “I had known,” Truman later said, “something that was unusually important was brewing in our war plants.” But what? Worried that the government was wasting taxpayer money, Truman decided to send investigators to Oak Ridge and Hanford.

Very soon after this, Truman's phone rang. It was Secretary of War Henry Stimson.

“I told him that I would come to his office at once,” recalled Truman. “He said he would rather come to see me.”

The seventy-seven-year-old Stimson walked into Truman's office. He lowered himself into a chair beside Truman's desk and got right to the point. Truman needed to stop asking questions about the secret war plants.

“Senator,” said Stimson, “I can't tell you what it is, but it is the greatest project in the history of the world. It is most top secret. Many of the people who are actually engaged in the work have no idea what it is, and we who do would appreciate your not going into those plants.”

“Well, all right then,” said Truman.

“All right,” agreed Stimson.

“You assure me that this is for a specific purpose.”

“Not only for a specific purpose,” corrected Stimson, “but a unique purpose.”

“I'll take you at your word,” said Truman, disappointed. “I'll order the investigations into those plants called off.”

Truman couldn't help himself, though. He continued poking around for information about where all the money was going.

“Truman is a nuisance,” Stimson griped. But nothing the senator did changed Stimson's position. Knowledge of the atomic bomb was available on a strictly need-to-know basis.

Harry Truman did not need to know.

MAN WITH FOUR GLOVES

ON THE FREEZING AFTERNOON OF FEBRUARY 5, 1944,
Harry Gold walked the streets of New York City's Lower East Side. He was wearing gloves and holding a second pair in his hand. This was according to Semyon Semyonov's directions—the gloves were a recognition signal for the man he was to meet. The other man, Gold was told, would be carrying a tennis ball.

A few minutes before four, Gold turned onto Henry Street. He always tried to get to a meeting spot a little early, just to have a look. He liked what he saw. The narrow street was lined with four- and five-story brick tenement buildings, many of them in the process of being torn down and replaced.

“The place had been very well chosen,” said Gold. “It was beautifully deserted.”

A few blocks away, Klaus Fuchs climbed the concrete stairs of a Manhattan subway station and stepped up onto the streets of the Lower East Side. He pulled out a folded map, took a quick look, and started walking.

As he turned onto Henry Street, he took a tennis ball from the pocket of his long coat. This was according to Ruth Werner's instructions—before leaving Britain, she had told him where and when to meet his American contact. She told him to carry a tennis ball and to look for a man holding an extra pair of gloves. Fuchs did not know the man's real name and was not to ask.

Sure enough, as Fuchs approached the designated spot, there was a man with four gloves, pacing the sidewalk to keep warm. The man glanced at Fuchs, and at the ball in his hand. He stepped forward.

“What is the way to Chinatown?” asked Gold.

“I think Chinatown closes at five o'clock,” Fuchs responded.

With this exchange of passwords, each knew for certain he was dealing with the right man.

Gold introduced himself as “Raymond.” Fuchs used his real name, since there was no secret about his identity. They shook hands, then began walking together.

“We strolled a while and talked,” Gold later reported to Semyonov. “He is about five-foot-ten, thin, pale complexioned, and at first was very reserved in manner.”

Gold suggested they get something to eat. Fuchs agreed.

“As I kept talking about myself,” reported Gold, “he warmed up and began to show evidence of getting down to business.”

Fuchs told Gold he was proud to be helping the Soviet Union. He told Gold where he was living, where the British team was working, and who was on it. He described as much as he knew about the organization of the Manhattan Project, saying he'd heard that the bomb design was happening at a secret site somewhere in New Mexico.

They made arrangements to meet again and agreed to a few basic rules. To avoid drawing attention, they would never meet in the same place twice, and “under no circumstances,” said Gold, “were we to wait any longer than four or five minutes at any of the meeting places.”

*   *   *

A
BOUT A MONTH LATER,
they met again on a Manhattan street corner and walked together toward the East River. Gold asked Fuchs for specifics about his work in America.

Fuchs explained that he and the British team were working out the details of how best to separate U-235 from U-238. The actual work was being done at a factory in the Southeast—the Oak Ridge plant, though Fuchs didn't know that detail yet. Fuchs described some of the complex challenges of separating uranium atoms. With his experience in chemistry, Gold was able to follow the basic science. “At the first opportunity,” said Gold, “I put this material in writing, and later handed it over to John.”

John was a KGB agent named Anatoly Yatzkov. Gold's long-time contact, Semyon Semyonov, had been under extremely close FBI surveillance lately, making it too risky for him to be closely involved with a source as valuable as Fuchs. Gold's new contact, Yatzkov, worked as a clerk at the Soviet consulate in New York. Soon after receiving Gold's report, Yatzkov slipped away from his desk, walked up to the KGB office on the top floor, coded the report, and sent it to Moscow.

Top officials at KGB headquarters were thrilled.
Finally
, they had a high-level physicist inside the Manhattan Project.

*   *   *

J
UST AS HE'D BEEN IN
B
RITAIN,
Fuchs was a bit of a loner in New York. He bought a violin and spent his evenings playing music in his apartment. On weekends, he enjoyed hiking on trails outside the city.

Each weekday he went to his office near Wall Street, where he worked with a team of British physicists. The other scientists liked Fuchs and respected his work, but didn't pay much attention to him. No one noticed him slipping notes and handwritten drafts of technical papers—documents he would have no reason to take home—into his briefcase. “I personally furnished all of the drafts,” he later said, “directly to the individual known to me as Raymond.”

Fuchs and Gold set a third meeting for March on Park Avenue in Manhattan. It was a chilly day, and both wore overcoats. Fuchs and Gold spotted each other and knew what to do.

“We immediately turned into one of the dark deserted side streets,” Gold recalled.

Gold walked up behind Fuchs. Fuchs took an envelope from his overcoat pocket and passed it quickly to Gold, who dropped it inside his coat. They walked together to the next corner, then separated.

“The whole affair took possibly thirty seconds or one minute,” Gold said. That was standard tradecraft—when documents were to be exchanged, meetings should be very short. “Approximately fifteen minutes later,” said Gold, “I turned over the information to John.”

Fuchs and Gold met again in late March in the Bronx. While they had dinner, Fuchs told Gold that the atomic bomb was being designed at a place called Los Alamos. At several more meetings in May and June, Fuchs delivered packages of documents with technical information on his work. Gold took the packages directly to Anatoly Yatzkov.

After one of his pick-ups from Fuchs, Gold arrived early for the hand-off to Yatzkov. “I still had about five minutes,” he said. He felt the large envelope in his pocket. Inside was information about the most closely guarded secret on earth. The temptation was too great. Gold stopped on the street, in front of a drug store. He looked all around. No one was watching. He slipped the envelope from his jacket pocket, reached in, pulled out the papers, and tilted them toward the faint light coming through the store window. He began to read.

“This was in a very small but distinct writing,” he said, “it was in ink, and consisted mainly of mathematical derivations.”

Gold didn't understand a word of it.

*   *   *

I
N LATE
J
ULY,
Gold arrived at the Bell Cinema in Brooklyn for a meeting with Fuchs. Fuchs never showed.

Their backup meeting was scheduled for a couple weeks later on the corner of Ninety-Sixth Street and Central Park West in Manhattan. Again, Gold waited. Again, no Fuchs.

“On this second occasion I became very worried,” said Gold. “The area is very close to a section of New York where muggings often occur.”

Yatzkov told Gold to try to find out if Fuchs was still in New York. Gold wrote Fuchs's name and address in a book and took it to the scientists' building. He was let in by a woman who was cleaning the lobby. Gold showed her the book, explaining he'd borrowed it from his friend, Klaus Fuchs, and was here to return it.

Fuchs was gone, the woman said. He'd left town suddenly and didn't say where he was going.

Gold passed the bad news to Yatzkov. KGB officials in Moscow were furious. After years of frustration they'd finally gotten a source inside the American bomb project—and now they'd lost him. “A stern warning and reprimand must be made,” Moscow cabled its New York office, “for losing contact with such a source.”

The Soviets never could have guessed that a second source was about to walk in the door.

BORN REBEL

WHEN THEODORE HALL GRADUATED
high school at the age of thirteen, he listed his three top career options: comedian, journalist, physicist.

At just fourteen, Hall entered Queens College in New York City. Finding the work too easy, he transferred to Harvard and loaded up on the toughest math and physics courses available. The challenging subjects were “delightful” and “hot stuff,” he told his brother. Physicist jumped to the top of his dream job list.

Ted Hall turned eighteen in 1944. He was about six feet tall and very thin, with wavy black hair. He was about to finish college and assumed he'd be drafted into the army as soon as he graduated. The government had other plans.

One afternoon, Hall was asked to report to a meeting room in the physics lab building on campus. When he walked in he saw that the shades were drawn, the lights dim. There was a long table in the room, but only one man sat at the table. He introduced himself as a physics professor who now worked for the government in Washington, D.C.

“There is a project,” the man told Hall. “It's doing quite important work, and they need some more hands.”

Hall asked for a bit more detail. The man shook his head, saying only that the project was war-related and top secret.

After the meeting, Hall walked back to his dorm. He talked with a friend from down the hall, a fellow physics student who had also been recruited by the mysterious man from Washington. They took turns guessing what they were being asked to do and where they'd go to do it.

Hall's roommate, Saville Sax, listened to the whole conversation. Sax was a dedicated Communist, and he knew Hall had shown interest in communism as well.

“If this turns out to be a weapon that is really awful,” Sax said, “what you should do about it is tell the Russians.”

Hall glared at Sax. Sax said nothing more.

*   *   *

H
ALL RODE THE TRAIN
to New Mexico and found his way to 109 East Palace Avenue in Santa Fe. He walked through a courtyard, knocked on a door, and entered a small office. There at a desk sat a smiling Dorothy McKibben. She made an ID badge for Hall and a quick phone call. A car came, and Hall was driven to the top of a nearby mesa and through the gates of Los Alamos.

At a brief orientation, Hall was told he'd be helping to build an atomic bomb. He was given a secret little book known as “The Los Alamos Primer,” made up of copies of the lectures Robert Serber had given the year before. He got a white ID badge, giving him unrestricted access to the Tech Area.

After spending a few days studying atomic bomb physics, Hall went to work with a team led by the Italian-born physicist Bruno Rossi. The team was given a tiny amount of pure U-235, one of the first samples to arrive from the Oak Ridge plant. Rossi asked Hall to carefully place the thin uranium strip inside a specially built machine that would bombard the uranium with neutrons. The more senior scientists watched while Hall worked the uranium into place. If he dropped the sample and contaminated it, they'd have to wait weeks for more U-235.

“It wasn't the easiest gadget to work with,” Hall said later. “As I mounted the specimen, I remember my hands were shaking. I don't know whether they were shaking enough for anyone else to see.”