Bomb (4 page)

“And that,” said Gold, “is how I began.”

*   *   *

G
OLD STARTED SNEAKING DOCUMENTS OUT OF HIS LAB,
plans and formulas for making industrial chemicals. Every few weeks he'd travel to New York City to meet with a Soviet contact—Gold knew these men only by fake first names. He'd hand over his stash of stolen documents, then hang around a coffee shop while the papers were copied. He got the papers back, rode back to Philadelphia, and returned the documents before anyone noticed they were missing.

By the time World War II began, Gold had given the Soviets every bit of useful information the Pennsylvania Sugar Company had in its files. He was tired of the long trips to New York, the constant lies to his family. Besides, Gold was starting to realize that the Soviet Union was hardly the workers' paradise Tom Black had described. In fact, it was a police state ruthlessly run by Joseph Stalin, a dictator who arrested and executed his political rivals, just like Hitler. Equally disturbing to Gold was the news that just days before the war started, Stalin and Hitler had signed a special pact, agreeing not to fight each other.
Why would Stalin make a deal with the devil?
Gold wondered. He was convinced—it was time to leave his secret life behind.

The Soviets had different ideas.

Gold's Soviet contact, known to Gold only as “Fred,” told Gold to get a job at a weapons factory—someplace with technology worth stealing. And Fred wanted Gold to start recruiting other spies with technical knowledge.

“I'm giving you orders!” Fred shouted.

When Gold hesitated, Fred went further. Should Gold ever get the idea of walking away from the Soviets, Fred assured Gold that his boss would get an anonymous note all about Gold's illegal activities.

“You'll be finished!” Fred shouted. “And don't think we will hesitate to do this!”

*   *   *

L
IFE IMPROVED A BIT
under Gold's next Soviet contact, a man Gold knew as “Sam.” During long walks along New York City streets, Sam gave Gold a basic education in tradecraft—the art and science of spying. Gold was taught never to use his real name when doing secret work, never to share his address. He learned to sit at booths in restaurants, because they kept him more hidden than tables. On the subway he sat right next to the doors. If he was being tailed, he could wait for a stop, let the doors begin to close, then leap up and jump out as the doors shut behind him.

Gold was never to attend Communist meetings, never to read Communist papers, never to express even the slightest interest in the Soviet Union. The main rule was this: “Present the appearance of a normal American.”

Gold enjoyed these talks and even felt comfortable enough to bring up his concerns about the Soviet Union, including Stalin's treaty with Adolf Hitler.

“What the hell?” Gold asked.

“Look, you fool,” Sam said, laughing, “what the Soviet Union needs more than anything in the world is time, precious time.” Stalin had no intention of keeping the agreement, Sam said, but the deal gave the Soviets time to build up their military strength. “And when the proper hour comes, you'll see, we'll sweep over Germany and Hitler like nothing ever imagined.”

*   *   *

W
HILE
G
OLD AND
S
AM STROLLED IN
N
EW
Y
ORK,
Adolf Hitler was on the move in Europe. German forces captured Norway and Denmark in April 1940, then turned against France, the Netherlands, and Belgium, forcing all three to surrender within a month. German bombs pounded British cities night after night. Great Britain stood alone in the war against Hitler. The United States rushed weapons to the British, but stayed out of the fighting.

Gold continued bringing Sam documents from his company files, but both knew the stuff was of little value. And in early 1941, Gold got some welcome news from Sam: “They had decided to drop me entirely.”

Gold was relieved to have his life back. He even began dreaming of starting a family of his own. It was too good to be true.

Stalin may have intended to break his treaty with Hitler—but Hitler beat Stalin to the punch. In June 1941, the German dictator launched a four-million man invasion force across the Soviet border. The German blitzkrieg drove deep into Soviet territory, capturing millions of soldiers and quickly approaching the Soviet capital of Moscow.

Sam called Gold. The Soviets wanted him back. It was not a request.

The Soviets had spies inside various factories—Americans who were willing to secretly share information with the Russians, in exchange for cash. Gold's new job was to act as a courier. He began taking long bus rides across New York State, picking up files in Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo. He was sent to Tennessee to get a sample of a new kind of explosive. He brought everything back to New York City and delivered it to Sam.

*   *   *

S
AM'S REAL NAME
was Semyon Semyonov. A thirty-year-old engineer with a degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Semyonov worked for a Soviet trading company based in New York. But that was just a cover for his real work. Semyonov was a secret agent for the Soviet intelligence agency, the KGB.

After picking up materials from Gold, Sam would head for the Soviet consulate, a three-story building in Manhattan. He climbed past the first two floors, where Soviet clerks did normal consulate work, like helping Soviet citizens get travel visas.

Then, making sure no one was in the hall, he would take out a key, unlock a door on the third floor, and enter the secret New York City headquarters of the KGB. It was a large, open room with desks and metal shutters on the windows and a portrait of the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin gazing down. Semyonov handed his documents to another agent and quickly left the building.

The stolen information was translated into secret code and sent by telegram to KGB headquarters in Moscow.

RAPID RUPTURE

SEMYON SEMYONOV'S
engineering job gave him a legitimate reason to be in the United States. But that didn't make him any less suspect in the eyes of the FBI. American agents had no evidence that Semyonov was a spy, but they knew
some
Soviets living in the United States were spies. They figured Semyonov might be one of them. They followed him on the street, into restaurants, onto the subway.

Semyonov and a KGB colleague named Alexander Feklisov began working together to try to shake the FBI. “We often tailed each other on our way to secret meetings,” recalled Feklisov, “to make sure we were not being followed.”

If they weren't sure whether they were being watched, they had several strategies ready. “It was a good test to enter a bar or a store,” explained Feklisov, “because one of the agents had to run inside to make sure no rendezvous was in progress.” You could also hop on a bus, which would force the FBI agent to tip his hand by getting on also.

Years later, Feklisov was asked whether he and Semyonov felt guilty about stealing technology from the Americans. After all, soon after Germany attacked the Soviet Union, the United States began shipping planes, tanks, cannons, and food to the desperate Soviets.

But Feklisov and Semyonov held a view that was common among Russians at the time. Yes, the United States was helping the Soviet Union—but not out of the kindness of its heart. The United States and Soviet Union had never been friendly, and nothing had really changed. America's help to the Soviets was the product of cold logic. The Soviet Union was battling Germany. America badly wanted to see Germany beaten. So Americans were glad to have the Soviets do the bloody work of fighting Hitler.

“When you know you are being taken advantage of,” Feklisov said, “you have every right to be clever.”

*   *   *

M
EANWHILE, THE
FBI was watching Americans, too.

One night, early in the war, Robert Oppenheimer drove to the home of a friend and fellow Berkeley professor, Haakon Chevalier. Oppenheimer parked in the street and walked to Chevalier's front door.

Watching from down the block were two agents of the FBI. The agents knew that Chevalier was a member of the Communist Party. They knew he hosted political discussion groups. It wasn't illegal to be a Communist. But it seemed likely that American Communists might feel allegiance to the Soviet Union. Could a citizen be a Communist
and
a loyal American at the same time? The FBI thought not. So agents watched known Communists like Chevalier, paying special attention to their friends and associates.

In 1941, the FBI opened a file on Robert Oppenheimer.

*   *   *

O
PPENHEIMER CONTINUED TO TEACH PHYSICS,
but he felt restless, like he should be doing something to help stop Hitler. “Many of the men I had known went off to work on radar and other aspects of military research,” he later said. “I was not without envy of them.”

The war news got worse and worse. Germany formed an alliance with Japan, which had a powerful military of its own, and dreams of building an empire in Asia. While Hitler's forces overran Europe, Japan was on the attack in China and Southeast Asia.

The United States cut off oil exports to Japan. This left Japan—a nation with few natural resources—with barely enough fuel to survive another year. President Roosevelt hoped Japanese leaders would be convinced to stop their armies from advancing further. Instead, Japan became even
more
determined to conquer new territory, new sources of raw materials—even if this meant taking on the United States.

With so many crises competing for Roosevelt's attention, the Uranium Committee continued to just crawl along. Frustrated by the slow pace of progress, physicist and U-Committee member Ernest Lawrence urged the committee to bring in some fresh talent. He suggested starting with a colleague of his at Berkeley, Robert Oppenheimer.

In October 1941, Oppenheimer attended his first meeting of the Uranium Committee. The members discussed the largest man-made explosion in history to that point—in 1917, in Halifax Harbor, Canada, a ship packed with millions of pounds of bombs and ammunition caught fire and blew up. The blast flattened buildings a mile in all directions and killed at least 2,000 people. It sent a 1,000-pound anchor soaring two miles through the air.

One uranium bomb, small enough to fit in a plane, could pack about ten times that power.

The meeting changed Oppenheimer's life. From that moment on, he knew he'd found his role in what was becoming a global showdown. “I spent some time in preliminary calculations about the construction and performance of atomic bombs,” he said, “and became increasingly excited about the prospects.”

*   *   *

T
WO MONTHS LATER,
at the U.S. military base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, an army sergeant named Joseph Pesek woke up early. It was December 7, a Sunday. Pesek was looking forward to a few hours of leave.

“After breakfast, I headed for the bus stop to wait for the 8:05 bus to take me to Honolulu where I was to play golf,” he said. “While sitting there on a bench, I noticed a large flight of aircraft approaching from the northwest.”

As the planes neared land, Pesek saw them start a sudden dive toward the harbor, where most of the U.S. Navy's Pacific Fleet was docked.
Some kind of training exercise,
he figured.

Standing on the deck of the battleship USS
Arizona
, a sailor named George Phraner had the same thought. First he heard the buzz of airplane engines. Then he saw the planes drop out of the clouds.

“It didn't mean anything to us,” he remembered, “until a large group of planes came near the ship and we could see for the first time the rising sun emblem on the plane wings.” This red sun was the symbol of Japan—the Japanese were attacking Pearl Harbor.

Bombs began smacking the water, smashing into ships, blasting planes parked on the ground, igniting fires everywhere.

“Air raid! Air raid!” shouted a voice over the ship's loudspeakers. “This is a real attack, real planes, real bombs!”

Phraner dashed below to get ammunition for his gun crew. He was lifting a ninety-pound case when he heard a “deafening roar” and felt the entire ship rock violently.

The lights went out, the cabin filled with smoke. The metal walls were heating up as Phraner felt his way to the ladder leading up to the deck. He started climbing.

“I was nauseated by the smell of burning flesh, which turned out to be my own as I climbed up the hot ladder,” he said. “A quick glance around revealed nothing in the darkness—but the moaning and sounds of falling bodies.”

When he finally tumbled onto the deck, Phraner saw broken bodies and body parts and pooling blood and flames everywhere. The ship was going down fast. He leaped over the side and struggled toward shore, splashing through water covered with blotches of burning black oil.

*   *   *

T
HE
J
APANESE ATTACK
on Pearl Harbor destroyed or damaged 18 warships and nearly 350 planes. More than 1,110 crew members went down with the
Arizona
. A total of 2,390 American soldiers and sailors were killed.

“You gave the right declaration of war!” Adolf Hitler raved to the Japanese ambassador in Berlin. “This method is the only proper one.”

Roosevelt was having lunch in the White House when he got the news. “They caught our ships like lame ducks!” Roosevelt shouted, pounding his desk. “They caught our planes on the ground, by God, on the ground!”

As radio and newspapers spread the story, the mood in America shifted quickly from shock to fury to vows of revenge. Roosevelt asked Congress for an immediate declaration of war on Japan, and got it.

“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion,” Roosevelt declared, “the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory.”