Bomb (8 page)

To any viewer, they looked like close friends out for a little stroll. Actually, it was the first time they'd ever met.

After about half an hour, the man handed the woman an envelope. She climbed back on her bicycle and peddled toward her small cottage in the nearby town of Oxford, where she was known as “Mrs. Brewer,” a refugee from Germany and mother of two.

In fact, her name was Ruth Werner, and she was a spy for the KGB. A German-born Communist trained in tradecraft in Moscow, Werner had spent the 1930s working as a Soviet secret agent in China and Switzerland. She'd been sent to Britain in 1941, charged with setting up a network of informants and sending useful intelligence to the Soviet Union.

It was illegal in wartime Britain for private citizens to use radio transmitters, so Werner smuggled in transmitter parts by hiding them in her children's stuffed animals and assembled the machine at home. She asked her landlord if she could put an antenna on the roof. It looked just like a regular radio antenna. The landlord had no objection. With this setup, she was able to communicate by radio with her KGB bosses in Moscow.

Moscow was particularly interested in reports from Werner's new contact, the thin man with glasses. And with good reason—he was helping British scientists figure out how to build an atomic bomb.

*   *   *

T
HE MAN WAS
a German-born physicist named Klaus Fuchs.

“The spelling,” a fellow German said of Fuchs's name, “sometimes caused people to pronounce it in a somewhat embarrassing way.” The solution for English speakers: pronounce it to rhyme with “books.”

As a college student in Germany, Fuchs had watched the rise of the Nazis with disgust. He joined the Communist Party, impressed by the party's willingness to speak out against Hitler. When Hitler took power in Germany in 1933, Nazi thugs beat Fuchs nearly to death and tossed him in a river. That only strengthened Fuchs's commitment to communism.

Fuchs escaped to England, where he earned his PhD in physics. When the war began, British scientists recruited him to help with a secret war-related project—the atomic bomb. “I accepted,” recalled Fuchs, “and I started work without knowing at first what the work was.”

A gifted physicist, Fuchs was well liked by his fellow scientists, though they found him difficult to get to know. He was always inside, hunched over his desk. He spoke very little, and never about politics.

“A very nice, quiet fellow, with sad eyes,” commented one.

“He seems like a chap who's never breathed any fresh air,” said another.

The British knew he'd been a Communist in Germany, but they figured he'd put that behind him. And in any case, they wanted his brain. No one guessed that their shy, pale coworker was capable of leading a double life.

“When I learned about the purpose of the work,” Fuchs later said, “I decided to inform Russia and I established contact through another member of the Communist Party.”

That led to Fuchs's contact with Ruth Werner. He and Werner met every couple of months on quiet rural roads. He passed her envelopes containing reports on everything British scientists knew about atomic bomb physics, and she radioed the material to Moscow.

“Once,” Werner recalled, “Klaus gave me a thick book of blueprints, more than a hundred pages long, asking me to forward it quickly.” This obviously couldn't be done by radio. Like all experienced spies, Werner had backup plans in place.

“I had to travel to London and, at a certain time in a certain place, drop a small piece of chalk and tread on it,” she explained. This was a signal to her Soviet contact—it meant that a drop-off would be made at a prearranged time and place.

Two days later she got on her bicycle, with Fuchs's report hidden under her clothes. “After about six or seven miles, I turned onto a side road,” she said. There, parked under a tree, was a car. Behind the wheel sat a Soviet agent.

“I cycled on, hid my bike, and went to sit in the car beside him for a moment,” Werner said. She handed over the papers, got back on her bike, and rode home.

*   *   *

“I
MPORTANT,
” officials in Moscow said of Fuchs's information, “very valuable.”

But it was of limited worth. Fuchs was doing interesting calculations, but the real action was taking place in the United States. And the Soviets were getting nothing at all from their agents in America.

By the fall of 1942, this was making KGB officials in Moscow very angry. “The organizational pace is entirely unsatisfactory,” Moscow scolded its American spies. “The project is taking a very long time to get going.”

In New York, Semyon Semyonov got the message. As part of his search for a way into the America bomb project, he turned to his best courier, Harry Gold.

“One evening in New York City,” Gold remembered, “about October-November 1942, Semyonov asked me if I had heard anything of a military weapon.” It was a bomb, Semyonov said, a weapon of almost unimaginable power.

“I was puzzled,” Gold said. “I had no idea that anything was going on in regard to atomic energy in the United States.”

Semyonov knew it was a long shot, but he was desperate. He asked Gold to keep his eyes and ears open.

*   *   *

M
EANWHILE,
Moscow officials reminded their West Coast agents that they'd been sent a list of scientists to cultivate. Moscow was particularly annoyed that no contact had been made with Robert Oppenheimer. The Soviets had no way of knowing that Oppenheimer had just been named the scientific director of the American atomic bomb project, but they knew he was a top American physicist. They knew it was
probable
he was involved.

Peter Ivanov, a KGB agent in San Francisco, thought about how he could get close to Oppenheimer. As a Soviet agent, watched closely by the FBI, it would be too risky for him to make a direct approach.

Ivanov went to see George Eltenton, a chemical engineer known to be sympathetic to the Soviet Union. Ivanov pointed out to Eltenton that the Americans and Soviets were allies in World War II, but the Soviets were the ones doing the fighting against Hitler. Why, Ivanov asked, was America keeping secrets from its ally?

Eltenton agreed; the Soviets deserved better.

Ivanov then asked Eltenton what he knew about atomic bomb research being done at the University of California, Berkeley.

“I, personally,” said Eltenton, “know very little of what's going on.”

“Do you know any of the guys?” asked Ivanov. “Any others connected with it?”

“Not very well,” Eltenton said.

Ivanov tossed out names of well-known Berkeley physicists: “Ernest Lawrence? Luis Alvarez? Robert Oppenheimer?”

Eltenton said he knew Oppenheimer casually. They'd been at a few political meetings together over the years.

Ivanov asked Eltenton to talk with Oppenheimer, to subtly feel out his interest in sharing information with the Soviets. Eltenton said he didn't know Oppenheimer well enough to do it. Ivanov wouldn't give up—wasn't there anyone Eltenton knew who could be trusted to approach Oppenheimer?

“On thinking the matter over,” Eltenton remembered, “I said that the only mutual acquaintance whom I could think of was Haakon Chevalier.”

Chevalier was a professor of French literature at Berkeley and the host of the Communist discussion group at which Oppenheimer had been spotted by the FBI about two years earlier. Chevalier and Oppenheimer were good friends. Eltenton asked Chevalier to approach his friend on behalf of the Soviets. Chevalier agreed.

*   *   *

T
HE PERFECT OPPORTUNITY
arose a few weeks later, when Robert and his wife, Kitty, invited Haakon and his wife, Barbara, over for dinner.

“Haakon was one hundred percent in favor of finding out what Oppie was doing and reporting it back to Eltenton,” Barbara remembered. “Haakon also believed that Oppie would be in favor of cooperating with the Russians.” Barbara strongly disagreed. They fought about it in the car on the way to dinner.

As soon as the guests arrived, Oppenheimer announced it was time to mix a batch of his famous martinis. He walked toward the kitchen. Chevalier followed.

As Oppenheimer began carefully pouring the liquor, a nervous-seeming Chevalier announced, “I saw George Eltenton recently.”

Oppenheimer looked up from his work.

Chevalier continued, saying that Eltenton had a contact with Soviet intelligence. If Oppenheimer ever wanted to share any scientific information with the Soviets, he could use this connection.

Oppenheimer was visibly disturbed by the suggestion. “That would be a frightful thing to do,” he said. “That would be treason.”

Chevalier said nothing more.

Oppenheimer went back to his martinis. “That was the end of it,” he later said. “It was a very brief conversation.”

Chevalier reported the results to Eltenton. A disappointed Eltenton told Peter Ivanov, the KGB agent, that there was “no chance whatsoever of obtaining any data—Dr. Oppenheimer does not approve.” Ivanov relayed the news to Moscow.

Oppenheimer chose not tell General Groves that he'd been approached by the Soviets. It was a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life.

DISAPPEARING SCIENTISTS

ON THE AFTERNOON OF NOVEMBER 16, 1942,
Robert Oppenheimer and Leslie Groves stood together in a deep canyon in northern New Mexico. Steep red-rock cliffs rose on both sides of the canyon. A clear mountain stream trickled down the center. It was a gorgeous spot.

“This will never do,” Groves grunted.

The two men walked back toward their car.

“If you go on up the canyon,” Oppenheimer suggested, pointing east, “you come out on top of the mesa, and there's a boys' school there which might be a usable site.”

The men climbed into the car and continued their search for the perfect place to build an atomic bomb lab. The site had to be remote, so work could be kept secret. But it also had to be fairly close to railroad lines, so people and equipment could quickly move in and out. And, ideally, it would have some buildings already in place, so scientists could move right in and get to work.

A light snow began falling as the car wound its way up a narrow dirt road carved into the side of a mesa. The car reached the top and pulled up to a gate with a sign reading Los Alamos Ranch School.

From their car seats, Groves and Oppenheimer peered through the gate. “We didn't want to get out,” Groves remembered, “as we should have had to give some reason why we were inspecting the place.”

Inside the gate, boys ran around playing sports in the snow—in shorts. “It was bitterly cold,” recalled Groves. “I thought they must be freezing.”

Beyond the playing fields were a few school buildings, a dining lodge, log dormitories, and several small houses for teachers. Oppenheimer loved the mountain and desert views. Groves loved the isolation.

“This is the place,” Groves said.

A few weeks later, the school director opened an official-looking letter and saw that it was signed by Secretary of War Henry Stimson. “You are advised,” declared Stimson, “that it has been determined necessary to the interests of the United States in the prosecution of the war that the property of Los Alamos Ranch School be acquired for military purposes.”

The school was closed, the students sent home.

While construction crews began expanding roads and nailing together new buildings at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer turned to his next task: “a policy of absolutely unscrupulous recruiting of anyone we can lay hands on.”

*   *   *

A
SHORT WHILE LATER,
a Harvard University chemistry student named Donald Hornig was doing research in an explosives lab when the lab director walked in. Hornig's boss took him to the attic and locked the door.

“How would you like another job?” asked the lab director.

“What have I done wrong?” Hornig asked.

“Nothing,” said his boss.

“What kind of job?” Hornig wanted to know.

“Can't say.”

“Well, where is it?”

“Can't say.”

“East or west?”

“Sorry, my lips are sealed,” said the director. “Think it over and let me know in the morning.”

Hornig decided to turn the offer down. It just sounded too strange. Then he started getting phone calls from former professors, and the president of Harvard. They all wanted to know what his problem was—didn't he realize his country needed him?

He took the job.

*   *   *

S
IMILAR SCENES
were taking place at top universities all over the country.

“People I knew well began to vanish, one after the other,” Stanislaw Ulam, a mathematician at the University of Wisconsin, recalled. Then Ulam got a letter inviting him to join a project doing important war work in New Mexico. Suddenly he knew where everyone had gone.

“I accepted immediately with excitement and eagerness,” he said.

When the physicist Robert Marshank got a similar letter, he announced to his wife that they were leaving immediately.

“What's it all about?” she asked.

“I can tell you nothing about it,” he replied. “We're going away, that's all.”

“At least tell me why we are going away,” she demanded.

He refused. Only when they were halfway across the country did she find out they were headed for the Southwest.

Oppenheimer did a lot of the recruiting personally. “I traveled all over the country,” he said, “talking with people who had been working on one or another aspect of the atomic energy enterprise.” It wasn't always easy to get them to sign up. “The notion of disappearing into the New Mexico desert for an indeterminate period,” he recalled, “disturbed a good many scientists.”

And yet Oppenheimer's offer did have appeal. “Almost everyone knew that if it were completed successfully and rapidly enough, it might determine the outcome of the war,” he said. “Almost everyone knew that this job would be part of history. This sense of excitement, of devotion and of patriotism prevailed. Most of those with whom I talked came to Los Alamos.”