The Trinity Paradox (41 page)

“I believe the reason why we didn’t do it was that all the physicists didn’t
want
to do it, on principle ... If we had all wanted Germany to win the war, we could have succeeded.”

—
Cari-Friedrich von Weizsacker

Professor Abraham Esau stood
by the flyspecked window in Heisenberg’s old office. He felt numb; only the nervousness and terror in the pit of his stomach reminded him that he was alive.

He stared out into the courtyard. Shrubbery dotted the barren spots. The gravel walkways looked more permanent now after a year and a half, different from that dark, wet night when Werner Heisenberg had been executed. If Heisenberg were still alive, perhaps
he
could think of some way to salvage the situation. They would never develop their atomic weapon now; they could not even use the radioactive dust again.

Esau watched the black staff car sit where it had parked. Shadows moved inside as the driver shut off the engine then emerged from his door, hurrying around to open the back. Reichminister Albert Speer stepped out, moving stiffly, like a puppet. He had aged a great deal in only two years. He stood, staring at nothing, and removed his hat. He pulled off his black gloves and stuffed them in the pocket of his uniform jacket.

Speer glanced around at the buildings of the Virus House, the chain-link fences, the wooden construction. Nothing had been improved since the establishment of the nuclear physics research group under Esau. The rest of the Kaiser-Wilhelm Institute looked imposing and Prussian, with tall buildings, stone edifices, and ornate facades. The Virus House, though, looked like a place where “ugly” research was conducted.

Speer turned and gazed straight toward Esau’s window. Though the glare from the sunshine would drown out any shadows of himself inside the room, still Esau cringed back. Speer had come for him. Esau hadn’t thought it would happen so soon.

On weak legs Esau walked back to the desk and set to work, straightening the papers on it. He closed the drawers of his file cabinet with a sense of finality, locking away all the failures, all the ideas they had developed.

From the top corner drawer of his desk, he removed his remaining stack of engraved stationery that proclaimed him as Plenipotentiary for Nuclear Physics. Tilting his hand, he let the buff-colored paper slide a few sheets at a time into the waste can.

He recalled hearing Major Stadt’s voice snapping an order for his two guards to shoot. In the darkness, under the glaring floodlights, Heisenberg crumpled to the mud. His shock of brownish-red hair looked dull compared to the bright red splotches on his chest.

Esau ran a hand over his own heart. He wondered if the same fate waited in store for him. He had failed. All of Germany was falling. They would put him to death.

The meltdown disaster and fire at Dachau had wiped out nearly everyone in the concentration camp. Those who had survived the initial massive dose of radiation were sure to die soon. This included the guards, all the Jewish prisoners, the camp staff, and a large fraction of the population in the surrounding towns. Within twenty-four hours Kurt Diebner had died in a small local hospital where the doctors had no idea how to treat his sickness.

The disaster had ruined all of their processed uranium, all of their purified graphite. They had nothing left of the entire reactor, and it would be a long time before they could gather the material to make a replacement.

Dr. Otto Hahn had insisted on going to the site himself, armed with a Geiger-Müller counter to mark the spread of the radioactive contamination. Hahn had kept a careful journal, recording every reading. He had toured the ruins of the Dachau camp, remaining less than an hour as he looked at the unburied bodies struck down by radiation sickness.

Many of the prisoners had fled the camp and wandered away, searching for an escape—but they were walking dead. And they died scattered across the countryside.

Otto Hahn had seen all this, and he had also found the people dying in their homes in the surrounding villages. He had seen horses lying dead in barns. He had seen vehicles stopped as their drivers, too sick to continue, crashed into trees.

Perhaps Hahn had been reminded too much of the deaths caused by his own development of poison gases in the Great War. Gas warfare had been his idea, after all. All those people had died because of his invention—and now he saw a slaughter of even greater magnitude. Perhaps it had been too much for his conscience to handle.

Hahn had left his journal behind and he had fled. Nothing had been seen of him for more than a week, and Esau did not expect him to be found ever again.

Now, without Heisenberg and without Hahn, Esau had been deprived of his two brightest stars. When times were more desperate than ever, he had no hope. The nuclear physics solution to this war, the awesome secret weapon Hitler would spring on the world, was no longer viable. They had gained time, with the successful attack against New York, but they had lost all their progress.

He heard footsteps in the hall. Esau remained with his back to the door, staring at the file cabinets. The footsteps stopped, but the visitor said nothing. Esau spun around to face him. “Reichminister Speer, how good of you to visit,” he said in a flat, uninflected voice.

Speer’s pale blue eyes widened at the cold tone of the greeting. “Herr Plenipotentiary, I am sorry I could not inform you of my coming. It is better for you to receive this in person.”

Esau felt a cold twist in his stomach. He wanted to wince and cringe backward, but he held himself firm, as all his party training had shown him. “What is it, Herr Reichminister?”

Speer reached inside his breast pocket and withdrew a folded letter. With one hand he waved it in the air to unfold it. “I have in my hand a personal letter from the Fuhrer himself.”

Esau held his breath.

“It is a letter of commendation. The Fuhrer has seen photographs of all the deaths in New York City. He is very pleased with this radioactive weapon of yours that kills people—that kills the enemy, but does not damage property. I must admit that I am fond of this too. You know of my own interest in architecture. It pains me to see how the indiscriminate bombs dropped on Berlin are destroying some of our greatest historical landmarks.

“Your radioactive dust weapon does not do this. The Fuhrer wants to implement a large program, and he wishes to have dozens of these radioactive bombs after all. We will scatter them over Great Britain. We will wipe out London, we will wipe out Coventry and Birmingham.”

Esau stammered, unable to believe his ears. “But that isn’t possible! Such bombs will contaminate the whole area for years, decades, perhaps even a century.” He lowered his voice. “You saw what happened at Dachau.”

Speer nodded. “The Fuhrer perhaps does not understand this, but these are his orders. He believes that within a year or two the winds will blow the contamination away, leaving the cities free for us to inhabit. Ready-made
lebensraum,
he thinks. We will not even need to build new places for ourselves. Everything will be there for the taking.”

Reichminister Speer handed over the letter. “Once again we are very satisfied with what you have done for our efforts. The Fuhrer himself has seen to it that you receive a medal of commendation.”

Speer sat down without being asked. He folded his hands in his lap, and his bright eyes took on a sudden focused intensity. “Now then, tell me how soon we can have these other weapons in production. I must have results and I must have them soon.”

Esau felt his throat go dry. “But have you not been informed of what happened at Dachau? We can no longer produce anything! Our uranium is gone, our graphite is destroyed, our reactor has burned. We have no more material to work with!”

Speer froze and, without moving in his seat, his knuckles whitened. He spoke again, keeping his voice low, the pacing of his words even. “I cannot accept that answer, Professor Esau. The Fuhrer wants these bombs. He must have the results soon—it could well be the last chance for the Third Reich. It is my responsibility as Reichminister for Armaments.”

Speer pursed his lips and remained silent. Esau felt too distressed to say anything.

“If I tell the Fuhrer to forget his only hope, I have no doubt that I will be removed from office. I believe I am his friend and confidant, and he depends on me. My predecessor in this post was killed in a sabotaged plane. I don’t want to end up in the same fashion—and believe me, if that fate is in store for me, I will make sure it is in store for you as well.”

Esau felt his skin grow damp and clammy. He sat down behind his own desk—Heisenberg’s old desk. He answered slowly, making up the phrases as he spoke. “I will have to ... discover new methods of working. I will have to obtain new resources of purified graphite. I will have to command all production from the Joachimstal uranium mines.”

“You shall have it,” Speer said.

Esau cleared his throat, but averted his eyes. “You realize that the Americans are no doubt much farther along than we are. We have had numerous setbacks. Now that we have used our weapon, you can be sure the Americans will use theirs before long. We have no defense against it.”

“That is why we must hurry.” Speer stood. “Do not let me down.” He turned to leave, then stopped. “And by the way, congratulations on your commendation.”

Esau sat staring at the clean top of his desk until long after he heard Speer’s staff car drive out of the courtyard. He could not do it! He had no way! They had no heavy water, no uranium, no supplies, no graphite. The remaining researchers were tired and ready to snap—and now they no longer had Heisenberg or Hahn, not even Diebner!

Esau removed some of the progress report files from the cabinet. He stared at the calculations, the projections, the overoptimistic estimates of all their work, cheerily faithful from the days when their biggest worry had been to get more attention, more priority, more funding. Now he wished he could take it all back.

Heisenberg himself had managed to fool everyone for a long time because of the mistakes in his calculations, because of neglecting certain ideas. Esau stared at the complicated numbers. Few people could understand all this. He himself needed to work very hard to put all the pieces together.

It had worked for Heisenberg.

He considered the idea again.

No one would know. It would buy him time. Esau needed time right now, although he didn’t know what to hope for. Perhaps another miracle. Perhaps the end of the war.

He took his pen and stared down at the numbers in the calculations and followed them with his fingertip.

As unobtrusively as he could, Professor Abraham Esau began to alter the data.

25

Trinity Site November 1944

“As I lay there in the final seconds, I thought only of what I would do if the countdown got to zero and nothing happened.”

—
General Leslie R. Groves

“It was like the grand finale of a mighty symphony of elements ... It was as though the earth had opened and the skies split. One felt as though he had been privileged to witness the birth of the world.”

—
William L Laurence,
The New York Times,
official reporter of the Trinity test

Elizabeth woke at the sound.
Opening her eyes on the cot, huddled under an Army-issue blanket, she looked at Dick Feynman standing in the doorway. A few of the other VIPs had stayed in the refurbished rooms of the McDonald ranch house; the rest of the building had been turned into administrative headquarters for the Trinity test. Feynman cleared his throat a second time to make sure he had Elizabeth’s attention.

“What’s the matter?” She struggled to an elbow. As her sheet fell from about her, she glanced down. Mrs. Canapelli insisted that she wear a nightgown in the dorm, though Elizabeth had normally slept naked, back in her old timeline. She saw she was still wearing her comfortable clothes, though. It took her a moment to understand where she was, what was going on.

“The test. It’s going to be back on,” Feynman said. “It stopped raining. I thought you were just going to take a nap.”

Elizabeth tried to clear the sleep from her mind. She had been dreaming about something ... Livermore, and the protest. Jeff had been with her; he had refused to get arrested. Why had she dreamed of that? It had been years since the demonstration.

And then she remembered where she was—Trinity site, the Gadget, World War II. This was the day! They had postponed the midnight shot because of a freak rainstorm across the desert. And now, by the darkness outside ...
 

“What time is it?” she asked.

“Time to get up. They’ll restart the countdown soon, and we’ll have to get back out to the main bunker.”

She rubbed her arms, getting herself moving. The night before, everyone had been mesmerized by the whole thing, swept up in the final excitement that surrounded the test ... and then about eleven o’clock the rain had come. Boiling clouds thousands of feet high had rolled over the dry
Jornada del Muerto;
lightning bolts lit up the sky, and the thunder tried to compete with the explosion men were waiting to make.