“Right,” Sheslakov said, sitting down and twirling his jade letter opener. “All you know of the German atomic program.”
Yanovsky looked surprised for a moment. “There’s none to speak of now, though there could have been. Their technical knowledge in 1939 was the equal of anyone’s.” He lit the cigarette offered by Sheslakov. “Tea?” he asked.
“When you’ve earned it.”
“Okay. In 1939 the Nazis set up a Uranium Society, the Uranverein, and all the prominent scientists they had left after the emigrations were given particular tasks to do in solving the basic problem of how to make the bomb. Uranium exports from Czechoslovakia were stopped, a heavy-water production program was started. By 1941 the scientists reported that they could build a reactor that would make the U-235 they needed for a bomb. The problem — ours, too, as I understand it — was the deadline. Hitler wasn’t interested in anything that would take several months, let alone something that would need a few years, so the program wasn’t given any priority. Our information is that the German scientists, most of them at any rate, were quite relieved about this and were quite happy to work on the theory knowing full well that their consciences would never be troubled by the practice.
“In the last year things have changed, though not that much. The Nazis are getting desperate, and all sorts of desperate solutions are being looked at. Atomic bombs are still seen as too long-term for practical use, but German atomic espionage in America has been stepped up. Fortunately most of their information comes from our Rosa, and she’s been busy confirming their pessimism. That’s about it. They have an atomic development program that might give them a bomb in ten years. Since they’ll all have been hanged within two, it’s completely irrelevant.”
Sheslakov looked pleased. “But they have the scientific knowledge?”
“Yes.”
“If they had the U-235, they could make a bomb?”
“Heisenberg actually told Speer as much. ‘Give us the U-235 and we’ll make you a bomb,’ he said. You’re not planning to give them any?”
“When did that conversation take place?”
“1942. June, I think. I can look it up.”
“No need.” Sheslakov stood up. “Thank you, Sergei Ivanovich. You’ve been most helpful. But,” he added, seeing the other’s expression, “I can say no more. And” — he looked at his watch — “I’m afraid there’s no time for tea. Yelena is well?”
“Fine. Apart from worrying about our son Mikhail.” He smiled ruefully. “You and Vera must come over. I’ll telephone you.”
Sheslakov closed the door behind him, thinking for a second about his own son, killed three years before in the war’s first days.
“Well, no obvious problem there,” Fyedorova said. “Tell me, why are you bothering to visit Kapitza? There’s no doubt concerning the scientific facts, is there?”
“I like to hear everything firsthand.”
A knock on the door heralded their next visitor, a burly man with a sour expression. He sat down without being asked. “Well, Comrade Sheslakov, I am here as ordered. I would be grateful if this business could take up as little time as possible.”
Sheslakov sighed inwardly, smiled outwardly. “I know your time is valuable, Comrade Boletsky, but this is First Priority business.”
Why, he asked himself, were there so many unmitigated bastards in the NKVD external sections?
“Comrade,” he said “tell me about the U-235 trains.”
“You have the report.”
“Tell me anyway,” Sheslakov said coldly, closing his eyes to help him keep his temper.
“They leave Oak Ridge on the first Friday of each month at around 6 p.m., arrive in Los Alamos on the following Tuesday morning. Each carries ten crates, weight approximately fifty pounds, each containing five pounds of U-235. Two military police accompany the train throughout, two state police are picked up and deposited at each state border.”
“It seems an absurdly low level of protection.”
“It is.”
“Why so little, Comrade Boletsky, why?”
“Because the Americans have not considered the possibility of an attack. I think the two policemen are only there because of some instinctive desire to guard something that’s important, not because they seriously think it needs guarding.”
“Good. Now the train — how is it composed?”
“What do you mean?”
“What does it consist of?”
“I don’t have that information.”
“Get it, please. I want to know how many railroad cars, whether the engine is steam or diesel, where and when the engineers are changed over, as they must be on such a long journey. I want the makeup of the train, the order of the cars involved, everything. Who is the source of information?”
“GRU,” Boletsky said with ill-concealed distaste. “Melville, real name Aaron Matson, deputy chief of security at Oak Ridge. Rosa is his contact.”
“Is she? What’s his motivation?”
“Ideological.”
“I want a full dossier on him too. Coordinate it with Barchugov. Also a complete timetable of the train’s journey, where it is at all times. And I want to know why it leaves on Fridays at 6 p.m.
“Finally,” he said, consulting his notes for the first time, “I want everything you have on the situations at Grand Falls and the Alaskan relay station. I particularly want to know the current situation regarding American cargo-checking procedures.”
He stood up. “I realize most of this will have to come from America, but I would appreciate whatever urgency you can muster. This is First Priority.”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Boletsky replied stiffly.
“Why,” Fyedorova asked after he’d gone, “does it matter what sort of engine is pulling the train?”
“Steam engines have to stop for water,” Sheslakov replied as he looked for a particular file in the stacks on his desk.
“I’m going to see Petr Kapitza,” he said, passing her the file. “This is all we have on Walter Schellenberg. When I get back you can tell me whether he’s the man to be tempted by our bait.”
After helping herself to the bottle of vodka that Sheslakov kept at the back of his filing cabinet, Olga Fyedorova settled herself on the old cot under the window and opened the file. Holding the German’s photograph up to the light, she studied it for several minutes, trying to think herself behind the eyes that stared out at her. They were a boy’s eyes, she thought, not unlike Sheslakov’s.
A good beginning.
Her approach to an operation like this was completely different from Sheslakov’s. He approached it like a diagram, she like the writing of a love story, weighing up the interactions in the diagram, the way the people concerned would respond to events and, most important of all, to each other. There would be no more than ten people intimately involved in the unfolding of the plan, and several of them would remain unknown to her. It was all the more crucial then that those she wove into the plot should be known quantities, and that their strengths and weaknesses should be written in from the beginning.
Schellenberg was a special case. He had only one decision to make, and everything that was known about him had to be manipulated in the desired direction. He came from a well-to-do family, had been educated at a Jesuit gymnasium, had studied medicine and law at Bonn University. Soon after graduation he had enlisted in the SD, the SS Security Service. All plus points, Fyedorova thought. Intellectuals were always easier to predict, particularly those who chose subjects like medicine and law. If he had studied history or physics, she would have been much less sanguine.