The move from the Jesuits to the SS was equally indicative. To her it implied the need for an ideological father figure; the ideology itself would be the product of circumstance rather than conviction. In France before the first war she’d known Catholics who had become Marxists at almost the touch of a button; almost the same process, except, she thought with a smile, in that case it was a mother figure that was required. Anyway, Schellenberg’s ideology was sufficiently vague and indeterminate to allow the free play of the sort of intellect that chose to study law and medicine. Neither would provide a driving force, and judging from his rise through the ranks, the man was not lacking in ambition. It couldn’t be money that moved him, and she had a sneaking suspicion that power for its own sake did not attract him. Power for what, then? It must be for play, for the chance to play games at the highest level.
That would make him ideal.
She went back to the file. He had coordinated the intelligence from Austria before the Anschluss, then personally undertaken a spy mission to West Africa in the winter of 1938–39, checking out harbour defenses. And, she remembered it now, he had been the officer at Venlo in 1939 who had lured the two British agents into captivity.
Games.
From 1939 to 1941 he had worked under Mueller for the Gestapo and had reportedly been close to Heydrich. Then, in June 1941, he had been switched to Amt VI, the SD’s Foreign Intelligence Service, as its new chief. With Heydrich gone, he had gravitated to Himmler, and was now thought to be the Reichsführer’s chief political adviser. Early this year his organization had absorbed the discredited Abwehr to form a newly unified intelligence service. He was Hitler’s spy master.
So much for his career: he hadn’t missed an opportunity. He had a house off the Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, a country house at Herzberg. His office was built like a luxurious fortress, with a machine gun built into his desk and alarm sirens activated by photoelectric cells. When traveling abroad he “wore” an artificial tooth containing poison and carried a cyanide capsule in a signet ring.
That, Fyedorova thought, was particularly interesting. What kind of a man carried two suicide devices? An obsessive. In fact, the whole business about the desk reeked, not of paranoia — paranoiacs didn’t go on spy missions — but of perverse perfectionism. The medical/law student again. Here was a man who believed passionately in details, and who would probably have the two weaknesses typical of such people — an inability to see the forest for the trees and, more damning in a spy master, the compulsion to furnish from the imagination those details which were unavailable.
She got up and refilled her glass, fixed the photograph to the wall in front of her, and lay back on the cot. “Will you bite, Walter tovarich?” she asked the picture.
“I think you will.”
Sheslakov had found Professor Petr Kapitza supervising the unloading of crates containing laboratory equipment. The Institute was in the final throes of its return to Moscow and chaos reigned. Kapitza’s state of mind had not been noticeably improved by the appearance of another interrogator from the Atomic Division.
“As far as I’m concerned, the ‘First Priority’ should be saving several years’ work from these vandals,” he had exclaimed, taking in the removal corps with a sweep of his arm. “Which one are you talking about?”
Sheslakov had given him a telephone number to ring and patiently waited in the Institute’s spacious lobby, imagining the swish of tsarist gowns in days gone by.
Eventually the scientist reappeared, motioning Sheslakov to follow him outside. “We can talk in the gardens, where we might conceivably hear each other.”
Sheslakov set out to be disarming. “Professor, I know your time is valuable, and I promise you that after this conversation the work can go on undisturbed. I have read the report of your conversations with General Kostylov, and there are just a few extra questions I need answered. First, if you were given fifty pounds of Uranium-235, could you make an atomic bomb?”
Kapitza looked at him sharply. “Is that a random figure you’ve just thought up?”
“No.”
“I thought not. The answer is yes, or at least the probability is very high. Two bombs, I would say.”
“How quickly?”
The scientist spread his arms. “That is hard to answer.”
“A month, a year, ten years?”
Kapitza looked up at the sky. “Two years, I would think. But I would not like to stake my life on it. The Fuchs diagram has no great surprises — the basic principles are clear. But there are always unforeseen problems.” He looked at Sheslakov again, this time with something approaching a smile. “Of course continued access to the American development process would save us from duplicating their mistakes.”
“How powerful would such a bomb be?” Sheslakov had no reason for asking the question save curiosity.
“Again, hard to say.”
“A guess?”
“I would say powerful enough to raze a city the size of Novgorod.”
It was Sheslakov’s turn to look at the scientist. Kapitza couldn’t possibly know that his questioner came from that city. A chill raced up Sheslakov’s spine. He couldn’t resist another irrelevant question.
“Professor, do you have any qualms about making such a bomb?”
Kapitza laughed for the first time. “Qualms? Of course not. Qualms have never stopped scientific development. We are on a roller coaster, as the Americans say, and the ups and downs keep getting steeper, and there’s no way to get off. What use are qualms?”
The chill was still there, so out of place on a beautiful spring morning. Sheslakov reorganized his thoughts. “The Uranium-235 — how easy is it to transport? How dangerous?”
“It won’t explode if you drop it. But it has to be kept in small quantities or a critical mass is reached. If that happens, radiation is released, and radiation kills.”
“So the idea of carrying five pounds of Uranium-235 in fifty-pound crates makes sense?”
“You are well-informed. Is that how the Americans are doing it? Yes, the container for the U-235 — a steel bottle probably — would be suspended somehow in the middle of the crate, keeping it an adequate distance from the other jars in the other crates.”
“So there would be no danger in handling these crates, no time limit, temperature limit, pressure limit, anything like that?”
“Not that I can see. When can we expect these crates to arrive?”
Sheslakov smiled, “If these crates arrive, Professor, you’ll be the first to know.”
“Yes,” Fyedorova told him on his return to the office. “Or at least I see no reason why not.”
Sheslakov sat himself behind his desk. “I think a drink is called for. In your case,” he added, examining the bottle, “another drink. I’m beginning to distrust this operation. People keep saying yes to me, as if the whole thing is a foregone conclusion.”
Fyedorova got up from the cot and took the proffered glass. “If it’s difficulties you want, don’t despair. They’ve found Luerhsen — in the Lubyanka. And they’ve lost Kuznetsky.”
Two
They had been underground for more than eighteen hours, and the strain of confinement was beginning to tell. The whispering grew louder, the accidental noises more frequent, the smell of the latrine buckets was becoming unbearable. Kuznetsky wondered whether it might have been better to send out scouts and risk the dogs picking up their scent.