said. ‘You’ve interned in Washington, but all the same you wouldn’t have been my first choice – you can’t even keep your goddamn uniform clean, look at you – but the job requires a knowledge of physics, and the field is kind of limited.’
Greg said: ‘Thank you, sir.’
‘Try that kind of sarcasm on your new boss and you’ll regret it. You’re going to be an assistant to a Colonel Groves. I was at West Point with him. He’s the biggest son of a bitch I ever met, in the army or out. Good luck.’
Greg called Mike Penfold in the State Department press office and found out that until recently Leslie Groves had been chief of construction for the entire US Army, and had been responsible for the military’s new Washington headquarters, the vast five-sided building they were beginning to call the Pentagon. But he had been moved to a new project that no one knew much about. Some said he had offended his superiors so often that he had been effectively demoted; others that his new role was even more important but top secret. They all agreed he was egotistical, arrogant and ruthless.
‘Does
‘Oh, no,’ Mike said. ‘Only those who have met him.’
Lieutenant Greg Peshkov was full of trepidation when he arrived at Groves’s office in the striking New War Department Building, a pale-tan art deco palace on 21st Street and Virginia Avenue. Right away he learned that he was part of a group called the Manhattan Engineer District. This deliberately uninformative name camouflaged a team who were trying to invent a new kind of bomb using uranium as an explosive.
Greg was intrigued. He knew there was incalculable energy locked up in uranium’s lighter isotope, U-235, and he had read several papers on the subject in scientific journals. But news of the research had dried up a couple of years ago, and now Greg knew why.
He learned that President Roosevelt felt the project was moving too slowly, and Groves had been appointed to crack the whip.
Greg arrived six days after Groves had been reassigned. His first task for Groves was to help him pin stars to the collar of his khaki shirt: he had just been promoted to brigadier-general. ‘It’s mainly to impress all these civilian scientists we have to work with,’ Groves growled. ‘I have a meeting in the Secretary of War’s office in ten minutes. You’d better come with me, it’ll serve you for a briefing.’
Groves was heavy. An inch under six feet tall, he had to weigh two hundred and fifty pounds, maybe three hundred. He wore his uniform pants high, and his belly bulged under his webbing belt. He had chestnut-coloured hair that might have curled if it had been grown long enough. He had a narrow forehead, fat cheeks, and a jowly chin. His small moustache was all but invisible. He was an unattractive man in every way, and Greg was not looking forward to working for him.
Groves and his entourage, including Greg, left the building and walked down Virginia Avenue to the National Mall. On the way, Groves said to Greg: ‘When they gave me this job, they told me it could win the war. I don’t know if that’s true, but my plan is to act as if it is. You’d better do the same.’
‘Yes, sir,’ said Greg.
The Secretary of War had not yet moved into the unfinished Pentagon, and War Department headquarters were still in the old Munitions Building, a long, low, out-of-date ‘temporary’ structure on Constitution Avenue.
Secretary of War Henry Stimson was a Republican, brought in by the President to keep that party from undermining the war effort by making trouble in Congress. At seventy-five, Stimson was an elder statesman, a dapper old man with a white moustache, but the light of intelligence still gleamed in his grey eyes.
The meeting was a full-dress performance, and the room was full of bigwigs including Army Chief of Staff George Marshall. Greg felt nervous, and he thought admiringly that Groves was remarkably calm for someone who had been a mere colonel yesterday.
Groves began by outlining how he intended to impose order on the hundreds of civilian scientists and dozens of physics laboratories involved in the Manhattan project. He made no attempt to defer to the high-ranking men who might well have thought they were in charge. He outlined his plans without troubling to use such mollifying phrases as ‘with your permission’ and ‘if you agree’. Greg wondered whether the man was trying to get himself fired.
Greg learned so much new information that he wanted to take notes, but no one else did, and he guessed it would not look right.
When Groves had done, one of the group said: ‘I believe supplies of uranium are crucial to the project. Do we have enough?’
Groves answered: ‘There are 1,250 tons of pitchblende – that’s the ore that contains uranium oxide – in a yard on Staten Island.’
‘Then we’d better acquire some of that,’ said the questioner.
‘I bought it all on Friday, sir.’
‘Friday? The day after you were appointed?’
‘Correct.’
The Secretary of War smothered a smile. Greg’s surprise at Groves’s arrogance began to turn to admiration of his nerve.
A man in admiral’s uniform said: ‘What about the priority rating of this project? You need to clear the decks with the War Production Board.’
‘I saw Donald Nelson on Saturday, sir,’ said Groves. Nelson was the civilian head of the board. ‘I asked him to raise our rating.’
‘What did he say?
