The Man with the Iron Heart

“What is it, then? How come I feel so crappy?” the guard asked.

“After we A-bombed the Japs, the docs called it radiation sickness,” the medic replied.

“Son of a bitch!” The guard would have got more excited, but he did feel crappy. “That thing the fuckin’ kraut touched off-that was an atom bomb? How come I ain’t dead?”

The medic hesitated. Maybe you will be-something like that had to be going through his mind. The guard would have been more upset had he been less wrung out, too. At last, the medic said, “Well, it wasn’t a real atom bomb. What blew up was just TNT, that kinda shit. If it was a real atom bomb, Frankfurt wouldn’t be there any more-one gone goose. But the fuckin’ krauts put some kinda radioactive crap in with the explosive, and the blast spread it all over the place. You musta been pretty close to where it went off.”

“Yeah, I sure was. That’s how I got the ribs,” the guard agreed. “What happens now? Am I gonna die?” He wished he cared more.

“See how much of that crap you took in. See if you get better or not.” The medics who were lugging the guard stopped at a door with ISOLATION painted above it in big letters that looked new. A nurse held the door open for them. She was a blonde with a nice shape-Betty Grable legs-but a gas mask kept the guard from telling whether she was cute or not. He also wished he cared more about that. If he didn’t give a damn about what a girl looked like, he had to be much too close to buying a plot.

Several other guys already lay in the isolation ward. A couple of them seemed pretty chipper. Others looked even worse than the guard felt. The medics got him up onto a bed. He lay there like a lump, wondering what happened next or if anything happened next. He had a hard time caring one way or the other.

Robert Patterson didn’t look happy about coming before Congress. Jerry Duncan didn’t give a good goddamn about how the Secretary of War looked. “Let me get this straight, Mr. Secretary,” Jerry said. “We had this enormous enclave in Frankfurt for American officers and their dependents, constructed at taxpayer expense for several million dollars. Is that right?”

“Yes, Congressman.” Patterson looked even less happy. Jerry hadn’t been sure he could.

“Okay,” Jerry said. It wasn’t-not even close-but sometimes you had to soften ’em up before you bored in for the kill. “We had this enclave. Now we can’t use it any more, because this damned German fanatic blew himself up right in the middle and left it radioactive. We were going to try the German war criminals there, but now we can’t do that, either. Is all that right?”

“Yes, Congressman. Unfortunately, it is.” There had to be some bottom to the Secretary of War’s gloom, but he hadn’t found it yet.

“How did the German drive his truck into the middle of our enclave?” Jerry inquired, acid in his voice. “Was the guard asleep at the switch?”

“It appears the guard was deceived, sir, if that’s what you mean,” Patterson answered stolidly.

“What would have happened if the guard wasn’t asleep at the switch?” Jerry liked his own phrase better. It made the guard and the Secretary of War look bad. “Wouldn’t the whole enclave have been saved?”

“Well, sir, I think the most likely thing is that the fanatic behind the wheel would have touched off the vehicle at the first sign of trouble,” Patterson replied. “There was a lot of explosive in that truck. It still would have blown up a large area, and it would have spread the, uh, radioactive material far and wide any which way.”

Damn, Jerry thought. That seemed likely to him, too, even if he wished it didn’t. He tried a different jab: “How did Heydrich’s fanatics get their hands on radioactive material in the first place? How did they know what to do with it?”

Patterson licked his lips. “They kidnapped physicists out of the British zone. The radioactive material came from the French zone.”

“So none of this is the War Department’s fault? Is that what you’re saying?” Jerry asked. “The bomb blew up in the American zone, didn’t it? It contaminated the American zone, didn’t it?”

“Yes, sir,” the Secretary of War said.

“And this, uh, radioactive material the fanatics got from the French zone-how did they know it was there?” Jerry pressed.

“I presume one of the German physicists told them,” the Secretary of War said.

“Now, we knew the stuff was there? But we didn’t try to get it because we didn’t want to alert the French to its presence? Isn’t that right?” Jerry said.

Patterson sipped from the glass of ice water in front of him before answering, “Yes, Congressman, I believe it is.”

In his shoes, Jerry would have been sweating, too, and would have wanted to cool down. “We held our cards too close to our chest, wouldn’t you say?” Jerry asked.

“It did turn out that way, yes, sir. Hindsight is always twenty-twenty,” Patterson said.

“How many people got blown up by the bomb, Mr. Secretary? How many will die of radiation sickness or cancer because of it? Couldn’t we have used some twenty-twenty foresight?” Jerry demanded.

Bang! The committee chairman used his gavel. “There will be no badgering of witnesses,” he declared. “You need not respond to that, Mr. Patterson.”

“Sorry, Mr. Chairman,” Jerry said. But, when he thought about the stories the papers would run, he wasn’t sorry one bit.

Some Soviet printer in Berlin had run off countless copies of the latest ukase from Moscow. The fellow must have, if one appeared on the desk of an officer as junior as Vladimir Bokov. With the order in hand, he went down the hall to see what his superior thought of it.

Colonel Shteinberg was reading the pronunciamento when Bokov came in. “Hello, Volodya,” he said. “You’ve seen this?” He held up the sheet of cheap pulp paper.

“Da, Comrade Colonel.” Bokov displayed his own copy. “What do you make of it?”

“It will be a little inconvenient, maybe, but of course we’ll do it, because the order comes straight from Marshal Stalin,” Shteinberg said.

“Of course,” Bokov agreed, straight-faced. Anyone who didn’t follow an order from Stalin would regret it the rest of his life, which might not be long but would be unpleasant. “We will have to help organize postage and reparations to make sure everything is examined by Geiger counter before it proceeds to the motherland.” He paused, then asked, “Comrade Colonel, how many of these Geiger counters are there in the Soviet zone, and what are they for?”

“They measure radioactivity. I found that out with a phone call to a doctor who did a course in physics before the war,” Shteinberg replied. “At the moment, I believe we have seven in the Soviet zone. But more are coming from the USSR.”

“Good. That’s good,” Bokov said with what he thought of as commendable optimism. Every motherland- bound letter, parcel, truck, soldier, dismounted factory? Seven of these Geiger counters? Yes, they needed more- thousands more!

All the same, he thought he understood why Stalin gave the order. Radioactivity could kill, and kill invisibly. The bandits’ bomb in Frankfurt must have put the Little Father’s wind up. If the Heydrichites still had any of their radioactive material-whatever it was-left, they could strike a blow at the very heart of the Soviet Union. Of course Stalin would do everything he could to block it.

Another question formed in Bokov’s mind. “What do we do if we find something that’s, uh, radioactive?” He had only the vaguest notion of what the word meant.

“Ah. They must not have issued you the supplement.” Moisei Shteinberg brandished another sheet of paper. “In that case, we are to find out who delivered it, and where, and where he got it. This may give us some leads on who gave it to him.”

“Yes. It may.” Bokov didn’t believe that, but he had to sound like someone who did. Well, it wasn’t as if he hadn’t had practice.

“And so we have our orders, and so we will carry them out,” Shteinberg declared. “At my suggestion, the Red Army’s postmasters have directed that all mail to the motherland be routed through Berlin. Six of the seven Geiger counters are here, in this city. All rail traffic between the Soviet zone and the USSR will be centralized here, allowing us to inspect soldiers and functionaries.”