anything,’ he said, looking pointedly at General Arnold, the Air Force Chief of Staff, then around the table, studying the brass name-holders on the conference table in front of each attendee.
He focused on Donovan.
‘Colonel Donovan, you are head of our Foreign Intelligence. What do we have? What can you tell me about this?’
‘Well, Mr President, sir, we do have a lot of information on this. Our aerial photos of the Rhineland show approximately ninety per cent of her manufacturing base is beyond repair. Germany does have other industrial areas, but these are piecemeal and many have already been overrun either by our troops or the Russians, sir.’
‘So you’re not convinced by this threat, then?’ asked the President.
‘I’m not saying that, Mr President, but I can’t see there would be many places left in the country where a significant industrial process could be carried out… assuming of course that the threat being referred to required a significant industrial process.’
‘Hmm, I see.’ Truman steepled his fingers and looked around the table for another candidate to extract information from.
Wallace was one of the junior attendees and stood a few feet back from the table behind Donovan, as did several other assistants and advisers to the various department heads present. As the room remained silent, Truman took the time to familiarise himself with the names and faces around the table.
Donovan leaned back and summoned Wallace over.
‘Sir?’ whispered Wallace.
‘You may need to present right now what you’ve put together so far, lad. Are you ready for that?’
‘I… I’m not sure I — ’
The whispered conversation between them wasn’t missed by Truman.
‘Young man, if there’s information to be had, then I’d prefer it first hand.’
Wallace’s face coloured as everyone in the room, older, senior military men and statesmen, stared at him.
‘Given the severity of the situation, I really don’t think I have time for opinions to filter their way through the correct channels. Please.’ Truman spread his hands, inviting him to speak.
Donovan twisted round in his seat and looked up at Wallace, who was now swallowing nervously, his almost pre-pubescent Adam’s apple bobbing like a cork. Donovan nodded and in a deep voice quietly said, ‘Go on, son.’
Wallace felt the crimson in his cheeks suddenly drain away and his scalp prickle as an even greater wave of anxiety swept through him.
‘Mr President… the ahhh… we believe the Germans could conceivably have a number of projects for weapons capable of mass destruction still in process. These projects could be small in scale, requiring modest industrial support, sir.’
Truman nodded. ‘Go on.’
‘There is… some evidence they have advanced biological weapons. Um… plagues, viruses that could plausibly be released by an agent or added to municipal water supplies, for example. Also they have developed some nasty chemical weaponry. But I believe there is another possibility to consider, though I hasten to add that it is unlikely, sir.’
Truman shrugged and raised his eyebrows.
‘We know they have been trying for an atom bomb, sir.’
The announcement caused most of the men around the table to stir uncomfortably. The President, however, remained unperturbed, if a little bewildered.
‘What the blazes is an atom bomb?’
Wallace looked back down at Donovan for help, eager that his department head be the one to explain why such a significant subject should have wholly bypassed Truman while he had been in the role of Vice- President.
Donovan spoke up. ‘Mr President, I think with respect to you, sir, this briefing should have come a little earlier. Under the former President’s instruction, an enormous research effort known as the Manhattan Project has been put together. It’s a programme to produce an atom bomb.’
‘Ahh… I see, something else that I’ve yet to be brought up to date on. Colonel Donovan, I might have been informed of this a little sooner.’
Donovan was subdued in his response. ‘Yes, sir, it was on a list of briefings you were due to receive over the next few days.’
‘So then, enough of that for now. Donovan, tell me what the hell an atom bomb is please.’
‘An atom bomb is a form of explosive device that is in the order of millions of times more destructive than conventional explosive materials. Although I’m no scientist, sir, I know the destructive potential of one atom bomb is far greater than, for example, all of the combined air raids so far carried out by the 8th Bomber Group in England.’
‘My God!’ Truman’s mouth dropped open. He looked back up to Wallace. ‘And young man, you think the Germans have some of these things?’
Wallace cleared his throat.
‘No sir, I don’t think so. But I know they were attempting to build one. Our troops recently discovered a research laboratory in Strasbourg, and a German scientist called Heisenberg is in our hands. We know from debriefing him that the laboratory was their main research strand, and that this Heisenberg was their leading physicist on the project. At the risk of complicating this with science, I can attempt to explain how we know they can’t possibly have an atom bomb.’ Wallace raised his eyebrows, a little more relaxed speaking before them all, now that he was approaching familiar territory.
Truman pursed his lips and then nodded. ‘Continue. I’ll try my best to follow.’
‘Okay.’ Wallace took a moment to consider how to explain the concept simply. ‘Mr President, sir, you know what an atom is?’
Truman frowned. ‘Of course, young man, it’s those little ball things we’re all made of, isn’t it?’
Wallace smiled, the President was essentially right. ‘Yes, sir. Well… we know from scientific work carried out in 1939 that splitting one of these releases an immense amount of energy. We also know that some molecules — ’ Truman frowned ‘- that some substances have atoms that are easier to split than others. One such substance is called uranium 235, or U-235 as we call it for short. Now, to take this idea and turn it into a bomb, one needs to split a whole lot of atoms very quickly. The way one does this is by creating what is known as a chain reaction. When one splits the first atom it sheds energy and a couple of particles known as neutrons. These neutrons in turn smash into neighbouring atoms, split them and release more neutrons. This happens repeatedly, with every new atom that is split two more neutrons are released, and pretty quickly you have billions of neutrons splitting billions of atoms, thus releasing a lot of energy. That is a chain reaction. Are you with me so far, Mr President?’
Truman nodded. ‘So far. Keep it like you’ve just done, as non-scientific as you can.’
‘So… that is the chain reaction, sir. However, as I mentioned earlier, only one type of substance, U-235, can have its atoms easily split this way, and it is very, very rare and must be very carefully refined and purified. To give you an idea, sir, of how much it has to be refined, it would take five hundred tons of mined uranium ore to produce one ounce of uranium; of this only about one per cent is U-235 while the other ninety-nine per cent is U-238, useless to the process. So, as you can see, sir, it takes a lot of work to produce the raw material for a bomb. We have been refining uranium now for nearly a year and I believe we have only just managed enough to make our first bomb.’
‘I see,’ said Truman. ‘But then could they have produced enough of this material for a small bomb?’
‘A very good question, sir. And the answer is that there needs to be a minimum amount, mass, of the substance in one place to enable the chain reaction. This is referred to as the critical mass. Once a block of U-235 is put together that exceeds this mass, the chain reaction happens pretty much automatically.’
‘Good grief! Do we have more than this amount of uranium? Is it kept apart? Separately, I mean?’
Wallace smiled at the President’s alarm, charmingly naive, but a sensible concern.
‘I believe we have in excess of that amount, and yes, it is stored carefully, sir.’
‘So what is this amount? Is it a lot, tons?’
‘The critical mass required to produce the chain reaction is calculated as one hundred and ten ounces
