"How much, General?"
"All of it."
"Even the plane, sir?"
Coppersmith swiveled his chair around so that he could look straight at her. "When we use a man like that, Sarah, we have to bring him all the way in. Tell him everything you know. You know everything I know. Everything. His life is going to depend on it."
"Even the camera?"
Coppersmith nodded. "Of course. We're giving him Atomsk. Do you understand — giving it to him? He'll worry about it from now on."
Captain Lomax felt the weight of weeks slipping from her. Ever since the first reports had come through, they had been pure nightmare. The story was tantalizing, strange, terrifying in its implications of the unknown; but even worse than knowledge was the secrecy. She had gone to sleep fearing she would speak in her dream; she had crossed streets afraid that a car might hit her, hurt her, make her delirious, so that she would say the unmentionable word — Atomsk.
The news came in from three different directions, but in each case it bore the name: the city of Atomsk. The first report was handed in by the Chinese. A military officer from Nationalist intelligence brought a special memorandum to the American Ambassador in Nanking. The original Chinese report was beautifully brush-written. The accompanying English-language text was typed with a purple ribbon on wretched paper. The story was simple:
One of the spies of the Generalissimo had been sent to reconnoiter Russian dealings with the Chinese Communists. He found himself on the track of something strangely interesting. Pretending to be a simple coolie, he blundered his way into an underground Russian city in Eastern Siberia. The name of the city was given in Chinese as Ya-t'ung-ssu-k'e and in Russian letters as ATOMCK — Atomsk. The Russians had been suspicious of him and had made him drink a glass of milky-colored water which caused him to become ill. But he escaped and got back to the Nationalist lines in Mukden, just before Mukden fell. The spy died before he could be flown out.
He had only one specific message: "Gauze nets of silly beast, suction two or four."
Along with the report from Mukden, the Chinese had sent the spy's right arm. And it was mildly radioactive.
The second report — which came from Europe — was a detailed description of plans for a secret underground city. The Russian who turned it in was a Soviet deserter, an officer. No one knew why he deserted. He knew all about the "Atom-gorod" plans as of December, 1945; he had not been allowed to know anything of the project after that date. American military authorities took him into the American Embassy for safekeeping and a special guard was put around the building.
The precautions were useless. A sniper's shot hit the renegade Russian deserter in the face when he carelessly looked out of an Embassy window. A stray shot, said the local Russians. A good rifle with telescopic sights and a fine rifleman behind it, said the local Americans. But the stranger was dead. He had given a location in latitude and longitude — in the wooded hills not far from Vladivostok.
But, after only one long interview, he had died.
The third report came in from Japan, through U.S. Navy channels. An American LST had run northeast from Hokkaido, up into the Sea of Okhotsk. The radioman happened to understand the Russian wireless code; he had been trained for liaison during the war, but had never had a chance to use his skill. By another coincidence, he happened to be playing with the wireless receiving unit. He caught the distress signal of a Russian aircraft, signaling weakly in open code. It was calling, "Atomsk, Atomsk." There was no answer to the call. The signal stopped suddenly.
Either the plane had crashed or the Red Air Force had shot it into silence.
That was all — these three reports. The Chinese report had reached Washington on November 28. The deserter's story had been brought in by courier on December 10. While these two were still being discussed and threshed out, the report from Japan had come in on January 22.
The official reaction was violent. A majority of the people concerned — fifteen or eighteen in number — said: "Leave it alone. What if they do have a place called Atomsk? Can we do anything about it? We have no authority under the United Nations Charter."
But a vigorous minority fought against inactivity. From American headquarters in Tokyo, a top intelligence expert — General Frederick Coppersmith — was sent to Washington to urge action. Eastern Siberia was a lot closer to Tokyo than it was to Washington or Frankfurt; American authorities in Japan threatened to take independent action to look into Atomsk if they did not get a definite policy out of Washington.
Nothing happened.
Under local orders — neither authorized by Washington, nor prohibited in advance — an American photographic plane ran out over the Sea of Okhotsk, crossed the Siberian coast just south of Bogopol, thus violating Russian territorial sovereignty, and made a single photographic run over the hills where Atomsk was said to exist.
By the time the plane reached the reported location of Atomsk, the Far Eastern air was full of Russian radio calls, all of them in code. American radio experts in Japan went out of their minds plotting the locations of Soviet stations which had never been heard on the air before. Soon the ground stations were followed by aircraft calls. The Soviet pilots spoke to one another sharply, cryptically, under the stress of extreme excitement. The whole of the Red Far Eastern Air Force seemed to have been called out to intercept the American plane.
But the American plane got through — almost.
It was a special model-one of the new experimental reconnaissance planes designed to survive by speed and by speed alone. It put on acceleration which the Russians had never seen before. It rose to a height on which they had not planned. But the Russians caught it, right at the photo finish, in the high cold air above the 38th degree North Latitude which divides American-occupied from Russian-occupied Korea. Down came the plane.
The pilot died either in the air or on impact. But the plane did not burn. That was another one of its novel features. It had been built not to burn. Its purpose was to see, to run, to get the message back.
Communists and Americans reached the wreckage on the ground; the Communists got there first and pulled the cameras out of the plane. Not until the self-propelled howitzers began moving silently for range did the Communist troops go back, back, back, two miles to their side of the border.
The Americans apologized locally to the Soviet military authorities. They said, "The pilot must have lost his bearings." No better pilot ever flew; no better bearings had ever been kept. But, in diplomacy, the word is the thing. The Russian military delegation in Tokyo displayed no ill will. They seemed to regard it as a good joke played by American professional soldiers on Russian professional soldiers, and — besides — they had nothing to worry about. They knew that their people had taken all the cameras out of the wreckage of the plane.
If they had known the truth, they would have been unhappy.
The Russian search had overlooked one camera. Which was not in the least surprising, because talented engineers had built the camera so that it would be overlooked. It was small, but good; it was activated by a special signal in the plane's radio transmitter. When started, it kept on going till its film ran out. Pre-focused, it adjusted for color and brightness automatically. When its job was done, the lens cover snapped back automatically and it looked like a small hydraulic jack on the landing gear.
The Russians didn't get that one.
The film was a special color film, fresh from the developmental laboratories in Rochester, New York.
The photographs were sent back to Washington in duplicate. The planes carrying them were given fighter escort until they were entirely out of the range of continental Asiatic bases. The photographs were precious. They showed Atomsk itself.