Hashimoto gave his orders quickly, with no sign of concern, aware now of the anxious faces around him.
I.58 steadied and then began to climb rapidly toward the surface. There, the diesel motors took over.
Hashimoto quietly cursed the dockyard fitters whose carelessness had nearly caused a disaster. Hiroshima Bay was deep; there was little chance grappling crews could have recovered the submarine. The fear that was always at the back of his mind—the dread of being entombed forever on the seabed—made Hashimoto almost physically sick. If he had to die, he wanted the end to come in battle. All but five of his classmates from the naval academy were dead, victims of American destroyers. Nowadays the life expectancy of a submarine crew was measured in weeks, not months, without the slipshod Kure dockyard workers shortening the odds still further.
Hashimoto was not a superstitious man. But he liked to believe that “anything which begins so badly must only improve.”
It was a comforting and very necessary philosophy for a commander who knew that every day the odds of his surviving were lessening. His great hope was that before he succumbed, he would have a chance to sink an enemy ship.
7
The drab, olive-green sedan stopped on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico. Lansdale told Tibbets and Beser to remove their air force insignia. He handed them corps of engineers’ emblems. In explanation, although it was hardly necessary, he said, “Security.”
The security chief was glad to be dealing with Tibbets and Beser. They were used to military discipline—not like the scientists who tormented his agents with their childish games. Lansdale was still smarting from the latest prank. A physicist had somehow opened the secret steel safe in the Los Alamos records office and placed a piece of paper on top of the priceless atomic secrets it contained. Printed on the paper were the words “Guess who?”
Beser was too overwhelmed by events to play any games. Yesterday he had been called to Tibbets’s office. The radar officer had immediately recognized by name the “important visitors”; Norman Ramsey and Robert Brode were physicists whose papers he had read as a student. They had questioned him for an hour on his academic background and radar qualifications. Finally Brode had told Beser he could do the job—on the understanding that his life was expendable.
Nobody had yet told Beser what the job was, but Beser knew better than to ask.
Early this morning, September 19, he and Tibbets had flown south from Wendover to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Lansdale was driving them on to Santa Fe. He cautioned them again. “You have nothing to do with the air force. You have never heard of Wendover. Don’t volunteer anything you know.”
They drove into town, stopping before a wrought-iron gate, centuries old, through which they entered a small, Spanish-style courtyard.
For two years this patio had been the receiving point for some of the world’s most distinguished scientists. Here, those men and women were given coffee, doughnuts, and comforting words from motherly Dorothy McKibben, who acted as “front-office receptionist” for the Manhattan Project’s most secret center—Site Y, Los Alamos.
Norman Ramsey was waiting on the patio to escort Tibbets and Beser there. He enjoined them never to address anybody they would meet as “doctor” or “professor.”
“Security,” Beser said solemnly.
Two considerations had influenced the choice of Los Alamos as an atomic laboratory. It was remote enough for security purposes; if one of the experiments conducted there resulted in a premature explosion, there was no sizable civilian population nearby to be imperiled by the release of radioactivity.
Tibbets’s first impression was disappointing. He felt “the birthplace of the actual bomb should look more factorylike.”
What he saw were clusters of buildings set out on a flat tableland, part of the plateau of the Jemez Mountains. Six thousand scientists, technicians, their wives and children now lived within the high wire fences. Beser thought the place looked like a concentration camp. Inside, this unhappy image persisted. Many of the buildings were of rough construction; speed, not comfort, had been the rule. As at Wendover, there were areas marked RESTRICTED and MOST RESTRICTED.
Waiting for Tibbets and Beser in his office was J. Robert Oppenheimer, the shy, frail theoretical physicist who was the scientific director of the Manhattan Project. He greeted them warmly but was less effusive toward Lansdale.
For months now, the security chief had been playing cat-and-mouse with Oppenheimer because of the scientist’s former association with various Communist organizations, his financial contributions to left-wing groups, his friendship with “fellow travelers.” He had beer under surveillance since March 15, 1943. He was followed, his mail opened, his telephone tapped, and, in Lansdale’s later admission, “All sorts of nasty things were done to keep a watch on him.”
Groves himself had questioned Oppenheimer and was satisfied that his “closest, most indispensable collaborator” had severed all connections with his offending past. He had ordered the watch lifted on his scientific director.
Lansdale had ignored the order. His agents continued to harass Oppenheimer.
They were watching the wrong man.
This morning, after Beser and Lansdale had left for Ramsey’s laboratory, Oppenheimer said to Tibbets, “You had better know everything.”
Pandora’s box was finally opening for the flier.
Here at Los Alamos, Oppenheimer began, men were delving into the unknown world, asking such questions as “What is matter?” and “How short can a ‘short time’ be?” Here they spoke of thousands of tons of energy as if energy could be weighed. They talked of a thousandth and then a millionth of a second as they devised ways to reduce time itself almost to nothing. They argued over the relative merits of the gaseous-diffusion and electromagnetic processes for separating uranium 235 from uranium 238; the uranium 235 produced could be measured in thimblefuls.
These men were also discovering the special nature of a chain reaction and studying the unique problem of critical mass: how to bring together two lumps of uranium 235 of the right potency to cause an atomic explosion at the right time.
Oppenheimer reduced the problem to a few words. “Time. That’s the problem, Colonel. Getting the timing right. If we are successful in solving that, then your problems will begin.”
The scientist looked benignly at Tibbets. “There will probably be problems right up until the moment when the bomb explodes.”
Oppenheimer explained how they intended to build the uranium bomb. A suitable mechanism had to be devised to bring two hemispheres of uranium 235 into contact quickly so that their combined mass reached the critical point and detonated. The amount of uranium 235 to be used, the size of the two spheres, the speed with which they must collide, the scattering angle, the range of the neutrons projected by the chain reaction—those, Oppenheimer said, were just some of the questions to be answered.
He rose to his feet and told Tibbets to follow him. They went into a nearby building, unmarked except for a sign:
This was where Captain Parsons and his team were dealing with how to ensure that the bomb would explode at a predetermined height above the target.
Oppenheimer said that Parsons would probably be going along on the first mission.
“Good. Then if anything goes wrong, Captain, I can blame you,” Tibbets said.
“If anything goes wrong, Colonel, neither of us will be around to be blamed,” Parsons replied.