She opened the envelope and unfolded the note inside. Come see me the second you get this-Franklin, it said. She recognized the Assistant Secretary of War's bold handwriting.
Any excuse to get away from this dreary debate was a good one. She hurried out of Congressional Hall-leaving was much easier than getting in-and flagged a cab. The War Department was within walking distance, but a taxi was faster. When Franklin Roosevelt wrote, Come see me the second you get this, she assumed he meant it.
"Heck of a thing about this Russian town, isn't it?" the driver said.
"I'm sorry. I haven't heard any news since early this morning," Flora said.
"Bet you will." The cabby pulled up in front of the massive-and badly damaged-War Department building. "Thirty-five cents, ma'am."
"Here." Flora gave him half a dollar and didn't wait for change. A newsboy waved papers and shouted about Petrograd, so something had happened in Russia. Maybe the Tsar was dead. That might help the USA's German allies.
She hurried up the scarred steps. At the top, her Congressional ID convinced the guards that she was who she said she was. One of them telephoned Roosevelt's office, deep in the bowels of the building. When he'd satisfied himself that she was expected, he said, "Jonesy here'll take you where you need to go, ma'am. Somebody will check you out as soon as you get inside."
Check you out was a euphemism for pat you down. The tight-faced woman who did it took no obvious pleasure from it, which was something, anyhow. After she finished and nodded, Jonesy-who looked even younger than Flora's own Joshua-said, "Come along with me, ma'am."
Down they went, stairway after stairway. Her calves didn't look forward to climbing those stairs on the way up. Franklin Roosevelt had a special elevator because of his wheelchair, but no mere Congresswoman-not even a former First Lady-got to ride it.
"Here we go." Jonesy stopped in front of Roosevelt's office. "I'll take you up when you're done." Don't go wandering around on your own. Nobody ever came out and said that, but it always hung in the air.
The captain in the Assistant Secretary of War's outer office nodded to Flora. "Hello, Congresswoman. You made good time. Go right in-Mr. Roosevelt is expecting you."
"Thanks," Flora said. "Can you tell me what this is about?"
"I think he'd better do that, ma'am."
Shrugging, Flora walked into Franklin Roosevelt's private office. "Hello, Flora. Close the door behind you, would you, please? Thanks." As always, Roosevelt sounded strong and jovial. But he looked like death warmed over.
He waved her to a chair. As she sat, she asked, "Now will you tell me what's going on? It must be something big."
"Petrograd's gone," Roosevelt said bluntly.
"A newsboy outside was saying something about that," Flora said. "Why does it matter so much to us? To the Kaiser, sure, but to us? And what do you mean, gone?"
"When I say gone, I usually mean gone," Franklin Roosevelt answered. "One bomb. Off the map. G-O-N-E. Gone. No more Petrograd. Gone."
"But that's imposs-" Flora broke off. She was as far from Catholic as she could be, but she felt the impulse to cross herself even so. She was glad she was sitting down. "Oh, my God," she whispered, and wanted to start the mourner's Kaddish right after that. "The Germans…Uranium…" She stopped. She wasn't making any sense, even to herself.
But she made enough sense for Roosevelt. He nodded, his face thoroughly grim. "That's right. They got there first. They tried it-and it works. God help us all."
"Do they have more of them?" Questions started to boil in Flora's head. "What are they saying? And what about the Russians? Have England and France said anything yet?"
"We got a ciphered message yesterday that made me think they were going to try it," the Assistant Secretary of War said. "They were cagey. I would be, too. Wouldn't be good to say too much if the other side is reading your mail, so to speak. And the Kaiser just talked on Wireless Berlin." He looked down at a piece of paper on his desk. "'We have harnessed a fundamental force of nature,' he said. 'The power that sets the stars alight now also shines on earth. A last warning to our foes-give up this war or face destruction you cannot hope to escape.'"
"My God," Flora said, and then again, "My God!" Once you'd said that, what was left? Nothing she could see-not for a moment, anyhow. Then she did find something: "How close are we?"
"We're getting there," Roosevelt said, which might mean anything or nothing. The exasperated noise Flora made said it wasn't good enough, whatever it meant. Roosevelt spread his hands, as if to placate her. "The people out in Washington say we're getting close," he went on. "I don't know if that means days, weeks, or months. They swear on a stack of Bibles that it doesn't mean years."
"It had better not, not after all the time they've already used and all the money we've given them," Flora said. If not for the money, she never would have known anything about the U.S. project. And she found another question, one she wished she didn't need to ask: "How close is Jake Featherston?" Even with the Stars and Stripes flying in Richmond for the first time since 1861, she thought of the Confederacy boiled down to the terrifying personality of its leader.
So did Franklin Roosevelt, as his answer showed: "We still think he's behind us. We're plastering his uranium works every chance we get, and we get more chances all the time, because we're finally beating down the air defenses over Lexington. His people have put a lot of stuff underground, but doing that must have cost them time. If we're not ahead, he's got miracle workers, and I don't think he does."
"Alevai," Flora said, and then, "Do they have any idea how many dead there are in Petrograd?" Part of her wished she hadn't thought of that. Most of the dead wouldn't be soldiers or sailors. Some would be factory workers, and she supposed you could argue that the people who made the guns mattered as much in modern war as the people who fired them. All the generals did argue exactly that, in fact. But so many would be street sweepers and dentists and waitresses and schoolchildren…Thousands? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? From one bomb? "My God!" she exclaimed again.
Franklin Roosevelt shrugged the broad shoulders that went so strangely with his withered, useless legs. "Flora, I just don't know. I don't think anyone knows yet-not the Germans, not the Russians, nobody. Right now…Right now, the whole world just took a left to the chops. It's standing there stunned, trying not to fall over."
That wasn't the comparison Flora would have used, but it was vivid enough to make her nod. Before she could say anything-if she could find anything to say beyond one more "My God!" — the captain from the outer office came in and nodded to Roosevelt. "Sir, the Tsar just issued a statement."
"What did he say?" Roosevelt and Flora asked at the same time.
The captain glanced down at a piece of paper in his left hand. "He calls this a vicious, unholy, murderous weapon, and he condemns the massacre of innocents it caused." That went well with Flora's thoughts.
"Did he say anything about surrender?" Franklin Roosevelt asked.
"No, sir." The young officer shook his head. "But he did say God would punish the Kaiser and 'the accursed scientists and people of Germany'-his words-even if the Russian Army couldn't do the job."
"How can he keep fighting if Germany can drop bombs like that and he can't?" Flora asked, not really aiming the question at either Roosevelt or the captain. Was God listening? If He was, would He have let that bomb go off? "Moscow, Minsk, Tsaritsyn…" She ran out of Russian cities. She did, yes, but she was sure the Germans wouldn't.
"Russia always takes more losses than her enemies," the Assistant Secretary of War said. "That's the only way she stays in wars. But losses on that kind of scale? I don't think so, not for long."