'You wouldn't believe a word of it,' Findhorn warned.
Stefi and Romella were giving him hard stares. He spilled the beans.
Finally Romella said, 'Right then, we should get on with it.'
Findhorn's heart leaped. 'You mean you're willing to carry on with the translation?'
'Why not? I don't like being knocked around.'
Stefi was looking reflective. 'There could be a lot of money in this.'
'Or none.' Findhorn pointed out.
Stefi said, 'Romella gets fifty per cent.'
'Ten,' said Findhorn.
'Twenty.'
'Agreed.'
'You said that money isn't the issue,' Stefi reminded him.
Findhorn nodded warily. 'Uhuh.'
'Good. So I'll settle for ten per cent.'
'For Heaven's sake, Stefi, why should you get ten per cent?'
She waved a finger at him. 'Because you need me. They know you and they know Romella. Every time you step out of the house you both risk your necks. But me? They know nothing about me. I can come and go in safety and do research for you, like HMS Daring, for example.'
'Good point. You could make all the difference. I've been consulting a friend with specialist knowledge. I'll surprise him with ten per cent of whatever we end up with, which will probably be nothing.'
'How secure are we here?' Romella asked, with a touch of anxiety in her voice. 'They might find out you have a brother in Edinburgh and check up.'
'This is Doug's hideaway. Nobody knows about it. Doug has a Queen Street apartment, but as a criminal lawyer he also wanted some place he could escape to without getting phone calls or visits at strange hours from strange people. So this pad is in our Mum's maiden name — that's the MacGregor on the nameplate. And the phone is ex-directory and under Mabel MacGregor.'
Stefi waved her hands around. 'I could get to like it. All this space, and angels and crocodiles.'
Findhorn said, 'We've assembled a team, and agreed the division of spoils. It's a start.'
'One for all and all for one,' said Stefi, reinforcing Findhorn's suspicion that she learned her English from movies.
Findhorn said, 'My bet is that the value of the secret lies with whoever discovers it first. And I don't know what resources we're up against.'
Romella was dabbing her lips. 'We're in a race? So let's get started.'
Findhorn was crouching in front of the genuine coal effect Scandinavian stove with the imported Mexican fire surround, trying to understand the controls.
'There's one thing I'd love to read about now.' Romella was carefully applying a skin-coloured powder to her bruise. The photocopies were laid out on a coffee table.
'Well?'
'The first time they set off an atom bomb. How Petrosian saw it. What it was like from the inside.'
Stefi, cross-legged at the table, flicked through a heap of photocopies. Findhorn pressed a button and flames shot up. He joined Romella on the couch.
Petrosian's diary, Thursday, 12 July 1945
Philip Morrison and I took the plutonium core out of the vault at Omega. Of course it was in sub-critical pieces. We put them in a couple of valises especially fitted for the purpose. Sat them in the back seat of Robert Bacher's sedan and set off for Alamogordo, with one security car in front, one behind. Both sweating at the thought of an automobile accident. Very unlikely, but what if we got hit by a truck and the bits went critical? A weird feeling, driving through Santa Fe, a sleepy little one-horse town, carrying the core of the 'gadget' — the atom bomb. If the locals had known what was being driven through their main street!
Turned off on a dirt track and left the plutonium in a room at MacDonald's ranch house, which had long been abandoned by the family.
Friday, 13 July 1945
Just after midnight, in MacDonald's Ranch, Bacher officially hands over the core from the University of California to Tom Farrell, General Groves's aide, along with a bill for two billion dollars.
Then we wait. Got a little sleep.
At nine a.m. Louis Slotin begins to assemble the core. He has to push the plutonium pieces together on a table to the point where they almost reach criticality. He's carrying a lot of responsibility — if he makes the slightest mistake we're dead, there's no bomb, the war in Japan takes a different turn and so does the future.
His concentration is terrific. He keeps licking his lips. You have to stare to see his hands moving at all and we're all standing like statues and screaming inside. Then Oppie turns up, practically sparking electricity with tension. This has a bad effect on everyone. Boss or not, Bacher tells him to get out. Louis completes the job.
3.18 p.m. We get a call from Kistiakowsky. The gadget is ready for the core. We carry it out on a litter and again it goes in the back seat of Bacher's sedan. We head for the tower at Trinity, Bacher at the wheel driving with extraordinary care.
Working in a tent at the base of the tower. The core goes on a hoist and is raised over the assembly. Lowered down into it with extreme slowness. Geiger counters rise to a crescendo as it goes in. Atmosphere unbelievable — I can't describe it. The tiniest knock could start a chain reaction.
Wind rising, flapping tent. We can't afford dust.
The core sticks. It's the heat from the plutonium, it's expanded compared with the dummy runs. The biggest concentration of eggheads the world has ever seen and not one of us thought of that. What else have we missed?
Equilibrium eventually reached and the assembly is complete by ten p.m. We leave it overnight in the tent. Groves gets some fantasy about Japanese saboteurs into his head and sends an armed guard out to it.
Saturday, 14 July 1945
Deteriorating weather. Freshening wind means the gadget sways as it's raised up the tower. Jams at one point. Eventually it reaches the top and Jerry eases it into the corrugated iron hut a hundred feet up.
Sunday, 15 July 1945
Weather getting serious. Storm clouds, high wind, thunder in the distance. What happens if Base Camp gets hit by lightning? Or even the tower?
Oppie up top, checking the connections. Alone with his creation. What thoughts are going through his head?
Eleven p.m. The General has been on site for some hours giving the weather men hell. Lightning flashing and drizzling rain. What if there's a short circuit? And what will the wind do to the radioactive dust? MPs assembled to evacuate Socorro if necessary. But Amarillo in Texas, three hundred miles away, could also get it. How do you evacuate 70,000 people at a few hours' notice?
The old rumour back again: some of the senior men are predicting the atmosphere will be set alight. Bets being taken on whether all life will be destroyed.
Truman and Churchill due to meet Stalin at Potsdam. It doesn't take much imagination to see that Truman will want a result. I imagine Oppie and Groves are under huge pressure from above.
Midnight. Can't see the Tower for mist. Heavy rain. Storms forecast to be heading this way.
Tension beyond endurance. We're all going insane with it.
Monday, 16 July 1945
Pouring rain throughout the early hours.
In the Mess Hall at Base Camp, Fermi has a new worry. He thinks if the wind changes suddenly we could all be showered with radioactive fallout. Oppie gets all distressed — he's practically weeping. Groves takes him out to the S.10,000 bunker — far too close, I thought.
Then the full force of the storm hits the tower. Lightning dangerously close. They have to postpone. At the same time the gadget has to be fired in the dark for the instrumentation to record it properly. Latest possible moment is 5.30 a.m.