As in most circles of academia, competitive banter was rampant. But high in the canyons of northern New Mexico, a new paradigm had been created. The Manhattan Project was a collection of mental talent perhaps unrealized in the history of mankind. Universities and industries across the world had been raided for the most gifted minds in existence. As the local jest went, "Here, university department chairs are a dime a dozen. Nobel Laureates a quarter."
Yet along with that intellect came a commensurate display of egos — men and women who believed that they were the best in their fields. For the most part they were right, but it made for an insufferable social scene. The Saturday night "Potluck and Dance" get-togethers had emerged as the most casual affair. After a long week in the labs everyone was ready to blow off steam, though anyone who ruined a night by making an ugly scene was not invited to the next.
The music came to an end, and the room was lost to the familiar tic tic tic as the needle on the phonograph hit the end of the rotating album.
"More, Karl! More!" someone yelled.
Heinrich smiled and leaned against a wall. His plump chest heaved for air and his shirt was sodden with sweat. "Yes, yes," he agreed, "in a moment."
A young woman, a secretary from the director's office, moved unsteadily to the turntable. Many of the men watched — while she wasn't particularly pretty, she was shaped along the lines of Rita Hayworth, and for a gaggle of love-starved scientists, many of whom had been forced to leave their wives and girlfriends behind, she was an eyeful. She also drank to excess.
"Any requests?" she slurred in a raspy voice.
"Something we can dance to!" came a shout.
"You drunk bastards can't dance when you're sober," the woman said. An instant later she stumbled, crashing into the table that supported both the phonograph and a ceramic toilet that served as a punchbowl. The whole lot clattered to the floor, alcohol-laden punch dousing everything. The woman was splayed out awkwardly, her white dress now wet and red. "Christ!" she sputtered.
A dozen men moved at the opportunity, but Heinrich was closest. He put down his bottle, scurried over and helped her up by the elbow. "Are you all right, dear?"
"Yeah, yeah," she said in a coarse East Coast accent. The woman rose unsteadily and looked at Heinrich with bland appreciation. Then a physicist from the explosives lab grabbed the other elbow. Heinrich knew he was a new man, from Vanderbilt, an expert in blast wave propagation. He was also six foot three and very handsome. The secretary immediately leaned away from Heinrich and swooned toward the Vanderbilt man.
"Maybe you should call it a night," the fellow suggested.
"Yeah, that's just what I was thinking," she agreed.
He leaned to her ear and spoke quietly, but Heinrich heard the words as he backed away. Can I give you a lift to your place?
Her reply was a smile and a nod.
The lack of music soon had a dampening effect. When the last two women left — in protective company of one another — the mood among the remaining men soured.
Forlani, an Italian mathematician, pointed to the toilet bowl that was cracked and surrounded by a sea of red. "You see? No woman can be around such untidiness. It goes against their nature." He went to the coatrack and made his grand proclamation. "J am going home."
Major James, U. S. Army Regular, and the only uniform in the place, picked up the tequila bottle Heinrich had put down in the ruckus. Heinrich rushed over and took it from the major's hand. "Oh, thank you, sir. I might need this later."
James laughed — in the good-natured way that fellow drunks did — and started for the door. Others followed. Heinrich and Peter Bostich, a Serbian colleague from the theoretical branch, were the last to leave.
The high altitude night air was cool and dry, even on the cusp of summer. The two engineers strolled a path that led to the housing community, gravel crunching crisply under their feet. Heinrich still carried his bottle, and Bostich cradled an armful of albums from his private collection, minus the one that had been lost in the disaster.
"It is amusing, is it not," Heinrich said, "that the creation of America's greatest weapon has been fueled so heavily by whiskey?"
Bostich laughed. "Yes, but it will not be so amusing if we fail." The Serb paused. "Will you be coming into the lab tomorrow, Karl?"
Heinrich's smile remained. "No, Peter. I will sleep rather late, I think." He had taken Sundays off this last month, a departure from the previous year when seven-day work weeks had been the custom. "Our share of the task is largely complete." He sighed. "Perhaps tomorrow I will go to church."
Bostich laughed. "I have never once seen you in church, Karl."
Heinrich put a hand to Bostich's shoulder. "We are close to our goal. Perhaps a little prayer to go along with so many calculations?"
The Serb nodded. "It is exciting, is it not, to be this near."
"Ja, ja. Only two more weeks."
"Will you go to the test?"
"Of course, Peter, I must see the result after so much effort."
"Oppenheimer seems nervous," Bostich said, referring to the director of the project. "Do you think the gadget will work?"
"Ah, the billion dollar question. Teller still insists it could ignite the earth's atmosphere," Heinrich prodded, a jibe at the famous Hungarian physicist.
"Teller still pursues his fusion miracle. Let us hope he is wrong on both counts."
The path gave way to a clearing where the housing compound lay. Heinrich gave Bostich a friendly embrace, noting the sour smell of old beer. "I will see you Monday, Peter. But call me tomorrow if anything arises."
The two parted ways, and Heinrich took a meandering path toward the back where his own room was situated. He often walked the woods at night, finding the evening air far less oppressive than that of the day. It sometimes seemed like the only time he could breathe.
Halfway to his room, Heinrich detoured momentarily into the low forest of squat pinon pines and emptied the water from his tequila bottle. When he had first arrived in Los Alamos he would never have considered such a ruse. In his initial weeks here he had cultivated a careful image — outgoing, free-spirited, sociable. And not afraid to tie on a few drinks. His first dinner party at the club had not ended until the following morning, when he had awakened stark naked under the billiards table. The banging in his head had not been an element of the hangover, but rather the cleaning ladys vacuum striking him repeatedly on the crown.
He was amazed at how easily the Americans had taken to him. Karl Heinrich had made no attempt to hide his Germanness — the accent would have been impossible to lose, and besides, many of the scientists here knew him from his teaching days at Oxford and Hamburg. There were other Germans here, and they all had two things in common. They were experts in their fields, and they professed a uniform hatred of the Nazi regime. Heinrich had never confided in any of the others, but he sometimes wondered if he was the only liar.
He had come late to the National Socialist movement. In the early 1930s he had been too consumed by his work to worry about politics. As a visiting professor at the University of Hamburg, he was a well-respected theoretical physicist, and Heinrich's lectures on alpha particle scattering were in high demand. His frustrations began in 1935 when an Austrian Jew, Simons, had beaten him to the punch by publishing the authoritative paper Mass Determination of Component Nuclei as Heinrich was nearing completion of his own parallel work. The field was one over which he had been considered lord and master, so the letdown was heavy. It was as if a renegade cardinal had usurped the pope's podium in Saint Peter's Square to issue Mass on Easter Sunday.