They arrived at the apartment to find the door ajar. A cursory look inside was all it took to confirm that no attempt had been made to tidy it up after the burglary. They went through to the bedroom, which was in a similar state; the duvet and mattress were still spewing their feathery contents onto the floor. There’s no way he could have slept in this bed last night, the inspector thought to himself. They left the apartment and returned to the main building.
He had asked Lavelle to assemble his men in Tom’s office, where he told them that a thorough search of the facility was required. As soon as the suspect was apprehended, they were to radio in and Lavelle would call off the search. In the meantime, they would speak to the Chief Security Officer to ascertain whether Tom had left the compound.
Frederick rose from his seat and made his way to the window, perching on the sill. Tom’s gaze followed him, but the bright sunshine streaming into the room made it difficult for him to discern Frederick’s features clearly, as he continued his monologue.
‘And then came the war. Initially, these physicists were unaffected, as both the Germans and Allies each developed their own alternatives to conventional weapons — mustard gas was the German’s choice, whilst the Allies preferred biological warfare, predominantly smallpox. But, as the war progressed, both sides looked for a more permanent solution and the spotlight shone on the work being done in the field of radioactive elements. The side that could harness the destructive components in radium or uranium would have a war-winning advantage. The Germans were the first to realise this and set about rounding-up as many scientists in this field as they could find in the occupied territories. Fifty-four men and women were initially asked, then coerced, then tortured and, finally, killed for their knowledge, but not one of them broke the sacred code to which they had sworn allegiance, to protect mankind from itself. If they had cooperated, the outcome of the war would have been very different.
‘The Allies got wind of what the Germans were up to and tried to respond by approaching their own scientists, but came up against a similar brick wall. Most were incarcerated as conscientious objectors and their research grants taken away from them. After the war, they found it very difficult to get any kind of work…’
The first hour had drawn a blank. An inspection of the security log had established that Professor Halligan had left the previous evening with the two policemen and returned by himself, some two and a half hours later. The absence of any other records meant that he was either still on the base or he had managed to by-pass the security systems protecting the perimeter walls and scaled the nine-foot high fence without detection. That was a highly unlikely scenario; Inspector Gervaux was informed by the Chief Security Officer, whilst sitting in his rather small office, surrounded by TV monitors flickering from one image to the next, as the entire base was being watched by electronic eyes.
As Tom squinted up at the silhouette in front of the window, he could tell that Frederick was getting emotional. Frederick cleared his throat and continued.
‘The few remaining physicists that were still in a position of influence took the decision to form a clandestine organisation, not only to protect themselves, but society as a whole. They realised that the attention shown by the militia in their chosen field would make it difficult for them to operate in the best interests of humanity. They could see the writing on the wall — if the powers that be wanted to exploit their discoveries for use in weapons of mass destruction, they would be incapable of stopping them through rational debate. The only option open to them was to infiltrate all nuclear programmes in an effort to hamper the development of atomic bombs from within. They successfully achieved their objective for over twenty years, until midway through the Second World War, when the American government discovered it had dissidents in its ranks. A witch hunt was conducted, which led to several of our key members being arrested and shot as spies. That initiated the formation of the Manhattan Project, an ultra-secretive research programme specifically designed to develop an atomic bomb for use against the Axis powers.
‘Under the control of the military and funded to the tune of $26 billion in today’s money, our members found it impossible to influence the inevitable progression towards unleashing the power of the atom for use on the battlefield. The rest, as they say, is history. Over 350,000 civilians were killed when the Americans dropped their atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The images sickened the scientists working on the project so much that some refused to do any further work and left immediately. Others stayed on, but wrestled with their conscience about the moralistic virtues of their science, many feeling remorse and guilt for their part in creating what amounted to the cruellest and most inhumane technological instrument ever used against another human being. Our membership went from less than a hundred to over a thousand overnight, many looking to atone for their misguided ambitions.’
The next hour had been spent in the Chief Security Officer’s cramped office studying the CCTV camera footage of the complex, starting with the accommodation block the previous evening, which clearly showed Tom exiting from a taxi and going inside. Fast forwarding through the tape revealed several people coming and going during the night, but none could be identified as their suspect.
The morning images were much clearer because of the daylight, but the volume of people increased substantially, making the identification process slower as they had to freeze the recording on each individual in order to eliminate them. They reached real-time recording with no sign of their suspect having left the accommodation block.
Frederick returned to his seat, which gave Tom the opportunity to ask about the German effort to produce a nuclear bomb.
‘Professor Reinhardt,’ explained Frederick, ‘who was head of our organisation at the time, was also responsible for the atomic research team for the German military. He managed to dissuade the Nazis from building a bomb on the grounds that it was too expensive and uncertain, and had no hope of success before the end of the war.’
‘And Oppenheimer? Wasn’t he a member of the organisation?’ Tom knew all about the Manhattan Project. Every undergraduate in atomic physics had learnt how Oppenheimer had been given the onerous task of bringing together the greatest scientific minds of his day to work on a project that had the sole purpose of killing thousands of people. He was noted for his mastery of all scientific aspects of the project and for his efforts to control the inevitable cultural conflicts between scientists and the military. He was an iconic figure to his fellow scientists, as much a symbol of what they were working toward, as a scientific director.
But it wasn’t so much Oppenheimer’s scientific or administrative achievements that were to be debated in the lecture halls around the world to this day, but more the ethical values of science as a tool to advance the human race. The question asked was how could the development of the atomic bomb be justified for the good of mankind?
Proponents argued that it shortened the war, saving the lives of many more soldiers and civilians that would have been killed had the war been allowed to continue to its natural conclusion using conventional weapons. The opponents, however, cited not only the indiscriminate way the bomb decimated everything in its path, but also the lasting effects of radiation on future generations of families fortunate or unfortunate enough to have survived the initial blast. This usually leads onto the wider implications of having such a weapon in the arsenal of a select number of countries who use it as a threat to make lesser nations capitulate, as opposed to being the ultimate deterrent and an essential instrument in maintaining world peace.