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"My research into nuclear physics has been canceled. All the scientists I work with have been reassigned. I myself am working on improvements to the design of bomb sights."
That seemed very reasonable to Volodya. "We are at war, after all."
"You don't understand," she said. "Listen. When uranium metal undergoes a process called fission, enormous quantities of energy are released. I mean enormous. We know this, and Western scientists do too--we have read their papers in scientific journals."
"Still, the question of bomb sights seems more immediate."
Zoya said angrily: "This process, fission, could be used to create bombs that would be a hundred times more powerful than anything anyone has now. One nuclear explosion could flatten Moscow. What if the Germans make such a bomb and we don't have it? It will be as if they had rifles and we only had swords!"
Volodya said skeptically: "But is there any reason to believe that scientists in other countries are working on a fission bomb?"
"We're sure they are. The concept of fission leads automatically to the idea of a bomb. We thought of it--why shouldn't they? But there's another reason. They published all their early results in the journals--and then they stopped, suddenly, one year ago. There have been no new scientific papers on fission since this time last year."
"And you believe the politicians and generals in the West realized the military potential of the research and made it secret?"
"I can't think of another reason. And yet here in the Soviet Union we have not even begun to prospect for uranium."
"Hmm." Volodya was pretending to be doubtful, but in truth he found it all too credible. Even Stalin's greatest admirers--a group that included Volodya's father, Grigori--did not claim he understood science. And it was all too easy for an autocrat to ignore anything that made him uncomfortable.
"I've told your father," Zoya went on. "He listens to me, but no one listens to him."
"So what are you going to do?"
"What can I do? I'm going to make a damn good bomb sight for our airmen, and hope for the best."
Volodya nodded. He liked that attitude. He liked this girl. She was smart and feisty and a joy to look at. He wondered if she would go to a movie with him.
Talk of physics reminded him of Willi Frunze, who had been his friend at the Berlin Boys' Academy. According to Werner Franck, Willi was a brilliant physicist now studying in England. He might know something about the fission bomb Zoya was so exercised about. And if he was still a Communist he might be willing to tell what he knew. Volodya made a mental note to send a cable to the Red Army Intelligence desk in the London embassy.
His parents came in. Father was in full dress uniform, Mother in a coat and hat. They had been to one of the many interminable ceremonies the army loved: Stalin insisted such rituals continue, despite the German invasion, because they were so good for morale.
They cooed over the twins for a few minutes, but Father looked distracted. He muttered something about a phone call and went immediately to his study. Mother began to make supper.
Volodya talked to the three women in the kitchen, but he was desperate to speak to his father. He thought he could guess the subject of Father's urgent phone call: the overthrow of Stalin was being either planned or prevented right now, probably here in this building.
After a few minutes he decided to risk the old man's wrath and interrupt him. He excused himself and went to the study. But his father was just coming out. "I have to go to Kuntsevo," he said.
Volodya longed to know what was going on. "Why?" he said.
Grigori ignored the question. "I've called down for my car, but my chauffeur has gone home. You can drive me."
Volodya was thrilled. He had never been to Stalin's dacha. Now he was going there at a moment of profound crisis.
"Come on," his father said impatiently.
They shouted good-byes from the hallway and went out.
Grigori's car was a black ZIS 101-A, a Soviet copy of an American Packard, with three-speed automatic transmission. Its top speed was about eighty miles per hour. Volodya got behind the wheel and pulled away.
He drove through the Arbat, a neighborhood of craftsmen and intellectuals, and out onto the westward Mozhaisk Highway. "Have you been summoned by Comrade Stalin?" he asked his father.
"No. Stalin has been incommunicado for two days."
"That's what I heard."
"Did you? It's supposed to be secret."
"You can't keep something like that secret. What's happening now?"
