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"He does like to get his own way."
"My father's the same," she said. "Sweet as cherry pie, until you cross him. Then he turns mean."
"I'm so glad you understand."
They returned to work. Greg felt angry all afternoon. Somehow his father's curse still lay like a blight over Jacky's life. But what could he do?
What would his father do? That was a good way to look at it. Lev would be completely single-minded about getting his way, and would not care who he hurt in the process. General Groves would be similar. I can be like that, Greg thought; I'm my father's son.
The beginning of a plan began to form in his mind.
He spent the afternoon reading and summarizing an interim report from the University of Chicago Metallurgical Laboratory. The scientists there included Leo Szilard, the man who first conceived of the nuclear chain reaction. Szilard was a Hungarian Jew who had studied at the University of Berlin--until the fatal year of 1933. The research team in Chicago was led by Enrico Fermi, the Ital
ian physicist. Fermi, whose wife was Jewish, had left Italy when Mussolini published his Manifesto of Race.
Greg wondered whether the Fascists realized that their racism had brought such a windfall of brilliant scientists to their enemies.
He understood the physics perfectly well. The theory of Fermi and Szilard was that when a neutron struck a uranium atom, the collision could produce two neutrons. Those two neutrons could then collide with further uranium atoms to make four, then eight, and so on. Szilard had called this a chain reaction--a brilliant insight.
That way, a ton of uranium could produce as much energy as three million tons of coal--in theory.
In practise, it had never been done.
Fermi and his team were building a pile of uranium at Stagg Field, a disused football stadium belonging to the University of Chicago. To prevent the stuff exploding spontaneously, they buried the uranium in graphite, which absorbed the neutrons and killed the chain reaction. Their aim was to bring the radioactivity up, very gradually, to the level at which more was being created than absorbed--which would prove that a chain reaction was a reality--then close it down, fast, before it blew up the pile, the stadium, the campus of the university, and quite possibly the city of Chicago.
So far they had not succeeded.
Greg wrote a favorable precis of the report, asked Margaret Cowdry to type it right away, then took it in to Groves.
The general read the first paragraph and said: "Will it work?"
"Well, sir--"
"You're the goddamn scientist. Will it work?"
"Yes, sir, it will work," Greg said.
"Good," said Groves, and threw the summary in his wastepaper bin.
Greg returned to his desk and sat for a while, staring at the representation of the Periodic Table of the Elements on the wall opposite his desk. He was pretty sure the nuclear pile would work. He was more worried about how to force his father to withdraw the threat to Jacky.
Earlier, he had thought about handling the problem as Lev would have done. Now he began to think about practical details. He needed to take a dramatic stand.
His plan began to take shape.
But did he have the guts to confront his father?
At five he left for the day.
On the way home he stopped at a barbershop and bought a straight razor, the folding kind where the blade slid into the handle. The barber said: "You'll find it better than a safety razor, with your beard."
Greg was not going to shave with it.
His home was his father's permanent suite at the Ritz-Carlton. When Greg arrived, Lev and Gladys were having cocktails.
He remembered meeting Gladys for the first time in this room seven years ago, sitting on the same yellow silk couch. She was an even bigger star now. Lev had put her in a series of shamelessly gung-ho war movies in which she defied sneering Nazis, outwitted sadistic Japanese, and nursed square-jawed American pilots back to health. She was not quite as beautiful as she had been at twenty, Greg observed. The skin of her face did not have the same perfect smoothness; her hair did not seem so luxuriant; and she was wearing a brassiere, which she would undoubtedly have scorned before. But she still had dark blue eyes that seemed to issue an irresistible invitation.
Greg accepted a martini and sat down. Was he really going to defy his father? He had not done it in the seven years since he had first shaken Gladys's hand. Perhaps it was time.
