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"We think so," Zoya replied.
"You think so?"
She shrugged. "We've never done
this before, obviously."
They got into the truck and drove, across country that was already a wasteland, to the distant control bunker.
The other scientists were close behind.
At the bunker they all put on welders' goggles as the countdown ticked away.
At sixty seconds, Zoya held Volodya's hand.
At ten seconds, he smiled at her and said: "I love you."
At one second, he held his breath.
Then it was as if the sun had suddenly risen. A light stronger than noon flooded the desert. In the direction of the bomb tower, a ball of fire grew impossibly high, reaching for the moon. Volodya was startled by the lurid colors in the fireball: green, purple, and orange.
The ball turned into a mushroom whose umbrella kept rising. At last the sound arrived, a bang as if the largest artillery piece in the Red Army had been fired a foot away, followed by rolling thunder that reminded Volodya of the terrible bombardment of the Seelow Heights.
At last the cloud began to disperse and the noise faded.
There was a long moment of stunned silence.
Someone said: "My God, I didn't expect that."
Volodya embraced his wife. "You did it," he said.
She looked solemn. "I know," she said. "But what did we do?"
"You saved Communism," said Volodya.
ii
"The Russian bomb was based on Fat Man, the one we dropped on Nagasaki," said Special Agent Bill Bicks. "Someone gave them the plans."
"How do you know?" Greg asked him.
"From a defector."
They were sitting in Bicks's carpeted office in the Washington headquarters of the FBI at nine o'clock in the morning. Bicks had his jacket off. His shirt was stained in the armpits with sweat, though the building was comfortably air-conditioned.
"According to this guy," Bicks went on, "a Red Army Intelligence colonel got the plans from one of the scientists on the Manhattan Project team."
"Did he say who?"
"He doesn't know which scientist. That's why I called you in. We need to find the traitor."
"The FBI checked them all out at the time."
"And most of them were security risks! There was nothing we could do. But you knew them personally."
"Who was the Red Army colonel?"
"I was coming to that. You know him. His name is Vladimir Peshkov."
