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“Sergeant,” he ordered, “the first chance you get, pull off the road and stop, would you, please?”
Then he pushed himself back against the seat. Lt. Colonel Stevens knew this was not the time to press him with questions.
A moment later, the Princess pulled onto the shoulder of the road and stopped. The WRAC sergeant twisted around to see what else was expected of her.
“Let’s take a walk, Ed,” Donovan said, and opened the curbside door.
As Stevens got out, he saw the Ford pull in behind them.
“Just stay where you are, please,” Donovan called, as Canidy stepped out of the passenger seat in the front, followed a moment later by Fine. There was a “just do what you’re told” tone in his voice.
He led Stevens fifty yards down the road, seemingly oblivious to the rain, which was now falling steadily. Then he stopped, looked around to make sure there was no chance of their being overheard.
“Lieutenant Commander Hudson is the President,” Donovan began. “I guess he got the name from the Hudson River.”
“And?” Stevens asked, confused.
“Ed,” Donovan said. “The time has come for you to be brought in on this. It’s—I don’t know how else to put this—the big secret of this war. I am not bringing Dave Bruce in on this. I don’t want to burden him with it. But one man here has to be told. And I’ve decided—actually President Roosevelt decided—that’s you.”
“Bill, knowing something that Dave Bruce doesn’t puts me on a hell of a spot,” Stevens protested. “He’s the station chief.”
“That can’t be helped,” Donovan said, so sharply that Stevens looked at him in surprise.
“I’ll be as concise as I can,” Donovan said. “In the summer of 1939, Albert Einstein sent a letter to Roosevelt through a man named Alexander Sachs. In the letter he said that he and others believed that if an atom of an element called uranium could be split under the right conditions, the splitting of this atom would send out particles which would knock into and then split other atoms. Those would split others, which in turn would split others. A chain reaction, in other words. Do you follow me?”
“I have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about,” Stevens said.
“Bear with me,” Donovan said. “The thing about splitting atoms is that energy is released. If we can cause a chain reaction of atoms, a tremendous amount of energy would be released. The formula is ‘energy equals the mass times the square of the speed of light,’ which is one hell of a lot of energy. In other words, a bomb with a power that boggles the mind could be built. One bomb would have the explosive power of thousands of tons of explosives. ”
Stevens couldn’t think of anything to say to that, so he said nothing.
“Roosevelt took a chance and authorized a program to see if the atom could indeed be split. A couple of thousand dollars at first, God alone knows how many millions so far. An Italian physicist named Enrico Fermi has been working on the project ever since. At the University of Chicago, in a laboratory under the stands of the football stadium. Taking an even greater chance, Roosevelt put Leslie Groves— You know him?”
“Only by reputation,” Stevens said. “Army Engineer colonel?”
“Buck General,” Donovan said, nodding. “Groves is now building a facility in the hills of Tennessee to refine enough uranium 235 to make such a bomb. Construction began before they knew for sure they could cause a chain reaction.”
“And now they know?”
“That’s what that message is all about,” Donovan said.
“How does the OSS get involved?” Stevens asked, then paused. “I guess I’m wondering why you’re telling me.”
“The OSS has already been involved,” Donovan said.
Stevens’s eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.
“In the presumption that the people at the University of Chicago would succeed in making a chain reaction, we’ve started to build the bomb,” Donovan said. “Let me make it clear: We’re years away from having one. But now we know we can eventually make one. To make one, we need one hundred highly refined pounds of a uranium isotope called uranium 235. At the moment, the total supply of uranium 235 in the world, including that in the hands of the Germans—who are investigating ‘nuclear energy’ themselves— is one-millionth of a pound.”
“I’m lost again, Bill,” Stevens said. “I don’t mean to sound so dense.”
“Uranium 235 can be refined from uraninite,” Donovan said. “There are two known sources of uraninite. One is in Pomerania, a state of Germany, and the other is in Kolwezi, in the Katanga Province of the Belgian Congo.”
“Oh!” Stevens said, catching on.
Donovan nodded.
“It was not known for sure whether the uraninite in the Belgian Congo was (a) in fact uraninite or (b) if it was, whether it could be refined to produce uranium 235. But we had to try.”
