A thousand suns

‘Fine, then we can take down a radiation meter, a Geiger counter. If it starts pinging, then that’ll confirm it, all the better,’ said Chris. He looked up from the table. There was still no sign of Wallace. ‘He’s taking his time isn’t he?’

At that moment the swing door to the toilets opened, and Wallace appeared.

‘Ah, there he is,’ said Mark. ‘So, you’re going to mention the bomb to him? See how he reacts?’

‘Yeah, let’s see how this wily old bugger responds to that.’

Chapter 51

Surrender: Mission Time: 10 Hours, 6 Minutes Elapsed

5.11 a.m., EST, the White House, Washington, DC

The meeting was still in session and it had been since midnight. The President, the Joint Chiefs and his war cabinet were looking ragged and tired. There had been a break, ostensibly for refreshments, but mainly it had been an opportunity to cool down fraying tempers.

The first hour of the meeting, up until 1.30 a.m., had been spent drafting high-level emergency orders to be despatched directly to General Eisenhower in France. The orders had been wired immediately, and confirmation that Eisenhower had received and read them had returned within the hour. The orders had contained a number of precautionary measures. Many, Wallace suspected, were probably too late to have any effect on whatever plan the Nazis had put in motion. No large planes were permitted to fly for the next twenty-four hours, all fighters based in southern England, France, Holland and Belgium with a suitable range had been issued orders to patrol the Channel and the north-west coast of France. In reality, there were going to be very few fighters they could mobilise at such short notice to cover this kind of area. Wallace considered it a desperate panic measure, but there was little else Truman could do, so it seemed.

On this side of the Atlantic, there was even less that they could do to prevent it happening, if they were indeed to be the target. There were no anti-aircraft defences along the east coast, and only a few symbolically placed around the White House. There were one or two placed on the rooftops of the tallest buildings around Times Square, more for show than anything else. There was no radar matrix established that could pinpoint any intrusion of airspace approaching America, as was the case for the south coast of England. It seemed obvious now, thought Wallace, why the Germans would pick America as the target for a weapon like this. Separated from the war by thousands of miles of water, the country had allowed itself to become a soft target.

The orders had been sent, but Wallace felt this was no more than a little feel-good medicine for Truman.

Since the despatching of these orders, Truman had used the time to go over once again the validity of the atomic threat. Wallace’s scientific contribution was closely questioned, while a senior member of Oppenheimer’s team, currently in Washington to prepare a detailed brief of the Manhattan Project for the new President, had been hauled out of bed in a nearby hotel and driven to the White House. The poor man, Dr Frewer, had been hastily fed a breakfast roll and given a black coffee to wake him up. Once he had been roused and brought up to date on events, he, too, had scoffed at the idea that the Germans were capable of making such a bomb and had been dismissive of the fast-cycle emission theory, calling it ‘hokum science’ at best.

Truman had questioned the man himself and, like Wallace, Frewer could only offer the assurance that the theory was extremely unlikely to work. He too had refused to say impossible, though.

That had seemed to have a profound effect on the President.

The sun had been up for some hours over DC and flooded into the conference room as the meeting reached a natural break, and Truman allowed them all a chance to step away from the table and visit the staff canteen for a late breakfast. He wanted them all back for half past eleven.

Wallace chose to freshen up and visited the washroom down the hall. He rinsed his face with cold water and stared wearily back at the young man in the mirror, as water dripped from the tip of his hawk-like nose.

He wiped his face dry. Right now, he’d rather return to the secure, comfortable and predictable routine he had been enjoying at Stanford only six short months ago and be blissfully unaware of the chaos here in the White House.

He did up his collar button, picked up his tie and made a quick job of a tidy bow. With a lick of his hand he smoothed down a tuft of hair on his crown and left the washroom, heading up the hallway to the conference room, feeling a little better.

He passed an ornate clock on a walnut side table and it chimed the quarter hour past eleven noisily.

Hitler’s deadline was now only a few hours away.