Opening Moves

“You know that with this agent and agent Gamayun we have properly infiltrated their inner project and extracted much information to aid our own research Comrade. Alkonost is an ideological agent who has been 100% reliable and I do not see any reason to doubt a report now.”

The General Secretary leaned back in his modest chair and drew deeply on his pipe, looking around his place of work and thinking.

“They are that advanced?”

“It seems so Comrade.”

“We have received no notification of this from our other assets?”

“None whatsoever Comrade General Secretary. All have been quiet for some time and our messages go unanswered. Not unusual for any agent and certainly not those within Manhattan. We have directed them to take no risk unless the information is crucial, particularly ‘Gamayun’ and ‘Alkonost’.”

The office was capacious and reasonably furnished, the most important and imposing piece therein being a huge table set centrally. Some trappings of Imperial times could be seen hung on the wall but for a man in his position the room could have been thought of as comparatively austere when viewed side by side with the other chambers of the old palace. None the less, the power was wholly focussed here, and in particular in the person of the man puffing away thoughtfully on his simple pipe.

“Some light, comrade” was the implied instruction, accompanied by a gesture with the smoking stem towards the nearest heavy velvet curtains.

Beria walked to the window and opened the long curtains. Sunlight streamed in, causing them both to squint until they grew accustomed to its brightness. He paused briefly at the window, looking down on the Kremlin walls, where a detachment of his NKVD troops was being inspected by a young and extremely keen major.

It was nearly eight in the morning but both men had been working for some hours already.

“Our own project Lavrentiy? I assume we have made no great headway since your last report?”

This was a subject of embarrassment to both of these men. The possibilities of fission research had originally been ignored by Stalin in favour of other, more understandable concepts. The first warnings that the Motherland was years behind in something extremely important were from Georgy Flerov, a notable Soviet nuclear physicist. He pointed out that, despite the discovery of fission in 1939, the West’s scientists published no further papers. This suggested that they were working on an atomic programme that was being kept secret. Assets in Britain sent further information confirming the existence of an American Atomic Research project and so the USSR had commenced her own atomic programme in September 1942. Until then it had not been considered important enough, an opinion that both men had held, quickly discarded, and now bitterly regretted.

“Nothing too dramatic, Comrade Secretary. I am satisfied that the scientists and technicians are working flat out and there is some progress by other unexpected means, as well as the information gained by our agents in place. We have made some interesting advances in the physics with Serov’s interrogation of the Germanski scientists, and the facility that Rokossovsky so kindly delivered intact has yielded more useful pieces of the jigsaw. Of course, the oxide we discovered in Oranienberg and Glewe will greatly assist our progress, particularly as I have it on good authority that it is already of the correct grade. The information Agents Alkonost and Gamayun have been supplying has greatly assisted the programme, particularly with the previous two reports we were sent, which seem to have allowed us to make good advances Comrade.”

Rummaging in his briefcase, Beria produced a small file containing a technical brief, authored by one of Russia’s most eminent scientists.

“Here we have Comrade Kurchatov’s recent report on how the information on the use of purified graphite and method of isotope separation supplied by our pet German scientists has greatly assisted progress and will undoubtedly bring forward our own completion date. I asked him to put it in simple terms that I could understand.”

Passing the file forward Beria knew better than to look too smug, especially as that was not quite what he had said to Comrade Kurchatov.

“We also have other agent assets, code names Mlad and Kalibr, both at the Amerikanisti facilities and we hope for more information from them but we have again been unable to get messages through to them and have received nothing for some months. In any case, they have been of limited value to date.”

Wishing to be as upbeat as possible, Beria concluded positively, “Comrade General Secretary, if we were to acquire no further information from this time forward, we would anticipate having a weapon available for testing by mid-1948, possibly sooner.”