Winter of the World

Volodya followed his instinct. He held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. ‘I go home and report failure,’ he said. ‘I can’t make you do anything you don’t want to do. I wouldn’t want to pressure you or coerce you in any way.’

Alice said: ‘No threats?’

That confirmed Volodya’s guess that the NKVD had tried to bully Frunze. They tried to bully everyone: it was all they knew. ‘I’m not even trying to persuade you,’ Volodya said to Frunze. ‘I’m laying out the facts. The rest is up to you. If you want to help, I’m here as your contact. If you see things differently, that’s the end of it. You’re both smart people. I couldn’t fool you even if I wanted to.’

Again they looked at each other. He hoped they were thinking how different he was from the last Soviet agent who had approached them.

The moment stretched out agonizingly.

It was Alice who spoke at last. ‘What kind of help do you need?’

That was not a yes, but it was better than rejection, and it led logically to step nine. ‘My wife is one of the physicists on the team,’ he said, hoping this would humanize him at a moment when they might be in danger of seeing him as manipulative. ‘She tells me there are several routes to a nuclear bomb, and we don’t have time to try them all. We can save years if we know what worked for you.’

‘That makes sense,’ Willi said.

Step ten, the big one. ‘We have to know what type of bomb was dropped on Japan.’

Frunze’s expression was agonized. He looked at his wife. This time she did not give him the nod, but neither did she shake her head. She seemed as torn as he did.

Frunze sighed. ‘Two kinds,’ he said.

Volodya was thrilled and startled. ‘Two different designs?’

Frunze nodded. ‘For Hiroshima they used a uranium device with a gun ignition. We called it Little Boy. For Nagasaki, Fat Man, a plutonium bomb with an implosion trigger.’

Volodya could hardly breathe. This was red-hot data. ‘Which is better?’

‘They both worked, obviously, but Fat Man is easier to make.’

‘Why?’

‘It takes years to produce enough U-235 for a bomb. Plutonium is quicker, once you have a nuclear pile.’

‘So the USSR should copy Fat Man.’

‘Definitely.’

‘There is one more thing you could do to help save Russia from destruction,’ Volodya said.

‘What?’

Volodya looked him in the eye. ‘Get me the design drawings,’ he said.

Willi paled. ‘I’m an American citizen,’ he said. ‘You’re asking me to commit treason. The penalty is death. I could go to the electric chair.’

So could your wife, Volodya thought; she’s complicit. Thank God you haven’t thought of that.

He said: ‘I’ve asked a lot of people to put their lives at risk in the last few years. People like yourselves, Germans who hated the Nazis, men and women who took terrible risks to send us information that helped us win the war. And I have to say to you what I said to them: a lot more people will be killed if you don’t do it.’ He fell silent. That was his best shot. He had nothing more to offer.

Frunze looked at his wife.

Alice said: ‘You made the bomb, Willi.’

Frunze said to Volodya: ‘I’ll think about it.’

(iii)

Two days later he handed over the plans.

Volodya took them to Moscow.

Zoya was released from jail. She was not as angry about her imprisonment as he was. ‘They did it to protect the revolution,’ she said. ‘And I wasn’t hurt. It was like staying in a really bad hotel.’

On her first day at home, after they made love, he said: ‘I have something to show you, something I brought back from America.’ He rolled off the bed, opened a drawer, and took out a book. ‘It’s called the Sears-Roebuck Catalogue,’ he said. He sat beside her on the bed and opened the book. ‘Look at this.’

The catalogue fell open at a page of women’s dresses. The models were impossibly slender, but the fabrics were bright and cheerful, stripes and checks and solid colours, some with ruffles, pleats, and belts. ‘That’s attractive,’ Zoya said, putting her finger on one. ‘Is two dollars ninety-eight a lot of money?’

‘Not really,’ Volodya said. ‘The average wage is about fifty dollars a week, rent is about a third of that.’

‘Really?’ Zoya was amazed. ‘So most people could easily afford these dresses?’

‘That’s right. Maybe not peasants. On the other hand, these catalogues were invented for farmers who live a hundred miles from the nearest store.’

‘How does it work?’

‘You pick what you want from the book and send them the money, then a couple of weeks later the mailman brings you whatever you ordered.’

‘It must be like being a tsar.’ Zoya took the book from him and turned the page. ‘Oh! Here are some more.’ The next page showed jacket-and-skirt combinations for four dollars ninety-eight. ‘These are elegant too,’ she said.

‘Keep turning the pages,’ Volodya said.

Zoya was astonished to see page after page of women’s coats, hats, shoes, underwear, pyjamas, and stockings. ‘People can have any of these?’ she said.

‘That’s right.’

‘But there’s more choice on one of these pages than there is in the average Russian shop!’

‘Yes.’