Brigadier General Leslie Richard Groves, U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, built the Pentagon in 1942. After that, they gave him a really big job. It wasn’t the job he wanted—he wanted to go overseas and get in the war—but he was a soldier. When they said frog, he jumped, just like the book said.
Groves was a big man, nearly six feet tall, tipping the scales at just over three hundred pounds. He had curly dark brown hair and blue eyes. He was a tough son of a bitch they could trust to get the job done. He was loud, he had little tact, and his people mostly hated his guts. Not that he gave a rat’s ass. He wasn’t running a personality contest. And besides, the flakes and nuts that made up the brain trust of the Manhattan Project needed a firm hand to keep
focused on the goal: the construction of a fission bomb—if such a thing was even possible, which nobody seemed to know for sure. He wasn’t the first man to compare his job to herding cats, but the comparison was apt, anyway.
He was an engineer, not a physicist; he was a construction project manager, not an ordnance specialist; he was a practical man, not an academic. That made him just about the opposite of most of the professionals he now managed. They were smart, even geniuses when it came to things like atoms and elements, but that didn’t make it any easier to keep them on schedule.
His intercom buzzed, and he slapped down the switch. “Yes?”
Static. A second buzz. “Yes?” More static.
Groves raised his voice. “Damn thing is on the blink again. Get it fixed this time! I mean it!”
His secretary, a sergeant, opened the door. “The secretary would like to see you in his office,” he said.
“Now?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Tell him I’m on my way. And get this fixed before I get back!” The big man grabbed his hat and headed down the long Pentagon corridors to the E-Ring, where the secretary of war and the most senior officers kept their offices. He was waved through the layers of assistants, secretaries, and aides that surrounded Henry Stimson. “Mr. Secretary,” he said in greeting when he entered the innermost office. Stimson had a great view of the Potomac through the window, the Fourteenth Street Bridge crossing the river, flowing into the federal buildings and monuments on the other side.
Stimson got to the point immediately. “The president wants to see us.”
“All right,” Groves replied. “Do we know what about?”
“Project status. What’s the word from the Hanford?”
Groves reviewed. “They’ve solved the problem of the piles fizzling out—turns out they needed more uranium rods in there. There was enough space in the core to drill the extra holes. D pile went critical, nearly two weeks ago. B pile got started up just two days ago. But they’re working now.”
“Making … what is that stuff, again?”
“Plutonium.” Groves limited his reply to the one word. He knew that the massive Hanford industrial complex, built along the Columbia River in the northwest and screened by mountains and military security from the rest of the country, was dedicated to the creation of this potent substance, the most valuable material—gram for gram—on the planet. Plutonium was, for all intents and purposes, a new element, something that had been previously unknown in nature. And Leslie Groves had seen a massive factory made just so it could be produced.
“Good,” replied Stimson. “How soon till we have a working gadget?”
“Maybe July,” replied Groves. “That’s still our best-case scenario. Of
course, that’s the plutonium device—the Fat Man. Our Little Boy is a simpler design, but it’s complicated, separating out the uranium for that one. I don’t see how it could be ready before summer, either.”
“That may not be good enough,” Stimson said, shaking his head.
The look on Groves’ face made his thoughts clear, but all he said was “Yes, sir.” The Corps of Engineers had a World War II slogan: “The difficult we do at once. The impossible takes a little longer.” His problems were of the “takes a little longer” variety, but he’d be damned if the war took one extra day because he couldn’t get the job done. He started thinking of ways he could squeeze a little bit more out of his schedule.
Alexis Krigoff had accomplished a feat achieved by few men in the history of warfare—three promotions in a matter of as many days! Even more unusual, he had achieved this without his superior officers being killed in battle. Within hours after his previous meeting with Comrade Stalin, he had received an envelope containing not only his promotion to
podpolkovnik
, or lieutenant colonel, but assignment to the First Ukranian Front as a political officer, a commissar.
The First Ukranian Front, commanded by Marshal Ivan Stepanovich Konev, was a mammoth force of over 500,000 men and 1,400 tanks, and was one of two main Soviet fronts advancing into Germany. The other, the First Belorussian Front, under the command of Marshal Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov, had 750,000 men and 1,800 tanks. Although the First Ukranian and First Belorussian fronts were the most important in this stage of the Great Patriotic War, they were not the only ones. The Soviet military was right now the strongest on earth. Mere years before, it had been unable to resist the great tank advances of Operation Barbarossa; now it was the Germans who crumbled before the unstoppable onslaught of Soviet might.
It was interesting that Krigoff was assigned to Konev rather than to Zhukov, because Stalin distrusted Zhukov, whose fame and competence threatened to overshadow the chairman. Stalin could brook no threat, not even an implicit one, to his own status, and as a result had removed Zhukov from command several times, only to restore him later on when the need proved greatest.
Being assigned to the front commanded by Marshal Ivan Stepanovich Konev was no disgrace, however. Stalin must have surrounded Zhukov with numerous agents to watch for any signs of danger, but Konev, a highly competent and effective commander, needed watching as well. As the Soviet Union continued on the road to true World Communism, the bourgeois tendencies were always something with which to be concerned. Everyone must be watched.
His uniform now carrying the shoulder boards of a
podpolkovnik,
two red stripes each with a star, he returned to the Kremlin, flushed with the anticipation of another meeting with the great man. His transition from an anonymous staff lieutenant to his new rank had come in such a dizzying swirl of events that he had not begun to adjust. He almost saluted the captain of the gatehouse guards; a last-second impulse held his hand until the man made the first gesture, which Krigoff crisply returned.
A lesser man, Krigoff reflected behind his tight smile, would have been frightened, even overwhelmed, by the rarefied atmosphere surrounding his new assignment. Even yesterday he had been a little awed. But he understood now that he had been destined for this place and this time. It remained only for him to see how he could turn that destiny toward his further advancement.
The means, he could see already, would come through the resumption of the campaign against the Nazis. Implicit in his appointment, of course, was Krigoff’s duty to report everything he saw, heard, and otherwise perceived to the ever-suspicious chairman. This was the way in which he had first attracted Stalin’s attention, and he was certain that it was the means by which he would secure his own place in the history of this great movement that was inevitably leading toward World Communism.
“Tovarich Podpolkovnik Krigoff?
”
Alyosha looked up to see a major hastening out of an office. The man’s face was pale, as if he was terrified that Krigoff would move on without speaking to him.
“Yes, Major?” He made his response as curt as possible, knowing that this was the way a busy lieutenant colonel was expected to act.
“I have been asked to show you a document—it was requested that you read it, before your meeting with the chairman. If you will come this way?”
“Could you not bring it to me? I am here on a matter of some urgency.”
“Begging the colonel’s pardon, but no—it is a top-secret communiqué and is not to be removed from the decoding section.”
Krigoff nodded; this might prove to be interesting. “Take me there,” he ordered.
For the next hour he perused the memorandum, which had been authored by none other than Marshal Zhukov himself. Zhukov had composed the document from his headquarters in eastern Poland; it was dated but two days ago. Krigoff was fascinated by what he read, though he maintained a critical detachment, for he knew that this was what the chairman expected of him.
In the paper the renowned hero of the Great Patriotic War outlined the dispositions of his military fronts. Operationally equivalent to the army groups of the Western Allies and Germany, though significantly larger, these fronts consisted of from three to seven armies, and they were poised for imminent attack. Against that mass of military might, it was difficult to imagine how
anything the Fascists did could stand in the way of the great Soviet advance. But generals always found reasons for worry, and so long as they did, and Lieutenant Colonel Alexis Petrovich Krigoff was near, he would always have something to report to his mustachioed master.
After he completed the reading, he returned the document to the still sweating major, who carried it back to a massive safe as if it were nothing less than one of the treasured Fabergé eggs of the tsars. Krigoff continued on, climbing the stairs until he arrived at the anteroom of the chairman’s office.
“He is ready for you, Comrade Colonel; you may go right in,” declared the female captain, Stalin’s appointments secretary. She was older than Krigoff, and he remembered that she had seen terrible action at Stalingrad while he, a lieutenant colonel, had never yet heard a shot fired in anger. No doubt she resented his quick ascension. At the same time, she was experienced enough in the ways of the Kremlin that no trace of her true feelings was revealed in her neutral expression.
Vaguely irritated in spite of her lack of affect, Krigoff stalked past without acknowledging the captain or her words.
The armed Red Army sergeant who opened the door also avoided revealing any emotion. This impassivity, or fear such as the major had displayed, were the two most common behaviors exhibited in the Kremlin. Krigoff had avoided both, a strategy not devoid of risk but one with a potential payoff, as his new shoulder boards signified. When Krigoff entered the great office, he was greeted like an old friend, and that distinction made his heart swell with pride.
“Ah, Alexis Petrovich, it is good to see you,” declared Stalin, who was alone in the large Kremlin office. He rose from behind his massive desk and ambled to an open liquor cabinet. “Vodka?”
“Indeed, Comrade Chairman, a drink would be most welcome. Thank you.” Assertiveness was clearly pleasing to Stalin, Krigoff noted. He offered a toast—“To the heroic armies of the Soviet Union!”—and swallowed the potent beverage, feeling the burn through his esophagus, the pleasant heat warming his belly. But only for a moment—he sensed that Stalin was ready for him to speak. Of course, the chairman already had far more extensive reports and briefings and analyses than Krigoff had read in the single, albeit detailed, memo. Indeed, Stalin no doubt had access to far more documentary information than any person in the world. But a factual recitation was not the kind of report he expected from his newly minted lieutenant colonel.
“Do you think my army is ready for this campaign?” Stalin asked, a genial chuckle concealing the gravity of the real question.
“Undoubtedly, Comrade Chairman. Spirits among the generals are high, and the staff work has apparently been meticulous. I believe that all of them are eager to go to work.”
“Nice thing about enemies, that. They bring a wonderful focus.”
Especially when the enemy has raped and blackened an entire country, Krigoff reflected privately. There were plenty of Russians who hated Stalin with an abiding passion—though he was not one of them—but even the most rebellious Russian hated the Nazis even more than they did the chairman. This hatred did in fact bring a unity to this endeavor that was being called the Great Patriotic War.
“Do you detect any indications of hesitancy, or fear?” pressed the chairman.
“There are … concerns,” Krigoff said. “Marshal Konev seems to be very worried about the crossing of the Oder, after we clean up the rest of Poland. He claims that the Germans have used the interval of the armistice to dramatically fortify that line. His front will be secondary, of course, to Marshal Zhukov’s, but it is still crucial to the campaign. Also, there is the matter of Konigsberg … even Zhukov acknowledged that great improvements had been made to the defenses there.”
“Konigsberg!” Stalin spat the word, his eyes flashing. “That place will be worse than Leningrad, even than Stalingrad before we are done. Hah—it was once the capital of Prussia! By the time we are done, Prussia will be but a bad memory—I think it would be a fine joke to give half of it to Poland! We will take the rest, of course. And let the fucking Nazis see what it is like to have their beautiful cities blasted into rubble, their people dragged into slavery.”
“The generals seem to feel that all of these obstacles can be crushed, though they are unwilling to predict an accurate time frame. And there was the one general noted, Petrovsky of the Second Guards Tank Army, who was still asking for more men and matériel.”
“Bah!” Stalin was impatient and grouchy now, his earlier cheerful spirits having vanished as quickly as the Moscow twilight of a few hours earlier. “We stand on the brink of greatness, of historic opportunity! Even as we speak, Rumania and Bulgaria are being cleansed, not just of fascist influence, but of capitalists as well. The Second and Fourth Ukranian Fronts stand ready to bring about the same result in Hungary. I have the two Belorussian Fronts and the First Ukrainian Front ready to move into Poland. I want them to understand that, once they advance, they are not to stop—not for the Oder, not for Berlin, not until they reach the Rhine!”
Krigoff remained silent, sensing that a response was not necessary, might even be dangerous. A wise Communist always said nothing when there was any chance of saying the
wrong
thing.
“There is another weapon that will come to bear,” Stalin continued. “And I would especially like your impressions of its efficacy. It is a new technology, something that we have obtained from the Germans—through diplomacy,
believe it or not!” The chairman had a hearty chuckle at that statement, and of course Krigoff joined in the laughter, though he did not understand what his leader was talking about.
“Rockets!” Stalin said, still laughing. “And not the little Babushkas that we launch by the hundreds from our trucks! No, these are the size of airplanes, and we can send them a hundred miles. I intend to rain them down upon Warsaw as we open the attacks, and I would like a firsthand report as to their effectiveness. You will communicate directly to me, Alexis Petrovich—do you understand?”
“Of course, Comrade Chairman! I am ready to go at once!”
“Soon, soon. The generals, the
world,
must understand that this is a race—the timetable cannot be fixed in advance, because we do not know what our adversaries in the West will plan. Though I do expect them to be aggressive, as well as fast. Perhaps they have the audacity to desire Berlin for themselves—
this is why we must reach the Rhine!
“It is any inclination toward hesitancy or caution that I wish to guard against,” Stalin continued, speaking conversationally, as if his burst of words had exhausted his temper. “I am assigning you to the mobile general staff; you will be assistant commissar in a tank army. Your official superior will be General Yevgeny Yeremko—a loyal old communist, though I wonder if in fact he is getting
too
old.” Krigoff made a mental note of that analysis; a superior’s weakness was something that could almost always be exploited.
Krigoff considered his assignment. He was best qualified for the role as a commissar, or
zampolit,
that he had been assigned. This was a particularly important role in the Soviet military organization, the role of political officer—the instrument of Party control. At every military level from battalion on up, a deputy political commander provided an appropriate Marxist-Leninist oversight of the commander and conducted training and indoctrination activities for the troops.
This was a role of the highest Party importance, and there were special schools for zampolits just as study at Frunze Military Academy prepared military officers for their role. Krigoff’s Party credentials and performance were beyond reproach, a critical qualification for such a position. But there was a problem: The commissar was consumed by internal duties involving the development of Marxist-Leninist thought among the soldiers, and was known as an instrument of Party control. This meant less opportunity to participate in the serious business of military operations, and also made people less willing to speak openly.
The chairman was still speaking. “You will further serve as liaison between the First Ukrainian and the First Belorussian fronts. You, Alexis Petrovich, are to be my eyes and ears on this campaign. You will report to me
everything that you observe, no matter how trivial—you will let me decide if it is important.”
“Yes, Comrade Chairman. It is my honor to obey.” Krigoff’s mind whirled over the task, and he ventured to speak further. “May I make a small suggestion that will help me better perform my mission?”