A Thousand Suns (36 page)

For Hans, now, a decision had been made. His commanding officer had become the enemy. ‘Then you’re a fucking traitor,’ he growled.

Max turned back to Pieter, he felt his last chance to swing this around rested with his co-pilot. They had the strongest bond within the four-man crew. Although Max knew their background differed in many ways, they shared a mutual bond of trust. Four years flying side by side had built that trust up into a concrete foundation that surely couldn’t possibly be undermined merely by the words they had spoken to each other in the last few minutes.

‘Pieter, come on, this is madness.’

Max decided Hans might still succumb if Pieter were to change his mind and agree with him now. The young man would hand the gun over to him and shamefully concede that he had become confused by events
if
he were the only one,
if
Pieter deserted his corner now. Max knew Hans was an insecure young man, still a boy in truth. He had little faith in his view of the world, his opinions, if he held them alone. He needed the corroboration of another; even more, he needed the approval of someone with rank.

It was down to Pieter.

‘I’m sorry, Max, but we’re going ahead with this, with or without your help.’

Hans looked reassured; pleased that such an important issue had been settled by someone else. ‘What do we do now? Do I . . . ?’

Kill him
.

All three of them knew those words were what was meant, if not spoken.

Pieter shook his head. ‘No, Hans.’ He turned to address Max. ‘But if you interfere, I will do it myself.’

Max heard the pain in Pieter’s voice, it had faltered momentarily. He knew it hadn’t been an easy thing for him to say.

Pieter shrugged slightly, and a wan smile spread across his weary face. ‘Just don’t make me do that, eh?’ he muttered to Max, patting his shoulder, the last gesture of friendship. ‘Hans, take him back to the waist section and keep your gun on him, I need to get back and fly this plane.’

‘How much longer?’

‘If we’re on course, half an hour, maybe less.’

‘Good.’ Hans jerked the gun to indicate that Max should lead the way back to the waist section.

Max tried one last time. ‘Pieter, do you -’

‘SHUT UP!’ Pieter shouted in reply. ‘Hans, don’t let him talk to you, if he talks, then shoot him, okay?’

Max cast one last glance at his co-pilot as he ducked through the bulkhead. His lips were drawn tightly, his eyes narrowed, the burden of the mission weighing heavily on
his
shoulders now. Pieter’s face was devoid of emotion, the last residue of warmth he had displayed towards Max had gone. His mind was on the mission, and that was all.

Chapter 54

Mission Time: 21 Hours, 52 Minutes Elapsed

4.57 p.m., EST, the White House, Washington, DC

There was a clock on the wall of the conference room, and Wallace counted the hours. The meeting had been in session now for over fifteen hours. He looked at the other men; many were staring intently at their wristwatches.

An hour ago, one of the marines guarding the conference room door had entered and informed the President that a staff car was waiting for him in front of the White House, ready to remove him to safety outside Washington. After only a moment’s consideration Truman had sent the marine away, announcing that he wasn’t going to leave his cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff behind.

Wallace found he was developing a grudging respect for this new President. He had only been in office a few days. During the last forty-eight hours, and the two meetings which he had attended, Wallace had witnessed the man steadily grow in stature from the unassuming, quietly spoken, unremarkable figure of before to what he was now. Most definitely a leader. Staying with them here, no matter how unknown the risk, was something Wallace would remember about the man for the rest of his long life. It was a true measure of the man.

Truman was sitting motionlessly now, one of the conference room’s burgundy- and gold-trimmed telephone handsets held patiently to his ear, everyone else in the room dutifully silent. As the President waited for the call to be put through he looked up at the wall clock. ‘My watch shows me two minutes to five, gentlemen. Assuming that is the deadline, just two more minutes to go. I really don’t know what is going to happen at five, if anything.’ He looked up at them with the faintest hint of a smile on his tight, bookish face. ‘I suggest those of you who believe in a God start your praying now.’

There was a murmur of tense laughter from some of the men around the table. Nonetheless, Wallace noticed several of them closing their eyes, their lips moving subtly in silence.

Less than two minutes to go.

Wallace was still certain that the whole thing was an elaborate bluff. The B-17 which had been seen heading out across the Atlantic accompanied by several Messerschmitts was, of course, real, and certainly it sounded, from the garbled and hastily delivered intelligence reports that had come in over the last two days, that the laboratory in Stuttgart with the cyclotron was also real. But the inescapable fact, confirmed now by Dr Frewer and over the phone an hour earlier by Dr Oppenheimer, was that there was very little chance of a viable atomic bomb with critical mass less than they had calculated - enough U-235 to produce a mass the size of a baseball - and there was no conceivable way the Germans could have got their hands on that much uranium.

No possible way, unless they’d discovered another form of isotope?

Unlikely.

At five o’clock only one possible thing could happen. The bomber would drop a device that would fail to detonate.

But there was a remote chance . . .
Wallace noticed his mouth drying and the slightest tremble coming and going.
There’s a chance
.

He allowed himself to indulge the improbable notion for a moment, that on this day the world would end with a bang. He wondered how fast this theoretical chain reaction would travel if it happened. If the bomb were to be dropped on them here in Washington, it would presumably be an instant death. But if it were dropped on New York, he wondered what vision they would behold as the explosive ripple of separating atoms approached them here, 300 miles away. A wall of brilliant light sweeping across the world, the light of a thousand suns bearing down on them, consuming all matter in front of it, and leaving behind it only superheated sub-atomic fragments?

‘One minute,’ Truman announced drily. Then, all of a sudden, the call connection came through. ‘Gentlemen,’ Truman continued, ‘I’ve got the company commander of the Times Square anti-aircraft battery on the phone.’

They heard an indistinct noise over the speaker-phone on the table in front of Truman, a hiss and a warble, the rumble of wind and of distant traffic and the muffled sound of a voice.

‘Is this Captain Delaware?’ Truman asked, speaking loudly into the mouthpiece.

‘Captain Eugene Delaware,’ they heard someone answer equally loudly. ‘Who’s this?’

‘This is President Truman.’

The captain laughed, ‘Steve, you trying that shit on me again? I told you this kind of crap don’t -’

‘Captain Delaware, this is your President, and I don’t have the time nor am I in the mood to play games with you, son.’

The President had struck the right tone.

‘Uh?’ Delaware responded. The noise over the speaker was suddenly muted, as if a hand had been placed over the mouthpiece and they heard the frantic exchange of muffled voices.

‘Captain Delaware, I was directed to this line via Colonel Smithson. When we’re done here you can check on that,’ added Truman impatiently.

The noise of wind and distant traffic returned as, presumably, the young captain had removed his hand. ‘Mr President . . . I’m really s-sorry, sir.’

‘Don’t worry about it, son. Listen now. We have had a report that one of our B-17 bomber planes is inbound to New York.’ Truman looked up at General Arnold, who nodded. ‘It’s carrying an important guest . . . but, we think it may be in some trouble.’

‘Yes, sir. A B-17, sir.’

‘We think it should be arriving any time soon. I want you to stay on the line with me, Captain, and let me know what you can see or hear. You got that?’

‘Y-yes, sir. I got that, sir.’

The conference room was utterly silent as all of them strained to listen to the confusion of noises coming from the small table-top speaker. Wallace wondered if New York was the target, whether they would actually be able to hear the distant drone of the flying fortress’s engines moments before this bomb was to be dropped.

Truman broke the silence. ‘So, is there anything in the skies, son? Anything you can see or hear?’

‘It’s very noisy, sir. A lot of noise up here. I’m just looking around. There’s patchy cloud cover, sir. Broken clouds, so anything approaching could be hidden from us until it’s quite close.’

‘Just keep looking, Captain, and stay with us,’ said Truman.

The President looked down at his watch. ‘By my timepiece, we have under a minute left, gentlemen. In case I’m not around to say so . . . thank you for attending these last two days.’ Almost as an afterthought, Truman added: ‘God bless America.’

Wallace smiled at the President’s words, and he found himself marvelling at Truman’s composure. The man must be as nervous as him, probably much more so, given that he had no understanding of the science that confidently assured Wallace that this day would not be their last. Only Wallace and Frewer could see the numbers that made this bomb a nonsense. Their eyes met across the conference room and Frewer shook his head in a relaxed manner and smiled to reassure Wallace.

Nothing’s going to happen, kid
.

Even so, Wallace couldn’t help but feel the cold draught of fate rushing towards them all.

The second hand on the wall clock passed by the nine and now pulled upwards towards the twelve in a languid arc.

Chapter 55

Mission Time: 22 Hours, 5 Minutes Elapsed

5.10 p.m., EST, approaching New York

Pieter saw the continent ahead of them at first as a series of indistinct smudges, appearing fleetingly behind the thick bank of clouds on the horizon. It seemed like America was having a dull, wet day as well as Europe. The smudges eventually merged into a solid dark mass of land on the horizon as he brought the plane down to 3000 feet.

‘Hans, I can see America!’ he shouted excitedly into his mask.

There was a moment before Hans replied as he scrambled to look out of one of the portholes to confirm the sighting. ‘My God, we made it!’

The low cloud had shrouded the coastline, hiding it from them until the last moment, and now he could see it approaching swiftly. Below, he could see several ships heading out to sea, leaving behind them long wakes that pointed like pale fingers north-west towards New York.

‘We’ve come too far south. I’m going to bring us up to two-ninety,’ he said, thinking aloud. ‘How’s Stef?’

‘Still out cold. He doesn’t look too good.’

Poor lad
.

It would have been good to have his help finding their way to New York, but it was clear from the traffic on the sea they weren’t too far off. Pieter smiled to himself. He just had to follow the ships; that was all he’d need to guide them in now. He checked their fuel. It was low, uncomfortably so. He estimated there was enough left for maybe another twenty minutes’ flying time. That was enough. Fifteen minutes or so to find New York, and five minutes to get some distance from it after they had dropped the bomb. If they couldn’t find anywhere suitable to land, they could bail out. Stef might be a problem if they had to do that, especially if he couldn’t be roused. In that case they’d just have to push him out, pull the cord and hope for the best.

And what about Max?

He suspected Hans would be happy enough to leave him aboard to go down with the plane. His snarling decision that Max was a traitor had sounded final. His own feelings were a little less certain. Max was no traitor, that much was for sure, but that strange note had clearly shaken him. He suspected that there was more to his odd behaviour than just that. Pieter had seen officers break down before, men that could seemingly endure an infinite amount of battlefield stress, and yet who suddenly seemed to suffer total emotional collapse. Several squadron leaders from KG-301 had suffered that fate, but for some reason he’d thought Max would never crumble like that. He wasn’t a traitor, and nor did he deserve to die. If it came to bailing, he’d make sure they
all
got out. Once they’d dropped the bomb, one way or another, this rift between them would no longer have any relevance.

The note?

The bloody thing had to be an attempt at sabotage, or a last-minute change of heart by some paranoid technician working on the project. But he wondered, for a moment, if the damn thing was for real, would that change anything?

Of course not.

If there
really
was a risk involved in dropping this bomb, a risk that the entire world could be incinerated, then it was the world’s fault for cornering them like this. The Russians were going to obliterate Germany anyway - better to bring them all down with them than for the Fatherland to die alone.

Pieter nodded; he was satisfied with that justification. It would be
everyone
’s fault if it all ended in ashes; after all, they were just trying to defend themselves. What other country wouldn’t do the same if they had the chance? And anyway, who would be left to point an accusatory finger?

No one.

He smiled grimly. To have got this far required the intervention of fate. To turn back now would be an unforgivable act of weakness. Pieter knew that fate, destiny, or whatever you wanted to call it, was with him, with them. Now was not the time for doubts or second thoughts.

He decided that that was the last of the thinking he should do on the subject. The only thing to do now was to concentrate on the job in hand.

Max watched Hans as he kept the gun squarely aimed at him. However, the young man’s eyes darted frequently to the starboard porthole, anxious to watch America approach, to see the country first hand that he’d only so far seen in the occasional newsreel, and once in a film about cowboys and Indians. Hans saw the clouds and the dark coastline, surprised at how much like the coast of Normandy it looked. He’d always thought America was a hot place - blue skies, golden beaches and large, beautiful, snow-tipped mountain ranges. But it looked like yet another cold, dark and wet country. He decided with a silent nod that it would make it that much easier to blow up a large chunk of it.

‘It’s not like you imagined it, eh?’ said Max.

‘No,’ Hans replied automatically.

Pieter’s voice came over the interphone. ‘Hans . . . tell him to be quiet, we need to concentrate.’

Hans reminded himself of the new situation; Max was no longer the plane’s commander, no longer a comrade, a friend. He jerked the gun towards him angrily. ‘Shut up, Max, I told you to stay quiet.’

Max raised his hands submissively.

How in God’s name am I going to stop this?

Time was running out for him to find a way to put an end to the mission.

He wondered why it had been so easy for him to believe there was some truth in that note, and for Pieter and Hans to dismiss it so readily. There might have been a time, maybe two or three years ago, before their posting to the eastern front, before this war had become so barbaric, that he too might have sided with them and considered it a Jew’s attempt to sabotage things.

But now? Maybe deep down, a suspicion as yet unspoken, he’d decided that their home wasn’t worth killing so many innocent people for. Maybe the world would be a safer place without someone like Hitler in it, who would gamble the world for his own ambitions; without easily led people like Pieter and Hans, who would do the same out of blind fealty to such a recklessly dangerous leader.

As a country, Germany would vanish, and her people would become - what? Russian citizens. Some might argue, losing a flag and a language . . . they deserved a great deal worse than just that.

Pieter leaned forward in his seat and looked out of the cockpit window. Below and ahead of them the coastline of America was upon them. He watched as greyish beaches, awash with the rolling surf of the Atlantic, slid beneath the nose of the B-17. There had been no more ships to follow in the last few minutes, so he had decided to hold his oblique north-westerly course until they crossed over the coastline and then he would pull round to the right and head due north, following the coastline until either they were nearly dry or he came across the city.

The gauge was now showing empty; it wasn’t a precise display, a needle hovering over a crudely marked dial showing hundreds of pounds of fuel, it was an approximate reading at best. His watch showed the time was twelve minutes past the hour. Another eight minutes, he decided, and then the bomb would have to go, New York or no New York.

‘I’m pulling around to the north now, Hans, and we’ll follow the coast. Eight minutes to go.’ Hans acknowledged, and Pieter began to bring the plane smoothly around to the right.