A thousand suns

Hauser felt something in him snap. He reached out and grabbed Schenkelmann by the arm and spoke in a low, menacing voice. ‘Now listen. The bomb will be readied for the journey tomorrow and you will also prepare the arming codes tonight. There will be no more talk about this infinite chain reaction. Your calculations on this are exaggerated, and they always have been.’

Hauser knew Schenkelmann’s figures were right.

They were right when first he came across the theory papers and they remained unchanged now. The theory, quite simply, was pure genius. Schenkelmann had shrewdly proposed accelerating the chain reaction by firing two uranium bullets at opposite ends of the mass. The advancing ripples from both ends would cause overlapping shockwaves to quadruple exponentially the rate of acceleration. A reaction like that would require so much lower a critical mass of U-235 than had previously been thought. Heisenberg had calculated that tons of U-235 would be needed; Schenkelmann’s technique required only ounces.

The danger, as far as Schenkelmann was concerned, was that such an accelerated chain reaction might cause enough immediate energy to be released to split the nuclei of non-fissile material. The man’s figures convincingly demonstrated the probability to be high, as much as fifty per cent, that the weapon would vaporise not only its target but also an unquantifiable range beyond it.

The mathematical implication was simple, an infinite chain reaction… a doomsday bomb.

‘The figures are right, Dr Hauser.’

‘If you do not shut up now, I will have you shot, Schenkelmann. Do you understand?’

Making the threat felt good, powerful. Like throwing a punch. For a fleeting moment he felt like following through on the threat and issuing the command to one of the guards, just to enjoy the thrill of issuing an order and seeing it carried out automatically, without question. He suspected he would have made a fine officer if his expertise hadn’t prevented him from being recruited. He found giving orders so easy, so natural.

Hauser had been assigned half a dozen SS men to guard the small laboratory and keep an eye on Schenkelmann. It had been Speer’s idea. He had been worried about Schenkelmann attempting to commit suicide, sabotage or even flee from the claustrophobic confines of the small underground lab. The men were always present inside and discreetly placed outside the inconspicuous corrugated doors of the building.

Hauser regarded the soldiers as his own private army, to command as he pleased. The novelty had yet to wear off.

The lab had been built into one of the arches of a railway bridge that ran parallel to a small cobbled back street. Behind this unassuming facade, which could easily have been the premises of any small, one-man business, the stairs descended to a cellar that had once been used to store wine. Here, in a space little bigger than a generous living room, Schenkelmann and two lab assistants had been given the task of assembling Germany’s atom bomb. This cellar had been Schenkelmann’s prison since the project had begun; the Jew hadn’t seen daylight in months.

‘P-please, Dr Hauser.’

Hauser felt his face flush with anger, first his cheeks, then his forehead and his ears. He knew he looked as crimson as a baby screaming for milk.

If threatening his life isn’t going to work, then there are other alternatives.

‘This conversation ends now, and you will proceed with preparing the bomb for tomorrow morning or I will see to it that your sister and your mother are visited by one of my men.’

Schenkelmann’s family had been found working alongside him in the munitions factory. It had taken very little string-pulling to have all three extricated from the factory and the women held in ‘care’ while Schenkelmann was put to work. With Albert Speer as the Armaments Minister providing the authority for these arrangements, there had been absolutely no red tape to cut through to move these three Jews. Equally, while they were useful to Speer and Hauser they would never be shipped off to an extermination camp, nor casually executed on the street by some over-zealous Gauleiter. With the rubber stamp of Speer, these three people were perhaps the safest Jews in Europe. They had been lucky to find his sister and mother alongside him in the factory, for now Schenkelmann was beginning to care little about his own miserable life; they still had the leverage of his loved ones to play around with.

Hauser smiled, aware that the threat had worked and that this troublesome little man had been silenced.

‘There, I’m glad we have that unpleasantness behind us, Joseph. Let’s finish the job here, shall we?’

Joseph Schenkelmann stared bleakly at the ground, aware that he had been a stupid, weak man for allowing the project to have progressed this far.

What have I done?