Bomb: Part Three

Others claimed Los Alamos was home for pregnant military personnel—or possibly a nudist colony.

“He wasn’t much of a speaker,” the physicist Isidor Rabi recalled, “but for ammunition he had everything Oppenheimer’s theoretical group had uncovered during the last year.

“The site itself was a mess,” said Robert Serber. “It was a shambles,” agreed Hans Bethe.

Pash dashed off another memo to Groves, this time accusing Oppenheimer of “playing a key part in the attempts of the Soviet Union to secure, by espionage, highly secret information which is vital to the security of the United States.”

In need of a third man for the job, they recruited Knut Lier-Hansen, a surveyor who lived in Rjukan.

But he did have one tactical question.

Determined to build a bigger arsenal, Leslie Groves ordered the construction of another secret city, this one in Hanford, Washington.

The narrow street was lined with four- and five-story brick tenement buildings, many of them in the process of being torn down and replaced.

That was standard tradecraft—when documents were to be exchanged, meetings should be very short.

“This was in a very small but distinct writing,” he said, “it was in ink, and consisted mainly of mathematical derivations.”

"A stern warning and reprimand must be made,” Moscow cabled its New York office, “for losing contact with such a source.”

“I saw Robert Oppenheimer running excitedly down a corridor holding a small vial in his hand,” Ulam said.

Doors opened, people were summoned, whispered conversations ensued, there was great excitement.

The KGB’s chief of foreign intelligence, Pavel Fitin, said Hall’s information “is of great interest to us.”

But since we can’t take it away from other countries, the USSR ought to be aware of its existence and stay abreast of the progress of experiments and construction.