The world awakened on August 7th, 1945, to a world it didn't quite recognize. The report of a solitary bomb dropped from a solitary plane incinerating the city of Hiroshima was a shocking and numbing blow to the world conscience. When, on the third day thereafter, Nagasaki met the same fate, the shock hardened to a sort of numb,existential horror. The war that threatened to be settled in the bloody, long-hoped-for manner of invading the Japanese home islands was then and there ended, ended with brutal abruptness.
The public account, skillfully constructed under the White House and with the hidden hand of Ezra, was that of bitter necessity. It was the tale of a dreadful but indispensable weapon, a tool used to preserve the hundreds of thousands of American lives that would have been lost in an invasion. President Truman talked of the tapping of the raw power of the cosmos. Newspapers ran headlines about the "Atom Bomb" and the "secret weapon that brought the war to an end." The world was asking the "what." Fewer than a dozen men knew the "how," and Ezra Prentice aimed to keep it that way.
In the initial, frenzied aftermath, as the world jubilated, Ezra acted with the fast-moving, silent stealth of a predator securing its domain. He knew the atomic secret was now the planet's most valuable and most deadly commodity. Having the weapon was not sufficient; he had to have control of the information behind it.
He also flew to Washington and called together a series of emergency, top-level meetings. He conferred with General Groves, with the influential leaders of Congress whom he had been grooming, and with the leaders of the now-mighty Truman administration.
"Gentlemen," he urged in a closed-door consultation with opinion-leading senators, "we've unleashed a power that cannot be undone. The scientific principles will potentially be re-discovered someday by someone else, but the engineering, the industry techniques, the manifold secrets of the technical work that caused the bomb to be—a body of knowledge—must be guarded with zealotry heretofore devoted only to religious scripture."
He argued the secret was just too vast and far too dangerous to be managed entirely by the military, whose intraservice rivalry and leakage built into the bureaucracy was a disadvantage. He urged the creation of a brand-new civilian agency with sole responsibility for all aspects of the nation's nuclear complex, from the uranium mines to the labs to the arsenal of finished weapons. He urged the United States Atomic Energy Commission.
It was a stroke of political genius. By invoking "civilian control," he appeared to be a democrat who would wrest this massive authority from the generals. In fact, he was creating a centralized, secretive bureaucracy that would be far more manageable for him than the large Department of War.
He utilized his political capital, the debts owed to him by Senator Truman and others, to make sure the enabling act was written to hisspecifications. And then he set out to work to make sure the right men were appointed as its first commissioners. He didn't want his own men in charge; that would be all too ostentatious. He wanted men who shared his vision, who believed in a healthy America and the need for a public-private combination in the atomic era. Through subtle back-channel recommendations to the White House, he saw to it the commission was populated with men dedicated to his ideology, even if not directly to him. He had essentially converted a public commission into a private cover for his own atomic interests.
Having the AEC in place, he then personally saw to it that his own companies—the chemical companies that prepared the graphite, the machine shops that assembled the centrifuges, the electronics research facilities that developed the components of the trigger—received the first and most profitable contracts to construct the post-war nuclear production centers at Hanford and Oak Ridge. He was securing his monopoly in the atomic era.
Yet there was one factor beyond his direct control: his chief scientist's conscience.
J. Robert Oppenheimer came out of the war as a national hero, the "Father of the Atomic Bomb." His face adorned the cover of popular magazines, a star scientist who was toasted by presidents and the people. But the man was tormented. The specter of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima haunted him. He began to speak out quietly, then louder and still louder, about the terrifying nature of the power that he'd unleashed. He began to advocate international cooperation, candor with the Soviets, an international system of control over atomic energy in order to avert the next nuclear arms race from looming.
To Ezra, they were not the pronouncements of a wise philanthropist. Rather, they were the foolish, perilous musings of someone who didn't grasp the brutal realities of the new world that he'd contributed to. The crusade for global control being espoused by Oppenheimer directly threatened the entire big plan of Ezra, who was based on a unilateral American monopoly and dominance. His most important asset was fast turning into his liability par excellence.
He called Oppenheimer to his New York office. The world outside was jubilant over the triumph, but within the soundproofed wood-paneled office the mood was icy.
Oppenheimer, gaunt and restless, made his case with a passionate, almost desperate, energy. "You must understand, Prentice, this cannot be the secret of one nation alone. It is too much power. It will lead to a race, an arms race that can only end in global annihilation. We have to work with the Soviets, bring this power under the control of a world body—"
"Robert," Ezra cut in, his tone mild but with a note of pure steel. "Your work is finished. You're a hero. The country is in its debt for its enormous contribution. It is time now for you to relax, to get back to teaching Berkeley, to reap the rewards of your work."
Oppenheimer stared at him in amazement. "You're not listening. This isn't about physics. It's about the survival of the human race!"
"On the contrary," Ezra replied. "I am thinking of nothing else. And the survival of our way of life depends on our unquestioned strength. Your new political crusade is naive. Worse, it is dangerous. It weakens our position at the precise moment we must be at our strongest. You will cease your public calls for international control. You will resign from the advisory committees where you have been advocating for this... folly."
Oppenheimer's intellectual arrogance flared. "And if I refuse? You think you can silence me? I am the man who built your bomb!"
Ezra stared at him, his face set in a mask of chilly, impersonal commiseration, the gaze a scientist might bestow on a specimen through the lens of the microscope. He sorted through a drawer and pushed forward a thin, unlabeled manilla file on the slick surface of his desk. It made no sound as it reached his guest.
"You are a great scientist, Doctor," Ezra said quietly. "Perhaps the greatest of your generation. But you are also a flawed man. A complicated man."
Oppenheimer's eyes darted down to the file. He did not need to open it. He knew what it contained.
"You have friends, acquaintances," Ezra went on, his voice an indomitable, silent litany, "who have belonged to the Communist Party. Your wife, your brother, some of the former students. You yourself have gone to the meetings. And then there is the state of your unkempt personal life, your extramural activity. Things the security officers in the Army's employ chose to look the other way about during the conflict, in the passion of the time. But the conflict is finished. Times ahead will be more distrustful."
He pushed forward slightly. "If you pursue this crusade, if you keep questioning the established policy of the United States government, these files will eventually fall into the appropriate hands. To some ambitious members of the House Un-American Activities Committee. To some columnists who do not take kindly to 'long-haired' thinkers. Your security clearance will be withdrawn. Your name will be ruined. You will be silenced."
Oppenheimer stared at the file, his face ashen. All the fight drained out of him, replaced by a look of utter, hollowed-out defeat. He was trapped. The very national security apparatus he had served, the system that had protected his secrets, was now being turned against him as a weapon. He realized, in that terrible moment, that he was no longer a partner in this enterprise. He was an employee who had outlived his usefulness. A tool to be put back in the box.
He once was the prince of Los Alamos, the world annihilator. But in this tiny office, he was just another asset to be managed by the man who actually managed the next century. Ezra had effectively used the state's power to silence the very person behind his most lethal arm. He'd bought the atomic secret so it would never escape where he believed it belonged: his crown of fire, his to own, his alone.