The post-war world Ezra built was to be a world of stability, an era of unquestioned American supremacy ensured by the terrifying potential of the atomic bomb. He envisioned a Pax Americana, a long peace planned from Washington and funded from his own private enterprise and technological genius.
He had overestimated.
The first public salvo of the new world was one that he had orchestrated. In the small Missouri town of Fulton, once out of office but still a global giant, Winston Churchill appeared on a platform in Westminster College. Ezra, through his now-deep contacts with the Truman administration, had personally arranged the visit, providing the aides to the former Prime Minister with speech points. He wanted Churchill's incomparable speaking style to rouse a complacent America from its slumber and face the new Russian threat.
Churchill didn't let down. His voice, a familiar bulldog growl, echoed over the airwaves around the world. "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic," he declared, "an iron curtain has descended across the Continent."
Ezra listened in his New York study with grim satisfaction. The phrase was perfect. It would mobilize the West. It was the start of building the political will for the long struggle he knew lay ahead.
Thousands of miles away, in the massive wood-paneled office of the Kremlin, the message came not with alarm but with bitter, churning rage. Joseph Stalin listened through the translation, his face an inscrutable mask, a cloud of pipe smoke curling around his head. The moment the broadcast finished, he summoned his most crucial scientific and intelligence specialists.
The chair of the table was Igor Kurchatov, a tall bearded physicist who was responsible for overseeing the Soviet bomb project. He looked nervous.
"Comrade Stalin," began Kurchatov, "our agent 'Star',"—their codename for Fuchs—"has provided us with an enormous quantity of new technical data from the American Los Alamos project. It is... complex."
He unwrapped the plans for the implosion device, the data tediously redrawn from Fuchs's recollection and stolen notes. "American design is brilliant but devilishly difficult. Mathematical calculations of the explosive lenses, the accuracy of the timing… on the basis of this information, their device is a sensitive, almost finicky piece of equipment. To produce a replica will require industry on a scale far greater even than our original estimates. It will take years, perhaps five or more, to build a workable copy."
What Kurchatov didn't know, what possibly no one in the room knew, was that Kurchatov was being tested with a work of genius disinformation. The data Fuchs provided was a perfect blend of fact and poison, a brew designed by Ezra to be credible enough to be believed and faulty enough to be certain to fall short.
Stalin listened, his eyes narrowed to slits. He was a man who looked for conspiracy in every shadow, and this report only reinforced his darkest suspicions. The Americans weren't just waving a new weapon; they were playing politics, trying to bluff him with a hard scientific puzzle. The atomic threat was not just a military reality; it was blackmail.
Instead of being bullied into submission, as the hard rationality of Ezra had anticipated, Stalin was enraged. He saw the American atomic monopoly as not a warning to be obeyed, but an indecent insult to the might and dignity of the U.S.S.R. He would not be bullied. He would not be threatened. He would answer this challenge with the full, brutal authority of the Soviet state.
He jabbed the stem of his pipe toward Kurchatov. "Years? We have not the years. The Americans think they can direct the world's future from the research offices. They are mistaken." He addressed Lavrentiy Beria, his infamous master of the secret police. "Beria. You will oversee this project. Kurchatov will be supplied with anything. A million men. The combined production of the Ural mines. He will be supplied with anything that he demands. If a scientist makes a hash of it, you will substitute him. If a factory falls behind schedule, you will substitute the manager. I desire our own bomb. And I desire it shortly."
He then made the fateful decision. "And we will not just replicate the faulty design. We will pursue every avenue at the same time. A uranium gun-type. A plutonium implosions device from our own theoretical work. All possible resources will be channeled into every avenue. One of them will work."
Ezra's subtlety had boomeranged on a massive level. His subtle moves to distract and stall the Soviet program had instead united them in a paranoid multi-front crash program far more ambitious and well-funded than the original schedule's.
The first practical consequence of this newfound hardening of the Soviet position came just weeks afterwards. In a direct, unabashedchallenge to the West powers, Stalin ordered the blockade of all land and sea routes into the Allied-governed areas of West Berlin. The city, an enclave of democracy deep in the Soviet-dominated area of Germany, was cut off, its two million citizens now hostages.
The Cold War, Ezra figured would be a lazy boil of politics and intrigue, just turned scalding.
Ezra was summoned instantly to a crisis conference in the White House Situation Room. The mood was grim. The highest commanders surrounded President Truman, who looked tired and frustrated.
"They're trying to starve us out," declared a four-star Air Force commander, pointing to a map of Berlin. "You cannot supply a two-million-person city from the air indefinitely. It's a direct challenge. My suggestion is we make an ultimatum. Tell them they have forty-eight hours to lift the blockade or we'll bomb Moscow."
One of the generals assented. "We've got the bomb. They don't. It's time we reminded them of the fact."
Everybody looked towards Ezra, the mastermind of their atomic supremacy. They hoped for him to sanction this offensive position.
To their utmost shock, he was against it.
"We can't," replied Ezra quietly but firmly. The room fell silent.
"What do you mean we cannot?" roared Truman. "You're the same individual who told me that this weapon was the foundation of our diplomacy!"
"It is," replied Ezra. "It is the foundation of a long-term strategic reality. It is, however, a crude, almost useless tool in a crisis like this. Gentlemen, just how much operational equipment do we have constructed and to hand?"
It was aimed at General Groves, who shifted uncomfortably. "The number is classified, but... less than a dozen."
"Not quite a dozen," said Ezra again. "Then what do we do?" Drop an atom bomb on Moscow? Burn millions of civilians and start a ground war with the Red Army that would bleed this country white in order to protect West Berlin? The citizens of the United States would never stand for it. It would be morally and tactically insane.
He looked the President directly in the eye. "What if we threaten to do it? Stalin is not the sort of guy who bluffs. What if we get called on our bluff? What if we maintain our ground and then we have the option of either starting World War Three or unveiling our doomsday device to be a paper tiger? We would suffer a global, cataclysmic loss of face from which we'd never recover."
He let the grim logic assert itself. He, the man who had brought this power to the world, was the first to enjoy its crushing limitations. The bomb was the ultimate weapon, but it was too large, too doomsday to be used as a diplomatic bludgeon in smaller international games of chess. It was like having the most powerful piece on the chessboard, the piece that would vacate the board but that you could never possibly move and thus break the game, and yourself.
Ezra Prentice, the man who thought that he'd achieved absolute control, was faced with his first paralyzing insight: he'd created a game of high-stakes poker in which he'd own the winning hand but the price of actually playing it was something that he was unable to afford.