Final Victory

By Philip Bosshardt

In August 1945, the U.S. used two atomic bombs against Japan. But a third bomb was also built. What if a special ops team from Japan and the Soviet Union had managed to steal the third bomb? Japanese leaders wanted to end the war, but not on America’s terms. To get better terms, a plan is developed to seize the third bomb and threaten San Francisco with it. The story of the Imperial Japanese plan for Final Victory ranges from Tokyo to Tinian Island, Moscow to Alaska, from Las Alamos to a stolen B-29 winging its way toward the City by the Bay. Only Army counter-intelligence agent Colonel Wade Brogan can stop the plan.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Philip Bosshardt
• Release date: Jul 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310671555

Philip Bosshardt

Philip Bosshardt is a native of Atlanta, Georgia. He works for a large company that makes products everyone uses...just check out the drinks aisle at your grocery store. He’s been happily married for over 20 years. He’s also a Georgia Tech graduate in Industrial Engineering. He loves water sports in any form and swims 3-4 miles a week in anything resembling water. He and his wife have no children. They do, however, have one terribly spoiled Keeshond dog named Kelsey.For details on his series Tales of the Quantum Corps, visit his blog at qcorpstimes.blogspot.com or his website at http://philbosshardt.wix.com/philip-bosshardt.

Book preview

PROLOGUE

San Francisco, California

7:35 p.m.

The Present

Detective Captain Wade Brogan, Jr. squatted down next to the body and studied the face of the dead man, making mental notes. Caucasian male, maybe early seventies. Several days’ worth of beard. Small eyes. A few tufts of greasy almost reddish hair. Bull’s neck, thick and ropy at the jawline. Scar under the left chin. Dirty misshapen teeth, with a few gold fillings.

What’ve we got here, Captain? Lieutenant Skip Thorne was new to Investigations. A puppy with an eager face. Brogan had taken Thorney under his wing for the time being.

Brogan scowled, stood up. ME says he died of natural causes. No obvious signs of trauma I can see.

OD? Crackhead, maybe?

Brogan shook his head. No needle marks on the arms. Nostrils are clear…no heroin. Tenderloin’s thick with crack now. But, offhand, I’d say this poor sod just expired. Checked out for the duration.

Thorne was puzzled. So how’d we get called in on a vagrant death? Couldn’t Metro or Golden Gate handle this?

Brogan didn’t reply at first. He was a senior detective with Investigations Bureau, San Francisco Police Department, had been for ten years now, and he knew the Field guys sometimes got in a hurry. If they couldn’t pin down a suspicious death on a readily evident cause right away, they often signed it off to Investigations. It made their caseload look better. The Bureau officially frowned on the practice, but what could you do?

Probably… Brogan scanned the dilapidated boarding room, letting his eyes massage every corner, every shadow, every item in view. The best evidence to break a case was always in plain sight, if you knew how to look for it.

Brogan and Thorne had been working the night watch out of Investigations, manning the Im/Forn desk at Personal Crimes Division, when the call came in. Im/Forn was department slang for immigrants and foreign nationals. The dispatch sheet was devoid of anything but the barest essentials:

Jefferson Hotel, 155 Eddy Street. Tenderloin district. White Caucasian male, dead in his room, found by the cleaning lady. Place stank to heaven, full of scraps of takeout food, boxes of noodles, shoeboxes of papers and maps strewn all over the place….

Shoeboxes of papers. It hit Brogan like a hammer. Where were these damned shoeboxes?

Cautiously, Brogan circled the room, carefully noting positions and angles. Everything was a clue. Small brown table, thick with coffee cup stains. A chest top drawer half open, gray T-shirts and underwear spilling out. A metal trunk next to it.

Brogan eased the lid of the trunk back with the toe of his shoe. Inside were boxes. Shoeboxes. The investigating officers had mentioned them. Brogan pulled out a few, untied the cord securing one, and emptied the contents onto the floor. Thorne watched, from somewhere behind, while Lieutenant Shriver showed up at the door.

Shriver was a five-year man, transferred over from Metro Division. He was a good detective, to Brogan’s way of thinking, if a bit stiff. Bag boys are here, Captain. ME wants to claim the body…get an autopsy started tonight.

Brogan nodded, now kneeling over the contents of the shoebox. Hold up a sec, boys…let’s just see what this crap’s all about. He picked gingerly through the papers.

Some were in English. There were references to the Army. To the Manhattan Engineer District. Fading Army letterhead…official-looking letters. Drawings and sketches too. A few papers were in other languages. Brogan recognized one of them. It was Russian.

He dug into other boxes, while Thorne and Shriver readied the corpse for removal. More papers. More sketches. Some of them were stamped SECRET, the red stamp ink now faded into the brown of dried blood. Brogan spread out a few of the larger sheets…they were maps, pieces of maps. By the corner of the trunk, a shriveled carton of half-eaten meat and bean stew lay on its side. The carton had a cross emblem on the side…our boy’s been taking his meals at St. Vincent’s lately, he realized. St. Vincent’s was a Franciscan mission around the corner.

What is all that stuff, Captain? Thorne bent down beside the detective.

Brogan rifled quickly through several sheafs of fading pages, bound with twine. Sketches and details. His eyes caught odd words, snatches of official phraseology.

Los Alamos…the Gadget… Trinity and Site Y. Alberta. Silverplate. Tinian.

One word in Russian stood out, scribbled along a few of the margins. Working for SFPD, you picked up stuff over the years. He knew a smattering of Spanish and Chinese, a few words of German, some gutter Russian, even a little Ukrainian. He could curse like a sailor in five languages.

Pobeda. The writer—was it the deceased slob behind them?—had scribbled it all over several pages. Pobeda…POBEDA…pobeda….

Brogan racked his brain. Victory…something like that.

He felt a nudge from Thorne. Hey, Captain…what’s got you so spooked? What the hell is that stuff?

Brogan shook his head. I don’t know exactly.

You look kinda pale…seen a ghost around here? Thorne chuckled, got up as the Medical Examiner’s staff swished into the walkup room to retrieve the dead derelict.

Brogan didn’t answer. Something…was it the guy’s face?—all beaten-down, like leather left out in the sun too long. The papers…some of them classified material. Maybe from the atom bomb project. The Manhattan Project. Brogan watched as the techs grunted and struggled, lifting the heavy body into a bag, finally zipping it up.

Something was bugging him. A connection not quite there. He squinted, jammed his hands into his coat pockets. Turned back to the papers he had spilled all over the floor.

Thorne and Shriver helped the techs work the vagrant’s stiff body through the door. Brogan stared back at the trunk, filled with papers and old shoeboxes.

Pop does the same damn thing, he muttered. They were about the same age. Mid to late seventies. Same generation. The Greatest Generation, Tom Brokaw had called them. Saved the world and all that. They saved everything, every little scrap. Hoarded papers and stuff like precious stones. Maybe they were precious, at that. He hadn’t seen Pop for a couple of weeks now. Every time he crossed the Bay Bridge and drove over to Manor Vista, Pop had been worse. The docs tried to be sympathetic. Alzheimer’s is a progressive disease, you understand. Plaque builds up around the brain’s neurons. More and more memory loss every month. Subtle at times, but progressive. It made Brogan depressed.

Had the derelict—Brogan had mentally tagged him as Russian, even named him Nikita, with his looks, the oiniony smell of the room, the feverish scribblings—expired the same way? What the hell was Nikita doing in a trashy, flea-bitten walkup room of the Jefferson Hotel with papers and drawings from nearly sixty years ago, stuff from the atom bomb project?

It gnawed at him for several more minutes, but only because Detective Captain Wade Brogan Jr. had lingered for awhile in Room 515, poking into every corner, scouring the place for clues as to what Nikita was all about, like any good detective. He had to admit it…his interest had been piqued. What he didn’t admit—at least not right away, until it slammed him in the face—was the link that had been there lurking in Room 515 all along…the link between Nikita, a dead Russian derelict and his own Pop, stuffed in a bright and airy but depressing nursing home in Oakland, California.

He hadn’t admitted what his eyes told him because he didn’t really want to know. But he couldn’t ignore it now. There was just one thing he had to know now. One piece of the puzzle.

What was Nikita’s real name? ET’s from Metro had already lifted the man’s prints. No doubt they were already being run now. With any luck, he’d have an answer before the shift was over.

He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know.

Pop had been muttering a lot of things lately. The visits were getting harder. He could see the Colonel deteriorating every time he came to Oakland. Lately, he wasn’t real sure Pop knew him, knew who he was. Somehow, seeing this room, seeing the papers with the scribbled Russian, seeing Nikita’s scarred and stubbly face, made him think of Pop. There was just something there…something Pop had been saying lately…like he knew the guy, like he should know more about the Russian than he did. Pop had talked about Russians a lot on the last visit. Russian agents…NKVD agents…counter-intelligence operations...most of the time it made no sense.

He knew Colonel Brogan had worked on the atom bomb project during the war. He knew he’d been a security officer. He knew his own Mother—Kate was her name—had been mixed up in the same stuff.

Captain Brogan had never been sure of what to believe. What could you believe of an aging parent with late-stage Alzheimer’s? What Pop muttered to him was sometimes so fantastic as to defy belief.

Your mother…Kate…she was a Soviet agent, see…she was a handler…working a half a dozen operatives...she was a packager…collecting and preparing stuff for delivery to the NKVD…it’s all right there, son…all right there in black and white…I wrote it all out just last week…so you’d know the truth—

But the pages the Colonel handed to him were just doodles and illegible scribblings.

There was this Russian agent, see. And Kate and me were dating, but she left with this agent, see…and they went north, by car, all the way up into Canada…into British Columbia. The Soviets had a base up there, in the deep woods—

For the last few years, in dribs and drabs, Wade Jr. had been able to pull together a few pieces of Pop’s wartime past. And the great crime his own mother, Kate, had supposedly committed. It seemed almost too fantastic to be true and Wade Jr., had started a diary, taking notes and recording everything Pop said.

This I gotta investigate further, he told himself. The story of his father’s wartime exploits with the Manhattan Project and his mother’s apparently heinous crime became an obsession with Wade Jr. He wanted to know the truth, had to know the full truth, before Pop passed on. Before, his memory dissolved completely into nonsense scraps and bits no one could connect. His real mother, Kate, had already died in 1963. Now, more than ever, Captain Wade Brogan Jr. had to know the full story.

Pop was deteriorating fast now. He’d seen that the last time he visited Manor Vista. Getting the truth was a race against time now, with Colonel Brogan’s stories becoming ever more fantastic as time went on. Wade Jr. found himself rushing to record everything, but not sure how much to believe. How much of the story was real? How much was Pop’s feverish imagination, now in the death grip of Alzheimer’s?

He knew what he needed most was real, tangible evidence.

And now, after getting the call from Metro to investigate the mysterious death of a vagrant Russian immigrant at the fleabag Jefferson Hotel, Captain Brogan knew with a chilling certainty that he couldn’t explain that he had run head-on into just such evidence, headlong into the truth of his very own murky past.

For the first time, Captain Brogan realized that the story his Pop had been mumbling about at the Manor Vista nursing home in Oakland was probably true. Here, finally, was someone who may have actually participated in it.

Captain, the body’s in the ME’s custody now. It was Skip Thorne, returned from the street. Thorne saw the pale frown on Brogan’s face. Hey, you okay? You don’t look so hot. It is kind of ripe in here.

Brogan stood up, gathering loose papers back into a shoebox. I’ll live.

Thorne was scanning the room. You look like you’ve just seen a ghost.

Brogan snorted. Maybe I have, Lieutenant. Maybe I have. You got any evidence bags with you?

Thorne radioed down to Shriver, with the ambulance below. The radio crackled with scratchy voices. Captain wants a few more bags up here. We’re taking some homework back to the station.

Brogan stared intently at the trunk. The truth’s in there, Lieutenant. Let’s bag all of it.

Thorne just shrugged. He was a vagrant, for Christ’s sake. The ME’ll establish cause of death. What do we need all that crap for? It’ll just clutter up the evidence shelves in the basement.

Brogan was already carefully extracting the remaining shoeboxes and lining them up on the dingy bed. ’Cause I’m curious. I’m a detective. I’m nosy and I like to butt into people’s business…that’s why. You hungry?

Resigned, Lieutenant Thorne came over and started helping. I could go for some of that crumb cake and a coffee at Pano’s, since you’re offering.

Brogan snorted. I was asking, not offering. But Pano’s sounds good to me.

Thorne was curious. So what’s eating you, Captain? Something’s bugging you about this fellow. You want to spill it so we’ll all know?

Brogan took the handful of evidence bags Lieutenant Shriver had just brought up and began sealing them over each shoebox. There were nearly a dozen, each one crammed to bursting with moldy papers, letters, maps, and scraps of pages.

Let’s get this stuff down to the station and I’ll meet you two clowns at Pano’s. Eleven o’clock?

Your treat? Thorne asked hopefully.

Brogan scowled at the both of them. You guys are like my girlfriend’s kids…always wanting a handout. My treat.

Yipppeee… Thorne smiled. They slipped under the crime scene tape barrier and headed down to Eddy Street.

Pano’s was a typical North Beach cop hangout in the shadow of Telegraph Hill, vaguely Italian with the best bakery this side of Market Street and thankfully devoid of all the grimy flop houses and massage parlors the Im/Forn squad seemed to spend most of its time around. Normal looking people, with normal dress—or what passed for normal in Frisco—inhabited the streets and cafes and during the day, Union Street was thick with snorting herds of bankers and stockbrokers and other financial types.

Plus the owner, Gino Cappelletti, served the best crumb cake and cappuccino this side of the San Andreas fault. As a result, half the Metro and Golden Gate Divisions could be found within five minutes drive of the place pretty much around the clock.

Brogan came in, and found Thorne with Shriver and Lieutenant Mike Floyd, a refugee from Narcotics/Vice, there as well. The detective squeezed into the booth.

Word gets around when the old man’s buying, huh, Mike?

Floyd just winked. Gino’s whipping up a special deal for us even as we wait. Smells heavenly, don’t it?

Thorne sipped at a coffee, his face wreathed in steam. So what’s eating you, Captain? ME’s preliminary on that Russian vagrant was a heart attack. It’s not even a murder. Why all the sudden interest? Did you know the guy or something?

Brogan waited until he had his own coffee, black with two sugars, and a dipping doughnut on the side. He tenderly sipped the scalding liquid.

There’s a possibility I might have heard of him before, yeah.

Thorne was immediately intrigued. So talk, already. Don’t keep us in suspense. You been hanging out in the Tenderloin after hours or something?

Brogan shook his head. Nothing quite so tawdry as that. Actually, it’s kind of a long story.

We’re all ears, Mike Floyd said.

Brogan swirled a spoon through his coffee, watching a few crumbs dancing around the spoon.

Well, this is going to take some time.

Then Captain Wade Brogan Jr. proceeded to relate to his colleagues the most extraordinary tale they had ever heard.

CHAPTER 1

Tuesday, May 8, 1945

Los Alamos Scientific Laboratory

10:00 p.m.

As parties went, the V-E day bash that night at Fuller Lodge was fairly subdued. Oppie had already spoken that afternoon, before a huge throng, right out there in front of T Building, several hundred of them at least. Jammed all along Trinity Drive, even onto the muddy shores of the Pond…a throbbing, buzzing crowd, alive with excitement. Hitler was dead, the Nazis defeated, Germany had surrendered.

Parties and gatherings had erupted all over the Hill that afternoon and evening. Knots of people gesturing and laughing, even singing, clotted the dusty avenues between the buildings. The Cryogenics Lab, down by the canyon rim, had even put on an impromptu dinner and dance, catered bucket-brigade fashion all the way up from the commissary.

So why the hell was Edvard Tolkach so morose, sitting in the corner of the lodge’s great room below a rack of stuffed coyotes over the huge stone fireplace? Hans Bethe, head of T Division, had put out the word: there’ll be another party at Fuller tonight…we’re all gathering there after nine…come as you are…we’ll snack and drink and laugh…we’ll show ‘em T Division knows how to put on a real affair—

It was that kind of night on the Hill at Los Alamos.

Fuller Lodge was a rambling wood frame building, an overgrown log cabin with a large veranda out front and twin chimneys on the sides. Night had come to the tech area but lights blazed up and down Trinity Drive and Central Avenue and Canyon Road. People still gathered in clusters of three and four, whispering and laughing into the wee hours of the morning.

Somehow, the dinner, dance and the piano playing seemed forced, even sad, to Edvard Tolkach. He sat out most of the late-evening festivities and the sing-alongs and hunkered down in a corner of the smoky, stifling, great room with several glasses of his favorite schnapps and a fresh pack of Lucky Strikes. While the others laughed and waltzed and joked across the parquet floor, Tolkach smoked and sipped his schnapps, indifferent to all the gaiety swirling around him. For the better part of three hours, he became little more than furniture, a brooding fixture rooted to the darkest corners of the hall.

Henry Graebel noticed him, several times. Two minutes to ten, he decided to do something about the dour Czech physicist who sat like a bespectacled Sphinx on a tattered bar stool.

Edvard, you’ve not sang a single song with us. What’s the matter with you tonight? It’s a glorious day…victory in Europe, the Nazis defeated.

Tolkach sniffed at the dregs of his schnapps, wanting more.

I’m bored.

You’re always bored at parties. Didn’t you go to parties in Czechoslovakia? Why do you come, if you’re bored?

Tolkach shrugged, looked up. Bethe said I should be here. You know how it is…comradely spirit, all that. He said Oppie might show up.

Graebel sipped at his own scotch and water. Oppie’s gone to bed. The man’s exhausted. He looks like Death itself. He needs his rest. Graebel was an Englishman. He’d known Rutherford himself, had come across the ‘pond’ to work on the Gadget and contribute a little expertise in radiation studies. He was accustomed to the melancholy moods of the Central Europeans. Maybe it’s the dark forests, he liked to say. He made a show of counting all the empty schnapps glasses, clucking at Tolkach. Five glasses…that’s nearly a whole bottle, Edvard. You leave any schnapps for me?

Tolkach snorted. You don’t like schnapps, Henry.

Neither will you, in about two hours. You eat anything tonight? Got something on your stomach?

Tolkach scowled and downed the last drops defiantly. He made an elaborate show of how precisely he could situate the glass with the others on the bar.

Graebel squeezed the physicist’s shoulder. He knew Tolkach still had a heavy heart. Liesel was gone…what was it now? Less than two months. Tragic was the only word. Los Alamos didn’t see many suicides.

You’ve been plotting the end of the world again, haven’t you?

Tolkach shrugged him off, eyed a husky man in a buckskin jacket over at the bar. The man had been following every move he’d made all evening, not so discreetly. I’m okay. It’s a bit stuffy in here, that’s all.

Graebel lit a cigarette, a Camel, and offered one to Tolkach. He took it and lit up, blowing smoke hard through his nostrils.

Let’s go outside, Edvard. It’s cooler and the air’s fresh with pine scent. Parties are winding down anyway. People still have to go to work tomorrow.

The two of them squeezed through some diehard jitterbugging couples and went out into the backyard of the lodge, finding a wooden porch railing overlooking a dusty fenced-in enclosure and beyond that more dust…Central Avenue and yet another throng of revelers. A faint Tommy Dorsey tune wafted on the cool night breeze, a car radio at the end of the drive. Inside, two shadows moved languidly, embraced in love.

Tolkach’s face glowed in the red light of the cigarette tip. He faced Graebel and smoothed back the bushy side lobes of his hair. The man in the buckskin jacket had moved outside as well, lingering at the end of the veranda, engaged in conversation with a pretty secretary in a sweater.

You know, Henry, it’s like I said before: there’s a lot of unfinished work to do. Oppie said the same thing this afternoon. The war’s going to be over before the Gadget’s finished.

Graebel had heard it in the hallways and the PX a thousand times before. The Nazis were finished. The Japs were the enemy now. Men are still dying in the Pacific. The war’s still on.

The Japanese are crumbling fast. What happens if they surrender before we test…before Trinity?

Maybe we shouldn’t concern ourselves with that, Edvard. I hear Truman’s a reasonable man. He’ll do the right thing. We should just concern ourselves with our own problems…hell, we’ve got bloody enough of those to deal with.

Tolkach started to say something but stopped. Raymond had been pushy lately. WINDWARD too. Kate had been nervous about it. They always want more, more information. Drawings. Details. When is the test? We need sketches, specifications. Fuses, detonators, circuit diagrams. More and more. Always more.

It made Tolkach nervous too. Giving birth was never easy…you couldn’t rush it. The Gadget had its own timetable. It didn’t help that they were watching him too. Official suspicion was the term. It was like a low-grade headache, always there in the background, never quite going away. Only Bethe and Oppie had managed to keep him from being kicked off the Hill.

Trouble was…the war might be over before it was born.

Graebel sniffed. The pressure’s getting to us, all of us. The Englishman had come to the Hill by way of the Met Lab. He was one of Compton’s boys. We need to unwind like this, more often, don’t you think.

Tolkach snapped. I don’t know what to think anymore. I— He stopped abruptly when several couples joined them on the porch, seeking cooler air.

Graebel nodded to Helmut Witmer, head of T Division’s instrument lab and his pretty Danish wife Ingrid. Witmer nursed a cocktail, his eyebrows arching inquisitively. Did I interrupt something here? A serious technical discussion?

Graebel grabbed Tolkach’s elbow. Dr. Witmer. Mrs. Witmer. A pleasure to see you tonight. We were just on our way out for a little stroll. He guided Tolkach off the porch and around the front of the lodge. They headed for Trinity Drive. To their right, white gateposts of the East Road security gate shone in bright floodlights. MP’s lounged in Jeeps all about the entrance. Traffic had dwindled to a trickle around the East Gate as the evening wore on. The MP’s paid them no attention.

Tolkach and Graebel turned right onto Trinity, heading up the street past the vast T building, home to the base administration, with its Physics and Chemistry Lab wings. Bathtub Row was still brightly lit up tonight, as sounds of more parties drifted on light breezes. At the 15th Street intersection, they made a left and strolled on in semi-darkness between rows of Quonset huts and aluminum shacks, past wooden signs labeled Machine Shop, Metrology Lab, and Physical Chemistry. The heart of the tech area was normally awash in pedestrian traffic by day but the streets were emptying out as the gatherings moved indoors. Laughter sprinkled with shouts and a few car horns honked in the distance. It had been a crazy day, when the news of the surrender had come in, and the night promised more of the same.

The men paused as a pair of white-helmeted MP’s sauntered by. They nodded, half-saluting, with the sort of smirk the physicists had come to expect. Soldiers thought Los Alamos was a freak show, full of funny-looking people with strange accents. Sometimes, Tolkach thought they were right. The MP’s snickered and turned down an alley between two shacks.

As he turned back, Tolkach checked the end of the street. As expected, the tail was still there, strolling along in the company of two women, arm in arm. The man in the buckskin jacket. Davy Crockett, Tolkach had taken to calling him. He’d seen the man before, a number of times. Security was funny that way. They seemed to rotate the duty, always coming back to the same faces in a few days. The Army was like that. It was strangely comforting.

Tolkach turned back, sucked harder on his cigarette. Henry…tell me the truth. You think we should drop the bomb on the Japanese?

Graebel shrugged, invisible in the darkness. If you mean: did I see the petition that’s going around, the answer is yes. Do I agree with it…I mean, with the theory we should demonstrate the bomb first before we use it on a target… Graebel jammed his hands in his pockets. I’ve not made up my mind on that one.

It’s the only moral thing to do.

Maybe. But we’ve not tested the thing ourselves yet. What if it’s a dud? Say we invite the Jap leaders to some small island in the Pacific and set off the bomb there and it fizzles. What then?

It won’t fizzle, Tolkach was sure. The test’ll go off just fine. When are you heading down to the Site?

Graebel flicked his cigarette butt into the dust and squashed it with the heel of his shoe. Day after tomorrow. I’m with the Herzl and the rest of the fusing people. There’s a bloody lot of wiring to run before the Gadget comes. How about you?

Tolkach could feel Davy Crockett’s eyes burning through the back of his head. He forced himself to focus straight ahead, and not turn about. I’ve going back East, remember. Liesel’s estate—

Ah, yes…you did tell me. Permission and all?

Tolkach nodded. Getting off the Hill was just about as hard as getting on it. The estate lawyers were meeting in New York City. Groves himself had to approve the trip, with strict time and travel limits. Security was stifling as the days counted down to the Trinity shot. Tolkach was sure he’d have plenty of company.

I’m signing some papers, that’s all. Just a formality. I’ll be back in two days, maybe three.

What about the children? Kristen and—your young one--?

Jurgen’s the youngster. They’re still with the Shurers. Wilfrid and Betty love them…I’m grateful. Tolkach twisted slightly, caught a side glimpse of Davy Crockett, moving up closer. The secretaries were gone. Another man had joined him. Very grateful—

Graebel was impressed. I’m surprised Groves approved it…at this point in the Project. What with security getting tighter every day.

They can strangle us with security, Tolkach muttered. In the long run, it won’t matter. Knowledge of all this—the Gadget, the physics, the techniques—can’t be kept hidden. We should be sharing it, with our allies, with the world.

Graebel snorted. Idealistic poppycock, Edvard and you know it. Just watch what you say around here. Just the other day, a machinist was picked up for questioning. He’d been mouthing off too much in the bar, the one in the Big House. I heard the bartender works for the Army.

They strolled on down into the heart of the tech area, slipping between the boiler house and a small tin-roofed hut that served as a clinic, drawn inexorably toward still-raucous knots and clusters of late-night revelers. A car radio blared a Glenn Miller medley while in the pools of spotlights, a dance line of T-Division technicians and clerks had formed, a big pinwheel undulating across the dust. Laughter and shrieks punctuated the night. MP’s cruised the perimeter, trying to keep a semblance of order.

Fifty yards behind the scientists, Dog Brogan paused on the edge of the gathering, clapping his hands in time to the music, while his target ambled on into the darkness. Tolkach and Graebel made another turn at the patrol road fence, and headed back toward Trinity, toward the trading post.

Running surveillance was tricky at times. He knew Tolkach was well aware of the tail—in fact, that was part of the plan. But you didn’t want to crowd a target. Give him room to feel comfortable and he’d lead you to the nest every time…that was the general idea. Brogan smiled at the dancing, while his partner, Andy Perkins, slipped down a dark alley to keep an eye on their friends. Switching off didn’t hurt, either. A target could get used to a tail, almost like they were dancing themselves, and work the tail to his own ends. Sort of like the tail wagging the dog, was how Colonel Cates liked to put it.

Brogan waited a few moments, then hustled to keep up with Quantum. He saw Perkins hand wave him over from the shadows by a stack of lumber.

Looks like they’re heading back, Perkins offered.

To the Lodge?

Maybe…there are so many people out tonight, it’s hard to stay up with them.

Better for us, Brogan reminded him. I’ve just got a feeling, Cactus. Tonight’s the night. Something’s going to pop…I can just feel it.

Could be my bladder, Perkins said. After all those drinks—

Shhh---

They eased out into the light and began sauntering north, toward Trinity Drive and the bungalows, to all intents and purposes a pair of scientists engaged in heated argument over some obscure point of theoretical physics.

Brogan knew full well there were at least one, maybe more, Soviet agents on the Hill. Since coming to Los Alamos, it was his job to be professionally suspicious of everyone. That was what Counter-Intelligence Corps agents did. But from late March, at the direction of Cates and his boss Colonel Parsons, Tolkach had gotten the lion’s share of attention.

It was a ticklish operation. A machinist from T Division, name of Gray Givens, had already been arrested and expelled from the Hill. He’d been caught with papers in his quarters he didn’t have clearance for. Tolkach was a different animal, though. He had arrived in February ’43, one of the earliest émigré physicists to set up shop. He was tight with Oppenheimer and Hans Bethe. Impeccable credentials. Worked with Fermi in Chicago. Rutherford in England. World expert in shock wave physics.

He was proving a very hard nut to crack indeed, not the least because he had high-level protection from Oppie himself. Critical to the project…critical to national security, were the words he remembered.

Edvard Tolkach had sufficient clearance to handle sensitive ordnance-related papers, materials and components, things like fuses and detonator designs but he was too canny to get caught with materials outside his clearance. Searches of his quarters routinely turned up nothing incriminating. Still, surveillance had on more than one occasion observed Tolkach (code named Quantum) bargaining with the PX manager for odd items, such as unusual quantities of paper (for coded reports, maybe?) and an unusual number of keys and locking devices. Odd things for a physicist to be getting from the base PX.

Word had come down to the Detachment directly from Groves on 10 April: put Quantum under 24-hour surveillance until further notice. Since CIC Los Alamos Detachment wasn’t blessed with a huge pool of agents, the order put a strain on operations. Everyone had to pitch in, even Col. Cates. Brogan had even left his undercover position as a stock clerk at the PX and gone on watch full time. It was boring as hell but potentially rewarding as there was growing evidence that a major Soviet spy ring was working the Hill and Dr. Tolkach was involved.

In between surveillance shifts and making out reports and other routine duties, Brogan contrived to spend as much time as he could with Kate. But the pressure of activity on the Hill and tightened security made seeing her more than once every few weeks difficult. He was growing frustrated and anxious for something to break, anything. The strain was getting to everyone.

Tolkach waved off Graebel and headed back to his own dormitory, a low rambling structure not far from the Big House up on Nectar Street. Brogan and Perkins followed at a discreet distance, negotiating several more street gatherings, horns honking and radios blaring. Tolkach disappeared inside for nearly an hour, while the CIC agents marked time outside, then the Czech physicist re-appeared suddenly and flung several bags into a nearby Dodge. He fired up the engine and spun off down the street in a swirl of dust, turning left at Central.

Brogan watched from the shadows of a telephone pole. Ten bucks says he’s out the East Gate and on his way to Santa Fe. Better let Coyote know he’s rolling.

Perkins nodded. MP’s can follow him to the train station. Coyote’ll pick him up there. What time’s the Starliner leave?

Brogan was already heading back to the Detachment command post, a rude hut behind T Building that everyone called the log cabin. Schedule says there’s a train departing at midnight. All-nighter to Chicago. We think he’ll make a change there before going on to New York.

New York’s the end of the trail?

Brogan was hurrying now, almost in a trot across the dusty street, dodging some crazy Jeep driver, who had to swerve to avoid them. New York’s the Emerald City…the place is crawling with Russians. With Tolkach on the move, this game’s in the fourth quarter. We nab Quantum with his fingers in the cookie jar and we could win the whole ball game…smash up the Soviets and their whole network for good. But we can’t let him out of sight for even a moment.

Perkins finally caught up with Brogan as both agents rushed toward the brightly lit ‘log cabin.’

Edvard Tolkach cleared Security at the East Gate with a minimum of fuss. He had the right papers, the right signatures. He headed off onto the darkened road—rutty old Highway 502 to Pojoacque, then south on 84 to Santa Fe. He squinted at the cones of his headlights, trying to stay on the road through all the blind twists and turns. It was a cloudy, moonless, but mild night. He took several deep breaths, forced himself to slow down, to concentrate.

It was a critical trip, but not for the reasons one might suspect.

Finally, he’d get to meet the right people. No more of this working through underlings and intermediaries and ‘handlers’. Finally, he’d meet face to face with WINDWARD himself and set things straight between them. Explain once and for all why he had agreed to do all this. Why sharing information with Allies was so important. This constant pressure for more—more drawings, more sketches, more details and information—was insane. It was going to blow up on all of them and soon. People would get hurt. Some already had. No, WINDWARD would understand, once it was explained to him.

He would have to understand.

He made Santa Fe and the train station in good order, just after 11:30 and parked his car on the curb at the Cerrilos Road entrance. Inside, hustling two small bags, he bought his tickets and waited nervously on Platform 3, chain-smoking Lucky Strikes, while the station crews made the Starliner ready for boarding. At a quarter to twelve, the conductor whistled three toots and called alllll…aaboooooard. Tolkach queued up and climbed up into the car, settling into a seat in the back, a seat he had all to himself. That was good. He was jittery and half-nauseated—Graebel had been right about the schnapps on an empty stomach—and he didn’t want to face anybody else tonight. Just snooze and think, think about what he would say to WINDWARD when they finally met.

Five minutes after twelve, the Atchinson, Topeka and Santa Fe’s pride and joy, the Midwest Starliner, strained and rumbled and hissed and finally got underway, easing out of the station onto northbound tracks, heading north for the Dixon Gap, paralleling the Rio Grande itself. In a few hours time, they’d be in Colorado, turning northeast across the great plains for Chicago and a speed run into the Windy City.

Tolkach dozed lightly. He was unaware that he had company. Coyote sat just two seats ahead, facing aft, fully awake beneath his black fedora, chin buried in a light wool jacket, keenly attuned to every snort and sniffle the Czech physicist made that night. There was no way in hell that CIC was going to let this big a fish give them the slip now.

Chicago came and went and Tolkach changed trains in a dim foggy blur of half-sleep, boarding the Gotham Express a little before eleven the next morning. He tried to check around for obvious surveillance and didn’t see any. The train pulled out for Manhattan a little after one. Coyote was still there, half a car away on the opposite side of the aisle this time. Major Matthew Delaney had made the train only moments after Tolkach, flashing his CIC badge for the conductor and squeezing past a couple engrossed in a long sloppy goodbye at the steps. He eased into his seat, hiked up a tattered copy of the Tribune, lowered his fedora and waited.

Quantum gave no evidence he noticed anything at all. He was fast asleep in minutes and Gotham Express was rolling across the north Indiana farm country inside of an hour, speeding east through a humid, cloudy early spring day toward Manhattan.

Grand Central Station was chaos, as usual. Remnants of the V-E day celebrations littered the concourse, piled into piles by the sanitation crews. Streamers and banners and hand-lettered signs and pieces of paper American flags and confetti and cups and all manner of debris covered the tile plaza. It was as if a great balloon had burst overhead, raining down paper in sheets and torrents onto the platforms. Victory disease had struck New York hard and fastened its grip on the city, as thousands of commuters and pedestrians surged back and forth along the sidewalks and streets, great rivers of smiling, kissing, shouting humanity. Manhattan was one vast college fraternity bubbling over with excitement and abandon. It looked like it might go on for days.

Tolkach dropped his bags on the side of the platform and fished in his coat pocket for a single scrap of paper. He found it and opened it: 108 East 34th Street, across from Vanderbilt Hotel and Fourth. The address was the agreed-upon meeting place. A week before he’d left Los Alamos, he’d worked out with his handler in Santa Fe where to meet WINDWARD. It was a place called Schinemann’s Deli.

Tolkach hoisted up his bags and located a taxi stand up at street level. Twenty minutes later, he was pushing his way into the deli.

Back booth…last one on the right…he’ll be wearing a gray parka with a Yankees ball cap…he remembered Kate’s instructions almost to the letter. He had memorized them; she was firm about not writing anything down. Too dangerous, she said. Could fall into the wrong hands.

He hadn’t seen any obvious tail on the taxi ride, but that meant little. The Army was clever. For all he knew, they could well have planted agents inside Schinemann’s, though how they would have known, he couldn’t say.

And there he was…short, rather stout, dark-rimmed glasses buried in the sports section of the Times. Coffee and a cigarette, plate of half-eaten tuna fish sandwich.

Tolkach went over, dropped his bags. Their eyes met. Kate had made him memorize the introduction.

Yankees don’t have any pitching this year. They’ll never get the pennant without pitching.

The stout man removed his Yankees ball cap and wearily rubbed a nearly bald head. His eyes said sit down. Tolkach sat down.

A gloomy dour face with button black eyes regarded him coldly. Tolkach wet his lips, felt the urge to say something, anything. Had he made a terrible mistake? He swallowed hard, then found a few words and forced them out.

You’re just as Kate described you. Finally, I meet WINDWARD. He extended a hand across the table. The gloomy man did nothing.

You take great risks coming here like this. You know you’ve been followed?

Tolkach retracted his hand, looked at it as if it were contaminated. He pulled his smaller bag up into his lap and unzipped it, removing a folder. I know that. I have information for you. And we need to speak.

The bald man sipped thoughtfully at the dregs of his coffee. His eyes narrowed, darting about the deli and kitchen. I’m not WINDWARD. And don’t use names like that in public.

Tolkach jerked as if stung. But—

For now…call me BISHOP. That’s all you need to know. Why have you come? You’ve violated every procedure coming here, especially with sensitive information.

Tolkach’s mouth worked but words nearly escaped him. But ACORN, er…Kate—she said she would arrange it…I mean—I am supposed to meet WIND— he stopped, mindful of the warning. You know—

He doesn’t meet—colleagues—in public. You have to work through the right channels. Much safer that way. More secure. The Army’s suspicious…you know that.

Yes, yes…I’m well aware of their suspicions. They’ve searched my place half a dozen times, followed me night and day. I’ve brought information…about the test. About Trinity. And other things. But I must see WINDWARD…immediately.

BISHOP scowled. Why?

Tolkach let the waitress take his order. He got a coffee and sandwich, realizing he was starving. When she had moved off, he passed an envelope across the table. BISHOP glared at it, without moving. Give that to WINDWARD. It’s a schematic of the detonator layout…the explosive lens and their geometry. For the bomb. It proves I’m serious. Kate said he wanted it.

BISHOP’s lips tightened and he shook his head, a quick almost furtive nod. This is not the time or the place. Put it away. I’ll tell you what to do with it later. Not here. Just tell me: why must you see WINDWARD?

Tolkach swallowed hard. He had thought about this very question, for days, weeks. Look, I’m not a traitor. I’m not a spy. America is a wonderful country. Like a big bear…clumsy but strong. Misguided at times. This— he waved the envelope, before stuffing it back in his bag—this kind of knowledge is powerful. We ought be sharing it with our Allies. Science doesn’t work in a closet. Scientists need to talk, argue, swap theories, criticize each other. All this security makes that impossible. And now, with the Nazis gone, Germany defeated, it makes even less sense. I want to tell WINDWARD that, tell him—he groped for the right words—to stop pushing so hard. We’re under a lot of pressure out there. The big test is coming up. It’s just a few months away, maybe a few weeks. It depends on things. And I want to set things straight.

Straight? How do you mean?

Straight between him and me. Why I agreed to give him this kind of information in the first place. I’m no Communist. I just wanted to do everything I could to make sure Germany was defeated.

BISHOP was thoughtful. You agreed to help us. You said you would help out. The best way to help is to give them the information they want.

Yes, but they keep pushing for more and more. It’s getting harder, with all the long hours, the tests, the calculations. Security’s tighter than ever. I just want WINDWARD to back off, leave me alone for awhile. Look, the whole reason I agreed to come to Los Alamos was to work on the project. We all thought the Germans were ahead. They had Hahn, they had Heisenberg, they had heavy water from Norway. We couldn’t be sure. Now Germany’s defeated. There’s no need for this kind of pressure anymore.

What about the Japanese?

Tolkach scoffed. The Japanese are on their last legs. Read the papers…it’s right there in black and white…anybody could see it. But the Project goes on…they want to do the test and drop the bomb, on somebody, before the war’s over. It’s the only way all the expense and the secrecy can be justified. Japan could capitulate at any time. There’s serious talk around the Hill that we should offer to demonstrate it to them, before using it. Tolkach shrugged, let the waitress set down his ham and Swiss. I think it’s a good idea.

BISHOP was considering several angles, none of which concerned Tolkach. I’ll talk to WINDWARD tonight. You mentioned the test. When is it? When will the thing be ready for use?

Tolkach devoured the sandwich. Between bites, lettuce dribbling out of the corner of his mouth, he said, Sometime in July, probably. The date hasn’t been set. There are other tests and experiments first. More calculations have to be done, then they have to be checked by others. It all takes time. I don’t see us with anything useful as a bomb until the fall…unless everything goes perfectly. Japan will be defeated by then.

BISHOP was already thinking ahead. Tolkach didn’t know it but Harry Wellmann—nee BISHOP—was working both sides of the street, and it was lucrative as hell so long as eggheads like the Czech physicist didn’t muck it up for everybody. Even WINDWARD and the Russians didn’t know the full story. The whole business was like a carnival house of mirrors, with everything reflecting everything, and Wellmann was the only one who knew the way out. Every scrap of intelligence he had procured for WINDWARD over the last two years, had also been provided to a contact at the Japanese Embassy in Switzerland. The fees were quite handsome. Wellmann had just put a down payment on a house up in Chappaqua, north of the city, and he had plenty left to bankroll the furnishings.

He glared back at Tolkach, sitting there with mayonnaise on his chin, sweating like an overgrown child about to be spanked. The poor clod had brains and credentials and morals and ethical principles about world peace and he might as well have been theorizing about it to the orangutans at the Bronx Zoo, for all he cared. Tolkach and his type were slugs to be stepped on, grease for the wheels, cows to be milked. They didn’t know a whit about the way the world really worked.

Wellmann—he assumed the persona of BISHOP on special occasions like this—had been paid handsomely by the Japanese for years. He worked for the Soviets on principle. He studied Tolkach for a moment.

When I give the word, go into the men’s room with your envelope. Anything else you have for WINDWARD too. Wait in the first stall—close the door—for five minutes. I’ll come in and occupy the second stall.

You’ll tell WINDWARD I want to talk, to see him?

Sure, sure…tonight. Maybe tomorrow morning. Wellmann looked about, systematically eliminating each and every patron at Schinemann’s as a tail. Finally, he made a show of slurping up the rest of his coffee. His mouth was hidden by the cup, but his words were unmistakable. Okay, Tolkach…now. Go on…now.

The scientist paused for a moment, until BISHOP’s eyes screamed at him over the rim of the cup. Startled, he got up and went to the restroom. As instructed, he entered the first stall and locked the door behind him. He waited, tapping his feet nervously, for what seemed like an hour. Several men came, did their business and went.

Presently, he heard BISHOP rustling into the second stall beside him.

His voice was thick and low. Tolkach…is that you? Are you there?

I’m here. What took you so long?

Never mind that…pass me the envelope. Quickly…I don’t have all day.

Tolkach did as he was told.

And the exchange was done in seconds. What do you want me to do now?

BISHOP was already exiting the stall. His voice was firm, a low hiss. Leave the diner. Go south on Madison. There’s a hotel called Prince George. Somewhere around Twenty-Eighth. Go into the lobby. Be at the bar at 8:00 tonight. I’ll have instructions for you then.

You’ll be there.

Me or someone else. Now…wait in here for five more minutes. Then leave the deli. I’ve already paid the bill.

And he was gone…with no further word.

Tolkach sat on the toilet for a few more minutes, his head swimming. He was sleepy, confused. WINDWARD was the key. He had to meet WINDWARD, explain things. There was no need for all this secrecy and invisible ink letters and code names, not anymore. The enemy was defeated. The Nazis were dust. If WINDWARD would just back off and stop pushing, the American Army would relax its suffocating security procedures and then everyone could behave like civilized people. Scientists could meet in conferences, exchange data, chat and theorize. It would be like Prague back in the Thirties, like Tubingen, before the Nazis.

Tolkach had a pounding headache when he left the diner. It was late afternoon, close on to five p.m., and the streets were still thick with shouts and impromptu gatherings. Taxis roared west on 34th Street, streaming American flags, serviceman clinging to the bumpers and running boards like leeches. Across the street, a small crowd was cheering as two GI’s shinnied up adjacent lampposts in some sort of vertical race to the top. Tolkach walked west, then south on Madison in a fog, buffeted left and right by rivers of people streaming in all directions at once.

He had walked five blocks before he even remembered to check for surveillance. He paused at a newsstand, bought a copy of the Times, and looked around. It was hopeless, he quickly realized. There were just too many people. A whole Army could have been after him and he’d never know it in this chaotic stew. Dejected, he plodded on toward the hotel BISHOP had mentioned.

Harry Wellmann, for his part, was by now on the other side of Manhattan, riding in a taxi up to the train station at West End Avenue, by Columbia University. He’d buy his steamship tickets there, then take the train on up to Chappaqua, and pack tonight in the splendor of his new Tudor-style brick two-story, just a stone’s throw from the emerald beauty of the Hudson River valley. With any luck, he’d be aboard ship tomorrow and pulling out of New York harbor by late afternoon. The Mendoza Line had always been his preferred means of passage across the Atlantic. With the convoys gone and the war in Europe now over, he ought to be able to make Lisbon in five or six days. After that, a quick train trip through Spain and France and he’d been in Berne in no time.

Count Okushiri Sasebo would pay handsomely indeed for the information Tolkach had brought him.

Watching the street dancing and the general madness of the post-V-E day celebrations through the dingy cab window, Wellmann knew that the Big Day had to be coming up soon. A test of the new bomb seemed to be only weeks away, at most. Tolkach had mentioned there were even plans for multiple bombs to be produced and shipped to the Pacific, if the test was successful.

This kind of information would be extremely useful to the Japanese, he had no doubt of that. Count Sasebo would be pleased. But there was much work to do. Once he got to Chappaqua, he’d have to write down everything Tolkach had said, write it with the special lemon-extract ink WINDWARD had furnished him last fall. And he’d have to carefully cut and fold the schematics Tolkach had given him too, so they’d fit properly in the hidden slots of his suitcase.

Of course, he’d furnish the same information to the Russians as well, slightly altered and take his fee from them too. That was the beauty of the arrangement. The Japanese and the Russians both paid well for critical information about what the Americans were up to. All you had to do was slightly re-format the stuff and then pass it along as fresh intelligence. The only risk was if the Russians and the Japanese got together and started comparing notes. He figured that was about as likely as seeing dinosaurs marching down Broadway.

The fisherman’s job was easy if you had the right bait and enough lines in the water.

CHAPTER 2

Tuesday, May 15, 1945

Vladivostok, U.S.S.R.

2:30 p.m.

Vice Admiral Hiro Ushenda glowered at the assembled team of Russian diplomats across the table. He had no use for the Russians and no use for this hare-brained scheme of a trip to Vladivostok. The idea of using the Russians as intermediaries to broker better peace terms with the Americans and British was ludicrous.

But the peace faction had the Emperor’s ear and Ushenda, as a representative of the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff, had been ordered along. The Sacred Voice of the Crane was not to be denied, even if His Majesty suffered with the advice of cowards and traitors.

Molotov was speaking, droning on, and Ushenda listened desultorily to the translation. The People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs looked like a schoolteacher, his tuft of gray moustache twitching and pince-nez glasses sliding down his nose. Sitting next to Molotov was the deputy commissar, Solomon Lozovsky, who had handled the bulk of the negotiations. The Russians had already spent three hours finding evermore obscure and pedantic ways of saying no.

The Japanese delegation listened politely, without emotion. Naotake Sato, the Japanese Ambassador to Moscow, was head of the delegation. Koki Hirota, the Home Foreign Minister, had also come along. Commander Yoshiro Fujimura, idly fiddling with a pencil whose point he had already gnawed down to a stump, sat next to Ushenda. Fujimura had come from Switzerland, had spent fruitless hours in secret meetings with Allen Dulles and others from the American O.S.S., trying to find honorable ways to end the slaughter in the Pacific.

Fujimura had brought the Japanese Ambassador to Switzerland, Shunichi Kase, with him from Berne. Captain Kaoru Takeuchi of the Imperial Navy General Staff rounded out the delegation.

The meeting had been an exercise in frustration.

The Soviet Government, Molotov was explaining, seeks to have correct relations with all parties to his conflict. His finger waggled in the air, and Ushenda found himself fascinated with the stubby digit, watching it trace imaginary diagrams, punctuating each phrase as the People’s Commissar made his points. "I remind the assembled delegates from the Empire of Japan that the Government of the U.S.S.R. finds that the views stated in your proposal dated 11 May are quite general in form and contain no concrete proposals. The proposed mission of the Imperial special envoy, Prince Konoye, is also not clear to my Government.

The Government of the U.S.S.R. accordingly, is unable to give any definite answer either as to the message of the Emperor of Japan or to the proposals herewith tendered. Molotov read the prepared response word for word, then put the sheet down and glowered back at the Japanese. Of course, I always avail myself of any opportunity to express to you and to your Emperor my highest regards and esteem.

As one, the Japanese smiled and bowed slightly, as the translation came through. Speaking as the senior representative, Ambassador Sato then extracted his own prepared statement and read its contents back to the Soviets. Ushenda half-dozed, wishing he were anywhere but here.

Our country is standing at the crossroads of destiny, Sato intoned, waiting momentarily for the translation to be made. If we were to continue the war under the present circumstances, the citizens would willingly die with the satisfaction of having truly served their country loyally and patriotically but the country itself would be on the verge of ruin. Although it is possible to remain loyal to the great and just aims of the Greater East Asia War to the very end, it is meaningless to insist on them to the extent of destroying the state. We should protect the survival of our country even by enduring every kind of sacrifice.

Ushenda knew the whole exercise was pointless. It was the mush-headed peace faction that had insisted on sounding the Russians out. Sato himself had requested the meeting, under some pressure from the Foreign Minister Shigenori Togo—an informal get-together, as he had termed it—to find out where the Russians really stood. Would they help or not? Would they declare war on Japan or not?

The purpose of the meeting was to see where the Soviets’ true intentions lay. Ushenda had to admit there was strategic value in that knowledge. The Kwantung Army on the Manchurian border with the Soviet Union was a shell, no longer a capable fighting force. Had they not seen with their own eyes on the ride from the port to the Ministry offices on Partizansky Street, the troop trains and tanks staged for embarkation, thousands of men and hundreds of armored vehicles, moving forward to be ready for action against the Japanese in Manchuria and Mongolia?

Japan’s position was weak. She needed to prevent the Russians from entering the war. Prime Minister Suzuki and Togo and the rest of the peace faction wanted the Russians to negotiate as middlemen, to broker a negotiated peace with the Americans, on better terms than unconditional surrender. Japan wanted the Americans to let them keep the Emperor as head of state. She wanted to keep Okinawa as a province and to have guaranteed access to oil and minerals in Southeast Asia and the Dutch East Indies. The Russians wanted Sakhalin Island and part of Hokkaido.

It was a futile trip and Ushenda found his mind wandering to details of home island defenses he had seen before leaving Etajima. That was where he needed to be now…developing plans for the final, glorious Decisive Battle, where the enemy would be slaughtered on the beaches and in the streets of the cities. Not here, in some dreary conference with rambling diplomats—

—we cannot accept unconditional surrender in any situation, Sato was saying. Although it is apparent that there will be more casualties if the war is prolonged, we will stand united as one nation against the enemy, if the enemy forcibly demands our unconditional surrender. It is, however, our intention with Soviet assistance, to achieve a peace not of the unconditional nature, in order to avoid such a situation which is not in accordance with His Majesty’s desire. Due to rather complicated internal relations— here, Ambassador Sato cast a sideways glance at Ushenda and Takeuchi, the military representatives—it is impossible for Japan to directly ask the Soviet Union for assistance in obtaining a proper peace. However, His Majesty wishes to assure the representatives of the Soviet Government that it is his most earnest desire to participate in a conference in which the Soviet Government will act as an honest mediator with the United States and Great Britain.

And so it went, for several more hours.

The meeting ended at 5:00, with the Russians and the Japanese exchanging formal pleasantries, agreeing to meet again. Nothing had been