The Final Storm Part 25

26. TRUMAN.

NORTH ATLANTIC OCEAN,.

ON BOARD THE USS AUGUSTA JULY 8, 1945.

The swells were gentle, made more smooth by the escort ship that broke the waves before them. She was the USS Philadelphia, another cruiser, designated not only as escort to smooth rough waters, but one more powerful piece of security. He was, after all, the President of the United States.

He stood against the rail, weary of meetings, the various officials mostly belowdecks, some sleeping, certainly. He knew there was seasickness, but not much, and the men who traveled with him would be unlikely to admit it to their boss anyway. The sea didn't bother him as much as he had feared, but the memories did. He had made this crossing before, in the first Great War, as an artillery officer. In 1917 the training had been brief and virtually useless, no one in his small command having any way to know what awaited them in that place they called the Western Front. But the fear was there, would stay there throughout the entire campaign, something an artillery captain could not admit to anyone, certainly not to the men who looked to him for authority, for leadership. He stared out at the swells, the hint of moonlight, thought, it is no different now. Well, maybe it is. This time I have a h.e.l.l of a lot more authority, and a h.e.l.l of a lot more people looking at me for answers. Three months ago I didn't even know the questions.

He had served as vice president for a total of eighty-two days, and during that time it had been made plain to him that President Roosevelt was not exactly his best friend. Vice presidents were chosen to help win an election, and Truman was under no illusion that his greatest benefit to Roosevelt's fourth campaign came from geography. FDR was a New Yorker, an easterner, something that concerned the campaign strategists even though Roosevelt's election to a fourth term was never really in doubt. But balance had always been the key word, and they had sought a midwesterner to round out the ticket. The previous vice president had been another midwesterner, an Iowan, Henry Wallace, but Wallace had caused rumbles around FDR's closest advisors for what some said was a kind of bizarre religious zealotry. It was the excuse made behind closed doors why Wallace should go, but Truman knew that the more likely reason Wallace had been replaced on the ticket was that Winston Churchill despised him. Whether Truman, a plain-spoken senator from Missouri, would do any better job than his predecessor seemed not to matter. The key for the political strategists was whether Truman was a liability to Roosevelt's presidency. Truman had never considered himself a liability to anyone, but then, his own career in politics had been turbulent only on a level that was invisible to anyone outside Missouri. And since Roosevelt's death, Churchill had surprised Truman by accepting him with far more helpfulness than Truman had any right to expect. It was a sad irony to Truman that Churchill seemed willing to support the new president with even greater zeal than many of the men in Washington, who were now Truman's subordinates. The grumbling about him in the halls of various government departments had not been a surprise. While Roosevelt was alive, Truman was very much a fifth wheel, kept outside FDR's inner circle, the president rarely conferring with Truman at all. The vice president's job had included presiding over the Senate, and Truman was perfectly content in that role. He was comfortable there, the familiar faces, the familiar squabbles. But on April 12, the world had changed. The man who was so much the country's grandfather had suddenly gone away. Truman had seen clear signs of Roosevelt's physical decline, but the reality of that had not sunk in until the president's sudden death. Truman the anonymous was now Truman the president, and more important, to the men who confronted the astounding challenges of waging a world war, he was Truman the Commander in Chief.

The air was warm, the only breeze coming from the movement of the ship, and he treasured the solitude, so rare now. He knew his plush quarters belowdecks was the appropriate place for him to be, catching up on whatever sleep he could. If the sleep wasn't there, the worries were, so many details about policy and personality, who among his party were dependable, and who were just along for the ride. He pushed his shoulders back, felt the first rumblings of a headache, thought, if my posture was sound before, it is miserable now. People b.i.t.c.h and moan about carrying the weight of the world on their shoulders. I can honestly say, I am one of them. But I'll put my b.i.t.c.hing up against anybody's. Try this job for a few weeks, pal. See how your shoulders droop. FDR suffered through that with more grit than anyone I've ever known, and no matter how much adulation or respect he earned, he refused to let it go. I suppose he believed that no one else in Washington could do it, no one had the shoulders for it. He may have been right about that. I don't know of a single senator or anyone else who was worthy, no one who could have pulled the country together. Well, most of it, anyway. Now, in every corner of the globe, the question being asked is whether I've got the shoulders, whether I'm worthy. h.e.l.l if I know. d.a.m.n if I can find the instruction book. My job is to ... do my job. Lead, for G.o.d's sake. Keep my nose out of places where the machine is working, and stick it in deep where it isn't. Thank G.o.d this war is on the downhill side. At least, they tell me it is. We won in Europe, we're winning in the Pacific. Maybe the biggest challenge I'll have to face is figuring out how to manage the peace. I can't leave that to military men.

Already a dark cloud was forming over Europe, the very reason for this voyage. His destination was Potsdam, near Berlin, a formal summit with Churchill and Joseph Stalin. Truman winced, thought, Old Joe has made it pretty clear that his best interests are in his best interests. Our best interests are an inconvenience. Tough nut, this one. Screw this up, Harry old boy, and we could find ourselves in another war. Europe needs a little quiet for a change, a few cities allowed to rebuild themselves, the people allowed to find some kind of life again. No one needs the kind of c.r.a.p Stalin is inflicting on those people. How in h.e.l.l do I stop that? Do I? With Stalin you either need extraordinary diplomacy ... or a baseball bat. I think he's bigger than me, so the bat would have to be a surprise. But so far, every communication I've had with the man tells me he's got the big bat, and the big glove, he owns the ball park, and the umpire's in his pocket. Thank G.o.d for Churchill. At least he knows the man, knows how to talk to him, knows what to expect. But we're not getting any respect from the Russians for what we did to the Germans, for the help we gave Stalin's people. Respect? h.e.l.l, they don't even acknowledge us. That's not blind pride either. It's calculated. He's going to push us as far as he can, and that might mean he's going to push us right out of Europe. That won't happen. Can't. Churchill knows that, but he's not in a position to stand up to the Russian tanks like we are. From what they tell me, Old Joe has one h.e.l.l of a lot of tanks. We have Ike, Marshall, Bradley, good people. And a few tanks of our own. Tanks. He pondered the sight of that, what it must have been like for the Germans to watch a sea of Russian armor pouring into Germany, crushing their army, their cities. We did most of that kind of work from the air, I suppose. Germans learned the hard way, that no matter what your boss is telling you, you aren't going to win a war when your factories are getting blown to h.e.l.l every night. And the cities. And the people. Tough decision, there, Franklin. How do you bomb cities and not accept that you're bombing the civilians right along with the munitions plants? Churchill pushed FDR hard on that one, had every right to. Hitler was happy blowing London to h.e.l.l, and we had to return the favor. It was sure as h.e.l.l the right decision. And it worked.

And now we're going to do it again. Been doing it, of course, those puff-chested boys out there in their B-29s, torching every square mile of Tokyo and anywhere else they can find a target. Keep it up, that's all I can say. That's working too. Now ... it might work even better. I've given them the okay, and if what they tell me is accurate, this war oughta be over pretty d.a.m.n soon. If they're wrong, we've gotta send a whole bunch of American boys into j.a.pan, to fight the most fanatical people who've ever tossed a grenade. No, not we. I.

Batter up, Harry.

He turned, looked up at the lights from the bridge, could see more lights beyond the bow of the cruiser, beyond the pair of three-gun turrets that aimed past the Philadelphia. The warships had no need to run in darkness, a wonderful change from the days of the U-boats. But there were no other escorts close by, no aircraft overhead, no great fleets of patrol boats keeping an eye on the new Boss. I wanted this trip kept secret as long as possible, and, by d.a.m.n, they obliged me. I rather like that, asking for something and n.o.body arguing about it.

Truman caught a shadow, a brief flicker of movement back near a row of steel drums. He knew it was a Secret Service agent, knew there were more, and probably some naval guards, lurking in every dark hole. Truman turned again to the water, thought, yep, I suppose there's somebody out there who'd do whatever it took to knock a hole in my head. j.a.p agents all over the d.a.m.n place, so they tell me. Well, not out here. If there were any j.a.p subs puffing around anywhere in this whole d.a.m.n hemisphere, they wouldn't let me hang my face over the side of this ship like some gawking tourist. But in Washington ... watch your step. They hated it when I walked to work, couldn't wait for me to move my a.s.s from Blair House to the White House. h.e.l.l, I liked walking to work. Hardly anybody recognized me, and the mornings can be d.a.m.n nice in the spring. Once the Secret Service started clearing off sidewalks, shoving people aside, well, that took all the fun out of it. I liked Blair House too. There are too d.a.m.n many offices in the White House, too many people who insist on talking to me. Everybody's in a hurry, their pressing matter more pressing than the next guy's. At least the Secret Service is happy. I'm behind thick walls, makes it a lot tougher for some j.a.p agent to pop a rifle in my direction. Well, maybe we can put a stop to that business altogether, give those people a reason to go home. I oughta hear something once I get to Potsdam. Unless there are delays, some problem that rattles the physicists, some reason why Oppenheimer or any of the rest of them think we need to wait, to do more research. They're pretty rattled already, and I can't blame them for that. I'm rattled, and I don't have the faintest d.a.m.n idea how this new bomb is supposed to work. They don't like to talk about it, but they're not sure the d.a.m.n thing will work at all. Or, maybe it will work too well, and destroy the world. Now, there's a h.e.l.l of a notation for the encyclopedia. Harry Truman, Final President of the United States. Most Notable Accomplishment: Destroyed the World.

For eighty-two days he had become accustomed to being on the outside, rarely included in FDR's most high-level discussions, especially with the military people. Truman wasn't bothered by that, knew that the relationship between the president and his vice president could never be chummy. Both men were, after all, politicians, and there was always life after holding office, and then you were likely not to be chums at all. Indeed, he thought, Washington is still Washington. He shook his head. Well, it's not always like that. But we're not used to having our president die in office. Now there's one d.a.m.n good thing about the Const.i.tution. Rules for this sort of thing. Otherwise somebody would just take charge, big mouth and big guns. We'd end up with somebody like ... oh G.o.d ... MacArthur. Yes, thank you, Founding Fathers. Whether FDR kept me involved really didn't matter. But that piece of paper told everyone what they had better do next. There's a new guy in charge. Tell him all the secrets.

The meeting had come in late April, and after Roosevelt's death, it was the second shock Truman received. The messenger had been Henry Stimson, the secretary of war, and across Truman's desk had come the astonishing details of something called the Manhattan Project. Until that meeting, just days after FDR's death, Truman had no idea at all what the project was, no idea that the United States had been spending enormous numbers of man-hours, employing some of the finest minds in the world of physics, to develop a weapon unlike any ever known. Truman had faced the nervous Stimson, who seemed unhappy to be the one to inform the new president that the project had been so secret it was thought unwise to include in its inner circle the vice president of the United States. But Truman knew about it now, even if he didn't completely understand the physics of nuclear fission. Stimson had told him that the physicists were confident then that the first atomic bomb would be ready for testing within four months of that meeting.

He glanced up at the sliver of moon, thought, that's pretty d.a.m.n soon. And d.a.m.n it all, I have to go to this conference and stare down Joe Stalin, and keep my mouth shut about the biggest d.a.m.n bomb ever built, a weapon that could very well stop this war. We're not even sure the thing will explode, and that's gotta be driving the physicists and their teams insane. Never been done before, ever. Might be a nice enhancement to my baseball bat if I could tell Joe Stalin that this d.a.m.n bomb not only exists, it actually works. Hey, Joe, you get your d.a.m.n tanks out of Poland or we might have to use Moscow as a testing ground.

He closed his eyes, a sharp shake of his head. Don't do that, Harry. This isn't a backyard spat, and this is a h.e.l.l of a lot more important than punching a bully in the eye. This is a secret, and if there's one man on this earth who doesn't need to hear about it, it's Stalin. Churchill knows, thank G.o.d for that. He knew from the beginning, and I guess it makes sense that FDR would have brought him into the ring. The Brits were aching pretty bad, too much blood, too much gloom. Even if Churchill had to keep his mouth shut, at least we could let him know that we were working like h.e.l.l to stick something new up our sleeve. The thing that stirs my coffee is that, from what we know now, Hitler was doing the same thing. Whether this big d.a.m.n son of a b.i.t.c.h actually fires off or not, I'm a lot happier that we're testing this thing over some desert in New Mexico than some n.a.z.i b.a.s.t.a.r.d doing it over London. G.o.d, I can't even think about that.

There had been additional meetings, some with the military men who stood guard over the Manhattan Project, some with the physicists themselves. With every piece of new information, Truman had become increasingly amazed that the secret had been as well kept as it had. This is Washington, for G.o.d's sake. Between Drew Pearson and William Randolph Hearst, you know d.a.m.n well that FDR's enemies would have paid big to expose something as big as this. j.a.p agents had to be throwing money around every military base, every Washington hotel, trying to find out any little ditty they could. This one could have made somebody rich as h.e.l.l. But so far, the secret is still ... a secret. d.a.m.n impressive.

The latest word had come just prior to his boarding the Augusta, that the first test would come very soon in the desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. The plan was for three bombs to be built, one for the test, and the others for use against targets in j.a.pan. The arguments over targets had begun in earnest, and Truman knew that the military men would be the best qualified to make that decision. The city most favored was Kyoto, a city of such importance to the j.a.panese that its destruction would surely bring the j.a.panese to the peace table. But Kyoto's importance was the primary reason Truman vetoed it as a target. The city was more historical than military, a religious and cultural center like no other city in j.a.pan. Truman had insisted that the target be someplace with more military significance, a direct strike into the heart of j.a.pan's war machine. The list had been a.s.sembled, and the advisors had come up with four that made the most sense. Truman had studied the short list with no real sense of the priorities of each, though the military men had offered suggestions why each, or any, was important. Truman had the list still, studied it in his mind now. Kokura, Hiroshima, Niigata, and Nagasaki. I can't really tell them which one is the best target. I just don't have that answer. It might depend on weather, of course, and it might be the pilot's decision, the ultimate discretion, which target can be hit. d.a.m.n, what a place to put a bomber pilot.

Throughout the meetings, the physicists, especially Robert Oppenheimer and Enrico Fermi, had been adamant that this bomb would end the war. Even though nothing like this had ever been used before, and even though no one really knew just what might happen when it detonated, there had been no hesitation among those men that the bomb be used directly against a j.a.panese target. Truman agreed with the military men who had been enthusiastic about the possibilities of what this weapon could do. The j.a.panese had defined the moral argument from the very beginning, and as word reached the Western newspapers of what was happening in China, what had been done to prisoners of war at Bataan, or the civilians in every place the j.a.panese had conquered, the fury of the American people had grown substantially. The military had their own fury, of course, and yet throughout the war, the Americans had played as close to the rules as anyone could expect. But the kamikaze attacks against American sailors had seemed to be the final straw, confirmation that the enemy in the Pacific was nothing like the Germans. Not even the spreading news of the Holocaust had seemed to affect the American troops with the kind of visceral disgust for what the j.a.panese had done. Germany's sins could be placed too easily at the feet of Hitler and a few of his henchmen, but the astounding viciousness of the j.a.panese seemed to pervade their entire military culture, a culture that Truman knew was nothing the Americans had ever faced before. He had been astounded to hear a broadcast, forwarded to him from the monitoring stations that recorded j.a.panese radio. The speech had come from j.a.pan's Prime Minister Suzuki.

Should my services be rewarded by death, I expect the hundred million people of this glorious empire to swell forward over my prostrate body and form themselves into a shield to protect the emperor and this imperial land from the invader.

With such resolve being fed to the j.a.panese people, who would no doubt respond as their emperor hoped, the decision to use this extraordinary weapon caused Truman no heartburn at all. Quite the opposite. Without such a decisive piece of weaponry, the American invasion of j.a.pan was the only viable strategy that remained. If the speculation about the power of the atomic bomb was accurate, Truman believed along with his generals that this one weapon could prevent the potential loss of an enormous number of American troops. But Suzuki's speech had offered up another reason for the Americans to avoid an invasion, something that many of the military advisors had given little attention. If the j.a.panese defended their homeland with the same ferocity they had inflicted on other lands, Truman had to believe that the loyalty of the j.a.panese people to their emperor might result in a fight that would cause the slaughter of millions of j.a.panese civilians, a moral nightmare for the United States, and especially for the young American soldiers who would stand at the point of the spear. To the commanders who had seen the barbarity of the j.a.panese up close, the morality of that was no issue at all. Increasingly there was a mood among the troops that j.a.pan needed to be punished, all of j.a.pan. It was an argument Truman could not dismiss. Throughout Asia, the people who had suffered such extreme depravity at the hands of the j.a.panese troops and their leaders had to receive at least some compensation, even if the best that could be accomplished was a weapon that some might see as overkill, an act of vengeance.

Though the military chiefs were mostly unequivocal in their support for the Manhattan Project, as June rolled into July, Truman felt that something had changed among the physicists, a slight whiff of what Truman felt was hesitation, or even pacifism. Truman suspected that the shift in mood was the result of the victory at Okinawa, the sense that the j.a.panese were beaten already, that this new weapon might be unnecessary. But the military chiefs had blasted that opinion to pieces, few believing that Okinawa would change anything in Tokyo.

A serious argument had been made for exploding a bomb off the j.a.panese coast, with no surprises, everyone notified well in advance, the whole world allowed to watch. If the j.a.panese High Command had any doubts about American superiority in arms, some said that this would clinch it, would inspire even the most fanatical j.a.panese generals to call it quits. But many of the military people thought that idea a waste of time, and there were two very good reasons why. Since 1942, j.a.pan's newly acquired empire had been crushed around the edges, then crushed in the vicious campaigns that drove closer and closer to j.a.pan. But every American commander who faced them saw for himself that the j.a.panese tactics and strategy had never seemed to change at all, no matter how much might and how much superiority in arms they had faced. No, he thought, if they won't even give up some p.i.s.sant little island in the middle of nowhere, how can we expect them to lay down arms to give up their whole d.a.m.n country, emperor and all? That one's pretty simple. Their losses have been staggering, and yet they've shown no hint of any willingness to accept defeat. Truman had been as baffled by that as the men around him. Okinawa had been a perfect disaster for the j.a.panese, and surely the Imperial High Command would know that mainland j.a.pan was the next target. And yet the rhetoric from Tokyo had not changed at all. Truman had heard some of the Ultra intercepts, the j.a.panese communications codes broken early in the war. The code breakers had done the same with the German codes, which had given the Allies in Europe an outstanding advantage. Most of the j.a.panese communications had now become so primitive that the code breakers were hardly in use at all, since most of the bases far from j.a.pan had been crushed or cut off. But Truman had heard some of the p.r.o.nouncements, had been astounded that the j.a.panese people were being told of ongoing victories against the enemy, including their magnificent triumph at Okinawa. The Americans knew of food shortages, and that, for j.a.panese civilians, gasoline and many basic staples were nonexistent. And their men, he thought. Their sons and husbands and fathers are simply gone, and no one there sees a problem? So, no, we cannot expect that a demonstration of some new powerful weapon, no matter how dramatic, is going to change that.

The second argument was more straightforward. What if the bomb didn't work? Yep, that would be a good one. We tell Tokyo, hey, bring your emperor and half your army and come on out to Yokohama Beach, and watch this. And so they gather out there, with half the world's newspaper reporters, just to watch us drop a big d.a.m.n steel ball into the ocean. Sploosh. I can just hear MacArthur, or even Nimitz. Uh, never mind, boys. And excuse us, but we've gotta go back home and help the president beat the c.r.a.p out of every d.a.m.n physicist we can find. As for the war, yeah, well, we'll get back to you on that one.

No, it's not funny. Not even close. The military says we need this, and it's hard to argue against that. Already we're mobilizing hundreds of d.a.m.n transports, and gathering up every healthy GI for a beach party that will make Normandy look like a rainy day in Miami.

The noise that came from the j.a.panese High Command was as militant as ever, defiantly antic.i.p.ating that the Americans would make their next move against the mainland itself, which was exactly what was planned. The invasion was scheduled for November 1, a ma.s.sive surge into the harbors and across the beaches at several points near key j.a.panese targets. The operation had been given a name, Olympic, and Truman had been briefed by the joint chiefs that the first phase of the invasion would involve more than a half-million American ground troops, with that many more to follow close behind. George Marshall and the other planners a.s.sumed the operation would carry on through the spring of 1946. Despite the most optimistic estimates, it was apparent that the war would last for another year, possibly longer. As for casualties ... Truman pondered that, all those estimates of American dead, some far more optimistic than others. Some of those boys think that if they feed me baby food, I'll give my okay to their plans without a second thought. Sorry, but no general has to tell me what a ground war looks like, because I've seen one. I know exactly what will happen to our boys. If I thought the j.a.panese could be convinced they ought to quit, fine, show me how to convince them. Nothing, not a d.a.m.n thing has worked so far. We've been busting up their bases and driving their people into h.e.l.l for better than three years, and no one's given me any sign that they're any less willing to die for their d.a.m.n emperor today than they were in 1942.

It was disturbing to him that some of the very scientists who developed this extraordinary weapon were now hedging their bets by insisting it not actually be used on a target, but only as a demonstration, a show of force that could not be ignored. That's pure bull, he thought. Every report says their people are more enthusiastic about fighting now than ever. We won't be fighting just their army, we'll be fighting every d.a.m.n j.a.p citizen. Call it what you will, their Home Guard, or militia. It means that sooner or later every GI will stand face-to-face with some mama-san holding a musket, or a pitchfork, and they won't just step aside. What will that do to our boys, faced with civilians who are as dangerous as the soldiers? How many more cities will General LeMay have to incinerate before he eliminates that threat? h.e.l.l, we'd do the same thing if the j.a.ps landed a fleet of invasion ships on the California coast. American civilians would put up a h.e.l.l of a fight if they were defending our homes in San Francisco or Los Angeles. Put anybody's back to their own wall and they'll turn up the volume. So, sure, if there's a chance to end this sooner ... there's no argument that trumps that. We sure as h.e.l.l don't need p.u.s.s.yfooting about this, not after so much has gone into it, and by d.a.m.n, every one of those scientists and every d.a.m.n general knows this decision is mine, and mine alone, and that order left my office a month ago. Right now it doesn't much matter which city it'll be ... if this son of a b.i.t.c.h works, we'll hit those people hard enough to make even the emperor take a little pause.

Truman began to pace now, caught a glimpse of the guard in the shadows, moving with him. He stopped, hands clasped behind his back, turned to the shadows.

"Come out here. You're giving me the jitters."

The man emerged, two more to one side.

"Sir. Sorry, but you know our orders."

"No problem there, boys. But you can knock off the cloak-and-dagger stuff." He paused. "You know what I've done?"

The man seemed puzzled by the question, searched past Truman toward the railing.

"Not here, you ... sorry. You know the kinds of decisions I've gotta deal with? Every d.a.m.n day?"

"Yes, sir. Difficult decisions, sir."

"You have no idea, son. But there's one I've made that wasn't difficult at all. It has to be done."

"Yes ... sir."

Truman felt a dangerous need to talk about it, a simple conversation, letting off some of the pressure. But his brain held him back, and he looked back out toward the moon, the low swells, heard the hum of the engines beneath his feet. Those d.a.m.n scientists will keep chewing on this, he thought. But the decision has been made, and it might be the only time in this job when I'm completely sure I'm right. Just tell me that the son of a b.i.t.c.h works.

BABELSBERG, NEAR POTSDAM,.

SOUTHWEST OF BERLIN, GERMANY.

JULY 16, 1945.

No matter what other goals could be met by a face-to-face meeting with both Churchill and Stalin, for the Americans the primary goal was to secure Soviet cooperation in the redevelopment of Europe. It was hoped, of course, that Stalin would allow those countries he now occupied to accept Western influence along with Western aid. But there was one other critical matter that Truman intended to put before Stalin. The Soviets had yet to declare war on j.a.pan, for complicated reasons of their own that made almost no practical sense to anyone in the West. Truman intended to change Stalin's mind, and hoped, in the spirit of Allies, that the Soviets would understand that if the war was to drag on for another year or more, it was essential that the Soviets do their part. The carrot Truman offered was one he knew would matter significantly to the Soviets, one way to smooth over a major sore point for the Russians since their embarra.s.sing defeat by the j.a.panese in the Russo-j.a.panese War, which ended in 1905. Russia had lost territory, islands north of the j.a.panese mainland, which no doubt Stalin wanted back. But if Americans were going to carry the load in any invasion of j.a.pan, Truman was adamant that the Russians would have to make some significant contribution before they received any kind of reparations of their own. He went to Potsdam knowing that Stalin could not really be forced into backing away from anyplace he now controlled in Europe. But at least the Americans and the British might have something to offer that would soften the Soviet demeanor.

Stalin had not yet arrived at the conference, and Truman had received a carefully worded intelligence report that the Soviet leader might have suffered a mild heart attack. The news had inspired a cascade of feelings, some of them distinctly unsympathetic, but very quickly after Truman's arrival, Soviet officials had come to call, a.s.suring him that Stalin would arrive the following day. No one mentioned a heart attack.

The house Truman occupied was called the Little White House, a diplomatic nicety from the Soviets that mattered little to anyone, not the least because the house was yellow. But Truman's entourage was busy in every available s.p.a.ce, spread out in other houses down the street. The officials who had accompanied Truman included Secretary of State James Byrnes and Truman's press secretary, Charles Ross. Military men were there as well, most prominently his chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, who for a while had held the same position under Roosevelt. Leahy was the one loud voice close to Truman who objected completely to the construction and use of the atomic bomb, an unexpected voice against using a weapon of such magnitude. Truman respected Leahy, as had Roosevelt, but Leahy's viewpoint was distinctly in the minority, and the admiral seemed to accept that with a grudging acknowledgment, though he never failed to be a bug in Truman's ear about the fatefulness of the decision. I sure as h.e.l.l don't need that right now, he thought.

Truman held the note in his hand, glanced at it one more time. For the moment all the important matters that the conference was to address seemed utterly trivial. He knew Churchill was housed about two blocks away, wondered about making another visit, this one unofficial, just to ... talk. He studied the note again, thought, Churchill will know of this soon enough. This isn't about gossip, after all. Hey, Winny, look what we did!

He sat, but couldn't stay still, rose again, went to the window. Babelsberg had been a German resort town, thick woods, something of an artists'colony. But all that had been erased, the three-story house where he stood just one more piece of the Soviet occupation. The house faced a lake, and he stared at that now, imagined Germans swimming, a holiday, full of joy and whatever pa.s.sed for carefree to Germans. But his heart was racing, and his eyes rose past the water, staring into blank sky, any thoughts of carefree far removed. He tossed the paper on the table, realized, right now, I have to just ... shut up. But by d.a.m.n, this is a day we will remember. Maybe the whole world. The paper seemed to float slightly, pushed by a gentle breeze from some open window beyond the door. He moved quickly, picked it up, folded it, stuck it in his pocket. He couldn't help the shivers, the strange excitement, knew that Leahy's doubts were about to be realized with as much gravity as the enthusiasm of the men who had pushed so very hard for the creation of the ma.s.sive weapon.

The note had come to him in a specially coded message from the secretary of war, Henry Stimson. The wording had been cryptic and vague, lest any Soviet agent might examine it, but the code had been prearranged, and Truman knew exactly what Stimson was saying. It had happened at 5:30 A.M., in the bleak desert near Alamogordo. Under the gaze of the men who had created it, watched by military men and carefully chosen newspaper reporters, the first atomic bomb had been exploded. It had worked.

The man who could rightfully be called the Father of the Bomb, Dr. Robert Oppenheimer, had observed the extraordinary flash with one thought rolling through his mind, the words from the ancient text of the Hindu people, the Bhagavad Gita.

I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.

27. TIBBETS.

HEADQUARTERS, 509TH COMPOSITE GROUP, TINIAN.

JULY 18, 1945.

The B-29 was warming up, the shimmy from the four ma.s.sive engines shaking him down to his toenails. He checked the gauges, knew that Lewis, beside him, was doing the same. On the panel in front of him the instruments sprang to life, needles pointing where they should, temperatures and pressures rising. Behind him, he knew that Blanchard was watching every move both men made, making mental notes, or even paper ones, jotting down anything Tibbets and his co-pilot were doing wrong. Tibbets tried to ignore the man's presence, thought, a.s.shole.

He pushed the throttle forward, the plane rolling toward the taxiway, the last stretch of pavement before the runway. The plane rumbled, shaking still, the roar of the engines growing louder, and Tibbets pressed the transmission b.u.t.ton on the radio mike, said, "Dimples Eight Two to North Tinian Tower. Ready for takeoff on Runway Able."

The response was immediate, the voice crackling in his ear.

"Roger, Dimples Eight Two. Cleared for takeoff, Runway Able."

He didn't hesitate, jammed the throttles forward, the plane responding after a slight hint of delay, lagging just behind the immediacy of the command from Tibbets's hand. But the speed increased quickly, the plane bouncing, a slight swerve that Tibbets corrected. The B-29 continued to gain speed, the bounces more undulating now, no glance at Lewis. For now there was nothing for the co-pilot to do but watch, as he was, staring straight ahead toward the far end of the field, 8,500 feet away. He waited for it, felt it now, the nose rising slightly, the plane seeming to pause, gathering air beneath the ma.s.sive wings, then smoothness, the wheels clear of the runway, the plane rising, pulling his stomach down, the sensation so familiar. He shifted his hands on the throttles, pulled one backward, heard the roar of the engines drop by a quarter, one engine shutting down, the prop feathering. He spoke into the intercom now.

"Engineer, confirm engine number one is shut down. Then feather engine number two."

The engineer, Duzenbury, replied, "Yes, sir. Confirmed. Number one feathered. Shutting down number two."

Tibbets smiled, would not look back at Blanchard, knew the man would be puzzled, possibly a full-blown panic. Just handle it, you jacka.s.s. I've got no time for chitchat, not right now. He struggled slightly with the plane's controls, compensated for the sudden loss of half the plane's power. To one side the props on the two idle engines had slowed considerably, propelled only by the wind speed of the plane, the B-29 held aloft now by only two of its engines. It had been Tibbets's plan, and his flight engineer had been prepared for the order, the entire crew knowing that their special guest was being given a demonstration of what the B-29 was capable of, and more important, what her pilots could do about it.

He looked to the altimeter, the plane rising past a thousand feet, then eleven hundred, gaining alt.i.tude far more slowly with half power. Suddenly Tibbets banked the plane hard, the silent engines now downhill, one wing pointing toward the blue ocean, and he said into the intercom, "Nice view, Colonel? Tinian's the hottest airfield in the Pacific. More B-29s fly out of here than anywhere in General LeMay's command. It's not the prettiest place, but we're making do."

He looked over to his co-pilot, saw Lewis glancing back toward Blanchard, a smile, no response from the guest behind him. Tibbets returned Lewis's smile, his eyes moving to the gauges again, keeping the plane in a steep bank. There was little drop in alt.i.tude, but he knew that wouldn't last, the bank too steep, the flight characteristics of the B-29 only allowing for so much lift before the plane simply fell out of the sky. The voice came now, high and tight, a slight stutter, Blanchard.

"Okay, Colonel. I'm satisfied. The engines are performing well. Can we complete the mission?"

Tibbets turned to Lewis, winked, said, "Certainly, Colonel. I thought I might shut them all down, show you our glide characteristics, but that can be a risky maneuver, especially at low alt.i.tude."

"No ... not necessary. Please proceed with the mission." Tibbets focused on the restart of the two silent engines, heard a final word from Blanchard. "Please?"

The two engines restarted, belching smoke for a brief second, their props fully engaged. Tibbets pushed the throttles forward, the plane surging, climbing again, straight and level. After a long silence, Tibbets spoke into the intercom.

"Navigator, give me a time to target."

"Twenty-one minutes, sir."

"Roger, twenty-one minutes. Colonel Blanchard, please note your watch."

Blanchard didn't respond, but Tibbets knew the colonel would do exactly that. He leaned back, pressed himself into the seat, flexed his shoulders. Immediately behind him the gap was too small for a regular seat, and he knew that Blanchard's jump seat was far more uncomfortable. On Tibbets's order the crew had made a minimal effort to soften the man's ride by adding cushions to the meager padding. He felt Blanchard shifting around, a b.u.mp against Tibbets's shoulder. The thought came again. a.s.shole.

The meeting with Blanchard's boss, Curtis LeMay, had been on Guam, hours after Tibbets had learned that the test explosion at Alamogordo had been successful. Tibbets had expected to be there for the test, to see for himself just what this new weapon was supposed to do, but there had been an urgency about his return to Tinian, a sudden change of plans that infuriated Tibbets, and made Tibbets's own commander more nervous than either of them needed right now. Tibbets's superior was Major General Leslie Groves, the man who had headed up the Manhattan Project since its inception in 1942, and the one man who had more authority over the mission to drop the atomic bomb than anyone but the president. It was Groves who had transmitted the coded message to Tibbets, already back on Tinian, that the bomb's test had been an extraordinary success. Tibbets had enormous respect for Groves, especially for the man's hard-nosed resemblance to a bulldozer. The military chiefs respected Groves as well, appreciating that Groves was a problem solver, and a man who would pursue any project, no matter how complicated, to its conclusion. Though it had not been Groves's decision to name the pilot who would carry the atomic bomb over j.a.pan, Groves had welcomed Tibbets immediately, quick to understand what many in the air forces already knew. Paul Tibbets was most likely the best man for the job. To the relief of both men, they had quickly forged a working relationship that rested on a firm foundation of mutual respect. Tibbets had not always agreed with the way Groves wanted things done, but even those arguments were never severe. Tibbets especially respected that if Groves saw he was wrong, he would listen to that and make corrections. Groves certainly had an ego, but he had been trained primarily as an engineer, with an engineer's mind. If the problem required a new solution, and that solution could be explained in ways an engineer's mind would appreciate, changes would be made. It had never hurt their relationship that Groves's office was in Washington, while Tibbets managed the intense training of the 509th in far-distant bases. The 509th had been established in the late fall of 1944, with its first base at Wendover, Utah. Security had been astoundingly tight, with a small army of highly screened guards, both in uniform and plain clothes, who kept a tight watch over the base and the men of the 509th, a tighter watch than most of them even knew about. But Tibbets knew that a host of unexpected security problems could plague any base located on American soil. With the enormous airstrips now fully operational on the island of Tinian, in the Mariana Islands chain, a few miles from Saipan, Tibbets had pushed hard for the 509th to relocate that much closer to their eventual target. Groves had not objected. The security of a base so far removed from prying eyes was only one reason Tibbets appreciated the move. He knew what many other commanders knew, that there was one enormous advantage being in the Pacific. You were no more than a teletype message or a radio relay from your superiors, but you didn't necessarily have to endure them looking over your shoulder.

The exception to that was Curtis LeMay, whose headquarters on Guam kept him too close for Tibbets to avoid. LeMay had known nothing of the Manhattan Project until a few weeks before Tibbets and the 509th had arrived on Tinian in early July, and even now LeMay knew very little of the specifics of just how this bomb was supposed to work. LeMay was far more concerned that a very special mission was to take place beneath the umbrella of his command, and he most definitely wanted to be included. That inclusion carried a heavy price for Tibbets. LeMay had begun to make loud noises that any special mission from Tinian should be flown by a flight crew selected by LeMay himself. With a nagging crisis possible from LeMay's increasing growls, Tibbets had been forced to fly to Guam himself, and had suffered through an explosion of a different kind, facing the caustic general by keeping a demeanor of calm that impressed even Tibbets himself. No matter what kind of demands or tirades LeMay might pour over him, Tibbets knew that he always had the upper hand. A single call to Groves, or better yet, to Groves's superior, the air corps chief Hap Arnold, would immediately produce the desired order for LeMay to leave his hands completely off of Tibbets and his mission. But orders or not, that kind of antagonism would never sit well with a bulldog like LeMay, and Tibbets knew that with so much at stake, it would be unwise to make an enemy out of Curtis LeMay. Tibbets had his hands full just keeping his own men segregated from anyone else on Tinian while he monitored their training and the ongoing secrecy of their mission, no simple task. None of the other wing commanders who flew missions out of the huge airfields had any idea what the 509th was doing there, and why they were not partic.i.p.ating in the usual bombing runs over j.a.panese targets. Since the 509th's mission could not be revealed in any detail to anyone on Tinian, there was considerable hostility from the other bomber groups that these new guys were receiving some kind of cushy special treatment. And, of course, the rumors flew along with the B-29s. To many it seemed as though Colonel Paul Tibbets was being given plush special treatment for no better reason than that he had powerful friends in Washington.

It seemed to matter little to LeMay that Tibbets had once been the most sought-after pilot in Europe, had been the primary pilot for Generals Eisenhower and Mark Clark, and had scored more than forty successful bombing missions in the workhorse B-17. LeMay had his doubts that a pilot with no experience in the Pacific had any business commanding this kind of critically important mission over a target area he had never seen. LeMay knew that Tibbets had received a very definite order that he was never to engage in any kind of practice run over any part of j.a.pan. Should something go wrong, from anti-aircraft fire or mechanical failure, Tibbets's capture by the j.a.panese could become a security disaster that might jeopardize the entire project. Tibbets took no insult from that. He had no interest in finding out just how much torture he could take from a s.a.d.i.s.tic j.a.panese officer, or whether his moral backbone could withstand the worst kind of interrogation the j.a.panese might inflict on him.

Even LeMay knew that Tibbets's orders came directly from Washington, and LeMay was sharp enough not to make enemies in places where his own career path might be decided. After the rage had pa.s.sed, LeMay had reluctantly agreed that Paul Tibbets might be the right man after all, though LeMay had one request. For at least one training mission, LeMay wanted Colonel Butch Blanchard, his operations officer, to go along for the ride, just to see if these boys who had done most of their work over Utah knew anything about what it took to handle a B-29 in the Pacific.

The voice came through the intercom from his navigator.

"Target dead ahead, sir."

"I see it, Captain."

Tibbets leaned back, made a slight glance at Blanchard, said into his intercom, "Note the time, if you will, Colonel. Unfortunately, my navigator has miscalculated. We're ahead of schedule by four seconds."

Blanchard said nothing, the message very clear. Tibbets looked to the altimeter, the plane straight and level at thirty thousand feet. He spoke into the intercom again.

"Major Ferebee, it's your bird."