Read Online Bomb by Steve Sheinkin - Free Book Online Page A

objection. With this setup, she was able to communicate by radio with her KGB bosses in Moscow.
    Moscow was particularly interested in reports from Werner’s new contact, the thin man with glasses. And with good reason—he was helping British scientists figure out how to build an atomic bomb.
    *   *   *
    T HE MAN WAS a German-born physicist named Klaus Fuchs.
    â€œThe spelling,” a fellow German said of Fuchs’s name, “sometimes caused people to pronounce it in a somewhat embarrassing way.” The solution for English speakers: pronounce it to rhyme with “books.”
    As a college student in Germany, Fuchs had watched the rise of the Nazis with disgust. He joined the Communist Party, impressed by the party’s willingness to speak out against Hitler. When Hitler took power in Germany in 1933, Nazi thugs beat Fuchs nearly to death and tossed him in a river. That only strengthened Fuchs’s commitment to communism.
    Fuchs escaped to England, where he earned his PhD in physics. When the war began, British scientists recruited him to help with a secret war-related project—the atomic bomb. “I accepted,” recalled Fuchs, “and I started work without knowing at first what the work was.”
    A gifted physicist, Fuchs was well liked by his fellow scientists, though they found him difficult to get to know. He was always inside, hunched over his desk. He spoke very little, and never about politics.
    â€œA very nice, quiet fellow, with sad eyes,” commented one.
    â€œHe seems like a chap who’s never breathed any fresh air,” said another.
    The British knew he’d been a Communist in Germany, but they figured he’d put that behind him. And in any case, they wanted his brain. No one guessed that their shy, pale coworker was capable of leading a double life.
    â€œWhen I learned about the purpose of the work,” Fuchs later said, “I decided to inform Russia and I established contact through another member of the Communist Party.”
    That led to Fuchs’s contact with Ruth Werner. He and Werner met every couple of months on quiet rural roads. He passed her envelopes containing reports on everything British scientists knew about atomic bomb physics, and she radioed the material to Moscow.
    â€œOnce,” Werner recalled, “Klaus gave me a thick book of blueprints, more than a hundred pages long, asking me to forward it quickly.” This obviously couldn’t be done by radio. Like all experienced spies, Werner had backup plans in place.
    â€œI had to travel to London and, at a certain time in a certain place, drop a small piece of chalk and tread on it,” she explained. This was a signal to her Soviet contact—it meant that a drop-off would be made at a prearranged time and place.
    Two days later she got on her bicycle, with Fuchs’s report hidden under her clothes. “After about six or seven miles, I turned onto a side road,” she said. There, parked under a tree, was a car. Behind the wheel sat a Soviet agent.
    â€œI cycled on, hid my bike, and went to sit in the car beside him for a moment,” Werner said. She handed over the papers, got back on her bike, and rode home.
    *   *   *
    â€œI MPORTANT, ” officials in Moscow said of Fuchs’s information, “very valuable.”
    But it was of limited worth. Fuchs was doing interesting calculations, but the real action was taking place in the United States. And the Soviets were getting nothing at all from their agents in America.
    By the fall of 1942, this was making KGB officials in Moscow very angry. “The organizational pace is entirely unsatisfactory,” Moscow scolded its American spies. “The project is taking a very long time to get going.”
    In New York, Semyon Semyonov got the message. As part of his search for a way into the America bomb project, he turned to his best courier, Harry