![]() He could lose himself among the crucibles and test tubes and let his guard down. Indeed, there was only one place he felt safe during that fortnight-his chemistry lab.Īs soon as he got his experiments running, the stress of atomic espionage lifted a little. For 14 days he never let the package out of his sight, even taking it grocery shopping. The backup meeting wasn’t for two weeks, which meant two more weeks of carrying the packet around, two more weeks of paranoia. After several delays he eventually reached New York-but too late to meet his Soviet contact. The train was so crowded he had to sit on his suitcase, but he clutched the papers tight and didn’t complain. ![]() He looked jumpy, even paranoid, and with good reason: he was a Soviet spy, and the packet in his hands contained the blueprints for an atomic bomb.Īfter a bus ride to Albuquerque he caught a plane to Kansas City and a train to Chicago. He kept popping up and scanning the crowd, worried he was being followed. Maintaining his grip on the packet, he sat on a bench and tried reading a book, Great Expectations. They shook hands warmly and, despite promises to visit, knew they’d probably never see each other again.Īfter the car rattled off, the tubby man schlepped to the bus station. Just before parting, the thin, bespectacled driver handed his passenger a package. After a while, as the desert cooled, they headed back to Santa Fe. The two men sat inside the car and talked like old friends, watching the lights of the city below. ![]() He climbed into the passenger seat and the car took off, winding its way to the edge of town, then up into the mountains. As the battered, blue Buick pulled up to the church in Santa Fe, a short, tubby man stepped out to meet it.
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