Waiting For Shiva, Page 2

my daddy later framed McVay for the sinking and had him court martialed on the bogus charge of not following evasive procedures… I didn't care for the Captain myself, but Daddy went too far that time. My father had ice water in his veins.”

  “How does that make you feel, Senator?”

  “What can I say? Mistakes are often made in wartime, most of them by the bureaucrats and politicians… my father WAS a bloodless monster, always scoffing at the yellow-bellies… a freeway in Maryland is named after him, by the way.”

  “So you and 'Little Boy' hooked up with the Enola Gay —”

  “At Tinian. Colonel Tibbits and General Groves weren't very happy to see me, but Truman and Daddy insisted that 'Mr. Anacreon' ride as an observer in the mission. The crew of the Enola Gay thought that I was a spy, and they were right, of course.”

  “What happened next, Senator?”

  “Tail Gunner Tech Sgt. Bernard 'Rocky' Rockenheimer took me under his wing, once the Enola Gay lifted off from the runway at Tinian.”

  Rocky was a sunny chap, the type of guy who whistles through the bone yard.

  “Stick with me, Mr. Anacreon, and enjoy the view. Rest assured that the Nips don't have many Zeros left in the skies to give us any trouble. Most of them went down as kamikazes, or have been destroyed by our bombers. Hopefully it's all over for those yellow bastards.”

  “A lot of folks back on the mainland think that the Japs are going to dig in for the long haul, and we will most likely be forced to invade.”

  “I've heard the scuttlebutt, but hopefully it won't come to that, once we drop a few of these little boys on them, sonny.”

  'Little Boy' was downright scary looking as it rested by it's lonesome in the bomb-bay compartment, to be sure.

  “What about anti-aircraft batteries?”

  “Mostly sporadic and ineffectual at this point. The Nips are pretty much out of munitions these days. Our target is an open city, by the way. Not much down there in Hiro-shima Town.”

  I tried to ignore the tightness in my gut.

  “Do you have anything to drink?”

  Rocky looked a little doubtful.

  “You look a little green around the gills… are you sure that you can keep it down?”

  “I think so.”

  Rocky opened up a dime bottle of soda pop. “Small sips, Sir.”

  I abruptly began to shake uncontrollably.

  “O preserve me… my sweet Prince Lucifer—”

  “What did you say?”

  I cursed myself and quickly recovered my wits.

  “Our Father who art in Heaven…”

  Rocky joined me. “Hallowed be thy name…”

  The waves lap ever closer to the driftwood log, so Mason helps me carry the walker through the sand up past the high tide line. I sit down on the walker's extendable seat and shut my eyes and visualize Shiva and the mushroom cloud left behind in the wake of the Enola Gay.

  “I myself couldn't make out much,” I tell Mason, “I remember the flash through my goggles, and felt the air concussions… the cloud didn't look like the picture the Brass released to the public… At least from where we were…”

  “How did you feel?”

  “About the bomb? Nothing. At least at first. I was still a little airsick.”

  “But later?”

  “We landed back at Tinian without incident. I even managed to fall asleep for part of the way. We were wined and dined by the Brass… later, as I typed up my report for Daddy, I thought about Prudence… and my dog. I also thought about my classmates at Princeton, and Mel Ott hitting his 500th home run… the crazy hills of San Francisco… I thought about everything BUT the people down there in Hiroshima… it wouldn't have done any good, you see. I wrote to Daddy and praised the mission, the plane, the flight crew. I also wrote special letters of commendation to General Le May and the President, praising Sgt. Rockenheimer.”

  “It hadn't sunk in yet.”

  “I didn't dare let it sink in. I couldn't, you see. I still had one more plane to ride, this time with the Fat Man.”

  “Fat Man was the second bomb?”

  “Fat Man was the bigger of the two, and the chosen prototype. Plutonium core. Now Little Boy was just the warm up, a simple uranium gadget that was fully assembled in the States, and absolutely safe for transport by ship because it could be armed only minutes before detonation. Plutonium is a different ballgame, and those maniacs at Los Alamos decided to fly the components out to Tinian and assemble the bomb there. I'll bet you didn't know that, did you? There is another thing the public never knew for years: Except for the firing pins, Fat Man was fully armed before it was loaded on the B-29. That thing could have taken out the whole island of Titian, if that plane had crashed on takeoff. Oh, they're still denying that even today, but I was in the loop, and old Colonel Wintergren later told me that the idiots back in DC didn't give a horse pucky. They were that insane, including my daddy. Now, on August 8, I was suddenly informed that I had been booted from the Fat Man run, and I didn't argue. I was full of the Manhattan Project by then, and only wanted to get off that crazy island. I was preparing to arrange transport to Honolulu, when Oppenheimer's right-hand man, Dr. Robert Serber, walked right into my tent without ado and told me to report to Major Sweeney’s aide-de-camp immediately. Little wheels were spinning, little political wheels. Now Serber didn’t look very happy about all of this espionage, and I didn't blame him. There was a very bad feeling in the air…”

  “Feeling, Sir? Like a premonition?”

  “To me? More like a vengeful presence… not Shiva, but… Kali… Appolyon. Extermitus. Hiroshima was a cakewalk, nothing but a passing daydream… Nagasaki was the nightmare.”

  Major Sweeney’s aide-de-camp led me around to a tent behind the Army officer's mess, where I was astonished to find Colonel Wintergren, laying face down on a table, rear end up in the air. His silk boxer shorts were pulled down to his ankles, and an Army nurse busied herself applying what looked like hemorrhoid cream. A burning cigar was clenched between the Colonel's teeth.

  “Sit down, sonny. Don't mind me—goddamn these blasted hemorrhoids! Must have been that bumpy run from Shanghai! I haven't changed my shorts since Outer Mongolia! Just traveled the entire length of Rooshia, after wrapping up some business in Hunland.”

  Wintergren gestured for the nurse to leave. “Thank you, Sergeant.”

  After the nurse departed, the Colonel pulled up his shorts and put on his pants, to my great relief.

  “We don't have much time, so let's dispense with the pleasantries. Your father has reason to believe that the next drop will be sabotaged by a mole who has connections to Russian Agents and peace activists in the Manhattan Project itself. This information came to us after you embarked on the Indianapolis.”

  “My father says that the Russians—”

  “This information is supposedly iron-clad. Your father believes that the saboteur is a most likely a Russian mole, but I beg to differ. Only weeks ago, Professor Einstein and more than 70 leading physicists petitioned the President to not use… this thing on the Japanese. General Eisenhower and Admiral Nimitz also stated their doubts, but the President, at the urging of Secretary Forestall, your father, and others, decided to move forward before the Ruskies could make their move into the Pacific Theater. So, here we are. Now my gut tells me that the saboteur is a dissenter from the Manhattan Project itself, a peace activist working independently from the Russians… we shall see… anyway, I was notified about the mole while I was in Potsdam with the President. The Boss received an urgent dispatch by way of a diplomatic pouch from your father, so he dispatched me out here just in the nick of time. We need to locate, identify, and neutralize the saboteur before he can carry out his mission, whatever it is. Only General Le May is in the loop at the moment. I wish we had more information to give you.”

  “How much time do we have?”

  “That depends on the weather. Keep your eyes and ears open, and be ready to move. You will be summoned by Shiv
a, who is one of us.”

  Mason and I idly gaze out at a distant tanker steaming south.

  “Heading in to Norfolk,” says Mason. “So what happened next, Senator?”

  “Total confusion! The 'official' story was that Fat Man couldn't fit in the bomb bay of the Great Artiste, which was the bomber chosen for the second run, so they had to jerry-rig another B-29, the Box Car. Major Sweeney and his crew switched over from the Great Artiste to Box Car, which really pissed-off Captain Frederick C. Bock, Jr., commander of the Box Car, which was originally set to be one of the escorts on the bombing run. That caused a lot of confusion and delays. I was finally informed by an orderly to report directly to the Great Artiste. I thought then and there that I had been bumped once again from Fat Man's plane, but the orderly took me aside, and hissed into my ear:

  “Shiva. Now listen up and keep your mouth shut. —Fat Man IS riding in the Great Artiste after all. Sergeant Rockenheimer has been enlisted to watch your back, just in case the saboteur is on board. Now everybody, including Major Sweeney, still think that Box Car is the one. We're hoping that the saboteur will weasel his way onto Sweeney's plane. If we are wrong and he has infiltrated the crew of the Artiste, we suspect that he will smell a rat when he learns that you are on board. He will most likely make his first move against you—and that's what we want, so we can smoke him out. Do keep your eyes open, and good hunting—Mr. Anacreon.”

  “So you were the