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Party.
    The friends went to dinner and talked over old times. “He decided to walk me to the subway,” Franklin reported to his KGB contact. “Our conversation on the way is what leads to the reason for this report.”
    As they strolled, Hiskey shocked Franklin by saying: “Imagine a bomb dropped in the center of this city, which would destroy the entire city.”
    Franklin laughed.
    â€œThere is such a bomb,” Hiskey blurted out. “I’m working on it.”
    Trying to appear only casually interested, Franklin asked for a few more details.
    Hiskey explained that he and other scientists were “working with desperate haste” to build an atomic bomb. It would be the most powerful weapon ever produced. The Germans, he added, were probably “far ahead on the bomb.”
    Then, after this burst of top-secret information, Hiskey went silent.
    â€œHiskey was sorry he told me about this,” Franklin reported, “and swore me to silence.”
    *   *   *
    V ASILY Z ARUBIN, the top KGB agent in New York City, telegraphed Franklin’s report to headquarters in Moscow. Moscow responded quickly, telling Zarubin the information “is of great interest to us,” and attaching a long list of technical questions about fission and bomb making. Zarubin gave the list to Franklin, ordering Franklin to get answers from his friend.
    Franklin went to Hiskey’s apartment but faced a major obstacle: Hiskey’s wife was there. Franklin was under strict KGB orders not to discuss the subject of atomic bombs in front of anyone but Hiskey.
    The three sat down to dinner. “At no time did Clarence bring up the subject of his work,” Franklin reported, “and following instructions, I did not mention the subject.” After the meal, Franklin tried to get Hiskey alone, with no success. “His wife was present the entire evening,” explained Franklin.
    That proved to be Franklin’s one and only chance. Hiskey was soon transferred to the University of Chicago. When a Soviet agent in Chicago made contact with Hiskey, the meeting was observed by FBI agents. The FBI informed the U.S. Army that Hiskey had been spotted with a suspected Soviet agent. Hiskey suddenly found himself drafted into the army and shipped to a remote military base in the Northwest Territories of Canada—far from atomic bomb secrets.
    Hiskey was never given an explanation. He knew better than to ask for one.
    *   *   *
    H ISKEY’S STORY illustrates just how hard it was for Soviet spies to get at American secrets. “It was difficult because we always felt we were under FBI surveillance,” said KGB agent Alexander Feklisov. “From the moment I arrived in New York, I was always shadowed as soon as I stepped outside.”
    Still, the Soviets were absolutely determined to steal the bomb. It was such a high priority, they code named the project “Enormoz”—Russian for “enormous.”
    But Enormoz could go nowhere until the KGB got a reliable source inside the American bomb project. With this goal in mind, Moscow headquarters made up a list of top American scientists to target for cultivation. “Of the leads we have,” Moscow informed its agents in the United States, “we should consider it essential to cultivate the following people.”
    Then came the names. The people on the list were all top scientists the Soviets suspected might be in on the bomb work. They were all known to have been sympathetic to communism before the war.
    The first name on the list was Robert Oppenheimer.



President Franklin Delano Roosevelt takes Prime Minister Winston Churchill for a drive in Hyde Park, New York, during a later visit by the prime minister, September 3, 1943.
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    ON THE CLIFF
    ON THE MORNING OF JUNE 19, 1942, President Franklin Roosevelt sat in the driver’s seat of his Ford convertible, parked beside an airstrip in