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the speedy construction of the Pentagon. He was also known to have a personality and management style that strained the bounds of polite discourse much the way his expanding midsection was straining the bounds of the belt on his always perfectly pressed, Army-issue khakis.
    Within days of taking the helm of the Project, the General finalized movement on the Tennessee site and dispatched the Engineer to meet with a polite yet somewhat reticent Edgar Sengier at his offices in the Cunard Building at 25 Broadway in New York City.
    Did this man have authority to deal? wondered the cool, dapper Belgian with the thinning hair and impeccable styling.
    This was not the first visit Sengier had had from a military man curious about his holdings. And this man, though professing to be with the military, was dressed in civilian garb. The meeting was brief and to the point. The Engineer was pleasantly surprised to learn that Sengier’s mining company, Union Minière du Haut Katanga, had roughly 1,200 tons of high-grade Tubealloy ore sitting that very moment on Staten Island and much more where that came from: the Belgian Congo. Sengier had left Brussels for New York in 1939, shortly before the Germans invaded Belgium and Hitler’s shadow looked as though it might fall on Africa. Sengier moved not only himself but his ore as well to the United States, shipping container after container across the Atlantic to New York. This material, once considered handy for dyeing Fiesta ware, regarded by some as mere garbage, a geological nuisance that got in the way of mining more important materials like silver, now was the sun at the center of the Project’s secretive solar system.
    Roughly 30 minutes and an eight-sentence scribbling on a yellow legal pad later—with a carbon copy left behind for Sengier’s files—the Engineer walked out onto the noisy Manhattan streets carrying a piece of paper that gave the US government access to the richest Tubealloy ore ever tapped on planet Earth, a geological freak of nature, really, boasting nearly 65 percent purity. It was from deep in the mines of Shinkolobwe, a name that means “fruit that scalds.”
    Within days, the Project arranged for the purchase of Sengier’s Staten Island stash and another 3,000 tons still waiting in Africa. The price was $1.60 per pound, of which $1.00 went to Sengier and another $0.60 going to initial processing at Eldorado in Canada. Office buildings, the shipping containers, the storage facilities: All were now hidden in plain sight, shrouded by the asphalt chaos of New York City and its environs, all right under the noses of millions of Americans.
    The ore score was a real boon for the Project. The materials were coming together, but the scale was about to expand drastically. A month later, in November 1942, the Project chose Site Y, a spot 35 miles northwest of Santa Fe, New Mexico, for development of the Gadget itself: Los Alamos. The General had heard from his newly appointed Site Y head that his team of scientists in the desert would need much more enriched Tubealloy than they had originally estimated, if they hoped to get the Gadget designed and tested in time—that is, before the Germans figured out how to do it.
    The spiders were weaving, Site X and Site Y were secure, and the Project had a line on a supply of Tubealloy and plans for gargantuan plants of never-before-imagined size and scope.
    Now all they had to do was find enough bodies to fill them.

CHAPTER 2
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Peaches and Pearls
    The Taking of Site X, Fall 1942
In the Hills of Tennessee, where man has harnessed the power of rivers, there resounds again the roar of tractors and bulldozers, the thud of hammers, and buzz of saws. This time, however, American Brain and Brawn is transforming a peaceful tract of farm land into a thriving modern community. The “old-timers” at Oak Ridge (those of us who have resided here two weeks or longer) have already been instilled with a feeling of civic