1945 (8 page)

This time it was lieutenant Commander James Mannheim Martel who lunged from his chair, and it was a measure of the effect of six weeks' sleep deprivation on his fighter-pilot reflexes that Brubaker managed to lurch an involuntary step backward before Martel's fist passed through the space his face had occupied a split second before.

Curiously, Grierson shoved himself between the pair not as a fellow cop, but with the attitude of someone separating arguing peers who had passed over the edge of violence. Martel just stood there panting. Brubaker had the look of a junkyard dog being baited from beyond a fence.

"Enough!" Grierson shouted. "Martel, Bru, ease off, will you?"

"Chief,
please
let me squeeze him. He'll talk."

"Maybe later, Bru. Not now." Then, speaking low so that Martel couldn't hear, he added,
"We aren't authorized.
" He turned back to Martel, who spoke before Grierson could.

"Know one thing, Grierson. Now or later, if you have one of your thugs lay a hand on me, you better kill me, because by God I'll take it personal, and I won't be down forever. Ever been in combat, Grierson? I've killed thirty men or more." He nodded at Grierson's shoulder holster. "Ever had that thing out in the heat? Ever aim it at anybody for real? Think about it, Grierson. You and your girlfriend there."

Brubaker looked like he was about to explode. Without bothering to look in his direction, Grierson waved him back down again disgustedly. "Martel—"

Jim cut him off. "Not another word. I want a lawyer. Now."

"Think about it, Martel. As long as you haven't been charged we can still handle this administratively. Stay at that country club for a year or two. If we go to court it's twenty-to-life, hard."

"Screw you."

"Closing in on your lies, are we?" Brubaker asked with a vicious smile. "You blew it about the nineteenth and now you can't cover it up. You're nothing but a damn traitor."

"Kiss my ass." Martel shifted his gaze back to Grierson. "Charge me or get the hell out."

"Just a couple more questions, Martel."

"Kiss off." Stubbing out his cigarette he reached over to the pack that was still on the table and fished out another one. He suddenly realized that he didn't have a light and glared at Grierson, who produced his lighter.

"I'll make you a deal, Martel. I won't ask you anything I've asked before, and you answer what I ask. All right?"

Jim started to tell him where to shove his questions, then 
thought about it. He had nothing to hide, and didn't want to seem as if he did. Hell, he supposed he even wanted them to get to the bottom of this. He just wasn't going to be screwed with anymore.

"Sure. Why not? New questions only. No repeats. You ask, I'll answer. But start using your psywar tricks on me again, and not another word."

"Okay. Deal. You're from North Carolina, aren't you, Martel?"

"Yeah. So what?"

"Ever been to Manhattan?"

"Sure I have."

"Like the place?"

"It's all right."

"Ever talk about Manhattan with any of your friends?"

"You mean Willi?"

Grierson nodded.

"How the hell can I remember that... yeah ... sure, we must have. Most Germans are curious about Hollywood and New York."

Grierson stared at him intently.

"Ever been to Oak Ridge?"

"What?"

'You heard me."

Jim sat absorbed in thought for a moment. This must have a point, but he couldn't figure it out.

"There's an Oak Ridge at Gettysburg. It's where they built the Peace Monument. Is that what you mean?"

"What about 238th Street in Manhattan, or Apartment U?"

"What the hell are you getting at?"

Grierson remained silent.

"Look, if what you've asked me means something, I haven't got a clue."

"What about the stadium at the University of Chicago?"

"We never played there when I was in the Academy, if that's what you mean."

Grierson took a cigarette from the dwindling pack and lit it. He continued to stare at Martel, his features expressionless.

"Care to discuss any of it?"

"Discuss what?"

"What we've just been talking about."

"Look, it might mean something to you but it sure as hell doesn't mean a damn thing to me. Manhattan. Apartment U or V. You've got another security leak? Somebody blow your codes?"

Grierson stubbed his cigarette out and stood up. He started to pocket his pack of smokes and then pushed them across the table to Martel.

"So is that it?" Jim asked coldly as the agent headed for the door. "You want to hang that on me as well?"

"We'll be in touch, Martel." A guard on the other side opened the door, and the FBI man was gone. The lock snapped shut behind him.

Martel took another pull on his cigarette and looked over at Brubaker.

"I bet you'd love to call in a couple of your friends to help you kick the crap out of me right now."

"Jesus, I hope they decide to go all the way on you," Brubaker replied wistfully.

Suddenly, for no particular reason, Martel's attention fixed on the bathroom mirror. He waved.

"Crap," Grierson snarled as he turned away from the other side of it, stepped past the cameraman and back out into the main corridor. He hated it when prisoners pretended they could see him.

Damn him. He looked back at the camera crew that had been filming the interrogation, wondering why Hoover was going to so much trouble over this. It bothered him that Martel might know something important that the number-three — all right, number-four — man in the FBI wasn't privy to. And whatever this Manhattan project was, it was surely important.

Grierson stepped out into the early evening chill. The 
film would be analyzed for any subde gestures on Martel's part, but Grierson already knew that nothing new would be discovered. That was a problem; the Navy was breathing hard down Hoover's neck on this. Clearly Martel had some friends in high places, and without clear evidence of Martels guilt, the case would soon be dropped. If that happened, Hoover would focus back in on alleged leaks within FBI counterintelligence and several of the defense plants that Grierson was responsible for.

Even the hint of a screw-up was enough to put someone on Hoovers blacklist.

Grierson climbed into his car and started back for the ugly confrontation he knew awaited him at FBI headquarters. He was learning to hate James Martel.

November 15 Berchtesgaden, Germany

The room clattered with scraping chairs and clicking heels as the Führer entered the palatial conference room with its open-walled view of the Alpine countryside. As he moved to the end of the long marble conference table he felt again the quickening, the narcotic thrill unknown since the last days of the Russian campaign. Both the victories won at the negotiating table and the triumphs earned in dictating to an empire paled to insignificance when compared to that greatest of all human endeavors, war— this time against the United States of America. In a way he would regret it when this last and foremost opponent ceased to exist, but then he had always been a sentimentalist.

To his left stood Field Marshal von Manstein, his chief of staff for the army. Next to Manstein was Doenitz of the Navy, and then Air Marshal Kesselring, Chief of Air Operations. To his right, down the other side of the table waited Himmler, Göring, Kaltenbrunner, who headed intelligence, the ever-present Bormann, and Albert Speer, head of industrial production and economic strategic planning:

Hitler's gaze fixed on General Kaltenbrunner. "The updated report you turned in yesterday. Do you vouch for it?"

"The reports are most reliable, my Führer. They come straight from the President's own Chief of Staff. Furthermore, what he's saying dovetails with reports from other sources."

"Then it is all too clear," Hitler announced. "They will 
try to lull us with hackneyed platitudes about peace—until this wonder weapon is ready. Then watch how their song changes. If they have this bomb first, that farmer and his fat degenerate friend in London will dictate to us."

He paused and looked around the room.

"To us!"

Hitler's gaze returned to his intelligence officer. "Is the estimated date we have for completion as reliable as the rest?"

"Such things are never certain, of course, but Harrisons Chief of Staff believes it to be accurate. The Russians too believe the Americans will achieve their target date. A couple of the American and British scientists, Communist sympathizers, are leaking information to Stalin, and they believe the dates." Kaltenbrunner carefully did not discuss his own pipeline into the Kremlin.

"Gott im Himmel!"
Hitler roared. "The idiot Americans will give this bomb to the Russians—Stalin will be at our throats!"

"In a way we are fortunate," the intelligence officer continued when Hitler had calmed himself. "Had they maintained their initial pace they would have the bomb right now. Luckily, they slowed down their atomic research lifter Pearl Harbor so that they could devote all their resources to dealing with Japan. Alas, once the war was over, Roosevelt managed to get the projects priority upgraded again, under the code name 'Manhattan.'

"We already have two intelligence teams in place to survey the main manufacturing site for the bomb." Kaltenbrunner paused and pointed at the map of the United States that covered the wall behind Hitler. There, in Tennessee. They've concentrated all their production of radioactive material at one site. They're planning to build a second site in the state of Washington but it will be two years before that's completed. Our sources don't know yet
at
what rate they are producing the crucial elements in Tennessee so we must assume the worst, that they will complete work within eighteen months, just as Harrison's Chief of Staff boasted."

Hitler stirred. "Early 1947."

"Yes, my Führer."

Hitler shifted his gaze to Speer.

"And our bomb?"

"Late 1947 at the earliest, and that only if everything goes perfectly, which it will not. As I have said previously, the British sabotaged some key research sites, and beyond that it will take us at least twelve months to build the massive facilities required to refine bomb-grade uranium in the sort of quantities that will be required. Like the Americans, we will need a factory area where nearly
a
hundred thousand workers can labor undisturbed."

"Then why not move now?" Hitler demanded. "We are already running rehearsals and training exercises. This conference merely confirms what I already knew. We could be ready in four weeks, six at most."

With one or two exceptions the entire group froze with almost the same look of nervous dismay. This had all been hashed out weeks ago, but Hitler had been known to change his mind. It would be very bad if this was one of those times.

"Because, my Führer," Speer replied quickly, "as we already discussed, we have another generation of weapons just coming on line, but it will be four to six months before we are up to full-scale production. When we have them in sufficient quantity, the new jets, television-guided rocket bombs, hydrogen-powered submarines and improved rockets will give us a tremendous edge. But we need time to develop sufficient reserves. Four months would give us another thousand of the new Gotha fighters and eight hundred more Arado bombers. As for the television-guided rocket bombs, we have only two hundred and fifty; in four months we will have a thousand, enough to send every single American carrier to the bottom.

"What we showed off at the parade looked glorious—and was! —but that display comprised nearly every plane we own of those designs. We will need these new weapons if we are to destroy the American fleet. During their Pacific War the

Americans made tremendous advances in naval warfare. Thar fleet is formidable. Our best plan is to keep a close watch on their Manhattan Project—and move just before they have the final design. For the next six months, time is our ally, and with our marvelous new asset in their White House, we will know their every move; if there is some breakthrough we can act earlier if need be. Please, my Führer, let us wait just a little. Come spring, we will be ready."

Hitler lowered his head as if calculating the odds once again. He finally raised his head. One by one, his gaze speared the commanders of the three military branches. "No later than April."

Those gathered around the table visibly relaxed.

"Now, let us consider England. The American Manhattan Project is the
reason
we must fight, but the assault on Oak Ridge is just part of this operation, and a minor one in terms of men and materiel. Gendemen, I expect to be in Buckingham Palace within forty-five days of the commencement of hostilities. Furthermore, I expect you to arrange matters in such fashion that England's death throes act as a lure to bring the American fleet within range of the Luftwaffe.

"This will not be a repeat of 1940," Hitler said meaningfully, looking straight over at Göring. Thanks to
Speer,
control of the air will be achieved using our Me-262s and the new Gotha 229s, which are superior to anything the British have. With drop-tanks these fighters will be able to supply cover over all of England, thus eliminating our greatest problem in the previous war: protecting our bombers. This time, in all the British Isles there will be no single place of refuge. As for the invasion itself — Hitler paused to look over at Manstein — "I've reviewed your proposals." He fell silent for a moment, then, theatrically, "I approve. I will help you refine them, of course, but in general, I approve of your implementation of my original plan."