The Soldier Spies (Men at War 3)

“We keep them from building engines,” Donovan said.

“How are we going to do that?” Canidy asked.

“I should have said, ‘we delay, we interfere with,’ the production of engines, ” Donovan said. “I think we can do that. How effectively remains to be seen.”

“How delay? How interfere with?” Canidy asked.

“The priority is first delay the jet fighters and next the flying bombs. If we can delay the production of jet engines, we can delay the production of jet fighters, and then we pray the Eighth Air Force can use the time bought to destroy German industry before they can, as you put it, start stamping out flying bombs like cookies.”

“And von Shitfitz can somehow help? How?”

"Specifically, by helping us bring out an expert who can tell us about the engines,” Donovan said. “Not their design. But their metallurgy. According to Pritchard and others, this is a whole new technology. A whole new metallurgy. If we can find out what kind of alloys are needed and shut off the German supply of the raw material, then we can delay—or at least interfere with—engine production.”

“Our own metallurgists can’t tell us?”

“There’re several ways to go, or so I’m told. We need to know which way the Germans are actually going before we can try to interfere with the raw-material-to-finished-engine process.”

“And the guy you want to bring out can tell us?” Canidy asked.

Donovan nodded. He was a little uncomfortable. While everything he had said to Canidy was true, it was not the whole truth.

“Who is he?” Canidy asked.

“His name is Friedrich Dyer. Professor Doctor Friedrich Dyer, of the Department of Physics at Philips University in Marburg an der Lahn in Hesse.”

“Which is where Eric went to school,” Canidy said.

Donovan nodded again.

Canidy accepted what he was being told without question. There was no reason that he should be suspicious, but it was better that he not be.

If Friedrich Dyer could be successfully extracted from Germany he might well be useful. But that was not the reason a good deal of effort and a great deal of money was going to be expended to extract him. If he could be extracted, then others on a list in Donovan’s safe could be extracted. The German chemists, physicists, and mathematicians on the list were those with expertise in the mathematics, physics, and chemistry of nuclear energy.

Getting them out might help Leslie Groves’s Manhattan Project. It certainly would deny their knowledge to the Germans. But they had to be extracted in such a way as not to alert the Germans to the American interest in nuclear energy. They would, in other words, have to be mixed with people with no nuclear connection.

Since Canidy could not be told about the atom bomb, he could not be told any more than he had been about the Dyer operation. Donovan understood the necessity for this, but he disliked what in the final analysis was deception of his own people.

“The prototype production of engines has been assigned to a plant in Marburg,” Donovan said. “The Fulmar Elektrisches Werk.”

"Fulmar?” Canidy said. "Jesus!” And then:“Electrical plant?”

“Relatively small electric furnaces capable of great and precise heat are what’s needed,” Donovan said. “The critical parts are small.”

Canidy grunted, as if ashamed he hadn’t thought of that himself.

“If we can bring the first man out, we can get others out,” Donovan said. “Dr. Conant of Harvard has made the point to the President that scientists are not a renewable resource.”

“It would be easier to kill them,” Canidy said. “Certainly cheaper.” Donovan looked at Canidy in surprise. Not that the thought had entered Canidy’s mind—it was a thought that had of course passed many times through his own mind—but that he could talk about it so matter-of-factly, aloud.

And then Canidy met his eyes, and Donovan saw embarrassment in them, maybe even shame.

“Don’t be embarrassed, Dick,” Donovan said. “It may well be necessary to take some people out.”

“Shit,” Canidy said.

“The rationale, for what it’s worth, is that any number of dead Germans are better than one dead American. A lot of innocent people are being killed in the bombing.”

Canidy grunted again.