“Then what is it that you want to do?”
“More sabotage. A helluva lot more. We’re already supplying some of General Sikorski’s guerrillas. I want to give them the means to take out these camps and the trains supplying them. The Germans are building more death camps because all the others are at capacity.” He paused, then added, “Frank, it’s become a logistical problem for Hitler. His SS simply cannot ‘cleanse’ fast enough. And the killings have only gotten worse since Count Raczynski spoke to the United Nations.”
The President shook his head in disgust.
“How the hell can I say no to that? Do it, Bill. But with this caveat: keep our fingerprints off it. I fear that if Hitler gets the idea we are targeting these camps—as opposed to it being just guerrillas—he will make an extra effort to kill those poor people faster. Just as happened after Raczynski’s UN speech.”
“Understood. Done.”
Roosevelt then looked down, turned to the second message, and began reading:
* * *
TOP SECRET
29MAY43 1750
FOR OSS WASHINGTON
EYES ONLY GEN DONOVAN
FROM OSS BERN
BEGIN QUOTE
1. NAMES OF REDS ACQUIRED FROM THE SPARROW SAID TO HAVE INFILTRATED THE NEW MEXICO SANDBOX ARE BEING INVESTIGATED THROUGH TINY’S SOURCES.
2. TINY SAYS THAT YOUR BOSS’S DECLARATION OF ONLY AN UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER LEAVES NO ROOM TO NEGOTIATE WITH THOSE WHO COULD BE IN CHARGE OF TAKING OUT HITLER.
DULLES
END QUOTE
TOP SECRET
* * *
Roosevelt poked his index finger at the sheet.
“What the hell!” the President blurted. “Does that say what I think it does? ‘Reds’ in ‘New Mexico sandbox’?”
“We are checking it out. But, yes, Allen says our Russian friends have spies in the Manhattan Project.”
Donovan noticed that the President seemed to stiffen at the suggestion of his Top Secret–Presidential project not being absolutely secret.
The OSS was deeply invested in the MANHATTAN PROJECT, FDR’s race to build the atomic bomb before Nazi Germany developed its own. A number of highly distinguished scientists—many Jewish, such as Albert Einstein and Niels Bohr—had fled the horrors of Nazi Europe. In a letter signed by Einstein and sent to Roosevelt in August 1939, they convinced the President that they believed that the scientific community could soon discover how to create the world’s most powerful weapon—one producing the explosive equivalent of twenty thousand tons of TNT—by harnessing the power of a nuclear reaction.
FDR quickly understood that whoever was first to build such a weapon would win the war.
Thus, the OSS’s first priority became the acquisition of whatever the MANHATTAN PROJECT needed—uranium ore, smuggle
d scientists, matériel, et cetera—as well as depriving the Germans of the same.
The President angrily shook the message.
“I’ll have the bastards lined up and shot!” he said. “When those names come, I want a copy of them immediately!”
“Yes, sir. But if we do find that there are indeed Russian spies, they’d be worth more to us alive than—”