FROM SECSTATE WASHINGTON 0645 28 NOVEMBER 1942
VIA PANAMA TO ALL AMEMBASSIES SOUTHAMERICA FOR IMMEDIATE PERSONAL ATTENTION AMBASSADORS
(1) SECSTATE DESIRES IMMEDIATE TRANSMTTTAL AT AMBASSADORIAL LEVEL TO HIGHEST POSSIBLE LEVEL HOST GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL, FOLLOWED BY WIDEST POSSIBLE DISSEMI?ATION TO ALL CHANNELS OF PUBLIC INFORMATION.
DECLARATION BEGINS:
THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE DEPARTMENT OF STATE
WASHINGTON, DC
28 NOVEMBER 1942
FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT, THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; HIS MAJESTY GEORGE VI, KING OF ENGLAND AND EMPEROR OF THE BRITISH EMPIRE; JOSEF STALIN, CHAIRMAN OF THE SUPREME SOVIET OF THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS; AND GENERAL CHARLES DE GAULLE, CHAIRMAN OF THE FRENCH NATIONAL COMMITTEE, ON BEHALF OF THEIR GOVERNMENTS, AND IN THE NAME OF THEIR PEOPLE, HEREWITH DECLARE :
THE GERMAN GOVERNMENT, NOT CONTENT WITH DENYING TO PERSONS OF JEWISH RACE IN ALL THE TERRITORIES OVER WHICH THEIR BARBAROUS RULE HAS BEEN EXTENDED THE MOST ELEMENTARY HUMAN RIGHTS, ARE NOW CARRYING INTO EFFECT HITLER'S OFT-REPEATED INTENTION TO EXTERMI?ATE THE JEWISH PEOPLE IN EUROPE.
FROM ALL THE OCCUPIED COUNTRIES, JEWS ARE BEING TRANSPORTED, IN CONDITIONS OF APPALLING HORROR AND BRUTALITY, TO EASTERN EUROPE. IN POLAND, WHICH HAS BEEN MADE THE PRINCIPAL NAZI SLAUGHTERHOUSE, THE GHETTOS ESTABLISHED BY THE GERMAN INVADERS ARE BEING SYSTEMATICALLY EMPTIED OF ALL JEWS EXCEPT A FEW HIGHLY SKILLED WORKERS REQUIRED FOR WAR INDUSTRIES.
NONE OF THOSE TAKEN ARE EVER HEARD OF AGAIN. THE ABLE-BODIED ARE SLOWLY WORKED TO DEATH IN LAROR CAMPS. THE-INFIRM APE LEFT TO DIE OF EXPOSURE AND STARVATION, OR ARE DELIBERATELY MASSACRED IN MASS EXECUTIONS.
THE NUMBER OF VICTIMS OF THESE BLOODY CRUELTIES IS RECKONED IN MANY HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS OF ENTIRELY INNOCENT MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDREN.
THE GOVERNMENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA; THE KINGDOM OF ENGLAND AND THE BRITISH EMPIRE; THE UNION OF SOVIET SOCIALIST REPUBLICS; AND THE FRENCH NATIONAL COMMITTEE CONDEMN IN THE STRONGEST POSSIBLE TERMS THIS BESTIAL POLICY OF COLD-BLOODED EXTERMI?ATION.
DECLARATION ENDS.
(2) SECSTATE DESIRES NOTIFICATION BY MOST EXPEDITIOUS MEANS OF COMPLIANCE, TO INCLUDE NAME AND TITLE OF FOREIGN OFFICIAL TO WHOM DECLARATION DELIVERED, AND DATE AND TIME.
CORDELL HULL SECRETARY OF STATE
"Jesus H. Christ!" Clete said.
"Rather nauseating, isn't it?" Nestor said.
Hundreds of thousandsof people murdered? Clete asked incredulously.
The ambassador said he's been led to believe it's many more than that," Nestor said evenly. "He thinks there was probably quite a discussion in Foggy Bottom ..."
"What?"
"... at the Department of State," Nestor explained somewhat condescendingly. "They call it 'Foggy Bottom' in Washington. The ambassador thinks there was probably quite a discussion with the decision made at the highest levels, perhaps by the Secretary himselfbefore they came up with the 'hundreds of thousands' language. Even that boggles credulity. One's mind can accept the death of one person, a hundred persons, even a thousand. Credulity is strained at tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands. The death, much less the murder, of millions is simplybeyond human comprehension."
"In other words, you believe this?"
"We know it to be a fact; our people have seen the death camps."
"Jesus!"
"Give me a call when you return from Punta del Este. Have a good time. I've been there. The women on the beach are stunning; made me wish I was a bachelor."
He put his beer bottle down on the banister.
"I can find my way out," he said.
Chapter Eleven
[ONE]
La Boca
Buenos Aires
1630 3 December 1942
Second Lieutenant Anthony J. Pelosi, Corps of Engineers, Army of the United States, wearing a short-sleeved white shirt and dark-blue cotton trousers, was wet with sweat when the bus finally arrived in La Boca. The bus was old, battered, noisy, and as crowded as the El at the Loop during rush hour more crowded; I feel like a goddamned sardine.
Lieutenant Frade had ordered him to spend as much time as possible riding the buses, "to get an idea of the terrain." The mentors in New Orleans had suggested the idea, and it was a good one, but Pelosi couldn't help but notice that Frade wasn't riding around in fucking buses himself; he was either getting chauffeured in one of Mallin's cars or catching cabs.
Pelosi stepped off the bus, took half a dozen steps, and then pulled the sweat-soaked shirt away from his chest and back.
Lieutenant Frade had also ordered him to start "laying in whatever you think you're going to need to blow a hole in a ship. No explosives, no detonators, they'll be provided. Everything else."
What the fuck is everything else? You need five things to blow something: explosives, detonators, wire, damping material sandbags are usually best and a source of juice to blow the detonators. A proper magneto controller is best. You hook up the wires, give it a crank, and boom!
I'm not as dumb as Lieutenant Frade and for that matter, Ettinger think I am. Laying in everything else does not mean I should find some engineer supply store and walk in and announce, "Hola! I'm interested in a good high-explosives controller. A Matson and Hardy Model Seven would be nice. What am I going to do with it? Why, I'm going to blow the bottom out of a ship in your harbor, that's what I'm going to do."
I don't really need a controller. I can get by with a couple of six-volt dry-cell batteries; Christ knows I've done that often enough. So what I'm doing here is looking for wire and a half-dozen dry-cell batteries. Big fucking deal.
What I really need is a magnet, a great big fucking magnet, so I can make something like the thing Lieutenant Greene, Chief Norton, and Bo'sun Leech showed me at the shipyard in Mississippi.
That device really impressed Tony. It was designed to pierce armored steel, like on a tank; and it was improvised from a limpet mine the Navy had gotten from the English, Chief Norton told him. It was constructed of magnetized steel. Its bottom was flat and was attached to the steel of a ship's hull. The top was of much thicker steel, and dome-shaped. The explosive went inside the dome; but the dome also served as a damper, directing the explosive force inward. Even better, the charge itself was moldedChief Norton called it a "shaped charge"so that it really directed all the force inward.
Tony could think of a lot of uses for shaped charges in the business. Blowing concrete-sheathed structural steel, for example. And if you put a bunch of small shaped charges around the base of a smokestack, you could really drop the sonofabitch in on itself.
The only thing Tony found wrong with the limpets was that you could hardly put a couple of them in your luggage and board the airplane in Miami.
He didn't think now that he would be able to lay his hands on a dome-shaped piece of steel, even make one himself. But he could probably weld together a boxthin steel on the bottom, heavier on the sides and topwhich would be maybe nearly as good as a dome. He would have to figure out some way to magnetize it. And he would try to mold some explosive himself into a shaped charge. If he could do thathe thought he could, with a big pot of boiling waterthen he would have something just about as good as what the Navy showed him.