“Ah, this is where you work your magic,” said Geller, the man who’d set today’s events in motion with the note wrapped in a one-dollar bill.
Cracco said nothing.
“In the months we’ve been working together,” the man continued, walking up to an oven and peering into the open door, “I don’t believe I’ve ever complimented you on your bread, Luca.”
“I know I bake good bread. I don’t need praise.”
Words are never arrogant if they’re true.
Geller continued, “The wife and I like it very much. She makes French toast sometimes. You know what French toast is?”
“Of course.”
Heinrich Kohl, standing nearby, however, didn’t. Cracco explained about the egg-infused bread dish. Then added firmly, “But you must make it with butter. Not lard. If all you have is lard, do not bother.”
Geller nodded to the crate. “Let me see.”
Kohl opened the lid. The men looked down at the canister attached to the oven. All three men were somber, as if they were looking at a body in a casket.
Cracco said, “Uranium. That small amount will do what you say?”
“Yes, yes. There is enough there to turn New York City into a smoldering crater.”
I would have expected bigger…
This material, Cracco had learned, would be turned into what was called an atomic bomb, and it seemed like something out of the science-fiction fumetti comic books that were so popular in Italy. Kohl had been working on it in Heidelberg for several years, seven days a week, ever since the directive from the führer was handed down to construct such a weapon.
Cracco patted his pockets and then stopped abruptly. “Is it, I mean, can I smoke?”
Kohl laughed. “Yes.”
He handed out Camels and the men lit up.
Cracco inhaled deeply.
Quarto…
At that moment another man appeared in the doorway of the bakery’s kitchen. A trim man, with a military bearing like Geller’s. He looked around, mystified.
“General,” said the new arrival respectfully. He was speaking to Geller, whom everyone referred to that way, though he was retired from his job as the U.S. army chief of staff in Washington. Presently he was a civilian-second in command of the Office of Strategic Services. Wild Bill Donovan’s right-hand man.
“Sir. I-”
“At ease, Tom. It’ll all get explained.” Geller then asked Kohl, “Do we need to do anything with it?” Nodding at the canister in the crate.
“No, no, it’s perfectly safe. Well, if you open the lead casing, you’d die of radiation poisoning in a day or two, and, I promise you, that would not be a pleasant way to die.”
“But it won’t blow up, will it?”
“No. The uranium must be shaped carefully and machined to within micromillimeters and the vectors arranged in such a way that critical mass-”
“Fine, fine,” Geller muttered. “Just need to know if our boys drop it, we don’t incinerate the Western Hemisphere.”
“Nein. That won’t happen.”
“Sir?” Brandon asked again.
“Okay. Here’s the scoop, Tom. Luca Cracco and Heinrich Kohl. This is Tom Brandon. Head of the OSS office here in New York. Even though we don’t technically have an office here in New York.”
Cracco had no idea what this meant.
Geller continued, “Colonel Kohl, of the Abwehr, formerly with the Abwehr, was a professor of physics at the university in Heidelberg before the war. He’s spent the last four years working with a team there to make one of these atomic bomb things. We knew Hitler wanted one, but we weren’t too worried. Everybody in Washington thought the crazy bastard’d shot himself in the foot with his Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service. You know, the law that kicked all non-Aryan professors out of colleges in Germany. Including most of their top atomic physicists. Felix Bloch, Max Born, Albert Einstein, and-”
Kohl said with a wry grin, “Yes, yes, how ironic it was! Hitler lost the very men who could determine the precise measure of mass to turn uranium 235 into a fissile material. And that is-”
Geller cut him off before the professor/colonel got technical again. “And they fled to the West. But der Führer insisted the work go on-with people like Heinrich here. Of course, he happened to have a conscience, unlike some of his colleagues. His goal all along was to keep working on this… what do you call it again?”
“Fissile material.”
“Yeah, that. But smuggle it to us, through the underground.” Geller glanced at Cracco. “Enter our amateur spy, here. About two months ago, Luca’s brother, Vincenzo, a soldier with the Italian army, was captured by the Nazis and thrown in a POW camp.”
Many people thought the Italians and Allies were enemies throughout the war. But that wasn’t the case. Mussolini was deposed in 1943, and the king of Italy and the new prime minister signed a secret armistice. Many Italians then began fighting alongside the American, English, and Indian forces against the Germans in Italy.
“Vincenzo escaped from the Nazi camp and headed to Germany to fight with the underground. When they learned about Luca, they put Vincenzo in touch with Heinrich, and they came up with a plan to smuggle this fashionable material-”
“Fissile.”
“-to America. Luca jumped at the chance to help. So they disguised the… material as part of an oven. And had it shipped to his bakery.”
Brandon said, “But, all respect, sir, why didn’t I hear about it? We could have…” The agent’s voice faded. He scowled. “You couldn’t tell me because you suspected the double agent we’ve been worried about might’ve been in our office here.”
Geller nodded. “German intelligence learned what Heinrich had done and that the shipment was on its way, when and where it would arrive. They alerted their agent in place. But we didn’t know who it was. It looked like the traitor could also be in your office here, Tom. So Luca and Heinrich were the bait. The double agent followed them-and they caught him.”
Brandon snapped, “It’s Jack Murphy, isn’t it? Jesus. Hell. I should’ve guessed. He never told me where his leads came from, how he knew about the operation. And he wanted to run it alone. So he could kill the two of them and ship the stuff back to Germany.”
Cracco said softly, “I wanted to shoot him. I nearly did. But that is what the Nazis would do. Americans would give him a fair trial. So, I spared him, tied him up.” He smiled. “I was rough with him, however, I have to say that.”
Brandon added, “I always wondered why Jack had a two-bedroom apartment.”
General Geller laughed harshly. “In Manhattan? On an OSS agent’s pay?”
“And had a fancy pocket watch. Oh, and he drove a ’42 Ford Deluxe.”
Cracco felt wounded. “You mean he did this for money?”
“Looks that way,” Geller said.
“Where is he?” Brandon’s voice was thick with pain.
“Paddy wagon’s taking him to federal lockup.” Geller offered a smile, which Cracco had learned was a rare occurrence. “Bill Donovan’s talked to Attorney General Biddle. We’re keeping Hoover in the dark. He’ll find out about Murphy’s indictment when he reads it in the Times. If he reads the Times.”
“What are you going to do with this?” Brandon indicated the canister in the crate.
“You didn’t hear this from me, but it’s going out west. New Mexico. There’s a project going on that’s pretty hush-hush. There’ve been some setbacks, and they need more of this fissile stuff. That’s it? Fissile?”
“That’s right.”
Brandon was looking at Kohl when he asked with a frown, “They’re going to use it, that bomb, against Germany?”