He took a deep breath. Now — another Enigma signal with the potential of an immensely greater disaster had been intercepted. Coventry would be a Bible-class outing in comparison. And the report was on his desk. If the Coventry story was true, he fervently hoped that the decision he'd just made would help justify in some small measure the earlier decision….
Should he consult Stimson? Notify him?
No He'd act on his own. Hell, he'd had his ass in a sling before….
He had a fleeting moment of doubt. Was it a wild-goose chase? Would he be jeopardizing the Manhattan Project needlessly? Was the Haigerloch Project just another of Hitler's screwball secret weapons? There'd been detailed reports of literally hundreds of them. True, a few had turned out to be highly effective. The V-1 buzz bombs. The V-2 rockets. Jets. But most had never reached the production stage. Just as well. Some that were actually tested and employed in strictly limited situations might have become real headaches. The Krummlauf Gewehr, for example, a rifle that could shoot around corners. Actually worked. A curved barrel with a Zeiss optical sight mounted on an MP 44…. A whole slew of Buck Rogersish aircraft. His favorite had been the Dornier DO-335. Someone had obtained complete blueprints of the damn thing. It was a fighter plane of extreme maneuverability. It had a propeller mounted at each end of the fuselage — a regular aeronautical pushmi-pullyu dreamed up by some Nazi Dr. Doolittle. He'd had fantasies of building a model of it for his grandson…. Or the Bombersäge—the Bomber Saw. That's what it was. A plane designed to saw a bomber in half, for crissake! It had a row of bazooka-like rocket weapons mounted vertically on the fuselage. All the fighter had to do was to fly under the bomber's vulnerable belly and push a button. Couldn't miss…. Hell, they'd even worked on making their damned planes invisible to radar. They'd developed a paint. Called it Schornsteinsfeger—Chimney Sweep. When smeared on the planes, it would trap incoming radar signals — and the presence of the planes would not show up on the radar screen. So far they'd perfected it for only one radar wavelength, however. God only knew when they'd be able to go all the way…. Even their subs had their secret devices. How about the Pillenwerfer—the Pill Thrower, an anti-detection device for U-boats? Turned the whole damned ocean into a giant Bromo-Seltzer. The device shot out perforated cans with a special chemical that immediately effervesced in the water and formed millions of bubbles that enveloped the sub and completely hid it from sonar detection. Every damned U-boat that had actually used it had escaped….
Was the project going on at Hechingen and Haigerloch in this category of never-rans? Or would it be the one that would give the Nazis their final triumph?
The intercom buzz interrupted his thoughts.
“Sir. Captain Cornelius Everett, Jr., Control Officer of Operation Gemini, is on the line.”
“Good.”
McKinley picked up the receiver. Without preliminaries, he demanded:
“Everett. What is your time frame for making Gemini operative?”
“Five days, sir.”
McKinley looked at the report on the desk before him.
“You will have to speed it up,” he said grimly. “I want Operation Gemini launched within twenty-four hours!”
13
Sig leaned against the dirty, cracked plaster wall in the farmhouse. It was cold and rough. His rucksack was lying beside him on the plain wooden bench. He felt keyed up. His mind still whirled with the hectic activities of the last twenty-four hours. One moment he and Dirk had been anticipating another five days of training and mission instruction — the next, after a crash-and-cram briefing session and a continuing flood of frantic preparation, they'd found themselves on a USAF plane bound for who-the-hell-knew-where. It had been Thursday when the floodgates broke Thursday the twenty-second of March It was now Friday. He glanced at his watch. A little before eight in the evening. Or—2000 hours according to GI lingo. Better get used to that, he thought.
He shifted on the hard bench. He fingered the coarse material of the jacket he was wearing. He was surprised how comfortable he felt in the clothes the London Moles had given him. It was the first time in his life he'd worn someone else's secondhand clothing. It wasn't the only first he was about to tackle.
In two hours he'd be well into Germany. Enemy country.
The plane had taken them to Strasbourg. He knew now that the little village they'd been rushed to immediately after landing was called Gerstheim. They had shown it to him on the map and told him it was totally evacuated. It was situated twenty-five miles south of Strasbourg between the Canal du Rhône au Rhin and the Rhine itself; a stone's throw from the river — and the enemy — in the sector of General de Lattre de Tassigny's French First Army.
He suddenly felt a wave of cold fear surge through him. What in the name of hell was he doing here?
When Corny had first told him of the decision to infiltrate them by land rather than by parachute, he'd felt greatly relieved He couldn't see himself leaping out of an airplane in the dead of some dark night. Corny's reasoning had been utterly logical. He and Dirk would have had to jump blind into enemy territory without a reception committee. The drop plane over the sensitive area might well have alerted the enemy — and there had been too little time to train him, Sig, thoroughly in proper jumping procedure, making an accident upon landing a high-risk proposition. And finally — it would be quite impossible for Dirk to jump with his scarcely healed chest injury anyway. He snorted cynically to himself. That last reason would have been enough all by itself for anyone — except perhaps for Corny….
He glanced at Dirk sitting close by, his eyes closed. He seemed utterly relaxed, calm. Almost too calm. Is that his way of being nervous? Sig wondered.
He looked around at the other men crowded into the farmhouse. Twenty-two of them. He'd counted them. Several times. Twenty-two. Including the sergeant, a forbidding, six-feet-four giant of a man with the magnificent name of Abu Kamir Hassan, who hadn't said two words to them since they had joined the patrol.
In a little while his life — and his partner's — would be in their hands….
He studied them with an odd, morbid fascination. How many of them would come back? How many would die? Would—he?
They were a strange group. Swarthy-skinned, with piercing dark eyes, rugged faces and close-cropped black hair; a special combat patrol mounted by the Premier Groupement de Tabors. Marocains — the First Group of Moroccan Tabors They looked fierce, hard, totally deadly as they checked their equipment and weapons with the quick, meticulous care of professional killers. In addition to their guns, every one of them carried a long, razor-sharp knife and several grenades hanging from his belt. The French officer who'd briefed Dirk and Sig on the line-crossing operation had referred to the Moroccans as goumiers, men specially trained for infiltration operations in rugged terrain. He had sounded awed.
A thought flashed into Sig's mind. World War II. It really was a world operation. Here he sat, a Swiss in a US Intelligence outfit, in a French farmhouse, surrounded by a band of Moroccans, with a Dutch partner and with clothing and equipment supplied by English Moles!
He looked at Dirk.
“I don't like it,” he said darkly.
Dirk kept his eyes closed.
“What's not to like?” he commented airily. “Just because you might get your ass shot off paddling across the river and crawling through the Siegfried Line?” He shrugged. “You'll get used to it.”