“It’s the least evil of the unattractive choices available, sir.”
“How will you even track this warhead? Don’t tell me your AWACS or your ECM planes or drones can see a shielded tactical nuclear warhead from such a vast distance away. The Atlantic coast of Argentina is fifteen hundred miles long!”
“Sir, I’m honestly not aware of our true capabilities there. I do know my superiors believe such staging access, if you grant it, could make some difference.”
Mr. Jones cleared his throat. “I think I can add something here.”
Everyone turned. Jones took an object from his pocket and put it on the conference table.
“What is that?” da Gama said.
The Brazilian generals passed it to their president.
Da Gama looked at it. “This is a bottle cap?”
“Mr. President,” Jones said, “how often have you walked by one of those on the sidewalk and paid it no mind? Ignored it altogether? Not even noticed it?”
“Why, I don’t know. There must be millions of bottle caps strewn everywhere each day.” South American bottling companies used and reused glass much more than aluminum cans.
“Precisely,” Jones said. “Only this isn’t really a bottle cap.”
“What is it?” Da Gama turned it over in his hand.
“It’s a gamma-ray detector. With a built-in radio transmitter. The microbattery is recharged daily by solar power.”
“And…?”
“These have been strewn, as you put it, sir, all around the waterfront of Mar del Plata, and Buenos Aires, and other ports of possible infiltration into Argentina such as Bahía Blanca farther south.”
“I’m impressed,” da Gama said.
“Can I see?” Jeffrey asked.
Da Gama slid the bottle cap along the table. Jeffrey looked at it carefully. Probably has a loop antenna built into the rim. “What’s the range of the radio link when this thing decides to sound the alarm?”
“I don’t know,” Jones said. “That’s above my clearance level.”
“Mr. President,” Jeffrey said. “Everyone. I think the way to break our impasse is to stop thinking in terms of certainties when we face so many unknowns. We need instead to consider scenarios. One possible scenario is the one we’ve all described, that the von Scheer is real and close and will deliver an American warhead, intending to detonate it as the excuse to then present German warheads to Argentina.”
Da Gama looked at Jeffrey. “Have you considered, Captain, that this whole train of thought we’ve been following is a very clever Axis trick to dupe us all and have us do their work for them? That, in fact, the Germans want us to think just this, and then an American incursion on either Brazilian or Argentine territory presents the Axis with sufficient excuse right there? That we, gathered here in this room, by holding this meeting and making the decisions that Captain Fuller presses us to make, may very well create the provocation for war?”
Jeffrey blushed. He hadn’t thought of that.
Da Gama is smart. Scary smart. But Jeffrey would not be put off, even by such powerful rhetoric.
“Mr. President, viewing everything as a whole, I think we need to take the risk.”
“I appreciate more and more why your head of state sent you, Captain. You’ve been in nuclear combat several times.”
Jeffrey nodded.
“You’ve dealt and taken atomic blows. You’ve seen and felt the horror firsthand. An envoy, a diplomat, an embassy man I could dismiss too easily as a mere theoretician. You, however, speak to me with total credibility.”
“Yes, thank you, Mr. President.”
“I know you do not urge active involvement upon me lightly. But still I must reject your premise of risk. I begin more and more to consider the opposite view. That to act, with no harder information to go on, would be our gravest possible error. I must think of my own people first, Captain, and not get caught up in adventures based on American whim. Brazil is a democracy, and I cannot on my own either perform or condone what amounts to a declaration of war, especially not at the behest of a foreign power, the United States. My people, our congress, they know nothing of the threat of nuclear fighting on this continent. To convince them, to have any constructive effect, seems an impossible task when I’m not convinced myself.”
“Sirs,” Jones broke in, “may I suggest we take a short recess?”
Da Gama nodded curtly. He got up to leave the room, followed by his officers. Once they were gone, Colonel Stewart and Mr. Jones came over to Jeffrey, who remained seated. He felt exhausted and beaten by the verbal fencing that had gone nowhere.
“Well, at least you’re trying,” Stewart said.
“Be careful,” Jones said in an undertone. “We have to assume this room is bugged, and they’re recording everything we say.”
“Fine,” Jeffrey said. “We don’t have anything to hide, do we?”
Stewart and Jones shook their heads.
Jeffrey walked up to the map of Argentina. He studied it from top to bottom.
Where would the American warhead come ashore? Where would they detonate it? How can Estabo’s SEALs effectively interdict a kampfschwimmer team? How best could Challenger intercept von Scheer ?…What if von Scheer landed her warheads too soon?
He began to form a plan. “Colonel Stewart? Mr. Jones? Either of you know how to work this map-displayer thing?”
“What do you want to see?” Jones asked.
“A different area. Run from Mar del Plata up to Paranaguá.”
“Remind me where’s Paranaguá.”
“South of Rio. On the coast.”
“And?”
“Go inland enough to show Buenos Aires, and all of the border between Brazil and Argentina too.” The border stretched about three hundred miles.
Jones played with the controls. He cursed once or twice, but soon had the new map on the screen.
Da Gama and his men returned to the room.
Da Gama saw the map had changed. “What are you looking at, Captain?”
“We need to see this more from the German point of view. We know time is critical for them because of Challenger’s presence.”
“Are they sure your ship is nearby? We took great precautions bringing you here.”
“They have to at least make allowances for the possibility.”
Da Gama nodded. “They too must look at different scenarios.”
“When transporting anything, time interchanges with distance, and distance with time.”
“Of course.”
“The Germans knew from the beginning that they wouldn’t have forever, or even very long…. Their target needs to be some where on this map, I think. Somewhere within easy range of Mar del Plata, which stands out as the closest port or naval base to wherever the von Scheer might be.”
“Easy range by what means?”
“If the target isn’t either Mar del Plata or Buenos Aires themselves — for all the various reasons we discussed and agreed on before — it has to be someplace inland to make any sense.”
“Transport by truck, or plane, or helicopter,” da Gama stated.
“Yes. All of which can be tracked by one of our airborne reconnaissance platforms.”
“So, Captain?”
“Our mistake before was fixating on the map of Argentina alone, thinking of Argentina in isolation. I think the target’s going to be somewhere on the border, close to the border.”
“There’s nothing there but jungle and swamps. We already moved the civilians out of Foz, with great difficulty.”
“Foz. That’s near the Triple Border, where Brazil and Argentina touch and both also meet Paraguay?”