1945 (46 page)

"This time, this time will be different. The Germans have plenty of industrial depth — and a truly wicked immediate military potential." Marshall paused for a moment. "We could lose, you know."

Jim nodded grimly. Down deep he couldn't really integrate that idea — after the invariable rough start, America won, always—but intellectually it was awfully easy to paint a victorious Nazi scenario.

"It may seem I'm being unfair to you, Commander Martel, since you saved your country once today already—"

"Sir, I was just one man. If any of us, you included sir, had failed in his duty, to say nothing of York and his militiamen, we would have saved nothing."

"Entirely true, Commander. But you and only you saw the truth and acted on it. Without your 'interference' every one of us who was at Oak Ridge last night would be dead this morning." Marshall paused, seemingly at a loss for words, then added, "Lieutenant Commander Martel, I am not by nature a person given to over-familiarity, and in fact I regard this modern instant-intimacy as deplorable. Yet that said, I do wish you to understand that while it may not seem so, I am very much aware that without your efforts both in general and particular, I would have met my Maker around 10:15 last night."

Jim in his turn was puzzled for a response that was neither fatuously self-deprecatory nor presumptuous. God forbid that he should seem "overly familiar"! Yet to tell the General that there was nothing personal in what he'd done, while true, did not seem to quite fit the moment either. He setded for what he hoped was an encouraging nod.

"Well then, as long as we understand each other, we can continue," Marshall said rather more brusquely than he'd probably intended. "Furthermore, and more to the point, Groves tells me that without the scientists and engineers he wouldn't have any idea how to go about restarting Manhattan. The Nazis would have had time to build dozens, hundreds of atomic bombs before we produced our first, and that would have been the end of us. Thanks to you we're still in the race. Behind, but still in the race."

Jim wasn't at all happy at the notion that if it hadn't been for his entirely fortuitous intervention the United States wouldn't stand a chance in the coming war. He knew well enough that sometimes one man did make the difference —Civil War buffs generally agreed that the untimely death of Stonewall Jackson from friendly fire had doomed the South, for example —but he didn't like it. What if he'd failed?

Seeing that Jim had nothing to say, Marshall continued. "As I was saying, it may be unfair to ask you to save your country two days running, but there it is."

"Sir," Jim said carefully as he composed his thoughts, "if I understand you, you are telling me that watching me has led you to radical ideas for winning the war. Industrial-organizational ideas I assume, since that is your forte. Then you tell me that this inspiration consists of throwing our best and our brightest into some upscale department store with unlimited charge accounts."

"Macy's, I believe I said," Marshall corrected.

"Yes, sir. And then you tell me that not only did I and I alone save my country from utter disaster yesterday, but that I must do so again today. Frankly, sir, I'm having a little trouble digesting all this."

Indeed he rather marveled at the General's resilience. All that mortal peril and physical stress, and the only outward sign was a certain quirkiness. Of course Marshall hadn't already been through the mill once when the bombs started falling, Jim consoled himself.

Marshall grinned. "I can see you're tiring, Commander, so I'll give you the short-course version now, and let you catch forty winks. Last time out we took the people we thought could perform, gave them specific goals, gave them everything they needed to meet those gods, and then got ourselves and everybody else out of the way. This time we'll do the same—except we will go one step further: the very best of them will set their own goals."

8:00 A.M. Washington, D.C.

"Martel, you look like hell," Donovan said pleasantly as he personally ushered Jim into his office.

Jim forced a half-smile. Without, as far as Jim could tell, saying a word, Marshall had somehow arranged for fresh uniforms to be waiting for them when the plane set down, but he still bore the evidences of a very hard night, nor had he had a chance to do more than splash water on his face when he switched into the uniform.

"Nah, let's sit over here," Donovan said, gesturing to an arrangement of a worn but solid leather couch with facing easy chairs and coffee table. "You get any sleep on the way up?"

Jim nodded. "Some. An hour maybe." He allowed himself a sigh as the easy chair took the burden. "Marshall and I talked for a while. Then I fell asleep, but they woke me up to take out some bits of this and that."

Donovan looked a question.

"I was a little too close to a grenade that lost its temper. Among other things. I wouldn't mind a chance to take a shower."

"Well, in this line of work there are days like that—at least one per customer. But I'm afraid you can't stand down quite yet. In two hours we're meeting with the President."

"General Marshall told me about it. Said I'm supposed to be there. Frankly I'm too damned tired to be as impressed as I should be." After the surgical procedure he and Marshall had spent the rest of the flight deep in conversation.

Donovan looked at Martel speculatively. "Tired or depressed?"

"Both, maybe. I knew something bad was coming, knew it from the beginning, and I didn't stop it."

"How do you think I feel, Jim? Or the President? You were one man, totally untrained for the situation. For us, the failure is much, much deeper, and I promise you we feel it. While you, in the face of ridiculous blindness and resistance, saved all you could. You should be proud, James Martel."

To the extent that he could feel any emotion right now, such praise from this man left Martel uncomfortable. Besides, it was a crock. He'd run through the situation a hundred times in his mind on the way back, and had seen a dozen places where with just a little more brains he could have nailed Skorzeny cold. If he'd just been a little firmer with Johnson, for example, or had quietly withdrawn with Wayne, rather than try to go one-on-one in the woods with Germany's top commando. That last thought left him more wretched than ever. He'd as good as killed his best friend. Dragged him from the loving arms of his true love and thrown him to the wolves. God, how would he ever be able to face that young woman? He hadn't even met her—he hadn't wanted to deal with people, even a friend like Wayne, after the FBI let him go.

After looking at Martel closely Donovan added, "Jim, it won't improve your mood to tell you things will look better after you've had some rest. But consider this: at this very moment Otto Skorzeny is cursing you as the man who ruined the culminating operation of his life."

Jim shrugged indifferently. The more he thought about it, the more he was certain that stampeding everyone into taking up a defensive position in a cellar had been less than brilliant. What if the enemy had simply called in an air strike, as it had done so effectively against the fabricating facilities? Contrary as it ran to instinct, they should simply have scattered, maybe with a screening force of whatever size they could manage fighting a delaying action. True, he had taken notice when Marshall pointed out that the bombers were scrupulously avoiding the administration building, but still it had just been dumb luck that Skorzeny & Co. had found the combination of records and scientists so tempting a target that—he shook his head angrily.

Donovan tried another tack. "C'mon, Martel, in three, maybe four hours you can cry in your beer if you want to, but you're not done yet. And this next part may be the most important of all."

Jim stirred. From earliest youth he'd been taught that duty's call must always be answered. "What do you mean?"

"I mean that General Marshall is about to attempt to convince the President that to beat the Germans we need to create a new paradigm of national R&D and production. You're part of the presentation."

"Hey, the General told me to be there, but just as an observer, an aide or something."

Seeing that Martel was safely re-engaged, Donovan snickered. "Oh, you poor, fair-haired boy."

Alarmed enough to momentarily forget his depression, Martel asked, "Why me? What do I have to offer on their level? I'm a pretty good analyst, a fair pilot—and I've just proved I'm a piss-poor field operative. How does that qualify me for anything but taking notes at a meeting like this?"

"Try any of that false-modesty crap where we're going and they'll hand you your head. Like the General no doubt told you, what you were was
right.
Everywhere we look, you called the shots as you saw them, and you saw them the way they turned out to be. That makes you New Paradigm Exhibit Number One." Donovan grinned. "Imight also add that for some folks that makes you real obnoxious to have around For example, I hear that General Groves just loves you to itty bitty pieces."

The third time Martel opened his mouth to speak and nothing came out, Donovan laughed again as he checked his watch.

"But wait! There's more!"

"More
what?"

"More fun for me, watching you," Donovan replied as he touched a buzzer on his desk. "Dave—"

"Yes, sir?" said the box next to the buzzer.

"Send her in, will you?" In response a door on the far side of Donovan's office opened, and a beautiful woman entered, hesitantly, as if unsure of her welcome.

"What the hell . . . ?" Jim whispered. "What are you doing here? And where were you when I—"

"When you needed me?" Betty McCann asked sadly, as she approached.

Jim nodded mutely.

"I know how it must have seemed to you. I wanted to follow you back to the States, but—"

Jim could only look at her, his mind a whirl of emotions. He had given her up and even managed to wish her well. But he'd been hurt, savagely hurt, he now realized, by the way she'd left him to fend for himself after his run-in with the Bureau. Now —

As the two of them stood there, motionless, speechless, not touching, Donovan thought it might be time to intervene. "Why don't the two of you sit down — no, together there on the couch, of course," he added when Jim made to take the easy chair opposite the one Donovan lad been sitting in.

When the three of them were setded, Jim and Betty rather stiffly, Donovan went on. "I felt really bad about it, Jim, but just as it was important for you to stay in the doghouse with the Navy, so that if anybody was watching you they wouldn't twig that somebody might be listening to you, we thought it was important that you also seem to be abandoned by your girlfriend. If you weren't even able to convince her you were clean, then they had nothing to worry about. Anyway that's how I saw it."

"You could have just told me," Martel replied with an expression that was not quite a snarl.

"You were just an anonymous pawn, Jim. Who knew how you would react? It isn't easy to hide joy. The whole point was to try to make the other side believe we all bought it about the leak being at the Embassy and not in Washington. It was better for you to be crushingly depressed."

"And he made it stick, too, the rat," Betty added, trying to smile. "Two of his goo—er, operatives were waiting for me at Templehof when I—"

"Yep," Donovan interrupted. "About three weeks after your big day with Grierson, Betty tried to jump ship. She'd grabbed a bunch of documents she thought would exonerate you and was headed in your direction. Lucky for her my boys were the ones looking over her shoulder; some of that paper was classified. She knew it, and didn't care. She was ready to risk time in the slammer just to make you look good. Don't let her get away, Martel, or you're a fool."

"My husband-to-be is not going to be ruined just so that the FBI can shovel their mistakes under a rug," Betty said defensively.

Though she was joking, suddenly Jim realized that their running gag about his career prospects was not entirely a joke to her. That his perfect, perfect angel had such a human foible warmed him even more. The last of the ice melted.

Donovan continued. "Anyway, my boys accompanied her on her plane ride—and brought her to me instead of to you. So I told her what was what, and why she—and you— had to wait, and sent her back to Berlin. Trevor made a couple of adjustments in her folder that made it look like she had merely taken a little accumulated vacation, so she was in the clear. Except Acres got a little too curious, so we 
had him reassigned to the Pentagon. He still thinks it was on account of you, which it was in a way." Donovan laughed. "Since the only guy I had available to send in was a field operative, it was a good thing that Betty had been doing most of Acres's job all along."

"So now maybe she can have the recognition as well as the work?" Martel asked dryly. The disparity between what his girl accomplished and what she got in return had bothered him since before she was his girl. She was the kind who should be giving orders—and at a very high level —not taking them.

"Well, I certainly recognize her," Donovan said, "and the guy I sent in pretty much took her orders and passed them on, so he must have recognized her too. If you're talking about suffragette stuff, I basically agree with you, but you're in the wrong department to get anything done about it. We're at war and I'm in charge of covert ops."