Eight
General Overton was in his office cubicle, the curtain open. He was entering data in his computerized daily log for Themis.
Pearson pushed off the hatchway of the Radio Shack, sailed across the corridor, and stopped her flight by grabbing the bar outside Overton’s cubicle.
He looked up from his screen.
“Want to hear a harebrained idea, General?”
“No. But I’m going to anyway, right?”
“Right.”
“Tell me.”
“Everything we’ve got so far points in the direction of a military buildup in Germany. Fossil fuels being stored. Industrial output at peak. Equipment reserves. The wells have to be part of that, but we’re stymied as to new information.”
“Granted.”
“In reviewing my pictures of the wells, I’ve noted that wells twenty-two, twenty-three, and twenty-four don’t show the same heat configurations as the others. I’m assuming that they’re currently drilling those three.”
“I’ll go with that,” Overton said. “The process seems to be one of constructing a platform and dome ahead of time, then moving the drilling equipment in later. More efficient that way, I suppose.”
“And they haven’t built a new platform in over a year.”
Overton pondered that. “Meaning they don’t plan any more wells, after the last three are completed?”
“That’s what I would guess,” she said.
“That also means that, once the last three are completed, the drilling program has achieved its end.”
“I’m thinking, General, that we’re getting close to a deadline.”
“Yes, but a deadline for what?”
“Consider Nineteen thirty-nine.”
“I don’t want to. You have an idea about what they are, don’t you, Amy?”
“Yes. But I need to confirm it.”
“Are we getting too harebrained?”
“I want to take the top off of a dome.”
“Jesus Christ!” Hannibal Cross said. “You’re out of your mind, Marvin.”
,The others on the conference call waited quietly. All of the Joint Chiefs were on the line, along with Adm. Richard Lorenzen, the commander of Atlantic Fleet submarine forces, and Marvin Brackman. On the other side of Brackman’s office, David Thorpe sat in a chair and listened intently to the voices on the speaker.
Brackman finally said, “You’ve all seen the data. I think this is the next step.”
“What did the Ohio get, Dick?” Cross asked.
“She sonar-mapped most of the area and took water samples,” Lorenzen said. “Those platforms are anchored in depths ranging from six hundred to seventeen hundred feet. There is no oil spillage, and what’s more, Hannibal, she never did pick up the sound of a pipeline. Those things make a noise, you know. Average water temperature in the area should run about forty degrees Fahrenheit, but is much higher near a well. At three hundred yards, the temperature readings were about forty-five degrees. At two hundred yards, as close as the Ohio approached a well, the readings showed seventy-one degrees. Rough extrapolation suggests that the temperature at the core, at the well casing, might be as high as two hundred degrees. Perhaps higher. The Soviets sent in the Typhoon, and she came back with similar data.”
“Anyone run into the Black Forest?” the chief of Naval Operations asked.
“The Ohio left the area earlier than planned when they heard the Forest approaching.”
The army chief of staff, a man holding engineering degrees, said, “Sounds geothermal to me, gentlemen. In an awfully dangerous place.”
“Another item,” Lorenzen said, “The marine life has definitely deserted the region. Sonar operators generally bitch about the number of whales fouling their readings, but they didn’t pick up one whale within thirty miles of the wells. We’re still analyzing water samples, but on first examination, the algae count appears to be higher, suggesting a warming of the seas. And lastly, we have recorded sonar readings of the wells. There are some big, big turbines in operation, and I think we could probably suspect turbine-generators.”
“Is that enough confirmation for you, Marvin?” Cross asked.
“Colonel Pearson,” Brackman said, and seeing Thorpe nodding vigorously, added his name, “and General Thorpe would like to see unprotected infrared data.”
“Shit,” the chairman said. “The National Security Council will come apart at the seams.”
“Skip them,” Brackman said. “Go right to the President and get a Presidential Finding. The CIA does it all the time for covert ops.”
Cross mulled it over. “He would probably go for it, but he’ll make it contingent upon another negative response to a State Department inquiry.”
“Do it any way you can, Hannibal. I don’t think we want to wait a hell of a lot longer. If State gets involved, insist upon a deadline for the response.”
“Such as, Marvin?”
“Such as, give the Germans until ten o’clock tonight to respond.”
“All right. I’ll try that out. In the meantime, gentlemen, in the event that our guesswork is correct, I want everyone, meaning your immediate staff people, considering the next phase. What steps do we take?”
After he hung up, Brackman looked to his intelligence officer. “I think, David, you can contact Overton and Pearson and tell them to prepare the operation. They’re to stand by until they have a final approval from me.”
“Will do, Marv.”
“I’m going to call Sheremetevo and tell him to keep his people out of the area tonight. When one of those domes splits open, we don’t want the Soviets catching the blame. And bitch as they might, the Germans will have a hell of a time laying the responsibility at our door when they won’t have radar or infrared evidence of an intruder. You’re sure about the missiles?”
“Yup. Outside of a few of our people, no one has ever seen a Wasp. They don’t have any identification on them, and McKenna’s at Jack Andrews, now, preparing some special Wasps. There’s not going to be any evidence.”
“I hope not. How big is this hole going to be?”
“Just whatever Pearson needs to get a reading.”
“I trust that we’re that good.”
“We are,” Thorpe said. “That’s why it’s called a surgical strike.”
The meeting at Templehof was a scheduled one, and Eisenach arrived on time, at three o’clock. His pilot settled the helicopter on the pad, next to a car waiting to take him to the administration building.
It was only a 160-kilometer flight from Peenemünde, but he was feeling tired. His days seemed to be getting longer, and he would just as soon be at home on the edge of the Tiergarten, enjoying a schnapps and putting his feet up on the windowsill.
After he was seated in the Mercedes, his adjutant, Oberst Maximillian Oberlin closed the sliding window between them and the driver and asked, “The progress is satisfactory, Herr General?”
“Not quite, Colonel. The engineers insist that they are on schedule, but their schedule does not correspond to anything I ever put on paper.”
The driver pulled out of his parking spot and headed down the tree-lined street.
“Engineers can be wily,” Oberlin said.
“Exactly. There are six vehicles fully constructed, but only the first two have all of their internal components. I am told the first is operational, but they hesitate when I ask to see all of the successful test data.”
“Who hesitates, General?”
“The man who is second in charge of the project. Goldstein.”
“Ah, the Jew.”
“Yes. It is too bad that we need his brain.”