“Sir,” he said solemnly, “if I were a betting man, I would say it’s almost a sure thing that the Commies know what we’re doing. When we cleared these people to work here, their early socialist leanings weren’t important because Russia was our ally and we were fighting the Nazis. We desperately needed their brains and didn’t much care about their politics. Now that the Reds are our enemies, the FBI is scrambling all over the records of some of our people and having a field day trying to trace their personal contacts. I can only say that I would be very surprised if Russia doesn’t know what we are up to and that we are extremely close to success.”
Truman nodded thoughtfully. “Thank you, General.”
The meeting was over. He stood and saluted again. Truman rose and shook his hand. “General, we may have it in our power to end this war and change the world for a very long time. I sincerely hope your bombs work and that you can get them into use before it is too late.”
Seconds after General Groves left the Oval Office, Secretary of State Ed Stettinius and Secretary of War Henry Stimson entered.
“You heard?” Truman asked, and the two men nodded. He had decided not to have the other men present for his meeting with Groves. He had thought it might intimidate Groves into being less than candid. Now he thought that Groves might be intimidated by a grizzly bear with hemorrhoids and not much else. God help the errant scientists who got in his path.
Stettinius took a seat. “At least we now have a clearer understanding of Stalin’s motives in attacking now. He wants victory before we get the bomb.” Stimson nodded agreement and reached for coffee.
“Yes,” said Truman. “In a little while we will have the greatest weapon man has ever known.” If the damned infernal thing works, he thought. “With that in mind, that son of a bitch Stalin has struck now while we don’t have that weapon deployed. He is trusting that this war will leave him with most of Europe as a fait accompli, and that we won’t use the bomb to help retake what he has stolen. What a calculating bastard!”
Stimson shrugged. “It is pretty much as we suspected.”
“Damn.”
“Mr. President,” Stimson continued, “we are now trying to figure out who has been passing on information regarding our atomic project. When we are successful, we can assess the amount and quality of the data we have lost and then forecast just when the Soviets might have an atomic bomb of their own. My own guess, however, would be within three to five years.”
“At which point,” said Truman, “we would be equals as nuclear powers. If Stalin has control of Europe when that occurs, we will have no opportunity of defeating him militarily.”
“That’s right,” Stimson agreed.
“Then,” Truman said thoughtfully, “it’s now or never for us, just as it is for him.”
“One other thought,” said Stimson. “What will Churchill say when he finds out that these atomic bombs are going to be in England?”
Truman grinned. “I have no intention of telling him.”
• • •
General Mikhail Bazarian looked at the gutted vehicle a few feet in front of him on the road to Potsdam and tried to stifle his rage. The tanker truck was totally destroyed. Even the tires had melted, leaving the truck’s axles on the ground. The blackened and grinning skeleton behind the steering wheel mocked Bazarian’s growing impotence. This was the third oil or gas tanker truck he’d lost this week and he would not be getting any more vehicles or fuel to replace them. If this kept up, the situation for his army could quickly go from annoying to critical.
Just a few days ago, he had gotten the word from Zhukov’s headquarters-no more oil or gas. For the foreseeable future, he would live with what he had. Bazarian had heard rumors of a massive attack on Soviet petroleum sources but had discounted them as enemy propaganda. Now he wondered. He always understood that a great deal of oil had come through Lend-Lease, although that had been officially discounted by political officers who denied the Soviet Union’s reliance on outside sources as being contrary to the spirit of the revolution. Bazarian sniffed. Some people still thought the world was flat.
But what he had not counted on was the destruction of his precious reserves by saboteurs. The corpse in the truck cab would give him no answers. The dead Russian soldier could not even tell him how he had died. Had he been stabbed or shot? Poisoned or strangled? Bazarian’s money was on him having been stabbed. It had happened before.
At least, Bazarian thought, the situation was not totally dire. He had received and kept two divisions of Romanians. They were shit soldiers whose country had surrendered and changed sides. They were poorly trained and equipped, but there were nearly 25,000 of them and they would make marvelous cannon fodder when the time came to storm Potsdam. They would go first, and his own men, still numbering more than 20,000 themselves, would follow into whatever breach the Romanians managed to make.
His artillery was still intact and their ammunition stores were adequate to support the attack. His tank strength, however, had not been fully restored. While he had managed to pick up a half-dozen precious T34s and their crews as replacements for the older tanks he’d lost, the same fuel restraints had denied him the opportunity to work with the new troops and increase their effectiveness. The only reason he’d gotten the T34s was because they were in bad mechanical shape.
Again on the positive side, the powers that be seemed to have totally forgotten about the foolish Russian colonel they had sent to report on him and whose sudden death had been so shocking. Obviously, the powers had better things to do.
So that left him with the matter of the saboteurs. He suspected that they were infiltrating his lines from Potsdam and causing the havoc in front of him. Bazarian briefly considered an artillery barrage to remind the Americans that he was still their master and they were effectively his prisoners, but decided not to. The directive to hoard resources was too specific for him to take a chance on disobedience. For the time being, at least, the people in the perimeter were snug and secure and would remain so. He would not attack or bombard, and was unable to do much about the now almost daily flights that had recommenced dropping supplies to the Americans. The flights infuriated him. How could the Americans get supplies and he could not?
So what to do about the saboteurs? First, he had to catch them. Then he would skin them alive and have one of his few scout planes drop the corpses into the perimeter. The thought made him smile. That would get their attention. He recalled that it was how his ancestors dealt with enemies and unwelcome visitors during sieges of castles.
Bazarian’s adjutant approached him and snapped to attention. “So?” Bazarian asked.
The adjutant, a young captain, was glum and nervous. Bazarian’s rages were becoming more and more violent as his frustrations increased. It would not be unusual for Bazarian to lash out and punch or kick someone who gave him news he did not want to hear.
“I’m sorry, sir, but the second guard died of his wounds.”
There had been two guards protecting the tanker. One was the corpse in the vehicle while the second, stabbed in the chest and throat, had been left for dead. While the saboteurs had been preparing to blow up the truck, the remaining guard had regained a level of consciousness and, through superhuman effort, managed to crawl away before passing out again. The saboteurs had probably looked for him to put in the cab with his comrade and given up quickly rather than take time searching and risk discovery.
It had been Bazarian’s fervent hope that the man would shed some light on who his adversaries were and just how they operated. For instance, just how did they manage to overcome two alert and well-armed guards? This was the third time this had happened, and the guards were all on their toes. After all, didn’t their lives depend on it?
“Did he say anything before he died?”