“And the story about shipping the inmates from Drancy to Poland, is it true?”
“It’s historical fact. Or at least it was. Hitler’s Final Solution will nearly succeed in wiping out all the Jews in Europe.” He took the C2ID2 back from her and scrolled to a history of the Holocaust, required reading for all IDF personnel. “Six million Jews die in the camps; another six million undesirables follow if we don’t stop it.”
“And you have a way to stop it?”
“There’s a weapon in my pod similar to the atomic bomb I talked about before. It’s much smaller, more efficient and more precise than the original American device. And, we can replicate it many times. It’s called a Mark XII hyperbaric nuclear weapon.”
“Assuming that I believe you have this powerful weapon, how do you propose to use it?”
“We’ll have to drive the Nazis out of France first. Then, we force Germany to surrender.”
Sarah laughed. “That’s your plan? Thirty of us to destroy a force hundreds-of-thousands strong. That must be some bomb.” Almost two million Nazi soldiers protected the western front. Then, add in the Vichy and Italian Fascist forces. Sarah’s numbers seemed insignificant, but he doubted this was the time to correct her.
“Thirty-one if you include me.”
“I don’t know if we can include you in this state. What happened to you this time?”
“It’s nothing. I’ve secured the weapon we need. Took a chance.”
“Are you suffering from radiation poisoning?”
Hiram smiled. “Nothing like that. I just need a few minutes to recover.”
She looked into his eyes as if she searched for a deeper truth. “Still, there are so many of them and so few of us.”
“Sarah, we have an unending supply of weapons more advanced and powerful than our enemies could imagine. And yes, it is some bomb.”
“What about the civilian casualties?”
“Hundreds of thousands. But that’s nowhere near the casualties suffered during the Allied invasion. And if you consider the millions that will die in camps before the horror of the Holocaust ends, wouldn’t that number be justified?”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“And we’ve got another problem.”
“What’s that?” She stared up at the sky.
“In my past, the Russians, the Americans, and the British met in the middle of Germany in 1945 and pretty much divided up Europe from there. Right now, the Russians are battling the Germans near Stalingrad, and the British are fighting them in North Africa. The Americans are preparing an Anglo-American invasion of Morocco and Algeria called Operation Torch in November, so they aren’t close to invading Europe yet.”
“Hiram, what are you trying to say?”
“Well, if we strike too quickly, the Red Army will overrun the Nazis, push all the way to the Atlantic Wall, and enslave the whole continent for generations to come.”
“Oh, I see,” Sarah said. “What can we do?”
“You can convince General Eisenhower to abandon Operation Torch and commence Operation Overlord as soon as we set off the first atomic bomb.”
“You are joking. And, why would this General Eisenhower listen to me?”
“No, I’m not. You’re the best woman for the job.” Hiram pointed to the C2ID2. “You understand the technology, or at least you will.”
“Say I agree to talk to this man and tell him all about this advanced technology,” she said. “Why General Eisenhower?”
“He’s the American general that Churchill and Roosevelt put in charge of Operation Torch and in two years◦– assuming I don’t demolish the timeline◦– he would be in charge of Operation Overlord, the Allied invasion of France. He’s the only American general in Europe that knows about the Manhattan Project, though it might not be called that yet.” Touching the display, he continued. “You’ve got the manual for the Mark XII and the pod. You can read the basic nuclear science section to advance what you already know of physics. By the time you get to Eisenhower, you’ll know more than enough to convince him the bomb really exists and that we have one.”
Sarah paged through the open Mark XII manual and stopped at one of the schematics. “This is the contraption that’s going to end this war.” She stared at the screen. “And how do you propose I get to England to arrange an audience with this general?”
“Have you heard of the Spanish Maquis?”
She shook her head and looked up from the display.
“I’ve got a plan. It’s going to be dangerous. But, as someone said, nothing worth doing is easy.”
13
1730 hours, Wednesday, July 29, 1942, Perpignan, Pyrénées-Orientales Department, Vichy France
Louis Petain sat at his desk idly tossing one of the strange finned bullets from one hand to the other. Such a small thing, and yet it could easily kill a man, or perhaps my career.
This particular slug had been extracted from the body of a sailor killed when the good ship M.V. Calais was seized by a group of armed women. The small relic presented physical evidence connecting the thirty escaped maids from the internment camp to the disaster at Port Leucate, proof of his team’s failure. The women roamed free with their Jew-loving dog, leaving six mangled gun emplacements and eighteen dead sailors in their wake.
No, not my team’s failure. Locard’s failure. Locard had enough time and every resource Petain had the authority to provide. He had spent hours in his laboratory fiddling with the damn bullets, looking at photos of mud, and drawing inaccurate conclusions. The man had nothing to show for it. Still, the criminalist was on Petain’s payroll. Authority can be delegated, but leaders can never be relieved of responsibility. He had heard his uncle say those words once. He set the slug down on his desk. But responsibility can be shared, and Locard has few friends in high places.
“Sir, Monsieur Locard is here to see you,” his secretary announced from the doorway. Petain swept the bullet into a desk drawer.
“Well send him in,” he said. Ten seconds later Locard stood in front of Petain’s desk.
“You asked to see me, sir?”
“Do have any useful information regarding the missing prisoners?” If the story told by the crew of the M.V. Calais held truth, a subset of his escaped prisoners had been put ashore in Catalonia, Spain along with a mysterious soldier. Petain wasn’t going to tell Locard. The fewer people that understood the connection between the two events, the better.
“I interviewed several of the detainees that had been housed in the same barracks as the Halphen woman. They claimed she had no living relatives remaining in France, just as the records indicated.”
After a pause, he added, “I would like to have questioned the women that were left behind myself.”
Petain heard the criticism in Locard’s voice. He wanted to rebuke the man, then reconsidered when Locard changed the subject.
“We may have another lead,” Locard said. “I learned one of the other women, Rosette Bertrand, has family living in Vichy.”
“Why weren’t they detained with her?”
“Her husband and two children were not identified as Jews. Her husband requested that she be detained. Appears she has just enough Jewish blood to be considered by the Nazis.”