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“No, no, nothing as” — he was going to say “crude” but Zhdanov was notoriously sensitive about his peasant background — “nothing as direct as that. The Germans themselves will steal the uranium. And we will help them.”

Zhdanov looked at him as if he’d gone mad. “Explain,” he said grimly.

Sheslakov did so, going over each point in his plan until he thought Zhdanov had grasped it. When he had finished the head of the Atomic Division leaned back in his chair and looked into space. “Very well,” he said at last, “I can see the possibility. Put it in writing and find the people.”

Sheslakov pulled the file out of his briefcase and handed it across the desk. “We already have the people,” he said.

* * *

Stalin pushed the report to one side of his desk and closed his eyes. Why “American Rose”? he wondered. Only the Germans and the Americans made a habit of flattering nature and themselves by applying such names to human enterprises. Sheslakov was a strange man, an oddity. But for now an affordable one.

Would it work? he asked himself. It felt right. The Americans had the scientists and the money and a country that wasn’t in ruins. And ambition. Unlimited ambition. But it wasn’t a calculating ambition. Socialism might be weak now but it saw the way forward, it calculated, it planned. Capital, for all its power, was blind as a river. And what could be more easily bluffed than blind ambition?

There was only the one flaw — the number of foreigners who would know, who could expose the bluff. A German-born woman: an American-born man, the agents in America who would inevitably have been softened by the capitalist life. But that was a flaw that could be corrected at the end of the game.

He called in his aide. “Telephone Zhdanov. Tell him yes.”

Four

“The diagram was drawn by a German scientist who’s now working at Site Y in New Mexico. He was apparently trying to impress his secretary,” Amy told Wim Doesburg as they strolled through the small Manhattan art gallery.

“It will impress Berlin, I think,” he replied, stopping in front of a canvas depicting a dark, almost ominous flower. “What do you think of this one?” he asked.

Amy forced herself to look at the painting. “Depressing,” she murmured.

“Isn’t it?” Doesburg agreed jovially. “But beautiful just the same.”

They walked on, continuing their conversation in the spaces allowed by other visitors to the gallery. Amy couldn’t remember ever feeling as nervous. At the meeting with Faulkner the previous day, he’d been almost unrecognizably tense, and once he’d shared what he knew with her, she wasn’t surprised. Now the strain of listening to Doesburg’s urbane chatter, observing the usual security precautions, and following Moscow’s script was stretching her to the limit.

Doesburg was excited by the diagram — she knew that much. His face and steady stream of conversation might not betray anything, but his walk had become noticeably jaunty in the last few minutes. Now was the time.

“There’s also some other unsolicited material,” she said casually at the next opportunity. “Of rather dubious value,” she added. “Sigmund insisted on explaining it all to me despite the security risk, and he’s included all the necessary information. You’ll see what I mean.” She paused to let a young couple meander by. “He’d just read the Picture Post article on Mussolini’s escape to Germany, and, according to him, it gave him an idea. He says at first he thought it was ridiculous, but then he realized it was feasible. Apparently there’s a train that takes the bomb material made in Tennessee to New Mexico for the bomb production process, and Sigmund has visions of Skorzeny dropping out of the sky and holding it up.” Catching Doesburg’s expression of amused incredulity, she said, “I thought the same, but he has looked into it all with great thoroughness, and the whole idea does have some lunatic logic to it. I can find no fault in his plan, but then I’ve no experience of planning such operations. Of course,” she added almost wistfully, “it would be a spectacular, tremendous coup.”

Doesburg said nothing for a moment, seemingly engrossed in a funereal painting. “I shall find the flaws for you, my dear,” he said finally. “But we must humor Sigmund, if only to keep the flow of diagrams coming.”

* * *

An hour later Doesburg was back in his Brooklyn home, spreading the contents of the envelope across the kitchen table. The diagram fascinated him — so much scientific advance represented on a single sheet of paper. His wife, Elke, looked at it over his shoulder. “Is that all?” she asked, unconsciously echoing his thoughts. “One page for a bomb that can destroy a whole city?”

It was only after dinner that he bothered to read Sigmund’s report on the uranium train. He had to admit the idea was attractive, and read on expecting to find the point where fantasy took over from practicality. There was a timetable, a crew schedule, a map with the escape route plotted in, even photographs of the train. There was no mention of Skorzeny; Sigmund specified a long-range U-boat, even the precise class required.

Doesburg scratched his head, ignored Elke’s attempts to interest him in the latest Victory Garden competition, and started from the beginning again. A U-boat drop-off on the coast of Georgia — simple enough. Two English-speaking German officers to be met by American operatives and transported to the hijack point. It was hunting country, so strangers hiring a lodge for a week would not seem unusual. The hijack itself seemed to present no difficulties, provided the information was all accurate. It was certainly comprehensive enough. Then a twelve-hour drive back to the coast for the pickup, with the FBI presumably in pursuit. But probably in total disarray, Doesburg thought. Sigmund had pointed out that the escape route crossed a state line in the first fifty miles, which would suitably complicate police reaction.

He walked out onto the backyard porch and lowered himself into his rocking chair. It was a beautiful evening, the distant towers of Manhattan silhouetted by the setting sun, the street full of children playing stickball. It was hard to believe that America was at war. In Tennessee and Alabama it would seem even more unreal. What a blow to American pride it would be! A coup.

And something of an opportunity. Doesburg knew only too well that when the Allies reached Berlin, as it seemed certain they would, there was every chance that they’d find a file with his name on it. He hadn’t said anything to Elke — there was no point in worrying her in advance — but he had for some time been preparing in his mind for their discreet withdrawal from American soil. If the Abwehr could be interested in this operation, they would pay, and pay a lot. No one in Berlin, he knew from lucrative past experience, had any conception of how cheap espionage really was. He could ask for $10,000, and 80 percent of that, plus the proceeds from selling their brownstone, would set them up very nicely in Brazil or Argentina.

There was even the faint prospect of a successful operation altering the course of the war, leaving his file in safe hands. There were no risks involved that he could see; everything would go through Rosa, and she knew neither his real name nor his address.

He went back indoors, addressed an envelope to his contact in Rio, and enclosed the diagram.

“You must mail this tomorrow morning,” he told Elke, “somewhere on Fifth Avenue. I must go to see Kroeger in Syracuse — there’s something I want sent immediately on the radio.”

* * *

After her meeting with Doesburg, Amy took the train back to Washington and went to bed.