already. “I assume you want the French communists blamed for those disruptions, which would result in a heavy- handed response by de Gaulle and the fools around him.”
“Indeed,” said Himmler, again pleased by Skorzeny’s intelligence.
“As to delivering a human package to the Reds, would the package have to be still living, or even intact? For instance, would just a head be satisfactory?”
The field marshal turned away in disgust while Himmler beamed. “We will check on that, now what about the bombs?”
“How large, Reichsfuhrer?”
“Assume five tons each.”
Skorzeny whistled. What on earth could weigh that much? “When and where?”
“Several months, and let’s assume Moscow and New York,” Himmler said. Von Rundstedt looked surprised.
“It can be done,” Skorzeny said. Nothing surprised him anymore. He was confident about delivering a bomb to Moscow, but New York? Despite what he’d just said, he would have to think about it.
“Then go and work on it,” Himmler said and dismissed the scarred colonel, who saluted and left them.
“I wasn’t aware that Heisenberg was that far along with his work,” Rundstedt said when they were alone. He was thinking of Varner’s last report on the matter.
“He isn’t, but he will be. He is too much of a scientist with his checking and rechecking until everything is perfect. He will be informed that he must race to completion and if that means taking shortcuts, even dangerous ones, then so be it. If he loses some of his precious physicists in the process, then they will be casualties in our war. Heisenberg can no longer think of himself as working in a lab. He must begin to realize that he is a soldier in the trenches and the enemy is coming at him. He must stop them now, and not a year or two from now when everything is perfect and he can say ‘eureka’ and astound the scientific world, perhaps winning a second Nobel Prize. He will also understand that he and his family will be forced to pay the price of his failures should he not succeed.”
Rundstedt nodded silently. He wondered if Heinrich Himmler had any idea just what the hell he was talking about.
Jessica heard the groans while she was still out in the hallway. She paused and was tempted to go somewhere else while Monique and Master Sergeant Charley Boyle completed their usual noisy mating ritual. Nuts, she thought. She was tired and, besides, her money was paying for the apartment.
She quietly entered the apartment and tiptoed past Monique’s bedroom. The door was open and she stopped. Boyle was on top of Monique. He was a stocky man with reddish hair on his back. She wondered if Jack had a hairy back. Monique’s legs were wrapped around her lover’s waist. He was thrusting inside her while his hands grabbed her breasts. Monique’s hands were on Boyle’s buttocks, pushing him ever deeper inside her while they both groaned and sighed.
Jessica tore her eyes from the scene and quickly went to her room, quietly closing the door behind her. She took off her dress, and cleaned her face, arms, and shoulders from a bowl of water. She thought about what she’d just seen. Vive la France, she thought. Jessica had never before seen people making love, if that’s what it really was. A few years back, she’d had the chance to see a smutty movie that cousin Jeb had gotten from his friends, but had passed on it. He’d later admitted it involved some foreign people and the film quality was really bad.
“And the people were ugly, too,” he’d added.
My education is sadly lacking, Jessica concluded. She wondered about Jack’s and thought she knew about Jeb’s. He’d bedded several of her friends who had told her what a wonderful experience it was. These comments had led her to let Jeb take a few liberties with her until they’d both called a halt to it.
Monique knocked and walked in. “My beloved sergeant is gone, if you haven’t noticed. Did you enjoy the view?”
Jessica was not abashed. If Monique had wanted privacy, she should have closed the door. “It was intriguing.”
Monique laughed. “Intriguing? Now you sound like an Englishwoman. It would have been truly intriguing if you’d brought your Jack Morgan up here and romped on your bed, with the both of you squealing with pleasure like Charley and I did. You should have, you know. Life is too short and sometimes people make it too damned complicated. There’s a war going on and we’d all better enjoy it while we can.”
Jessica and Monique had had this conversation before and Jessica had explained that, first, she wasn’t ready to have sex with Jack or anyone else for that matter, and, second, American women didn’t usually jump into the sack with someone they’d just met. Monique had said that was a shame because they were missing so much time and pleasure. She’d then gotten Jessica to admit she’d never gone all the way, and that some reasonably heavy petting had been about it. Monique again thought that was a terrible waste.
“You’re lovely and you have a wonderful figure, why don’t you use it?” she’d said. “Someday you’ll be old and wrinkled and no one will want you. Use it now, while you can still enjoy it.”
Why not indeed, Jessica had thought, although she figured she had more than a few years to go before she’d be old and withered. But Monique had a point. Jack could be dead at any time, and bombs were falling around Paris although, so far, its status as an open city had been sustained and kept it from damage even though the Allies now occupied it.
It was time to change the subject. “What do you mean about complications?” Jessica asked.
“I told my sergeant to go away and not come back,” she said sadly. “That was a farewell lay.”
“Good grief, Monique, why?”
“Because he is a thief and a crook and is going to get arrested. And that means anyone close to him might be arrested as well.”
“Ah.”
“Ah, indeed. Recall all the food and other things he got me, much of which I sold and sent back home to help with my son? Well, all of it was stolen. I thought as much, but I closed my eyes to it. My sergeant and a bunch of others are stealing from the U.S. Army and now the MP’s are investigating it. He is debating turning in others in return for a light sentence and came to me to tell me to get rid of what I might still have and be ready to answer some questions. He will doubtless lose his stripes and probably have to go to jail. He may be dishonorably discharged, but he may also be sent to a combat unit as a private. Either way, he is dead to me. I will miss him. He was a competent lover and a great purveyor of luxury items.”
Jessica had heard rumors from her uncle that some GI’s in the supply units were pilfering large quantities of supplies and selling them on the black market. A little thievery was common enough when temptation presented itself and, as Tom had said, who counts paper clips and pencils? Still, stealing to provide one’s self with creature comforts was one thing, but this level of thievery was much more ambitious. Jessica was glad that the apartment was in her name and that she could prove where the money came from.
“Monique, I’m sorry.”
“So am I,” she said with a mocking pout. “Now it will take me weeks to find a replacement for him.”
Jim Byrnes’ career in the United States government had been varied, even spectacular, although he’d been denied his nation’s highest honor, the presidency. And, at age 65, he knew it would never happen. He’d been a congressman from his native state of South Carolina and then a justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. He had stepped down as a Justice in order to head the War Mobilization Board for his good friend, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He’d also been born a Catholic, which offended many Protestants, and then converted to Episcopalian, which offended Catholics, thus making him unelectable to national office.
Still, the President trusted him and liked to use him for unofficial duties like the one he was pursuing today. Andrei Gromyko, the gloomy looking Soviet ambassador to the United States awaited him in a conference room in the uninspiring red stone castle that was the Smithsonian Institute. Gromyko was much younger than Byrnes and was considered a rising star, a Red Star, Byrnes thought whimsically.
