The Proteus Operation Read online

  "Personally, you mean?"

  "Yes."

  Greene sipped his coffee again. "I gave that a lot of thought while I was waiting for you and Kurt to get back from England," he said. "And you know, Claud, the more I thought about it, the more I found myself wondering if it would really be so bad. I don't have any real ties back in '75. My wife died eight years before we left, as you know. We had no children, and I was never very close to the rest of my relatives, if you know what I mean . . . hadn't even seen most of them for years. I guess I'd turned into a kind of academic recluse, burying myself in mathematical physics and coaching students."

  He snorted to himself. "Maybe they were my substitute family."

  "None of the team has any strong ties back there, Winslade commented. "This fiancee thing that Cassidy tells everyone about isn't as serious as he makes out, you know. In fact, he'd be far better off out of it."

  Greene was only half-listening. "But what was the point of trying to do anything for students in that world? he went on distantly. "What worthwhile purpose was left for science? What future was there? At least here there might be a chance."

  "Is that all?" Winslade asked. His tone said that it shouldn't have been.

  Greene stared at bis cup. When he looked up again, a harder glint had appeared in his eyes and his mouth was set in a determined line. "No, Claud, it isn't, he said. "Everything was finished back there. Oh, sure, America was going to fight in the best traditions of honor and so on, but it was a hopeless gesture. Our way of life was finished."

  "But here it's different. Yes, there are problems, but everything isn't lost. I don't know how, but there might be some way yet of stopping the Nazis." Greene brought his palm down hard on the desk. "Goddam it, Claud, after the things we've seen, I'd fight them with my teeth and nails if that's what it takes. At least in this world we've got something worthwhile to fight for, for a change—a chance for things to turn out differently. And even if it doesn't work out, then at least we'll go down with our self-respect intact. How could we say that in a world that had surrendered itself like sheep?"

  Winslade seemed satisfied. "Eventually, the others will come to see things the same way," he-said. "In fact, subconsciously, most of them do already. And if Dr. Einstein provides them with an acceptable rationalization while they are adjusting to that perspective, then he will have served us more than adequately."

  Greene looked apprehensive suddenly. "But we are going to try approaching him?" he said. "I mean, that's what you've just promised the troops. Besides, we can't let the opportunity just slip by."

  "Yes, don't worry, Mortimer," Winslade said reassuringly. "After all, who knows—we may find we have a winning ticket."

  There was a short silence while Winslade at last lit his cigar. Greene leaned back in the chair and stared at the door.

  "Okay, so, changing the subject, what are we going to do about this Bruno Verucin business?" he asked.

  Winslade exhaled a stream of blue smoke. "I suppose it is quite definite that our people did it," he said.

  "No question about it." Greene waved toward a newspaper lying on top of one of the desk trays. "We double-checked with the surveillance pictures, but I was never in any doubt, anyway—that's him in there all right. Nobody came for any money on the first of the month. It happened when work on the machine was stopped and I'd given them extra leave. The ammunition inventory shows five rounds of .45 caliber unaccounted for."

  "And you still want a full inquiry and disciplinary proceedings," Winslade said.

  "You can't be serious about just letting the whole thing ride," Greene protested. "I mean, it constitutes a major violation of just about every regulation you can name, and on a mission like this . . . And then there's Harvey Warren to think about. He's the senior military officer. How's he supposed to retain any authority if we do nothing? What about his professional image?"

  "Not to mention yours, of course," Winslade remarked mildly.

  Greene started to object, but checked himself when he saw the futility of pretensions. "Yes, he said, thrusting out his jaw, "mine, too."

  Winslade turned his back on the map that he had been looking at and puffed at his cigar. "There's no reason to suppose that they think we know," he pointed out.

  Greene scowled and shifted uncomfortably in his chair. That was true, but the answer had clearly left him far from satisfied. "Look," he said, "running Sugar group smoothly is my job. How am I supposed to do it if we're going to let anyone who wants to go off and fight private wars whenever he feels like it?"

  "Would it make any difference if I tell you that Special Operations soldiers are not just more clockwork products from the military machine?" Winslade said. "I've worked with them for years. They're selected and trained for independence and initiative. Traditional discipline doesn't work with them. Trying to assert authority heavy-handedly only earns contempt."

  "So how do you command any respect from people like that?" Greene asked.

  "By showing them some."

  "For behaving like thugs and jeopardizing the whole mission?"

  "No. For being thinking, feeling human beings and not mindless zombies like the creations of the SS."

  Greene stared moodily. "I'm not sure I see your point," he said grudgingly. His voice hinted that he did, but wasn't about to admit it so readily.

  Winslade helped him out by accepting the remark at face value. "Try and understand the frustration that the men have been feeling," he said. "They've seen with their own eyes what Nazi conquest means, and to them the message of what's happening in Europe is obvious. But they have to watch the spectacle of the West's leaders lining up to bow and scrape before the dictators, and there's nothing they can do about it."

  "But there was something they could do about the other Hitler—Bruno. You talked about self-respect a few minutes ago, Mortimer. The troops have theirs, too. How could they condemn the failure of the world's leaders to resist intimidation, and at the same time do nothing themselves when their friends were intimidated? You see, they had to do it. If they weren't made that way, they wouldn't have been picked for this mission to begin with."

  Greene eyed Winslade dubiously for a few seconds. At length, he gave a resigned nod. "Okay, Claud. I'm not sure yet if you've totally convinced me, but I'll go along with it and pretend we don't know. How about Harvey Warren, though? He's my second-in-command here. Will he be able to accept it without feeling undermined?"

  "I'll talk to him this afternoon," Winslade promised.

  The atmosphere in the room had lightened considerably. "I must say, I'd like to have seen it," Winslade said, chuckling suddenly. "Do we know who was involved?"

  Greene wiped his mustache with a knuckle. "Harvey thinks Ferracini must have been in on it because of the way he reacted to the girl being beaten up at the nightclub," he said. "Very likely, he was the instigator. Also, he's been pretty close to boiling point for months."

  "Mmm, that sounds like Harry," Winslade agreed. "So that would automatically implicate Cassidy, too. Besides being virtually Harry's Siamese twin, he has high principles, too, strange as it may sound. He takes individualism to the point of being socially obnoxious at times, but that's just his safety valve. Harry doesn't have one. So who else? Floyd, I imagine—the operation had Lamson' stamped all over it."

  Greene nodded. "Probably Ryan . . ."

  "And the other captain—Ed Payne?"

  "Unlikely—Payne's too much of an intellectual. Also, he reported the deficit in the drugs, which would be hard to explain if he'd been involved. I doubt if he even knew the others were planning it."

  Winslade nodded as if the assessment was pretty much as he had expected. He was about to say more when a tap sounded on the door, and Major Warren's head appeared. "Am I interrupting?" he inquired.

  "No, no, come on in, Harvey," Winslade said. "What is it?"

  Warren looked slightly mystified, as if not quite sure how to put what he wanted to say. "Er, it's about the problem you referred to
earlier—about getting in touch with Einstein. We may have found an answer."

  Winslade and Greene exchanged surprised looks. "What kind of answer?" Green asked guardedly.

  "Well . . . Warren motioned back over his shoulder with his eyes. "Cassidy says that he and Ferracini know some of Einstein's acquaintances. He says they can put us in touch."

  "Cassidy!" Greene exploded. "How can he possibly know anyone remotely connected with Einstein? It's just another of his cock-and-bull stories, for God's sake. He—" Greene stopped in response to a motion from Winslade.

  "Go on, Harvey," Winslade said.

  "I know it sounds crazy, but he really does seem serious," Warren said. "He claims they know some of the physicists at Columbia, such as Fermi. . . . And he also mentioned Leo Szilard, who filed a joint patent with Einstein for a heat pump when they worked together back in the twenties in Europe."

  Greene slumped back in his chair, totally bemused. "Fermi? Szilard? How would somebody like Cassidy even have heard of names like those?"

  "That's what I mean," Warren said. "He does seem to know what he's talking about. And what's more, Gordon Selby was with them a couple of times in town. He's also met some of the people they know, and he says there just might be something to it."

  CHAPTER 15

  JEFF FROWNED THROUGH HIS owlish glasses at the turntable and innards of the disemboweled wind-up phonograph standing on the table in the front room of the apartment, and probed with a screwdriver to adjust something inside. He mounted one of his 78 r.p.m. records in place, slid the control switch to "play" and lowered the needle. After a few seconds of hissing, a jolly but scratchy voice singing to a tinny-sounding accompaniment filled the room.

  I press the middle valve down,

  The music goes round and round.

  Oh-ho, Oh-ho, Ho-ho!

  And it comes out here . . .

  It was too fast and squeaky. Jeff stopped the record and turned a screw further. An ominous boingggg came from inside. He sighed and looked up.

  "I'm not sure, but I'll try," he said. "Things have changed since the Szilard and Fermi papers appeared in Physical Review in April. The people involved seem to be applying a kind of—I don't know what you'd call it—voluntary self-censorship. They're not publishing any more information on their research, and they've clammed up."

  "Any guesses why?" Gordon Selby asked from where he was sitting on the couch next to Cassidy. He had a pretty good idea already, but was curious to hear what Jeff made of it.

  Jeff shrugged. "If a chain reaction's possible, it might give you a way of making much bigger bangs than you can get with ordinary explosives," he said. "There are people in Germany who are just as capable of figuring out what the Hahn-Strassmann experiment means as anyone here—Heisenberg, for example. Why risk giving them extra clues?"

  "How about the guy who's doing the experiments—Fermi?" Cassidy asked. "He sounds pretty approachable. What are the chances of talking to him?"

  "None, right now," Jeff said. "He's lecturing at Ann Arbor in Michigan for the summer. There's somebody called John Dunning who's been working with him that I could try, though. But it is getting difficult. Asimov—he always wants to know everything—tried to find out from Professor Urey a little while back what's going on with all the uranium experiments we keep hearing about, and he nearly got his head bitten off. Everybody's clamming up about it."

  Opposite Jeff, Ferracini stared moodily at the table as he listened. Why the hell couldn't Cassidy simply have told Claud that they knew a student from Columbia who might be able to suggest some names to approach, instead of leaping in with both feet and saying they knew Fermi? Claud and Mortimer had seemed interested and asked for an introduction. But instead of backing down when he had the chance, Cassidy had plunged on. "Sure, no problem, Claud. Just give Harry and me a day or two to fix it, okay?"

  Later, Winslade, knowing Cassidy of old, had asked Ferracini for the real story. To Ferracini's consternation, Winslade, instead of quietly calling the idea off and trying another approach, had been happy to let them go ahead, even though Ferracini had given little for their chances. And now, sure enough, Fermi wasn't even in town, and the people who were weren't talking to anybody. Even Selby seemed to be realizing to his discomfort that the academic freedom taken for granted in 1939 didn't extend to quite the extremes that his first conversations with Jeff had led him to imagine.

  Ferracini didn't understand what game Winslade was playing. If he had wanted to give Cassidy a mild rap on the knuckles for talking through his ass, he would have found some other way to do it than by exposing him to ridicule in front of the team. That kind of thing wasn't Claud's style.

  Janet, who was sitting by the door leading into the back room, studied the toe of her shoe. "Who are these people you work for?" she asked suspiciously. "Why should they need to involve Jeff? It doesn't make sense. If they're politicians or something like that, why can't they go through the faculty dean? If they're scientists, how come the scientists at the university don't already know them?"

  The question was not entirely unexpected. "They represent a consortium of private interests that are concerned about the possibility of Hitler getting his hands on a super explosive first," Selby told her. "They're willing to put up funds for comparable research over here, but before getting mixed up in a lot of red tape and bureaucracy, they want to talk informally to the scientists involved—to be sure that the implications are what they seem to be."

  "I see." Janet could have tried harder to sound convinced.

  "What about Leo Szilard?" Selby asked, looking at Jeff. "He's involved in the experimental work, too, isn't he? And he's Hungarian—another European. He might know some-thing about the German work as well as about what's happening here." What really interested Selby was that Szilard was an old personal friend of Einstein's; he didn't want to complicate the conversation even further by mentioning Einstein's name to Jeff just now, however.

  "I don't know," Jeff replied. "I'll talk to Dunning and a couple of others tomorrow. We'll have to wait and see what happens."

  Nothing more could be done about the matter that evening. The talk drifted on to the university and its buildings, the Morningside Heights area in general, and from there, to the subject of travel in and out of Manhattan. Jeff thought it ought to be possible to live a fairly full life in the subway system without ever coming out on the street at all. "There's practically a second city down there," he said. "You've got lunch counters, barbers, shoe-shine stands, shops, and most of the big buildings connect to the subway, too. For instance, you could live at the Commodore, work in the Chrysler Building, eat at Savarin's, shop at Bloomingdale's, swim at the St. George in Brooklyn, see a movie at the Rialto, and even get married in the Municipal Building, if you wanted."

  Selby became engrossed in one of Jeff's textbooks, and Jeff and Cassidy started fiddling with the phonograph again. Ferracini said he was getting hungry, and Janet offered to go for some take-out food from a Mexican restaurant on the next block. Ferracini said he'd go with her.

  It was evening when they came out, but still warm from the sweltering day. Lights were coming on in the street and over the fronts of the bars, restaurants, and dime movie houses standing intermingled with dry goods stores, butchers, groceries, and vegetable stores, many of the latter displaying mangoes, tamarinds, cassavas, pimentos, and other foods typical of so-called Spanish Harlem a few blocks farther east. There were plenty of people about, especially Puerto Ricans and Latin Americans. Children were still out on the streets, swinging on ropes around streetlights, playing hopscotch on the sidewalks; one group was jumping on a discarded bedspring. Teenagers lounged on corners or around the cavernous tenement entrancewavs, and older people in flower-patterned cotton dresses and colored shirts sat talking and watching the world go by from the steps leading up to their apartment houses.

  Europe had fallen to the Nazis years before Ferracini was born, and Asia and Africa were devoured while he was still growing up. By
the time he became aware of the world and its situation, America was on a war economy and preparing itself for the final conflict that everyone accepted as inevitable. That was the only America he had known. But he had heard and read of the times before that, when life had been different, and places with names like London, Paris, and Vienna, each with its own allure of mystery and excitement, had been parts of a free world that people hoped to visit one day. For a few brief years after the Great War, the world had begun turning away from centuries of imperialism and oppression; its peoples had at last started learning to live together. And America, surely, with its throngs of every race, language, color, and creed daily rubbing shoulders in the streets of New York and San Francisco; with the ocean liners docked beneath scores of flags in its harbors; and its Clipper flying-boats bringing Tokyo hours closer, had pointed the way forward to the world as it might one day have been.

  He felt strange walking through the streets of that America of long ago. This was how it should have stayed, he told himself. He could feel freedom all around him, a sense of vitality that had been absent from the times he remembered. There were still signs of the Depression, to be sure, and the nation still had its share of problems, but underneath, it was confident and optimistic, its conviction unshaken that its problems could be solved. It was the America that the father and mother he had never known had come halfway around the world to find: an America that still had faith in itself.

  "You said once that you were from this area, didn't you, Harry?" Janet asked as they walked.

  Ferracini returned abruptly from his reverie. "Oh, yes. That's right."

  "Whereabouts? Farther east, maybe—the Italian quarter?"

  "We've got some family there, but my folks moved out, to Queens. They both died when I was a baby. I grew up with an aunt and uncle over in Hoboken."

  "Getting too crowded—when your parents moved out of the city, I mean?"

  "Too Italian."