bowed his thin head in the direction of the general. He spoke as if exhaling, his high voice irritating.
“I’ll answer you, Herr Reichsminister. And then, I believe, you will see how fruitless this discussion is.… Sixty per cent of the world’s crushing-bortz diamonds are in the Belgian Congo. The two principal deposits are in the Kasai and Bakwanga fields, between the Kanshi and the Bushimaie rivers. The district’s governor-general is Pierre Ryckmans; he is devoted to the Belgian government in exile in London. I can assure Leeb that the Congo’s allegiances to Belgium are far greater than ours ever were in Dar es Salaam.”
Leeb lit a cigarette angrily. Speer leaned back in his chair and addressed Zangen.
“All right. Sixty per cent crushing-bortz; what of carbonado and the rest?”
“French Equatorial: totally allied to de Gaulle’s Free French. Ghana and Sierra Leone: the tightest of British controls. Angola: Portuguese domination and their neutrality’s inviolate; we know that beyond doubt. French West Africa: not only under Free French mandate butwith Allied forces manning the outposts.… Here, there was only one possibility and we lost it a year and a half ago. Vichy abandoned the Ivory Coast.… There is no access in Africa, Reichsminister. None of a military nature.”
“I see.” Speer doodled on top of the paper Altmüller had passed to him. “You are recommending a nonmilitary solution?”
“There is no other. The question is what.”
Speer turned to Franz Altmüller. His tall, blond associate was staring at them all. Their faces were blank. Baffled.
2
SEPTEMBER 11, 1943, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Brigadier General Alan Swanson got out of the taxi and looked up at the huge oak door of the Georgetown residence. The ride over the cobblestone streets had seemed like a continuous roll of hammering drums.
Prelude to execution.
Up those steps, inside that door, somewhere within that five-story brownstone and brick aristocratic home, was a large room. And inside that room thousands of executions would be pronounced, unrelated to any around the table within that room.
Prelude to annihilation.
If
the schedules were kept. And it was inconceivable that they would be altered.
Wholesale murder.
In line with his orders he glanced up and down the street to make sure he hadn’t been followed. Asinine! CIC had all of them under constant surveillance. Which of the pedestrians or slowly moving automobiles had him in their sights? It didn’t matter; the choice of the meeting place was asinine, too. Did they really believe they could keep the crisis a secret? Did they think that holding conferences in secluded Georgetown houses would help?
Asses!
He was oblivious to the rain; it came down steadily, in straight lines. An autumn rainstorm in Washington. His raincoat was open, the jacket of his uniform damp and wrinkled. He didn’t give a damn about such things; he couldn’t think about them.
The only thing he could think about was packaged in a metal casing no more than seven inches wide, five high, and perhaps a foot long. It was designed for those dimensions; it had the appearance of sophisticated technology; it was tooled to operate on the fundamental properties of inertia and precision.
And it wasn’t functional; it didn’t work.
It failed test after test.
Ten thousand high-altitude B-17 bomber aircraft were emerging from production lines across the country. Without high-altitude, radio-beam gyroscopes to guide them, they might as well stay on the ground!
And without those aircraft, Operation Overlord was in serious jeopardy. The invasion of Europe would extract a price so great as to be obscene.
Yet to send the aircraft up on massive, round-the-clock, night and day bombing strikes throughout Germany without the cover of higher altitudes was to consign the majority to destruction, their crews to death. Examples were constant reminders … whenever the big planes soared too high. The labels of
“I’ll answer you, Herr Reichsminister. And then, I believe, you will see how fruitless this discussion is.… Sixty per cent of the world’s crushing-bortz diamonds are in the Belgian Congo. The two principal deposits are in the Kasai and Bakwanga fields, between the Kanshi and the Bushimaie rivers. The district’s governor-general is Pierre Ryckmans; he is devoted to the Belgian government in exile in London. I can assure Leeb that the Congo’s allegiances to Belgium are far greater than ours ever were in Dar es Salaam.”
Leeb lit a cigarette angrily. Speer leaned back in his chair and addressed Zangen.
“All right. Sixty per cent crushing-bortz; what of carbonado and the rest?”
“French Equatorial: totally allied to de Gaulle’s Free French. Ghana and Sierra Leone: the tightest of British controls. Angola: Portuguese domination and their neutrality’s inviolate; we know that beyond doubt. French West Africa: not only under Free French mandate butwith Allied forces manning the outposts.… Here, there was only one possibility and we lost it a year and a half ago. Vichy abandoned the Ivory Coast.… There is no access in Africa, Reichsminister. None of a military nature.”
“I see.” Speer doodled on top of the paper Altmüller had passed to him. “You are recommending a nonmilitary solution?”
“There is no other. The question is what.”
Speer turned to Franz Altmüller. His tall, blond associate was staring at them all. Their faces were blank. Baffled.
2
SEPTEMBER 11, 1943, WASHINGTON, D.C.
Brigadier General Alan Swanson got out of the taxi and looked up at the huge oak door of the Georgetown residence. The ride over the cobblestone streets had seemed like a continuous roll of hammering drums.
Prelude to execution.
Up those steps, inside that door, somewhere within that five-story brownstone and brick aristocratic home, was a large room. And inside that room thousands of executions would be pronounced, unrelated to any around the table within that room.
Prelude to annihilation.
If
the schedules were kept. And it was inconceivable that they would be altered.
Wholesale murder.
In line with his orders he glanced up and down the street to make sure he hadn’t been followed. Asinine! CIC had all of them under constant surveillance. Which of the pedestrians or slowly moving automobiles had him in their sights? It didn’t matter; the choice of the meeting place was asinine, too. Did they really believe they could keep the crisis a secret? Did they think that holding conferences in secluded Georgetown houses would help?
Asses!
He was oblivious to the rain; it came down steadily, in straight lines. An autumn rainstorm in Washington. His raincoat was open, the jacket of his uniform damp and wrinkled. He didn’t give a damn about such things; he couldn’t think about them.
The only thing he could think about was packaged in a metal casing no more than seven inches wide, five high, and perhaps a foot long. It was designed for those dimensions; it had the appearance of sophisticated technology; it was tooled to operate on the fundamental properties of inertia and precision.
And it wasn’t functional; it didn’t work.
It failed test after test.
Ten thousand high-altitude B-17 bomber aircraft were emerging from production lines across the country. Without high-altitude, radio-beam gyroscopes to guide them, they might as well stay on the ground!
And without those aircraft, Operation Overlord was in serious jeopardy. The invasion of Europe would extract a price so great as to be obscene.
Yet to send the aircraft up on massive, round-the-clock, night and day bombing strikes throughout Germany without the cover of higher altitudes was to consign the majority to destruction, their crews to death. Examples were constant reminders … whenever the big planes soared too high. The labels of
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