"I'll be out of France before my passport expires," Fulmar said. "What are you doing here?" Baker asked.
"What is this, anyway?" Fulmar asked.
"Nothing. I was just curious. I don't see many Americans in s these days."
Pan "I suppose not Fulmar agreed.
"So you'll let me buy you a drink?"
Fulmar hesitated, then nodded.
They went into the bar and took a table against the wall.
Fulmar knew several of the young German officers and spoke to them in German. There was dialect and slang. Fulmar was perfectly fluent in that language, so fluent that he could obviously be mistaken for a German. His French was impeccable, too.
"I think they're about out of American whiskey," Baker said.
"I drink fin de 1'eau," Fulmar said, in English. "I can't stand French beer."
"Bring us a siphon and ice," Baker ordered. "And some cognac."
When they had mixed the drinks, Baker raised his.
"Mud in your eye," he said.
Fulmar chuckled. "I haven't heard that in a while he said.
"How long have you been over here?" Baker asked.
"I came over for my last two years of high school," Fuhnar said. "And then I stayed for college. That makes it eight years."
"You've never been back?"
Fulmar shook his head no. Then he took the cognac bottle, poured the empty coffee cup half full, and added ice and a good spritz from the siphon.
"You say you don't live in France?" Baker asked.
"Are you just making conversation, or is that an official inquiry?"
"Forget I asked," Baker said quickly. "I didn't mean to pry."
"I know curiosity is eating you up, Mr. Baker, but maybe that's your business, so I'll try to satisfy it. I live in Morocco. I have been given a permanent residence permit by the Moroccan government. I would suppose the consulate general in Rabat has all the details."
-I guess my curiosity ran away with me," Baker said, making it an apology. "I didn't mean to offend."
"None was taken," Fulmar said dryly, smiling his open, engaging smile.
"I was told you were German," Baker said with a smile. "That made me curious, too."
"My father is German," Fulmar said, looking directly at Baker. "So far as they're concerned, that makes me a German. If I was in Germany, they'd put me in the army, American passport or no. I don't want to be a German soldier."
"Maybe you should think about going home," Baker said.
"And get drafted into the American army? No, thanks."
"You may have to go home," Baker said. "What if the consulate won't renew your passport?"
"Then I'll become a Moroccan citizen," Fulmar said.
"Can you? Don't you have to be Moslem?"
"How do you know I'm not?" Fulmar asked. "And besides, I have friends there."
"Friends?"
41 Um."
"That would be Sidi el Ferruch?" Baker asked, and Fulmar nodded.
"You two are close," Baker said.
"My God, you are nosy!" Fulmar said, but he was still smiling. He liked the man, in spite of his nosiness. Baker was smoother and smarter than he looked. "We went to high school together in Switzerland. And then to the university. We're very close. I owe him."
"Indeed?"
"He pointed out to me that I would be a fool to go in either the German or the American army," Fulmar said. "And then put his money where his mouth is by fixing it so I didn't have to. And he is indulging me tonight by taking you to dinner."
"I'm flattered," Baker said. "And surprised."
-You should be," Fulmar said, and chuckled. "It isn't often that you'll have a chance to break bread with a direct descendant of the True Prophet. And besides, it isn't often lately that I've talked to a smart American."
"I'm even more flattered," Baker said. "I'd love to break bread with a descendant of the True Prophet-and to continue talking with another smart American." He paused a moment and then added casually, "Oh, by the way, when you're not breaking bread with a descendant of the True Prophet, how do you spend your time in Morocco?"
"I try very hard not to wear out my welcome," Fulmar said, and laughed. "There aren't many Europeans who speak Arabic that they trust. Within limits, they trust me."
Baker nodded, and then Fulmar went on. "They don't all sleep in tents on the desert, you know, tending camels. They're in business. And just because the French lost the war doesn't mean that the French have stopped trying to screw them."
"It must be interesting," Baker said.
"Sometimes," Fulmar said.
When Sidi Hassan el Ferruch appeared at the door of the bar, with his enormous Senegalese bodyguard, N'Jibba, Fulmar and Baker joined him. There was a Delahaye waiting for them at the door of the Crillon, with a Peugeot sedan in line behind it.
The restaurant was small, the lobsters were delightfully fresh, and Sidi el Ferruch told Eldon C. Baker more than he really cared to know about the deplorable state of French racing stables under the German occupation-and absolutely nothing else of interest.
When Baker had undergone his formal training as an intelligence officer, he had been told that the error most often committed by men in the field was their failure to transmit what seemed to be unimportant information because they could see no use for it. Odd facts from various sources often could be put together to form valuable data.
Thus, with that in mind, after he had returned to the Crillon he put together another report on Fulmar, Eric, in which he stated that he had come to suspect that there was more to Fulmar than was immediately apparent. In other words, under the cover of his loungelizard image sponging on the son of the pasha of Ksar es Souk, he was up to something-something that very likely could be put to use by "our team" when the time came.
HVDE Park, New York August 21, 1941
The President of the United States, Colonel William B. Donovan could tell from the glint in his eyes, was about to be witty. But he was in the process of chewing a cracker smeared with Liederkranz cheese, so the remark had to wait until he finished.
"With Eleanor off spreading the pollen of goodwill," Franklin D. Roosevelt said, "it will not be necessary for us to play bridge before we can move on to the serious drinking. May I suggest we all go in the library?"
There were appreciative chuckles from the three other men at the table. None of Roosevelt's political cronies were present. That and the presence of William B. Donovan and a Navy commander named Douglass convinced J. Edgar Hoover that Roosevelt wanted more from him than the pleasure of his company at dinner.
Roosevelt's valet, a large black man in a white jacket, moved to the President to push his wheelchair, "I'll do it," Roosevelt said. "And that will be all, thank you. We are now going to tell bawdy stories in private."
He got another appreciative chuckle.
They followed him down a corridor to the library, where decanters of whiskey, a bottle of R6my Martin cognac, and a silver ice bucket had been laid out on a table so Roosevelt could play the host and make the drinks.
"As your Commander in Chief, I grant you immunity from the regulation which proscribes drinking on duty, Commander Doug-lass " Roosevelt said.
:,The commander is on duty?" Hoover asked.
"Yes," Roosevelt said. "And I really think he needs a little liquid courage before he tells you what he has to say."
"I always thought Edgar was unshockable, like a clergyman," Donovan said.
Hoover ignored that.
"You're ONI*, aren't you, Commander?" he asked.
Hoover took some pride in knowing who was involved in intelligence, and he was not reluctant to let the President, and for that matter Donovan, see again that there was very little that escaped his professional attention.
"No, sir," Commander Douglass said. "I'm now with COU' Hoover could not conceal his surprise.
Commander Peter Stuart Douglass, USN, was a sandy-haired, freckle-faced, pleasant-looking man of forty-two who had spent his
Navy career moving between deep water (his last assignment had been as commanding officer of a destroyer squadron) and intelligence.
"Take a stiff belt, Commander," Roosevelt said. "Give it a moment to warm you, and then get going."
"Yes, sir," Douglass said.
"Let me lay the groundwork," Roosevelt said, changing his mind. "Some months ago, Alex Sachs came to me bearing a letter from Albert Einstein and some other eggheads at that level. They believe it is possible to split the atom."
Hoover looked at Roosevelt, not understanding.
"What does that mean, Mr. President?" Hoover asked.
Roosevelt motioned for Douglass to speak.
"It means the potential release of energy from matter at a rate a "Office of Naval Intelligence. thousand times that possible from present energy-release rnethods@" Douglass said.
"I don't think I understand that either," Hoover confessed.
"I don't want to insult your intelligence, sir, by-2"Douglass said.
"You go right -ahead and insult my intelligence, Commander," Hoover said.
"Sir, you understand that explosives really don't explode? An explosion is really a process of combustion? The 'explosive material bums?"
Hoover nodded.
"If the atom can be split Douglass said, "it might be possible to extract a thousand times more energy than from combustion."
"A super bomb?" Hoover said.
"Yes, sir ' " Douglass said.
"We don't know that yet Roosevelt said. "After my first visit with Commander Douglass, I had Jim Conant for dinner and discussed it with him."
It did not surprise Hoover that Roosevelt had gone to James B. Conant, president of Harvard, for advice. The Roosevelt administration was heavily larded-far too heavily larded, in Hoover's opinion-with members of the Harvard faculty. Roosevelt was a Harvard graduate. "And what did he say?" Hoover asked.
""Yes,"' Roosevelt said, "and 'no."' He waited for a laugh that did not come. "Yes, it is possible," the President said. "No, not now. Maybe fifty, a hundred years from now."
"And you think he's wrong?" Hoover asked. "I think he underestimates both his own academic community and American industry" Donovan said. "In other words, you think a super bomb like this is possible9" Hoover asked. "It sounds like Buck Rogers in the twenty-fifth cen-tury-"
"I think so too," the President said. "But I at least believe it's worth the gamble : to try and find out. If such a weapon were possible, it would considerably change the odds of our losing a war should war come to usas I believe it must."
"They've already split the atomi" Donovan said. "What they have to do is learn to make it a continuous process, what the scientists call a chain reaction."
"An Italian physicist named Fermi is doing some work at the University of Chicago," Roosevelt said. "He hopes for some positive results by the first of the year."
"Who knows about this?" Hoover said.
He just thought of that, Donovan thought, somewhat unkindly.
"A handful of scientists; the chief of naval intelligence; Bill; Commander Douglass; an Army colonel named Leslie Groves; and now you," Roosevelt said.
"What will be required from the Bureau?" Hoover asked formally.
"Secrecy," Roosevelt said. "Secrecy. Absolute secrecy. This thing, if it works, could decide the war. We have to build a wall of silence around it."
"The FBI can handle it, Mr. President," Hoover said, making it a proclamation.
"I'm sure the FBI, as ever9" Roosevelt said solemnly, "will deliver to the country whatever it is asked to deliver."
"It will, Mr. President," Hoover said, equally solemnly.
Donovan suspected the President was playing Hoover for his, Donovan's, amusement, but there was no question that Hoover was oblivious to it.
"The FBI will of course have a major and continuing role in this Project," Roosevelt said. "But that will be somewhere down the Pike. What I'm concerned about right now, and the reason I have asked you here, Edgar, is something that's going to happen almost immediately."
"Yes, sir, Mr. President?" Hoover asked. If he were a soldier, Donovan thought, Hoover would be standing at attention.
"The British and the Germans have also been working on splitting the atom," Roosevelt said.
"The Germans?" Hoover asked. Roosevelt nodded.
"Dr. Conant has arranged to send two of his associates, chaps named Urey and Pegrani, to England to see how far the English have gotten," Roosevelt said. "And to see what they can find out about the German effort. They'll be leaving very shortly."
"Would it be possible, Mr. President," Hoover asked, "for me to send a couple of my agents with them?"
"Bill has something like that in mind, Edgar," Roosevelt said.
""Something like that'?" Hoover quoted. "Do I see a hook in there?"
"Bill thought about sending Commander Douglass. Or to have Douglass recruit some people from ONI and send them."
"It's an FBI function, pure and simple," Hoover said, annoyed.
"You know," Roosevelt said, "I thought you would say something like that, Edgar."
"It's a statement of fact," Hoover said. "Nothing personal, Bill, you understand."
"Before I say this, Edgar... and pout if you like' " Roosevelt said, "I want to remind you that you were given the FBI in large measure because of the efforts of Bill Donovan to get it for you."
44 Bill knows I'm grateful Hoover said, not very graciously. "But with all respect to naval intelligence-"
"I'm not finished, Edgar," Roosevelt cut him off. "What I have decided to do, and the operative word is 'decided,' is something entirely different."
He paused there, then put on his smile again.
"You will, of course, recognize this as yet another manifestation of my Solomonlike wisdom' " he said.
He got the expected chuckle.
"It occurred to me," the President went on, "that if... when... we find ourselves in this war, it will undoubtedly be necessary for us to do certain things of doubtful legality. Things that neither the FBI nor any of the service intelligence agencies would like to be connected with."
"The FBI Hoover said, "will do whatever is necessary, Mr. President."
"Edgar," the President replied, "under your leadership, the FBI has become the most respected agency in the government. I don't intend to-I will not-see the escutcheon soiled."
OK, Edgar, Donovan thought, wiggle out of that one if you can. ,You are very kind, Mr. President, to say that," Hoover said. "However, in the national inter-"
Roosevelt shut him off by raising his hand.
"Edgar," he said with a toothy smile, "I learned a long time ago that if you're going to do something of questionable legality, the first thing you do is find yourself a good lawyer."
Hoover laughed, but it was forced. He took the law seriously, and didn't like jokes made about it.
"So I'm going to give these necessary-but perhaps a little underhanded-missions to Bill, who is the best lawyer I know," Roosevelt said.
"I don't quite understand, Mr. President," Hoover said.
"Among other things you are to do, Edgar," the President said, "is not only to look the other way when you suspect COI is doing something it shouldn't, but... and this is very important... you are to divert the eyes of other people who may be asking questions."
"Isn't that tantamount to giving COI a license to break the law?" Hoover asked.
"It is giving him license to do whatever I tell him to do in any way he can most effectively do it," the President said.
"If this carne out, Mr. President, it would be damaging, very damaging, politically," Hoover said. "I respectfully suggest, Mr. President, that the FBI can handle this sort of business, when necessary, better than anyone else."
Donovan was surprised that Hoover was offering the FBI to do the President's illegal bidding. Roosevelt acted as if he didn't hear him.
"I yesterday afternoon sent to the Senate the name of Commander Douglass for promotion to captain,"
Roosevelt said. "And I instructed the secretary of the Navy to place Captain Douglass on indefinite duty with the Office of the Coordinator of Inforr-nation. In the absence of Bill, when dealing with COI, you will deal with Douglass.
"I have also instructed the chief of naval intelligence that he is to transfer to COI whatever people Captain Douglass asks for. And I want you, Edgar, to send over six of your best people to Douglass. Your very best people."
W E B Griffin - Men at War 1 - The Last Heroes Page 15
