The Haigerloch Project

He returned to his desk, stared at the Intelligence Summary. Should he alert Groves? As soon as the thought occurred to him, he knew he would not.

Groves had stopped a top OSS agent, that baseball player… Bates. Burns. Berg — that was it — Moe Berg… from going into Germany to check on the Nazi atomic project. Into the same damned area — Hechingen — mentioned in the report.

McKinley sighed.

Groves felt — and he had been right — that if Berg was captured, the Nazis might sweat more information out of him about our project than he could have learned about theirs.

McKinley flipped the switch on his intercom.

“Barnes,” he said, “the MED offices are still in the War Department Building?”

“Yes, sir,” his aide's answer came over the speaker.

“Get hold of their head of security. Colonel — eh—”

“Reed, sir. John Reed.”

“—Reed. I want him here in my office in two hours.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Also that major from Donovan's outfit—”

“Major Rosenfeld, sir. David Rosenfeld.”

“Right. The one we've dealt with on OSS matters.”

“Yes, sir. Anyone else?”

“That's all.”

“Yes, sir. Colonel Reed and Major Rosenfeld. Your office at 1330 hours, sir.”

There was a click from the intercom.

McKinley sat back in his chair. He knew both Reed and Rosenfeld. He respected them. They were men like himself who believed in getting a necessary job done — even if it meant not going through channels but taking direct action.

And action had to be taken.

He'd damned well better get some hard facts about the Nazi bomb.

A few months before, Groves had been wise in choosing to stop direct penetration of the suspected project area.

This time there was no choice. They had to go in….

He stared at the Intelligence Summary. Slowly he reread the first item:

1 Mar 45. Sector of 11th Inf vic Bitburg, Germany (Q 822 877). German scientist, Johann Decker, believed active with Degussa, Frankfurt, killed during exfiltration attempt. Decker states that individual named Himmelmann in Haigerloch ten miles west of the town of Hechingen (P 654 667) may have information re: German progress in atomic research. States further that German physicists are close to success….

McKinley sighed again. Decker. Johann Decker…

Who the hell was Johann Decker?

6

The slim file folder on the desk before Standartenführer Werner Harbicht bore the legend printed in black block letters:

GEHEIME STAATSPOLIZEI

Amt IV E-1

Stuttgart, Wkr V

A handwritten case number, 3-72P, had been entered in the appropriate box in the upper right corner — and beneath it a name in bold lettering: DECKER, JOHANN.

Colonel Harbicht, Chief of Amt IV E-1—Counterespionage — Regional Gestapo Headquarters, Stuttgart, contemplated the file. He knew every word it contained. It had been lying on his desk in a stack of new cases to be brought to his attention when he had returned to his office early that afternoon. It was now close to 1800 hours and Harbicht had just made up his mind. He knew exactly what he had to do.

He felt the familiar exhilaration course through him and welcomed it, a well-trained hunting dog sniffing a fresh spoor.

Seeing the name on the case file folder, he had recognized it at once — even though years had gone by since he had last been involved with Johann Decker. In 1934, as a young officer in the then year-old Gestapo organization in Berlin, he had investigated Decker, who had suddenly been publicly spotlighted because of getting the Nobel Prize. There had been rumors that Decker was hostile to the rising National Socialist movement, and Harbicht had investigated the man. He had found no concrete evidence to support the allegations, and no action had been taken.

Now — more than ten years later — the name of Johann Decker had reappeared.

Decker should have reported in Haigerloch on March 1. It was now March 3—and the man had not arrived. He had, in fact, disappeared.

Harbicht was acutely aware of the security measures that surrounded the entire project at Hechingen and Haigerloch. He knew how vitally important the undertaking was to the Reich — and to ultimate military success. Although Decker had last been seen in a town outside Harbicht's jurisdiction, the man's destination had been Haigerloch. And Haigerloch was in his territory. He had at once requested a full report on the Gestapo investigation in Mayen, Decker's last known whereabouts.