The Haigerloch Project

He was eager to come to grips with this new challenge, and even swollen with the influx of workers and technical personnel on the project, Hechingen was a small town. Fifteen, twenty thousand people. He would be able to hold it in an iron fist.

He had never yet emerged a loser.

7

It was precisely 1330 hours when Captain Barnes ushered Colonel Reed and Major Rosenfeld into General McKinley's office. The general looked at his aide.

“No interruptions,” he said quietly.

“Yes, sir.”

Barnes left.

McKinley gave each of the officers a copy of the Intelligence Summary.

“Read the two marked items,” he said.

He studied the two men as they read. Rosenfeld, the OSS officer, was in his late thirties, a linguist-sociologist, European languages. He had expert knowledge of six or seven and spoke every one of them with an atrocious Midwestern accent. Reed, the MED security chief, was a few years older, with an extensive background in law enforcement and as a special agent in the FBI.

The two men finished reading at almost the same time. They looked up at the general. Their faces were grim.

McKinley turned to the senior officer.

“Reed?” he asked quietly.

“What's the reliability rating of the Norwegian source?” the colonel asked.

“High,” McKinley answered. “A member of Milorg — the Norwegian Resistance Organization.”

Reed nodded thoughtfully.

“It's a new ballgame, sir,” he said slowly. “Taken in context with other intelligence, it sure looks as if the Germans are up to something. Getting ready for some action. Possibly — atomic…”

McKinley glanced at the summary.

“Do you know who this Johann Decker is?” he asked.

“The name is not familiar.”

McKinley flipped the intercom switch.

“Barnes,” he said, “is that biographical information on Johann Decker — reference, Intelligence Summary, third March, page two — ready?”

“Just transcribing it, sir.”

“Also find out who was interested in exfiltrating him And — why.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Bring it in when you have it.”

He flipped off the switch and turned back to Reed.

“Degussa?”

“A Frankfurt corporation, sir. They have an outstanding reputation in the field of metal refinement. Pre-war, they used small amounts of uranium for the manufacture of ceramic coloring. We have had unconfirmed intelligence that indicates considerable quantities of uranium products recently shipped to their plant.” He thought for a moment. “But we have no reliable information on any current project. Degussa security has been extremely strict. We assume it to be a uranium-reduction project.”

McKinley nodded.

“And — Himmelmann?”

“Probably Gustav Himmelmann. An Austrian physicist involved in atomic research. One of the scientists whose whereabouts Alsos has been trying to pinpoint.” He frowned. “Apparently he is in Haigerloch.” He paused. “Only — ten miles from Hechingen…”

“Yes. Hechingen,” McKinley said. “Again…”

His mind raced back to the fall of the year before. It had been their biggest scare. Aerial photographs taken on a series of sorties had revealed a construction program of considerable magnitude mushrooming with extraordinary speed in the Hechingen area. Railroad spurs, power lines and storage tanks had sprung up; what appeared to be a number of medium-sized industrial plants and factory buildings with tall chimneys had been erected and a grid of pipes laid out on the ground, and storage depots with mountains of material dotted the region. The project had obviously been given the highest priority; three large forced-labor camps had been built literally over-night. Since a flock of German atomic scientists had already been sent to Hechingen and surrounding villages, everyone from Groves on had felt the project might well be a Nazi version of Oak Ridge and Los Alamos rolled into one. The complex was finally determined to be a new form of shale-oil-cracking plant, and that explanation had been accepted then. Indeed, there were deposits of low-grade oil shale in the region. Now he felt suddenly uneasy. Extracting oil from shale was inefficient. Was the operation actually a cover for the construction of an atomic bomb?

He turned to the OSS major.

“Rosenfeld?”

“They are obviously going full steam on some top-secret project — atomic or not,” the officer said. “We will have to find out exactly what.”

“You recommend an OSS mission?”

Rosenfeld nodded. “I do.”

McKinley turned to Reed. “What about Alsos?” he asked.

He already knew the answer….

Alsos was MED's own scientific-intelligence unit, formed in the fall of 1943. Its primary mission was to collect intelligence of atomic developments in Italy and Germany. Alsos agents advanced with and operated closely behind US military forces — but never in enemy territory. The highly knowledgeable Alsos scientists and specialists were far too vulnerable to risk capture and interrogation. Alsos’ German operation had begun only a week before near Aachen, too recently for any significant results.

“It's not an operation for Alsos,” Reed said.