The Haigerloch Project

The Trinity test at Los Alamos was obviously a project of topmost priority. Now it had become figuratively as well as literally explosive. The congressional bloodhounds had nosed a quarry. Pointed questions about the “squandering” of millions of taxpayer dollars were already rumbling from certain factions on the Hill. They might have to go through the same damned rigmarole they'd already suffered once, when questions in Congress had gotten the Special Senate Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program into the act. Thank God Truman, then chairman, had realized the risk in an investigation of the Manhattan Project and had promptly agreed to postpone action until after the war.

The most vociferous Congressman then had been Representative Engel of Michigan. And now Engel was making noises again. He had to be placated again. It would require supremely delicate handling at the highest level. Groves? Stimson? Marshall?

He pushed that problem aside and fingered the cabled report brought to him a short while before. Top secret. From London. He began to read it once more, although he knew it by heart. He saw only one word.

OHIO.

The current code word meaning uranium.

A German encoded message had been intercepted and deciphered. It was an order to ship at once all available uranium mined at the Joachimthal mines in Czechoslovakia and processed at the Auer-Gesellschaft near Berlin to Haigerloch at Hechingen.

There it was. The first time Haigerloch and uranium—the core element of an atomic bomb — had been definitely linked!

He had no doubts about the authenticity of the intercepted message. He had come to rely implicitly on reports such as this one. It had originated with Ultra.

Ultra messages awed him. He knew he was one of a handful of senior US officers and officials who were privy to the awesome secret of this vitally important British operation. It was an appalling responsibility. Were the Germans to learn or even suspect that the British had cracked their supposedly unbreakable coding-machine system, the Enigma, and were literally reading every top-secret High Command document and order it encoded, they would immediately discontinue using it, and thus deprive the Allies of an invaluable intelligence source. The British called their decoding set-up the Ultra Operation. And it was. The vitally essential intelligence gathered by Ultra had to be jealously safeguarded — and backed up with conventional intelligence to allay any possible enemy suspicions.

With a cold lump in the pit of his stomach, he recalled a high-level rumor early in Ultra's existence.

Ultra had picked up the bombing orders for the Nazi Luftwaffe to blitz the cathedral city of Coventry supposedly well before the scheduled attack occurred. Evacuation might have been achieved — but such a move would certainly have alerted the enemy to the existence of Ultra. McKinley felt cold. The decision to do nothing and doom an entire town in order to safeguard Ultra must have been agonizing.

He took a deep breath. Now — another Enigma signal with the potential of an immensely greater disaster had been intercepted. Coventry would be a Bible-class outing in comparison. And the report was on his desk. If the Coventry story was true, he fervently hoped that the decision he'd just made would help justify in some small measure the earlier decision….

Should he consult Stimson? Notify him?

No He'd act on his own. Hell, he'd had his ass in a sling before….