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behave like a civilized Christian. The number of beers subsequently bought for
Lamson at the pub not far from the camp by grinning young Britishers more than
compensated.
The British weren't the only ones gearing up to fight the last war all over
again. The
French, if anything, were worse; and from what Ferracifli and the others had
heard and read in the course of almost a year in
America, the majority of U.S. generals still seemed to be having trouble
grasping that the planet continued beyond Maine. It wasn't so much that they
were slow in responding to change. Leaders and rulers always had much to lose
and little to gain from the disruptions brought by change;
therefore, invariably, they constituted the conservative elements of society
That much had been true throughout history. The difference this time was that
the thinking of one side was being shaped by minds whose experience came from
eighty-five years in the future.
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Even so, the Ampersand troops agreed privately, in the four months that had
gone by since the beginning of September, the West's leaders should have
learned more from Poland than they had.
The New Year was colder and icier than usual, even in Berlin. Despite years of
incessant, vitriolic Nazi propaganda, the majority of the population hadn't
wanted war. In contrast to the scenes of frenzied jubilation amid which the
German armies of 1914 had marched off to the fronts, the streets had remained
quiet and empty at the news of Poland's invasion. Now with things like the
blackout, a war surtax of fifty percent on top of income tax, the virtual
disappearance of gasoline, the introduction of ration cards for food, soap,
shoes, and clothing, and coffee's replacement by a coarse substitute made from
roasted barley seeds, the average Berliner felt the cold of 1940
psychologically as well as physically.
The scene in the Tiergarten presented a curious contrast, with children
skating on frozen ponds, and sandbagged antiaircraft batteries brooding
menacingly beneath snow-laden camouflage nets. Colonel Piekenbrock and
Lieutenant Colonel Boeckel were taking a lunchtime stroll from the
Bendlerstrasse. They walked slowly side by side, caps pulled low, faces tucked
down behind the upturned collars of their greatcoats, snow crunching beneath
their j ackboots.
"There's no chance of mistaken identity?" Piekenbrock said. His breath turned
to white vapor in the cold air as he spoke.
Boeckel shook his head. "The faces were identified independently by three
experts. Also, the car was registered in Teller's name. We're quite certain."
They walked on in silence for a while. "So what do you make of it?"
Piekenbrock asked.
Boeckel knew by now that this tendency of Piekenbrock's didn't mean he was
perpetually devoid of ideas. It was simply his way to ask a subordinate's
opinions before voicing his own. It helped him recognize talent, and it
disarmed yes-men.
"Well, we seem to have uncovered a small, but highly professional,
unpublicized unit of the American Army, specially trained in guerilla methods
and undercover operations. They've even staged practice missions from a
disguised base in New I York."
"Agreed," Piekenbrock said, nodding.
"And now we find Einstein visiting this same base. Not only that, but he's
with Teller and
Fermi, both of them specialists in I the same field." Boeckel glanced at his
superior uncertainly.
"Oh, yes, yes," Piekenbrock said, waving a leather-gloved hand impatiently and
thrusting it back in his pocket. "You can say it. Einstein is a great
scientist. Never mind the nonsense that I Goebbels churns out for the masses.
And you say that this Hungarian and the Italian specialize in the same field
What field is that?"
"I made inquiries at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute," Boeckel replied. 'About a
year ago, an important experiment was conducted here in Berlin which caused an
international stir among physicists investigating the inner structure of
atoms. Apparently, 1 there are good reasons to suppose that atomic processes
involv ing the element uranium might release quite large quantities of 1
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