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a stamp, write your Fond Pen Pal, "He's been hurt," Sarah said to Ann.
"Not seriously. He had some kind of an accident."
"He's lying through his teeth," Ann said, Sarah looked at her in surprise. Ann
walked back out of the bedroom and returned with the manila envelope in which
she had all the rest of the story, copies of the radiogram, and the letters
from the Chinese embassy and from Peter Doug lass, Jr." and the clippings from
Time and Life.
"He looks terrible," Sarah said when she saw the photographs. "He looks
starved."
"He's alive," Ann said.
"And he's coming home."
"Why didn't you show me this stuff before?"
Sarah demanded. Ann shrugged her shoulders. "I was suffering from perfectly
normal postnatal depression," Sarah said furiously.
"I wasn't crazy!" Ann smiled at her. Sarah thought of something else.
"Have you heard from Dick Canidy?
A "Not from or about," Ann said. "Well, they're probably keeping him busy,"
Sarah said, "and he just hasn't had time to write."
"Sure," Ann said.
"Either that, or there is a Chinese girl, or girls, or an American nurse, or
an English nurse, or all of the above."
"You don't know that," Sarah said. "I know Richard Canidy, damn him," Ann
said.
FOUR I Warm Springs, Georgia June 8, 1942
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The President of the United States and Colonel William J. Donovan took their
lunch, fried chicken and a potato salad, on the flagstone patio outside
Roosevelt's cottage. The two were shielded from the view of other patients and
visitors at the poliomyelitis care center by a green latticework fence.
Roosevelt had a guest, who vanished immediately on the arrival of Donovan by
car from Atlanta. Donovan wondered why he was surprised and shocked. Roosevelt
was a man, even if his legs were crippled. Eleanor, he well knew, could be a
pain in the ass. Barbara Whittaker was far more charming, and certainly
better-looking, and Chesly Whittaker had died in the bed of a woman young
enough to be his daughter.
Why should he expect Roosevelt to be a saint? And, he told himself, in any
event it was none of his business. He had come to Georgia to discuss the war,
and what COI was doing to help win THE SECRET WARRIORS N TO it, Whether
Franklin Roosevelt was getting a little on the side had nothing to do with
that. The most important thing on Roosevelt's mind at lunch was neither the
beating the nation was taking in the Pacific nor even the first American
counter stroke, Operation Torch, the invasion of North Africa, scheduled for
the fall. What he wanted to discuss was the super bomb. Donovan had previously
learned that while the experiments at the reactor at the University of Chicago
were by no means near completion they had yet to try for a chain reaction-Dr.
Conant of Harvard had reported that the scientists were more and more
confident that things were going to work. After these reports Roosevelt had
been so confident-or, Donovan thought, so desperate-that he had authorized a
virtual blank check on his secret war appropriations funds to go ahead with
the effort. As of June 1, under an Army Corps of Engineers officer, Brigadier
General Leslie R.
Groves, the Manhattan Project had come into being, with the mission of
developing a bomb whose explosive force would come from atomic fission.
Manhattan had been chosen for the project name in the hope that the enormous
expenditures about to be made would be connected with Manhattan Island, rather
than the facilities being built at Oak Ridge, Tennessee, Han ford, Washington,
and in the deserts of the Southwest.
The Office of the Coordinator of Information had so far been involved in this
program in the operation that had located and brought to the United States
Grunier, the French mining engineer who had worked before the war for Union
Mini re in the Belgian Congo. One of the very few known sources of uraninite
ore, from which it was theoretically possible to extract uranium 235, was in
Katanga Province of the Belgian Congo. From Grunier it had been learned that
there were in fact many tons of uraninite in Katanga Province lying around as
by-products of other Union Mini re mining and smelting operations. Some of it
had simply been removed and pushed aside as slag during copper and tin mining
operations. A few people questioned how much to trust Grunier, for he had been
brought involuntarily to the United States from Morocco where he was working
in phosphate mining. His family was in France, and he was understandably
concerned for their welfare. This concern was promptly used as leverage by COI
He was thus prevailed upon to draw maps. Donovan then sent an so a agent to
the Belgian Congo from South Africa who had returned with fifty pounds of
uraninite ore in twenty bags. The source of each bag was labeled according to
which pile of spellings it came from. Twelve of his packages turned out to be
useless. They were not what Grunier thought--or at least so he told the COI
interrogators-were supplies of uraninite. Seven more samples had not contained
enough uraninite to make refining possible.
One of the three good samples had contained an adequate parts-per-million
ratio, and the last two, on spectrographic and chemical analysis, proved to be
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very desirable. The next question was: Were the samples truly representative
of the pile they were taken from, or were they a fluke?
This problem was magnified greatly because of the enormous quantities of
uraninite ore required to produce even minute quantities of pure uranium 235.
There was, so far as anyone knew, less than 0.000001 pound of the stuff in all
the world. Some scientists believed that as little as an ounce of pure U-235
would be enough to make up the critical mass of an atomic fission bomb. But
others, just as knowledgeable, said the minimum figure would have to be at
least a hundred pounds. Thus, to determine how many thousands of tons were
going to be necessary to produce as much as fifty pounds of uranium, it was
necessary to have refinable quantities. In laboratory terms, that meant a
minimum of five tons. For now. And of course much more later, if things went
the way everyone hoped they would. As of December 12, 1941, the German
government had informed the Belgian government that under the terms of the
armistice agreement between them, the export of copper and other strategic
minerals and ores from Belgian colonies to the United States of America was no
longer permitted. And all other exports would henceforth be reviewed to make
sure they would not accrue to the enemy's benefit.
Worrying about how to smuggle several hundred tons of ore out of the middle of
darkest Africa would, however, have to wait. The job now was to determine if
the Katanga ore was what was needed, and the way to do that was to get five
tons of it to the United States. And the way to do that, Donovan decided, was
to fly into Katanga and get it. "You're working on flying the stuff out, then.
Is that right, Bill?"
Roosevelt said.
THE SECRET WARRIORS 8 el "Yes, Sir," Donovan said. "How are you going to do
it?" Donovan was a little annoyed with Roosevelt's interest in details. It
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