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“Eleven months ago,” Lindemann continued, “just after the German surrender at Stalingrad, we learned of the existence of Tabun. Tabun was interesting because it worked in an entirely different way than any previous gas, by crippling the central nervous system. Yet because it was not significantly more lethal than phosgene, we didn’t overreact. But we did realize that our own chemical weapons weren’t much further along than in 1918, and we moved to correct the imbalance. Sarin—while it shares some characteristics of Tabun—is a completely different animal.”
“I’m a little fuzzy on my chemistry,” Eisenhower said with disarming frankness. “What makes Sarin so different?”
Lindemann knitted his eyebrows. “Unlike most poison gases, General, Sarin is absolutely lethal. In 1939, the deadliest battlefield gas in the world was phosgene.” He paused to give his next statement the necessary emphasis. “Sarin is thirty times as deadly as phosgene. In sufficient concentration it can kill within seconds, and it need not even enter the lungs. It can pass directly through human skin.”
“Jesus Christ.” Eisenhower had blanched. “How does this stuff work?”
Lindemann considered the American commander for some moments. “General, every function of the human body, both conscious and unconscious, is controlled by the brain. Much as a general controls his troops. The brain passes its orders down to the organs and the limbs by means of nerve branches. The nerves are the couriers of the brain, you might say. When the brain sends a message down a nerve, a compound called acetylcholine is produced. Now, at this point, the nerve has temporarily lost its conductivity. The courier, having delivered his message, can no longer run. The nerve can only be restored to its conductive state by an enzyme called cholinesterase. Without this enzyme, the nerves of the body are nothing but dead tissue. The couriers die where they lie.”
“And this gas,” said Eisenhower, “Sarin. It destroys this enzyme, this …?”
“Cholinesterase,” supplied the major of intelligence.
“Precisely,” said Lindemann.
Eisenhower pursed his lips. “Exactly how much of this stuff would it take to kill a soldier?”
Lindemann answered with his pipe clenched between his teeth. “One thousandth of a raindrop. A droplet so small most of us couldn’t see it with the naked eye.”
Churchill noted the stricken look on Eisenhower’s face. The meeting was going just as he’d planned.
“Our people at Porton have been working round the clock to copy Sarin,” Lindemann went on, “but I’m afraid they haven’t had much luck. It’s devilish difficult to reproduce.”
“I’m afraid the Germans are having all the luck just now,” Churchill said dryly. “And there’s worse to come. Prof?”
“Yes. General, Brigadier Smith brings word of a still deadlier gas than Sarin. It is called Soman. We don’t have a sample, but I’ve seen a detailed report. Remember your lethality ratios. Phosgene was the deadliest gas in 1939. Sarin is thirty times as deadly as phosgene. And according to the reports, Soman is to Sarin as Sarin is to phosgene. Worse, it’s persistent.”
“Persistent?” Eisenhower echoed.
The American major chose this moment to reassert himself. “General, persistence was one of the primary gauges of gas effectiveness during World War One. How long the gas stayed at ground level after it was released.”
Lindemann nodded. “We have reports that Soman can remain stable for many hours, even days, clinging to whatever it comes into contact with. A soldier exposed even several hours after a battle would still likely die. And it would be a horrible death, General, I can assure you.”
“Do we have any idea how much of this stuff the Germans have stockpiled?”
Brigadier Smith cleared his throat. “General, our best estimate is upwards of five thousand tons, ready for use.”
The intelligence major was stunned enough to preempt his general. “Did you say tons?”
Churchill nodded crisply. “Conventional cylinders, aircraft bombs, artillery shells, the lot.”
Eisenhower held out his right hand to Churchill. “Let me see that damned thing.”
Churchill tossed the sealed vial toward the sofa. Commander Butcher and Brendan Bracken jumped, but Eisenhower caught the vial and held it up to a lamp. “I can’t see anything,” he said. “Just some condensation at the bottom.”
“That’s because it’s invisible,” Churchill said. “Prof?”
“Eh?” Lindemann was fussing with his pipe again.
“The delivery system. Aerosols vecteurs?”
“Right. General, when the Nazis overran Belgium in 1940, they scoured the universities for technology that might further their weapons research. I’m sorry to say that they came across the work of a rather talented chemist named Dautrebande. Dautrebande had been experimenting with a new concept he called aerosols vecteurs. In plain language, he’d found a way to reduce almost any substance to its smallest stable state: charged particles in suspension, refined to ninety-seven percent purity. He intended to use this technology to disperse healing agents in sealed hospital rooms. Obviously, the Nazis have other uses in mind.”
“Remember,” said Churchill, “the paramount consideration in gas warfare is the element of surprise. With Dautrebande’s system, the Nazis could saturate an entire battle area with Soman before anyone even knew they were under attack. And we have no idea how aerosols might affect current protective equipment. It could render it totally obsolete.”
Eisenhower stood and began pacing the room. “All right, you didn’t invite me here to describe the problem. What do you want to do about this?”
Churchill didn’t hesitate. “I want the Eighth Air Force and Bomber Command to begin hitting the German stockpiles immediately. All known nerve gas factories should be added to the master target lists and given top priority.”
“Good God,” murmured Commander Butcher, whose former job had been a vice presidency at the Columbia Broadcasting System. “A direct hit could send clouds of lethal gas rolling across Germany. Thousands of women and children might be killed. From a propaganda standpoint alone—”
“If,” Churchill interrupted, “our air forces, in the course of bombing Germany’s industrial base, happen to set free something we had no way of knowing was there … I don’t see how we could be blamed.”
The ruthlessness of Churchill’s suggestion silenced the Americans.
Eisenhower stopped pacing. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but up to this point the Germans have not deployed poison gas on the battlefield. Not even against the Russians. True?”
“That’s true,” Churchill admitted. “Though they are murdering captive Jews with cyanide gas.”
Eisenhower ignored this. “Therefore, we must assume that Hitler is restraining himself, even in the face of terrible losses, for the same reason that he has not used biological weapons. Because our intentional intelligence leaks to the Germans let them know in no uncertain terms that we have the means to retaliate in kind.”
Churchill gave a conciliatory nod. “General, in the case of biologic weapons our leaks were quite truthful. However, in the area of chemical weapons you’ll find that we exaggerated a bit. All in a good cause, to be sure. To buy ourselves time. But with the invasion imminent, our time has run out.”
Eisenhower turned to his intelligence major. “Just what do we have in our chemical arsenal?”
“Loads of phosgene,” the major said defensively. “We’re stockpiling sixty days’ worth of retaliatory gas for D-Day. And new shipments of mustard are arriving all the time.”
Eisenhower frowned. “But nothing like Sarin?”
“No, sir.”
“Nor Soman.”
The major shook his head. “Not even close, sir.”
“Jesus H. Christ.” Eisenhower looked around the room. “Gentlemen, I think it might be better if the prime minister and I continue this conversation alone.”
“Brendan,” Churchill said, barely controlling the excitement in his voice, “you and Duff give our American friends some tea and biscuits. Clemmie will show you where everything is. And I believe the Prof has a late appointment.”
Lindemann glanced suddenly at his watch. “Good Lord, Winston, you’re right.” The tall don gathered up his hat and coat and started for the door, only at the last moment remembering that he was leaving the presence of the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force. He turned and tipped his hat to Eisenhower.
“Godspeed, General,” he said, and was gone.
FIVE (#u9202e47e-8c10-57b0-9178-03a7dc256446)
Dwight D. Eisenhower furiously smoked a cigarette at the very window where Churchill had awaited his arrival. During the past forty minutes, he had sat mostly in silence, chain-smoking Lucky Strikes while the prime minister painted nightmare scenarios of the eleventh-hour appearance of Sarin and Soman on the D-Day beaches. Finally, Eisenhower turned from the window.
“Frankly, Mr. Prime Minister, I don’t know why you came to me with this. You know I don’t have direct control over the strategic bombing forces. I’ve been fighting for that control for weeks, and you’ve been resisting me. Are you changing your position?”
Seated in a wing chair several feet away, Churchill stuck out his lower lip as if pondering an unfamiliar question. “I’m sure we can come to some reasonable compromise, General.”
“Well, until we do, I couldn’t make the decision to bomb those stockpiles even if I wanted to. Besides, this is a political matter. It’s a question for President Roosevelt.”
Churchill sighed heavily. “General, I spoke to Franklin about this matter in Cairo. I had an early report about Sarin. But I don’t believe he fully grasped the threat. He seems to think the tide has turned sufficiently in our favor that no single German secret weapon could stop it. The air marshals are making similar noises, and they resent my meddling. That’s why I came to you. As the man in charge of OVERLORD, I thought you couldn’t fail to see the danger.”
“Oh, I see the danger, all right.”
“Thank God.” Churchill spoke quickly. “The mind recoils. Rommel could bury canisters of Soman weeks before our troops arrive, then detonate them from a safe distance. Half a dozen planes spraying aerosol-borne Soman could stop your entire force on the sand. D-Day would be a disaster.”
Eisenhower raised his hand. “Why do you think Hitler will deploy nerve gas on the invasion beaches if he didn’t use it at Stalingrad?”
Churchill answered with confidence. “Because Stalingrad, however terrible a defeat, was not the end. He could still take the long view. But Hitler now faces the lodgement of an Allied army on the Continent. If we breach his Atlantic Wall, it means the end for him, and he knows it. Also, there is some question as to whether the Germans had effective protective gear for their own troops at that time. Remember, Sarin and Soman can pass through human skin. One gust of wind blowing the wrong way could decimate a German battalion as easily as one of ours. It happened often enough in the Great War. But given the stakes of the invasion, will Hitler hesitate to sacrifice his own men? Not for a moment. I tell you, that devil will stop at nothing.”
Eisenhower found Churchill’s eyes in the gloom. “Mr. Prime Minister, at this stage of the game, we’ve got to see Hitler straight. We can’t afford not to.”
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I mean I know for a fact that in 1940 you planned to use poison gas on the Germans if they reached the beaches of England.”
Churchill did not deny it.
“So,” Eisenhower plowed on, “let’s stop pretending we have some special moral obligation to stop Hitler from using gas under circumstances where we would probably do the same.”
“But that is precisely my point! Hitler will soon be in the very circumstances in which we would resort to using gas ourselves. Can we afford to hope he will not?”
Eisenhower violently stubbed out his cigarette. “How the hell did we get into this mess?”
“I hate to say it, General, but it goes back to the non-competition agreements signed by Standard Oil and I.G. Farben in the 1920s. The arrangement was that Standard would stay out of chemicals if Farben stayed out of the oil business. Both companies held to that deal up to and even after the outbreak of war. It’s the Germans who’ve revolutionized commercial chemistry. We have nothing to compare with the Farben conglomerate.”
“What about French scientists?”
Churchill shook his head sadly. “Hitler alone holds this card.” He picked up a pen and began doodling on a notepad. “May I speak with absolute frankness, General?”
“I wish to God you would.”
“Duff Smith and I have a theory. We think Hitler hasn’t used Sarin yet for one simple reason. He is afraid of gas. He was temporarily blinded by mustard gas in the Great War, you know. Made quite a thing of it in Mein Kampf. He may well have an exaggerated fear of our chemical abilities. We believe the real danger isn’t Hitler at all, but Heinrich Himmler. Sarin and Soman are being tested at camps run by Himmler’s SS. The sample of Sarin came from a remote SS camp built solely for the purpose of manufacturing and testing nerve gases. Himmler also controls much of the Nazi intelligence apparatus. Therefore, he is the man most likely to know we possess no nerve gases of our own. Duff and I think Himmler’s plan is to perfect his nerve gases and protective clothing, then present the whole show to Hitler at the moment he most needs it—to stave off our invasion. At a single stroke Himmler could save the Reich and raise himself to an unassailable position as successor to the Nazi throne.”
Eisenhower pointed a fresh cigarette at Churchill. “Now that, Mr. Prime Minister, is a motive that makes sense. Do you have proof of this?”
“Duff’s Polish friends have a contact very close to the commandant of one of these camps. This agent believes a tactical demonstration of Soman—a demonstration for the Führer—may be scheduled in a matter of weeks, possibly even days.”
“I see. Mr. Prime Minister, let me digress a moment. Professor Lindemann said your people are working around the clock to copy Sarin. I assume that is strictly for retalia-tory purposes?”
Churchill took a deep breath. “Not if you agree with me, General. I believe there is an option more desirable than bombing the German stockpiles. I’m speaking of a demonstration raid. If our scientists succeed in copying Sarin, I believe we should launch a limited attack with our gas as soon as possible. Only by doing this will we leave no doubt whatever in Himmler’s mind that he is wrong in his estimation of our capabilities and our resolve.”
Eisenhower looked at Churchill with unveiled amazement. The cold-bloodedness of the British continually stunned him. He cleared his throat. “But so far your scientists’ efforts to copy Sarin have been unsuccessful, correct?”
Churchill turned up his palms. “They’re dabbling with something called fluorophosphates, but progress is slow.”
Eisenhower turned to the window and stared out over the snowswept English landscape. In the dark it looked as quiet as a cemetery. “Mr. Prime Minister,” he said at length, “I’m afraid I can’t support you on this. Neither the bombing nor the … the demonstration raid.” Hearing Churchill’s soft groan, Eisenhower turned. “Wait—please hear me out. I deeply respect your judgment. You have been right many times when everyone else was wrong. But things aren’t so clear cut as you’re trying to make them seem. If we bomb the German stockpiles and nerve gas plants, we tip our hand to Hitler. We show him what we fear most. Also, by bombing the stockpiles we indirectly use nerve gas on the German people. That’s practically the same as first use. What would then stop Hitler from using Soman against our troops?”
Churchill hung on every word, searching for a chink in the American’s logic.
“No,” Eisenhower said firmly, “it’s absolutely out of the question. President Roosevelt would never authorize a gas attack, and the American people wouldn’t stand for it. There are still thousands of veterans walking American streets who were terrorized by gas in the first war, some scarred horribly. We will retaliate if attacked ourselves. The president has made that clear. But first use? Never.”
Eisenhower steeled himself for the familiar roar of the British lion. But rather than rise to his feet for a spirited argument, Churchill seemed to withdraw into himself.
“What I will do,” Eisenhower said quickly, “is push for full American cooperation in developing our own version of Sarin. That way, if Hitler does cross the line we can show our people that we’re giving as good as we get. I’ll press Eaker and Harris for aerial surveys of the gas plants and stockpiles. If Hitler uses Sarin, we’ll be ready to start bombing immediately. How does that sound?”
“Like we’re planning to shut the stable door after the horse has run away,” Churchill mumbled.
Eisenhower felt his notorious temper reaching the flashpoint, but he managed to check it. He would have to endure countless hours of negotiations very much like this one in the coming months, and he had to keep relations civil. “Mr. Prime Minister, I’ve heard tales of doomsday weapons on both sides since 1942. In the end, this war will be won or lost with planes, tanks, and men.”
Sitting there in the great wing chair in his dragon dressing gown, hands folded across his round belly, Winston Churchill resembled nothing so much as a pale Buddha resting on a velvet pillow. His watery eyes peered out from beneath heavy lids. “General,” he said gravely, “you and I hold the fate of Christendom in our hands. I beg you to reconsider.”
In that moment Eisenhower felt the full weight of Churchill’s indomitable will projected against him. But his resolve held firm. “I’ll keep all this in mind,” he said. “But for now I must stand by what I said tonight.”
The Supreme Commander rose and moved toward the study door. As he reached for the knob, something stopped him. A brief intimation that perhaps he had won too easily? He turned and fixed Churchill in his gaze. “As I’m sure you will, Mr. Prime Minister.”
Churchill smiled in resignation. “Of course, General. Of course.”
When Eisenhower’s party had gone, Brigadier Duff Smith joined Churchill in his private study. A single lamp burned at the prime minister’s desk. The one-armed SOE chief leaned forward.
“The air seemed a bit chilly when Ike collected his men,” he observed.
Churchill laid both pudgy hands on his desk and sighed. “He refused, Duff. No bombing of the stockpiles, no demonstration raid if we develop our own gas.”
“Bloody hell. Doesn’t he realize what Soman would do to his sodding invasion?”
“I don’t think he does. It’s the same old American song, the same schoolboy naivete.”
“That naivete could still cost us the war!”
“Eisenhower has never seen combat, Duff, remember that. I don’t hold it against him, but a man who’s never been shot at—much less gassed—lacks a certain perspective.”
“Bloody Yanks,” Smith fumed. “They either want to fight this war from six miles up in the air or by the Marquess of Queensbury rules.”
“Steady, old man. They’ve acquitted themselves quite handily in Italy.”
“Aye,” Smith conceded. “But you’ve said it yourself a hundred times, Winston, ‘Action This Day!’”
Churchill stuck out his lower lip and fixed the brigadier with a penetrating stare. “You never thought Eisenhower would agree to the bombing, did you?”
The SOE chief’s poker face slipped ever so slightly. “That’s a fact, Winston. I never did.”
“And of course you have a plan.”
“I’ve had thoughts.”
