LITMIR.BIZ

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have a lot of time to chat on the way to Buenos Aires. An airplane is already waiting for us at the airbase near Santiago de Chile. You, my friend, have five hours for everything. Transfer the ‘station’ to your deputy for the time you’ll be away from your post. As far as I know, your successor is already preparing to fly to Chile. We'll talk about the rest in your office and on the plane. This mission is very important for the White House. There hasn't been an event as secret as this since the Manhattan Project. Come on, it's time to go to your office.”

      Mr. Rosenblum turned and walked towards the crevasse, where there was a path Walsh had not noticed before. He took one last look at the Pacific plain, the black clouds, then he pulled down his hat and followed the Center’s man to a car, which turned out to be waiting for them a hundred yards away, just around a sharp bend in the trail.

      He thought that fate once again smiled on him: just recently he considered it was time to get out of this unfriendly country, and just like that, they told him where to go. Hell, not a terrible option when you think about it. If not for the Russians…

      But here, fate itself was powerless.

      July 28, 1950

      Oval Office of the White House

      Washington, D.C.

      Harry Truman, the thirty-third President of the United States of America, sat at his desk. He was listening to the quiet man in the guest chair to the left of the countertop. Once again, the president noted to himself that the naval uniform suits him. Rear Admiral Roscoe Henry Hillenkoetter was the third director of US intelligence. He was also the first CIA director since the National Security Act had passed.

      Hillenkoetter went the way of a proper admiral. He commanded the battleship Missouri during the Second World War. Afterwards, he led naval reconnaissance in 42–43 in the staff of Admiral Chester Nimitz, the commander of the Pacific Fleet.

      In 1947, the Rear Admiral headed the Central Intelligence Group. It grew in a short time, through his efforts, to the size of a department. He was Truman's poster boy and never forgot to whom he owed his position as chief of clandestine services in the States. The rumor was that it was he who coined the secret slogan of this secret organization: ‘By 1948, more than the state’. Those were not empty words. By now, management has moved from the banal collection of information about events in the world to shaping those very events. Thus, the CIA became a government within the US government.

      Truman listened to the Rear Admiral's report half-heartedly. He remembered the unofficial breakfast for the signing of the National Security Directive at the White House. His chief of staff, Admiral William Leahy, and the then first director of the CWG, Admiral Sidney Souers, both attended. He had presented them with a black cloak and hat, a wooden dagger, and a false mustache each. Truman had told them then: "You must accept these garments and their attendant accessories as my personal detective and director of the central office of intelligence."

      And so the Central Intelligence Group, in a couple of years, proved to him that, in principle, a small intelligence organization cannot exist.

      The President showed he had lost the thread of the admiral's report. Rubbing his tall forehead, Truman interrupted Hillenkoetter's monotonous reading with an impatient gesture. He said, staring into his eyes:

      “Ros, let's stop here. The situation in Korea, of course, is acute. The commies are breaking into the South with terrible force, but I'm not interested in this now…”

      The admiral closed the folder, put it on his knees. He stared at the head of state somewhere around the bridge of his nose. His face was the classic sea wolf of Jack London’s novels, and also impenetrable. Truman suddenly realized the admiral fit in perfectly on the bridge of a warship, like that same Missouri. He was also quite imposing right here, in the Oval Office. Well, wherever a person is, that is their place, but it is a rare quality to seem at home in such different locations.

      The Republicans in Congress will not forgive him because intelligence practically clapped its hands to its ears. This allowed the North Korean army to invade the south of the peninsula. Now everyone, from UN officials to the heads of the leading world powers, is forced to puzzle over how to resolve the Korean crisis, which is descending into a full-scale local war. China has already climbed onto the heap, with the implicit support of the Soviet Union. Now the American fleet is heading into the conflict area at full steam. But it’s not even about this conflict. If the latest reports from South America are accurate, geopolitical domination will be decided there. And what will the head of the youngest yet most ambitious power structure in the world say to this?

      “Admiral,” the President continued, “naval intelligence reported that not just fascist henchmen, but even some of the world’s leading nuclear experts, have built their nest in one Latin American country. Simply put – runaway German nuclear physicists. What do you know about this?”

      Hillenkoetter's cheek twitched. The president would not have noticed if he had not already been staring at his inscrutable face. The admiral answered evenly and calmly:

      “We’ve been working on this topic for a long time, ever since the Argentines handed us those fugitive German submarines. Lengthy interrogations of the crews and commanders of the German submarines yielded practically nothing, but specialists of the Office of Strategic Services concluded that these two submarines brought some passengers to the coast of Argentina. The Argentine Coast Guard found nothing suspicious in the coastal zone, but this means nothing. Volksdeutsche Germans inhabit the entire coast near Buenos Aires. They were at one time very loyal to the Hitler regime and could well have sheltered the fugitives.”

      Truman got up from his chair and walked to the large window, pulling open the curtains. He turned to the admiral.

      “Go on, go on. It's all very interesting. As I understand it, it was not the party bosses of the Third Reich that arrived on these boats?”

      “Yes, sir. Our specialists examined the cabins of the submarines with great care. They found nothing unusual until the radiation specialists intervened.”

      “Radiation?”

      “Yes. Our work on nuclear weapons had already reached the final test stages, and we knew perfectly well that the Germans had advanced quite far in their research in this area. Anyway, it occurred to someone to examine the cabins with a dosimeter…”

      “And?”

      The admiral smiled with one corner of his mouth.

      “One compartment had a small spike. Not much, hardly noticeable, but this allowed us to assume that there were some radioactive substances or people who had direct contact with it, previously transported in it. Back then, it was not too alarming. The war was ending. We were head and shoulders ahead of everyone in the nuclear race. Real-world tests were just around the corner. We postponed that case. But now, after the Soviets have reached relative parity with us – not in terms of carriers of nuclear weapons, we are still far ahead of them with bombers – the time has come for a renewed search in this direction.”

      Truman sat down in a chair opposite the admiral, leaned back.

      “And you think that former Nazi scientists, if they exist, could help us make some kind of leap forward in the development of nuclear weapons of greater power?”

      The admiral nodded.

      “Exactly.”

      “And what is being done in the search for these most mysterious physicists?”

      “We’ll use our agents in Argentina and Chile in the operation, and use the Chilean ‘station’ for operational communication, since we still feel at home there. Argentina is more complicated. The local dictator, Juan Perón, is very independent, widely implements a policy of nationalizing enterprises and the natural resources of the country, encouraging trade unions and flirting with the Volksdeutsche. He is interested in investments, and the fugitive Germans brought a lot of gold there. But we already focused our residency on solving the problem.”

      Truman rubbed his palms contentedly.

      “Bravo, admiral, bravo! Consider yourself redeemed in my eyes for the Korean crisis. No, no, I can’t guarantee you

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