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“Then Doug won’t have to wait long for his turn at taking it out.”

Donovan chuckled appreciatively.

“With any luck, he can do it safely from the controls of an Aphrodite drone,” the OSS director said. “But if the Pope keeps up the pace, Doug may not get a chance.”

“The Pope?”

“Fermi,” Donovan explained. “Oppenheimer picked up on the nickname. Years ago, some Italian scientists gave it to the young Fermi because they said he believed himself to be infallible.”

Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer was the distinguished physicist from the University of California overseeing the scientists of the Manhattan Project.

Douglass grinned. “Oh, that one. Sorry. My mind went right to Rome. I had heard that about the nickname.”

Donovan went on, “Oppenheimer says that in discussions with the Pope after they created the first atomic chain reaction at the University of Chicago in December, he, Oppenheimer, sees a completed bomb.”

Douglass stared at Donovan.

“That is remarkable,” Douglass said after a long moment.

“Yes, which is why the OSS is accelerating the pulling out of the scientists and the sabotaging of assets.”

“Sounds like Doug is going to be busy.”

“We’re all going to be very busy.”

[ THREE ]

The National Institutes of Health Building

Washington, D.C.

0655 7 March 1943

The young woman at the tall reception desk in the NIH lobby watched as the lithe, good-looking guy in his mid-twenties walked toward her. He wore a U.S. Army uniform with first lieutenant bars and had blond hair and blue eyes. He moved with enormous energy and confidence.

Seated at a small desk to the right of the receptionist station was a uniformed policeman—half-listening to a radio news bulletin about what was being described as a train derailment in Oklahoma earlier in the day—and two other cops standing guard by the elevators. They watched the soldier, too.

“My name is Fulmar,” the Army lieutenant said to the receptionist. “Captain Douglass is expecting me.”

She consulted a typewritten list.

“May I see some identification, please?”

Fulmar produced the identity card issued by the Adjutant General’s Office, U.S. Army, that said he was “FULMAR, Eric, 1st Lt., Infantry, Army of the United States.”

After she carefully studied it and studied him and smiled, she produced a cardboard VISITOR badge. Fulmar thought that that was curious; he was in the OSS, not just a regular visitor to the Washington office, and thought that the list she had checked would have somehow reflected his status.

Then he noticed there was no signage—no indication whatsoever—of the OSS and decided the standardized badge was part of the anonymity, and thus nothing more than some standard operating procedure, and attached it to his tunic using the alligator clip on the back.

One of the guards at the elevators approached the desk.

“Please show the lieutenant to Captain Douglass’s office,” the receptionist said to the guard.

“This way, sir,” the guard said.

They took the elevator up three floors, then walked all the way down a long hallway. At the end was a doorway with a little sign labeled DIRECTOR. A police guard was posted outside. He was sitting in a folding metal chair reading the Washington Star.

The two policemen acknowledged one another, and Fulmar followed the first through the door and into an outer office that had a small army of female clerks. One was older and gray-haired, at a basic wooden desk with a black phone and a nameplate that read A. FISHBURNE, and was apparently in charge. Two younger women were standing at a pushcart stacked with papers and file folders and working with quiet efficiency to feed a huge bank of file cabinets. Three other young women noisily clacked away at typewriters, presumably generating more work for the women at the file cabinets.