The doctor also reluctantly admitted that giving him this medicine-and bed rest-was about all the treatment the hospital could offer. “I can do that here,” Donovan announced.
“I can’t go to the hospital now. The doctor couldn’t argue with that.
So he had a pharmacy deliver the blood-thinning medicine, then watched as Donovan took a strong first dose. “Take a couple of good stiff drinks, too,” the doctor said. Donovan asked the natural question: “I thought you weren t supposed to mix drugs with alcohol?”
“This is the exception,” the doctor replied.
“Drink all you want. Alcohol thins the blood. just stay in bed, and don’t get excited.” Donovan was normally a teetotaler, but since whiskey was less repugnant than rat poison, he ordered up a bottle of Scotch.
After they had gathered in his room, Donovan told the Disciples how he had damaged his knee, but not about the blood clot. The first item on the agenda, as always, was the super bomb. The Science Disciple, who was on leave from the Department of Physics of the University of California at Berkeley, reported that there was no question that the Germans were methodically, if not rapidly, engaged in nuclear re search. As one proof of this, they had granted the same immunity-“for scientific contributions to the German State”-to Jewish physicists and mathematicians involved in such research as they had to Jews involved in rocket propulsion. And further, a German delegation had not long before returned from a visit to a plant in Denmark that had been engaged in research into a substance called heavy water. This substance, he explained-until it became apparent that no one else either understood or much cared about it-was water to whose molecular structure had been appended another hydrogen atom. The Germans were apparently trying to cause a chain-or explosive-effect by releasing the extra hydrogen atom so appended. The Science Disciple then argued that it would be useful to “persuade” scientists engaged in German atomic research to come to this country-or, 4( persuasion” failing, to kidnap them. Though he was not convinced that these people would be able to make a contribution to the American nuclear effort, it was inarguable that if they were here, they could not contribute to the German effort.
The problem, Donovan said, was that if German nuclear people started disappearing, it would alert the Germans to American interest in the subject. Roosevelt himself had decided that the one American war plan that most had to be concealed from the Axis was the attempt to develop an atomic bomb. “Even in the case of that obscure mining engineer we just brought out of North Africa,” Donovan went on, we thought about that long and hard before we went for him. In the end, because we need the uraninite ore from the Belgian Congo, we decided we had to have him. In other words, we’ll have to go very carefully with this. As a general rule of thumb, anybody we got out would have to be very important. So come up with a list, and rate them twice: how important they are to the Germans and how important they are to our program.”
The second item on the agenda was political: the question of Vice Admiral d’escadre Jean-Philippe de Verbey, French Navy, retired. Not just for organizational but for personal reasons. This affair was the business of C. Holds worth Martin, Jr.” the Disciple who dealt with France and French colonies. Like Donovan, Martin had served with the American Expeditionary Forces in the First World War. After the war, he had been appointed to the Armistice Commission. A civil engineer, he had met and married a French officer’s widow, and had subsequently taken over the running of “I her late husband’s construction firm.
This he had turned from a middle size, reasonably successful business into a large, extremely profitable corporation. His wife’s social position (she was a member of the deposed nobility) and his wealth had then combined to permit them to move in the highest social circles. C.
Holds worth Martin, Jr.” brought his wife and children to New York after the fall of France in 1940, purchased an apartment on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park, and promptly enraged the Franco-American community and large numbers of sympathetic Americans by proclaiming whenever the opportunity arose that French stupidity, cowardice, and corruption, and not German military prowess, had caused France to go down to such a quick and humiliating defeat. Even more outrageously, he made no secret of his belief that millions of middle and upper-class Frenchmen indeed preferred Hitler to Blum,’ and had every intention of cooperating with Hitler’s New Order for Europe.