Free The Red Eagles by David Downing Page B

within our reach.”
    Zhdanov’s ears pricked up almost visibly. “How?” he asked, offering Sheslakov the first Havana cigar he’d seen since the war’s beginning.
    Sheslakov lovingly applied the match, savoring the moment and taking an almost sadistic delight in the other man’s ill-concealed impatience. “You recall your submission to Stavka on” – he consulted his notes – “April 28 concerning the possible theft of American Uranium-235. To summarize – you pointed out that the amount we could steal would be militarily useless even if we could contain the political damage.”
    “I have not forgotten.”
    “Both problems can be avoided.” He took another puff on the cigar. If only Cuba were run by Communists! “The Americans, knowing how much material had been stolen, would know how many bombs we could make.”
    “That seems self-evident.”
    “Ah, but there is a hidden assumption, that our building of atomic bombs would necessarily be linked with our theft of the material.”
    “But it would be.”
    “Indeed, but the Americans need not know that. If we can both steal the material
and
convince the Americans that we have not stolen it, then the problem is solved. Our possession of atomic bombs will then be ascribed to our own domestic development program, and the Americans will have no idea how many bombs we
really
have.”
    “We’ll still have only two, which the military say will be worse than useless.”
    “We will have only one. We must explode the first toshow the Americans we actually have the capability. I’m afraid the military, as usual, is behind the times. They just don’t understand that these atomic bombs are not ordinary weapons; the mere threat of using them will be enough. If both sides have them, no one will dare use them, and the calculations that matter will concern men and tanks and ships again. What is important is not actually having the atomic bomb, but instilling that fear into the Americans.”
    Comprehension dawned on Zhdanov’s face, then swiftly made room for more furrows of concern. “Who else would steal it then?” It was such a stupid question that Sheslakov let Zhdanov answer it for himself. “A
ruse de guerre
. Soviet soldiers in German uniforms.”
    “No, no, nothing as” – he was going to say “crude” but Zhdanov was notoriously sensitive about his peasant background – “nothing as direct as that. The Germans themselves will steal the uranium. And we will help them.”
    Zhdanov looked at him as if he’d gone mad. “Explain,” he said grimly.
    Sheslakov did so, going over each point in his plan until he thought Zhdanov had grasped it. When he had finished the head of the Atomic Division leaned back in his chair and looked into space. “Very well,” he said at last, “I can see the possibility. Put it in writing and find the people.”
    Sheslakov pulled the file out of his briefcase and handed it across the desk. “We already have the people,” he said.
     
    Stalin pushed the report to one side of his desk and closed his eyes. Why “American Rose”? he wondered. Only the Germans and the Americans made a habit of flattering nature and themselves by applying such names to human enterprises. Sheslakov was a strange man, an oddity. But for now an affordable one.
    Would it work? he asked himself. It felt right. The Americans had the scientists and the money and a countrythat wasn’t in ruins. And ambition. Unlimited ambition. But it wasn’t a calculating ambition. Socialism might be weak now but it saw the way forward, it calculated, it planned. Capital, for all its power, was blind as a river. And what could be more easily bluffed than blind ambition?
    There was only the one flaw – the number of foreigners who would know, who could expose the bluff. A German-born woman: an American-born man, the agents in America who would inevitably have been softened by the capitalist life. But that was a flaw that could be corrected at the end of the