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“How are negotiations going with the new Russian?”
“The new Russian?” Lang parroted.
“Gerhard, why am I getting the idea that you two are not sharing everything with me?” Mannhoffer said. “That would be unwise.”
“What do you think I’m not telling you?” Körtig asked.
“The answer to what I just asked: how negotiations are going with the new Russian.”
“Oh, you mean Pavel Egorov,” Lang offered.
“If that’s his name. The one the Kremlin sent here from Mexico City.”
“Well, for obvious reasons,” Körtig said, “neither Lang nor I have met him personally. I don’t think he even knows our names.”
“Never underestimate the NKVD. He probably knows everybody’s name. He just doesn’t know, for the moment, where to find us.”
“You asked how the negotiations are going,” Körtig said, a bit impatiently. “Moreno, of the Banco Suisse Creditanstalt, tells me that they are willing to meet our price—”
“One hundred million U.S. dollars?”
Körtig nodded. “Deposited in the Banco Suisse Creditanstalt in Johannesburg. But with certain conditions. First, that we provide them with a fifty-kilogram sample of the uranium oxide so they can test it to make sure of what they’re getting.”
“All they would need to make sure it is what we say is a cupful, not fifty kilograms.”
“I raised that objection through Moreno. They replied that if we have fifty kilos of the stuff, that would tend to suggest we have, and will give them, the rest—the other five hundred and ten kilos.”
“And how will the transfer be accomplished?” Mannhoffer asked.
“The U-234 will rendezvous with a Russian freighter at a to-be-determined point in the South Atlantic, somewhere south of the Falkland Islands—”
“Whereupon,” Mannhoffer interrupted, “fifty NKVD agents, or that many Marines, will board U-234, kill every German aboard, take the uranium oxide, and then sink the U-234.”
“Now, Ludwig, you’re beginning to annoy me. Did you really think I wouldn’t think of that?”
“And?”
“When U-234 sails for the rendezvous point, Pavel Egorov will be aboard. If anything goes wrong, your favorite new Russian will be eliminated. He will remain on U-234 until she comes back to Argentina. When Moreno tells us the money is safely in our account in South Africa, Egorov will be freed.”
“How do you know you can trust Moreno?”
“Because I have told him if he betrays us in any way, we will kill him and all members of his family.”
Mannhoffer considered everything he had been told, but said nothing.
“Does that answer your concerns, Ludwig?”
“I have a few others,” Mannhoffer said.
“Let’s have them.”
“How much time do the Russians want to test the uranium oxide we give them for that purpose?”
“I’ve looked carefully into that, too. What they told Moreno they intend to do is break the fifty kilos down into small packets. They will then be taken in luggage to Rio de Janeiro. There is a Soviet embassy there. The uranium oxide will then be sent via diplomatic pouch to Moscow. The Americans are now offering flying boat service between London and Rio.”
“The entire fifty kilos?”
“I don’t think they’re going to send it all. You were right, Ludwig, that they only need a cupful or whatever to test it.”
