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Atlantic to Lagos, Nigeria, from there to Dakar on the tip of West Africa,
arriving finally at Casablanca, on the Atlantic coast of
Morocco. There, just over two months after
F American forces under General Patton had landed to wrest the area from the
Vichy French, Roosevelt and Churchill, accompanied by their Chiefs of Staff,
were meeting to review the war effort and agree on future strategy
After resting the night at a hotel in the Anf a suburb of the city, the team
was driven through sunny, palm-lined streets guarded by American troops to an
outlying villa, where Churchill and Roosevelt held their private conferences,
away from the main staff sessions. Relatively few individuals had been
admitted to the Proteus secret even now, and the only other persons present
were George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff of the United States Army, and Sir
Alan Brooke, the
British Chief of the Imperial General Staff. The meeting took place in a
large, airy room at the back of the villa. Orange and lemon trees surrounded a
lawn and pool outside the open French windows, and armed sentries patrolled
inconspicuously below a high wall at the rear
387
Churchill, cigar in hand and wearing a khaki bush shirt with baggy casual
slacks, came around the map-covered table in the center of the room with a
show of almost fatherly affection as the arrivals were shown in. He pumped
their hands warmly and put his arm around Anna's shoulders to give her a hug.
"It's a miracle!" he declared. "Impossible, I tell you, and yet here they are,
back from the dead. We'd long given up any hope, you know."
"Except Mortimer," Roosevelt said as he wheeled his chair across the room. "He
was the one who talked us into keeping the machine running. I figured he
should know you people better than we did."
Marshall and Brooke were introduced. "I'm still not sure I believe it, you
understand,"
Marshall said frankly. "I've read the report, and I can see you all standing
here in this room, but I'm still not sure I believe it."
Brooke could only shake his head. "I don't think it's possible to express
anything adequately in words. I've been told about the way things were in the
world you all came from, and
I can see for myself the differences in this one of ours...Really, what does
one say?"
"How about, 'Welcome back'?" Winslade suggested.
Brooke smiled. "That's enough? Oh, very well, then, welcome back, all of you."
"I wouldn't say that the changes were entirely our doing," Anna said. "You
seem to have been busy, too."
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Roosevelt nodded. "Oh, sure, we haven't exactly been idle during your absence.
I think we've managed things about as well as could reasonably be expected...a
few regrets and miscalculations with hindsight, but I guess that's life."
"Compared to the world we came from, it's astounding," Winslade said.
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"And your wounds, Ed-I've been worried about them," Churchill said. "Are they
mending satisfactorily? And what about you, Paddy, and you, Harry? How are you
feeling?"
"Much better, thank you, sir," Payne replied. "Major Warren says I'll be back
up to
Special Operations standards in no time." Ryan and Ferracini said they felt
fine.
Churchill nodded happily. "Splendid, splendid." He smiled and rubbed his palms
together for a moment. 'And now, we have something to show you that you should
find interesting. Brookie?"
Brooke switched on a slide projector already positioned before a screen and
inserted a frame, while Marshall closed a blind to darken the room. The
picture was an aerial photograph, taken from a considerable height, of a
tremendous plume of smoke ris ing over a landscape of low, rounded hills with
open and forested patches. The smoke emanated from one end of a large
industrial complex situated by a river. "Recognize it?" Churchill asked
lightly. "It's from a set brought back by one of our Photo Recce flights a few
days after you got back." [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]