The Company of the Dead

by David Kowalski

  Of course, the Reich had been mobilised for weeks now. When the Titanic had sailed out from the new Harland-Wolff shipyards in Bremen to pick up the delegates at Southampton, she already had a complement of nearly three thousand men on board. Two years of meticulous planning had delivered the cream of Germany’s shock troops past all of the Japanese defences. In the unlikely event that ongoing peace talks succeeded, they would be redeployed elsewhere. Perhaps secreted into the soft underbelly of Japan’s East Asian holdings where they might play havoc for years, undetected. Moreover, the 5th Fleet remained deployed in the Atlantic, under the pretence of war games. Crack troops in Bavaria, India and the Confederate States of America were available for active duty.

  War with Japan.

  Wilhelm considered the scenarios, played each of them out in his mind to their violent conclusion.

  It starts with an atomic strike. A crippling blow to destroy my government, crushing my people’s spirit. They will dig in to their positions in Russia, forcing a stalemate. They mean to dispose of the Confederacy, apportion the Southern Continent to the Mexicans. Canada, cowed by the threat to its borders, will not take action, and we will be compelled into an unacceptable peace, leaving the New World to the Japanese. That is what I would do, were I Ryuichi.

  But God in Heaven, they started with an atomic strike. We have always entertained a contingency plan to end any possible conflict with nuclear weapons, but to commence one with them? Where will this end?

  No long-range bombers could have reached Berlin, not without raising an alarm. Therefore the device had to have been aboard the Kamikaze. So it was unlikely that any other cities had been attacked, as yet. The enemy had to be under the assumption that he was dead, that his government was undone. Why else risk the enmity of the world, unless they concluded that this would bring them swift victory? Cut off the head of the empire and leave the carcass floundering while they divided it piecemeal.

  They had made their play and it was found wanting.

  He would find the place where the electromagnetic pulse of the blast had waned. He would broadcast the orders himself. Coordinate the vast movements linking the Anglo–Canadian forces in the North with the Germano–Confederate forces of the South. He would seize and hold New York—the Shogun would die in his place. The city would burn for Berlin.

  Where would this end? He’d seen what happened to the survivors of the first atomic tests in North Afrika, and he’d been caught too close to his city to escape that fate. But he would have his revenge. His stratolite fleet would visit such vengeance upon the Japanese Isles. They would make a suitable pyre for his own inevitable funeral. They would sink beneath their own ashes.

  He felt his eyelids flutter and grow heavy. His men were singing softly, an ancient song of war and conquest. He fought the urge to sleep. He saw his men through the swirl of the mist. The old horses they rode, ribbed and manged, seemed transformed into mighty steeds. The cooks and train engineers had become his squires and footmen. He dreamt he was a Teutonic Knight, riding eastwards into history.

  IV

  April 22, 2012

  New York City, Eastern Shogunate

  Nightfall, and the tanks were rolling down Broadway.

  Eight days earlier, the Titanic had berthed at the Lower West Side docks of Manhattan. After the fireworks and the speeches, as twilight settled upon the city, the first wave of Brandenburg shock troops moved into position. Once in place, the operatives who’d strolled down the ship’s gangway in suits, overalls and crew uniforms met with their various contacts. In bars and cafés, private homes and movie theatres, they went over their various assignments.

  Eight days, then the world changed forever.

  Protocols had been put into place and they were followed with meticulous fervour. Power lines went down and fuel dumps blazed. Computing systems were disabled and a series of assassinations were carried out throughout the blackened city. Frogmen, emerging from concealed hatches beneath the Titanic’s waterline, swam out to attach magnetic mines along the hulls of nearby Japanese warships. They targeted the engine rooms, sonar domes, screws and rudders, and were safely back aboard their ship before the first explosions rocked the harbour.

  Reports began to arrive as Fordham led his men down West Street. The docks lining the Lower West Side had been reduced to a cinder-red glow. Sandbagged machine-gun entrenchments would prevent immediate retaliation from across the Hudson. Having demolished the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, they secured their left flank, then advanced uptown block by block. Three files of light armour rolled down the Titanic’s gangways: one heading towards Central Park, a second for the Harlem River crossings, while the third smashed its way through a series of hastily assembled roadblocks down West Broadway.

  Beyond the Chambers Street police station, freshly ablaze, Fordham made out elements of the third column: four tanks and two personnel carriers rumbling along the Church Street approach to the Summer Palace. A detachment of the Imperial Watch, caught between the tanks and Fordham’s advancing troops, lay strewn between the buildings. The street was encrusted with a dazzle of blue armour and blood; lapis lazuli etched upon the rubble. The burnt-out remains of a single Dragon tank crouched in their midst, the snout of its flamethrowers still grunting and smouldering.

  The palace itself had dominated the skyline from as far back as Eleventh Avenue, glowing a dusky cherry-red, the harbinger of what was to come. Rising tiers of paper and wood encased an array of concrete redoubts only hinted at by their spies’ intelligence.

  Black-uniformed Germans leapfrogged across the long green lawn leading up to the palace stairs. The soil erupted in mortar fire as Hideyoshi’s Guard descended—row upon row of men in crimson body armour, their devil-grins fixed in a metal grimace, ornate machine-guns slung in place of swords.

  The New York bay area had once been inhabited by the native Algonquian and Iroquois nations. Riding to battle, they’d hurtled down the great white swathe between Manhattan’s island of hills, forming a trail that would one day be cobblestoned, and later paved. A succession of bright lights now illuminated that ancient warpath and a new army was on the march. New York was about to enter its final stage. Oblivion.

  V

  April 23, 2012

  Houston, Texas

  Two days had passed since Patricia Malcolm had been promoted to the highest level a woman had ever achieved in Bureau history, yet Director Webster had dealt her a Pyrrhic victory. In the same breath that gave her the position, he’d stated that it was a consequence of her previous connection to Kennedy. And all he had given her to work with were the standard Bureau files.

  Word had spread fast. Her colleagues addressed her as “agent”, but with a blend of nuances that suggested anything but respect. In order to demonstrate her abilities, she now had to participate in the destruction of Kennedy’s career, possibly his life.

  She made sure she was the first to arrive, knocking on the door to the director’s outer chamber, then waiting, her heart fluttering in her chest.

  Sensation is disorganised stimulus...

  As the others filtered in, she sat with her notes on her lap, straightening the pages, thumbing through the leaves and making sure they were in order.

  Perception is organised sensation...

  She heard the director’s voice say, “This meeting was scheduled for ten, let’s get started.”

  Conception is organised perception...

  She rose from her seat and crossed to the front of the room. She wore a dark blue skirt and jacket; her hair was tied back as usual. Pumps. No make-up. One of the boys.

  And organised perception...?

  A blue rectangle formed on the wall behind her. She picked up a pointer from where it sat on the lectern.

  “Director Webster, agents.” She surveyed the darkened room briefly.

  Organised perception is knowledge.

  Apart from the director of the Bureau, there were twelve other men in the room. They slowly fell silent under her
gaze. Only Williams had been present at the last meeting, the one where she’d been transferred to OPR and asked to give her presentation. Reid and Carter were now at the training camps. Cooper and Robbins had been sent to New York to apprehend Lightholler and bring Joseph back.

  Knowledge is power...

  Joseph’s mantra.

  She looked down at her notes: the words were just strokes and marks on the page.

  Robbins had been found in the front seat of a Hotspur in the Queens Midtown Tunnel with a bullet in his brain, and no one had heard from Cooper. Nothing made sense any more.

  Sensations: An atomic bomb over Berlin; a division of Brandenburg Special Forces now in possession of New York City; air battles over the North Atlantic; British and Canadian troops massing at the northern border; Mexican raiding parties attacking Confederate bases at Laredo and El Paso.

  As far as reliable sources were concerned, Union and Confederate soldiers had yet to come into conflict, but it was only a matter of time.

  Perceptions: Joseph Kennedy, a decorated war hero, a senior officer of project Camelot, a man entrusted with the most delicate of Confederate state secrets, had gone rogue. This much had been confirmed.

  Conceptions? How would they exist, when the organised perceptions refused to make sense? It was the heart versus the mind, as it always had been when it came to Kennedy.

  “This is Joseph Robard Kennedy, Assistant Director, New Orleans branch.” She said it slowly, as if the name held no meaning for her. An image flickered on the screen, accompanied by murmurs from the audience. She let the pointer thud against it. “Born in Dallas, Texas, 1968, the only child of Richard Fitzgerald Kennedy. He is the great-grandson of Joseph Patrick Kennedy I and Howard Hughes, and a grand-nephew of John Fitzgerald and Robert Francis Kennedy.

  “JPK I, as I’m sure most of you know, held the post of Union ambassador to the German Empire soon after the Second Secession.”

  A series of black-and-whites flashed across the screen. Shots of Joseph senior on a variety of balconies with an assortment of foreign dignitaries.

  “The Kennedys came south with the great migration of’47, establishing themselves in New Orleans.”

  There was a cough from the back of the room that barely concealed the word “carpetbaggers” within its bark. A sprinkle of tense laughter followed. She waited till it died down before continuing.

  “JPK had nine children, four sons. Joseph Patrick II, his eldest, served with the air force in the First Ranger War and subsequently followed his father into politics, securing an appointment as Confederate ambassador to the Union in ’58. He resigned his post after Dealey. In the early eighties he was part of the Confed–German delegation to the Ottoman Empire Dissolution talks. He disappeared during the Sinai Hostage Crisis of ’83, just prior to the German annexation of the Arab Emirates. He had three sons, Richard Fitzgerald Kennedy being the youngest.”

  A new set of images detailed a fresh brood of Kennedys.

  “Richard Fitzgerald kept a remarkably low profile for a Kennedy.” Malcolm caught Webster’s cold smile and paused while the chuckles faded away. “He studied at Xavier, majored in engineering and worked on the Mississippi-Gulf Outlet Project in the late sixties before moving to Texas. He married Janet Hughes in 1963 and died in ’99 of lung cancer. His wife passed away three years ago of heart failure. This left our subject with a sizable portion of the Hughes Tool Company, Hughes Aeronautics, the Summa Corporation, and a number of hotel interests.”

  She found herself almost smiling at a memory that came unbidden. That weekend at the Desert Inn Hotel. She thought she’d forgotten.

  “Assistant Director Kennedy attended Patton High in Houston and college at Southern Methodist where he majored in philosophy and political science, graduating with honours. A chess player since childhood, he devised the line of play known as the Kennedy Defence while in his teens. It enjoyed a brief popularity, I’m told.” She glanced at Webster, who responded with a nod.

  “After taking a First in philosophy at Yale he returned to the Confederacy in ’89. His post-Master’s year was spent at the Naval Research Facility, New Orleans, 1989–90. He joined the military the following year. Officers school. Rapid promotion through the ranks. He was approached for recruitment by the CBI initially in November of ’93 and again in May of ’94, declining on both occasions.” Malcolm waited for some comment from the audience that was not forthcoming. “He was attached to the 4th Mechanized-Cavalry Division when the Second Ranger War broke out, and received a field commission to major after the Battle of Mazatlan. He marched into Mexico City with Clancy.”

  A new image filled the screen. Kennedy: younger, his face full of promise, standing next to General Clancy in front of the Mexican National Palace. It was quickly replaced by another picture: Joseph Kennedy in dress uniform, posing before a billowing Confederate flag. Malcolm thought she could detect smiles in the audience.

  “He ran for president in 1998 as an independent candidate,” she continued. “Approached again in ’00 by the CBI and recruited successfully. Field agent from 2000 to 2003. Attached to National Security, Maritime Surveillance 2004 to 2007, appointed assistant director in 2008. Shifted to Counterterrorism, Covert Action Branch.”

  She replaced the pointer on the lectern and clasped her hands before her, pale and white against the folds of her suit.

  “Last known to be working on Project Camelot.”

  The room had been quiet before. The occasional rustle of someone moving in his chair, the tap of a pen against a desk. Now there was total silence. The hum of the slide projector filled the air. She could imagine their thoughts.

  Camelot.

  A phrase that had been repeated in hushed tones in the cafeterias and commissaries, whispered at bars by agents off duty. Just saying it out loud to these men confirmed the fact that the CBI had been operating with the Germans and Union Intelligence Agency, clandestinely and unbeknown to most of their own government’s officials. And by saying it, announcing an undeniable association with the terrible events that were now unfolding.

  “Thank you, Agent Malcolm, that’s enough for now.” Webster rose from his chair. “As some of you may have heard, there’s been a hiccup with the containment effort in Nevada and Louisiana. We have tactical agents on the ground at both facilities. Show us the updated schematics we got from the Patton, Agent Williams. Show us the camps.”

  VI

  April 24, 2012

  Red Rock, Nevada

  The water was tepid. No longer completely cool from the desert night, yet to be warmed by the hot day the forecast had promised. Doc lay on an inflatable mattress, heels dangling in the water, his damp hair in thick curls against the cushion. Two large palm trees leaned over the pool’s shallow end. A phonograph, set on a table beneath the swaying fronds, played the Goldberg Variations.

  The world was going to hell, yet floating here he could almost imagine himself between two realities and travelling back towards salvation.

  “Doc.” A cry disturbed his reverie.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Tecumseh wants you in the radio room.” It was one of Kennedy’s ghost dancers. Decked out in civilian garb he could pass for an average American indian fresh off the reservations.

  Doc knew better. In his haste to respond, he almost capsized. “I’m on my way.”

  “The major’s patching through on a secured line.”

  It had been three days since Doc had heard from the major, calling from a pay phone in Manhattan, of all places. Kennedy had made two requests: prime the carapace; and pass a command on to the Camelot facilities, tell them to fade out. The fade was a vanishing act. The camp pulled a Houdini and two thousand people disappeared into the desert.

  The warning had been timely. Bureau tactical agents had swarmed the deserted barracks of Alpha camp just before sundown. Then the shit hit the fan. The war.

  What the hell was going on?

  The ghost dancer offered him a hand as he cla
mbered out of the water. Dripping, he ran across the grounds to the small bunker that served as the base’s communication centre and burst through the door to find Tecumseh crouched over the radio.

  The wide bulk of Tecumseh’s frame made the transceiver look like a toy. His chair groaned as he swivelled to face Doc.

  “Sorry,” he said. “The major just cut the call.”

  “Damn,” Doc muttered. “I wanted to tell him about that power surge we had. What did he say?”

  “He wanted to make sure we had the camouflage in place.”

  Red Rock lay near the flight path of the Patton. Normally it remained in visual range for a maximum of two days. With the camouflage up, observers wouldn’t see shit for sand.

  “Anything else?” Doc asked.

  “He wanted to know if any of the others had been in touch. They had to split up after New York. The major’s alone, except for the package.”

  They had Lightholler. Good.

  “He also mentioned something about a ranch.” Tecumseh eyed him curiously. “Said he should be there by Thursday, maybe the day after.”

  “That means they’re still north of the border. We need to send someone out there.”

  “He wants us to be ‘go’ within the week. Can you do that?”

  “We’ll be ‘go’ in twenty-four hours. We still need to do a power-up this afternoon, though.”

  “Want to test the auxiliary while we’re at it?”

  Doc thought about the cable network that snaked under miles of Nevada desert, attaching their generator to the main power array at Alpha. “It’s not like we want to attract any attention from the Bureau,” he replied. “Go ahead, but let’s make it quick.”