The Proteus Operation

by James P. Hogan

  Winslade switched off the projector. Over by the door, Brendan Bracken, a close friend and aide of Churchill's, turned on the lights. Heavy silence lasted a few seconds while the mood dissipated, and then murmurings and muttered comments broke out all around the room. Admiral Pound, the First Sea Lord and a former naval colleague of Churchill's, looked across at Bannering. "So was that when you got out, Arthur—with those people right at the end?"

  Bannering shook his head. "I went a couple of months earlier with one of the departments that had been relocated to Canada in October."

  Desmond Morton, another of Churchill's close acquaintances since the Great War days, stroked his chin thoughtfully. He was a former artillery officer who had added to his Military Cross the distinction of being shot through the heart and living normally ever since with a bullet in him. "Then that would mean there's a . . . copy, or whatever, of you, walking around somewhere in London at this very moment, wouldn't it?"

  "Yes," Lindemann tossed in. "As a matter of fact, he's been hoping to catch a glimpse of himself ever since January."

  "Extraordinary!"

  At the front of the room, Churchill rose to his feet while the screen was being retracted out of the way of a large map of the world affixed to the wall. He turned to face the room and raised a hand. Silence fell quickly. Winslade came forward to sit down in the chair that he had occupied earlier. "Now you have seen the rocks of disaster to which our course of only a few months ago was leading," Churchill said. "But let no one suppose that we now know how to avoid the worst. On the contrary, the situation here seems to be, if anything, even worse than that which existed without our meddling. We are at war with greater determination, certainly, but against that our prospects for success have surely weakened since Russia has been converted from cynical neutrality to active alliance with Hitler."

  Nobody could be sure how much of what had changed in this world was really a result of the team's actions, and how much of it would have happened, anyway. Sometimes the subtleties of the web of causes and effects that linked their actions to seemingly disconnected, faraway events were astonishing.

  Churchill continued, "Corporal Hitler's October 6 Peace Speech to the Reichstag, we are told, took place in both worlds. The version we heard in this world, however, blamed me specifically for the war. Since my counterpart held no office in the Proteus world, it is clear that our actions are already altering the behavior of the Nazi leaders in Berlin.

  "Furthermore, as we know, Chamberlain and Daladier are staunchly refusing even to consider a conference while German armies stand on ground that they have seized by force; in the previous world they were too paralyzed by the rush of events to reply. This difference, too, can be attributed to the Proteus operation."

  Churchill spread his hands appealingly. "On the other hand we have the deplorable incident of the Royal Oak." In the middle of October, a German submarine had penetrated the defenses of the British Fleets home base at Scapa Flow, off the north of Scotland, and sunk the battleship Royal Oak at anchor. "That did not happen in the previous world. As head of the Admiralty, I can assure you we would have been better prepared if it had. It's difficult to see how anything that we have done could possibly have brought about that change."

  "But what are we to make of the recent vote by the U.S. Congress to repeal the arms embargo section of the Neutrality Act?" Churchill asked. This decision allowed American arms and munitions to be sold to belligerents as long as they were paid for in cash and transported in the buyer's own ships, which favored the Allies because of Britain's naval strength. "Was this no more than a whim of a different timeline? Or was President Roosevelt, who became disillusioned in the previous world, sufficiently inspired by our last-minute resoluteness to step up his pressure on Congress? If so, then again we can take credit for bringing about the difference."

  "In short, how reliable a guide are the major events in that previous world to what is going to happen in this one? We are searching feverishly for a pattern."

  He paused and surveyed the room for a moment before concluding. "If German planning has followed the same course as before, we know that the blitzkrieg in the West has already been ordered. Only the foibles of the weather are causing its postponement. Previously the attack came finally at the end of January, but with all the uncertainties, who can say if that will be the case again? It could come tomorrow."

  Churchill raised an arm and extended his index finger for emphasis. "But nevertheless, we dare not risk making this knowledge generally available within the government. If word were to find its way back to Hitler and his masters that they no longer have a monopoly on this extraordinary time-technology, we have to assume they would try for an immediate victory by introducing atomic weapons now, instead of waiting until 1942. Thus, everything depends on the scientists in America. We over here can only hold firm and await results with hope."

  It was an anticlimactic note to finish on, and the room remained quiet. Churchill nodded to Winslade to take it from there and sat down.

  Winslade rose, rubbed his hands together for a few seconds while he stood looking at the map, and then turned to face the room. "But that isn't to say that we can't take advantage of our foreknowledge to reap some benefit," he said briskly. An immediate stir greeted the statement. This was what everyone had been waiting to hear. "Let's be honest with ourselves and admit that in view of the security precautions that we've all agreed are essential, we're not going to see any fundamental alteration in government policy in the next two months. We assume, therefore, that the blow upon Belgium will fall late in January, as before. We hope, however, that because of what people like Winston have been doing, the French will hold out better this time."

  Winslade paused, but no one spoke. He turned to gaze at the map again, and then ran a finger along the jagged coastline of Norway. "Hence, this area, remote from all the action, should be very quiet. Now, while we as a group may not control the country, we do pretty much have the Navy—the First Lord and First Sea Lord are sitting right here."

  "The plan we have worked out is this—to take advantage of the attention being focused on the Western Front during these spring months by using the Navy to put ashore a landing force here, in northern Norway. Publicly, the justification will be to aid Finland through Sweden. In our world, the Finns surprised everybody by giving the Russians a bloody nose, and there was a lot of popular support and sympathy for them. We see no reason to expect anything different in this world. The government, however, will believe that the purpose of the operation will be to cut Hitler's iron-ore supply line from the Swedish mines here at Gallivare, and down here through the port of Narvik."

  Winslade smiled crookedly for a second. "But the real reason will be to forestall the Nazi invasion of Norway, which we know will take place in May. Hence, we can deny Hitler not only his iron ore, but also the additional U-boat bases that he's planning to seize on the Atlantic seaboard."

  There was a short silence while the listeners digested the proposition. Then somebody asked, "How sure can we be that the Germans will stick to May?"

  "Nothing's certain," Winslade conceded. "But so far at least, the timeline differences that we've observed seem to be in details rather than in anything substantial. Events should tell us if that principle is continuing to hold. According to our experience, for example, the Russian attack on Finland should begin two days from now. Whether or not that happens again will be a good test."

  "How well-prepared are we to mount an expedition like that—in training and equipment, I mean?" Desmond Morton asked doubtfully. "Let's not forget how much of a start the Germans have got."

  "Harvey?" Winslade invited, looking at Major Warren.

  Warren answered from a chair by the door, near Eden and Duff Cooper. "Not so well-prepared as we'd like," he admitted candidly. "The biggest thing that the people I've talked to don't comprehend yet is the power of planes against ships. If the Luftwaffe manages to get bases within effective range of the operation, we're
in trouble. Carriers can't compete with land-based aircraft, and the British Navy doesn't have enough carriers, anyway. Forget battleships. They've had their day."

  "But the Luftwaffe won't be anywhere near because they'll be preoccupied in France," Churchill said. "And if the German Navy tries to intervene, well, we know how to take care of them." Laughter came from one or two places, somebody raised a query, and the discussion turned into a technical debate on the relative merits of land- and carrier-based aircraft and battleships. Warren caught Winslade's eye and held it for a moment. Winslade shrugged.

  There was another part to the plan, too, which only the original, inner core of people knew about.

  Hitler's return-gate to 2025 was located near Leipzig, in the eastern part of Germany, just under a hundred miles south of Berlin. It was contained in a rock-hewn cavern deep beneath a chemicals and munitions manufacturing complex at a place called Weissenberg. There could be no hope of defending the West effectively while it continued to exist. And since there was still no news of a connection back to 1975, Winslade had decided on his own initiative to do something about getting rid of it.

  "We were supposed to be just sappers sent ahead to build the bridge for getting the tanks across," he had told Churchill. "But it doesn't look as if the tanks will be coming. Therefore, I propose that we attack the target ourselves, without any further waiting. Eliminating that machine must be our overriding priority."

  Eliminating it would be the goal of operation "Ampersand", tiny in scale but immeasurably great in importance, that would be timed to take place while the other events in Europe were drawing attention elsewhere.

  Having provisionally agreed on the outline of a plan, the group waited to see if Russia would confirm Winslade's prediction by attacking Finland, as she had in the previous world. She did, right on schedule, on November 30. Encouraged that their information was continuing to prove reliable in its essentials, Winslade sent a message to New York, readying the rest of the mission's military contingent for an immediate move to England.

  CHAPTER 26

  COLONEL HANS PIEKENBROCK, CHIEF of the Abwehr's secret intelligence and espionage section, stared dubiously at the file lying open on his desk. He reached across the desk and took the glossy pages from an American illustrated news magazine that Lt. Col. Boeckel was proffering from the other side.

  "And this is the picture?" he murmured as he examined the color photograph on the top sheet. It showed two men shaking hands in a spacious, elegantly furnished setting, while several others looked on from behind. The scene was of representatives from a couple of South American states saying farewell to U.S. officials in the entrance hall of the White House after talks following the October conference of American nations. Piekenbrock was interested not in the foreground figures, however, but in the small group of uniformed soldiers behind them that the cameraman had inadvertently captured, just inside the edge of the frame. They were standing in a loose huddle, possibly waiting their turn for an appointment. A couple of men in civilian clothes were with them, also.

  Boeckel passed across an enlargement of part of the picture, which the Photographic Department had produced at his request. "If I may, sir . . ." He indicated two of the soldiers, who were standing together on one side—one tall, with a yellow mustache, caught in the act of waving a hand as he said something; and the other, darker. "Fritsch sent us the article because he says he's certain that those two were among the gang he described in his earlier report." Boeckel picked up a further enlargement, showing very grainily, but discernibly, the shoulder patches and collar insignia on the tunics. "I did a routine check to identify the unit they're from, but the result was puzzling. There's no record of those designations in any of the U.S. Army manuals. And if you look carefully at the uniforms themselves, you'll notice that they differ from the standard American pattern in a number of subtle ways. Again, we have no record of anything quite like them."

  Piekenbrock sat back in his chair, his fingers steepled below his chin. Then he got up and walked over to the window to stare down at the traffic on Bendlerstrasse. "Let s run through this very quickly once again," Piekenbrock said at last. "First of all. this man Fritsch gets himself mixed up with American gangsters somehow and ends up at this house outside New York. But these mysterious men in masks, who walk up walls and put hoodlums in the hospital with their bare hands, appear from nowhere, seize the whole place, and hand it over to a rival gang."

  "What appears to be a rival gang, anyway."

  "Whatever. And Fritsch sends you a report of this affair, including an account from the New York newspapers."

  "At the time, it seemed to have nothing to do with anything except American criminals," Boeckel said. "But we kept the matter under review, nevertheless."

  Piekenbrock held up a hand. "You did the right thing. Anyway, it now turns out that these men are not criminals, but American soldiers. Also, they belong to a hitherto unknown unit, which might conceivably just have been formed. They appear to have undergone some extraordinary training. And now they show up at the White House . . . to meet whom? Could it be the President himself, perhaps? If so, why? Who are they?"

  "I have been giving the matter some thought," Boeckel said.

  "And have you come up with any ideas?"

  "Well, it's merely a speculation, you understand, sir, but it seems to me that the U.S. military has been developing secret unit to specialize in undercover urban activities sabotage, assassination, or other such missions. The raid on the gangster's house could have been a practice exercise with the added benefit of having some redeeming social value perhaps by eliminating some criminal elements that the authorities couldn't touch legally."

  Piekenbrock raised his eyebrows. "You mean the police didn't know? Wouldn't that be a bit risky?"

  "Not as risky as the real thing and someone else's police," Boeckel pointed out. "It would be the ultimate in training realism."

  "Hmm, yes—ingenious, I'll grant you that. Go on."

  Boeckel tapped the file lying on the desk. "The warehouse that Fritsch identified in Brooklyn could be their camouflaged operations base. What I suspect is that they've been running an elaborate exercise to see if they can remain invisible for a protracted period in a major city while merging with the criminal fraternity and carrying out active operations, all without any cooperation from the authorities, or even any official knowledge that they exist. Having tested their methods, a visit to Washington could represent their 'graduation,' as it were, before becoming operational elsewhere."

  "Such as?"

  Boeckel shrugged. "Well, we all know that Roosevelt would like to get into the war, but Congress and the people won't let him, openly. A good guess might be that they're being sent over here—maybe even to Berlin."

  "And assassination, you said, might be among their specialties?"

  Boeckel drew a long breath. "With some obvious names as targets."

  Piekenbrock nodded. Clearly, his own thinking had already led him to the same conclusion. "That could also explain why Roosevelt should be involved personally," he mused.

  "Exactly, sir."

  "Hmm . . . I think we should find out more about this warehouse if we can," Piekenbrock said. "Not Fritsch—he's just an amateur. Reads too many boys' books and takes risks. Get one of the professionals onto it—someone like Musketeer. But I don't want anyone breaking in or doing anything reckless if they're likely to bump into the kind of people that Fritsch described. That will be all."

  "Yes, sir." Boeckel stood up and gathered the file and papers together.

  "I just want to know a bit more about the place, some idea of what goes in and out," Piekenbrock said. "Low-key—know what I mean?"

  "I'll start on it right away."

  "Very good. Oh, and Boeckel—about that secretary of yours. She's an attractive woman. It's not a good idea to flaunt it so much when Lady Luck smiles your way, you know. I'm hearing jealous noises from several directions. I know the Führer wants us to make more G
ermans, but he never said anything about making a public spectacle of doing so. I trust I make myself clear?"

  "Oh, yes, sir. I'm sorry. I'll be more discreet."

  "Verv good. I'll say no more. Good day. Heil Hitler."

  "Heil Hitler."

  CHAPTER 27

  FERRACINI'S UNCLE FRANK HAD brought him here once as a young boy to see the place where he had been born. And from time to time as he grew older, when Ferracini felt sad or lonely, he had come back to this part of Queens to walk the streets that had made up the world of the parents he had never known, as if sharing the memories of the sights and scenes they had lived among somehow brought him closer to them.

  The building that he remembered as derelict and boarded-up on the corner of a dingy street now had bright red curtains and flowerpots in the upper windows, and a bicycle shop was open for business on the ground floor. What he had known as an auto-parts dealer's next door, with a sparse assortment of gaskets, fan belts, cans, and tools clipped to peg-board behind its dusty window, was a busy delicatessen. The liquor store beyond that was still a liquor store; the hardware store was still a hardware store, although it looked more old fashioned, with tin bathtubs hanging over the doorway, drums of kerosene and turpentine inside, and a bench out on the sidewalk stacked with bundles of firewood, candles, balls of twine, and all kinds of brushes. What had been a TV store was now selling vegetables, and the gap where a burned-out shell had stood was a house with green painted woodwork and children's drawings chalked on the wall by the door. The street as a whole, though recognizable and not without its scars, had a different feeling from the tired drabness of the scene he remembered from long ago and yet to come, in another world. It felt alive and colorful, as he had pictured it in his daydreams; the way he would have liked it to be.