Pearl Harbor: A Novel of December 8th

by Newt Gingrich

Churchill nodded in reply and offered to refill Cecil’s drink. He refused, fearful he would fall asleep if he had but a few more ounces. Winston poured himself several fingers’ worth in his glass and smiled.

  “If it should come to that, in the spring Stalin and his cutthroats will drive out the starving bastards who are left. No, that old devil will never give up, unless there is finally a coup and a bastard as dark as him, Beria for example, murders him then takes his place, and then they will disintegrate into civil war. The army would love nothing more than to take down the NKVD. The same with the Wehrmacht I daresay when it comes to their SS and Gestapo. A complicated mess, but I doubt if it will come to that.”

  Cecil looked back down at his own drink, regretting he had not asked for more. After the long strain of the trip by American clipper plane, then a twenty-four-hour flight across the States, and then another day and a half to here, he could stand to get drunk, properly drunk.

  The world was a madhouse and only America, in a perverse sort of way, seemed removed from it all. They were profiting, out of the doldrums of the Depression, thanks to the emptying of the British Treasury for arms. They were even mobilizing, halfheartedly, but still at every airport where the DC-3 he was traveling aboard stopped to refuel, he saw bustling activity, trainer aircraft by the scores, new barracks going up by the edge of airfields; at their stop in St. Louis, a score of their B-17s warming up for a training flight. But as for the rest of the country, it was still locked in an opiumlike dream of peace. Just arm and sit back, waiting it out. Snatches of overheard conversations dwelt on new cars, the latest Western pic, the trivial going-ons of Hollywood celebrities, the casual talk of peace. Only on the flight from New York to Newfoundland, to Iceland and then London, were the passengers somber, most of them obviously military men, dressed in civilian garb, tightlipped other than the most casual of conversations, but then again he was tightlipped too, simply a reporter returning back home with little to say about all that he had seen. During the night someone reported a flickering glow to the south and all had gathered at the windows, gazing out across the black Atlantic—and there was indeed, a pulsing fire in the distance that suddenly winked out.

  “Tanker most likely,” someone whispered, “sunk, poor bastards.”

  As they flew peacefully along through the night, he had been suddenly aware that directly below, at this very moment, U-boats were on the surface, charging their engines, prowling, hunting for their prey, perhaps a lookout hearing the drone of their distant engines, calling a warning as the darkened plane droned overhead and then passed on.

  And now here, another shudder rumbling, this one closer, he could almost sense the overpressure of the bomb striking nearby. Winston did not even notice. “If they strike us before the new year,” Winston finally said, “there is precious little we can do about it. The crisis is still on in North Africa, even though Rommel has been forced back. If Hitler does push to Moscow and does not overreach, it could free a dozen of his divisions to turn south, to overwhelm us and take the Suez come spring. We have nothing to spare for the Pacific; I fear we can barely hold in India. It will be an American fight.”

  “But suppose they don’t directly strike the Americans,” Cecil ventured. “They just hit us and the Dutch. Do you think President Roosevelt could rally the support necessary to enter the war?”

  Churchill grumbled and shook his head.

  “I doubt it. The isolationists will point at the map, how far distant it all is, how meaningless to American interests. Far better for us that a U-boat sinks one of their destroyers off the coast of New York City, but even then, there would be some screaming that Roosevelt and his Jewish friends had warmongered it.”

  Cecil looked at him, slightly shocked.–Oh yes, that propaganda line of the Nazis is heard by more than one in America. Filthy tripe all of it, but some hear it and repeat it. No, it will take a blow, a very hard blow to bestir them. Tell me, do you think the Japanese will hit the Americans as well?”

  Cecil sat back in his chair, nursing the last few drops of his drink, and without prompting Winston uncorked the scotch and refilled his glass, and he now gladly accepted it.

  “They will.”

  “Why so?”

  “They cannot bypass the Philippines in their drive south. Second, the embargo of oil has become an issue of national pride. Finally, though some in the navy are indeed for peace, far more moderate than the army, there are others who believe one killing blow can shatter the Americans. It is a testing that some have itched for for nearly forty years.”

  “Two boys on the block and sooner or later they’ll test each other’s mettle, is that it?”

  Cecil nodded.

  “It is the weakness of the samurai way. I saw it when I taught at their academy. Their strange game of all offensive and precious little defense. Their thinking is to strike first, the single killing blow. You see it in their sword fighting versus ours. Our dueling is fencing, strike, counterstrike, maneuver, thrust, counterthrust to finally the kill. To the samurai, for one blade to even touch the other is considered a lessening of victory. The true victory is the serpentlike strike, lightning speed in the very first strike, so fast the opponent’s blade falls to the ground, dead, before it has even touched the other blade or armor of his opponent. That is considered the true glorious victory. They believe it is their destiny; they will fight for that destiny in the manner in which they think. No, they will not attack us and leave the American threat to their flank and rear. I daresay the first blow will fall there because that is potentially the strongest opponent. We, I am ashamed to say, are seen as secondary.”

  “And where will they strike?”

  “The Philippines, obviously. I am not privy to the American war plans, but everyone can surmise them. Strike the Philippines, then wait for the American fleet to sortie from Pearl Harbor. As it transitions to the Marshall Islands, their ground-based planes, destroyers, and submarines will harry and weaken. Then once into the open seas beyond, the main battle fleet will come forth to finish the job. Then the Americans, defeated, sue for peace.”

  Churchill snorted derisively. “They don’t know the Americans, if ever aroused. Lured into a fight or not, they sink a fleet and the Americans will build another, just as the Romans did against Carthage.”

  “We know that, many on their side know it, but they will do it nevertheless.”

  Churchill nodded, taking the information in. “I’ll talk to Roosevelt about it again tomorrow,” he finally said. “Get some rest. Go to number ten, they’ll have a room for you there.”

  Cecil hesitated and Winston chuckled. “It’s only been hit once, and besides, those pesky flies overhead are just a nuisance raid. Keep us up, keep us on edge. You’ll sleep like a baby. We’ll talk more tomorrow, and then I want you to go back.”

  “Back, sir?” Cecil asked, unable to hide his dismay.

  “But of course.”

  “Sir, may I speak frankly?”

  “By all means.”

  “I’m sick of it all. I’ve seen far too much. Whatever love and respect I once held for the Japanese died at Nanking and was buried deep in the four years since. I’m sick of the Orient, the brutality, the war, the blindness of more than one on our side out in Singapore who chortle and say all will be well, that the little yellow buggers wouldn’t dare strike England.”

  He sighed.

  “Couldn’t I have a posting here for a while?”

  Winston smiled and laughed.

  “But you’re my expert out there now; my eyes and ears. Your report is damn good, and damn smart of you as well to bring it direct. If you had mailed it, I fear other eyes might have read it first. I wanted your impressions directly, to hear your voice and all it implies as you speak. Take a few days to rest, then I want you back out there in Singapore. If the show is to start, I want someone outside the loop to report to me, and you I trust.”

  Cecil sighed and wearily shook his head.

  Winston looked at him coolly, as
if examining him for some test.

  Cecil wanted to tell his old Harrrovian schoolmate to bugger off, but he could not. He was not just Winston, he was the prime minister, and even the closest of friends did not speak thus to the PM.

  “Go on now, off to bed with you. We’ll talk more tomorrow. Do this favor now, my friend, and then, well, perhaps after the show starts that you predict, I might have other ideas for you. You’re too old now to go running around in the middle of a war zone”—he smiled—–but then again, this is a war zone.”

  Even as he said it, there was another thump, this one fairly close. “On your way back there’s an American I’d like you to talk freely with. Interesting chap named Donovan.”

  Cecil sat up at the mention of the name.

  “Has a friend, Hollywood director. Remember that terrible movie about the Welsh that they lavished awards on this year? Such sentimental rubbish.”

  “You mean John Ford?”

  “That’s him. Like you to meet him as well on your way back, talk things over a bit. Maybe something there a bit farther down the road.”

  Now he was curious. A Wall Street lawyer, hero of the last war, now supposedly heading up some hush-hush operation, and a hard-drinking Irishman with little love of the English, who nevertheless made damn good films. What was Winston thinking of?

  “Off with you now and get some rest. We’ll talk more tomorrow before you catch your flight out.”

  Finishing up his drink, Cecil stood up, and a Royal Marine guard outside the door beckoned the way up the long flight of stairs to the outside. An antiaircraft gun lit off over in the small park in front of Parliament, a stream of tracers going up, the flashes illuminating the grounds. He paused to watch.

  “Not much of a show tonight, sir,” the sergeant announced cheerfully.

  There was a flash across the river, a thundering explosion rolling over them several seconds later.

  “Nothing at all, a miss is as good as a mile, sir.”

  The guard walked him up, through the blacked-out streets to Number 10, and handed him off to another guard who guided him into the residence of the PM. He knew he should be honored by this; few were granted the privilege of staying in Winston’s private quarters. The windows, of course, were all cross-hatched with tape; inside, blackout curtains darkened the room. An all-so-proper butler was waiting, asking if he needed refreshment before retiring, perhaps a cup of tea with something in it, sir? Cecil politely refused and minutes later was up on the third floor, door closed, the room decorated in late Victorian, heavy on knickknacks and pastoral paintings.

  The bed was already turned back, and he barely took the time to take off his shoes and jacket, collapsing atop the bedspread.

  But sleep was impossible. Back to Singapore, damn it. His subterfuge, and Winston most likely had seen clear through it, was that by personally delivering his memo, Winston would ask him to stay on here, rather than go back to what he suspected would be a hellhole under siege come spring. It was not that he was afraid of a fight, far from it. A posting now to Spain, Turkey, for that matter even back into the secret activity he knew must be going on up at Bletchley Park, was more his ideal line now. And this talk of Donovan and John Ford was interesting stuff. But Winston wanted him back in Singapore for now and he could not say no. And sleep was impossible as well, for at regular intervals, every ten minutes or so, another bomb whistled down, sometimes far, sometimes near enough that the blackout curtains rustled, and though disgusted to admit it after all he had been through… he was afraid.

  Pearl Harbor

  9 November 1941

  9:30 a.m. Local Time

  “Sir, there’s someone waiting outside to meet you.”

  James Watson looked up from his desk, bleary-eyed, as usual. He had been working since… well, he wasn’t quite sure when, on several naval transmissions triangulated out of Manila as coming from Formosa, indicating an increase of traffic. There had been talk of trying to sneak a reconnaissance flight up to just off the island for a look around. MacArthur had vetoed the idea as too provocative.

  Provocative, hell—the Japanese were wandering “by accident” into Philippine airspace nearly every day, popping in along the entire west coast of Luzon. Commercial flights between Hong Kong and Manila were disgorging what was now the usual array of alleged businessmen who seemed a little too fit and trim, several cameras in their luggage, who would stay for a day then fly back out.

  And yet he was still hampered by the absurdest of controls. In fact, an investigation team led by a senator and a federal judge had been sent out at the behest of the Senate to see whether the navy and army out here were breaking any laws regarding trying to look at outgoing mail and telegraph messages from Japanese who seemed more than a little suspicious. It was promised that if the slightest impropriety was uncovered, heads would roll, perhaps all the way up to CinCPac himself. Fortunately they had not heard about James and Collingwood’s little venture of sending an enlisted man down to prowl through Western Union’s trash; that lad had been quickly transferred off to an outgoing destroyer, bound for Manila, so he would not be forced to perjure himself.

  He pushed back from the desk, rubbing the stubble of his chin again—a couple of days’ worth of growth—and he knew, without even raising his arm for a quick whiff, that he most likely stank. The air conditioner, a great luxury that everyone else on the base was envious of, wondered about, and grumbled about regarding those “weird birds in the basement,” had gone on the blink again, and the temperature in the room was somewhere in the low eighties.

  He went into the washroom, splashed some water on his face, toweled off, and wove his way back down the narrow corridor, past dozens of others, some bent on the same task as he, others laboriously working on translations of what little they had, looking for any finer nuances, well-worn Japanese-English dictionaries open by their side. In the signals room, to his left, behind a locked door, a dozen operators were monitoring a dozen frequencies around the clock, some of them in the clear transmissions, weather reports from commercial Japanese ships, messages back to the mainland that might have, concealed within them, some hidden text or clue. Others were engaged in the laborious process of taking down each Morse dot and dash, not really understanding the words at all, just jotting them down as fast as they were received to be passed on to someone like himself. Still others listened to the commercial and state-run radio stations, enduring the at times god-awful screeching noise that the Japanese claimed passed for music, and on rare occasions even a Western piece, though decadent American jazz and big band had been banned. Of late the song about the air raid shelter and ignoring the bombs had found new rivals extolling the prowess of the army as it fought to free innocent China from the brigands and Communists, another something of a recruiting song about the joys to be found aboard a ship on the high seas, defending Japan. All of it had to be monitored; but not all of it was. Navy simply didn’t have the money, the equipment, nor the manpower to monitor all possible sources of information twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. So every few days “the chief,” as they called him, would hold a quick meeting, educated guesses would be presented as to which frequencies and stations might bear fruit, and personnel were assigned, and the rest of the traffic went unlistened to, perhaps bearing a message that would fit into another message and together would help crack the newest code, which the Japs were changing ever more rapidly of late.

  It was like watching a dozen leaks in your ceiling, but you only had one bucket to run around with, trying to catch the drops; and it drove them all mad, made worse by the four-and-a-half-hour time difference, which meant they lived on Tokyo time rather than Hawaiian.

  Opening the door, he stopped before the marine guard, the two of them just nodding, both knowing each other well, but still the ritual of holding up his identification card and a slight extending of his arms to show he was not carrying out any papers concealed under his light tropical-weight uniform.

  Up the flight o
f stairs and a second door with yet another marine guard before finally stepping out into the foyer of the main administrative building of the base. He squinted for a moment, morning sunlight flooding in, disoriented, for inside his body was telling him it was five a.m. tomorrow. That always threw him, the whole dateline thing that it was a Sunday, November 9, and not Monday, November 10, 1941, Japanese time, another bother when it came to duty assignments given holidays and weekends, both there and here.

  “James?”

  Still squinting a bit he turned, immediately recognizing the voice… it was Cecil!

  “Damn me, when did you get in?” James cried, going over to his old friend and in a very un-Britishlike gesture slapping him with nearly a bear hug.

  The traffic in and out of the building on this Sunday morning was light—it was, after all a Sunday at 9:30 a.m.—but still there were enough passing back and forth to take a second, somewhat jaundiced glance at a very disheveled naval commander, with coffee-stained shirt, embracing a very proper-looking captain of the British navy, complete to, American eyes, the rather silly-looking tropical Bermuda shorts and knee-high white socks.

  But the two didn’t care and both looked at each other appraisingly as, a bit embarrassed, they stepped back from each other. Both, of course, had aged in each other’s eyes since the last time they had seen each other.

  “I’d suggest visiting the office,” James said, nodding back to the door where at the mere mention of a visit, the normally friendly marine guard stiffened a bit, “but you understand.”

  “I took the liberty of picking up some sandwiches and coffee,” Cecil said, gesturing to his leather attach–case, which was bulging slightly. “My transportation was most kind in lending me a vacuum bottle. Let’s just go sit down by the waterfront and chat. I haven’t much time.”

  “When are you leaving?”

  “The Clipper takes off at thirteen hundred, your time here. A bit confusing I daresay. My watch is still set on San Francisco time, so how long does that give us?”