Designated Targets — Axis Of Time Book II

by John Birmingham

  Marshall didn’t look happy at the suggestion. “We could, sir. But in the event of an invasion, you would have unprepared troops fighting battle-hardened Nazis.”

  The comment hung in the air, unaddressed, for an uncomfortably long time. Roosevelt stared at the painting of George Washington that hung on his office wall. The first American president had also led poorly prepared forces against a formidable enemy. Ironically, that enemy now sat across from him, pleading for help.

  “Nevertheless, please do it, General,” he said at last. “If a nation of shopkeepers can stand against the Nazis, I don’t see why our armed forces can’t do the same. Prepare for the redeployment.”

  The office was immaculate, as always. Unlike many of the other seats of power in Washington, it did not boast any newfangled technology, such as computating machines or flexible pads.

  Director Hoover had certainly secured a goodly number of those for the Bureau, to be certain, but they were located elsewhere, in the Records Department, in the laboratories, and in Assistant Director Tolson’s office. Hoover liked to boast that steely nerve, a good aim, and unquestionable moral rectitude were still the primary weapons of any FBI agent. These new gizmos were really just better filing cabinets, and he, for one, didn’t need them cluttering up his desk. He was perfectly capable of running the best counterintelligence service in the world without having to rely on some electronic brain.

  When he used that line with the press, as he had at least six times this week, he always managed to put such a mocking emphasis on the last phrase that he never failed to gain an appreciative laugh from his audience of Bureau-approved reporters.

  There was no laughter in the director’s office this morning, however. Indeed, J. Edgar Hoover was incandescent with rage. His double-breasted suit squeezed around him like a straitjacket. Sweat prickled in his hair and ran down his neck. It hurt to breathe, and it was all he could do to stop himself from taking the sheaf of paper he was holding, ripping it into tiny little bits, and throwing them back in the face of the trembling agent who stood in front of him.

  Normally, Hoover spoke in a high-pitched, rapid-fire staccato. It could be hundreds of words a minute when he was particularly upset. However, he’d sat white and shaking and utterly silent for ten minutes while he read the agent’s summary report, over and over again. Sometimes, when he reached an especially odious passage, he was tempted to skim, but he forced himself to read those parts twice.

  When he was finished, he put the paper down and said nothing. His small mouth puckered once or twice, but mostly his lips remained pressed tightly together. Assistant Director Tolson sat nearby and stared at the carpet. Agent Clayton, the bearer of bad news, waited for the hammer to fall.

  “Despicable, filthy, gutter talk,” Hoover managed to squeak out at last.

  Clayton’s mouth worked like that of a fish that had been snatched out of its bowl.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” was all he could say.

  “Filthy!” Hoover roared now. “Get out of my office, and never set foot in this building again.”

  Clayton gaped and blubbed some more, but finally he had no choice but to bow and exit at high speed, with the director’s red-rimmed eyes boring into his back as he fled.

  “Is it as bad as people have been saying?” Tolson asked when the other man was gone.

  Hoover turned on him like a spitting cobra, but as Tolson flinched, the director got a hold of his temper. It wasn’t Clyde’s fault, after all. As best anyone could tell, it was some egghead named Pope who was ultimately responsible, and he was dead. Hoover had briefly contemplated assigning a team of agents to track down this Pope fellow’s parents or grandparents, just to ensure they never met, but he’d been told such efforts would be futile. This accursed time travel didn’t work like that. Even if Pope was never born, it wouldn’t return any semblance of sanity or balance to the world.

  No, he was stuck with things the way they were, with a colony of perverts and half-castes spreading the most terrible lies about him, and poisoning America with their toxic philosophies and practices.

  He again read the first page of Clayton’s report, gripping the papers so tightly, his hands were trembling. Twenty-two subversive bookstores had been caught stocking copies of these awful books about him. They were cheap, pulpy copies, and there was no publisher’s imprint on the spine, but the booksellers were all known Communists or fellow travelers, so there was no doubt the reds were behind it. He could hardly bring himself to look at Clayton’s description of the latest “biography” that had surfaced out of California. American Tyrant by this so-called Professor Forstchen. A dime-store novelist of some sort, according to Special Agent Clayton. A purveyor of filth and fiction, even when he was writing alleged history like American Tyrant: The Biography of J. Edgar Hoover.

  Again, if only he could stop this Forstchen’s parents from meeting . . .

  The director read Clayton’s summary of the book.

  It claimed that he was a blackmailer. That he befriended criminals and that he had suppressed evidence about the assassination of a President John F. Kennedy—the son of that bootlegging villain in London, no less! It said he was corrupt, and a liar, and had nothing at all to do with the killing of Dillinger or the capture of the Lindbergh baby’s kidnapper, two of the greatest triumphs of his career so far.

  There was even one claim that his mother had twisted his mind, and that he was a . . . a homosexual, and a pervert who dressed in women’s clothing.

  His head reeled. It was practically unbearable.

  “Eddie, people have always gossiped,” said Tolson, who looked worried even when he wasn’t. “You can’t let it get to you. It’s just words.”

  Hoover’s eyes were nearly brimming with tears as he regarded his constant companion. For once he spoke slowly. “Junior, words . . . they are . . . grossly insufficient to express the thoughts in my mind and the feelings in my heart for you. But mark me well, words can be weapons, too, every bit as deadly as a knife or a gun.

  “Look at this, just look at it, would you. They’re saying I knew about Pearl Harbor before it happened. That little weasel Popov is behind that, or that bastard Stephenson, or both of them, believe you me. And that Jewish rat Kolhammer is pulling their strings, and . . .”

  He was beginning to heat up again, accusations and insults spilling out of him in a cascade of high-pitched, verbal machine-gun fire.

  Tolson rubbed his eyes and shook his head from side to side. It was unusual for him to play an assertive role in their relationship. He was loyal, but very much the subordinate partner, two steps behind and one to the side. “Eddie, Eddie, please, you’ll kill yourself. Come on, now, we’ve faced worse than this before. And besides, these people are vulnerable. They’re a rabble. There’s not a genuine hero amongst them, not like you and me. You know what it’s like in California now. Those sort of degenerate shenanigans might play well with the Hollywood set, but decent Americans won’t stand for it. You need to rally the people against this menace. You know Roosevelt won’t do it. Why, he’s half a red himself, what with that awful wife of his. The New Deal was naked socialism, no less. And then there’s this desegregation garbage.”

  Tolson had actually climbed to his feet, and was stalking around the office now. He slammed the door closed and turned on the startled director. When he spoke, it was with unusual intensity.

  “The real people aren’t happy at all with that gang of perverts out there. They want things put right again. And we can do it, Eddie. They’d expect us to do it, to protect them the same way we protected them from the mobsters and kidnappers. They expect you to do it.”

  J. Edgar Hoover blinked away a tear. It fell to his desk, smudging a line of Special Agent Clayton’s report, a horrid passage alleging that the director had worn—or would wear—a red dress and a black feather boa to some sort of homosexual orgy in a hotel in the 1950s. It was all lies and filth, carefully crafted to break his will.

  But Clyde, that wonderf
ul, dear, dear man, had led him through the darkness that threatened to envelop them both.

  “You are my sword and my shield, Junior,” he croaked as he stood and hurried around his desk to embrace the only human being, besides his sainted mother, whom he had ever really known and loved.

  Clyde was right. Kolhammer and his kind would have to be fought. And J. Edgar Hoover, American patriot, would lead that fight.

  As he pressed up against the familiar, reassuring bulk of Clyde Tolson’s body, he was already plotting his counterattack. “I think I need to see Congressman Dies again,” he said.

  SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE ZONE, CALIFORNIA

  A long time ago, in a universe far, far way, a much younger Phillip Kolhammer had read a book, A Man Called Intrepid. William Stephenson, the Canadian adventurer who was Winston Churchill’s personal representative in the United States, was every bit as impressive in real life as he had been in the pages of that book. An infantryman and later a fighter ace flying Sopwith Camels in the First World War, he became a very successful businessman after the armistice—so successful, in fact, that he performed his current duties, as the head of Britain’s intelligence operations in the western hemisphere, without being paid.

  According to his biography, he was a believer, and for that reason, Churchill had placed him in his position above the objections of the old guard within British Intelligence. Stephenson had used his extensive business contacts to funnel information about the Nazis to Churchill during the latter’s wilderness years, and when the old warhorse had finally made it to Downing Street, the Canadian had offered to personally assassinate Hitler. That plan was quashed by Lord Halifax, who was then foreign secretary.

  For once, Kolhammer allowed himself a wry smile concerning the tangled threads of fortune within which he’d become trapped. He’d bet big money that Halifax regretted his decision now.

  “Is something funny, Admiral?” asked Stephenson.

  “Not really,” Kolhammer said. “Idle thoughts, that’s all. It’s late.”

  And it was. They met in his office, which was swept every few hours for bugs. It was a bare space, particleboard walls and government-issue furniture. Kolhammer had softened the raw fit-out with some personal photographs, a rug he’d bought many years ago in Cairo, and a couple of armchairs, where he and Stephenson now sat, nursing mugs of coffee with rum shots. The office might have looked unimpressive, but it was a central node of the distributed infotech system he was building in the Valley. There was more network capacity in this one small room than in all of Washington. Not all of the equipment was authorized, however.

  “You wouldn’t believe the number of these things we keep finding all over the Zone,” Kolhammer commented, holding up a bulky, primitive listening device. It was most likely an FBI plant. His counterintelligence people had swept it out of a bar down on Ventura that was popular with his officers.

  “Actually, I would,” Stephenson replied. “Hoover’s more trouble than the Abwehr and the NKVD put together, at least as far as my work goes. You know, we gave that guy one of our best double agents—”

  “Popov,” said Kolhammer, who’d downloaded Intrepid for a skim-through before he’d first met Stephenson.

  The Canadian rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Popov. You know, I can never get used to the idea that the world is full of people who know all my secrets now. Anyway, Popov was sent to New York by his Abwehr controller, this guy Auenrode. This is before Pearl Harbor, right? The Japs wanted to know all sorts of things about the defenses in Hawaii. The exact location of ammo and fuel dumps, which hangars are where, what ships and subs anchor at what piers.

  “Hoover did nothing. He let this guy cool his heels for two weeks while he took off on a holiday with his boyfriend, with the mob probably picking up the tab. When he finally does get back, Hoover explodes, screeching at Popov to get out of his office.”

  Kolhammer knew the story. He even vaguely recalled that Popov had described Hoover as looking like “a sledgehammer in search of an anvil,” although he hadn’t seen that phrase when he quickly reread the book about Stephenson. He thought it was apt.

  “Well, this is a pain, but I can live with it,” Kolhammer said, twirling the antique listening device around his finger.

  “I don’t think you can, actually,” Stephenson countered.

  Kolhammer took a sip on his cold cup of coffee. It needed more rum. He was tired, and looking forward to a few hours’ sleep on the cot he kept in the room next door. But he’d come to respect Churchill’s spymaster as much as anyone he’d ever met, and if Stephenson was concerned enough to fly all the way out to California, it probably meant he had some real concerns.

  “How so?” he asked.

  Stephenson leaned forward as if to impart a secret, an unconscious gesture, given that this room was probably one of the most secure places on Earth.

  “You know he’s got agents crawling all over the Zone,” he said. “And he’s probably paying more for informants here than he is throughout the rest of the United States, and probably even in South America, too.”

  Kolhammer shrugged. “There’s no secrets for him to dig up out here. The Zone operates under twenty-first century U.S. law and custom. He could set up a love shack with Tolson and start selling medical marijuana tomorrow, if he wanted to. No one would stop him. And likewise, he can’t interfere with or stop what goes on out here. It’s not his turf anymore.”

  “No, it’s not,” conceded Stephenson. “But underestimate him at your peril. Bill Donovan has OSS keeping very close tabs on Hoover, and he says the strain of the last few months is eating the man up. If he lashes out when he goes down, it’s you he’ll be aiming at and believe me, for a fairy, he hits hard. It’s a laydown that he’s behind this Un-American Activities bullshit. Donovan says a Bureau car picked up Dies and ferried him to dinner with Hoover and Tolson the night before the committee announced its new investigations. They’ve been all over one another like cheap Chinese suits for weeks, and remember, not everybody wants to publicly snuggle with Hoover nowadays.”

  Kolhammer snorted at the image and put his empty mug aside. A shaded lamp threw a small circle of light onto his desk. He peered into the gloom that lay just beyond. He could just make out a picture of his wife hung on the wall in the shadows on the far side of the room. She was lost to him now. He knew that, and the pain of their separation was never-ending.

  “Bill,” he said, “I don’t doubt that you’re right, and I’ll give some thought to whatever precautions might be necessary. But my own comfort is a tenth-order issue right now. I have real enemies trying to kill my people, even as we speak.

  “If I have to deal with Hoover, I will. Trust me.”

  Stephenson was not convinced. “You want to follow this HUAC thing very closely, Admiral. Every dollar you spend out here is raised in Washington. And they can cut you off, just like that. Dies isn’t the only person Hoover is talking to, and the director is not the only one who wants to jam you back into your wormhole, or whatever it was.”

  Kolhammer made a rueful face at that. “Believe me, Bill, there are days I’d love nothing more. But the reality is, we’re here. We fucked things up royally by coming here, and now it’s my job to set them as right as I can. I know enough politics to watch my back, and if I have to kick someone’s head, it’ll get kicked. But I’m not going to pick fights for the sake of it. You’re right. Our position here is tenuous. Bringing home those POWs generated a lot of goodwill. I get a couple of hundred letters a week thanking me for bringing home somebody’s son or husband or brother. But in the end, we don’t belong here. Not yet. Not for a fucking long time. And muscling up to somebody like Hoover, who enjoys genuine support—well, that’s just dumb.”

  Stephenson poured another tot of rum into his empty coffee cup. “That day is coming, Admiral, whether you want it or not.”

  “I know. But a smart man chooses his battles. And he doesn’t lash out at a strong enemy.”

  “Hoover’s not as stron
g as he once was. None of the quality press have moved on him yet, but those pulpy biographies keep turning up like bad pennies, and the yellow press have been running with them. It’s hurting him.”

  Kolhammer was as still and quiet as a bronze Buddha.

  Stephenson smiled. “But you wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

  “I think,” replied Kolhammer, “that it would be a mistake to personalize everything in terms of Hoover. Not all politics are personal.”

  Stephenson nodded, before changing the topic. “So, how are you settling in here, Admiral? I see you’re still sleeping in that damned army cot. Couldn’t you at least have requisitioned some kind of inflatable superbed from your own stores?”

  Kolhammer smiled sadly and rubbed at his eyes. “I don’t mind. A big bed would just remind me how empty it is every night.”

  “Excuse me, I’m sorry,” said Stephenson, glancing at the picture of Marie Kolhammer on the desk. “It must be very difficult for you.”

  “And millions of others,” said Kolhammer. “There’s nothing special about me. Listen, Bill,” he said suddenly, “would you like the grand tour? I normally can’t get to sleep right away anyhow. I like to take a drive before turning in. I could show you the manor, as the Brits say, and drop you into town afterwards.”

  “Sure,” said Stephenson, finishing his drink. “If you don’t mind the drive.”

  Kolhammer called through to his PA to lock down the office and tell security he’d be sleeping at home for a change.

  “You’ll need your coat,” he told Stephenson. “It gets chilly this time of year.”

  A female sailor was waiting by his Humvee out in front of the building. “It’s been swept, sir. No bugs.”

  “Thank you, Paterson.”

  “I didn’t think Admirals drove themselves anywhere,” the Canadian quipped as he swung himself into the front passenger seat. “Or is this just another example of creeping socialism from the future.”