Surely this was hell.
Summers was actually grateful when the deal came down at the end of the main course, and Hoover leaned forward to turn the screws. “Congressmen, this week your committee will be reviewing significant expenditures allocated for the Special Zone, if I’m right.”
“We will,” said Gentry, trying to appear eager to please. “We’re looking at an appropriation measure to pay for emergency housing, for all the workers flooding in there.”
Hoover stared at him for a long, long time without speaking. His pouchy, bulldog eyes burned fiercely. Air whistled between his crooked teeth. He wouldn’t even let the congressman drop his gaze. Summers was glad he wasn’t on the receiving end. It felt like staring down the barrel of a gun.
“I am sure,” the FBI director said at last, “that you will take as long as is absolutely necessary . . . to give full and proper consideration . . . to the best interests of the country . . . and all of its servants.”
“Of course,” agreed Gentry after a slight delay.
Summers just nodded. His throat was so dry, he could hardly form the words.
“Excellent,” said Hoover. “You can pay your bill on the way out.”
17
IN TRANSIT TO LONDON
The Trident’s Eurocopter hammered across the green patchwork of the southern counties at top speed. Villages, woods, cricket grounds, lakes, and farms all slipped by in a blur as Karen Halabi wondered what might be waiting for her at the other end.
Before taking off, she’d downloaded the latest compressed burst from California. Admiral Kolhammer had fought hard to keep his command in one piece, but strategic surprise had made that impossible. The destruction of the contemporary Pacific Fleet, the invasion of Australia, and the threat hanging over Britain meant that any Allied resources had to be sent where they would be most effective in forestalling an enemy that was lashing out in all directions.
To some extent, they’d done well. The Japanese thrust into Australia seemed to be doomed, as the ground combat elements of the Multinational Force moved to directly engage Homma’s forces. Reports of atrocities had aroused outrage in the press and Parliament, and led to another round of accusations that Britain had abandoned her former colony in its hour of need. But really, it was nothing out of the ordinary.
The Japanese continued to reinforce their holdings in the southwest Pacific, using the divisions they had stripped from China. The Clinton and the Siranui had left Honolulu for San Diego, but some of the carrier’s surviving air wing remained on the island as a guarantor against misadventure by Yamamoto.
There was the usual level of witless hysteria on the mainland United States. The encrypted briefing from Kolhammer, for her eyes only, covered the rather tense political situation of the Special Administrative Zone.
The Soviet–German cease-fire remained intact, for now. Stalin was still refusing to return any of the Allied ships or personnel that had been trapped at Murmansk when he unilaterally withdrew from hostilities against the Reich. The German buildup continued, but there had been no obvious surge to indicate that an attempted channel crossing was likely to being immediately.
There was nothing, really, that justified dragging her away from Portsmouth and the Trident without notice.
She heard the pilot’s voice through her earpiece. “ETA twelve minutes, Skipper. We’ll be setting down at Biggin Hill. There’s a car waiting there for you.”
“Thanks, Andy,” she said. “Don’t hang around if there’s a raid inbound while I’m gone. I wouldn’t trust that hardened shelter to stand up in a sun shower.”
“Righto, Skipper.”
They passed over a convoy of American trucks on a road heading south. The line of vehicles stretched out for well over a mile, and at least half of them seemed to be towing artillery pieces. Troops in the open trucks waved as they roared over.
A thunderhead far away to the west dropped sheets of gray rain on rolling farmland, while beneath them she could see dozens of schoolboys in uniform, digging with spades to widen a stream into a makeshift antitank ditch. Fields and pasture were marred by the sprouting spikes of sharpened stakes to prevent gliders landing. The sight reminded her of Branagh’s Henry V, which was immensely popular in the movie theaters at the moment. The BBC had telerecorded a master copy to film from her own ship’s video library. Here and there, crossroads were marked by barrel-like blocks of concrete, or piles of wrecked cars, rusty plows and mounds of rubble, ready to be pushed on the road surface to form another small obstacle to any possible German advance. Sometimes she saw trees that had been cut down by the roadside, ready to be dragged across as further obstacles.
The open countryside gave way to more roads and buildings. As they swooped over a village, her pilot pointed out the firing slits that had been knocked into the upper floors of two whitewashed houses that had probably been built when Shakespeare was a boy. Concrete cubes lay scattered around a radar station, even though it had been made entirely redundant by her ship’s Nemesis arrays. It made sense to keep the contemporary facilities active. They’d be needed if the Trident was ever successfully attacked and disabled.
The airfield at Biggin Hill drew closer, a broad area of clear ground, crisscrossed with tarmac, dotted with hangars, protected by bristling nests of antiaircraft artillery, some of it now radar controlled. The pockmarks of previous Luftwaffe bombing raids were clearly visible as discolored patches of grass and runway, damaged buildings, and piles of wreckage.
They set down alongside a specially constructed hangar, which was supposedly designed to withstand a direct bomb strike. The chopper settled onto its wheels a hundred meters from the bunker as ground crew made ready to run in and secure the propeller blades against any gusts coming from the storms to the west.
Halabi jumped out, crouching, and hurried over to a waiting jeep.
“Putting her in under cover, Captain?” asked the ground crew chief with a hopeful tone. Judging from the look on his face, he’d never had the chance to get a really good look at the exotic warcraft.
“Only if that storm comes over, Sergeant. And if we get a head’s-up that Jerry is on his way, my lads are out of here. Sorry.”
“Right you are, ma’am,” he said, disappointment echoing in his voice.
With the omniscient arrays of the Trident on hand to warn of developing air attacks long before they could even form up over France, a curious dissonance had come over the British high command. They lived under the sword of Damocles, knowing that it must fall. An attempt at invasion was imminent. Yet the power of those early-warning systems meant that a degree of relaxation now existed in London, even as preparations to meet the Nazi blitzkrieg accelerated. Halabi saw no street signs as she drove through the city, no locale indications of any kind. Even war memorials had been defaced to remove the names of local boroughs. There were no milestones to be seen. They had all been pulled up.
The devastation of London, whole blocks demolished by blast damage and fire, never failed to stun her with a fractured sense of the familiar. It wasn’t just the city. It was the echoes of other cities. In every street, drums of oil-soaked rags stood ready to be lit to provide a smoke screen, just as in the Baghdad and Damascus of her youth. Then of course, there was the unfamiliar. In this London, like hers, military uniforms were everywhere, but here, apart from an occasional African-American soldier, there was nobody like her. No darkies, as the locals would have it. There were no curry houses or Indian spice shops. And it seemed that every spare patch of grass had been given over to growing carrots, potatoes, and cabbage. Flyers outside theaters advertised the new Agatha Christie play, Ten Little Niggers, while official posters promised that YOUR COURAGE, YOUR CHEERFULNESS, YOUR RESOLUTION WILL BRING US VICTORY.
Halabi found herself charmed and a little amused by the clunky, pompous slogan. It wasn’t a patch on the free-market propaganda from her day, like the swimsuit posters for the French Connection (United Kingdom) fashion label, which featured an Iranian �
��dignity officer” waving a copy of the Koran at smirking, lower-case supermodel, caitlin lye, who was clearly thinking of the advert’s tagline.
“Fcuk Off.”
Oh well, thought Halabi, to each their own.
Reaching their destination, Halabi climbed out of the jeep, thanked the driver, and checked in with the single bobby who was guarding the approach to the PM’s office and residence. It was nothing like the Downing Street of her day. For starters, the iron fence railings had been removed and melted down for scrap. They were probably enjoying a new life as Spitfire parts, or a destroyer’s armor plating.
An attendant met her at the front door, which did look just the same as always, painted black, with a lion’s-head knocker, lamp, brass numbers, and letterbox inscribed FIRST LORD OF THE TREASURY. The man ushered her into the entry hall.
The windows were sandbagged, and long heavy drapes the color of port had been drawn, but it remained a large bright room, the floor mostly covered in black-and-white marble tiles—except for two surprisingly tacky pieces of brown carpet on either side of the front door. Five desk lamps added a golden glow to the light provided by the small chandelier in the center of the ceiling.
“The Prime Minster will see you immediately,” whispered the attendant, a gaunt fellow in dark civilian clothes who wouldn’t have been out of place in Boswell’s London Diaries. “You will find him and his party in the Blue Drawing Room.”
She followed him through into another room, this one lit mainly with lamps and chandeliers, and cluttered with Chippendale chairs and card tables. Again, the windows were all blast-proofed, although the drapes remained open, exposing old-fashioned window seats. Blue silk wallpaper lent the room a brooding atmosphere, unleavened by the portraits of Nelson and Wellington glowering down from above the doors.
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill was standing beside the mantelpiece over a hearth in which three logs burned amid a large pile of embers. Talking with him were Major Windsor, a woman, and another man, she didn’t recognize.
“Excuse me, Prime Minister,” said Halabi. “I’m sorry to be late. We had a little trouble, which delayed me unavoidably.”
The PM waved her over. She was struck by how much he resembled the caricaturists’ pictures of him as a British bulldog. When he spoke, however, his voice sounded much stronger and even richer in tone than she remembered from the famous BBC recordings of his wartime speeches. “Not to worry, Captain. Do come in, and please join us. I’ve already heard about the jet plane attack. I understand you’re going back to the Admiralty later to brief them.”
“I am, sir. It was hard to tell from the vision we took, but the Germans appeared to have fitted primitive missiles of a sort that wouldn’t have come into use for quite a while yet. It’s an unsettling development, I’m afraid.”
“Well, I’m sure they’ll keep you busy with that this evening. For now, well, you know the dashing prince, of course. This is Lieutenant Jens Poulsson, and Miss Vera Atkins.”
“Oh! Of the Special Operations Executive? I saw Cate Blanchette play you in the movie,” said Halabi, shaking each hand in turn. She hadn’t been expecting to meet such interesting characters as these. The SOE was famous, or perhaps infamous would be a better description, as the Western world’s first state sponsored “terrorist” organization. Tasked by Churchill with “setting Europe ablaze” after Dunkirk, they had gone about the mission with a passion.
Atkins looked slightly discomfited. “Yes. And I must say, it’s rather a bother when the whole world suddenly knows all about your secret life.”
“I am sorry, Ms. Atkins,” said Halabi. “I didn’t mean to come across as a smart arse. I’m sure it must be very difficult.”
“No more so than your own situation.”
“Lieutenant Poulsson is from Norway,” Harry told her.
The light suddenly went on for her. “Ah. I see. The heavy water plant.”
“Yes, Captain,” said Poulsson. “It is still there. We know it. And they know that we know. It’s a most unfortunate situation. What you would call a sticky wicket, I believe.”
Halabi understood now that she’d been summoned to London to receive orders concerning one of the key facilities in the Reich’s atomic program. Most likely, they wanted her to destroy it. Norwegian commandos had originally attacked it in 1943, after an earlier raid by British forces had failed abysmally. In this world, however, that first raid had yet to take place. And there was every chance that the Nazis knew all about the way things were supposed to play out.
They may even have had access to a copy of the Hollywood movie, or the BBC miniseries that told the story of the “the heroes of Telemark.”
“Unfortunately, we have no land attack missiles left,” Halabi said. “But surely the Havoc does? Or one of the Task Force surface ships? They could take it out without any fuss at all.”
Churchill grunted in exasperation. “Indeed they could, Captain. But Prime Minister Curtin will not release any of the forces currently assigned to the defense of Australia. And the Clinton’s battle group, or what remains of it, is still in the Pacific en route to San Diego. It will be some time before they’re in any position to help. Assuming, of course, that they would. Admiral Kolhammer seems to think of himself as something akin to a Chinese warlord, and he reacts to direct orders as if they were nothing more than gentle suggestions.”
The destroyer captain said nothing.
When it was obvious she wouldn’t take the bait, Churchill waved the issue away with another irritated mumble. “Well, we’re not here to discuss your colleagues, or their continued refusal to accept the new realities. I need you and His Highness to undertake a mission of the utmost importance. The destruction, as you certainly must have surmised, of the heavy water factory in Telemark.”
“Is there some reason it has to happen immediately?” Halabi asked.
Jens Poulsson spoke up. “We maintain contact with some of our sources at the plant. The Germans are about to move ten thousand gallons of heavy water. We do not know where, but regardless, they cannot be allowed to do so. They must have learned of the original raids that took place in your history. So they have decided to act quickly.”
“But if your source is still alive and in touch,” she reasoned, “the Germans obviously cannot possess perfect knowledge of the plant’s history. Otherwise, they’d know about him. They must have picked up scraps here and there from the lattice cache on the Sutanto. But not the whole story.”
“It hardly matters,” countered Churchill. “The point is, they must be stopped. And the plant must be taken out of action—permanently. If they succeed with their atomic program, we will be utterly defenseless. And if Britain falls, it will make it just that much harder for the U.S. to strike, particularly at such a great distance.
“I fear, Captain Halabi, that the Axis powers are now less interested in global conquest than they are in holding their current gains, and they hope to do so by getting access to these ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ as you call them. They want Britain and, I suppose, Australia, largely to deny America any base usable for a counterattack.”
“I see,” said Halabi before addressing the Norwegian. “And you have some plan in mind, I suppose.”
“We do,” replied Poulsson, “but it requires your help, and the prince’s, for it to have any chance of success, particularly at such short notice.”
“No notice, really,” said Harry.
“Indeed,” the SOE man conceded.
Halabi looked down and realized she was standing next to William Pitt’s writing desk. Somehow, it seemed very small. “You’ll need the Trident to move Major Windsor’s men, and Lieutenant Poulsson’s, too, I imagine. Into Norwegian waters, for the assault.”
“Exactly,” confirmed Harry. “I’ll be taking two squads. Poulsson and two others will come with us. We’re to rendezvous on the ground with local resistance fighters who will get us to the plant. We’ll need to chopper in and out.”
“Can
you do it?” asked Miss Atkins.
Halabi did not reply immediately. She took a few moments to consider the variables as best she could: the need to sneak past the Kriegsmarine; the chance that, with forewarning, the Nazis would simply be waiting for them in the fjords or at the plant itself; the odds of making it back after the strike alerted the Germans to their presence; the possible cost of losing the Trident, balanced against the risk of Hitler getting his hands on a nuclear weapon. This last one was the most important consideration of course.
The Nemesis battlespace arrays of her ship gave the British high command virtually total awareness of the tactical situation in the local theater. The Luftwaffe could not launch raids of any size on the nation’s capital—or anywhere else in the southern half of the United Kingdom, for that matter—without the Allies knowing of it almost immediately. Admiral Raeder could not put his relatively weak naval forces to sea to protect any invasion fleet while he faced certain destruction at her hands.
The Germans knew that the Trident was the linchpin of England’s defense, and they had spent enormous amounts of blood and treasure trying to take her out. The Allies, on the other hand, could not afford to lose her, which was why she had never sortied to directly engage the German capital ships, and why so many fighters that should have been protecting British airfields against bombing raids were instead assigned to covering her arse.
If the Trident appeared in hostile waters, Göring would probably send his entire air force against her. But if she remained here and Poulsson and Atkins were right about the atomic plant, the question of the Trident’s survival would become moot anyway.
Halabi shrugged and looked at Churchill. “I don’t know if we can do it sir. But we can give it a damn good shake.”
Churchill nodded. “England expects that every man, and woman, will do their best.”
* * *
As the two SOE agents left, the PM asked Halabi and Harry to stay for a moment. The attendant who had shown her in appeared with a trolley that rattled with a collection of teapots and china cups. The prime minister shooed him away, offering to pour the tea himself.
Designated Targets — Axis Of Time Book II Page 24
