Hoover looked stunned. His mouth opened and closed twice without a sound coming out.
“That’ll be all, Edgar.”
The FBI director seemed incapable of movement. It was as though he had gripped a naked electric wire, and couldn’t let go.
A Secret Service agent appeared through the Oval Office door.
He whispered something in Hoover’s ear and gently took his elbow, guiding him toward the door. With only two exceptions, everybody in the room found something fascinating to look at, somewhere off in the middle distance. The exceptions were President Roosevelt and Admiral Kolhammer.
Black could have sworn that a flicker of a smile played across the president’s face. And Kolhammer had somehow positioned himself near the exit without Black ever seeing him move there. He leaned over to give Hoover a comradely, reassuring pat on the back as he passed by. It looked like a genuinely compassionate gesture by the admiral, unless you heard what he actually said, as only Dan Black could.
“Hey, Edna. Loved the kimono.”
“Have you ever considered a career in politics, Admiral?” Roosevelt kept the grin from his face as he asked, but the tone of his question was playful.
Kolhammer played it straight down the line. “I really don’t believe it’s appropriate for serving military officers to publicly involve themselves in the political process, Mr. President.”
“Really?”
The Oval Office was empty, save for the two of them. The others had all left some twenty minutes earlier. A storm front was coming in from the west. Gusts of wind pasted wet leaves against the windows. Roosevelt wondered whether Kolhammer was just being polite. He might well be a registered Republican.
“You don’t think that was politics, Admiral? Sandbagging Hoover like that? Is it common practice for the military in your day to put spies on the tail of civil servants they don’t like?”
A smile crinkled a fine network of wrinkles at the corner of Kolhammer’s eyes. “We’ve had some trouble with apparent espionage efforts in the Zone, Mr. President. It’s what you’d expect, with so much advanced R and D going on there now. So it was only natural for my security to mount an effort to close down the operation.”
“On your own.”
“We had interagency help. From the Secret Service and the OSS. You can imagine our surprise when the trail led us to a hotel room in Florida. And the terrible shock of finding Mr. Hoover there. In a kimono.”
Roosevelt snorted, unable to contain himself. “I think he’d call it a bathrobe. Tell me, Admiral, what was the Secret Service and Colonel Donovan doing offering interagency help for a domestic security matter? That’s not within their fief?”
“Nobody knew that, until they knew it, sir,” the admiral replied. Completely deadpan. “When I received the data from my security people—” He nodded at the video stick Roosevelt was rolling around in his palm. “—I immediately informed the other services that we had a problem. It was the considered opinion of us all that the only way to resolve the matter was to take it to the chief executive.”
“I’ll bet it was,” said Roosevelt. His mouth felt like it was full of dry leaves and dust. He wanted to know a lot more about these “security people” of Kolhammer’s who’d caught the FBI director with his pants down. They didn’t sound like your run-of-the-mill night watchmen. Still, if there were problems here, there was also opportunity. An especially strong gust of wind threw a heavy twig into the window behind him. He expected to hear thunder start up in the next few minutes.
The admiral remained sitting at ease in front of him, giving nothing away.
“I imagine you’ll want to know what I’m going to do about this?” said Roosevelt.
“It’s really none of my business, except where it impinges upon the security of the Special Administrative Zone, Mr. President.”
“No,” Roosevelt agreed. “It’s not.”
He said nothing else, expecting to draw Kolhammer out with his silence. But the admiral remained po-faced. “Well, I’m not going to sack him today, if that’s what you were hoping. But then as I understand it, in your day, what a man does in the privacy of his own home is his own business. Is that right?”
“It is, Mr. President. In his home . . . or his motel room.”
Roosevelt contained a chuckle with only the fiercest of efforts. He wondered how on earth Kolhammer did it.
He placed the video stick into a desk drawer.
“What matters now are results, Admiral. Mr. Hoover knows I want results on the questions of who set those bombs, and how they managed it. If he is to have a future as director of the FBI, he’ll get me those results.”
For the first time Kolhammer offered something without being asked. “He’d get them a lot quicker if he didn’t have so many agents crawling around the Zone. Or following your wife, with all due respect, Mr. President.”
Roosevelt used his tongue to work free a piece of meat that stuck between his teeth during lunch. It covered his reaction to Kolhammer’s comment about Eleanor. He’d been livid when he’d seen the data about how Hoover had been opening her mail and having her followed around. But he wasn’t about to lay that card on the table. As much as he’d come to respect and even like Phillip Kolhammer, he still wasn’t a hundred percent sure about him. After all, he could well be a Republican, couldn’t he?
“I’ll make sure the Bureau stops wasting its time in California, Admiral. You can be certain of that.”
“I’d like to be, Mr. President.”
Roosevelt patted the desk where he’d deposited the data stick. “You can.”
28
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
True Grit was the best goddamn movie Eddie Mohr had ever seen. It was a hell of a shock, seeing John Wayne all fat and old and grizzled, but Mohr had seen enough birthdays to have no trouble imagining himself like that, so it wasn’t entirely a bad thing. After all, even missing one eye and carrying a huge spare tire, Rooster Cogburn didn’t give much away in the ass-kickin’ stakes.
Mohr had seen the movie five times now: two times for free on the base up at San Diego, and three times on his own dollar at a theater in downtown L.A., where he was now. The youngsters, they all preferred that Star Wars shit, but it just left him cold. How you could get into something that was so far removed from reality, he just didn’t know. But True Grit was as real a story as he’d ever seen, even the bit at the end with John Wayne doing his one-man cavalry charge, reins between his teeth, six-shooter in one hand and Winchester in the other. That was a great fucking ending, not like that dumbass Apocalypse Now. He’d had to see that one in the Zone, because it was banned everywhere else, and he wondered why the hell he’d bothered when that bald bastard chopped up that poor fucking cow.
Mohr shook the image from his head as Marshal Cogburn yelled at the bad guys to fill their hands. After three weeks without a break, he was gonna enjoy—
“Oh, goddamn. What now?”
The lights in the theater came up, and the management came on over the PA, telling everyone they had to get out in a fast but orderly fashion. Luckily Grauman’s Egyptian Theater, a less famous cousin to Grauman’s Chinese a few blocks west, was only a third full, because there was nothing orderly about the way most of the patrons suddenly flew for the exits. Some idiot even shouted that there had to be a bomb in the joint.
Mohr rolled his eyes to heaven. He dawdled at the rear of the crush, ready to start pulling people off each other if it got out of hand. But the ushers and the good sense of a couple of other customers prevented a serious bottleneck from building up. As the choke point cleared, he saw a couple of AF uniforms at the exit. A black airman and a white sailor.
“Hey, you guys know what’s up?” he asked.
The black guy, a flight sergeant, inclined his head toward the manager in the lobby, who was quickly handing out refunds and trying to hurry the stragglers outside. “He said a bomb went off on a trolley car over at Van Nuys. The city is shutting down the electric railwa
y and all sorts of stuff. Like theaters, I guess.”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” said Mohr.
“Hey, chief, how we gonna get back if they shut down the rail?” asked the sailor, a young middie whose name tag read LINTHICUM.
“Initiative, Mr. Linthicum. Let’s get out of here and find a bus. You coming with us, Sarge?”
Fight Sergeant Lloyd thought it best if he did.
They collected their refunds and stepped out into the bright light of a warm autumn morning. Mohr was still squinting into the sun when the tomato hit him.
“What the fuck?”
A rotting apple struck Lloyd on the head.
The fruit came from a rowdy group across the street, which he’d mistaken for disgruntled movie patrons. They were bunched up where roadworks partly blocked the footpath. Looking at them now, Mohr could tell that they were off-duty sailors and soldiers, all ’temps. There were about fifteen or twenty of them, and the way they’d gathered around in a tight group, all turned inward, he could tell somebody was about to get the shit kicked out of him.
A cruising police car slowed down as it passed by; then it sped up and disappeared around the block.
“Shit,” said Mohr. “You guys gonna back me up?”
He headed across without waiting for their reply. Lloyd fell in beside him, with Linthicum bringing up the rear.
As they got closer, dodging in between the traffic, he heard somebody call out, “Hey, it’s the nigger lovers and their boy.”
With that, it didn’t matter that they were outnumbered. Mohr was past thinking rationally. He grabbed a steel picket and wrenched it out of a pile of earth and broken asphalt.
A corporal came at him with his fists up, but Mohr just swung the heavy iron bar into his face with such casual violence that he might have been taking the top off a boiled egg. The corporal’s head snapped back with a wet crack and three or four teeth flew out. As he dropped, Mohr swung an overhand blow onto his shoulder, feeling it break like a soft twig.
The dark energy holding the group together drained away instantly, allowing him to get a better look at what had been happening. A kid in a torn AF uniform was down, already unconscious and covered in blood. Half his faced had been pulped. Mohr didn’t know him, but he looked like some sort of Mexican.
“He’s a fucking zoot-suiter, Chief. He deserved it.”
Mohr turned a pitiless eye on the man who’d spoken, a big dumb bastard in an army uniform. “You want some of this, shit head?” He held up the steel rod, which was noticeably stained with the corporal’s blood.
The private backed down. “No, sir.”
“Do you think you could help him up, Mr. Linthicum?” Mohr asked the midshipman he’d met inside.
The young man nodded. He and Lloyd pushed their way in through the crowd. It was then that Eddie Mohr finally realized there was something else wrong. He hadn’t paid attention to the sound of sirens when they’d emerged on the street, but now that he did, they were everywhere. And at least five or six columns of smoke were visible rising over the city.
“What the fuck’s been going on here?” he asked.
WASHINGTON, D.C.
“More bombs?” asked Kolhammer.
“No, sir,” said Black. “Riots. Both in Chicago and L.A.”
They’d moved from the White House to the War Department offices in the Munitions Building on Constitution Avenue, for a smaller meeting. Just the two of them with Eisenhower, and his secretary to take notes. Kolhammer had wondered whether they might meet Kay Summersby, but then remembered that Ike himself wouldn’t meet her until he got to England. Who knew if that would ever happen now.
He’d been waiting on Eisenhower, dwelling on the ripples of blood and consequence his arrival had created, when both his and Commander Black’s flexipads beeped with incoming traffic.
Black scanned the message first and told him what had happened. “It’s weird, sir. It looks like your zoot suit riot in L.A., and the black riot that would have happened in Chicago in your nineteen forty-three. They’re early, though. And quite a few of our people have been caught up in the violence, back in L.A.”
“Have they been specifically targeted?”
Black frowned and read more of the message from the Zone. “Hard to say. There’s some guy in a hospital, one of your sailors off the Leyte Gulf, says he was attacked by a mob which blamed him for Hawaii and the bombings and for the Japs invading. But the police radio is carrying lots more reports of sailors and soldiers ganging up on the local pachucos.”
“And in Chicago?”
“Straight out black-and-white race riot. A big one. But nothing on why yet.”
Kolhammer had his own ideas about why, but he kept them to himself for the moment.
Eisenhower turned up at that point. They’d scheduled this meeting to discuss what role Kolhammer’s units out West would play in the wider global conflict.
“Let’s talk worst-case scenarios first, Admiral,” he said. “What can you give me right now?”
Kolhammer beamed the relevant files across to Ike’s flexipad before passing across a hard copy. “There’s a test squadron of Sabers out at Muroc, which I’d be happy to certify as battle ready. Two prototype midair refuelers are good to go, which means we can get those planes over Hawaii if you choose. Of course, they won’t have a lot of payloads to deliver. The rockets are still in beta phase, but the cannons are fine. We’ve got ten thousand MK-One assault rifles, with grenade launchers, but we don’t have ground forces ready to deploy with them. Colonel Jones gave up a significant number of his people to supply training cadre, but it’s a slow business, and sending them now really means killing most of them, for no appreciable return.”
Eisenhower turned the problem over in his mind. “What about the First Marine Division?”
Kolhammer had hoped he might suggest that option. The First had never made it to Guadalcanal. The destruction of the Fleet at Midway had robbed the Allies of any means of getting them there, and Yamamoto had seized the opportunity as part of his mad dash south to take a stranglehold on the island, at the same time as he pushed nine divisions into New Guinea through Rabaul.
“MacArthur’s blooded them on the Brisbane Line,” said Kolhammer. “They’ve been working in with the Eighty-second, so they’d be familiar with our methods. The Aussies have been replacing their Lee Enfields with a thirty-aught-six Kalashnikov variant that’s a close copy of our MK-One. So the marines could train with them down there. I’d say they’re good to go.”
“MacArthur will scream blue murder. As will Curtin, and with good reason.”
“If the Japanese take Hawaii and keep it, Australia will go down, and New Zealand with it. We’ll be boxed in on the Pacific. And then the Atlantic, if England falls.”
Eisenhower turned around in his old, wooden swivel chair to look at the map that hung on the wall behind his head. “Okay. Leave the politics to me,” he said at last. “I’ll get the First marines ready for redeployment. Which raises the question of how we get them to Pearl with that rogue ship of yours lurking around.”
“The Siranui can escort them, if we turn her around right now. The Clinton’s close enough to San Diego that we can cover her with the Raptors we’ve got on shore.”
“How many Japanese do you have left on that vessel, Admiral? The Siranui?”
“Nine. All volunteers. They’ve been helping with the changeover to the Leyte Gulf’s crew. We couldn’t have done it without them. All of the software was in kanji script.”
“Good for them, but I’m afraid they’ll have to sit this one out.”
Kolhammer didn’t reply immediately. He’d fought very hard to keep his “enemy alien” personnel out of prison, and just as hard to protect the Siranui’s crew from the prejudices of the ’temps. He trusted each of them with his life, but he could understand Eisenhower’s point, and he could tell there’d be no shifting him on it.
“Okay,” he agreed reluctantly. “We can cross-deck them to the Cli
nton, for now. The software changeover is complete, anyway. But they’re going to be assigned to active duty under my command, General. I’ll not have them treated with a lack of honor.”
Eisenhower didn’t seem put out by that. Instead he threw Kolhammer off balance with a pause and a change of tack. “I thought you handled that scene in the Oval Office very well, Admiral. Hoover was really gunning for you.”
“He’s been gunning for all of us, from day one,” said Kolhammer. “Well, maybe day two, when he figured out that he had no secrets from us.”
“Rumors have been swirling around him for years,” said Eisenhower. “But he’s wounded, not crippled, Admiral. You’ll want to watch yourself.”
“I have bigger problems than that fruit and nut bar,” said Kolhammer.
“For now you do. That won’t always be the case.” Eisenhower waved a hand toward the map on the wall. “This isn’t the only war you’re fighting, Admiral. Don’t make the mistake of assuming you have to fight every battle on your own. Not everybody in this country is as frightened of the future as Mr. Hoover.”
“They should be,” replied Kolhammer. But he regretted doing so.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
The guy in the back of the car was beginning to spasm and vomit up bile. Mohr thought they might lose him before they made it to the hospital. The driver, some Good Samaritan who’d surprised the hell out of Eddie by pulling over and offering to help, kept veering into the oncoming traffic as he craned around to ask if the kid was going to make it.
“I don’t know,” said Eddie. “They fucked him up pretty good.”
Flight Sergeant Lloyd was in the front passenger seat, while in the back Mohr and Linthicum nursed the unconscious victim of the mob attack. The chief had been forced to crack another one of those losers across the head with his makeshift club to get them to break it up. He’d belted a sailor with blood on his bell-bottoms, figuring that was as good as a guilty verdict in a proper court.
Designated Targets — Axis Of Time Book II Page 39
