“There will be no escape from justice for those responsible for starting this war,” he continued. “Or for those who have committed crimes in its prosecution. But your people do not need to share in that punishment. The invasion of your Home Islands for which you are preparing will not come. No American soldier will set foot there while we remain at war. There is now no reason for them to do so. Lay down your arms, and we will come peacefully, to help you rebuild and to take your place in the community of civilized nations. Resist us and you will be destroyed. There will be no glory, no honor in such resistance. Only the most abject folly. Your warrior spirit will count for nothing inside the fireball of an atomic explosion. Such human or spiritual considerations are irrelevant. You have twenty-four hours to reply.”
Again, he allowed a small pause to add gravity to his words. The faces of the military men in the room were somber, and largely unreadable. Henry Stimson, his secretary of war, was nodding grimly, but with noticeable enthusiasm. It was Stimson who had argued strongly-and in the end, effectively-for delaying their first atomic strike until they had a sufficient store of weapons to launch equally devastating follow-up strikes and, just as important, enough planes to deliver them as far as Moscow if need be. It was the only way to dissuade the Soviet Union from any misadventures. Truth was, Roosevelt could have ordered the destruction of Berlin at any time in the last three months, and he knew that years from now there were going to be historians damning him for not having done so. If he had been planning to run in the next election, there would doubtless have been some dunderheads who accused him of letting Americans die needlessly while he built up a stockpile of A-bombs that could have saved their lives.
But in his heart, Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew that they did not die needlessly. Stimson was right. With no knowledge of how far any Communist atomic program had advanced, there was no alternative to building a deterrent that was immediately available and credible. When Lodz had disappeared inside a mushroom cloud, that debate had ended.
In the brief moment while he drew his breath he glanced over to his wife, who smiled at him with such understanding and kindness that it nearly broke his heart. He pressed on.
“And finally to you, my fellow citizens of this great republic, and to our friends and allies throughout the free world, I can only say, thank you. In our history books it is presidents, prime ministers, and generals who are credited with winning wars, but those books are wrong. It is you, all of you, who have worked and fought and sacrificed so much these last years, to whom victory belongs. Unfortunately I cannot promise you that peace is with us just yet. I cannot force our enemies to see reason if they are intent on blinding themselves to it. But I can promise you that we will not spend one life more than necessary to bring them to account. And if that means burning them from the face of the planet, then so be it.
“Thank you for listening, and good-bye.”
He held the blank gaze of the middle camera lens until the producer signaled that they were done. It was a weird unnatural thing, sitting there with a silly grin on your face, and not something he saw himself ever growing used to. Harry S was welcome to it.
Polite applause broke out among the civilians as he relaxed.
“Well, do you think they’ll get the message, Henry?” he asked Stimson.
“Who, Mr. President? The Japanese or the Russians?”
“Both of them.”
D-DAY + 42. 14 JUNE 1944. 1705 HOURS.
THE KREMLIN, MOSCOW.
“You! You are responsible. This is your fault!”
Beria could feel his bowels turning loose and watery as Stalin pounded the table and shouted at him in front of the whole Politburo. The fact that they were meeting at such an unusual hour was evidence enough of a crisis. Stalin’s dark, knitted brows, and the pipe lying broken on the empty table in front of him, confirmed the worst. He was in a killing fury of such unbridled intensity that nobody dared speak, or even look sideways at the object of his anger, lest the supreme leader of the workers’ state suddenly transfer his wrath. Even Malenkov kept his eyes studiously downcast, and he could always be counted on to revel in any misfortune that befell Laventry Beria.
“But I am not responsible for the Americans’ atomic program,” the NKVD chief protested. “I am responsible for our own, and that has delivered more than I was asked.”
“Three bombs!” thundered Stalin. “Three puny little bombs to their, what, dozens? Hundreds? Does anybody have any idea? Any idea at all? No! And these planes they have flown from the middle of their deserts to the middle of Germany. What do we know about them? How many do they have? Can we shoot them down? Or does the Rodina now lie open before them like some drunken washerwoman with her ankles up around her ears? Nothing! You know nothing!”
Beria had to protest that. His life depended on it. “But we do know about these planes. They are called B-52s. Stratofortresses. They fly at over a thousand kilometers an hour, not much more than our Tupolevs. Perhaps even less. At best they have a maximum range of thirteen thousand kilometers, not much more than our bombers. We have always assumed they would build these things, and they have. It is not a surprise at all!”
Stalin hammered the desk with his fist, once, making a water jug jump two centimeters off the polished walnut surface. “You looked very fucking surprised when the Americans sent over a copy of Roosevelt’s speech. And anyone can read a computer file. I do not want to be quoted old Wikipedia articles about this new bomber. I want to know how many they have. How many they can produce. And how many atomic bombs can they put on them this very day.”
Mercifully, Stalin allowed his fearsome gaze to widen, encompassing the entire Politburo.
“I want to know if we can beat them now. Timoshenko, what say you?”
The Soviet defense minister, the formidable peasant warrior from the Ukraine, jutted his chin upward. He at least would not be cowed. “If they have no more bombs, yes. We can roll over them. If they have three to five, a parity of atomic force with us, it will still be possible. But if Roosevelt is speaking truthfully and they have ‘many’ more bombs, even double or triple our number, we cannot hope to prevail.”
The Vozhd turned his malign glare back toward Beria. “And does the NKVD have even the slightest idea of what remains in their atomic arsenal?”
Beria’s heart, already racing, lurched in his chest. Keeping his voice as calm as possible, he spoke quietly but forcefully. “We have all known that the reactionaries gained a great intelligence gift, the value of hindsight, from the libraries of Kolhammer’s ships. Dozens of our operations were instantly compromised. Our British networks with few exceptions were wrenched out root and branch. We lost our best sources who could have answered that question, and we have known that for years.”
Fear was giving his argument some impetus now. He had managed to stop gulping and stammering, and a sense of genuine indignation animated his speech.
“But we can still use our brains. Look at the Berlin raid. Three warheads used on one target, completely annihilating it. They would not have been so wasteful if they had no other weapons. And this demand of Roosevelt’s, that the Japanese surrender and submit to immediate occupation or face the systematic destruction of their cities. It is meant for us as much as them. But it cannot be a bluff because if a day passes and they cannot deliver on the ultimatum, we will know them to be lying. No. I suspect they have enough bombs to destroy at least three or four major Japanese cities, with still enough in reserve to employ on the battlefield against us if they have to.”
Timoshenko nodded his shaven head, lending Beria some unexpected support. “That is logical, Comrade General Secretary. The three bombs that hit Berlin convince me. It would be madness to have wasted them so if they did not have more. Yes, it sends a message to us. But I cannot see it as a bluff.”
Stalin appeared to hang on the edge of a precipice. He could have gone one way or another; exploding again, or taking the answer in calmly and reasonably. To Beria’s great
relief, reason won out.
“So why, if they had some many bombs, did they wait until now to use them? They could have annihilated the fascists with one big raid.”
“And that would have left an empty Europe at our feet,” said Beria. “They needed forces on the ground to contest that ground with us. Plus, they have no stomach for anything that gets too hard. Would we send six million men to fight in a radioactive battlefield? Of course, if it meant victory. Would they? No. They could not. They are beholden to their bourgeois classes. They simply cannot act with our freedom. Plus, we must remember first principles. They are capitalists. To destroy a host of French and German cities is to destroy a vast storehouse of capital that they would otherwise seize for their own use. Like Timoshenko, I do not think they are bluffing. I believe they have many more atomic warheads.”
Stalin drummed his fingers on the table. “It is a poor correlation of forces we face-”
Beria was bold enough now to interrupt him. “But it is not, Comrade Secretary. We control so much more of Europe than we did at the end of the war in the Other Time. Our forces are largely unopposed in China and much of continental Asia. We have the men in place to demand a division of Japan. If we can consolidate our hold over these gains, we will control much of the world in five years. An excellent correlation of forces.”
The spymaster risked a glance around the long table. He quickly surmised that well over half the assembled ministers and military officers were in agreement with him. Others, like Malenkov, maintained a studied neutrality.
“Timoshenko,” said Stalin, “I want the truth. Can Zhukov and Konev break through the German defenses where they have deployed their chemical weapons?”
The defense minister shook his head. “Not without using our atomics. And once they have gone, we will stand naked before the Americans. We need those weapons to stop them from attacking us. We know that Churchill and some American generals are in favor of doing just that. And Kolhammer has spoken openly of the need to do away with us.”
At the mention of the infamous naval commander a ripple of anger and disgust traveled around the table. Beria had a whole section of his intelligence services devoted to the top commanders of the former Multinational Force, but by far the greatest number of analysts was assigned to Kolhammer. His every public utterance, and some of his private ones, was studied with great intensity. More than once Foreign Minister Molotov had called on the U.S. ambassador to protest yet another insulting and dangerous statement by the commandant of the Special Administrative Zone. It was infuriating, the way he was allowed to run wild. He was worse even than MacArthur or Patton.
Before Stalin could speak again, there was a knock on the huge double doors that sealed them into the committee room. An NKVD colonel appeared, seeking permission to enter. Stalin nodded, and he hurried over to Beria. Bending forward and whispering into his ear. As he listened, the spymaster’s balls contracted right into his body. His throat tightened with fear. He had to pour a glass of ice water with a shaking hand to compose himself before relaying the message.
“Well?” growled Stalin. “Good news, I hope.”
“I…I’m sorry, Comrade General Secretary,” said Beria. “No. It is not good news. A Japanese carrier has launched over a hundred suicide planes at the Kamchatka facility. Our MiGs shot down most of them. But nine made it through. Three of them dived into the reactor building. It has been destroyed. Most of the facility has been destroyed.”
For once, Stalin surprised him. Rather than exploding he simply shook his head, like a man who has just seen a dancing two-headed dog. “But how? How did they get near enough? Was the navy not patrolling those waters? Timoshenko?”
The defense minister looked aghast. “Most of our modern ships were deployed to the Kuril campaign. But we did leave some advanced destroyers in place.”
“Not enough,” said Beria. “They’re gone, too.”
“It must be the Americans,” said Molotov, the foreign minister. “They must have had a hand in this. Just as they let the fascists escape from Western Europe, they have let this Japanese carrier escape. They must have. How else would Yamamoto have known where to strike?”
Beria turned back to Stalin with the greatest reluctance, expecting to find those cold, dark eyes on him, blaming him. But the Soviet leader was lost, deep in thought. Silence descended on the room for a long time. Laventry Beria peeked out of a window, where the heavy drapes had come apart a few inches, allowing him a view of what appeared to be a glorious late-afternoon sky.
“I have decided,” said Stalin.
D-DAY + 43. 15 JUNE 1944. 0749 HOURS.
IN-FLIGHT, SEA OF JAPAN.
The Red Army Air Force did not run to the luxury of in-flight refueling, but with a range of seventy-two hundred kilometers, the short hop from Vladivostok to Japan would not stretch the capabilities of the Tu-16. It was a stretch for Kapitдn Gadalov and his crew, however. They had flown the length of the USSR, through eleven time zones, stopping to refuel three times. That had been a cautionary measure, but one the men had appreciated, as it allowed them to disembark for an hour to stretch their legs and breath some fresh air.
The coast of the Rodina slipped away behind them. The squadron leader of the fighter escorts waved to them as the morning sun glinted off the bubble canopy of his MiG-15. He, too, had flown across the vast expanse of the republic but, with a much more limited range, had set off two days earlier and been forced to land for refueling more than a dozen times. It would have been easier to use one of the squadrons based out here in the east, but Moscow insisted on using the same personnel and equipment as in the original raid on Lodz.
Gadalov did not mind. It was an honor to serve the people and workers of the Soviet state, and to be chosen twice for such a mission was a rare distinction. He had been lavishly fкted since Lodz. His pension had been increased to the level of a general’s, and his family had been moved out of their cramped apartment in Kiev into a dacha that had once belonged to a Romanov prince. A true believer in the revolution, however, he was happier simply to have served his comrades and, as everyone said privately, to have sent a warning to the capitalist West: they should not imagine the Soviet Union was going to disappear anytime soon.
“Two hours to go, precisely,” announced Lieutenant Gologre, his navigator-bombardier.
Gadalov acknowledged the update.
If he had any regrets about what he was about to do, they were simply that these bombs would not be dropped on the Nazis. As much as the Japs needed punishing for what they’d done to the Pacific fleet, he reserved a dark little corner of his heart for the so-called master race. He could only hope that he would soon be back over the skies of Germany with another bomb bay full of nuclear fire.
D-DAY + 43. 15 JUNE 1944. 0922 HOURS.
TOKYO.
The grounds of the Imperial Palace were always beautiful, but Emperor Hirohito particularly enjoyed them at this time of year. It was not as picturesque as during the cherry blossom festival in April, of course. But there was something exquisite in the warm stillness of the morning in summer. It was as if time itself were suspended while the day hovered on the edge of creation. Hirohito thought anything might be possible. His people might be saved. His throne delivered from the threat of the godless Communists and arrogant Yankees. Why, Prime Minister Tojo had sent word this very morning of another stunning victory over the Bolsheviks somewhere in their northeastern territories. An attack by the navy on some secret atomic facility. As long as the empire could still reach out to strike and cripple the enemy like that, there was hope. Even with Admiral Yamamoto dead and the Combined Fleet gone, there must be hope. He had personally approved of Yamamoto’s approach to the Emergence barbarian Kolhammer. The admiral had thought him the most likely of their enemies to see reason, and that had not changed.
But had Kolhammer responded to the message?
If he had not had time, might he still do so, before it was too late to stop the Communists?
&nb
sp; The emperor paused on a small wooden bridge to listen to the trickle of water and the trilling of a night heron, up well past its bedtime.
He died listening to birdsong as a small, brilliant sun bloomed overhead.
D-DAY + 43. 15 JUNE 1944. 1153 HOURS.
HMAS HAVOC, SEA OF OKHOTSK.
“Target lock, skipper.”
“Thank you, weapons. On my mark-”
“Begging your pardon, Captain, but you may need to see this.”
Captain Jane Willet felt a brief flicker of irritation, but suppressed it immediately. Her crew were well trained, and would not interrupt her without good reason. She stepped away from the offensive systems bay and raised an eyebrow at her duty comm officer.
“Yes, Mr. McKinney?”
“Flash traffic on Fleetnet, ma’am. Immediate cessation of hostilities in the Pacific. All units to hold position, further orders to follow in an hour.”
Before she could say anything, more text scrolled across the screen in front of her young officer. She saw his eyes go wide, just for a moment. The Combat Center of the submarine was already hushed and taut as they prepared to put a torpedo into the Nagano, but she was aware that the tension suddenly seemed to ratchet up a few notches for everyone on duty.
“Tokyo has been confirmed destroyed by an atomic strike of Soviet origin. Japanese national command has shifted to Hashirajima Naval Base, with Admiral Moshiro Hosogaya acting as chief of the Imperial general headquarters. He has formally contacted Admiral Spruance to offer an unconditional surrender.”
“Bugger me,” said Roy Flemming, her boat chief. “They nuked Tokyo for Kamchatka, eh? Mad bastards.”
Willet eyed the defenseless carrier steaming southward on the huge flatscreen to her left. There were no planes spotted on its flight deck. It had carried nothing but jet-powered Ohkas, and every one of them had been launched at the Soviet nuclear site. Farther up the body of the submarine a smaller screen played video of the three Soviet destroyers she’d been forced to sink to allow the Nagano to carry out its mission. Before they reached port her IT boss would scrub away every quantum flicker of evidence linking the Australian submarine to their demise; the contemporary government would never be informed.
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