The Prime Minister's Secret Agent
Page 21
The two men looked at each other. “They’re going to attack at one, Eastern Standard Time,” Kramer said.
Bratton started to pull on his jacket. “I’ll find General Marshall, you find Admiral Stark.” He looked up at the clock with wild eyes. “We still have time.”
“Dr. McNeil?” Maggie said, pushing open the door to the veterinarian’s office.
The doctor was at his desk, his bushy white hair as wild as ever, typing up invoices with his two pointer fingers. “Who are you?”
“Maggie Hope. I adopted the cat from your office last week.”
“Well, I wouldn’t have recognized you, Doreen. You’re not half as pale and pinched as you were. But you can’t give the cat back. No matter how obnoxious he is.”
“No, no—the cat’s fine,” she said. “Dr. McNeil, I know you only work with animals—”
“Farm animals, lassie. Large brutes of the field. No dogs and no cats.”
She looked at his typing. It was riddled with errors. “What about humans? A human’s an animal. Sometimes not even as noble as animals.”
“What are you getting at, lassie?”
Maggie took off her coat and untucked her blouse, revealing the flesh just above her waist. The scar from the bullet was red and angry.
“Looks like you have an infection, there.”
“I have a bullet there,” Maggie retorted. “And it needs to come out. I’d like you to do it.”
“I don’t do cats and dogs—and I don’t do humans. Go find a people doctor—Fort William has a few. I can make a call—”
“Dr. McNeil,” Maggie interrupted, “I want it removed now. It’s been in there far too long, and now it’s time to come out. And,” she added, with a sly smile, “I’m an expert typist—even typed for Prime Minister Winston Churchill once upon a time. I’m sure I can help you with this batch of invoices. What do you say?”
The vet glared. “You drive a hard bargain, lass.”
Maggie grinned. “I do.”
“Should I even ask why you’re carryin’ around a bullet in yer middle?”
“Probably not. But let’s get it out now, shall we?”
Bratton burst into the offices of the Deputy Chief of Staff of Intelligence. “Where’s the General?” he barked.
The assistant covering the desk was freckled, slight, and fair-haired. “It’s—it’s Sunday morning, sir.”
Bratton exhaled with impatience. “I’ll need to use your phone,” he said, reaching for the receiver.
“Yes, this is Colonel Bratton,” he said. “Connect me with the Chief of Staff, General Marshall.” He began drumming on the desktop with his fingertips. “Yes, at his quarters in Fort Myer.”
There was an interminable wait while Bratton listened to the piercing ring of the telephone. He kept checking his watch. Finally, someone at Fort Myer picked up. “This is Colonel Bratton,” he repeated. “I need to speak with the General, ASAP.”
He rubbed at the back of his neck with his free hand. “What do you mean he’s not there?”
Then, “He’s out riding? Well, somebody better mount up and gallop after him!”
In the Japanese Embassy, the clicks and clacks of hunt-and-peck typing ceased. The typist, sweaty and disheveled from his efforts, burst into Ambassador Nomura’s office, where he and Special Envoy Kurusu were waiting. They, too, had been up all night, and while their posture was impeccable, there were violet circles under their eyes.
The typist bowed deeply, then said, “Here’s another part of the document, sir.” He cleared his throat. “We are instructed to deliver the fourteen-part message at exactly one P.M., sir.”
They all looked to the grandfather clock in the corner of Nomura’s office. It was already after eleven.
“One P.M.?” Nomura shouted, standing. It was the first time the usually placid man had ever raised his voice in the office, and the other men stared at him, mouths agape. “Hurry! Or else we’ll never have it ready for Secretary Hull in time!”
Kramer had reached the office of Admiral Harold Rainsford Stark, Chief of Naval Operations, out of breath, his white silk scarf undone, threatening to slip from around his neck. He handed the document to the Admiral, who looked askance at Kramer’s demeanor, his own thick white hair perfectly combed and square jaw set.
Stark left Kramer standing as he read through the document, taking his time, while sunlight through the government-issue blinds cast lines across both men’s faces. A clock ticked on the mantel. Finally, Stark looked to Kramer. “This message indicates the Japanese are going to attack.”
Relief flooded Kramer’s face. “Yes, sir.”
“Thank you.” Stark waved a hand. “You may go now.”
Kramer shifted his weight. “Sir, as hostilities seem imminent, shouldn’t we telephone Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii?”
Stark’s eyes widened. The Admiral was not used to being told what to do. “No. I’m going to call the President first.” He looked Kramer up and down, taking his measure. “I need to speak to the President in private.”
Kramer saluted and left. When Stark called the number, it was busy.
Chapter Nineteen
At the large desk in his office, General George C. Marshall, Chief of Staff U.S. Army, looked over Bratton’s documents, as Colonel Bratton chewed the inside of his lip.
“The Japanese government,” Marshall read, “regrets to have to notify the American government hereby, that in view of the attitude of the American government, it cannot but consider that it is impossible to reach an agreement with further negotiations …”
He skimmed the rest of the papers, then looked up. “Colonel Bratton, I do believe you’re right. This document convinces me that the Japanese will attack at or shortly after one P.M. today.”
Bratton, who’d been dressed down by Marshall after the previous week’s false alarm, swelled with pride and relief. Marshall scrawled a message down on a piece of his personal stationery for distribution to the commanding generals in the Philippines, the Canal Zone, and the Presidio. It read: The Japanese are presenting at thirteen hundred EST today what amounts to an ultimatum. Also, they are under orders to destroy their code machines immediately. Just what importance the hour set may signify, we don’t know, but be on alert accordingly.
“Don’t you think we should let Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii know, too, sir?”
“Let me call Stark first,” Marshall said. He spoke a few minutes with Stark, and listened, and then hung up. “Admiral Stark doesn’t think any additional warning is necessary.”
The telephone rang, and it was Stark again; the Admiral had changed his mind. “Yes, sir—we’ll take care of it.” To the list of people getting the memo Marshall added in a scribble: Inform the Navy.
“Colonel Bratton, please take this to the communications center. They’ll get it out to Admiral Kimmel and the rest of them in the Pacific.”
“Yes, sir!” Bratton said, saluting.
“And if there’s any question of priority,” Marshall called after him, “get it to the Philippines first!”
Bratton ran down the hall to the Communications Center. “This is urgent!” he panted, thrusting the thick, engraved sheet out to Colonel Edward F. French, chief of Traffic Operations. “General Marshall wants it sent to all Pacific commanders by the fastest possible method!”
At his desk chair, French stared at the page for a long moment. He looked back to Bratton. “The General’s handwriting …” he said, shaking his head. “What a mess. I can’t read it. You’re going to have to help put it into some kind of legible copy.”
Bratton, at the limits of both patience and sanity, opened his mouth to spew profanities at the man—then closed it. He sat down to transcribe the note using the typewriter at the empty secretary’s desk, hunting and pecking one key at a time.
When he handed the typed message back to French, it was precisely two minutes before noon.
At the Japanese Embassy, Nomura’s typist was also still hunting and pecking. He t
ook off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He went back to the document, hit a wrong key. “Chikusho!” he swore, sweat breaking out on his upper lip. Then he crumpled up the piece of paper and threw it in the trash. He took out a fresh sheet and rolled it into the typewriter to try again.
In the office adjoining, Nomura paced while Kurusu sat absolutely still. “The typist still isn’t finished!”
Kurusu nodded, unruffled. “We will have to postpone our one o’clock meeting with Secretary Hull.”
Nomura ground his teeth in frustration.
Bratton hovered as Colonel French sent the message from General Marshall. Finally, French sent him away, saying everything was in the works, and it would take thirty to forty minutes to get through.
But French struggled with the messages, especially the one to Admiral Kimmel in Hawaii. He took the message himself to the signal center, but the channel to Fort Shafter had been out since ten thirty because of bad weather.
“Direct channel to Hawaii’s out, sir.” The aide was young and untried, and annoyed to be at the office on a Sunday morning.
“Shit!” French began pacing. “The weather’s that bad? No sign of it clearing?”
“No, sir. We—we could always give it to the Navy, sir.”
French shot him a deadly look. “Do you think the weather will be more cooperative for the Navy than it is for the Army?”
The young man shrank in his seat. “No, sir.”
French thought. “Well—then we’ll have to send the damn thing as a telegram! Call Western Union!”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
In his bed at his home in Honolulu, Kimmel was woken up by a shrill telephone. “Kimmel,” he grumbled into the receiver, feeling the effects of both the late night and the cocktails.
He listened. And sat up, eyes widening. Then he spoke. “Do you mean to say a submarine was reported, and shots were fired, and it’s taken you this long to report it to me? No—I don’t care if it still hasn’t been confirmed. I should have been informed immediately! Get the report and confirmation over to my office! On the double!” He threw both the telephone and receiver at the wall. It fell with a crash and the tinkle of bells.
“Honey—” his wife murmured from the bed, pushing away the quilt and rubbing her eyes.
“Not. Now. Dear,” Kimmel growled as he went to put on his uniform.
It was barely dawn in Honolulu when the telegrams finally came in to the Western Union office. “Messages for Admiral Kimmel and General Short, sir,” said a clerk, painfully thin with wide-set eyes.
“Are they marked urgent?” the manager asked. He was older, grayer, and had a cup of hot coffee and a Portuguese sweet roll on his desk he wanted to get back to.
The clerk looked over the document. “No, sir.”
“Then just type them up and put them in their respective boxes. Their secretaries’ll pick ’em up Monday morning.”
“I don’t have all the fancy anesthetic you might expect, being from London and all,” Dr. McNeil said, scrubbing his hands with soap and hot water. “But we Scots do claim Joseph Lister as our own—so no need to worry about infection.”
“That’s all right,” Maggie said, gritting her teeth.
“I think I have some brandy somewhere, if you want it …”
“No. No thanks.” Her hands gripped the table, her knuckles turning white.
Dr. McNeil examined the wound. “It’s close to the surface—that’s good,” he said, cleansing the area with raising antiseptic fluid on a cotton pad.
Just do it! Cut it out! was all Maggie could think.
And then he lowered the scalpel.
Clara felt in the darkness for the reading glasses she had next to her book. Dr. Carroll had even been kind enough to give her a leather case. Clara smiled as she opened it, then took out the glasses. She opened her blackout curtains and let the moonlight stream in.
She took the glasses and broke off both earpieces. She put one of the lenses under the leg of her chair, placing the glass carefully so that only one half of the lens would be crushed under the chair leg. She pushed down on the seat of the chair. Nothing happened. “Scheiß,” she muttered.
She sat down on the chair, and heard a satisfying crunch as the glass shattered. She knelt down to inspect the damage. There were splinters and shards of glass, which glinted in the moonlight. But there was one large piece.
She picked it up, holding it in her palm, almost as if weighing it. “Yes,” she said. “This will do. This will do nicely.” In the light of the moon, she smiled. “Through a glass darkly,” she muttered.
And then she slit her wrists.
Yamamoto waited in silence in his office, at his desk, eyes closed, a globe next to him.
There was a knock at the door, and “Sir!”
“Enter.”
The officer could barely contain his excitement. “Tora! Tora! Tora!” he exclaimed. “The strike force has achieved complete surprise!”
Yamamoto opened his eyes, his shoulders dropping slightly. He looked at the officer. “What about the U.S. aircraft carriers?”
The man’s face dropped. “At sea, sir.”
“And when did the U.S. government in Washington receive our final notification? Before hostilities commenced?”
“We’re still waiting to hear, sir. There have been some issues in getting a signal through to Washington.”
Yamamoto closed his eyes again and folded his white-gloved hands, as if in prayer. “The game hasn’t even begun.”
After hearing about the USS Ward’s bombing of an unidentified submarine in Hawaiian waters, Kimmel had canceled his golf date with General Martin and called for his driver. Even though it was Sunday morning, he was going in to the office.
There was a roll of thunderous noise from outside, but it went on too long to be thunder. Kimmel, uniform still unbuttoned, ran down the stairs to the front garden, along with his wife and the rest of the staff. From his front lawn he had a perfect view of Pearl Harbor.
They looked up at the sky and saw the outlines of Japanese Zero planes flying overhead, so close that the blowback nearly knocked them down. The morning sun had risen red, and its crepuscular rays looked like the flag of Japan.
Over Pearl Harbor, torpedoes began to fall and Admiral Kimmel, watching the destruction of the U.S. fleet, fell to his knees.
Chapter Twenty
When Clara regained consciousness, she was in a hospital.
Her wrists were bandaged in white gauze. An IV was stuck into a vein of her inner elbow.
There was a figure on the chair, a man in a rumpled suit, his usually perfectly Brylcreemed hair mussed, a file of papers, still unread, on his lap. He gazed, unseeing, out the window, at flakes of swirling snow.
But when he sensed Clara’s eyes open, he trained his eyes back to her.
“Peter,” she said, smiling weakly. “You came.”
“If you’d really wanted to kill yourself, you would have slit your carotid artery—you wouldn’t have wasted time with your wrists,” said Frain, unable to tear his eyes away from Clara’s.
She smiled, a satisfied cat-like smile. “I bought myself some more time,” she said. “I know British law. Even though I was scheduled to be shot the next morning, you wouldn’t have let me bleed out on the floor. The moral inconsistencies of your people amuse me to no end.”
Frain put his thumb and forefinger to the bridge of his nose.
“No,” Clara said. “I know your ways. I knew that you would hospitalize me, and wait until I’ve recovered, and then shoot me.” She smiled. “You British are so civilized.”
“Now that you’re awake, I’ll leave you in peace,” Frain said, gathering up his belongings.
“No, no,” Clara said, never taking her eyes from his. “It’s been, let’s see—how long? Twenty-five years now?” Her gaze flicked up and down his body. “You’ve aged well, Peter, I must admit. Except for the gray in your hair and a few more wrinkles, you look the same.”
“How do you know that?” she mocked. “You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’ve been through over there. In Germany … They’re insane—do you understand? Hitler is insane and he’s surrounded himself with yes-men who cater to his every whim. I did what I needed to do to stay alive. To keep my family in Berlin alive.” She looked at him, eyes wide. “I did what I had to, to survive.”
Frain put on his overcoat. “Yes, I’m sure,” he answered drily. “And what of your family here? Did you ever think about them? And now that you’re here, what of your family back in Germany?”
“Margaret, yes, of course. You know how I loved her. But Edmund—no. He was a means to an end. Miles—well, that marriage was dead long ago. And Elise …”
“Yes?”
Clara shook her head. “Too pious for her own good, but Elise is a survivor, too. I’ll bet on it.”
“And me?” he asked, putting on his hat and shrugging into his overcoat.
“Peter,” she said, her eyes green and wide. “I loved you. I always loved you. And we both know you loved me, too.”
The clock in Secretary Hull’s antechamber ticked as Ambassador Nomura and Special Envoy Kurusu waited. It was five minutes past two in Washington.
Hull was just finishing up a telephone conversation with President Roosevelt. “Yes, Mr. President,” he said, standing, his eyes like flint. “And it’s been confirmed by multiple sources?” Then he sat, his knees buckling under him, hitting the leather seat with a bang he didn’t even notice. “All right then. Yes, they’re about to arrive. Of course I won’t let on that we know when I receive them. Yes, Mr. President. Thank you, Mr. President.”
Hull hung up the telephone and took a ragged breath. He called out to his secretary, “Send them in.”