V-S Day: A Novel of Alternate History

by Steele, Allen

  “We prefer Max,” Esther said quietly.

  “Frank, too,” Ham added.

  “They fucked up,” Sabatini muttered. He caught a withering look from Goddard as Esther’s face turned red. “Pardon my French, ma’am, but that’s why we’ve replaced them. If they hadn’t been careless . . .”

  “I understand.” Goddard slowly let out his breath, then looked at Bliss and nodded. “This is fine, Colonel. I’m sure we’ll be able to work here.”

  “Sure.” Gerry exhaled smoke, rolled his eyes. “Just let me get my moose gun, and I’ll hunt down some dinner.”

  “I said, I’m sure we’ll be able to work here!” Goddard snapped.

  Gerry turned pale. No one spoke for a couple of moments. In the past, Goddard would have immediately apologized after snapping at someone. He might have even added a quip of his own. But over the last few days, it had become increasingly obvious that his brush with death had robbed him of his sense of humor. No one had seen him so much as smile since then, and, even with Esther, he’d become short-tempered.

  The uncomfortable silence lingered until Bliss coughed into his hand. “Yes, well . . . anyway, Bob, you and Esther won’t be staying here. You’ve got a place of your own just down the road.” He pointed to a cedar-sided cabin about fifty yards away, just visible through the trees. “We’ll have an agent with you at all times, and the two other men will be bunking with the team here at the lodge.”

  “Bunking?” Mike asked. “Did you say bunking?”

  “Umm . . . and another thing, Colonel.” Henry half raised a hand. “You still haven’t told us why Lloyd and Harry aren’t here. Will they be joining us soon, or . . . ?”

  “Kapman and Chung have been reassigned,” Bliss said. “They’re still working on Blue Horizon, but they won’t be working here with the rest of you.” He raised a hand before anyone could ask any further questions. “I’ll explain everything once you’ve all unpacked and settled in. We’ll meet in the living room in . . . say, an hour?”

  “That would be fine, Colonel.” Goddard looked at his wife. “Come along, dear . . . let’s go see our new house.”

  Esther nodded unhappily. She was clearly not pleased about having to leave Worcester and relocate to a summer cabin out in the middle of nowhere. But she clung to her husband as they walked down the dirt road. Watching them go, Henry reflected that Goddard suddenly looked his age. He’d never thought of him as being an old man, but now . . .

  “I’m not liking this.” Ham Ballou had moved up beside him; his voice was little more than a whisper. “I’m not liking this at all.”

  “You and me both.” Henry was thinking about the fact that the 390 Group been spirited away so quickly that he hadn’t gotten a chance to find Doris and let her know that he wasn’t going to be seeing her for a while. “And even less than you do.”

  =====

  Wielding a broom like a baseball bat, Henry crept toward the wasp nest dangling from the loft’s bare rafters. Several wasps clung to the plate-sized honeycomb, mindless of the human a few feet away. “Ready back there?” Henry asked, not taking his eyes off the nest.

  “Ready when you are,” Mike replied. For some reason, he spoke in a near whisper.

  “Okay, then, on the count of three.” Another couple of steps, and Henry was almost directly beneath the nest. “One . . . two . . . three!”

  He swung the broom in a clean, swift arc. It hit the wasp nest and knocked it from the rafter beam; as it fell to the floor, Henry leaped away, nearly falling over one of the steel-frame camp beds lined up on both sides of the narrow room. Wasps were already swarming from the fallen nest as Ham darted forward, spray gun in his hands.

  “Die, you bastards! Die!” he yelled, pumping the gun as fast as he could to drench the nest with insecticide. At once, the loft was filled with an alcohol stench. The wasps caught in the spray fell to the floor and flopped about in dying spasms, but a handful were still airborne and angry. With high-pitched whines, they began to dart toward the giant who’d dared attack their colony.

  “Retreat! Retreat!” Ham lunged for the door behind him, but one of the steamer trunks at the foot of each bed got in his way. He yelped as he tripped over it and fell face-first to the bare wooden floor, the sprayer gun skittering out of his reach. “Damn it!” he yelled, swatting at a wasp that flitted past his face. “Hey, someone help me!”

  As Henry reached down to pull Ham to his feet, Mike snatched up the sprayer. Careful not to use it until the other two were clear, he hastily pumped more insecticide at the wasps, then followed Ham and Henry through the door. They slammed it shut, then stood for a minute on the small landing at the top of the stairs, trying to get their wind as they shared a laugh at their own silliness.

  “I hope . . . we got ’em all,” Henry gasped.

  “Hope so too.” Ham was half–bent over, hands on his knees. “Someone’s got to . . . go back in there and open a window . . . air the place out.” Catching the look on Henry’s face, he shook his head. “Not me. I’m on their . . . most wanted list.”

  “Yeah, they’ve got it in for you,” Mike said, then he saw how the other two were eying him. “Whoa, Nellie. Not me . . .”

  “I can’t believe that’s where we’re all going to sleep,” Henry said, shaking his head in disgust. “Six beds in one room. Feels like I’m in the Boy Scouts again.”

  “Yeah? If you like that, you’re gonna love this.” Ham pushed open the door across the hall, revealing a bathroom not much larger than a closet. Inside were an old-fashioned claw-foot tub and a sink with exposed pipes. “Notice anything missing?”

  “Yeah. Where’s the . . . ?” Mike stopped. “Oh, no. Don’t tell me it’s outside.”

  “Yup. The outhouse is in the backyard, about ten feet from the kitchen door.” Ham shrugged. “At least it’s got its own woodstove.”

  “Wow. The lap of luxury.”

  “Leave it to Uncle Sam to spare no expense.” Ham shook his head. “And leave it to our nursemaids to claim the downstairs bedroom. ‘Security reasons,’ my ass.”

  “Yeah, well . . .” Henry checked his watch. “’Bout time for everyone to meet up in the living room. Maybe we can persuade Igor to spring for a couple of prefab houses.”

  The other two chuckled at the mention of the nickname the 390 Group had recently bestowed on Omar Bliss. “Ignorance is Bliss” became a whispered catchphrase when the colonel stubbornly resisted the group’s more radical proposals, and this led to some team members referring to him as Ignorance for a while until they realized that this wasn’t entirely true: Bliss wasn’t ignorant, really, just a bit behind the times. So Ignorance was shortened to Igor, which suited him even better: If you squinted a bit, the colonel did look a little like Dr. Frankenstein’s henchman. No one called him that to his face, though.

  The colonel was already in the living room when Henry, Mike, and Ham came down from the loft and trooped in through the porch door. FBI agents Sabatini and Arnold were leaning against the fieldstone fireplace; they might have been a couple of weekend hunters were it not for the shoulder holsters visible beneath their unbuttoned jackets. The three team members had just taken seats when Gerry and Taylor came in. They’d spent the last hour unloading everyone’s belongings from the cars and were looking forward to taking a break before starting on the truck.

  “Where’s Bob?” Taylor asked, looking around the room as he sat down on the couch next to Henry. “Aren’t we waiting for him?”

  Bliss shook his head. “No, we’re going to have this meeting without him. I told him and Esther they’re excused so that they could make themselves at home, but the fact is there’s some things I want to talk about without his being around.”

  The team members glanced at one another. “It’s about what happened the other day, isn’t it?” Ham said quietly.

  “What else?” Taylor also kept his voice down. �
�I’ve worked with Bob for years, and I’ve never seen him like this. I mean, I don’t think he’s said ten words to me in the last couple of days . . .”

  “Someone tried to kill him, and they damn near succeeded.” Mike scowled at him. “That would give anyone the heebie-jeebies.” He turned to Bliss. “Colonel, none of us are crazy about moving up here, but you probably did the right thing. If that guy was a German spy . . .”

  “Was he a kraut?” Ham looked over at the two G-men. “Has anyone learned anything about him yet?”

  “Nothing conclusive,” Sabatini admitted. “He wasn’t carrying any identification, and if there was someone working with him, he made a clean getaway. But his gun was German-made, and my office thinks he may also be responsible for the murder of a Beach Patrol watchman on Cape Cod earlier that morning.” The FBI agent shrugged. “So, yeah, it’s a safe bet the guy who tried to shoot Dr. Goddard was a Nazi.”

  “Which means two things,” Bliss said. “One, the Germans consider Bob to be enough of a threat that they went to the trouble of sending someone over here to knock him off. And if that’s the case . . . two, the British air raid wasn’t entirely successful, and Silver Bird hasn’t been destroyed.”

  Grim nods from around the room. The group had been informed of the RAF air raid on Peenemünde the day after it happened, and they’d hoped that it would have knocked Silbervogel down enough that the Germans might simply give up and cancel the project entirely. Indeed, there had been less urgency about Blue Horizon in recent weeks. Although work in Worcester continued, there was no longer a feeling that 390 Group was in a race against time. They were designing an experimental spacecraft that might still be used, but probably not before the war was over.

  Their attitude changed as soon as they heard about what happened at City Hall. The colonel’s observation reinforced what they’d come to suspect: Goddard wouldn’t have been targeted if the Nazis didn’t think he might develop a deterrent to their antipodal bomber, and therefore Silver Bird was still under way.

  “We’ve relocated you here in case he had accomplices,” Bliss continued, “but that’s not the only reason. Bob’s shook up by this, and so is Esther. We can’t have him trying to work on this project while worrying if he’s going to catch a bullet whenever he walks outside, and we risk having anyone going after you guys, too. I’m sorry the accommodations are a bit rough, but . . . well, we’ll try to make you as comfortable as possible, so long as you’re here.”

  “And how long will that be?” Henry asked.

  “Until your work is finished,” Bliss replied. Groans and irate murmurs greeted this remark, and he quickly held up his hand. “I know that’s a long time to keep you sequestered, but . . .”

  “Sequestered?” Gerry stared at him. “What do you mean by that?”

  Bliss hesitated, and Sabatini stepped in. “What this means is that new security protocols are now in effect. No one is to leave this camp without an FBI escort. We’ll drive someone into town to buy groceries, cigarettes, newspapers, or whatever else you need, but otherwise, you’re to remain here.”

  “What about mail?” Mike asked.

  “It’ll still come to Worcester. So far as anyone you know is concerned, you’re still at Clark University. And if you send anything out, it’ll be mailed from Worcester, too, so it’ll have that postmark.” Sabatini paused. “Naturally, you’ll refrain from saying anything about this place. Don’t give us reason to start reading your letters to make sure that you’re in compliance.”

  “And the phone?” Henry asked. “I haven’t found one yet.”

  “That’s because there isn’t one here and never has been. The guys who started this club were serious about getting away from it all.” Sabatini shrugged. “No loss. I’ve seen the local switchboard. It’s in the back of the general store, same place you’ll be buying food. The operator is an old biddy who looks like the type who’d be an eavesdropper, and the last thing we want is to have her hearing anything about Blue Horizon. That’s why we’ll be installing a radiotelephone next week. It’ll only be used for official communications, so don’t even think about using it to call your girlfriend.”

  Henry stared at him, and Sabatini grinned. “Yeah, we know all about her,” he went on. “Frank figured out you were seeing someone on the sly and had us check her out, just to make sure she wasn’t a spy. She’s a peach, all right . . . but I hope she’s the patient type, because it’s going to be a while before you’ll see her again.”

  Henry said nothing but instead fixed his gaze upon the floor. “Sorry, man,” Taylor said to him quietly, then he looked at Bliss again. “You still haven’t told us why Lloyd and Harry aren’t here. Couldn’t you fit more beds in the loft?”

  Gerry shook his head. “Like there’s any more room up there.”

  “Available space was one consideration, yes,” the colonel said, “but there’s another reason. Now that we’re getting close to actually bending metal, I’ve decided to send them down to Alamogordo, where they’ll join Lieutenant Jackson.”

  “Lucky,” Taylor muttered.

  If Bliss heard what he said, he chose to ignore him. “The Goodrich company will soon be delivering the pressure suit you’ve designed, and I want Lloyd there to make sure the breathing mixture is correct when our pilot tries it on for the first time. He’ll also be working with Harry on further tests of the main engine once it’s built and been sent to New Mexico.”

  Mike was in the midst of pulling out his briar pipe when the colonel said this. He stopped tamping tobacco in the bowl and peered at Bliss. “Come again? I thought the engine was going to be built down there.”

  “Yes, well”—Bliss hid his apparent discomfiture by coughing in his fist—“there’s been a change of plans. The engine’s going to be built and static-tested here in New England.”

  This caught the team flat-footed. The five remaining members of the 390 Group stared at Bliss in shock, their mouths falling open. For months, Goddard had been campaigning to have the main engine assembled somewhere close enough for them to have firsthand participation in its construction and testing, only to hear the same arguments against it repeated again and again. Now, all of a sudden, the colonel had apparently changed his mind.

  “Why are you . . . ?” Henry began.

  “Dr. Goddard wouldn’t let us relocate the project unless we were willing to make certain concessions. He pointed out that, if we came all the way up here, we’d be even more isolated than we were before, and that could cause significant delays. He and Lieutenant Jackson had been pushing for the Wyman-Gordon Company to be hired as prime contractor since that would put the engine R&D phase in Worcester, and the Pentagon has been considering this for a while. Recent events just . . . um, speeded up the decision-making process a bit, that’s all.”

  “I don’t care if they made it by flipping a coin,” Taylor said, a grin stretching across his face. “That’s great news!”

  “Does Bob know yet?” Ham asked, and Bliss shook his head. “Well, this ought to cheer him up.”

  “Yeah, but now we’ve got another problem,” Henry said. “Where are we gonna test the damn thing once it’s built? I mean, you can’t just light up an engine that size anywhere near a city and not have someone notice.”

  “Yes, well . . . that’s one more thing for you characters to figure out.” Bliss frowned. “Speaking of which, how are you coming with the missiles?”

  Henry, Taylor, and Gerry shared a look; developing the X-1’s armament was their job. “Not so good,” Henry admitted. “The missiles themselves are no problem . . . a couple of solid-fuel rockets launched from under the wings, that’s all . . . but we’re still trying to figure out how our pilot’s going to get a dead bead on Silver Bird when both ships are traveling at different relative velocities.”

  “It’s like trying to hit a bullet with another bullet,” Mike added. “Or like trying to shoot a car
from another car that’s moving at a different speed.” He shrugged. “Give us five or ten years, and we might be able to give you some kinda guided missile, but we just don’t know how to do that yet.”

  “I understand,” Bliss said, “but we don’t have five or ten years. I’m not sure we even have five or ten months. British intelligence has reason to believe that the Germans have moved Silver Bird from Peenemünde . . .”

  “Hey, when did that happen?” Ham was as surprised everyone else. “How did the Brits figure out . . . ?”

  “I can’t tell you because I don’t know either. All I know is that MI-6 has some way of knowing what the Germans are doing. According to them, the Nazis have transferred Silver Bird from the Baltic coast to an inland location.” Bliss looked at Henry. “Appears that one of your guesses might be correct. MI-6 thinks the new site is somewhere in the mountains, possibly near a town called Nordhausen.”

  “Ah, so . . .” Ham gave Henry a wink. “All that time you’ve spent in the library has paid off. Besides sparking with a certain librarian, I mean.”

  Henry cast him a foul look as the others chuckled. All except Bliss. “If I’d known about that . . .” the colonel began, then he sighed and shook his head. “Never mind. That’s something I don’t have to worry about anymore . . . is it, Henry?”

  “No, sir,” he said quietly. “It isn’t.”

  “Good.” Bliss stood up and stretched his back. “Very well, then. If no one has any other immediate business, I suggest we get back to work.”

  “Anyone want to help with the file cabinets?” Taylor asked as he got up from the couch. “They’re pretty heavy, and Gerry and I could use a hand.”

  “Sure, I’ll pitch in,” Ham said, and Mike nodded as well. “Henry, you want to . . . ?”

  “No, I don’t.” Without another word, Henry stood up and marched out of the living room. The porch screen door squeaked on its hinges as he opened it and banged into its frame when he let it slam shut behind him.