by Daniel Wyatt
“Amateurs.”
“We caught you, didn’t we?”
“Mere luck.”
Preston smiled. “I’ll let you in on a little secret. For over a year now, our Intelligence has been intercepting all of Germany’s military signals. We know what your army, navy, and air force are going to do in advance, before your own mid-range commanders do. Amateurs? I think not.” Preston rammed the muzzle at the back of Eiser’s neck and fired once. Eiser let out a wretched, low groan as he fell sideways.
“Bon voyage,” Preston said, watching the blood flow onto the ground. He didn’t enjoy killing people. However, Eiser was the exception.
* * * *
Gestapo Headquarters
Heinrich Himmler answered his intercom. “Yes?”
“Herr Reichsfuehrer, a courier arrived with a decoded message from Hamburg. It’s for you.”
“Bring it in at once.”
“Yawohl, Herr Reichsfuehrer.”
The adjutant entered Himmler’s office, left the sealed envelope on his desk, and departed. The Gestapo leader cut at it with his gold-plated letter opener. He adjusted his pince-nez.
TO HEINRICH HIMMLER WE HAVE YOUR MAN TOMMIE
PLEASE BE SO KIND AS TO SHOVE IT UP YOUR ASS
YOUR FRIENDS THE ENGLISH
Himmler didn’t appreciate the vulgar side of British humour. He crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it across the room. He wasn’t going to mark this in his date book. So much for keeping an eye on the poodle-killer, Eiser, upon his return. So much for becoming the Fuehrermaster. For now.
* * * *
Pacific Ocean
They crossed the international dateline. The Japanese Task Force had been on the open sea for a week, still undetected, when the coded message came over the wireless.
CLIMB MOUNT NIITAKA
It was confirmed. Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo was to proceed southeast and attack the U.S. Navy ships, and the Army and Navy airfields as planned, at dawn, December 8, Tokyo time.
December 7, in Hawaii.
There was no turning back now.
TWENTY-FOUR
Prestwick, Scotland — December 5
Landlubber Wesley Hollinger decided to accept the risks as par for the course. Scheduled North Atlantic winter crossings were always terrifying at best with the Ferry Command aircraft overloaded with men and gasoline. The buffeting westerly headwinds were often raw, gusting to one hundred miles per hour. The air was usually piercing cold, with icy conditions. The accommodations were cramped. But it was still the quickest route to Washington.
It would be no milk run.
At two in the morning, with snowflakes in the air that melted once they touched ground, Hollinger waddled aboard the idling black British Overseas Airways B-24 Liberator with the dozen or so adventurers — pilots and airmen — for the return trip to RAF Ferry Command Headquarters in Montreal. He was weighed down like the others with a winter-issue parka, a fleeced flying suit, thick gloves, a parachute and life vest, knowing damn well that he wouldn’t stand a fiddler’s chance if the aircraft had the misfortune of going down over the ocean. Rescue missions were out of the question, assuming anyone would ever receive the radio signal in the first place.
Hollinger laid down on one of the mattresses on the plywood deck above the bomb bay — head-to-toe with the group of airmen — and flipped on his oxygen mask. It was deathly dark. This flight did not sit well with him. Heavy on his mind were the two Dorval-bound BOAC B-24’s that had crashed into the Scottish hills in August, both minutes out of Prestwick and only four days apart. Forty-four in total had died, instantly.
The B-24 took off and climbed into the scattered cloud. Hollinger could see the ground off and on, lit by the moonlight, through the cracks in the bomb bay. The flight would take approximately sixteen hours from Prestwick to Dorval, Quebec; over 2,000 miles of nerve-wracking boredom. Too bad he couldn’t do a crossword.
Two hours into the unforgiving Atlantic airstream, Hollinger had deciphered the pilot’s strategy. The North Atlantic headwinds were the strongest at sea level. Therefore, to conserve fuel, the pilot had to climb to thinner air, where the wing would ice up, forcing him to dive for sea level. There, the ice would come sliding off the wing, and crash against the fuselage. Climb and dive. On one occasion, so much ice formed inside one engine that it quit temporarily, but later came back to life at sea level.
Fortunately, the hum of the engines eventually dropped Hollinger off to sleep.
He woke up, his body a block of ice. How long had he been out? He didn’t know.
Huddled under a thick blanket, Hollinger saw the ocean below through the crack by his face. Only daylight between the Liberator and the vast expanse of water. This far north in December, the sunlight wouldn’t last long. He couldn’t tell how far away the white caps were. A few thousand feet, for sure. He turned away, gasping in the mask cramped to his mouth. The exposed flesh on his face was freezing. He still had several hours to go. He started to perspire. He was going to catch his death of cold by the time the aircraft landed. He began to doze off. Then one engine quit. Hollinger flicked his eyes open. He knew something sounded different. They went into another dive.
But this time the engine didn’t start.
* * * *
Kaflavik, Iceland
Hollinger heard the bad news once they had landed safely at the Royal Air Force base on the south coast of the island.
British mechanics determined that the B-24’s number two engine had an electrical short. It needed parts. And number four was leaking oil to boot.
* * * *
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii
Edgar Heinemann adjusted the focus range on his binoculars and looked over the waterway from Aiea Heights.
Five of the battleships had remained in port for a week, two returning the day before. The big prizes, the carriers, were gone. All four of them. With the weekend coming on, they probably wouldn’t return. Not now. That day, the Lexington steamed out, accompanied by five heavy cruisers. However, the cruiser escort attached to the Enterprise had returned after being out of harbour for a week. But no Enterprise. Yet. Perhaps by Sunday or Monday. At least an outside chance. The Hornet and Yorktown had not been heard from for days. Whereabouts unknown.
Heinemann squatted in the weeds and wrote down his assessment of Pearl Harbor and the sought-after Battleship Row.
Ships at anchor at 1800 hours: 9 battleships, 3 cruisers, 3 submarine tenders, 17 destroyers. In dock: 4 cruisers, 3 destroyers. All 4 carriers at sea.
* * * *
The White House — December 6
At 0930 hours, a sealed envelope was delivered to President Roosevelt, the latest decoded Japanese message sent from Tokyo to its Washington Embassy. It was a long-winded thirteen-part communiqué that the Ambassador was told not to deliver to the Americans until specified by Tokyo. One part — the fourteenth point — was held back until further notice.
The President wondered aloud what was in the fourteenth part as he turned to his adviser, Harry Hopkins. “Harry, what do you make of it?”
Hopkins only sighed.
Roosevelt knew it was all coming to a head. The Japanese were riled. The US Ambassador in Tokyo had been warning Washington for months of an armed conflict somewhere in the Pacific. American code-breakers had been receiving and decoding Japanese messages depicting their dissatisfaction with Washington. Japan’s Ambassador to the US Kichisaburo Nomura and Special Envoy Saburo Kurusu had presented a final proposal of the ongoing negotiations to Washington on November 20th. They were ordered to wait until the 25th for a reply. Then the deadline was extended another four days. The US forces in Hawaii had received and acted upon two alerts, one specifically against sabotage. Then, on December 2, the American code-breakers had intercepted a message from Tokyo to their Embassy in Washington, ordering Nomura and Kurusu to destroy their codebooks.
The President turned, put the thirteen-part message down, cleared the bile in his throat, and said to Hopkins
, “I don’t like it, Harry.”
“Neither do I, Mr. President. Not at all.”
TWENTY-FIVE
Pearl Harbor
Edgar Heinemann stood in the weeds on the hillside across the Harbor, focusing on the sudden incoming flight of aircraft. The bright red-ball markings on the wings told him they were none other than ... Japanese.
Here they come.
“Edgar Heinemann?”
The German spun around to see two tall men in suits, not ten feet away. “Yes,” he said, coolly.
“You are under arrest.”
“Is it against the law to watch the Harbor?”
“No,” one of them said.
“What’s the charge then?”
They both drew guns.
“Treason. Come with us. Now.”
* * * *
Within sight of Pearl Harbor, the leader of the attack, Commander Mitsuo Fichida, radioed Admiral Nagumo at sea. “Tora, Tora, Tora!”
Tora meant Tiger. The word repeated three times signified to Nagumo that his aircraft had caught the American Fleet by complete surprise. The second wave of one hundred and eighty-three aircraft was halfway to Oahu. Within two minutes, the first wave dive-bombers dove for the ships on and around Battleship Row, as the fighters targeted the nearby airfields.
The Japanese Blitzkrieg was on.
* * * *
Edgar Heinemann saw it as the two men handcuffed him, flung him into the black Mr. and drove away.
He watched as the low-flying fighters beat a path to Battleship Row. He saw the ack-ack puffs from the American gunners ... the bomb explosions ... the waterspouts ... the black smoke. He could feel the concussion of the hits on the ships.
How did they catch him so soon?
* * * *
Bolling Air Force Base
It was early afternoon in Washington.
Hollinger picked out the round face of Colonel Bill Donovan inside the noisy, crowded air terminal, alive with people who had just arrived from other flights.
“What’s up, Kid? I knew it had to be important when you used our private code.”
Hollinger slapped his briefcase. “Colonel, you’ll never believe what I have in here.”
“Let’s talk in the car. I can’t hear myself think with this racket.”
Donovan gave the keys to the government Packard to Hollinger. On the way to the new COI Headquarters on the corners of Pennsylvania and Constitution Avenues near Capitol Hill, he spoke hurriedly of the American loans. Donovan listened long and hard, eyeing Hollinger’s May 9 Falcon File paperwork proof, before he responded.
“I know all this, Wesley.”
“You do?”
“Yes, I do. I have a spy inside one of the firms mentioned here, at Kerr, Chapman & Company. They’re the ones holding all the loan paperwork for the Wall Street banking conglomerate dealing with the German businessmen.”
“You’re referring to the I.S. Filberg mentioned there?”
“That’s them, Wesley. It’s a big industrial business outfit. The largest in Europe. Been around for a few years.”
“Sir, now that the British know about this banking deal, what can we do?”
“Hell if I know.”
Following a long period of silence, Donovan clicked the radio on. It was the middle of a special broadcast, something about Hawaii. He turned the volume up. In stunned silence, they listened. The out of breath announcer repeated the news flash three times. The Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. It had to be a joke. Donovan changed the station. The same thing was on another frequency. He turned to Hollinger.
“They did it, Wesley! The bastards attacked us!” The COI leader pointed through the windshield. “Stop here.”
Hollinger pulled the car over to the curb on Pennsylvania Avenue.
* * * *
The State Department, Washington
Japanese diplomats Nomura and Kurusu delivered the fourteenth part of the December 6th message to Secretary of State Cordell Hull, who by now had received the shocking news from Hawaii. Worse, a second wave of Japanese aircraft had struck. The diplomats were one hour late, and looked embarrassed.
The fourteenth part was a declaration of war.
In anger, Hull told them what he thought of them and shooed them out the door.
* * * *
Pennsylvania Avenue
Donovan and Hollinger stared straight ahead through the windshield.
“Did you know that reports have been out on a potential Pearl Harbor attack for months?” Donovan said.
Hollinger turned his head. “You’re kidding! How! What gives?”
“In the spring, the Peruvian Ambassador in Tokyo overhead such a conversation between two Japanese diplomats. He told Joseph Grew, our Ambassador in Tokyo, and he notified Washington.”
“Obviously nothing was done about it.”
Donovan shrugged. “No proof. The attack had to hit home to be effective. Our code breakers — the same organization you had worked for — got wind of it too. In ample time. Tokyo were still in communication with their Embassy here at all times on the Purple traffic.” Donovan paused, then went on. “Back in October, our Army Signal Intelligence Service decrypted a message from Tokyo to Consul General Kita in Honolulu asking for the exact locations of our warships and carriers at Pearl Harbor. But something got lost in our translation to Hawaii.”
“Was the information passed on to Kimmel or Short?”
“Someone in Washington said no. That’s not all. A German spy, Edgar Heinemann, was sent to Honolulu in August and has been feeding the Japanese Consul with data for months. And we were ordered by Washington to lay off him completely, because we could intercept his messages anyway.”
Hollinger instantly recognized the name Heinemann. Eiser’s mentor.
“There’s going to be hell to pay now for Kimmel and Short,” Donovan continued. “Left in the dark and all.”
“What do you mean, sir?”
“They weren’t in on the code breaking.”
Hollinger felt sick. “You mean to tell me that the top Army and Navy commanders in Hawaii weren’t even told that we were reading the Japanese transmissions from Tokyo?”
“That’s right.”
Hollinger shook his head. “Why not? They were the closest to Japan.”
“I don’t know. Maybe Washington didn’t want a leak.”
“And now they’re going to take it on the chin, I bet?”
“Chances are, they will.”
“Sir, I remember what you said to me months ago on the way to the White House. Certain people wanted a war. You meant the banks, didn’t you? Wall Street banks.”
“Yes, that’s who I meant. The same banking houses that financed Hitler when his men came calling hat in hand for loans a number of years ago, before the Nazis rose to power.”
“Can these deals this year still be honoured?”
“Yes. We’re not at war with Germany, only with the Japanese.”
“If Congress passes such a resolution.”
“They will,” Donovan said. “There’s no doubt. But I don’t think they’re committed to two fronts. Germany didn’t attack us. Japan did. Under our Constitution, only Congress can declare war. We’ll see if Hitler plays it smart. Technically, we’re not at war with Germany. Hitler might just choose to stay out of it. Under the terms of the Italian-German-Japanese Triparte Pact, Germany doesn’t have to declare war on us since Japan was the aggressor. However, we know that Hitler was doing his best to keep us out of this until the German army could at least defeat Russia. It’s forty below in Moscow now. Yesterday, Soviet General Zhukov — their last hope — launched a counteroffensive outside Moscow with thousands of fresh, well-clothed troops. Early reports are sketchy. We don’t know how it’s progressing. But we do know from our Embassy in Moscow that Stalin had fled the city. If Hitler does declare war on us, then his own reports must tell him that Russia is no more. As good as dead.”
“Colonel?” Hollinger asked Dono
van.
“Yes, my boy.”
“Seems to me that Washington and Wall Street wanted to get into this. And they could have used Japan to do it.”
Donovan looked straight ahead. “I refuse to answer that on the grounds that it might incriminate me. Let’s go. The office will be buzzing today.”
“What a way to run a war.” Hollinger removed his fedora and twirled it into the back seat. “Somebody has to be the scapegoat. Poor Kimmel and Short.”
“Exactly. And the banks come out smelling like a rose. Let’s go.”
Hollinger took hold of the steering wheel. “So, we’re in it.”
TWENTY-SIX
The House of Representatives — December 8
The President of the United States jerked to his metal legs and approached the podium for the urgent joint session of Congress. Every seat was occupied this noon period. Any other day at this hour most of the members would be gone for lunch. Not today.
The President cleared his throat and commenced firing, his voice heavy with emotion.
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in infamy — the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. Last night Japanese forces attacked Hong Kong. Last night Japanese forces attacked Guam.”
The President paused, looking to Wild Bill and Hollinger in the balcony. He wasn’t talking out of both sides of his mouth now.
“Last night Japanese forces attacked the Philippine Islands. Last night the Japanese attacked Wake Island. This morning the Japanese attacked Midway Island. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph, so help us God. I ask this Congress to declare that a state of war exists between the United States of American and the Empire of Japan.”