The Proteus Operation

by James P. Hogan

  America couldn't afford to let Britain and France go down. Despite lofty phrases about keeping the world safe for democracy, the simple fact was that to save her own hide, America would have to halt the have-not nations in their drive to loot the haves, and the Maginot Line was her first line of defense. It had been true in 1917, and it was true now.

  Roosevelt, in his letter, had referred to the coincidence of his and Churchill's having occupied similar positions during the Great War. Then he had gone on to use the telling phrase that the current situation was "essentially similar". The letter, in language that another global strategist would understand, had signaled their unity of viewpoint and purpose.

  How he wished there were more people in Congress with similarly broad conceptual horizons, Roosevelt thought as he sat back from his desk in the room he had made his "oval study." He watched Secretary of State Cordell Hull and adviser Harold Ickes depart with the three senators they had been talking with about the 1935 Neutrality Act that he wished he'd never signed; a vote on easing the restrictions against shipping arms to belligerents would take place at the end of the month—October.

  He preferred working here to his official office in the Executive Wing. It was a comfortable room, with dark green curtains, white walls, chintz-covered furniture, and he had given it a personal touch with dozens of personal knickknacks, family mementos, stacks of books and stamp albums, numerous model ships and selected treasures from his collection of naval charts and pictures. The desk had been a present from Queen Victoria. It was made from the timbers of a British ship abandoned after becoming trapped on northern ice; the ship had subsequently been saved by American whalers, and restored and returned to Britain by the U.S. government.

  Roosevelt, in his fifty-seventh year, President since 1932, had thinning hair starting to turn gray, a broad smile that came readily and showed his teeth, and wore gold-rimmed pince-nez on a large, straight nose that suited his rugged, square-jawed head. He was naturally big in stature and had developed massive arms and shoulders after a polio attack eighteen years previously, which had left him with both legs paralyzed and would have ended the careers of many lesser men. He, however, had bounced back into the political arena to become Governor of New York State, and then President at a time when the nation's distressed condition had presented government with perhaps its greatest challenge. He had responded spectacularly, and whatever some financial and economic experts might have had to say from the comparative shelter of later years about the real efficacy of his measures, the sheer dynamism of his "First Hundred Days" had been enough to inspire the people that the strength of Uncle Sam was committed on their side. The plunging indicators of prosperity and confidence had leveled out and then begun rising again in the succeeding years, and his reelection in 1936 had been a landslide of popular endorsement.

  His second term, however, perhaps predictably, was proving to be a rougher ride. In his own words, he and his New Dealers had "earned the hatred of entrenched greed". With the worst of the Depression behind them, the forces of the far right were now pouring out of their trenches to attack those who had dented their self-esteem by exposing their pretensions to knowledge that the public had once taken for wisdom. On another flank, his move to alter the structure of the judicial branch—in effect, to liberalize it after a number of Supreme Court rulings that parts of the New Deal were unconstitutional—had proved to be miscalculated and had failed. The experience had demonstrated that, irrespective of his continued personal popularity, there were certain principles and institutions that the American people cherished above individuals, and which they were innately suspicious of any attempts to meddle with.

  In this category was their determination, having disentangled themselves from the Old World and its problems, to stay disentangled, and not to involve their sons in the very squabbles that they themselves had come halfway around the world to escape. The solid isolationist phalanxes of Congress reflected this mood, and if Roosevelt believed privately that America would have to enter the war sooner or later, clearly he would have to tread carefully in any attempt to reshape the nation's perceptions.

  Until quite recently, he hadn't been at all sure that he wanted to make any such effort. Munich and the events after it had filled him with a sense of hopelessness and despair, and by the summer of 1939 he had practically resigned himself to the thought of retiring from public life to enjoy his family and his personal interests for whatever time might be left. But Chamberlain's eleventh-hour firmness over Poland, which Roosevelt hadn't expected, had given him new heart; and then the appointment of Churchill first to the War Cabinet and then to the Admiralty had rekindled all his old hopes. His letter to Churchill had also been partly an expression of the jubilation he had been unable to contain.

  In fact, the sudden turn of events had been so invigorating that he was even entertaining thoughts of flouting convention and running for a third presidential term. It was only a thought. He hadn't mentioned it to anyone yet, not even Eleanor.

  In the meantime, however, there was the next meeting to think about. While Pa Watson, his appointments secretary, was marshaling the next group of visitors in the corridor outside, Roosevelt drew the top folder of his stack across the desk and opened it to quickly refresh his memory.

  Oh, yes, it was a follow-up to the meeting that Alexander Sachs had finally obtained on October 11, after a two-month wait, to hand-deliver the letter from Einstein. A little tough on Alex, but how much free time could anyone expect a President to have when the fuse to the global powder keg had just burned down? Roosevelt turned over the sheets in the dossier and scanned the underlined sections and the marginal notes he had made. Uranium research at Columbia . . . possible source of enormous energy . . . single bomb might destroy a city . . . Nazi program? Also present besides himself, Sachs, and Watson had been two ordnance specialists, Colonel Adamson from the Army and Commander Hoover from the Navy. "Not a relative!" Watson had penned jokingly by the latter name in his briefing notes. Roosevelt smiled. The transcript of the October 11 minutes showed the meeting ending with Roosevelt's words, "Pa, this requires action.

  The action had taken the form of appointing an Advisory Committee on Uranium, to be chaired by the Director of the National Bureau of Standards, Lyman J. Briggs. The committee had scheduled its first meeting to take place at the Bureau on October 21 and sent out invitations to the scientists whose names Sachs had given as being involved in the work.

  But then something unusual had occurred. Leo Szilard had contacted Watson to insist that a group representing the scientists be granted access to the President before that date. Demanded as absolutely imperative. Fixed for Oct. 16. Roosevelt's eyebrows rose as he read Watson's note of the conversation. "Demanded, huh?" he murmured to himself. "Boy, this had better be good." Then he set the file aside and looked up as the five visitors filed into the room.

  Roosevelt already knew Einstein. The professor and his second wife, Elsa, deceased three years now, had stayed as overnight guests at the White House early in 1934 after moving from Europe; they had actually arrived in 1933, but there had been a mix-up with the first invitation. Roosevelt spoke German well, and he and Einstein had found much to talk about concerning the darkening European scene and their common love of sailing.

  Szilard, the Hungarian scientist referred to in Einstein's letter, was with him, and Colonel Adamson was back again after being tracked down by Watson at short notice. The other two names, however, were unfamiliar: Professor Mortimer Greene, and a German, Dr. Kurt Scholder.

  Roosevelt sat back and beamed when the introductory formalities had been completed. "Okay, he invited. "Shoot."

  Szilard, uncharacteristically nervous from his sense of the gravity of the occasion, sat forward on the edge of his chair. "Mr. President, thank you for agreeing to my most irregular request, he began. "I'm sure that when you have listened to us, you will agree there was good reason for it. I'll come straight to the point . . ."

  "Please do," Watson in
terjected. "We've had to make time by squeezing you in."

  Szilard nodded. "The fact is," he continued, "that what we have to say has nothing to do with uranium research, although that, too, is an important subject. The real matter that brings us here is far too sensitive to have risked committing to paper in any form." Adamson and Watson frowned. Roosevelt's chin tilted upward a fraction, the movement alone doing all the asking that was necessary.

  "If I may." Mortimer Greene reached inside his jacket and took out an envelope, from which he drew a photograph. He half-rose to give the picture to Watson, who passed it to the President. It was an enlargement of a photograph in a document from the microfilm library that the team had brought with them from 1975.

  Roosevelt's brow creased as he stared at the picture. Then his expression changed from puzzlement to baffled incredulity as the impossible implication of what he was looking at sank in. He looked up, and his mouth started to open. "Oh, yes, it's quite genuine, I assure you," Szilard said.

  "Be thankful, perhaps, that happen every day, something like this does not," Einstein offered, trying to be helpful.

  Roosevelt blinked and looked down at the photograph again. It showed a Christmas family gathering in front of a large, gaily decorated tree, with smiling people, children dressed in their Sunday best, and lots of packages and wrappings lying around. The family was his, and the place was clearly their mansion at Hyde Park, by the Hudson, halfway between Albany and New York. He himself was standing in the center with Eleanor; three of their sons—John, James, and Franklin D., Jr.—were there, with daughter Anna Eleanor; and there were in-laws, grandchildren, and other relatives that he could identify immediately.

  The problem was that he couldn't remember a Christmas on which this particular picture could have been taken. For one thing, there was a female cousin sitting with a baby on her knee that seemed to be hers, yet she had never had one and had only recently announced her engagement. And even more perplexing was the note scribbled across the lower right-hand corner in what was unmistakably his own handwriting. It read:

  To Catherine & John

  with happy memories to relieve these trying times

  affectionately

  Franklin D. R.

  Christmas, 1941

  Nineteen forty-one?

  Roosevelt set the photograph carefully on the papers before him, stared at it for a few seconds longer, then took a cigarette from the box to one side and inserted it into his holder. "I think you people had better explain," he said at last, looking up.

  The decision finally arrived at, as Winslade had hoped, was to try all-out for a working return-gate as first priority, which would automatically give them the bomb—from 1975— if they succeeded. A lower-priority program of ongoing atomic research would be maintained in the meantime as insurance in case they didn't succeed. This arrangement had the added attraction that the second area of activity could continue to provide a convenient cover for the first.

  The other thing Roosevelt ordered was that the remainder of the Proteus team be brought to Washington. "I want to meet every one of this bunch", he told Watson. "And besides, every U.S. citizen ought to be able to talk to his President. What difference does it make which copy, or whatever, of the U.S. they're from?" He thought for a moment and then looked at Greene. "How long did you say they've been cooped up in that warehouse in Brooklyn?"

  "Since February," Greene replied.

  "Did the soldiers there bring uniforms back with them from 1975?"

  "Yes, as a matter of fact they did."

  "Well, you can tell them that I want them to wear their uniforms when they come here," Roosevelt said. "It'll be good for their pride and morale." He made an empty-handed gesture at Watson. "Things would have taken a pretty bad turn if soldiers of the United States Army had to creep around in disguise to meet their own Commander-in-Chief, wouldn't they, Pa . . . and at the White House of all places? If anyone gets inquisitive, they can just say that the subject's classified and they're not permitted to talk about it."

  The meeting at the Bureau of Standards that had been fixed for October 21 did take place as scheduled. For the record, an appropriation of $6,000 was approved to commence the U.S. nuclear weapons program. The transcript of the proceedings depicted Adamson as a closed-minded officer of the old school, unwilling to consider new possibilities. At one point, he was recorded as asserting that moral superiority, not gimmicks in weaponry, brought victory. If that were so, Eugene Wigner retorted, the Army's budget could be cut by thirty percent. Edward Teller concluded that Hitler's "moral superiority" had just smashed the Poles.

  But that was, after all, only for the official record.

  CHAPTER 25

  IN THE HISTORY OF the Proteus teams world, Hitler had delivered a major speech to the Reichstag on October 6, 1939, proclaiming his desire for peace. He had done no more than correct the injustices inflicted upon Germany at Versailles, he maintained, and he offered to settle the few remaining differences between Germany and the West at a conference. The West's leaders, however, unable to back down in the glare of world opinion, but at the same time unwilling to initiate serious hostilities, had remained inert. This had led Hitler to conclude that they needed a stronger justification if they were to disentangle themselves from the war.

  The Russians, sensing what was coming and anxious to improve their security, had begun pressuring Finland for border readjustments after seizing eastern Poland, and eventually opened hostilities against Finland at the end of November. With Russia thus preoccupied for the time being, Hitler ordered preparations for an attack into France through Belgium and Holland. Bad weather caused several postponements, but the blitzkrieg finally rolled westward on January 30, 1940. The French, already demoralized internally and faced with three Fascist dictators—Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco—on their borders, sued for an armistice without any great show of resistance.

  The screen before the gathering of people in a darkened room of Churchill's flat in Morpeth Mansions showed newsreel extracts of German tank columns passing through French villages, artillery batteries in action, and thousands of bedraggled Allied prisoners being marched along roads by grinning Wehrmacht guards. Arthur Bannering's voice continued its commentary above the whirring of the projector. "Hitler agreed to a cease-fire on condition that France be partitioned into a German-occupied sector and a sector under a pro German regime that would also administer the French colonies. The French accepted, leaving the British Expeditionary Force across the Channel in an impossible situation. It, too, was forced to surrender in March."

  "They couldn't have been evacuated?" Churchill queried from where he was sitting in the center at the front, facing the screen.

  "Everything had been half-hearted," Bannering replied. "Nobody had expected an attack of such ferocity. The Army wasn't equipped to fight a real war, never mind to stage an evacuation."

  "Hmph," Churchill grunted.

  Churchill had moved into quarters above the War Room at Admiralty House, which besides keeping him close to his official duties, freed his own flat at Pimlico for use as an operations center for the Proteus team. Professor Lindemann, who was sitting by the fireplace, had also moved into Admiralty House, ostensibly to set up a statistics department for aiding the Navy with scientific analyses and advice. It was now November 1939, and the trusted inner circle that knew about Proteus had grown somewhat since the outbreak of war.

  The film showed German soldiers demolishing the wall of a museum building and then moving a railroad coach outside. Bannering continued, "The French surrender was formally signed in April, in the same railway carriage that Marshal Foch used to dictate the surrender terms to Germany that ended the Great War. It was moved for the occasion to the same spot in the woods at Compiégne that it had occupied on November 11, 1918."

  Scenes of the surrender formalities followed, and then the view changed to one of German troops embarking and their ships putting to sea. "In May, Hitler's forces invaded Denmark and Norway.
The British position was hopeless—the Norwegian ports would enable the Germans to tighten the U-boat blockade; we had no allies; and all of our equipment, along with most of the Air Force, had been lost in France. With the end in sight, Mussolini entered the war by attacking Egypt and British East Africa. Despite the treaty terms forbidding it, Hitler seized the French fleet at Oran, which in combination with the Italians gave the Axis the Mediterranean. We had no choice but to withdraw the Navy to Gibraltar, leaving Egypt exposed."

  Bannering's voice took on a bleak note as he relived the anguish of years that were both long gone and imminent. "After that, the rest of Europe fell in with what was obviously the winning side, and we were soon overwhelmed. Spain opened its borders, enabling Hitler to take Gibraltar. Malta fell. The Balkan states aligned with the Axis to form a second strategic pincer closing on the Persian Gulf through Greece and Turkey, in addition to the Italian offensive across North Africa."

  "In November, Halifax, who had replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister, sought a truce by offering to give up Egypt. But Hitler was unimpressed, since the collapse of the whole Middle East was now unavoidable, anyway. Seeing a chance to eliminate a possible base for future American operations, Hitler demanded occupation of the British Isles."

  The picture on the screen showed formations of massed Luftwaffe bombers, and then changed to more by-now-familiar shots of explosions, fires, and falling buildings. This time, however, the scenes were of London streets and landmarks. Gasps of protest came from some of the viewers. Bannering concluded somberly, "The remnants of the RAF were destroyed in the first three weeks. We were defenseless. Nothing was left to oppose the air bombardment or the invasion forces massing in the ports across the Channel. The Royal Family and other prominent figures were taken to Canada, and German troops began landing in England, unopposed, on the last day of the year. The British surrender was signed on January 1, 1941." The final sequence showed Hitler driving triumphantly through London at the head of a victory parade, along streets lined with panzer tanks and gray-coated German soldiers.