“Arsehole…” Lloyd shot back, neither man finding the exchange funny enough to smile under the circumstances.
US War Department
Munitions Buildings, Washington D.C
December 8, 1942
Tuesday
(East of the International Date Line)
“Mister Vice President, Mister Speaker, Members of the Senate and the House of Representatives: yesterday, December Seventh, 1942 – 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…”
Colonel Jack Davies waited nervously in the ante-chamber of the office of Henry L. Stimson, US Secretary for War, as Roosevelt’s historic speech to the Joint Session of Congress played on a large, vacuum-tube radio set atop a side table by the sofa on which he sat. The speech had been given first thing that morning, and the radio stations had been replaying it regularly since amid unending news reports and speculative ‘post mortems’ on the loss of the carriers off Hawaii and the destruction of the Panama Canal. He found the whole experience darkly surreal from the point of view of someone who’d grown up in the Realtime 1980s. Save for the year quoted, what was playing currently on the radio sounded word-for-word identical to the ‘Day of Infamy Speech’ he’d learned about in history class.
A career fighter pilot, Davies stood around six foot three in height. Broad and fit due to a strong exercise regimen, he wore short-cut, straw-blond hair capped an open, country face with an equally open, toothy smile. He wasn’t smiling at that moment however. Even for a man with some foresight into a future that had been turned completely upside down, he was having great difficulty processing the concept that the United States of America, his homeland, was now in a state of war with the greatest global threat it had ever faced.
“No matter how long it may take us to overcome this premeditated invasion, the American people in their righteous might will win through to absolute victory. I believe that I interpret the will of the Congress and of the people when I assert that we will not only defend ourselves to the uttermost but will make it very certain that this form of treachery shall never again endanger us.”
He was still listening to the speech as the door to the hallway outside opened and a tall, thin man in a clearly-expensive suite entered alone. The uniformed receptionist behind her desk in the far corner of the room rose immediately and approached to greet him, reaching out to take hat and coat as he offered them across.
“Good morning, Sir Owen,” she declared with a winning smile as she directed him to the sofas where Davies sat. “There’s a bit of a wait I’m afraid; The Secretary has someone else to see before you as a matter of urgency…”
“That’s quite alright, Margaret,” he replied with a nod and a smile, the informality of it all suggesting he was no stranger to these offices. “I know I’m early: I don’t mind waiting…”
“Thank you, sir; please take a seat…”
He moved across to sit down on the two-seat sofa beside Davies’, giving the officer a faint smile and nod of acknowledgement as he did so. With a long, thin face and thinning hair cut short and parted on one side, he appeared perhaps in his mid-fifties and carried a direct, rather serious expression. The most intriguing thing for Davies however was the man’s accent: one he’d not heard for some time.
“Good morning, sir,” he ventured with a nod of his own, cap resting in his lap between both hands. “Pardon my asking, but you’re Australian, I see...”
“That wasn’t a question, colonel,” came the dry, very Australian reply, “but you’re quite right… I am…”
“Colonel Jack Davies, sir… US Army Air Force…”
“Yes, I see that,” the newcomer nodded slowly, giving him a strange stare as if mentally sizing him up in some way. “Owen Dixon,” he added, leaning forward and extending a hand that was shaken in return. “You’re the fellow ahead of me in the queue, I presume?”
“I guess so, sir, ‘though I’m not actually sure why I’ve been called in here today,” Davies conceded with a shrug.
“You weren’t all that surprised by my accent,” Dixon observed shrewdly, raising an eyebrow.
“I’ve worked with Aussies before, sir…” Davies grinned in return, both men nodding in that moment as if it were all that needed to be said.
The door to the inner office opened at that moment, allowing the exit of another man in a well-cut suit, a visitor’s pass pinned to his lapel that was identical to those worn by both waiting men. What did surprise Davies in the seconds that followed was the immediate change in Dixon’s demeanour upon catching sight of who that man was. As both rose immediately to their feet with the appearance of the US Secretary of War a moment later, the pilot was the only man in the room to note the fact that Dixon’s fists were clenched rigidly at his sides in that moment of decidedly awkward silence.
“I thank you again for coming to us with this, Ambassador Thomsen: we will have a response for you as soon as possible. Margaret will have a detail brought up to escort you to your car.”
“Please, Herr Stimson, there is no need,” Thomsen answered quickly, the starkness of his German accent jarring in that environment to the point where even Davies felt an instinctive and very negative reaction.
“I insist, Ambassador,” Stimson countered steadfastly. “This is a big place to be walking about alone and we wouldn’t want any ‘misunderstandings’ with the staff or any other visitors… please…”
“As you wish, Mister Secretary,” Thomsen acceded graciously, almost coming to attention as he nodded his assent. Davies could have sworn the only thing missing was the click of his heels coming together.
“Colonel Davies,” the receptionist called, butting in on his moment of lost time as Stimson disappeared back into his office. “The Secretary will see you now…”
Oh… uh… thank you, ma’am,” Davies mumbled vaguely, still watching the German as the man took a seat of his own on the very opposite side of the office to Dixon, making a clear effort to not look in his direction or to react in any way. As he stepped through the open door, he hoped whatever escort was coming got there soon, as the atmosphere he was leaving behind had suddenly become decidedly toxic.
“Jack…!” Bill Donovan, Chief of the Office of Strategic Services exclaimed the moment the door had closed once more, standing over in one corner of the US Secretary of War’s ornately decorated office. “Good to see you again…!”
The only word that could possibly describe Jack Davies’ frozen expression in that moment was ‘star-struck’. He’d known he was about to meet Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson for the first time, but had no idea Donovan would present. Another presence he’d been given no warning of whatsoever was that of the President of the United States himself, Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Stimson, at seventy-five years old, was sitting in his second term as Secretary of War, appointed by the Roosevelt Administration as a way to win bipartisan support from the Republican Party of the time. A career politician, he wore round, thin-framed spectacles over a hawkish nose and a thick, greyed moustache as he sat at his huge desk, both hands clasped seriously before him as he stared expectantly at the dumfounded pilot.
Roosevelt himself sat in a large upholstered chair that had been brought in specifically for him, no sign of a cane or the wheelchair Davies suspected must have been hiding out of sight nearby. A victim of polio since the early 1920s, he suffered permanent paralysis from the waist down that made it almost impossible to walk unaided. The wheelchair was never seen in public however due to the perceived stigma that might attract, and the President was often filmed of photographed with either aides or one of his sons at his side for surreptitious support.
He seemed more relaxed now as he sat there with a smoking cigarette fixed into a short cigarette holder stuck between his teeth. A chronic smoker, Roosevelt’s health had already begun to deteriorate since his re-election in 1940 and Davies was also well aware of how t
hat piece of history ended in Realtime. Rumour had it that all attempts to get the man to even cut back on his intake had met with failure, despite plenty of future evidence pointing to the folly of such action.
“Mister Donovan has told me a lot about you, colonel,” The President advised with a disarming smile, the cigarette holder moving to his hand for a moment as he gestured to a simple, wooden chair placed directly before all of them. “Please, have a seat… we’ve never met before, have we, son?”
“N-no, Mister President,” Davies admitted, sitting as directed and holding his cap once more in both hands on his lap, shifting his feet nervously. “I wasn’t aware you would be here, sir.”
“No one’s aware of that fact, colonel,” Roosevelt explained with a soft chuckle, “no one outside of this room right now at least…”
“…And the German ambassador, it seems, sir,” Davies pointed out as tactfully as he was able, not able to help himself.
“You don’t miss much do you, son?” Roosevelt noted with far less of a smile, nodding in acknowledgement all the same. “You were right, Bill…” he added, turning momentarily to glance at Donovan, “…this kid is pretty sharp.” He turned back to Davies. “I find it strange however, considering your origins, colonel, that it has taken this long for us to meet. Everything I’ve seen of your record suggests you’ve been doing some fine work the last two years since arriving here…”
“Just doin’ my bit, Mister President,” Davies demurred modestly, uncomfortable about having his record reviewed so positively by his Commander-in-Chief for some reason. “I don’t have the historical knowledge that some of the other guys in my unit have, but I know how to teach fighter pilots… so that’s what I do…”
“Your unit…” Roosevelt repeated knowingly. “The Hindsight Unit…”
“Yes, sir…”
“I think you’re selling yourself short, son, when you say you don’t have any historical knowledge…” Donovan observed with a wry smile. “That talk we had a few months back was very enlightening.”
“And with all due respect, sir, I’m concerned now that some of what we discussed was used to influence what’s happened in Ireland since…” Davies shot back, mostly managing to keep the sharpness from his tone.
“Colonel, I can assure you one hundred per cent that the plans for that operation, ARKANSAS LIME, were finalised long before we spoke to you in September,” the OSS Chief assured, not offended in the slightest. “All you did was confirm what we already believed, so you don’t need to worry yourself unduly over that…”
“…But at the time you also already knew of the existence of Sam Lowenstein, sir…” he countered quickly, the reply already formed in his mind. “Otherwise, why would you have been so eager to question me on the man, considering that we all know now that he’s right here in the United States?”
“Sharp… like you said,” Roosevelt muttered under his breath, nodding faintly in approval.
“You got guts, son,” Stimson declared, speaking for the first time and also sounding vaguely impressed, “but guts alone doesn’t win wars, and you know that just as well as the rest of us. Now Bill’s not the kind of fella to be real open with information,” he continued, giving a wry smile of his own, “and considering his job, that’s probably a good thing…” That remark drew chuckles from both Donovan and the President, and even Davies couldn’t help but concede that point with a faint nod.
“Right now though, we’re going to spell it right out, colonel… plain and simple…” Roosevelt continued, fixing Davies with an intense, almost soul-searching stare. “Son, we need your help. The United States needs your help. And as much help as you’ve already been, doin’ all that good work down in Nevada, there’s a lot more at stake here than a few fighter jets or some better-trained pilots…”
There was something in the way Roosevelt had spoken that went straight to Davies’ core, which had been exactly as intended. To hear from the President of the United States – his Commander-in-Chief – that his country needed his help was a compelling argument indeed for a military officer.
“Now, the fact is,” Stimson explained, removing his glasses and pinching at his nose as if to relieve some perceived pressure there, “the Japs have hurt us badly, and I don’t think you need me to tell you that. What you may not know,” he continued as Davies nodded again in agreement, “is that the attack on the Panama Canal was made with the use of an atomic bomb. Now Bill here…” he went on, noting the pilot’s reactions as his eyes flew wide in shock, “thinks you’d already know what one of those is, and from the look o’ things, that seems just about dead right.”
“The Japanese have nuclear technology?” Davies blurted, disbelief in his tone. “You’re saying the Japanese have built an A-bomb before us…? Sir, that’s impossible…!”
“Yes, colonel, it is.” Stimson agreed. “In the last 48 hours, we received warning from the German government that renegade factions within their own ranks had supplied the Japs with two atomic bombs without the knowledge of their own military or civilian command. We were also warned that it was the intent of the Japanese to use one of those devices in a direct attack against US soil. We were worried about a city… a military base perhaps… by the time we realised the real target we were unfortunately too late to do anything about it…”
“The Nazis told us this…?” Davies hadn’t believed it was possible for his levels of incredulity to rise any higher, but was proven wrong in that moment. “And we’re sure this isn’t some attempt to fool us? Some attempt to earn their trust by providing information too late to be acted upon?”
“We do not believe this to be the case,” Donovan chimed in, not sounding convinced as much as he wanted to believe it. “The manner in which the information was conveyed suggested it was done so at great risk to the bearer. We also have reason to believe that this information came directly from Reichsmarschall Reuters, rather than Hitler or any of his cronies…”
“Reuters,” Davies sneered caustically, “who’d do anything to avoid war with the United States…”
“Exactly the reason we feel the information is genuine,” Roosevelt advised emphatically. “We may not like the guy, but everything we’ve seen of Reuters and everything your Hindsight Unit has told us, he’s a straight-shooter. If the briefing we’ve read is correct, isn’t it true that in your history, Adolf Hitler declared war on the United States four days after Pearl Harbor?”
“I – I’m not sure of the exact timeline, sir, but that would be correct…” Davies conceded reluctantly.
“Which would fly directly in the face of the stance we’re currently receiving from the current Nazi administration,” The President continued. “Ambassador Thomsen, who you just saw leave this office not five minutes ago, repeated those same assurances that the last thing Nazi Germany wants is war with the United States. Son, they wanted to avoid it badly enough to betray their own ally instead.”
“Far as I know, sir, the Nazis aren’t shy of betraying anyone to get what they want,” Davies pointed out, not seeing how the last observation made any difference whatsoever.”
“What if we told you, colonel, that the German Ambassador just gave us –in writing – an official declaration that they are willing to guarantee no Kriegsmarine vessels in the North Atlantic any further west that the Azores… including U-boats…? That in writing, the Nazis are willing to guarantee no aggressive move against the United States – that their interests lie to their east and they want only peace on their western borders?”
“I’m no historian, sir, but I’d say that they’ve made promises like that before…” Davies shrugged. “Although sir, it’s true that their real interest always was the USSR… everything else was pretty much a sideshow as far as Hitler was concerned.”
“Colonel, I don’t think you understand the predicament we’re in at the moment…” Stimson explained sourly, his expression one of frustration and despair. “Yesterday, the Japs just handed us our own asses in a bag!
Yesterday we lost every carrier we had in the Pacific, and with the Panama Canal out of action it’ll be months at best before we can transfer anything across from out Atlantic fleet, most of which are older and less capable vessels anyway, excepting Hornet. The casualties at Panama alone were close to a fifty thousand dead, and more dying every day from this Goddamned ‘radiation poisoning’ business. The Brits have some extra carriers now due to rebuilds and refits – mostly at American dockyards” he added with no small amount of sarcasm, “but they’re gonna be stretched thin trying to keep the Japs out of South-East Asia as it is, and right now the US Navy is at least a year away from seeing any new carriers of its own come off the slipways.
“Even if we act now… withdraw everything we have out of the Atlantic and move it west, we’re still behind the eight ball…” he observed bitterly, neither Roosevelt nor Donovan seeming any happier about the situation. “If we don’t act now, well…” he paused and swallowed hard, the words unpalatable.
“…Then we’ve lost, son… simple as that…” Roosevelt finished for him. “We’re two or three years away from an atom bomb of our own, and by the time we’ve rebuilt any kind of new carrier force in the Pacific, the Japs will be so dug in that it’ll cost millions of American lives before we can knock ‘em back again… if we can… we need a secure East Coast, and the only chance we have of guaranteeing that is to take the Nazis at their word…”
Davies was aghast. Although he fought valiantly to hide it, the reality of what The President was saying filled him with horror at the thought.
“What do they want?” He directed that question at Donovan, knowing full well who the brains behind any subterfuge would be.
“Colonel…?” Donovan asked in return with a raised eyebrow, feigning ignorance.
“You’re all politicians, sir, even the Germans…” Davies growled, thinking the statement an obvious one. “They’re not gonna offer us anything unless they get somethin’ they want in return. What did they want…?” He demanded, repeating his initial question.
The Dead Alone (Empires Lost Book 3) Page 62