A Mighty Endeavor

by Stuart Slade

  “Why bother?” Cardew’ spoke derisively, an obvious sneer in his voice.

  “Because this is their country, Sir Richard. We rule it in trust for them. Sir Martyn, you have spoken with Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru? How does the Congress Party see things?”

  “As usual, Your Excellency, they want independence now, if not sooner. Within that framework, however, there are many divisions. Nehru is now of the opinion that knuckling under to this order would make any rapid attainment of independence most unlikely and unproductive if attempted. On the other hand, continuing the war, for a short time at least, would underline India’s independence and bring their dream within easy reach. That is an attractive prospect for them. After some discussions, Nehru has come to the opinion that, since India is now in the war, it should stay in. May I add that his own abhorrence of the Nazi regime was of some importance in him reaching that position.”

  “Communist rabble-rouser.” Cardew’s sneer cut across the room and more than one head nodded in agreement with him.

  “Where do Nehru’s political opinions finally reside, Sir Martyn?” Lord Linlithgow spoke quietly while he marked down those who had nodded. They would need to be maneuvered out of the way.

  “There is no doubt he is a socialist your excellency, one who believes that the best model for developing this country resides within the framework of large, state-run enterprises. He would fit very well within the Labour Party in that respect. But a communist? I do not think so. His guiding light is the future of India and all else takes second place to that. To be a Communist would mean that he would place the interests of international Communism over those of India and that he will not do. There are Communists in the Congress Party, of that I have little doubt, but they do not dominate its leadership. There are fascists also. I would name Subhas Chandra Bose as prime in their number. He is closer to the leading figures than any communist. I would suggest it is in our interest to support the existing Congress Party leadership and ensure that neither of those factions gains any significant power.”

  Lord Linlithgow nodded. “So the Congress Party would support us in continuing the war?”

  “Nehru asks for time, Your Excellency. Time to persuade those who hold different positions from his own of what lies at stake here. That would allow him to present his position as that of the Congress Party, rather than just a faction of it. I have an idea of how we can buy some time at least.”

  “Pray tell?”

  “I understand that the undersea telegraph lines are experiencing erratic problems at the moment. Some messages are being corrupted in transmission and I believe that this was one of them. It may possess real content that is quite different from the corrupted version we have received. We owe it to the responsibility of our positions here to ensure that we have received a true and fair copy. I suggest we return a ‘copy corrupt’ signal and ask for a retransmission.”

  “Your Excellency, I object. This is a lie; a damnable lie.”

  “I think not, Sir Richard. Can you prove to us, here and now, that the message we received was not corrupted in transmission?’ Lord Linlithgow paused before continuing, “I thought not. Sir Martyn is right. Whole sections of critical importance may have been omitted. It has happened before. I would remind you of the time when the text of the Holy Bible was corrupted in transmission and the word ‘not’ was omitted from the Seventh Commandment. Sir Martyn, do as you propose.”

  Bank de Commerce el Industrie, Geneva, Switzerland

  “There’s one person who will know how to get this information used.” Branwen felt like ducking for cover as she made the suggestion. Mentioning Phillip Stuyvesant to Loki was akin to pouring gasoline on an already-raging inferno. Why can’t these two grow up? Sometimes Branwen felt as if she wanted to take both of them quietly to one side and bang their heads together.

  To her astonishment, Loki nodded in agreement. “I hate to admit it, but you are almost certainly right. If we send this material over now, it will get lost at best. Nobody in authority knows who we are.”

  “May the gods be praised for that.” Branwen spoke fervently.

  “Right. But now that very anonymity is turned against us. To the world at large, we’re just bankers and traders.”

  Loki shook his head. He had just returned from Germany. What he had seen there turned his stomach. The reason behind his trip was a simple one. Five years earlier, a member of his family by the name of Morrigan had been framed as a communist by a man Loki had trusted and left to the tender mercies of the Gestapo. That had left Loki with only one practical option. He had made a trip to Germany, found her and put a bullet into her head before she could talk. She would have talked, eventually, and there was far too much she could tell her interrogators. Loki knew that. He also knew that his rifle shot had been the only mercy she was likely to receive. On that trip, his eyes had been fixed on what he had had to do and he had ignored what lay in clear sight around him.

  That hadn’t been the case on this trip. It had been purely a matter of revenge. He had found Odwin Noth, the man who had betrayed Morrigan. Loki had framed him as a communist agent and then killed him. Only, this time his eyes had been open and he had taken full measure of the German regime in a way that not even Kristallnacht had made clear. He had also achieved something else. He was a banker, a Swiss banker; Germany was a country where everybody in authority wanted a numbered Swiss bank account of their very own. That made him a sought-after guest; in so doing, he had been able to recruit people right across the entire spectrum of German industry. Loki never asked questions that seemed to have direct military or political significance; he was far too astute for that. Instead, he expressed interest in little things that seemed to have no direct relevance to anything much. What his contacts never realized was that each piece of data was a part of a jigsaw. When fitted together, they provided a picture of German industrial production and planning that was completely unmatched. Quietly, Loki was proud of what he had created. Not just because nobody had ever achieved so complete a picture of a nation’s industry at war before, but because even those who had helped prepare it never knew the product existed.

  “I took the liberty of contacting Phillip. He’s sending Igrat over to collect the information. She’ll have Henry with her as a bodyguard.” Branwen waited for the explosion. Dealing with a situation that involved both Phillip Stuyvesant and Loki was rather like juggling bottles of nitroglycerine. One could never be sure quite what was happening or when one would explode.

  “That’s good. Is there any word from England yet?”

  Branwen relaxed slightly. “On Churchill? No. He seems to have vanished completely. The general presumption is that he headed south as soon as news of the Coup broke and made it to Ireland. Our guess is that he’s still there, in hiding and waiting for things to settle down before flying over to Canada.”

  “Interesting. Head of a govemment-in-exile I suppose. A lot of people who were over in the U.S. and Canada have refused to return. The entire British Purchasing Commission for a start.” Loki grinned at the thought. “And that gives any government in exile a useful civil service. Something most of them lack. Igrat’s coming over, you say?”

  “That’s right.” And you’re pleased because it’ll give you another chance to get her into your bed. Something you only want because you think that sleeping with Phillip’s daughter will be a gesture of derision aimed at him. And Igrat won’t sleep with you because she’s smart enough to understand that.

  “Good, I’ve got some German strategic plans here as well. One’s on an abortive plan Noth came up with. He thought of going East through Turkey and Persia to try and hit India. The other is the German decision to invade Russia. I hope the Americans will know how to use them.” Loki looked at the plan for the German advance on India. It had its author’s blood on the cover.

  Lopburi Army Testing Ground, Thailand.

  The Carden-Lloyd machine gun carrier came to an abrupt halt, its long antennas waving in the air. The tac
tical situation had been set up for this particular display. The presumption was that a Thai unit was advancing down a road and had run into a hostile roadblock, built around entrenched infantry and supported by artillery and machine guns. It was a well-built, well-sited position that would hold up the advance for several hours if not dealt with. The book answer was quite simple; some of the advancing infantry would pin the roadblock with a frontal probe while the rest of the unit outflanked the defenses and either wiped them out or forced them out of their position. Simple, but requiring too much time. A different answer was being evaluated here.

  The key component of that answer was the machine-gun carrier. Or rather, the vehicle that had once been a machine gun carrier. It had been rebuilt; an enlarged and much taller rear structure had been added that housed two radios, their operator and an Air Force officer. One of the radios was tuned to Air Force frequencies and would be used to contact the Corsair dive bombers circling overhead. The other radio was a standard Army communications set. Inside the vehicle, the Air Force officer had seen the defenses and decided to do something about it.

  “Cobra Section, attack target on road five hundred meters ahead of position. Green to red.”

  Suriyothai watched as the flare arched upwards from the Carden-Lloyd and started to burn green. Half way through, the flare turned red. Overhead, the drone of aircraft engines suddenly picked up in volume. Then it changed to the wailing scream of a dive bomber in its near-vertical plummet on the ‘enemy position’. The Air Force has taken a lesson from the German book and attached sirens to the fixed undercarriages of its Vought Corsair biplanes. She looked up; the four aircraft that formed Cobra Section were peeling over into their dive. It was a chilling sight; one that the world had become all too familiar with after the German displays in Poland and France. Her binoculars tracked the dive bombers down as they slammed their weapons into the enemy position. We need better dive bombers; ones that can dive steeper and deliver heavier bombs than those old Corsairs. On the ground, the troops were running forward while the smoke from the bombs was still clearing. By the time the defenders could have recovered, the infantry were all over them. The position ‘fell quickly’ and the Thai flag was waving over it before the aircraft could return.

  “Five minutes from spotting the defense to the dive bombers taking it out.” Field Marshal Plaek sounded more than pleased. “It took the Germans between twenty and thirty minutes to organize an attack like that, and everybody thought they were marvels for achieving it. And we took five!”

  “Because we had the aircraft circling overhead and the observer on the ground ready to bring them in. That’s the real breakthrough. The dive bomber attack was reasonably good but it was nowhere near as skilled as the Germans. Our dive bomber pilots need to train more. They must fly more often and keep practicing. See to it please, Field Marshal.”

  It was a sight that would confuse any conventional military officer. A woman in a Colonel’s uniform was casually giving orders a man in the uniform of a Field Marshal. Only the tiny handful of people who knew who the woman was would have found it, not just unsurprising, but routine.

  “Do you miss military command, Your Highness?”

  Suriyothai smiled in response. “Yes, I do. And I miss fighting with you by my side.”

  Beneath her smile, her mind ran back to 1932 and the end of the absolute monarchy in Thailand. Her function, the whole meaning of her life, was to serve the monarchy and defend its interests. Sometimes, that meant changing it. 1932 had been one of those times. She had seen that the days of absolute monarchies had ended. They had ended years before, but a series of unusually able kings in Thailand had concealed that. But time had caught up with the monarchy and it had to change, become a constitutional monarchy, if the institution was to survive.

  It had been the Great Depression that had ended things. The existing absolute monarchy had been unable to cope with the escalating financial crisis; economic ruin threatened. Suriyothai had moved to avoid the impending disaster. She organized a group of military officers and civilians and planned a coup that had taken place in June 1932. Her allies then had been a group of young intellectuals educated overseas led by a young French educated lawyer, Pridi Banomyong, and a military faction led by military officers Phraya Phahon and Plaek Pibulsonggram. The coup had been launched at dawn and was over by noon the same day. It went so smoothly that most people were hardly aware it had taken place. The King had acceded to the demands to avoid bloodshed and agreed to serve as the constitutional monarch. Not everybody approved of that. In October 1933, a rebellion by provincial garrisons led by Prince Boworadet, a former Minister of War, brought the country to the brink of civil war. Suriyothai had assembled a force of government troops and appointed Lieutenant-Colonel Plaek Pibulsonggram their commander. In order to make sure she remained in command, she had appointed herself a Colonel and so she had remained.

  The fighting had started on 12 October when the rebels had captured Don Muang on the outskirts of Bangkok. Heavy street fighting had lasted for two days before they began to retreat. Suriyothai had led her regiment in pursuit and overrun the main rebel stronghold. Even then, she hadn’t stopped. Her troops had pursued and advanced to the rebel base in Nakhon Ratchasima. By 23 October, the rebels had been dispersed, and the revolt was over. Implicated in the rebellion, the King had abdicated, stunned by the fact Suriyothai had taken the field against him. She had pointed out that she served the country and the monarchy, not an individual monarch.

  She shook herself slightly, shaking off the old memories. Beside her, Plaek smiled; he had seen her perform as a soldier and found taking orders from her appropriate. It was simply recognition of ability. “Your Highness, may I introduce Wing Commander Fuen who devised the tactics we have seen today?”

  “Well done, Wing Commander; a most impressive display. What do you call the observer on the ground?”

  “A forward air controller, Your Highness.”

  “Then train many forward air controllers. We should have one with radio equipment in every battalion at least. You have six months. And make sure our dive bomber pilots train hard. Far more than you can ever realize depends upon their skills.”

  Boeing 314, “Yankee Clipper”, Marseilles Flying Boat Station, Vichy France

  “Well, Phillip was right. France didn’t hold out very long after Britain caved in.” The passengers from the Boeing 314 had already disembarked but were stacked up waiting to get through French immigration. The chaos wasn’t the French officials’ fault; everything was still confused after the armistice signed in Paris had ended the fighting. The northern half of France was now under German occupation; the southern half was not. Igrat looked at the staff checking papers. Mostly they were the traditional French police, but there were some others lurking around, watching suspiciously. Gestapo. The flying boat anchored out in the bay was the first to arrive here since services had been suspended during the war. That apparently being over, Juan Trippe had moved quickly to reestablish his clipper service to Lisbon and Marseilles.

  “Your name, mademoiselle?” The customs officer was looking at her passport, so the question was superfluous.

  “Igrat Shafrid. Resident in Georgetown, Washington and Long Island, New York. I am here on a vacation trip.” Igrat’s French was fluent and won her immediate points with the immigration officials.

  Not so much with one of the Gestapo officers. He pricked up his ears at the sound of Igrat’s name. “Do you have Jewish ancestry?” The question was snapped out.

  Igrat switched smoothly to equally fluent German. “Certainly not. I am an American of Persian ancestry. You know, the original Aryans. My family has been in America since 1760. As for religion, the only God I believe in is printed by the United States Treasury and has pictures of presidents on it.”

  “You can sure say that, sweetie.” Henry McCarty was playing the part of Igrat’s sugar daddy. That was the overt cover. As usual, there was a cover within a cover. The second-line cover wa
s that he was actually a shady businessman who was looking for black market opportunities in a German-dominated Europe. Anybody who did a detailed investigation of the Broadway Baby and her sugar daddy would discover the corrupt businessman who had brought Igrat along as his cover. The best security was always to give people things to find.

  The French official looked down and smiled. He’d recognized Igrat as an adventuress almost immediately and slightly envied McCarty for his companionship with her. Although, he had no doubt the stunning brunette would empty his wallet with great efficiency. “My apologies, mademoiselle. You will be staying in France long?”

  “Only a few days. We are on our way to Geneva. My daddy has business with one of the banks there.” The note of boredom at the mention of business permeated Igrat’s voice.

  “Now, sweetie, if Daddy doesn’t do his business, sweetie won’t get her presents.” Henry sounded almost pleading and the French official was desperately trying to not laugh.

  “You promised we could go to the Champs Elysee.” Igrat pouted.

  “I am sorry, mademoiselle. Paris is occupied by les Boches and nobody can go there from here. But the shops here in Marseilles are just as good.” The Frenchman spoke with the fervor of a man whose family had long resided in Marseilles and regarded Paris as having a collective case of a severely over-inflated ego. “And our restaurants are much better.”

  “So I hear. Daddy promised me some real bouillabaisse.”

  “Then you are in for the experience of a lifetime. Welcome to France.” Igrat’s passport was stamped and she was past immigration. McCarty followed her a minute of so later.

  “Well done, Iggie. By the time you’d finished with him, I got through without a problem. The guy who spoke to you was Gestapo?”