Rex Tugwell ordered coffee for the Commander In Chief.
“Rex, what is that God-awful stink?”
“Well, Mr. President, from what I understand there has been some sort of fire in Ohio.”
“Ohio, what sort of fire?”
“Some rubber tires, I have been told.”
The President sniffed, “Well, the sooner it burns out the better, but Ohio—that’s hundreds of miles from here.”
“Must have been one hell of a fire, hope the fuckingthingburnsout,” the President chuckled, the last four words sounding as one.
In truth, “the fire” was actually two separate fires in Akron: one at the Goodyear dump and the other 25 miles away at the Goodrich dump.
The “fucking thing” did burn itself, or rather, themselves, out—in February. Yet another of the usual Washington cover-ups followed—an inquisition followed to protect the guilty and torment the innocent, much along the lines of the original one in Spain, and with about the same level of veracity and honesty. The official title was the “Secretary of War’s Review Panel of the Ohio Rubber Fires,” less reverentially referred to as the “Rubbers Report.” The report conjectured that a number of men—“possibly of an Italian or Spanish persuasion”—had surreptitiously entered the two massive dumps and had planted “up to 100” magnesium flares. These flares burn with temperatures approaching the outer surface of the sun. Or as one reader succinctly described it, “very, very fucking hot.”
The fire had destroyed 60% of the U.S. reserve of rubber, and—a little more importantly—the ability of the U.S. to wage war.
But that was the least of the President’s problems.
20: Roosevelt’s Sacred Magisterium
Washington
Friday, 5 December 1941
“Bad business, that tire thing,” the President remarked to Rex.
Rex nodded, but looked ragged and nervous.
“What is it, Rex?”
“Sir, I’d rather wait for Mr. Hopkins to join us.”
Roosevelt’s ever-sensitive antennae twitched, “Rex, when you say ‘sir’ and ‘Mr. Hopkins,’ I know something is wrong, so out with it.”
Tugwell looked at the floor hoping for some form—any form—of salvation.
At this moment, salvation did arrive in the shape of Harry Hopkins.
“So, Harry, give me some good news.”
“Well, sir, the Canadians are no longer whining about the fires in Akron.”
“Good, so I hope those no-good, fucking gutless Northern monkeys have stopped their bitching. Have they?”
Saying nothing, Hopkins moved to the President’s desk and laid out the late morning issues of three Toronto morning newspapers.
“United States Plans To Invade Canada!” was the headline in end-of-the-world type; these six words were the front page of each of the dailies.
“What the fuck is this nonsense?” the President asked.
Hopkins took a very deep breath; Tugwell was still staring at the floor, praying he was anywhere but the Oval Office.
“Well. It seems the Canadians have gotten hold of War Plan Red. And so too have the English, and the Australians, and so on, and so on, and so on. And they know all about our proposed poison gas attacks as part of the plan.”
“How the fuck could this happen? WPR is a fucking HyperSecret—that means, Eyes Only, no fucking copies.”
“How the fuck could this happen?” by now Roosevelt was screaming, well beyond merely shouting.
Hopkins quietly said, “It gets worse.”
“Worse, worse, how much fucking worse can it get? Are you fucking joking—worse?”
“Well, the Canadian papers say there is a handwritten note from you to Stimson that is supposed to say, ‘Henry, as we discussed, we need to make these dopey northerners the 49th state ASAP—this cuts across party lines, Franklin.’ And these papers say they have had the hand writing analyzed and it is ah, conclusively, ah, yours, ah, Mr. President.”
Hopkins prayed for an earthquake to swallow up the White House, or at least that he would be struck dead; neither happened.
Roosevelt said nothing, then simply asked—himself more than the other two—“How the fuck did this happen?”
“So, what should we do, Mr. President?” Rex asked feebly having finally summoned the courage to speak.
Roosevelt, the consummate dissembler, reached for a cigarette.
“Do? We do nothing, we do dick, zero, nothing, nada. We don’t need those fucking Canadians cunts. If they whine, fuck them, we will cut off all the milk and honey to Mr. Winston and see who needs whom then.”
Even before finishing this sacred magisterium, Roosevelt’s finely tuned calculus engine was already turning, and he returned to master manipulator politician mode.
“Pour me a drink, and take one yourselves, if you like.” In spite of it being two minutes before 11 in the morning, both did likewise.
“So who does this help? Obviously, Berlin, but also Tokyo. So it must have been one—or both (Roosevelt chuckled at this). I have to say, I thought I was the wiliest cunt in the henhouse until today. But these people make me look like a Hudson River hick.”
The straight Scotch steadied—if only a little—Tugwell’s nerves, and he realized he was playing at the top table—here the President of the United States was making a brief study that would please even Niccolò.
“So Berlin is clearly the first winner, but Tokyo also gains if those dozy northern cunts take umbrage. But we really do not need the ball-less wonders.” (Tugwell was reminded of the President’s frequent conjecture that “All—no, that’s not fair—let’s say 97%—of Canadian men were born without testicles.”)
The President chuckled, “We live in interesting times.”
How could he change so quickly the two men wondered?
21: A Fine Social Contract
San Diego
Saturday, 6 December 1941
The rain squalls had started a little after ten that evening. By midnight, the wind had picked up and the rain was so heavy a man could not see more than 30 yards in front of him, and with the rain and wind came the cold. To Harrison, who had served in Minneapolis, this was mild weather. But still he did not like it—give him Galveston any time. Now there was a sweet town: warm, lots of booze, and lots and lots of girls who just loved a good time—a good time that almost always ended in what he liked most, what he called a “bed whacking.” But this cow town out West, you could take it, and you could keep it.
As the leader of the hourly patrol, he was strongly considering a slight variation in procedure, namely, a quick whip around the fuel tanks to ensure that no Mexicans had loaded them onto their donkeys and had stolen them. Then, over to the garage, which was always warm, dry and quiet. True, there was none of what he most liked, but poontang would be in abundance when he got he got his 48-hour liberty on Tuesday. Down by the docks, he loved to entertain the girls who had made their way up from Baja. To compete with the local girls, these Mexican senoritas were always cheaper, hotter and, most important, younger—many looked like innocent virgins. While it was true none of them were tight—after all, they were hard-working girls—they did get (or seemed to get, he could never quite tell) more excited than the local girls. And excitement and noise and wetness, as the girls all know, are what excite all men the most.
Harrison left with a two-man squad, “This will be a cursory and summary inspection.”
The two soldiers in the squad looked at each other, not understanding his words.
Slightly exasperated, Harrison explained, “We will look at Tank 1, then go to the garage. I doubt the Mexicans will be stealing the tanks tonight.”
Both men smiled and nodded.
Five minutes later, they got to the garage. It was typical—dark, bottle-green and over-painted, with signs dispensing such nonsense as “Let’s Prevent Noise By Ourselves” and the ubiquitous “No Smoking While Dispensing Fuel.”
The three men opened the side door. From
the outside floodlights, they could see the dark shadows of the pool’s trucks and jeeps and they could smell the stale grease. They walked to the drivers’ inner waiting room and sat down. The small room was a sanctum of quiet. Scattered about were copies of Life and the Saturday Evening Post, and a few magazines that his mother back home would call “rude” with smiling ladies all beaming at the reader, nipples brazenly erect, occasionally with a hint of pubic hair.
The drivers’ waiting room was not the cleanest place in the world, but there was a two-burner electric stove, an icebox, and most important of all, hidden behind the wood paneling above the icebox, a fifth of bourbon. The established protocol was: Drink It, Replace It. But for a fifth of a gallon of the best southern bourbon, this was a fine social contract.
The three sat down, and three glasses were found. Not that the glasses were the cleanest, but—what the hell—the whiskey would kill all the germs.
Outside, under the cover of the driving rain storm, ten men emerged from a hole in the chain wire fence at the top of the compound. All were wearing Navy uniforms. The rain was the last thing on their minds. At the last moment, the idea of carrying mock wooden rifles had been discarded, not because the rifles did not look real, but rather because they would be of no benefit if the men were captured. All ten entered through the hole in fence at the north of the compound—the highest point—as the Swede had explained that, “This gives us a small advantage in case of discovery—the opposition will have to run up hill, and this will slow them, especially while carrying rifles.”
The troops nodded and appreciated his thoughtfulness about their well-being—their Spanish commanders in their civil war could have learned from the Swede’s thoughtfulness and planning and consideration for his troops.
The rain was a godsend but had they not rehearsed for the week prior back in Nogales, they would all have been lost. And, Holy Maria, these tanks were huge—in training, the men could not believe the circles of lime the Swede had marked on the four soccer fields in Nogales. But now they could see these monsters for themselves, each wider than a soccer field’s width and higher than a ten-story building; inside each, enough fuel for one of the giant American aircraft carriers for a month of cruising. And there were ten of these monsters.
Each man half walked, half ran to his designated monster. Placing the first of the two limpets on the uphill side of the tank, he then moved to the opposite side—this was the dangerous part as now the man was in the lights.
In far less time than they dreamed of, all ten men reunited at the hole in the fence. In reality, it was just four minutes. The ten scrambled through the fence back to bus. Once they reached the bus, they scrambled on board, like very nervous and frightened school boys who had successful robbed a candy store for the very first time at the start of their promising young criminal careers. The inside of the bus was dark—just three red bulbs dimly glowed, just enough dull glow to not trip over the steps. All ten stripped off their uniforms and placed them in two cream calico bags. While they were doing this, the bus had jumped into life and had slowly and carefully started on its slow journey back to the safety of Mexico. Two hours out on the highway, they stopped and dumped the two calico bags on the side of the road into a ravine. They all talked about the mission and their rewards for four minutes of pure, breathtaking exhilaration—imagine actually being paid to do this.
In the drivers’ small waiting room, the two electric burners glowed red and while their glow was somewhat feeble, the room was very small, and soon it was warm. In addition, the bourbon was having its effect. Harrison and his tiny army were all feeling no pain. Harrison rose and was starting to say they should make some coffee and get going back to the barracks. Just as he made this slightly garbled announcement they heard a muffled noise from the top end of the tank farm, then a second later, another, then the sounds of six more. Startled, all three looked at each other.
Two seconds later, the pool garage and the inner sanctum of the drivers’ waiting room were swept away by a flood of nine million gallons of heavy fuel oil. Enough fuel oil—as the quickly convened inquisition, the “Naval Review of the Loma Fuel Farm Attack,” pointed out—to fuel the US Navy’s entire aircraft carrier fleet for 74 days.
Or as one slightly more astute analyst pointed out: with the loss of Loma and the Hawaiian Islands oil farms, the American carriers best use would soon be to be scuttled as artificial coral reefs; Yamamoto pondered this as he thought about the time his Emperor had mentioned to him the need for more coral reefs for his Emperor’s son’s beloved fish.
22: Sato’s Cherry Blossoms
Cristobal, Panama
Sunday, 7 December 1941
At six in the morning on the bridge of the Tancho, Admiral Sato looked at the sky. Broken clouds masked much of the full moon. An hour earlier, all 60 men had squeezed into the ward room designed for 20 officers.
“Well, men, today we will make history for our nation. I can tell you that our countrymen are about to attack the American possession of the Hawaiian Islands in the Pacific.”
A gasp swept the room; Sato waited for it to subside,
“And with that attack, we will start to fulfill the Emperor’s destiny to be the ruler of the Pacific, our Pacific. But our mission is just as important. And we can cripple our enemy—cripple it without the loss of one life, either Japanese or anyone else.”
Sato moved to a large map on the wall of North and South America. Two red lines showed distances from New York to San Francisco. The red line going through the Canal had the distance listed beside it of 8,370 kilometers, while the second one, around the Horn, had the distance listed as 20,900 kilometers.
“Gentlemen, as you can see from these lines, the Panama Canal is the most vital strategic resource the Americans have. Yet, in spite of this, they have decided not to reinforce it in any way. Such a sweet little virgin cannot be wasted.” (All present knew of Sato’s predilection for Yokohama virgins; it was common knowledge that in this very ward room Sato had deflowered seven girls—“just there where you are eating your udon noodles”—he would remind many a blushing midshipman who stared at the table. “Clean, sweet, innocent and above all, very, very tight,” Sato would smile.)
Sato was loved for his wit, his love of wine, his joie de vivre and above all, how he cared for his sailors.
“But seriously, gentlemen, we have been blessed. So here is the plan: we will weigh anchor at midnight and will slip out of this very congenial port. Silence is key. Our hosts will mostly be in their beds, but there is no reason to tempt the Fates. We will steam due east. Our agents up the coast have indicated there are no commercial vessels at the mouth of the Canal. Then we will turn 180 degrees and steam into the mouth of the Canal. We will travel at just six knots, and even at that, it will be damn close as the Canal is only three boat widths wide in the entrance. The depth reading our fishing boats have taken over the past year as they have ‘accidentally’ strayed into the Canal have suggested we can drive at least five kilometers, possible as far as seven kilometers, into the Canal. At the five kilometer mark, there will be a burning truck on each bank. When we see these markers, we turn hard a-starboard and reverse the starboard engine. We will then block the Canal. When we run aground, I will scuttle the ship.”
A second gasp was heard.
“Gentlemen, please be aware this is not a game. We are simply following the guiding principle of attacking the enemy’s weakness, and in this case, his weakness is his Canal. We will proceed into the Canal, scuttle the ship, disembark the ship’s company and then the explosive charges will turn her into a great, impassible thorn. A thorn that will do more damage than one thousand sister ships could ever inflict. All of you will remember the difficulties we had as a massive ship of the line in rounding the Horn—the massive seas, the Roaring Forties, the Furious Fifties, the Screaming Sixties. We felt like the proverbial cork. And remember the icebergs we saw? Now think what a small, frail, common oiler, one tenth our size, will feel. Gentle
men, we are blessed.
“You have all wondered about the dry docking in Yokohama last year. And how it was done in such secrecy. How our aircraft hangars below decks were filled with the huge blocks of triangular cast steel. Blocks that are taller than two men and each weighing 50,000 kilograms. Well, now you know. As the ship explodes, these huge blocks will all settle together to create a massive barrier. Nothing will pass. You will be disembarked so we can complete our mission. Are there any questions?”
Sato felt a frisson of excitement as he finally explained to his crew what he himself had proselytized to Yamamoto two years earlier.
No one spoke.
“Dismissed, and good luck to all of you. I expect all of you to report on the first of April at noon to the bar of the Palace Hotel in Tokyo to drink sake with me and to view the cherry blossoms fall around our Emperor’s palace.”
The reference to the ideal of a samurai’s death was a nice touch.
Ten hours later, the Tancho steamed at under quarter speed—six knots—into the eastern side of the Canal. The fishing agents had been modest—the Tancho had no difficulty in making the five kilometers into the entrance of the Canal. Sato had assigned two flagmen to stand at the front of the aircraft carrier’s flight deck. In case of a premature grounding Sato had taken the precaution to have them wear harnesses attached by a rope to the deck. The flagmen were needed because it was impossible for the conning tower to see the Canal, so these two directed the way. From time to time one of the flagmen would lose his footing. Sato smiled to himself that Takashi in the battleship Senshi at the other end of the isthmus would be able to drive in without having to resort to using flagmen.
True to Sato’s word, the five kilometer mark was indicated by a truck on fire on each side of the Canal. Upon seeing the burning beacons, Sato started the Tancho on the final turn of her life. At 36,000 tons, the aircraft carrier took over 16 kilometers to completely reverse direction. But because of the narrowness of the Canal at the eastern end, Sato did not have to wait long. A moment later, the Tancho started to run aground, her twin screws still madly turning in opposite directions doing nothing but churning the mud.
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