by Jeff Edwards
He looked at his watch. They would finish with the torpedoes shortly, and then they could begin loading the missiles. It was obvious that his crew would finish ahead of schedule. He stepped away from the railing, executed a precise turn to the right, and began walking with a crisp, deliberate stride.
It was time to inspect the other three submarines under his command and check the status of their weapons on-loads. No doubt they would also be ahead of schedule, but probably not so far as his own crew. He had, after all, personally selected every one of his men. They were, quite literally, the best that the German Navy had to offer. And after six months of intensive pre-mission training, they meshed like the proverbial well-oiled machine.
As he walked, Gröeler pulled off his officer’s cap and rubbed his fingers briskly through his blond crew cut. There was more than a little gray in his hair now. That too was a good thing. The other wolves in the pack should be reminded that the lead wolf was the oldest and wisest, as well as the strongest.
He pulled his cap back on and straightened it with a practiced gesture: no wasted motion. Let his men see the outward evidence of his self-assurance. Let them note the steadiness of his hands and the easy grace of his movements. They would take confidence from these things, and they were going to need that confidence, along with every scrap of advantage they could get.
The mission was achievable; he was certain of that. It would require exceptional skill and more luck than he cared to think about, but it could be done. He knew the tactics of the American Navy and the capabilities of their hardware. He could bluff the Americans. Avoid them. And if he couldn’t …
It wasn’t failure that worried him. He had made every possible preparation. His men were handpicked and expertly trained. His boats were in superb condition. All of the necessary support mechanisms were in place. The plan could work. He would make it work.
But what about afterward? Would the Americans really react as the Bundeswehr’s military Security Council predicted? Did his superiors really understand the Americans at all? Gröeler certainly didn’t, and he’d been studying them and their military tactics for his entire adult life.
The Japanese had critically misjudged the Americans in 1941, hadn’t they? Their attack on Pearl Harbor had devastated the U.S. Pacific Fleet. The mission had succeeded. But the Americans had not sued for peace, as the expert strategists and tacticians had assured the Japanese High Command. The carnage inflicted at Pearl Harbor had enraged the normally placid Americans in ways the Japanese psyche could not even comprehend. The Americans had risen from the wreckage of the attack and crushed Japan like an insect. Finally, it had taken the nuclear extermination of over a quarter of a million Japanese citizens and the utter destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to slake the American thirst for revenge.
Japan had nearly been destroyed as a result of wishful thinking on the part of its leaders. And now, the chancellor and his cronies in the Bundeswehr seemed to be poised to make the same mistake. They were gambling the fate of Germany on their projections of how the Americans would react. What if their guesses were wrong? What if the American response was military instead of political?
Gröeler shook his head. He had spent his entire life in submarines. He didn’t know much about international politics, but this whole thing struck him as the worst sort of wishful thinking. The kind by which nations were destroyed.
He had nearly turned the mission down. For the first time in his life, he had come within a centimeter of refusing to obey his orders. Only one thing had stopped him—the knowledge that the Bundeswehr would find someone else to carry out the plan. Someone less capable. Success might bring consequences that the Bundeswehr and the chancellor had not foreseen. But, if the mission was botched, the consequences would be ungodly.
Gröeler shook his head again. Either his superiors had forgotten their history, or they hadn’t noticed the date. The seventh of May. The anniversary of the Nazi High Command’s unconditional surrender to the Allies at the end of the Second World War. Germany had lain in ruins then, Berlin still burning from the American fire bombs, the countryside torn by the boots of soldiers and the treads of tanks. And the Bundeswehr had selected this date to launch their operation. Had they done so out of blind ignorance? Or was their choice of dates intentional? Some delusion that Germany was destined to recapture its former glory? Gröeler couldn’t decide which idea was more frightening.
He sucked a last lung full of smoke from the cigarette and thumped it over the rail into the water. In the split-second before the butt left his fingers, he caught a glimpse of the brand name: Ernte 23.
The name brought a bitter smile to Kapitan Gröeler’s mouth. Ernte meant harvest. And, if the mission didn’t go as planned, there would be a harvest all right. A harvest of blood and fire.
He looked down at the piers where the young Sailors were rushing to carry out his orders and wondered if any of them would survive it.
CHAPTER 4
WASHINGTON, DC
SUNDAY; 06 MAY
8:45 PM EDT
President Francis “Frank” Chandler swiveled his chair a few degrees to the left and stared out the window across the White House grounds. It was really coming down out there tonight, the rain driving across the manicured lawn in torrents. Occasionally the wind would manage to whip a burst of raindrops far enough under the edge of the colonnade to splatter on the marble flagstones of the covered walkway. But even those violent bursts fell well short of the windows.
Some small part of him wished that the wind would pick up enough to drive the rain against his windows. He loved the sound of rain on glass; it conjured up memories of boyhood summers in Iowa cornfields and of the clatter of a good spring rain on a corrugated tin roof. Of course, he probably wouldn’t have been able to hear it anyway; the windows were triple-paned bulletproof glass.
He watched for a few seconds in silent fascination. There was something strange about seeing the rain without hearing it; something vaguely disconnected: a little like the feeling that came from watching television with the sound turned down.
He leaned a little farther back, rested his elbows on the padded leather arms of the chair, and wondered for the thousandth time at the strange chain of events that had led him to the Oval Office. The thought, as always, brought an odd half-smile to his lips. There were men—powerful and influential men—who spent their entire lives fighting for a chance to sit in this office. Struggling one rung at a time up the twin ladders of politics and public opinion—waiting for a chance to sit in this chair, behind this desk. But the job had very nearly fallen into Frank’s lap. He sure as hell hadn’t planned his life around it, anyway.
He was a latecomer to politics, and he had entered the political arena by the back door. (Some of his more vocal critics preferred to say he had tunneled under the back fence.)
The son of an Iowa corn farmer, he had inherited three major things from his father: a passion for the land, an iron-hard work ethic, and the shambling big-boned frame of a farmhand. Six foot four and broad shouldered, he had a roughness about him that spoke more of flannel shirts and work-scuffed blue jeans than of suits and neckties.
His love of the land had not led him to the farm, as it had his father and grandfather before him, but to the laboratories of the University of Iowa. Armed with a master’s degree in organic chemistry, he had climbed through the ranks of the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land Stewardship, where his fierce determination to improve the lot of the American farmer had eventually earned him an appointment as the state secretary of agriculture.
With the appointment had come the realization that the future of the farmer was being decided not in the fields or in the laboratory, but in the boardrooms and on the floors of the legislature. Frank had decided to throw his hat into the political ring. After an extremely successful term as the state secretary of agriculture, he had made a dark-horse bid for governor of Iowa. He’d never really expected to win. At best, he had hoped to drag the plight of th
e farmer into the forefront of Iowa’s political system. To raise important issues in the hopes that more viable gubernatorial candidates would have to deal with them.
But his plain-talking grassroots campaign had resonated with the voters of Iowa, and they had surprised him (and everyone else in the state political machine) by electing him governor.
Four years later, he had entered the race for the presidency, running a distant second to Martin Bridgewater: an archly conservative senator and the fair-haired boy of the Republican Party. Bridgewater was a charismatic speaker and a political heavyweight. The cameras loved him, and so did the crowds. He had started with a thirty-point lead over Frank in the CNN, USA Today, and Gallup polls, and had widened it quickly.
Frank had been poised to lose the election by the widest margin in history, when fate dropped another surprise in his lap. Martin Bridgewater’s pregnant nineteen-year-old mistress had decided to take her story to the media. Bridgewater had lost twenty polling points in the first forty-eight hours. Even so, he might well have weathered the storm. After the predictable outcry, his supporters had settled down pretty quickly. They seemed prepared to forgive him for his transgressions. Other powerful men had succumbed to the temptations of the flesh, after all. Some of them had even been presidents.
But Bridgewater’s girlfriend had sold six cassette tapes to one of the more sensational cable news programs. The young woman had recorded many of her private phone conversations with Bridgewater. The news anchors had apparently delighted in playing sound bytes of the more lurid parts, bleeping out questionable choices of language in a manner that made the tapes seem even more sordid than they actually were. At the climax of the exposé had come the most damning revelation of all: Senator Bridgewater—a rabid pro-lifer—had tried to convince his mistress to have an abortion. He had offered the girl a quiet cash settlement to get rid of the baby and disappear into the woodwork.
Bridgewater’s campaign had disintegrated in a matter of days. The resulting backlash of public opinion had hurled Frank Chandler, the hayseed candidate, into the highest office in the land.
* * *
President Chandler’s eyes were still locked on the rain falling soundlessly outside the bulletproof windows. His odd little smile faded slowly. He’d been sitting in the big chair for thirty-nine months and sixteen days, and he still couldn’t believe he was here. In the few quiet moments that the job afforded him, the surreal quality of the entire situation filtered back to the surface of his mind, leaving him with a disjointed feeling. Disconnected. Like the strangely silent rain.
He sighed and, for a brief second, entertained the notion of opening one of the French doors that led to the columned walkway. That way, at least he’d be able to hear the occasional spatters of rain on the flagstones.
“Mr. President?” The voice belonged to the White House chief of staff, Veronica Doyle.
The president snapped his mind back to attention and swung his chair around. “Yes?”
“They’re ready for you, sir.”
“Good,” the president said. He rubbed his eyes and blinked several times. “Where is the ambassador?”
“In a holding pattern in the West Wing lobby.”
The president nodded. “Show our people in. We’ll give them a minute to get settled before we call for the ambassador.”
Doyle nodded to the Secret Service agent standing by the door to the office of the president’s secretary. The agent opened the door, and the team for the China meeting began to filter into the Oval Office.
The president beckoned them into the room and waved them toward the rectangle of couches and chairs at the end of the room opposite his desk. “Have a seat in the bullpen. Make yourselves comfortable, I’ll be with you in a couple of seconds.”
He turned back to his chief of staff. “What else have we got tonight?”
The chief of staff flipped open the lid of her palm-top computer and scanned the small LCD screen. “At nine-thirty, you’ve got a phone conference with the assistant secretary of state for Eastern European affairs. The Russians are asking for increased wheat subsidies. Assistant Secretary Chernja thinks it’s a bad idea, but she wants your permission before she shuts the door on this one. You also promised the vice president you would sit down with him and look at his numbers on the handgun bill.”
The president nodded. “Move the vice president up to nine-thirty and bump Assistant Secretary Chernja to tomorrow morning. The Russian thing isn’t going to self-destruct any time soon, and I’d much rather hit it when my brain is fresh.”
Doyle nodded and made rapid notes on the input screen of her palm-top. “Good idea, Mr. President. I’m starting to fade myself, sir.”
Her appearance belied her words. Her short black hair was flawlessly styled, her turquoise silk business suit was immaculate, and if there was any fatigue behind her flint-gray eyes it certainly wasn’t visible to mere mortals.
The president stood up. “All right. Send for the ambassador. Let’s get this over with.”
* * *
The bullpen consisted of two couches and four chairs, laid out in a rough rectangle around a low-topped French Empire bureau that served as a coffee table. The table was an authentic piece from the President Monroe collection, burnished ebony with curving saber-style legs that were chased with gold leaf. The source of a minor point of contention, the date of the table’s manufacture could be set at either 1827 or 1830, and a fairly good case could be made for either date. The chairs and couches—which appeared to be matching French Empire pieces—were actually excellent reproductions, crafted by the famed Kittinger Furniture, suppliers of White House furnishings for nearly a hundred and fifty years.
The president had given the bullpen its name during his first week in office. In baseball, the bullpen was a designated area of the ballpark where the pitchers warmed up before they trudged out to the pitcher’s mound, where the real work began. The nickname had not proven to be very accurate, because he generally accomplished more serious work in the bullpen than he did at his desk—which (according to the metaphor) should have been the pitcher’s mound. But, apropos or not, the nickname had stuck.
The president walked over to the bullpen and spent a few minutes greeting the members of his meeting team and shaking hands. Not counting himself and his chief of staff, Veronica Doyle, the team consisted of Secretary of State Elizabeth Whelkin; National Security Advisor Gregory Brenthoven; Assistant Secretary of State for Southeast Asian Affairs William Collins; and a designated note taker, Marine Corps Lieutenant Michael Summers, on loan from the National Security Council. There would be no need for an interpreter, as the Chinese ambassador spoke excellent English.
* * *
The hallway door opened and the ambassador was ushered in by a deputy assistant to somebody-or-other in the National Security Council. The young woman, who probably didn’t know that she had been selected on the basis of her obscurity, was visibly nervous over what was obviously her first visit to the Oval Office. Despite her nervousness, she made her announcement flawlessly. “Mr. President, may I present Ambassador Shaozu Tian, minister plenipotentiary of the People’s Republic of China.”
The president smiled and stepped forward to shake the ambassador’s hand. “Good evening, Ambassador Shaozu. Thank you for coming on such short notice.”
The ambassador returned his smile. “I am honored to be of service, Mr. President. And I bring you greetings on behalf of the citizens and government of the People’s Republic of China.”
The next few moments were dedicated to handshakes and pleasantries as the ambassador was introduced to the rest of the team.
When the members of the team took their seats, they fell silent. In accordance with the dictates of protocol, the president would speak as the sole representative of the United States—just as the ambassador would speak as the sole representative of his own government. The other members of the team were there to watch, gather information, and formulate ideas for the discussion that
would immediately follow the meeting. During the meeting itself, they might pass the president notes or documents, but they would not contribute directly to the conversation.
There was an additional point to having so many non-speaking members in the room. Few people are comfortable under close scrutiny. Having a room full of people watch your every gesture and listen to your every word—all without speaking themselves—can be highly unsettling. It is difficult for even the most accomplished of diplomats to concentrate properly under such circumstances. In Washington circles, the technique has often been likened to a low-intensity version of Psychological Warfare.
* * *
When everyone was finally seated, the president said, “I hope you will forgive me if I come directly to matters of business.”
The ambassador smiled slightly. “An excellent idea, Mr. President. I am an old man, and I must confess that the passage of years has somewhat blunted my taste for polite small talk.”
“Good,” the president said. “I would like to discuss the matter of your country’s most recent ballistic missile launch.”
The ambassador’s eyebrows went up slightly. “I see. Is there a problem?”
“Yes,” the president said. “There is a problem, or rather—there are two problems. The first is with the trajectory of the missile, and the second is with the timing of the launch.”
“Oh? And why should either of those pose difficulties? To my understanding, the launch was conducted safely, without incident or threat to life.”
“Without incident—yes,” the president said. “It’s the ‘threat to life’ part that we are not so certain about.”
“How so?”
“The missile in question was a DF-21C, designed to carry the NV-6 nuclear warhead; is that correct?”