The Whitelaw Hotel on the corner of Thirteenth and T wasn't the finest establishment in Washington, but it was special in a way that a Waldorf-Astoria could never be.
Built in 1919 in the Italian Renaissance Revival style, the Whitelaw was the world's most famous African-American hotel. It was a temporary home in the national capital for entertainers like Duke Ellington, or the leaders of black organizations like the NAACP, none of whom could rent rooms in the city's segregated luxury hotels. So it was unusual-almost unprecedented-for a high-ranking white military man to stay there. Admiral Kolhammer's PA had standing instructions to book him into the Whitelaw whenever he traveled to Washington.
He checked in early, straight off the red-eye, before starting a long day of crisis meetings at the White House and the War Department.
"I need to get some breakfast, have a shower, and change," he told the front desk. "Then I'm out of here. In fact, if you could have a car waiting for me at a quarter of nine, my little part of the war effort would run a lot smoother."
The duty manager was only too happy to help. The Special Administrative Zone put a lot of business through the Whitelaw.
Agents Flint and Stirling hovered nearby, like golems in off-the-rack suits.
"Would you prefer to have breakfast in your room, sir?" the manager asked. "We have a suite ready for you."
"No. I'll just go through to the dining room now. One of my staff is meeting me there. A Commander Daniel Black. Please send him on through when he arrives. He shouldn't be too long."
He turned to his security detail. "We're going to be on the move all day. You guys ought to grab some chow while you can, too."
The agents nodded, and Stirling moved through to check out the room.
A bellhop was summoned to take Kolhammer's baggage, and the kid obviously recognized him. In fact, almost everyone in the large crowded lobby seemed to know who he was, courtesy of four months of blanket coverage in the black press. As he moved through the warm but cavernous space, with strangers pointing and smiling, or just whispering and trying not to look like they were gawking at him, Kolhammer was struck by the thought that this was probably how Spruance had felt when he'd first come aboard the Clinton back at Midway.
Well, it was his choice to stay here. In part, it was just petty politics, really. But sometimes that was important, too. He had a lot of officers serving under him who would not be welcome in any of the other, better hotels in Washington, simply because God had wrapped them up in the wrong skin color. And to Phillip Kolhammer's way of thinking, that sucked. Back in the twenty-first, a lot of assholes would have thought of his insistence on staying here at the Whitelaw as politically correct grandstanding. But they could go fuck themselves and the horse they rode in on.
Correctness be damned. He simply wouldn't stand for his men and women being treated with anything but the utmost courtesy. If the fucking Ritz or the Savoy wouldn't have, say, Colonel Jones as a customer, then they could damn well get by without Kolhammer's money, as well. He tipped the bellhop and walked through to breakfast.
"You eating, Agent Flint?" he asked.
"No, sir," said Flint. "Stirling's always been more of a chow hound than me. I had a Twizzler on the plane."
A waiter met them at the entrance to the dining room, a huge sumptuous space that was about half-full. Kolhammer took a table and ordered a full hot breakfast with a pot of Jamaican coffee. Flint left him alone, taking up a station where he could see all the entrances and exits. Dan Black arrived just as Kolhammer's first cup of coffee was poured. The man looked like he hadn't slept in three days.
"I haven't, sir," Black said, when the admiral asked him. "Julia believes sleep is for the weak. She'd make a good Nazi, in many ways."
Kolhammer allowed himself a chuckle at that. He had no personal relationship with Duffy, but they had locked horns professionally a couple of times back in the twenty-first. She'd proved herself more than helpful after the Transition, however, and Kolhammer had come to appreciate having an indirect line into the national press via Duffy, through Black. It was amazing, really, the alliances he'd been forced to make.
"Any closer to setting a date for the big day?" he asked.
Black shook his head. "I'm beginning to think she has a-what do you guys call it?-a fear of commitment."
Kolhammer laughed out loud for the first time in days. "We do," he said. "We do. But I don't know if a lack of commitment is one of Ms. Duffy's defining character traits, Commander. She's just very focused. I think you'll find that, when the time comes, she'll throw herself into marriage with the same enthusiasm she brings to her work, you poor bastard."
Black looked more than a little worried at that. "You two have crossed swords before, haven't you, Admiral?" he said. "She speaks of you a lot. Calls you the Hammer."
"Yes, but does she say it with respect?"
"You can't have everything, sir."
"And therein lies the sorrow of existence, Commander. At least according to the Buddhists. There's no law says you can't have breakfast, though."
Black ordered bacon and eggs when Kolhammer's order arrived.
"So, you read the files I e-mailed you?"
"Yes, sir," said Black. "Read them on the train coming down. I've already made calls to Patton's staff, and to Eisenhower. Ike's on board, but I suspect that if we delay too long here in Washington, we'll get home to find that General Patton has made off with all of our prototypes and the test crews to drive them, colored or not. I've gone ahead and released the new 'chutes to the Hundred-and-first, though. I didn't think you'd have a problem with that."
Kolhammer chased a piece of sausage around his plate and shook his head. "That's fine. But I'll bet General Lee didn't leave it at that."
"No, sir. He wanted the assault rifles and the grenade launchers, too. They've done some training with the MK-One down in Kentucky. Lee's in town right now, trying to get Marshall to agree to reequip the whole division."
"Jesus Christ," muttered Kolhammer. "They're still months from being combat effective. Okay. Leave that one to me."
"What's your reading, sir, if you don't mind me asking. I've been out of touch."
Kolhammer blew his cheeks out in exasperation. "Well, first up, I don't think there is any chance of an invasion here. I know that makes me a minority of one, but the Axis powers don't have the ability to force a landing on the continental U.S. They do have a fair shot at taking Hawaii, and they will throw everything at England."
"Will they win?"
Kolhammer sighed. "They could. The odds are against them. It's the wrong time of year. They don't have air superiority. The Royal Navy can still kick Raeder's ass in a straight-up fight. And of course, there's always Halabi to consider. But it's not going to be a stand-up fight. The Luftwaffe can put two thousand aircraft over the Channel, which will severely constrain the British Home fleet, even with the RAF and the Army Air Force ripping into Goring's men. They've been just as busy leapfrogging themselves as quickly as we have."
Black nodded. One of the files Kolhammer had sent him was Captain Halabi's report of the jet and rocket attack on the Trident. She described the German weapons as primitive and their tactics nonexistent. But those 262s looked mighty impressive to Black, who'd learned his flying just ten years earlier in a canvas biplane.
"And Hawaii? Australia?"
Kolhammer looked grim as he mulled over his answer. "The signals we're getting from MacArthur about a second assault Down Under are bullshit. The Japanese do not have the depth to pull off two strategic strikes at the same time. But they'll benefit from any doubt they sow in our minds by making a move to surge more of their forces down from New Guinea. It complicates things enormously. The chances of Prime Minister Curtin releasing any forces to help us in retaking Hawaii are slim because of it."
"You think it'll come down to having to retake the islands."
"I'm afraid so," said Kolhammer. "I've got all my intel people working the take from Hawaii, and nothing I'm seeing makes me feel good about this. The Japanese definitely have control of the Dessaix, a French ship that was part of my original force. I don't think they have the crew helping them-or not many, anyway. The attack profile was a fucking shambles and seemed to indicate both a very low level of competence by whoever is sailing her, and possibly even active sabotage by somebody on the ship."
Black poked at his breakfast disconsolately. "Well it's not all bad, then."
"No," said Kolhammer. "But there's nothing good about it, either. The enemy won't have sent the Dessaix in harm's way without stripping her of everything that wasn't immediately needed for the strike. And that's a lot of technology off a ship like that. It's even possible they've removed whole weapons systems and given them to the Germans. I had to send a burst to Halabi warning her that she could face a missile strike out of France. You see the problem. It's like a demonic butterfly effect."
"A what?" asked Black, looking completely dumbfounded.
"Never mind," said Kolhammer. "Bottom line, things are about to turn to custard everywhere all at once… There's something else, too, Dan."
Black's food had arrived, but he really hadn't touched it. He looked up from the plate at the change in Kolhammer's tone.
"I received some information the other day. Through back channels. It's about Hoover."
Black's face was blank.
"We've had a lot of trouble with the Bureau in the Zone, as you know."
The commander nodded. He seemed genuinely in the dark about whatever Kolhammer needed to discuss.
"I was given a list of names, of people the Bureau had recruited or attempted to recruit as informants, provocateurs, and so on. Your name was on the list."
Black's eyes went wide, and he swore. The blood drained from his cheeks and then rushed back in as his whole body seemed to stiffen with an electric shock. "Me? Why me?"
Kolhammer's smile was tired, but real. He had no intention of hooking Black up to a polygraph or asking him to take a shot of T5. His security section had already determined the circumstances of the approach to Black.
"Don't beat yourself up over it, Commander. You were an obvious candidate, and believe me, it is a goddamn tenth-order issue today. They were always going to pick you, and I think you were always going to disappoint them. But you didn't disappoint me."
Black moved around uncomfortably in his uniform. Their presence in the dining room had ceased to be a minor sensation, although a newly arrived group of four men did stop on their way through and pointedly check them out. Black didn't seem to notice them at all.
"It just leaves a sour taste in the mouth is all, Admiral."
"Get over it. They tried it on. They failed. Hoover will keep for the moment. Just be careful about talking to garrulous sheet metal salesmen in the future."
Black's face twisted as he tried to work out the reference.
"The man on your flight over here," Kolhammer said helpfully. "His name really was Dave Hurley, but he wasn't a sheet metal maker. He was FBI. He was trying to get you to compromise yourself, before he put the hook in. It wasn't the first time."
Black's jaw was knotting and clenching furiously. "Damn, Jules was right. I thought it was just her being, you know, twenty-first. All cynical and so on. But she was right about Hoover after all."
Kolhammer shrugged. "Maybe. There's a lot of unsubstantiated rumor around Hoover. And the thing about rumors, Commander-as your girlfriend the journalist could tell you if she's any good at her job-is that the rumor you most want to believe is the rumor you should be most skeptical of. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'd better go clean myself up. I feel like a bag of shit. I'll meet you in the lobby in fifteen."
As he stopped to sign his chit on the way out, Kolhammer saw the small group who'd just come in approach Black and engage him in an animated conversation. That was okay. As far as he knew, the FBI didn't have any black field agents at this point in time.
He hurried out of the dining room, with his Secret Service detail falling in behind him.
His hand kept patting the pocket where he had the data stick with the surveillance download from Chief Petty Officer Rogas. Kolhammer hadn't had time to watch the raw footage, but Rogas had cut together a five-minute briefing package that was mercifully free of too much X-rated material.
Kolhammer had no taste for gay porn.
Kolhammer was familiar with both the White House Situation Room in the basement of the West Wing, and the deeply buried tubelike Presidential Emergency Operations Center under the East Wing. In 2021, the meeting he was attending would have been held in one of those two places.
In 1942, however, neither existed. They were about to be built, because one of the more obscure factoids that came through the Transition in the lattice memory of Fleetnet was the information that the White House was structurally unsound and needed to be completely rebuilt from within. The work would have taken place during the Truman Administration, but had been brought forward in light of changed circumstances.
A single bomb could have brought the entire structure down on top of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was due to be temporarily shifted across to Blair House, but the move had been delayed by the attack in the Pacific and the bombing campaign at home. Thus Kolhammer and Black found themselves ushered into the old Oval Office by the president's secretary, Ms. Tully.
The room was instantly recognizable, but like so much of the world he moved through nowadays, noticeably different from Kolhammer's memories of the twenty-first century. He'd been in the room three times before.
Some things were reassuring constants, though: the white marble mantel from the original 1909 Oval Office, the presidential seal in the ceiling, the two flags behind the chief executive's desk, and the desk itself, carved from the timbers of the British warship Resolute. It was so familiar that he could have felt right at home, were it not for the other men in the room.
Roosevelt was in his wheelchair behind the desk, and he did not stand to greet them, although Kolhammer understood that the treatments he'd received from Task Force medical officers had greatly improved his mobility. The secretary of war, Henry Stimson, was waiting with Marshall and Eisenhower. Ike offered both of the newly arrived officers his cheeky, infectious grin.
Marshall, as ever, remained formidably reserved.
"Admiral Kolhammer," he said in his cold, clipped way. "Commander Black."
Black was mechanically formal in his reply. Kolhammer could afford to unwind a little, although he never called the chief of staff anything other than General or General Marshall. Roosevelt had told him that when he'd first met Marshall, he'd slapped the guy on the back and tried to call him George.
He quickly put me in my place, I can tell you, Roosevelt had said, not altogether fondly.
Admiral King, the navy's senior officer, stood next to one of the two dark studded leather couches, which made the room seem so much darker than Kolhammer remembered. The British ambassador, Lord Halifax, had been talking to the Army Air Force's Commanding General Hap Arnold near the windows overlooking the Rose Garden. Kolhammer could only guess at the unhappy tone of that exchange. There were already calls in Congress for the withdrawal of USAAF's strategic bombing units from the U.K., to prevent them from falling into the hands of the enemy when Britain inevitably fell.
Roosevelt cut though the formalities and asked everyone to "take a pew." He turned first to Kolhammer. "Admiral, I believe you have the most recent report from Hawaii."
Kolhammer thanked him, and inserted a data stick into the flatscreen that had been suspended on the Oval Office wall where Jann Willhelm Rohen's famous oil painting, The Death of Bin Laden, would have hung in another world.
"Gentlemen. These first images come from a Big Eye UCAD currently on station above the island of Oahu. It was launched from the Siranui last night to provide greater surveillance cover than the smaller multifunction birds we put in place to provide broadband links and basic oversight after the Clinton left for San Diego."
When the vision of Pearl Harbor and Ford Island came up, Admiral King let slip a single, sharp curse.
"As you can see," Kolhammer continued, "no significant surface units have survived the missile strike."
It was Hap Arnold's turn to react when similar images of Hickham, Wheeler, and Bellows detailed the utter devastation that had been visited upon those airfields. Kolhammer then switched to a top-down view of Honolulu, showing that approximately three quarters of the city had been razed to the ground.
"Casualties are estimated at twelve thousand dead, and about as many injured. My F-Twenty-twos are gone, save for two that were about a hundred miles south of the islands on Combat Air Patrol at the time of the attack. They had just enough fuel to make it to Midway. General MacArthur has released an in-flight tanker and a Hawkeye from the Southwest Pacific Command to join them. As you know, while in transit the AWACS plane located Yamamoto's Combined Fleet. The Japanese have already begun conventional air attacks and are expected to be in position to force a landing on Oahu in about six hours."
"How long before your jets can hit them?" asked King.
"Two and a half hours. But that strike will have a limited capacity. Each plane is carrying one heavy air-to-surface ship-killer, which, all things being equal, will take out whatever it's aimed at."
"But all things are not equal, are they, Admiral?" said King.
"No," he admitted. "The Dessaix appears to have survived and been compromised. She would be capable of negating an attack by the Raptors, and of shooting them down, too. However," he hastened to add, "I can say with certainty that the Dessaix is not being crewed by her original complement, and it's doubtful that whoever is in control will be able to use the ship to the best of her abilities."
King pointed at the scenes out of Pearl. "Really, Admiral? Their abilities don't look all that goddamn doubtful to me. Sorry, Mr. President."
Roosevelt waved his apology away, but indicated to Kolhammer that he should carry on.
"If the Dessaix had been commanded by Captain Goscinny and crewed by his men, there would be nothing left of Oahu," the admiral said. "The Clinton would probably be at the bottom of the ocean, and half of Los Angeles or San Diego would be gone."
"And that's supposed to fill us with confidence?"
"No, but it should forestall any undue panic, if you were so inclined."
"Why, you impertinent son of a-!"
"Gentlemen!" The president intervened to defuse the escalating confrontation between the two navy men. Then he continued. "Admiral Kolhammer. Can Hawaii be defended?"
"No, sir."
King threw his hands up in the air. "You just said-"
Roosevelt had to hush his naval chief again, before Kolhammer could continue.
"It cannot be defended, but it can be retaken, if we move before the Japanese have time to secure their lodgment. The Eighty-second could do it, with some help from the Siranui, your marines, and maybe the Second Cavalry."
"Neither Prime Minister Curtin nor General MacArthur are going to trample you with offers of assistance, when they have their own problems to address," said Roosevelt. "I've already had both of them in my ear about a second Japanese attack on Australia."
"With all due respect, Mr. President, there won't be a second Japanese attack on Australia. I have seen the sigint take, and my people have been analyzing it, too. It's a diversion. The same sort of thing you would have done before the original D-Day. For the moment, the Australian theater is insignificant. I think the main purpose of the original invasion was to draw my forces down there and to exhaust them. You've seen the briefing note on young Kennedy's mission and Homma's interrogation. They were drawing our fire. To some extent that has worked, and so Hawaii is now the main game. If they get a lock on the islands, they can take Australia and New Zealand at their leisure and hold us back from their home islands long enough to develop an atomic deterrent. You can order MacArthur to release the Eighty-second, Mr. President. Jones has a degree of autonomy at the operational level, but we've integrated our units into your command structure."
"That's arguable," said King. "The way you run your little duchy over in California-"
Roosevelt interrupted him once more. "Gentlemen, please, let's not fight this one all over again. Unless you want to speed up the integration of your own services, Admiral King. I could sign Truman's Ninety-nine-eighty-one Order today, if you want, rather than continuing with this ridiculous fiction that Admiral Kolhammer is field-testing the concept out in the Zone."
Silence greeted that ultimatum.
"Right. Admiral, please continue with your presentation."
Kolhammer reformatted the big screen to display a world map, with smaller windows open over current flashpoints. "Taken with developments in the European theater and in General MacArthur's area of operations, I believe the Axis powers are attempting to compensate for their long-term strategic vulnerability by swarming us sooner, rather than later. In addition to the movements at Hawaii, off northern Australia, and in France, Lord Halifax confirms that Gibraltar is coming under greatly increased air attack. Wahabi insurgents are fomenting trouble in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria. And Baath Party fascists are in revolt in Iraq. I don't believe any of this is unrelated."
Kolhammer looked to the British ambassador for confirmation.
"I'm afraid that's not all," said Halifax. "We don't have confirmation yet, but Lord Mountbatten has sent word from India that Soviet armor is reportedly pushing down through the Afghan passes. We have no idea whether or not this is true, and if so, whether it presages open cooperation between Berlin and Moscow again, but at any rate it appears the Axis powers are going to attempt to link the Asian and European theaters through the Middle East, while we have our hands full elsewhere."
Roosevelt looked positively ill. "I can't believe Stalin would get back into bed with Hitler," he said. "I suppose I can accept him withdrawing from the alliance. It makes some sense to let us bleed along with the Germans, while he gathers his strength. But I can't imagine anything that would make him trust Hitler again."
Kolhammer spoke up again. "I haven't seen the British material yet, but if Stalin is pushing down through the Afghan passes, we shouldn't assume it's to help Hitler and Tojo. He may just be moving to stop them encircling him."
Marshall spoke up from the couch, addressing that point. "Mr. President, Stalin doesn't need to trust Hitler. One way or another, we fully expect the Soviets to reenter the war in late 'forty-four, early 'forty-five, but what form that takes will depend on circumstances. Either Hitler will turn around and attack them, having secured his western flank against us. Or if we have beaten Germany, we can expect to have to deal with a Soviet assault into Europe. Atomic weapons or not, Stalin has shown that he won't accept the verdict of history. He knows that if he sits pat, waiting for the correlation of forces or the contradictions of capitalism to deliver him a victory, it all ends with his statues being pulled down and Coke machines being installed in the Kremlin."
"Admiral Kolhammer?" said Roosevelt. "Do you concur, based on the value of hindsight?"
"I do, Mr. President. The Soviets always go long. Stalin was this close to going under when Hitler offered him the cease-fire. While he knew he would have come out on top in version one of this war, he knows he can't guarantee that same result in version two. Not with the technology and the forewarnings that the Axis powers now have in their hands.
"So the opportunity to build up his forces while we grapple with Hitler was heaven-sent, even though he knows the Nazis will be back at his throat, given half a chance. Still, I don't think we'll find them in an open alliance with Germany again. Every bullet they have will be needed soon enough. But if this push into Afghanistan plays out, it may be the first move in whatever new game Stalin is playing. At a guess, I'd say he's going to give the Cold War a miss, and get straight down to business when it suits him best. As General Marshall says, sometime in 'fourty-four, or the year after."
"My God," said Roosevelt. "This war could go on for ten years."
Kolhammer nodded. "Or it could all be over-quite literally-much sooner, if the Nazis and the Soviets develop atomic weapons."
The president looked to the British ambassador again. "This new information you have, the files sent to the Trident, do we know if they're genuine?"
"There's an enormous volume of information, Mr. President. Our boffins have given it all a tick so far, but I believe Admiral Kolhammer has assigned some of his analysts to the package."
"We have, sir. So far it checks out. The Norwegian heavy water plant, this Demidenko project-they both seem to be blinds for a joint fast-fission project the Nazis are working on with the Japanese, and they very much exclude the Soviets. The other material, the conventional weapons projects, all look kosher to us. Whoever this guy is, he's done us a huge favor."
"Okay, we'll move on to that this afternoon. We're getting off our agenda. Let's talk about these bombs that have been going off here. It's scaring the hell out of people, and beginning to have a real effect on home front morale."
Even though he'd stayed up all night preparing for this meeting, Dan Black wasn't required to speak, for which he'd be saying a special prayer of thanks later that evening. When asked, he provided hard copy and electronic files showing the status of all of the accelerated R amp; D projects in the Valley. Then he sat back down and watched the show, wondering just how the hell an unemployed coal miner turned copper miner turned crop duster had ended up in the Oval Office at a time like this.
His old man wouldn't have believed it in a million years.
He didn't think he'd ever be comfortable in this sort of company. Not like Admiral Kolhammer, who never seemed to take a backwards step, no matter what. Or Admiral King, who looked to be as tough as nails as he stalked around the room like he had an iron poker jammed up his ass. His intolerance of the Multinationals was matched only by his intolerance of the British, in the person of Lord Halifax, and even of the U.S. Army, leading Black to wonder if Marshall and Eisenhower were at the meeting in part to draw fire away from Kolhammer.
As for his own role, Commander Black sat in his chair by the mantelpiece, stiff-backed, unmoving, and trying not to sweat too loudly.
He almost fell over backwards when the president's secretary showed J. Edgar Hoover into the room.
Black couldn't help sneaking a look at the admiral's reaction, but Kolhammer was perfectly amiable. If anything, he greeted the FBI director with more warmth than anyone else in the room. Roosevelt was quite proper, without being warm. Halifax was smooth, as you'd expect of a knighted diplomat. Eishenhower was his usual friendly self, but the other military men were quite chilly. Although, when he thought about it, neither Marshall nor King were particularly friendly with anyone.
Hoover looked terrible. Gray blotchy skin hung in loose bags all over his face, and his watery eyes were sunken inside bruised-looking sockets. He was holding a single sheet of paper that he clung to as though to let go of it was to release his hold on life itself.
"Mr. Hoover," said Roosevelt. "I asked you here to give us the latest on the bombings. What do you have for us?"
Hoover didn't sit, preferring to stand by the president's desk, reading from his notes like a pupil called up to the front of the class. When the famous crime fighter spoke, Black had trouble following the rapid-fire delivery, although it sounded as if he didn't have much to say, anyway.
"Fifteen bombs have now gone off on both the eastern and western seaboards," Hoover said. "No war industries or elements of the infrastructure have been damaged, due I believe to the work of my agents in securing these facilities of vital national importance against the depredations of saboteurs and enemy sympathizers."
He shot Kolhammer a scowl at that point, but the commander of the Special Administrative Zone lobbed back a totally anodyne smile.
An uncomfortable silence enveloped the men in the room. As the seconds ticked by, it became quite excruciating.
"Is that it?" asked Henry Stimson.
Hoover's bulldoglike face flushed a deep crimson. "Mr. Secretary, my agents are shaking the trees and crawling down the darkest rat holes at this very moment in order to catch the vile malcontents responsible for these outrages. I think it ill behooves us to cast aspersions on their performance at this time. If there have been any slipups, you can rest assured I will find out about them."
Dan Black felt a sudden urge to leap from his seat and shout down the hypocritical little prick. He felt Kolhammer's cool gaze settle on him, however, so he reined in his indignation.
"I see," said Roosevelt, his voice as empty as an abandoned house. "Do you have any casualty figures, Mr. Hoover?"
The director stumbled for a moment. "Uhm, I believe one of my assistant directors is preparing those as we speak, Mr. President. I didn't think it would be advisable to come here with incomplete or misleading facts for you."
"All right, then, you get yourself back to your office and get me those figures, and when you come back, I'd like to know who's been setting these bombs, how they did it, and what you're going to do about catching them. People are beginning to panic, Mr. Hoover. They think this is some sort of prelude to an invasion. We have to convince them otherwise."
"If I may, Mr. President?" said Hoover.
Roosevelt's head tilted, and his bifocals caught the light at just the right angle to completely obscure his eyes. It was an eerie effect, since it made him look quite inhuman. Dan sensed that a trap was opening up in front of Hoover, but the FBI boss couldn't see it.
"I think they're right, Mr. President," he offered. "I think this may well be the work of a fifth column smuggled into the country through California, from South America. I intend no insult to Admiral Kolhammer…"
Black wasn't sure if Hoover had intentionally used the Germanic pronunciation, but again it seemed to roll off the admiral without effect. On the other hand, General Eisenhower did not seem at all impressed.
Hoover pressed on, seemingly oblivious. "But I am afraid things are very lax in California, from a security standpoint, Mr. President. Very lax, indeed. The laws of the country are flouted openly and at every turn. Simply uncountable numbers of undesirables and subversive types have set up shop in the shadow of this 'Special Administration' Zone. Enemy aliens are free to wander about unmolested. Some of them, I am duty-bound to point out, are men and even women who arrived with Admiral Kolhammer with the most advanced military training, and some of them having special training above and beyond that in exactly the sort of covert operations which have taken place in New York, and now in Los Angeles-which of course, is so close to the Special Zone that it would be remiss of me not to follow up that line of inquiry."
Hoover's excitement had got away from him. He was like a race caller at the derby now, so quickly did each sentence tumble out over the last.
"And of course, there are still 531,882 registered enemy aliens in that state who have not been interned, another 1,234,995 free in New York, and plenty more in between. If you would be willing to indulge me, Mr. President, I feel we can get right to the bottom of this situation. I have taken the liberty, which I'm sure you'll understand given the current exigencies, of having the Bureau's legal section draft a proposed executive order which would give the FBI the powers it needs to effectively deal with this immediate threat to our cherished freedoms and-"
"Enough, enough, Edgar. Just leave it behind on your way out," said Roosevelt. "I'll have Francis Biddle review it, later."
Hoover looked stunned. His mouth opened and closed twice without a sound coming out.
"That'll be all, Edgar."
The FBI director seemed incapable of movement. It was as though he had gripped a naked electric wire, and couldn't let go.
A Secret Service agent appeared through the Oval Office door.
He whispered something in Hoover's ear and gently took his elbow, guiding him toward the door. With only two exceptions, everybody in the room found something fascinating to look at, somewhere off in the middle distance. The exceptions were President Roosevelt and Admiral Kolhammer.
Black could have sworn that a flicker of a smile played across the president's face. And Kolhammer had somehow positioned himself near the exit without Black ever seeing him move there. He leaned over to give Hoover a comradely, reassuring pat on the back as he passed by. It looked like a genuinely compassionate gesture by the admiral, unless you heard what he actually said, as only Dan Black could.
"Hey, Edna. Loved the kimono."
"Have you ever considered a career in politics, Admiral?" Roosevelt kept the grin from his face as he asked, but the tone of his question was playful.
Kolhammer played it straight down the line. "I really don't believe it's appropriate for serving military officers to publicly involve themselves in the political process, Mr. President."
"Really?"
The Oval Office was empty, save for the two of them. The others had all left some twenty minutes earlier. A storm front was coming in from the west. Gusts of wind pasted wet leaves against the windows. Roosevelt wondered whether Kolhammer was just being polite. He might well be a registered Republican.
"You don't think that was politics, Admiral? Sandbagging Hoover like that? Is it common practice for the military in your day to put spies on the tail of civil servants they don't like?"
A smile crinkled a fine network of wrinkles at the corner of Kolhammer's eyes. "We've had some trouble with apparent espionage efforts in the Zone, Mr. President. It's what you'd expect, with so much advanced R and D going on there now. So it was only natural for my security to mount an effort to close down the operation."
"On your own."
"We had interagency help. From the Secret Service and the OSS. You can imagine our surprise when the trail led us to a hotel room in Florida. And the terrible shock of finding Mr. Hoover there. In a kimono."
Roosevelt snorted, unable to contain himself. "I think he'd call it a bathrobe. Tell me, Admiral, what was the Secret Service and Colonel Donovan doing offering interagency help for a domestic security matter? That's not within their fief?"
"Nobody knew that, until they knew it, sir," the admiral replied. Completely deadpan. "When I received the data from my security people-" He nodded at the video stick Roosevelt was rolling around in his palm. "-I immediately informed the other services that we had a problem. It was the considered opinion of us all that the only way to resolve the matter was to take it to the chief executive."
"I'll bet it was," said Roosevelt. His mouth felt like it was full of dry leaves and dust. He wanted to know a lot more about these "security people" of Kolhammer's who'd caught the FBI director with his pants down. They didn't sound like your run-of-the-mill night watchmen. Still, if there were problems here, there was also opportunity. An especially strong gust of wind threw a heavy twig into the window behind him. He expected to hear thunder start up in the next few minutes.
The admiral remained sitting at ease in front of him, giving nothing away.
"I imagine you'll want to know what I'm going to do about this?" said Roosevelt.
"It's really none of my business, except where it impinges upon the security of the Special Administrative Zone, Mr. President."
"No," Roosevelt agreed. "It's not."
He said nothing else, expecting to draw Kolhammer out with his silence. But the admiral remained po-faced. "Well, I'm not going to sack him today, if that's what you were hoping. But then as I understand it, in your day, what a man does in the privacy of his own home is his own business. Is that right?"
"It is, Mr. President. In his home… or his motel room."
Roosevelt contained a chuckle with only the fiercest of efforts. He wondered how on earth Kolhammer did it.
He placed the video stick into a desk drawer.
"What matters now are results, Admiral. Mr. Hoover knows I want results on the questions of who set those bombs, and how they managed it. If he is to have a future as director of the FBI, he'll get me those results."
For the first time Kolhammer offered something without being asked. "He'd get them a lot quicker if he didn't have so many agents crawling around the Zone. Or following your wife, with all due respect, Mr. President."
Roosevelt used his tongue to work free a piece of meat that stuck between his teeth during lunch. It covered his reaction to Kolhammer's comment about Eleanor. He'd been livid when he'd seen the data about how Hoover had been opening her mail and having her followed around. But he wasn't about to lay that card on the table. As much as he'd come to respect and even like Phillip Kolhammer, he still wasn't a hundred percent sure about him. After all, he could well be a Republican, couldn't he?
"I'll make sure the Bureau stops wasting its time in California, Admiral. You can be certain of that."
"I'd like to be, Mr. President."
Roosevelt patted the desk where he'd deposited the data stick. "You can."