1945 (29 page)

Standing unobtrusively with Churchill was a man who by his rank of captain ought not to have been there at all, or only in a menial capacity. Instead, and unlike the others, he stood close enough to the great man to communicate
sotto voce,
giving his opinions as requested. While his attitude was certainly deferential and attentive, it was neither strained nor marked by any particular tension.

"Well, Basil," asked the War Leader of the Britons, "what do you suppose your precious Belisarius would have done in these circumstances?" He gestured disgustedly at the map below.

Accurately judging this as no time for the informality that generally characterized their relationship, military teacher, historian, and theoretician Sir Basil Liddell Hart spoke gravely and to the point. "Prime Minister, I do not know. I can tell you, though, that he would never willingly have allowed himself to have arrived in such a situation in the first place."

Churchill raised an imperial eyebrow at the implied criticism.

"Which is not," Liddell Hart continued, "to say that the emperor Justinian might not have placed him in an analogous and equally bad one. Just as, I think, President Harrison has done to you."

Churchill glanced to left and right. "Well, yes, perhaps so. But keep your voice down."

"Three months ago we might have amused our German friends with veiled feints in North Africa, forward placement of bombers that could strike into their oil fields, tempted them in other ways to misallocate their resources. Now? It is hard to be subde with a knife at your throat."

"Hmm. I thought you might say something like that. You damned policy boffins are all alike. Filled with grand theories, but sterile when it comes to cases." Churchill knew he was being both unfair and unkind, but then he knew that Liddell Hart knew it too, and would make allowances.

Liddell Hart smiled lopsidedly, then continued. "Since our prospective ally has seen fit to pin us in place while our enemy maneuvers around us, at this late moment there is little we can do but endure the onslaught. Nor do I think we have much chance of surviving it."

Churchill glowered at the confidant he had chosen to protect him from his own penchant for military follies such as the Dardanelles, while at the same time not limiting him to the dull plodding that was a sure recipe for doom on the part of a military underdog. "What? Defeatism? From you? Have you nothing better to offer? Then why—"

"I misspoke, sir," Liddell Hart broke in quickly. "I should have said rather, 'we have not much chance of surviving it alone.' Therefore our every move should be predicated on the arrival of the Americans in the nick of time and ensuring that they do so arrive. For example, it is imperative that their President be informed instantly of any threat to their Canal. Conversely, while any other first strike against the Americans should also be thwarted, it would be better for us if that thwarting occurred after such a strike were irrevocably launched."

Churchill glanced about him again. "Hrmph. Keep such opinions to yourself, sir. But I take your point."

"I would add that when the Americans arrive it may be that they do so in desperate straits, so to speak. In such a case an American carrier might be worth more to us than a British city."

"Yes, yes. It follows that if we cannot survive without the Americans then we must see to it that the Americans survive at any cost to ourselves. Any cost at all."

Liddell Hart nodded. His point had indeed been taken.

Churchill turned to Rear Admiral Rushbrooke, his head of naval intelligence. Rushbrooke moved to stand directly next to him as Liddell Hart faded unobtrusively into the background. "What's the latest on the U-boats?"

"Not much, I'm afraid. Both their new Type 17 Walter hydrogen-peroxide engine boats and the Type 21 electro-submarines are fitted out with snorkels, and that makes them the bloody deuce to find even in transit. And once in place they simply don't surface. Also, it's a certain bet they have radar detection mounted on their snorkels. When they detect an aircraft, they just slip even the snorkel below the surface and pop it back up after the danger has passed."

Churchill had been growing visibly impatient during this. "I didn't ask for excuses! It's answers I want. Give me answers! Tell me what you know!" Though he played the public as if it were a musical instrument and he its master, he was not always so inclined in private. When crossed Winston Churchill could be hard to bear.

Wordlessly the admiral picked up a long pointer. Leaning over the balcony, he tapped four black markers at the edge of the near end of the table. "Starting with these, we've had four contact reports in the last day. It could be one sub, it could be a pack of them. Actually, they're probably off this board now; they were running on a course taking them toward the Bahamas. We have another contact, off the board as well, a hundred and eighty miles east-northeast of Bermuda. We've had another contact here"—he indicated a point on the map fifty miles off the point of Greenland—"and one moving toward Labrador.

They were picked up on the surface by a Canadian B-24." The admiral drew a deep breath. "Within the last two days we've had twenty-seven contacts with subs exiting their bases at Bordeaux, l'Orient, Cherbourg. Again, we could be catching only a small part of the movement, or most of the contacts could be multiple, so numbers are vague at best."

"But it could be a wolf pack."

Rushbrooke nodded. "Oh, yes."

Churchill looked back down at the map and pointed toward Norway. "Is that their 6th Mountain Division?"

"It sailed from Trondheim this morning, sir. The 90th Light Division is slated to pull out tomorrow. The Luftwaffe ground division, scattered in airfields along the northern coast of Norway, has nearly five hundred transport planes and is supposed to airlift back to Germany starting Easter Sunday."

He looked past the admiral to the head of MI-6, British intelligence. "Why back to Germany, 'C'? One might think it better positioned where it is." By convention, the name of the head of international espionage was never spoken.

"C" shrugged. "I can't say, sir. Unless they calculate they won't need to defend their northerly approaches after what they are about to do."

"Are all their sub yards empty?"

"We think so, sir."

Rushbrooke nodded in agreement.

"Frankly, sir," Liddell Hart added, "the Germans know they haven't a hope of keeping such massive movements secret. What they are trying, I think, is both to keep us in the dark as to tactical particulars, and maintain deniability with the Americans until the last possible instant. As long as their noses aren't rubbed in it, the Yanks really don't want to know."

Churchill nodded. He knew too well the truth of that.

The head of MI-6 went on. "I've been flooded these last two days with contact reports from nearly every one of our

European agents, and their reports all point to one conclusion. Either Jerry is coming at us again, or he wants very badly for us to think that he is. A few hours ago the most telling report so far came in: one of their printing offices has ditched its current run of commemorative stamps for the fifth anniversary of the invasion of Russia in favor of petrol-rationing stamps — to be issued on May first."

Churchill shook his head. "The idiots. You think this is it, then?"

"Definitely, sir. Sometimes they're simply too organized. I've also received reports on orders for military headstones, blackout curtains getting shipped, even an increase in production of penicillin and bandages."

Churchill lit yet another cigar. "Yes, this is it." His gaze shifted to Air Marshal Leigh-Mallory, head of the Royal Air Force

"And what have you to contribute to our joy?"

That worthy coughed and cleared his throat. "Last night
a
photo-recon Mosquito equipped with a high-power strobe made low-level runs over two airfields near Dieppe." He reached into his briefcase and pulled out several photos, passing them over to Churchill.

"You'll see, sir, that the fields are packed. You're looking at Me-262s and 229s, Dornier 335s, and Me-510s. You'll see circled on the second photo an angled shot into a warehouse that's packed with munitions, while the rail line running just next to the airfield has nearly sixty tanker cars that we must assume are filled with av fuel and jet fuel. Contrariwise, the airfields we photographed near Baku and along the Caspian coast are stripped, just a light force of obsolete Fw-190s and Ju-88s. I'm willing to bet Jerry has very nearly every one of his modern fighters within strike range of us. . . . We also have a report of nearly two hundred of their new Me-264E long-range bombers engaging in some sort of low-level night maneuvers in eastern Germany, near the Polish border."

"Low-level?"

"Strange, sir, I know."

Involuntarily Churchill glanced back at Liddell Hart, who moved forward to his side and followed him to the balustrade, where again they stood alone.

"What are they doing, Basil?"

"Perhaps we can reason it out, sir. Two hundred is a very large number, after all, very nearly their entire long-range bomber force.... Therefore whatever they are rehearsing for is not small. Furthermore, they must anticipate surprising their target."

Churchill raised an inquiring eyebrow.

Hart shrugged. "Such large and lumbering aircraft could not survive low-level runs in the face of significant antiaircraft defenses."

Churchill nodded his understanding.

Hart went on. "They certainly don't think they can surprise
us—"

Churchill broke in. "So who then? The Americans?"

"Who else? We have already discounted the possibility of a renewed assault on the Soviets for good and sufficient reason."

"Yes, yes. The Americans. It must be they who are the target. But what about range? Surely even Adolf is not prepared to launch a suicide run at this early stage."

"Yes, that is the problem: there would not seem to be a valuable enough target within range of those planes. Unless..."

"Unless what?" Churchill prompted.

"Can the Germans have developed some method of in-air refueling?"

"By God! That must be it!"

There had been numerous intelligence reports of German work in this area. Supposedly it was still all very experimental, but it wouldn't be the first time Jerry had surprised them with the speed of some military development, not by a long shot.

Churchill switched his attention to Rushbrooke, who 
stood a short distance away. "Is there anything else going on here we know that the Americans do not? If so, we must inform them instantly, and with the greatest possible frankness." Churchill paused in thought. "No. We must do more than that. Andrew will surely discount any bald reports of these exercises. We must 'discover' information pointing to an attack—even if we must invent it. If the Americans do not want to believe the simple truth, we must help them along. And we must ensure that they defend that canal!"

Without bothering to wait for a reply from the admiral, Churchill turned back to Liddell Hart. "What shall we tell him?" he asked quietly. "Remember that it must be dramatic and plausible, but that it need not pass a long-term muster. Next week it will be a small matter that I grew overenthusiastic today."

Hart shrugged. "In that case, why invent anything? Unimpeachable source. Our single most valuable asset. You have sworn never to speak his name. Of course you might have to give your word that what you say is true."

Churchill stared bleakly at the other for a moment, then nodded dismissal. The others, sensing his wishes, maintained their distance. Once again he gazed thoughtfully down at the vast table map with its clustered assets. Soon he would talk to Harrison, but for now he would concentrate on what was before him.

War was coming within a matter of days. But what was the German plan? Where should he put England's chips on the map below? He shook his head, glowered. One major error on his part and England would fall. And even if he did everything right, still survival depended on the American response. How should he advise them? He was sure Harrison would react if his Congress let him —but would it? Churchill had begun to suspect that nothing would bring the Americans in quickly enough to matter except an attack upon American soil.

Churchill smiled in sardonic despair. Had it come to this?

Was England's one hope that Germany attack America as well? Even Churchill could not quite bring himself to understand that the assault on England was merely an inevitable consequence of the assault on America

He looked back down at the plot table. A Wren, pushing a shuffleboardlike stick, placed another U-boat identification marker off the Bermuda coast. Well, it was time to act.

He walked back over to the knot of commanders who waited on his word. "As of noon tomorrow I'm ordering a full alert and mobilization of all our forces." He hesitated for a moment and then looked over at Leigh-Mallory. "Draw up plans for a pre-emptive strike on German airfields located in the French occupied zone."

His staff looked at him incredulously.

"No, I haven't gone mad, not yet at least. But if we have an incident, just one incident, those airfields are to be smashed instantly."