Designated Targets

With the meeting reduced to the inner core of the Reich, Himmler opened the manila folder that contained his notes. Although he had become comfortable using a flexipad, he still preferred to rely on paper and ink in situations such as this one. It wouldn’t do for his briefing to be marred by a misplaced data file or malfunctioning software. He didn’t understand how this “Microsoft Corporation” could have become so dominant in die andere Zeit. He found their products to be annoying, and entirely unreliable.

“The Demidenko Project proceeds well,” he began. “The Bolsheviks have committed enormous resources, and state that they are satisfied with progress, which of course, remains far behind the joint research we are carrying out with the Japanese government. Demidenko has allowed us to test much of the secret theoretical work we have undertaken without the Soviets’ knowledge, and even the failures at the test site have proved invaluable in confirming the hypotheses of von Braun’s group. While we consider it inevitable that the Politburo will have established their own rocket research, in violation of the cease-fire agreement, we can be confident they possess neither the technical resources nor the skills needed to match our combined efforts.”

Oshima bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment.

“On current projections,” he continued, “we will have a V-Three rocket capable of striking at all of the main Soviet production and population centers by late nineteen forty-three. Within a year after that, we should be able to launch from land-based systems against the East Coast of the USA. Although, they will have achieved a similar level of development with their own missile programs, and of course, their Manhattan Project should also have come to fruition by then.”

Nobody in the room looked comfortable with the idea of an America that would be able to obliterate entire cities in Europe with just a single warhead.

“However,” Himmler added, “we do not think they will be able to fit an atomic device onto a missile for some time yet—”

“What do you mean by some time?” Göring demanded. “Will it be nineteen forty-five, nineteen forty-six? When?”

The führer didn’t slap down his Luftwaffe chief this time. Instead, he laid down the pencil with which he had been taking notes. “Yes, Heinrich. This is an important point,” he said. “If we allow them to achieve a lead on us, Truman will not make the same mistake twice, assuming that he still succeeds the cripple. If he can develop the same superiority of atomic forces he enjoyed over the Communists in the early days of their Cold War, he will strike us without hesitation. He may even trade one or two of his own cities for all of ours. And if that pig Churchill is still alive, skulking around in exile, he will probably bomb his own countrymen rather than allow us to hold England.”

Himmler listened in respectful silence. It was a reasonable question, even if it had been inspired by a very unreasonable and slightly drunken oaf like Göring.

“There are two things to note, mein führer. First, Churchill. I have a plan in hand to deal with him during Sea Dragon. I will come to that presently. Second, I must agree that the Americans will lead us in rocket technology. They gained a much greater bounty from the Emergence—thousands of personnel, many of them trained technicians, and a wealth of computing power within their ships that unfortunately we can but dream of. The files on the Sutanto and the Nuku are a very poor substitute. They had very restricted access to Kolhammer’s Fleetnet, much of it at the level of the mundane and ridiculous.

“The French vessel has been a treasure trove, by comparison, but of course we have had her for less time, and the vast majority of her crew were uncooperative. Some of those who we’d thought cooperative at first, turned out to be working against us, and they even managed to accomplish quite significant acts of sabotage before they were caught and punished. I can only imagine what information has been lost to us because of that. Another saboteur nearly destroyed the entire vessel when we were removing the Lavals.

“But in executing them, of course, we killed the very men best able to teach us how to use the infinitely more complex devices on that ship. It is the devil’s own dilemma.”

He could see Göring twisting about like a man whose hide had shrunk in all the wrong places. The Reichsmarshall wore the burden of his failures heavily.