Designated Targets

Tolson had actually climbed to his feet, and was stalking around the office now. He slammed the door closed and turned on the startled director. When he spoke, it was with unusual intensity.

“The real people aren’t happy at all with that gang of perverts out there. They want things put right again. And we can do it, Eddie. They’d expect us to do it, to protect them the same way we protected them from the mobsters and kidnappers. They expect you to do it.”

J. Edgar Hoover blinked away a tear. It fell to his desk, smudging a line of Special Agent Clayton’s report, a horrid passage alleging that the director had worn—or would wear—a red dress and a black feather boa to some sort of homosexual orgy in a hotel in the 1950s. It was all lies and filth, carefully crafted to break his will.

But Clyde, that wonderful, dear, dear man, had led him through the darkness that threatened to envelop them both.

“You are my sword and my shield, Junior,” he croaked as he stood and hurried around his desk to embrace the only human being, besides his sainted mother, whom he had ever really known and loved.

Clyde was right. Kolhammer and his kind would have to be fought. And J. Edgar Hoover, American patriot, would lead that fight.

As he pressed up against the familiar, reassuring bulk of Clyde Tolson’s body, he was already plotting his counterattack. “I think I need to see Congressman Dies again,” he said.

SPECIAL ADMINISTRATIVE ZONE, CALIFORNIA

A long time ago, in a universe far, far way, a much younger Phillip Kolhammer had read a book, A Man Called Intrepid. William Stephenson, the Canadian adventurer who was Winston Churchill’s personal representative in the United States, was every bit as impressive in real life as he had been in the pages of that book. An infantryman and later a fighter ace flying Sopwith Camels in the First World War, he became a very successful businessman after the armistice—so successful, in fact, that he performed his current duties, as the head of Britain’s intelligence operations in the western hemisphere, without being paid.

According to his biography, he was a believer, and for that reason, Churchill had placed him in his position above the objections of the old guard within British Intelligence. Stephenson had used his extensive business contacts to funnel information about the Nazis to Churchill during the latter’s wilderness years, and when the old warhorse had finally made it to Downing Street, the Canadian had offered to personally assassinate Hitler. That plan was quashed by Lord Halifax, who was then foreign secretary.

For once, Kolhammer allowed himself a wry smile concerning the tangled threads of fortune within which he’d become trapped. He’d bet big money that Halifax regretted his decision now.

“Is something funny, Admiral?” asked Stephenson.

“Not really,” Kolhammer said. “Idle thoughts, that’s all. It’s late.”

And it was. They met in his office, which was swept every few hours for bugs. It was a bare space, particleboard walls and government-issue furniture. Kolhammer had softened the raw fit-out with some personal photographs, a rug he’d bought many years ago in Cairo, and a couple of armchairs, where he and Stephenson now sat, nursing mugs of coffee with rum shots. The office might have looked unimpressive, but it was a central node of the distributed infotech system he was building in the Valley. There was more network capacity in this one small room than in all of Washington. Not all of the equipment was authorized, however.

“You wouldn’t believe the number of these things we keep finding all over the Zone,” Kolhammer commented, holding up a bulky, primitive listening device. It was most likely an FBI plant. His counterintelligence people had swept it out of a bar down on Ventura that was popular with his officers.

“Actually, I would,” Stephenson replied. “Hoover’s more trouble than the Abwehr and the NKVD put together, at least as far as my work goes. You know, we gave that guy one of our best double agents—”

“Popov,” said Kolhammer, who’d downloaded Intrepid for a skim-through before he’d first met Stephenson.

The Canadian rolled his eyes. “Yeah, Popov. You know, I can never get used to the idea that the world is full of people who know all my secrets now. Anyway, Popov was sent to New York by his Abwehr controller, this guy Auenrode. This is before Pearl Harbor, right? The Japs wanted to know all sorts of things about the defenses in Hawaii. The exact location of ammo and fuel dumps, which hangars are where, what ships and subs anchor at what piers.

“Hoover did nothing. He let this guy cool his heels for two weeks while he took off on a holiday with his boyfriend, with the mob probably picking up the tab. When he finally does get back, Hoover explodes, screeching at Popov to get out of his office.”