Final impact

“Admiral, you seem almost eager for this conflict with the Russians,” Roosevelt said.

“I have no enthusiasm for it at all, Mr. President. It will be an unholy bloodletting. But in my opinion, it is inevitable. The Soviets will not accept their future-the future they found in our records. We’ll fight it out in the next few weeks or the next few years, but we will have to fight them. And it’s almost certain that Stalin will want that fight to take place now, when he’s at his strongest, and before we reach the stage of mutually assured destruction with atomic weapons.”

Kolhammer waited for someone-Admiral King, he guessed-to flay him again for having royally fucked up their world. He’d built up a thick mass of scar tissue over the past two years of getting flogged on that same point. To his surprise nobody did anything of the sort.

The president, looking unsteady, turned to Lord Halifax. “Mr. Ambassador, what is the position of His Majesty’s government concerning the Soviet declaration?”

Kolhammer narrowed his eyes without realizing it. His research on Lord Halifax gave him no confidence in the man. He was a remote, upper-class grandee who was in Washington because Churchill couldn’t stand to have him spooking about London. He’d been an appeaser in the 1930s who’d argued that Hitler’s territorial ambitions should be accommodated, since they “constituted no serious threat” and even marked the return of the Germany to normality after the trials of the Great War and Versailles. If he’d been born a century later, thought Kolhammer, he’d have been one of those idiots who slapped their foreheads and moaned, “What did we do wrong?” every time some jihadi nutjob blew up a primary school or crashed a supertanker into a port.

With a long face and a melancholy, almost melodramatic delivery, however, Halifax said, “His Majesty’s government has been aware of Major Ivanov’s activities, and has been studying his reports for some time now.”

That didn’t surprise Kolhammer. He knew a Russian-speaking SAS officer had accompanied Ivanov into the Soviet Union.

“It’s the opinion of the prime minister and cabinet that war with the Soviet Union is inevitable, and that all preparations must be made to successfully prosecute the conflict as quickly as possible.”

“I see,” Roosevelt said. He was apparently as taken aback as Kolhammer. “General Marshall, gentlemen, I don’t want to fight another war, and I will do all I can to avoid it, but as it will fall to you to prevail in any conflict with Stalin, I must now direct you to begin planning for that eventuality.”

Spruance poured himself a second cup of coffee from the pot on the warming stand in Kolhammer’s ready room. The task force had moved only a few nautical miles since they’d sat down to take part in the teleconference, but the world had turned itself inside out, again. Maybe one day they’d get used to the feeling, Kolhammer mused.

He finished the dregs of his espresso and stared out a porthole. He could tell from the lazy, heaving motion of the ship and the number of whitecaps out on the deep blue that they were sailing into a weather front. A southerly, if he guessed right.

“Young Kennedy is already a hundred miles out ahead of us,” Spruance said. “I intend to chopper a SEAL team out to him, and then send him to drop them on Saipan.”

Kolhammer folded his arms and leaned back on the edge of his desk. “Seems a reasonable idea,” he agreed. “There’s nothing like eyeballing the ground for real. And our drone cover isn’t what it used to be.”

“No, but we have a larger issue now, don’t we?” Spruance said. “If it turns out that Tojo is withdrawing some of his forces from the Marianas to shore up defense of the Home Islands, we have to decide whether or not we’ll let him.”

“Uh-huh,” Kolhammer responded. “My two cents’ worth. If the Japanese want to get home, we should let them. It’ll mean less resistance for us, and it’s going to get bloody taking those islands. More importantly, it’ll hold up the Sovs, and believe me, you don’t want them getting hold of Japan. I can’t think of anything worse.

“You think the Japanese are bad news now, you got no idea. As Commies, they’d be worse than the North Koreans.”

Spruance paced the room with hands clasped behind his back. He adjusted his balance to the movement of the ship without apparent thought.

They’d been given no specific orders about how to respond to a Japanese withdrawal from the Marianas. Until they knew better what was happening out there, they’d been ordered to continue as planned. Spruance stopped at a porthole and gazed out over the task force awhile. The invasion fleet that hit Calais had been an awesome sight, even when viewed on screen. But it hadn’t been a proper oceangoing armada like this one. This had fewer ships, overall, but to Kolhammer it looked much more powerful.