Final Impact (44 page)

“What d’you think you’ll do?”

“Huh? Sorry.” Lonesome’s question had caught him off-guard.

“When we get back. Will you stay in the service? Or go private.”

Kolhammer’s answer was delayed by the muted roar of an A-4 ripping down the flight deck not far above their heads. It was a question he’d given some thought to, but without coming to any conclusions yet.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Things will change when peace breaks out. The sunset clause will start ticking, for one thing. But people will feel a lot freer to air their differences and to act on them, too. The Zone, the Valley, or whatever you want to call it, is going to be at the center of that. I feel I should be there one way or another. What about you?”

Jones surprised him with his answer. “I’ll be staying in the corps. I think Truman will get the job come November, and he’ll desegregate the forces. Then the real work will begin.”

“You wouldn’t be working under our system anymore, Lonesome. You’d be in their world. They’ll take your brigade from you, for starters. You know that, don’t you?”

The general nodded. “I do. But because it
is
going to happen, like you, I feel the need to be there. Besides, I don’t think we’re done fighting. Not by a long way.”

Kolhammer nodded his agreement.

The task force was still steaming eastward but it had turned north, away from the Marianas, after detaching a smaller force to accept the Japanese surrender there. Everything was up in the air. He assumed they’d be occupying the Japanese Home Islands, at least in the short term, but that hadn’t been confirmed yet. Nobody even knew how those islands were going to be divided among the winners. It was a fair assumption that Tokyo was going to end up in the American and Australian sector, though. On the Asian mainland China was still convulsed in war, with the Soviets and Mao’s Communists allied against the Nationalist government. Sheer mass was going to tell in that battle, he was certain. Indeed, Uncle Joe’s minions had been busy all over. They were fighting in Korea, Indochina, Afghanistan, and Persia. Not to mention the huge bites they’d taken out of Eastern
and
Western Europe.

“Yeah, there’ll be some fighting yet,” said Kolhammer.

Lieutenant Liao appeared at the door again. “Excuse me, sir,” he said. “But we’ve just received a priority encrypted data burst from Captain Willet on the
Havoc.
Your eyes only. It’s on your desktop now.”

He thanked his assistant and clicked on the flashing icon.

Jones took another cookie while he waited.

“Hmm,” said Kolhammer. “That’s a shame.”

“Can you say what?”

“Captain Willet caught up with the
Nagano,
that
kamikaze
transport, and sank her. But she regrets to inform us that it was after the cessation of hostilities. The cease-fire orders didn’t get through in time.”

“She pick up any survivors?” asked Jones.

“There were none,” said Kolhammer, pointedly.

The marine shrugged.

“Fortunes of war, Admiral.”

“I suppose so,” said Kolhammer.

EPILOGUE

7 AUGUST 1944.
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA.

If she squinted into the bright morning light and concentrated on the northern headland, where developers hadn’t gained the upper hand back in twenty-one, it was almost possible for Jane Willet to imagine she was home again. Bondi Beach remained the same deep, south-facing bay. That would never change. The biscuit-colored cliffs looked just as they had when she’d last left
her
Sydney, the beautiful, conflicted, and utterly self-obsessed meta-city of 2021. Standing in the fresh air on the flying bridge of the
Havoc
’s conning tower, she could see the old art deco apartment she’d rented for a year when studying for her postgrad degree at Sydney Uni, except that here it was a “new” building, standing out rather starkly on the raw, scraped-looking heights of Ben Buckler. The third story had not yet been added and two modern houses that had stood beside it in her memory were gone, replaced by fibro cottages. Goats roamed freely over what would one day be the links of the North Bondi golf course.

“Fancy a drink at the RSL, Chief?” she asked.

Roy Flemming didn’t take the binoculars from his eyes. “They haven’t built it yet, skipper. Just a big sand dune there at the moment.”

The great, black cigar-shaped hull of the most powerful submarine in the world passed smoothly through the cold blue waters of the Pacific as they drew nearer to the end of their long voyage. There was almost no swell to speak of today, no lines of whitecapped breakers rolling in toward the golden crescent of the beach. Her beach. That was fine by Willet. It’d make for a much smoother passage through the Heads.

“Not much of a welcome home, is it?” mused Lieutenant Lohrey, her intelligence boss.

“Not much,” Willet agreed.

There were only a few sailboats out on the deep, and no RAN vessels or officials to greet them.

“We
are
having a reception at town hall tomorrow, remember,” the captain offered a little weakly.

“Whacko,” said Flemming.

“Spiffing,” Lohrey agreed in the same monotone.

Willet smiled thinly and muttered, “Wankers.”

They passed the cliffs at Vaucluse in companionable silence, watching as the lighthouse drew up, then slipped behind them. Soon enough they were turning to port for the run in to Sydney Harbor, and as Willet was afforded a better look inside the vast anchorage, her heart began to beat harder. A real smile broke out, lighting up her face.

The entire harbor was choked with flotillas of sailcraft and warships. A dozen ferries, all of them crowded with cheering and waving spectators, were drawn up in the waters off Manly Pier. Tugboats pumped huge white geysers from their fire hoses, high into the sky, forming rainbows as the winter sunlight refracted through the falling spray. Horns began to blare. Whistles shrieked and tooted. And Willet could feel in her chest the roar of what had to be a million voices raised in acclamation of their return. She wanted to speak but a lump in her throat prevented any words from coming. She swallowed and tried again, beaming as she turned to Lohrey. “Amanda, you’d better make sure the crew can see this on shipnet. They’re gonna be pissed if they miss it.”

The
Havoc
’s intelligence chief sported a rather sheepish grin. “Already taken care of, skipper.”

Willet narrowed her eyes in suspicion. “You knew? You knew this was waiting for us and you didn’t say anything?”

Lohrey showed her a pair of open, honest palms. “Orders from the PM, ma’am. Mr. Curtin was adamant that this was to be a
surprise
party. He’s waiting for us at Woolloomooloo along with an honor guard, our families, such as they are, and a couple of hundred freeloading dignitaries.”

Willet’s curse was lost in the roar of six RAAF jet fighters sweeping overhead, waggling their wings and trailing green and gold smoke, a nice uptime touch. A battery at the North Head artillery school commenced a twenty-one-gun salute.

The captain of His Majesty’s Australian Ship
Havoc
saw almost none of it as tears dissolved the scene into a swirling miasma of color. She felt Roy Flemming’s hard, leathery hand slap her once on the back.

“Good job, skipper. Good fucking job.”

7 AUGUST, 1944.
CANADA.

Paul Brasch stepped lightly out of the jeep and thanked the driver before collecting his duffel bag. Night was falling on the small lakeside village; one bright star had already appeared in the east, a single point of light in a burned orange sky. Without the wind of the jeep’s passage, he became aware of a rich stew of unfamiliar scents and the chaotic overture of birdsong and insect calls.

The village, a tiny hamlet that serviced the local salmon-fishing industry, was a good mile around the curve of the lake. He caught the briefest hint of singing and a piano playing as the breeze changed direction for a moment. And then it was gone again, and he was left alone at the end of the long gravel roadway down to the waterfront cabin.

The sound of the jeep’s engine faded away, and he began to walk. With each step he found his throat growing tighter, and his eyes bleary with the first tears he had shed in an age. He walked slowly, taking in the magnificent view and the quiet peace that surrounded him, hoping to compose himself before meeting his wife and son. He had no idea whether they would stay here in this obscure part of Canada, no idea what the rest of their lives would bring. He had money enough to give them a new life anywhere in the free world, but perhaps, for the next little while, they might just sit quietly here by the edge of this lake and wonder at the miracle that had delivered them from evil.

Brasch was imagining long fishing trips with little Manny, and the first night he would spend in bed with his wife, when a small, piping voice brought his head up with a start.

“Papa! Papa!”

It was Manfred and Willie, both of them running up the path toward him, arms out, their cheeks red and wet with tears of joy. But there was something wrong with the boy’s face and his voice. Brasch experienced a second of free-floating panic and then realized what was so different. Manny’s voice was clear and his mouth a perfect O as he ran toward his long-lost daddy. The cleft palate with which he’d been born—the small deformity that would inevitably have seen him fed into the ovens of the Reich at some point—was gone. Fixed by surgery, he supposed.

But gone. Gone forever.

“Papa! Papa!”

Paul Brasch, the good German, dropped his duffel bag and ran toward them.

7 AUGUST 1944.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA.

“So when are you starting work, ma’am.”

Mohr’s voice was a raspy bellow in her ear. It had to be, or she would never have heard him over the roar of the nightclub.

“Please, Eddie!” she yelled back. “Would you knock it off with the
ma’am-and-skipper
routine. We’re not on the quarterdeck and I’m not even a captain anymore. Karen will be fine.”

The big chief petty officer smiled and winked. “Right you are, ma’am. Karen it is, then, skipper.”

His face glistened with sweat, and stage lighting glinted off his scalp beneath the short back and sides. Karen Halabi rolled her eyes, but she, too, was smiling. She was free. She was alive. She was a little bit drunk. And she was married to the greatest guy in the world who was, at that very moment, up on stage, playing his beloved electric guitar in public for the first time in three years. Mike was a little rusty, but like everyone in the Palomino Club he was also drunk and happy and well beyond caring whether his version of “Smoke on the Water” paid sufficient homage to the original. The guys in his garage band were all uptimers and they were just loving the chance to play some old-school rock and roll for the heaving crowd of Zoners and Angelinos who gathered at the Palomino four nights a week to dance along to some kickin’ tunes.

“So, you didn’t answer my question…Karen. When d’you start?”

Halabi finished her beer and signaled an overworked bartender for two more as Mike and the boys started in on their version of “Smells Like Teen Spirit.”

“Next Monday morning,” she shouted back at Mohr. “So Mike and I have a few days left yet. He has an extra week’s leave, so he’s going to be getting the house set up, making my dinner, ironing my shirts. All the old-fashioned corporate-wife stuff.”

Eddie Mohr, the master chief of the USS
Hillary Clinton,
grinned like an old fox at the henhouse door. “Will he now?”

Halabi punched him on the arm. “And you won’t be teasing him about it either,
Chief.
I’ve got a good housebroken man up there on that stage, and he’s going to stay broken. Understand?”

The beers arrived and Karen paid for them with her Combat Optics credit card. The guys at CO had insisted she take it as soon as she signed her employment contract. As senior vice president in charge of R&D she enjoyed a generous personal expense account over and above her corporate allowance. The combined sum of the two was appreciably more than her husband pulled in as a U.S. Navy captain, and the sign-on bonus had been generous enough to pay cash for their beachfront house in San Diego. It wasn’t in-Zone, but she’d found to her delight that the U.S. West Coast felt a lot more like her sort of place than she could have hoped for back in the UK. Probably something to do with being in the New World.

The crowd roared as Mike plucked out the first notes of “Louie Louie.”

Eddie Mohr charged his glass and shouted, “To the future.”

Karen Halabi sloshed beer over her arm and his shirt as they clinked glasses, but she figured
What the hell?

“To the past,” she cried back.

7 AUGUST 1944.
SANDRINGHAM HOUSE, NORFOLK, ENGLAND.

It had taken quite some time for Harry to get used to his being so much older than his grandmother. Princess Elizabeth had been a very young sixteen when he’d arrived, and if anything Harry had been more nervous about their first meeting than she. After all, he had loved her all his life, but he had known her as the aged monarch of another era. Here she was a smooth-faced teenager and he was the increasingly aged one. At least it felt like that some mornings. He really was getting too fucking old to be jumping out of planes and into punch-ups with the likes of Otto Skorzeny.

He rolled the shoulder where the SS colonel had plunged in a bayonet as Harry strangled him to death in a cellar in Magdeburg. They were walking through the southern reaches of the estate, and it was unseasonably chilly.

“It’s a lovely day, don’t you think, Harry?”

“It is, Granny. It’s good to be alive.”

The princess had dissolved into giggles the first time he’d called her that, and Harry had blushed beet red, but as Elizabeth had laughed and laughed, until tears began to stream from her eyes, an embarrassed chuckle had escaped her grandson. It turned into a genuine full-bellied laugh, and soon they were both rolling around on the floor of the great hall at Sandringham, under the unblinking gaze of a stuffed baboon that Harry remembered fondly from his own childhood.

Now, strolling the grounds, Harry called her Granny without a second thought. It had become his pet name for her, and she had settled into a close, comfortable relationship with him that was more akin to that between siblings than anything else.

They walked a little behind the rest of the shooting party of about thirty, including the king and queen mother. Elizabeth was unarmed, but Harry cradled a beautifully handcrafted shotgun. They were after a pheasant for the dinner table that evening.

“He’s a bit scared of you, you know,” she said.

“Who?”

“Philip, silly. My
husband.
”

Harry smiled. “You haven’t married him yet, you know, Granny. You haven’t even had a real date.”

She may have blushed then, or perhaps it was simply her skin’s response to the chill of the morning.

“Oh you. You’re awful.”

Harry sucked in a draft of stinging-cold air. “Am not,” he replied.

7 AUGUST 1944.
SAVANNAH, GEORGIA.

“Thanks, but not for me, Vern.”

“Your loss, Phil. From what I hear, these things are gonna be banned one day.”

Phillip Kolhammer leaned back in the rocker on the porch of the slumping old homestead and shook his head.

“No. I don’t think you’re going to see a revolution in Cuba now, Vern. Without Castro or Guevara to lead it, it might have happened. But all that aid money flowing in there now is tied up mighty tightly with all sorts of strings. Things are gonna be different there at least. But don’t let that stop you enjoying your stogie.”

“It surely won’t.”

“No. Nothing ever stops Vernon enjoying himself,” said Louisa Cuttler as she stirred a tall glass of iced tea. “I’ve been clipping him stories about how those things are going to kill him, and do you think he’ll listen? No. Not for a million dollars will he listen…”

The lilt of her voice reminded Kolhammer of Marie so much, it hurt. But it was a sweet pain, and much softer than it had been when he’d first sought out her maternal grandparents. There was so much of Marie in Louisa’s eyes and voice that he could close his own eyes, rocking gently back and forth on the tired gray boards of the porch, and it was almost as if his wife were with him again. Like Einstein had said, she was
this
close.

He’d never met Vernon and Louise Cuttler back up in his own day. They had both passed on by the time he’d met Marie. But they’d raised her after her own parents died in a car crash, and his wife had loved them with a childlike devotion, even as a grown woman.

“That was a wonderful dinner,” said Kolhammer. “I can’t thank you folks enough for taking me into your home and…”

“Now, Phil,” Louisa insisted. “Don’t you go getting yourself all choked up. You’re family and that’s the end of it. I know things are…well, a little strange…And our granddaughter as you knew her will never be born in this world. But the good Lord knows her soul, and I know He will send that soul to us in some form at some time of His own choosing. That may be of no ease to your suffering, but you should never doubt that you have a home here with us, and with all our family. You’ll always be welcome.”