Pearl Harbour - A novel of December 8th (35 page)

He read, and reread the letter, folded it up, and placed it back in his desk, took out a sheet of paper and with his famed style of calligraphy, began to write out a formal note.

London: 30 October 1941

The distant thump, that one he could feel in the soles of his feet, caused him to look up. Winston did not even notice, settled back in his thick leather lounge chair, a scotch in one hand, cigar in the other.

The chair was the one luxury of the room, which was painted a dull institutional green. Studies had shown that was the best color for those doomed to live perhaps for days, even weeks underground. It was a tiny alcove, with room for the chair, a cot to sleep on, a small side cabinet filled with the required scotch and cigars, a desk, and the straight-back chair that Cecil now sat on.

Another thump, this one closer, and Winston chuckled at Cecil’s obvious discomfort.

“A mile or more off, just a nuisance raid, keeps us on our toes; you should have been here this time last year.”

Winston chuckled and pointed up to the ceiling, a crisscross of pipes and wires lacing back and forth.

“My engineers didn’t tell me until later that a good drop down some ventilation shafts would have blown us all to hell. This bunker is nowhere near as safe as most believe. I wonder if Hitler has the same design problems. Would love to know that,” and he grinned.

He looked at his drink and swirled it in its glass before taking another sip.

“Now Stalin, rumor is he has one a hundred feet deep under the Kremlin. Heaven knows he might need it or just simply get out if the weather turns back to Hitler’s favor and the ground freezes.”

Winston looked off.

“He could still collapse, you know. Oh, he talks a great game of reserves, and of course his demands for supplies and yet more supplies from us and the Americans, but all that is saving him now is mud. Freeze tomorrow, and I dare say they’ll be in Moscow in a fortnight.”

Another thump rattled the room.

“Six months after that, and the Luftwaffe will be back with a thousand planes a night.”

Cecil was still in shock from his ride down from Biggin Hill. It had been his first time back to England since leaving at Winston’s behest nearly five years ago. Entire blocks of once familiar landscapes had been turned to rubble. Though exhausted after a week of flying across the Pacific, the United States, and then on back to here, he had sat erect throughout the last hour of drive to this concealed command bunker. A day and a half ago he had been in New York City, its port crammed with shipping, streets bustling with renewed traffic after the long Depression, but here, it truly was back into a war zone. Not as bad as Nanking, but shocking none the less, a different kind of destruction because this was once home ... and his own flat had been one of the victims just off from Paddington Station, a direct hit he had been told, the tenant an old friend from school days, engaged in some hush-hush job like himself, never found in the blown-out wreckage.

Well, if one had to go, better that than all the horrors he had seen in China and had just finished telling Winston about.

“If Stalin should indeed fall,” Winston mused, “it could still change the complexion of what we must assume Japan is preparing for.”

“Going north, even in winter?”

“The temptation for their army would be too much, even now. Most certainly the Soviets gave them a good and proper drubbing two years back and showed Japan its weakness in armor and aircraft. They have rectified the latter. I could see them delivering the stab in the back, the way Italy did to France last year, come in to scoop up what spoils they can once the real fighting is finished. That still might be possible.”

Cecil did not reply. If Germany did topple Stalin and the Japanese then moved in from the east, what would that bode for England, for the world, a year hence? The full fury of the Nazis would be turned again upon this island and then all Japan need do is sit back awhile longer. England, in the end, would have to strip itself bare out of the Pacific. Perhaps even India would then be in jeopardy.

Churchill smiled as he looked down into his drink.

“I’ve read your report, though, my friend, and I dare say it is already too late. The die has been cast, and now we must wait to see what it produces.” He had traveled nearly fifteen thousand miles to deliver but several dozen typewritten pages, feeling the information too sensitive to transmit, or even to hand off to the Americans to deliver. No, this was something he felt Winston had to see directly. It was his assessment that the Japanese would strike toward Singapore and the Dutch East Indies within the month, two months at the latest.

“Devilish bastards,” Winston grumbled. “They think we are on the ropes. Now is when they will move.”

“And Stalin and the Soviets?”

“Take Moscow now, the edge of winter?” Churchill laughed softly. “You were the one who excelled even above me in history back at Harrow.”

“Napoleon,” Cecil replied. “Stalin will order the entire city burned if need be, then retire back to Gorky or Kuibyshev to continue the fight. The Nazis will occupy a burned-out shell at the end of a thousand-mile supply line.”

Churchill nodded in reply and offered to refill Cecil’s drink. He refused, fearful he would fall asleep if he had but a few more ounces. Winston poured himself several fingers’ worth in his glass and smiled.

“If it should come to that, in the spring Stalin and his cutthroats will drive out the starving bastards who are left. No, that old devil will never give up, unless there is finally a coup and a bastard as dark as him, Beria for example, murders him then takes his place, and then they will disintegrate into civil war. The army would love nothing more than to take down the NKVD. The same with the Wehrmacht I daresay, when it comes to their SS and Gestapo. A complicated mess, but I doubt if it will come to that.”

Cecil looked back down at his own drink, regretting he had not asked for more. After the long strain of the trip by American clipper plane, then a twenty-four-hour flight across the States, and then another day and a half to here, he could stand to get drunk, properly drunk.

The world was a madhouse and only America, in a perverse sort of way, seemed removed from it all. They were profiting, out of the doldrums of the Depression, thanks to the emptying of the British Treasury for arms. They were even mobilizing, halfheartedly, but still at every airport where the DC-3 he was traveling aboard stopped to refuel, he saw bustling activity, trainer aircraft by the scores, new barracks going up by the edge of airfields; at their stop in St. Louis, a score of their B-17s warming up for a training flight. But as for the rest of the country, it was still locked in an opium-like dream of peace. Just arm and sit back, waiting it out. Snatches of overheard conversations dwelt on new cars, the latest Western pic, the trivial going-ons of Hollywood celebrities, the casual talk of peace. Only on the flight from New York to Newfoundland, to Iceland and then London, were the passengers somber, most of them obviously military men, dressed in civilian garb, tightlipped other than the most casual of conversations, but then again he was tightlipped too, simply a reporter returning back home with little to say about all that he had seen. During the night someone reported a flickering glow to the south and all had gathered at the windows, gazing out across the black Atlantic--and there was indeed, a pulsing fire in the distance that suddenly winked out.

“Tanker most likely,” someone whispered, “sunk, poor bastards.”

As they flew peacefully along through the night, he had been suddenly aware that directly below, at this very moment, U-boats were on the surface, charging their engines, prowling, hunting for their prey, perhaps a lookout hearing the drone of their distant engines, calling a warning as the darkened plane droned overhead and then passed on.

And now here, another shudder rumbling, this one closer, he could almost sense the overpressure of the bomb striking nearby. Winston did not even notice. “If they strike us before the new year,” Winston finally said, “there is precious little we can do about it. The crisis is still on in North Africa, even though Rommel has been forced back. If Hitler does push to Moscow and does not overreach, it could free a dozen of his divisions to turn south, to overwhelm us and take the Suez come spring. We have nothing to spare for the Pacific; I fear we can barely hold in India. It will be an American fight.”

“But suppose they don’t directly strike the Americans,” Cecil ventured. “They just hit us and the Dutch. Do you think President Roosevelt could rally the support necessary to enter the war?”

Churchill grumbled and shook his head.

“I doubt it. The isolationists will point at the map, how far distant it all is, how meaningless to American interests. Far better for us that a U-boat sinks one of their destroyers off the coast of New York City, but even then, there would be some screaming that Roosevelt and his Jewish friends had warmongered it.”

Cecil looked at him, slightly shocked. ”Oh yes, that propaganda line of the Nazis is heard by more than one in America. Filthy tripe all of it, but some hear it and repeat it. No, it will take a blow, a very hard blow to bestir them. Tell me, do you think the Japanese will hit the Americans as well?”

Cecil sat back in his chair, nursing the last few drops of his drink, and without prompting Winston uncorked the scotch and refilled his glass, and he now gladly accepted it.

“They will.”

“Why so?”

“They cannot bypass the Philippines in their drive south. Second, the embargo of oil has become an issue of national pride. Finally, though some in the navy are indeed for peace, far more moderate than the army, there are others who believe one killing blow can shatter the Americans. It is a testing that some have itched for for nearly forty years.”

“Two boys on the block and sooner or later they’ll test each other’s mettle, is that it?”

Cecil nodded.

“It is the weakness of the samurai way. I saw it when I taught at their academy. Their strange game of all offensive and precious little defense. Their thinking is to strike first, the single killing blow. You see it in their sword fighting versus ours. Our dueling is fencing, strike, counterstrike, maneuver, thrust, counterthrust to finally the kill. To the samurai, for one blade to even touch the other is considered a lessening of victory. The true victory is the serpentlike strike, lightning speed in the very first strike, so fast the opponent’s blade falls to the ground, dead, before it has even touched the other blade or armor of his opponent. That is considered the true glorious victory. They believe it is their destiny; they will fight for that destiny in the manner in which they think. No, they will not attack us and leave the American threat to their flank and rear. I daresay the first blow will fall there because that is potentially the strongest opponent. We, I am ashamed to say, are seen as secondary.”

“And where will they strike?”

“The Philippines, obviously. I am not privy to the American war plans, but everyone can surmise them. Strike the Philippines, then wait for the American fleet to sortie from Pearl Harbor. As it transitions to the Marshall Islands, their ground-based planes, destroyers, and submarines will harry and weaken. Then once into the open seas beyond, the main battle fleet will come forth to finish the job. Then the Americans, defeated, sue for peace.”

Churchill snorted derisively. “They don’t know the Americans, if ever aroused. Lured into a fight or not, they sink a fleet and the Americans will build another, just as the Romans did against Carthage.”

“We know that, many on their side know it, but they will do it nevertheless.”

Churchill nodded, taking the information in. “I’ll talk to Roosevelt about it again tomorrow,” he finally said. “Get some rest. Go to number ten, they’ll have a room for you there.” Cecil hesitated and Winston chuckled. “It’s only been hit once, and besides, those pesky flies overhead are just a nuisance raid. Keep us up, keep us on edge. You’ll sleep like a baby. We’ll talk more tomorrow, and then I want you to go back.”

“Back, sir?” Cecil asked, unable to hide his dismay.

“But of course.”

“Sir, may I speak frankly?”

“By all means.”

“I’m sick of it all. I’ve seen far too much. Whatever love and respect I once held for the Japanese died at Nanking and was buried deep in the four years since. I’m sick of the Orient, the brutality, the war, the blindness of more than one on our side out in Singapore who chortle and say all will be well, that the little yellow buggers wouldn’t dare strike England.”

He sighed.

“Couldn’t I have a posting here for a while?”

Winston smiled and laughed.

“But you’re my expert out there now; my eyes and ears. Your report is damn good, and damn smart of you as well to bring it direct. If you had mailed it, I fear other eyes might have read it first. I wanted your impressions directly, to hear your voice and all it implies as you speak. Take a few days to rest, then I want you back out there in Singapore. If the show is to start, I want someone outside the loop to report to me, and you I trust.”

Cecil sighed and wearily shook his head.

Winston looked at him coolly, as if examining him for some test.

Cecil wanted to tell his old Harrrovian schoolmate to bugger off, but he could not. He was not just Winston, he was the prime minister, and even the closest of friends did not speak thus to the PM.

“Go on now, off to bed with you. We’ll talk more tomorrow. Do this favor now, my friend, and then, well, perhaps after the show starts that you predict, I might have other ideas for you. You’re too old now to go running around in the middle of a war zone”--he smiled--”but then again, this is a war zone.”

Even as he said it, there was another thump, this one fairly close. “On your way back there’s an American I’d like you to talk freely with. Interesting chap named Donovan.”

Cecil sat up at the mention of the name.

“Has a friend, Hollywood director. Remember that terrible movie about the Welsh that they lavished awards on this year? Such sentimental rubbish.”