8

He still used the wheelchair, although the treatment had restored his mobility to an amazing degree. Eleanor said he looked twenty years younger, but Franklin Roosevelt still felt uncomfortable.

He knew he wasn't long for the world, even with the treatments devised by Kolhammer's doctors. He might have given himself an additional three or four years at best, but you could never tell. There was so much to do, and he wasn't sure he could see it through to the end. The Transition had proved to be as hideously complicated as he'd expected. Creating the Special Administrative Zone where companies like Douglas and Boeing and Ford could fully exploit the patents they already had on future technologies meant that the market drove the pace of innovation as fast as it possibly could, without sending a shockwave through the "old" economy. But of course, it had also meant establishing an enclave within the body politic of the Republic, which many saw as being a protected reserve for the worst sort of subversive elements. It had cost him enormous amounts of political capital to ram the thing through Congress, even with a sunset clause, and he just knew that his enemies would play merry hell with it at every opportunity. Indeed, they were already doing so. The damnable House Un-American Activities Committee of Congressman Dies had suddenly stopped investigating the Ku Klux Klan and the German American Bund and announced hearings into the Zone that very morning.

Roosevelt had to wonder whether it was significant that Dies had met with Hoover and Tolson for dinner last night.

He really needed a smoke.

Giving up had been remarkably easy after receiving the implant, and it was a wonder how clear-headed he'd become. His mind ran at twice the speed, and he seemed to retain much more of what he read and heard. The physical craving for a cigarette was only a fleeting twinge nowadays, and even that bothered him less and less frequently. But at times like this, he still suffered a powerful need for the soothing familiarity of the habit.

It made him ponder what to do about the cigarette companies when the war was over.

For the moment, however, the war was a long way from being over. In fact, from many angles, the situation looked significantly worse. From the point of view of Lord Halifax, the British ambassador, who sat in the armchair directly across from him in the Oval Office, the course of events must have looked very grim, indeed. A long Roman nose and a high domed forehead conspired to give the ambassador a mournful countenance at the best of times. These last few months, his naturally forlorn expression had grown longer and more strained.

Admiral King wasn't helping.

"Ambassador," King rumbled, "you've got the Trident blocking the Channel. And you still have one of the most powerful fleets in the world anyway. If and when Hitler is fool enough to send his pissant little navy against you, it will be destroyed."

Halifax, who had been born without a hand at the end of his withered left arm, managed to balance a bone china cup of tea on his knee, and take a sip without any apparent effort. "Admiral King," he replied calmly, "the Trident is indeed a powerful deterrent. But she cannot be rearmed. She wasted a good many of her rockets on the Singapore raid."

King raised an eyebrow. "Wasted, you say?"

"You know what I mean, Admiral. It was a marvelous achievement, rescuing so many of our POWs-and yours, I suppose. It played very well with the press, and the Parliament. A second Dunkirk, and all that. But in so many ways, it was irresponsible."

Roosevelt felt the need to break in before this old argument flared up again. There were no representatives of the Multinational Force present, just the president, his three joint chiefs, and the British ambassador. But he'd found, time and again, that whenever two or more people gathered together, they could quickly and easily find themselves coming to blows on this particular topic. Indeed, it had joined religion and politics as a third great social taboo, never to be discussed in bars or at dinner. He knew, as well, that King privately agreed with Halifax, but he could see the navy chief squaring off for an argument.

"Gentlemen," he interjected, "there's no point raking over these coals again. The choice was not ours. It belonged to Kolhammer and his people, and they knew exactly what they were doing. Let's just move on, and deal with the present, shall we?"

It was midmorning in Washington, with an autumn chill lying hard against the windows of his office. Gusting, uncertain winds blew drifts of fallen leaves across the manicured lawns of the White House. The newly formed joint chiefs had gathered to give Halifax some unwelcome news. The U.S. Army simply did not have enough combat-ready divisions to bolster Great Britain's defenses against a renewed threat of invasion. The navy, heavily engaged in the South Pacific and still reeling from Midway and the seizure of convoy PQ 17 by the Soviet Union, could not secure the Atlantic or offer much more than token assistance in the event of a lunge across the channel by the Third Reich. And the army air force was still training pilots and building up its squadrons.

Of all the joints chiefs, Admiral King was the most dedicated to the idea of defeating Japan first. He was a constant critic of the accepted Europe First strategy, and the recent events had only hardened his resolve. "We are already heavily engaged in repelling an invasion, Mr. Ambassador," he said with customary bluntness. "Unless you had forgotten about abandoning your former colony. Remember? Australia? We have nearly a quarter million men down there right now because your Royal Navy built its guns facing the wrong way in Singapore, letting the Japs run wild."

Roosevelt closed his eyes and counted to five, but Halifax was a practiced diplomat and refused to rise to the bait. As brilliant an officer as King was, Roosevelt wished he could curb his tongue sometimes. He was without a doubt the most deeply loathed admiral in the U.S. Navy.

"Do I need to remind you, Mr. Ambassador, that if we lose Australia, we will find it virtually impossible to fight our way back into Asia? Tojo will control the East. He'll also have seized a significant manufacturing base and all the continent's natural resources, including massive uranium deposits."

When King sat down, the other joint chiefs started up, and Halifax listened to all the arguments, sipping from his precariously placed cup of tea, waiting until the last man, General Henry H. Arnold, finished explaining why precious resources were being diverted from building B-17s to B-29s, and even a prototype test squadron of B-52s.

Then the ambassador placed his teacup on the table in front of him and spoke quietly, but with great force. "Do you not see, gentleman, that this is exactly what Hitler is gambling on? That he can strike, and make up for his blunders, while we are still reeling from the aftermath of the Transition. It is exactly what the Japanese have done in the Pacific, withdrawing from China and moving their forces south to block any advance on the Home Islands. You may think yourself safe, protected by two oceans as you are, but we all know they are rushing to develop their own atomic weapons, and the means of delivering them onto your cities. If we give them time-even a little time-they will succeed."

Admiral King had developed the habit of playing devil's advocate in any discussion with the British, and much to Roosevelt's chagrin, he did so again now. "Mr. Ambassador, it's inevitable that Hitler will attempt a Channel crossing. We all agree with that. He shut down the Eastern Front when he had Stalin on the executioner's block. He would only have done that because he discovered what was about to happen out there. And no doubt, Stalin agreed to cease hostilities when records from the future confirmed us as his ultimate foe.