"I can add fifty percent to our coverage immediately, if the Chancellery will just release the funds. That extra capacity will be crucial. The RAF has changed its tactics, and has begun striking at our radar sites with these wooden Mosquitoes, flying low and fast and firing a new rocket specifically designed to home in on radar emissions. They, too, have accelerated their weapons-development programs. And they posses the Trident, which we do not-"
"We would have such a ship, if it weren't for our yellow friends," Goring muttered, a little too volubly.
"Enough," Hitler commanded. "Let Speer continue."
Himmler glanced over at the Japanese ambassador but his face was a marble mask. For once, the SS chief agreed with Goring. He didn't think they should have let the Dessaix out of their grasp, either. It would have been invaluable in the coming operation. But the fuhrer had insisted. They would fight this war as a global conflict. The Japanese were closely coordinating their plans with the Reich, and Yamamoto insisted that those plans turned on the Dessaix. Besides, she had been stripped nearly bare before being sent to the Pacific. She might not play a direct role in Sea Dragon, but some of her weapons systems would.
Himmler listened as Speer mumbled a thank-you to Hitler and pressed on. Still refusing to raise his head.
"The Panzerfaust Two-fifty, a great improvement on the model Thirty, will be ready, but in limited numbers," he said. "On current scheduling, twelve hundred will be available in the one-use format. There are also two hundred prototype reusable Panzerschrecken, available immediately, with a projected supply of eighteen to nineteen hundred warshots."
Himmler moved his cold gaze away from Speer for a moment to let it rest upon General Ramcke. The paratroop commander had designs on those weapons, along with the body armor and assault rifles under development at Monovitz. Himmler met the man's gaze and held it, forcing the Fallschirmjager to lower his eyes. The new SS special units would be receiving those items. They had been in training with the prototypes and mock-ups from the first day of the project.
He went back to staring impassively at Speer. The armaments minister spoke for another quarter hour, outlining the state of all the accelerated programs for which he was responsible. When he was finished, the fuhrer dismissed him, along with all the other minor functionaries.
The room cleared quickly, until only four men remained besides Himmler and Oshima. The fuhrer of course, Reichsmarshall Goring, Herr Doktor Gobbels, and Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, who was one of the few people besides Himmler who had come to enjoy even greater prestige and power since the Emergence. He had negotiated the cease-fire with Stalin, and Hitler considered it to be a master stroke. And more important, like Kaltenbrunner, he had died well in the other history.
Ribbentrop was the first Nazi to hang at Nuremberg, and he had gone out proclaiming his loyalty to the fuhrer. Even Himmler could find no fault in that, although the man remained the most awful preening snob.
With the meeting reduced to the inner core of the Reich, Himmler opened the manila folder that contained his notes. Although he had become comfortable using a flexipad, he still preferred to rely on paper and ink in situations such as this one. It wouldn't do for his briefing to be marred by a misplaced data file or malfunctioning software. He didn't understand how this "Microsoft Corporation" could have become so dominant in die andere Zeit. He found their products to be annoying, and entirely unreliable.
"The Demidenko Project proceeds well," he began. "The Bolsheviks have committed enormous resources, and state that they are satisfied with progress, which of course, remains far behind the joint research we are carrying out with the Japanese government. Demidenko has allowed us to test much of the secret theoretical work we have undertaken without the Soviets' knowledge, and even the failures at the test site have proved invaluable in confirming the hypotheses of von Braun's group. While we consider it inevitable that the Politburo will have established their own rocket research, in violation of the cease-fire agreement, we can be confident they possess neither the technical resources nor the skills needed to match our combined efforts."
Oshima bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment.
"On current projections," he continued, "we will have a V-Three rocket capable of striking at all of the main Soviet production and population centers by late nineteen forty-three. Within a year after that, we should be able to launch from land-based systems against the East Coast of the USA. Although, they will have achieved a similar level of development with their own missile programs, and of course, their Manhattan Project should also have come to fruition by then."
Nobody in the room looked comfortable with the idea of an America that would be able to obliterate entire cities in Europe with just a single warhead.
"However," Himmler added, "we do not think they will be able to fit an atomic device onto a missile for some time yet-"
"What do you mean by some time?" Goring demanded. "Will it be nineteen forty-five, nineteen forty-six? When?"
The fuhrer didn't slap down his Luftwaffe chief this time. Instead, he laid down the pencil with which he had been taking notes. "Yes, Heinrich. This is an important point," he said. "If we allow them to achieve a lead on us, Truman will not make the same mistake twice, assuming that he still succeeds the cripple. If he can develop the same superiority of atomic forces he enjoyed over the Communists in the early days of their Cold War, he will strike us without hesitation. He may even trade one or two of his own cities for all of ours. And if that pig Churchill is still alive, skulking around in exile, he will probably bomb his own countrymen rather than allow us to hold England."
Himmler listened in respectful silence. It was a reasonable question, even if it had been inspired by a very unreasonable and slightly drunken oaf like Goring.
"There are two things to note, mein fuhrer. First, Churchill. I have a plan in hand to deal with him during Sea Dragon. I will come to that presently. Second, I must agree that the Americans will lead us in rocket technology. They gained a much greater bounty from the Emergence-thousands of personnel, many of them trained technicians, and a wealth of computing power within their ships that unfortunately we can but dream of. The files on the Sutanto and the Nuku are a very poor substitute. They had very restricted access to Kolhammer's Fleetnet, much of it at the level of the mundane and ridiculous.
"The French vessel has been a treasure trove, by comparison, but of course we have had her for less time, and the vast majority of her crew were uncooperative. Some of those who we'd thought cooperative at first, turned out to be working against us, and they even managed to accomplish quite significant acts of sabotage before they were caught and punished. I can only imagine what information has been lost to us because of that. Another saboteur nearly destroyed the entire vessel when we were removing the Lavals.
"But in executing them, of course, we killed the very men best able to teach us how to use the infinitely more complex devices on that ship. It is the devil's own dilemma."
He could see Goring twisting about like a man whose hide had shrunk in all the wrong places. The Reichsmarshall wore the burden of his failures heavily.
He still controlled the Luftwaffe, in a sense, but he was no longer free to determine its destiny. Whereas the German Air Force had once been his personal plaything, it was now simply a tool of the state. He retained his position simply because, of the three services, only the Luftwaffe had shown no evidence that it was a nest of vipers. In Himmler's eyes, loyalty without competence was hardly worth having, but he could understand the fuhrer's need to keep a few of the old comrades around him.