There were more than a hundred individual unit markers on the Kriegsgebiet display, and every one them jumped when the fьhrer pounded his fists down on the map table, hammering at Norway like a vengeful God.

“I say it is a diversion, and so it must be!”

“Yes, yes, of course, Mein Fьhrer, but they are still a worthy target,” Zeitzler babbled. “Just imagine the blow to their morale if they were to be wiped out. They are weak, the democracies. They cannot absorb the damage as we can. If we were to release the Panzer Lehr, they would annihilate-”

Hitler turned on him.

“Enough! You will execute my orders, or you yourself will be executed. Do you understand?”

Himmler thought the army chief might save them the cost of a bullet by falling dead with fright then, right in front of the assembled high command.

The lights in the room faded out for a second, causing them to glance around nervously. But a quick check confirmed that no Allied bombs were falling. Most likely it was just some problem with the wiring, a common enough occurrence in these hastily constructed bunkers.

As the exposed bulbs hanging over the map table flared again, Himmler regarded the situation in Calais with a dismal eye. He did not like to question the fьhrer, and would never do so publicly, of course. But uniquely among the Nazi elite, he prided himself on being able to broach unpleasant subjects, even with Adolf Hitler.

Indeed, it was he who had suggested the temporary cease-fire with the Bolsheviks, allowing them to secure themselves in the West. And it was he who had first admitted that the Allied air strikes on the rail lines leading to the Jewish processing facilities in Poland were appreciably slowing the Final Solution. He had led the counteroffensive against their enemies within, revealed by the electrical archives on the Dessaix. And he had been the first to recognize that, to preserve the forces they had moved into northern France, they would need to withdraw beyond the range of the Trident’s sensors and Churchill’s Bomber Command.

Hitler had not enjoyed hearing any of it, but he had to be told. Was it the same now?

The Reichsfьhrer-SS examined the map table, comparing it with the televiewing screen. He wasn’t a military genius-he knew that only too well. But he would not shy from doing whatever was necessary. Around him the business of the war continued. The fьhrer curtailed his diatribe against Zeitzler and started in on Gцring, demanding to know why the Luftwaffe was making so little headway in cracking open the Allied air defense network.

“They are in our Kriegsgebiet now, Herr Reichsmarschall. But where are your jet fighters? Where are the dive-bombers?”

Himmler didn’t even bother attending to the fat fool’s reply. It would be a waste of time. Gцring had no operational control of the air force anymore. He was only here because he had survived the purges. Himmler shut him out now, along with the dozens of war room staffers who scurried about. Instead, he concentrated on the situation unfolding in front of them.

The Abwehr reported that Allied preparations for a massive assault on Normandy continued unabated. A real army was gathering in the hinterland of Falmouth and Dartmouth, ready for the channel crossing. There would be no repeat of the Fortitude deception-not in this war. The Reich would not be caught unawares or misled into thinking the invasion would fall in one place, when all along it had been meant for another. The crushing weight of the greatest military machine the world had ever known was poised to fall on Eisenhower as soon as he commenced his main thrust.

Still, Zeitzler had a point. To destroy the landing at Calais might prove a crippling blow to Allied morale.

But then, the fьhrer was right, as well. Thousands of Allied warplanes infested the sky above Calais and Dover, just waiting to pounce. To commit the best of their armored and heavy divisions into Calais meant feeding them to the sharks of the RAF and the USAAF.

If only they could match the Allies’ surveillance cover. Unfortunately, while providence had delivered the Dessaix into their hands, only a handful of the crew had proved cooperative, and some of those had turned out to be saboteurs. As a result, they had not been able to fully exploit the ship’s capabilities, and now she was lost to them forever. Sunk by that criminal whore on the submarine Havoc.

One could go mad thinking about the squandered opportunities. With just a few “surveillance drones,” and the men trained to use them, they could have logged every ship and aircraft movement out of southern England.

Himmler sighed.

The fьhrer had calmed down and was standing at the table again, arms folded, chin on his chest as he bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet and pondered the diabolical strategic problems of the hour. The Allies must be kept from the Fatherland a little while longer. Soon the Reich would have its first atomic weapon, and there would be no more talk of unconditional surrender. Churchill and Roosevelt would be the ones groveling, begging for an accommodation.

Then, with the democracies checkmated in the West, they could turn their attention back to Stalin.

The map table did not extend beyond Poland, yet the vast steppes and the brooding Communist giant were never far from anyone’s mind. The cease-fire with Moscow was still holding, but it was beyond argument that the Red Army was using this time to prepare its defenses against another Wehrmacht attack, at the same time that the two states “cooperated” on a number of technical projects-all in the name of facing the “common enemy.” It was all horseshit, but the pause in hostilities suited them both.

Or rather, Stalin thought it suited him.

When the atomic warheads were finally delivered, the Slavic buffoon would be made to realize just how wrong he had been.

Brasch had read somewhere that those who can eat well, and those who cannot, exist at all times on opposite sides of a gulf that can never be crossed.

It had been more than three and a half years since pastries had been legally sold in Paris, and about the same interval since fish, meat, chocolates, tobacco, and wine had been rationed almost out of existence. Nonetheless, sitting by one of the large windows in Maxim’s Le Bar Imperial, Major General Paul Brasch found himself adrift on the odors of fine French cuisine. The Parisians in the street below might have been getting by on starvation rations, but when Reichsmarschall Gцring was in town looting the art treasures of the Republic, he loved to dine at Maxim’s, and so the wartime restrictions did not bite as heavily here.

Brasch nursed his Kir Royale and wondered whether or not he would ever have set foot in this place-or any like it-had it not been for the war.

Not likely, he mused. And truthfully, it wasn’t the war that had delivered him to this stool at the end of a dark wooden bar. No, it was the Emergence. Without the miracle of the time travelers’ arrival, he would probably be a frozen corpse somewhere in Russia by now. Instead he sipped at a cocktail, enjoyed the sour look on the face of his latest bodyguard, Hauptsturmfьhrer Neumann, and wondered whether his data package would arrive before his dinner guest.

He would never know, really. The encryption software protecting his communications stripped off any identifying tags such as datelines. He alone would be able to read the file, and then for only ten minutes, before it disappeared from history altogether. And of course, he wouldn’t be cracking open his latest instructions from the British over a late supper with General Oberg, the SS commander in Paris.