Roosevelt shook his head and held up his hand again. “Please, spare me. I just need to know that you’re not still running some undercover operation in Joe Stalin’s backyard.”

“I am not.”

“And what about my backyard?” the president asked, his voice suddenly cold again. “Am I going to wake up tomorrow and find that your Ms. O’Brien has done away with yet another inconvenient foe, like Mr. Hoover or Congressman Dies?”

Kolhammer could sense a trapdoor creaking beneath his feet. He carefully avoided answering the first question by concentrating on the second.

“Ms. O’Brien is her own woman, sir. She’s a private citizen now. Not mine to command.”

“Really?” FDR tilted his head. A reflection of the fire burning in the Oval Office hearth filled one lens. Kolhammer resisted the urge to shrug. He knew Roosevelt was using the expanding silence as a weapon, hoping to make him blurt something out as the discomfort grew more intense. Did the old man know about the Room, or was he just fishing?

He chose his next words carefully. “I’m sure Director Foxworth could tell you all about Ms. O’Brien,” he said in a monotone. “I understand he has a considerable number of the bureau’s agents assigned to watching her full-time.”

Roosevelt didn’t bite. “And how would you know that, Admiral?” he countered. “Surely Ms. O’Brien’s affairs aren’t a matter of concern to your Zone security officers.”

“No, sir. They are not. But Ms. O’Brien is no wallflower. I doubt a week goes by that she doesn’t complain in the press-about harassment by the FBI or the IRS.”

Roosevelt didn’t so much smile as stretch his lips back to bare his teeth. “You seem to sympathize with her, Admiral Kolhammer. You don’t think Internal Revenue should have investigated her companies.”

Still standing rigidly, Kolhammer had little trouble avoiding that trap. In a way, being forced to remain at attention focused his mind. “I don’t see that it would be appropriate for me to comment, Mr. President, for any number of reasons.”

“Oh, come now, Admiral. You must have an opinion. I know you think very highly of Ms. O’Brien. You were quoted at length in that New Yorker profile of her, as I recall. You can’t be happy to see her name dragged through the mud.”

“If I had a personal opinion, it would be just that, sir. Personal…and private.”

“I see,” Roosevelt said, fitting a new cigarette into his holder. “That’s odd, because you were quite free with your opinions when Director Hoover resigned.”

Kolhammer ground out his reply like an ogre chewing rocks. “Director Hoover misapplied public resources in the surveillance and harassment of Zone personnel. He compromised the security of a significant number of research programs. And he did untold damage to the operations of other intelligence agencies through his incompetence, malfeasance, and utterly inappropriate use of bureau resources. You are correct, Mr. President. I expressed these opinions publicly, under oath, during hearings in both the Senate and the House. It was my duty to do so.”

“Was it your duty to repeat them and expand on them for Miss Duffy in The New York Times?” Roosevelt demanded.

“I believe so, sir. Where I came from, considerable harm was done by military officials who did not speak their minds when they should have.”

“Well, you’re not there anymore, admiral!” the president barked. “You are here, and we do things differently, as you are forever reminding me. You may not have liked Hoover, but he was a patriot, and he didn’t deserve what your people did to him. Julia Duffy drove that man to his grave. In the end, I believe she as good as put that gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.”

A single twitch at the corner of one eye was all that gave away the roiling surge of anger behind Kolhammer’s mask, but he held his tongue.

Roosevelt was breathing hard, one fist clenched on his desk blotter. What Kolhammer wanted to do was pound the president’s desk so hard it cracked in two. He wanted to demand that Roosevelt sign an order directing as many resources as it took to dismantle the transport system that fed the Nazi death camps in Poland. He wanted to tell the president to stop fucking around, to face the inevitable and sign Truman’s Executive Order 9981. He wanted to do about a thousand things that he knew were vitally important, but that nobody born here seemed to care two figs about.

Most of all, Kolhammer wanted to know why Roosevelt was allowing the killer of Daytona Anderson and Maseo Miyazaki to continue walking around as free as a fucking bird, fкted as a hero while he did so.

Roosevelt had known the murderer’s identity for well over a year, and Kolhammer had suppressed it for the entire time, much to the disgust of the only other two uptimers who also knew: Doc Francois and Lonesome Jones. The commandant of the Special Administrative Zone felt sick whenever he thought about it. He had given his word that he wouldn’t go public with the information, and he had extracted the same promise from both Francois and Jones, on the understanding that justice would be done.

But it hadn’t been, and now he had to stand here being dressed down about Hoover when the vicious old fag had brought ruin on himself. It was enough to make him throw up his hands and walk away.

And he might have, too, if not for Roosevelt’s next move.

“I want you to sign this, Admiral.”

“Excuse me, sir?”

Kolhammer came back to earth with a thud. The president had taken a piece of paper out of a desk drawer, and he was holding it out for the admiral.

“It is an undated letter of resignation,” Roosevelt explained without preamble. “I’m afraid I’m going to have to shorten your leash, at least until I feel I can trust you to-”

“No, sir,” Kolhammer interrupted.

The president looked genuinely stunned. “What? What do you mean?”

“I mean, no, sir. I will not sign this letter. If you wish to dismiss me, I would ask you to do so now. Terminate my commission as of this minute. But I will not be a party to this.” He dropped the paper back onto the desktop.

“Well, I…I…”

Clearly Roosevelt was at a complete loss.

Kolhammer expected to be dismissed, cashiered on the spot, but the president simply gawked at him.

The two of them faced off over the letter for what seemed like an awfully long time. Kolhammer knew he was supposed to pick it back up. You don’t just throw documents back in the face of the president of the United States.

Finally a long sigh leaked out of Roosevelt. He leaned back in his chair, nodding slowly.

“All right then.”

He took up the letter and tore it in little pieces, dropping them into a wastebasket by his side.

“All right,” he repeated. “But understand this, Admiral, your days of running off like Lord Jim are well and truly over. You have no idea of the political capital I have spent protecting you and your little kingdom out there on the West Coast.”

Kolhammer opened his mouth to speak, but this time Roosevelt wouldn’t allow him to get a word in.

“No. Just be quiet and listen for once. This war is drawing to a close, if the whole planet doesn’t burn inside a nuclear fireball. I won’t be here much longer-”

He held up his hand to forestall any objections.

“-another year or two, most likely. Maybe three depending on the treatments your physicians have been supervising. But I can feel myself winding down like an old clock. My time is passing.”

Roosevelt paused, and seemed to notice for the first time that Kolhammer was still standing at attention.

“Please relax a little, would you, Admiral. You’re giving me a stiff neck just watching you stand like that.”

Kolhammer allowed some of the tension to run out of his body, but he still didn’t look around for a chair.

“The sunset clause on your enabling legislation for the Zone will come into effect one year after the unconditional surrender of whichever of the Axis powers lasts the longest-probably Japan, as in your time,” the president said. “So on the stroke of midnight of that day, a little more than one year hence, the Special Administrative Zone will cease to exist.”