The president, looking unsteady, turned to Lord Halifax. “Mr. Ambassador, what is the position of His Majesty’s government concerning the Soviet declaration?”

Kolhammer narrowed his eyes without realizing it. His research on Lord Halifax gave him no confidence in the man. He was a remote, upper-class grandee who was in Washington because Churchill couldn’t stand to have him spooking about London. He’d been an appeaser in the 1930s who’d argued that Hitler’s territorial ambitions should be accommodated, since they “constituted no serious threat” and even marked the return of the Germany to normality after the trials of the Great War and Versailles. If he’d been born a century later, thought Kolhammer, he’d have been one of those idiots who slapped their foreheads and moaned, “What did we do wrong?” every time some jihadi nutjob blew up a primary school or crashed a supertanker into a port.

With a long face and a melancholy, almost melodramatic delivery, however, Halifax said, “His Majesty’s government has been aware of Major Ivanov’s activities, and has been studying his reports for some time now.”

That didn’t surprise Kolhammer. He knew a Russian-speaking SAS officer had accompanied Ivanov into the Soviet Union.

“It’s the opinion of the prime minister and cabinet that war with the Soviet Union is inevitable, and that all preparations must be made to successfully prosecute the conflict as quickly as possible.”

“I see,” Roosevelt said. He was apparently as taken aback as Kolhammer. “General Marshall, gentlemen, I don’t want to fight another war, and I will do all I can to avoid it, but as it will fall to you to prevail in any conflict with Stalin, I must now direct you to begin planning for that eventuality.”

Spruance poured himself a second cup of coffee from the pot on the warming stand in Kolhammer’s ready room. The task force had moved only a few nautical miles since they’d sat down to take part in the teleconference, but the world had turned itself inside out, again. Maybe one day they’d get used to the feeling, Kolhammer mused.

He finished the dregs of his espresso and stared out a porthole. He could tell from the lazy, heaving motion of the ship and the number of whitecaps out on the deep blue that they were sailing into a weather front. A southerly, if he guessed right.

“Young Kennedy is already a hundred miles out ahead of us,” Spruance said. “I intend to chopper a SEAL team out to him, and then send him to drop them on Saipan.”

Kolhammer folded his arms and leaned back on the edge of his desk. “Seems a reasonable idea,” he agreed. “There’s nothing like eyeballing the ground for real. And our drone cover isn’t what it used to be.”

“No, but we have a larger issue now, don’t we?” Spruance said. “If it turns out that Tojo is withdrawing some of his forces from the Marianas to shore up defense of the Home Islands, we have to decide whether or not we’ll let him.”

“Uh-huh,” Kolhammer responded. “My two cents’ worth. If the Japanese want to get home, we should let them. It’ll mean less resistance for us, and it’s going to get bloody taking those islands. More importantly, it’ll hold up the Sovs, and believe me, you don’t want them getting hold of Japan. I can’t think of anything worse.

“You think the Japanese are bad news now, you got no idea. As Commies, they’d be worse than the North Koreans.”

Spruance paced the room with hands clasped behind his back. He adjusted his balance to the movement of the ship without apparent thought.

They’d been given no specific orders about how to respond to a Japanese withdrawal from the Marianas. Until they knew better what was happening out there, they’d been ordered to continue as planned. Spruance stopped at a porthole and gazed out over the task force awhile. The invasion fleet that hit Calais had been an awesome sight, even when viewed on screen. But it hadn’t been a proper oceangoing armada like this one. This had fewer ships, overall, but to Kolhammer it looked much more powerful.

Spruance turned away from the view. “When we find out exactly what’s going on, we will be referring back to Washington,” he said, in a tone that made it clear he would brook no argument.

“Of course,” Kolhammer agreed. “This is your task force, Admiral, not mine. I’m just here to run my part of it.”

“As long as we understand each other then, Admiral. I’m not going to interfere with your tactical decisions. You’re playing with technologies and doctrine I’ve never trained for. But I am not going to make political decisions-and neither are you. If choices of that nature are to be made, they’ll be made by the right people, not us.”

Kolhammer agreed with as much good grace as he could muster. He liked Spruance, even though he knew the other man found him and his people vexing-to say the least. As long as the Auxiliaries did what was asked of them, though, Spruance had never interfered with their command chain or conducted himself with anything but the most proper of courtesies. Lonesome Jones had only kind thoughts and soft words for him, and that said a lot.

Kolhammer checked his watch. It would be another five minutes before the Eighty-second’s commander arrived. “Any word on when the Sovs will arrive in Washington?”

“No,” Spruance answered. “Three or four days at a guess. But you can bet that when they do get there, they’ll have an army of liaison officers wanting to swarm all over King and ‘coordinate’ with our efforts out here.”

“Anything to keep us out of the Home Islands,” Kolhammer said.

Spruance grunted. He was lost in his thoughts, but the commander of the Clinton’s battle group had a good idea of what he was thinking about.

When will we get the bomb?

There had been well over three hundred people at cocktails last night, and dawn found a few of them still lying around on the artificial beach on top of Slim Jim’s building. The original owner, a haberdasher who’d gone out of business by refusing to run up any twenty-first designs, had shipped in a couple of tons of sand from Europe and poured it onto the roof around the swimming pool. Slim Jim couldn’t understand the guy at all. If he was willing to buy in truckloads of fancy store-bought European sand when there was plenty of free stuff up the road at Santa Monica, why not crib a few pairs of pants from some unborn Euro-queer like Armani? Most of Slim Jim’s suits were Armani rip-offs. In fact, if he remembered right, he even owned a chunk of some fashion house back in New York that specialized in recreating clothes from uptime magazines. Or maybe not. It was hard keeping track of everything he owned nowadays. And anyway he had legions of accountants and lawyers to do that for him, freeing him up for the important business of rooftop beach parties with Hollywood starlets and a select circle of beer buddies.

At that very moment one of his best suds-buds, old Artie Snider, was facedown in the crotch of some B-list starlet from Sammy Goldwyn’s stable. He wasn’t doing nothing, of course. That’d be a bit fucking dйclassй, as Ms. O’Brien woulda put it. Artie had just passed out sometime before sunup and, unable to shift his considerable bulk, the blonde had fallen asleep beneath him. Slim Jim smirked at the twists of fate that spun out of the Transition. He was willing to bet a million bucks that when Snider had his leg shot out from under him by the Japs down in Australia, the big dumb bastard had no idea he’d land flat on his face in some bimbo’s twat at a penthouse party in LA.

Slim Jim wrapped a soft, white cotton bathrobe around himself and tried to haul his ass skyward out of the lounger in which he’d crashed. The morning sun had climbed over the highest floors of the unfinished skyscraper across the street, burning through his eyelids to wake him up a few minutes ago. It was now hot enough to give him a bad sunburn if he didn’t watch out. He was working on his tan, but it was taking awhile. He had the kind of sallow, moley skin that didn’t brown easily. Prison pallor, they called it. Once upon a time anyway. He found people generally fell over themselves to be nice to him these days. Except for those Rockefeller pricks, of course.