"I suppose the Japs will find this information useful when they take over the place," he muttered bleakly, dropping the briefing memo back onto his desk. "Although I'll be buggered how they expect to grow rice here."
"They won't be growing any rice here, Prime Minister. You know that," said Robertson. "They'll be beaten here. Driven back through the islands. And burned alive in their own cities. Probably a lot quicker than would have happened originally. We had that uranium dug up and shipped off to the Yanks double-quick. They're working twenty-five hours a day on this A-bomb of theirs. And they're not going to waste time running up blind alleys like they did-or would have-the first time. They have a room full of computers now. It could be less than a year before they test the first warhead."
The prime minister, a former journalist, sketched a thin, humorless smile. "Everybody is working overtime to build their own bombs, Paul. I don't imagine for a second that Hitler and Tojo haven't stripped all the computers off the ships they found. And I think the Japs are here partly because they covet our uranium-"
Robertson made to object, but the PM waved him away.
"Oh, I know, I know. They're going hell-for-leather to deny the Americans a launchpad for their counterattack in the Pacific. They can get uranium from the Russians now, anyway. Neither they nor the Germans can hope to compete with the Yanks in the end. They just don't have the industrial base needed to win a race to the bomb-" Curtin rubbed at his red eyes with a shaky hand. "-but they are here, on our soil, killing our people."
"We're beating them."
"No. We're killing them. But we're not beating them yet. They're not in retreat from MacArthur's bloody Brisbane Line. They're dying on it. But there's a hell of a lot of people trapped behind that line, and I'll wager pennies to pounds that they're dying a lot harder than Homma's men. It's not even propaganda that the Japs treat their captives worse than animals. It's history now."
Robertson couldn't argue with him on that. It had proved impossible to suppress the knowledge that had come through the Transition, and after a couple of futile attempts by the Commonwealth censors, they hadn't bothered trying any longer. For once they hadn't had to invent stories of the bestial nature of their enemies. The Nazis and Imperial Japan already stood condemned by history, and even by the testimony of their own descendants.
He had seen newsreels of some of the English-speaking German and Japanese personnel who'd arrived with Kolhammer. They were touring the U.S. on a war-bond drive, and had proved themselves to be more than effective campaigners against their own countrymen. The Germans in particular, as he recalled, attacked the Third Reich with almost messianic zeal. The two Japanese sailors were a little more restrained, but no less emphatic that the militarist government of their homeland had to be defeated and replaced with a modern democracy.
It made Robertson's head spin every time he thought about it, and he was grateful to be so busy. He wasn't responsible for giving Curtin military advice. Originally he'd been assigned to the PM's office to help smooth the transition from a state-based to a federal taxation system. But that had been temporary, and now he'd agreed to a permanent appointment, helping the government deal with the economic implications of the Transition. His brief covered everything from planning for future droughts, through to simple trademark issues. Before joining the PM in his surprisingly small, dark office, he'd been on the phone to the American ambassador, trying to convince their cousins across the Pacific to prosecute some five-star grifter by the name of Davidson who'd lodged patents for more than half a dozen inventions that would have been developed by local businesses.
It was a hell of a job, dealing with the monetary implications of an invasion one moment, and with a crook who was trying to steal the plans for a self-chilling can of beer the next. But when nobody was watching, Robertson had to admit to himself that he was, just occasionally-well, not having fun exactly, but he'd never been as excited by the challenge of his old job in the bank. There he'd made money. Here he made history.
"Prime Minister, you cannot give up hope," he insisted. "They surprised us with the landings in Queensland because it was insanity. They lost half their troops just getting ashore, a disaster by anyone's measure. And yes, they've rolled over dozens of small towns, but as soon as they hit MacArthur's defensive line, they stopped dead-literally. They have no chance of reaching our main population or production centers. They're terrified to the point of impotence of engaging with Spruance's fleet because of the Havoc and the Kandahar's battle group.
"Yamamoto is like a drowning man desperately grabbing at anything to stay afloat. He-will-lose."
Curtin's tired, watery eyes glared defiantly up at him over the rims of his glasses. "Then what are they doing here?"
4
The killer was well known, at least to his most important victims. Blokhin was the man's name. He had served under the Tsar in the Great War, but had switched his loyalties to Lenin's Bolsheviks by the early 1920s. He had been a secret policeman ever since, rising to head the Kommandatura Branch of the Administrative Executive Department, a rather bloodless title for the lord high executioner of the Soviet Union.
Nikita Khrushchev, who would now never become the Communist Party leader, groaned as the heavy iron door swung open and Blokhin entered the room. Through the sweat and blood that clouded the vision in his one good eye, he could make out the hem of the leather butcher's apron that was nearly as legendary as the ogre who wore it. It was said to be so heavily stained with the blood of the thousands of Polish officers Blokhin had personally executed at Katyn that it could never be cleaned. There was probably more life in that filthy tunic than remained in Khrushchev's entire broken body.
Blokhin spoke to a couple of NKVD guards, his flat, Slavic features hardly moving as he did so. The pair stomped over to where Khrushchev lay on the cold concrete floor and pinned him beneath their boots. The agony of their hobnails grinding into his already tortured flesh and broken bones summoned up screams the former Politburo magnate had not thought he would be able to voice. His throat was already raw from what seemed like a lifetime of screaming.
He was dimly aware of Blokhin's heavyset form as it advanced on him, and for one irrational moment he wondered if he might have lived had Stalin agreed to liquidate the executioner, as Beria-the head of the NKVD-had once desired.
But that was madness. The Soviet Union had no shortage of executioners.
After all, Yezhov-that poison dwarf-had tortured and killed unknowable numbers of enemies, only to be killed in turn by Beria. He had died begging and screaming and thrashing against his fate, and all Khrushchev had left was a determination that he would not go out like that. He knew there was no return from this very special section of Lubianka. Best then to consign his shattered carcass to the release of death with what little dignity he could muster.
Naked, covered in his own filth, nearly toothless, his face a bruised ruin, one eye gouged out, nubs of broken bone poking through torn flesh at half a dozen places on his body-the very concept of dignity was ludicrous. But he would not beg for his life. He would-