“So, have we broken their codes or not?”
“How would I know — you’re the one who works there. So what is happening at Camp Washington?”
“Well, I’m not important enough to know secrets, although I think it’s highly unlikely we’ve broken any major codes. I do know that we are working hard on it, but what that German said about millions of variables is correct. Even if we should somehow manage to translate a coded message it might be months after the fact and be totally useless by that time. Langford was trying to feather his nest. What is going to happen to him?”
They’d walked to a staff car. Baldwin opened the doors and they both got in. “I think he’ll be warned and watched. His career is effectively over, although he won’t be arrested or charged with anything. Nobody will want any possible publicity. When we play the recording for him, he’ll probably crap.”
Alicia smiled warmly. “I’d love to be there to see that. Please make sure that he acknowledges his paternity and pays Aggie’s bills. She’s now in a home for unwed mothers and, when the baby is delivered, she’ll be discharged from the army. It won’t be honorable, which doesn’t seem fair, but maybe it’s the best thing.”
“Nothing’s ever fair, lieutenant, especially in the army. You did do the right thing with this Langford creep. Now you can go back to your major and tell him what a great day you had.”
“Thanks. What will happen to Stahl?”
“Probably nothing, although I’d like to see him sent home. I think he’s up to no good. However, he did refuse Langford’s proposal and he does have diplomatic immunity. Yeah, we could send him back to Germany and then they’d send one of ours back here in a diplomatic tit for tat. Nah, this Stahl guy will get to stay, at least for the time being.
Admiral Sir Philip Vian stood on the bridge of his flagship, the battleship King George V. It was the second ship named after Britain’s beloved king. Unlike American ships where the bridge was enclosed, Royal Navy warships were open to the wind and Vian liked that. At least he liked it most of the time, he thought with a smile as he recalled some frigid days in the North Atlantic.
The battleship, Vian reluctantly admitted, was as obsolescent as the British Empire. The Americans had bigger and mightier battleships, as did what remained of the Royal Navy after being bled by the German navy, the Kriegsmarine.
The fifty-nine year old Vian had chosen the King George V because he liked the ship and her history. She had been instrumental in the sinking of the German super battleship, the Bismarck, in May of 1941. Even though she displaced forty-two thousand tons, the King George V was slightly under-gunned with only ten fourteen-inch cannon. Most modern battleships carried sixteen-inch guns and many of the older ones carried fifteen-inchers. Vian wasn’t concerned since it was highly unlikely that she’d be fighting other battleships. Germany’s fleet of capital ships consisted entirely of the admittedly mighty Tirpitz and two much smaller battleships, the Scharnhorst and the Gneisnau. No, the battleship was now the escort to the carrier, not the other way around.
He was sadly confident that no battleship would be named after King George VI, the current monarch, no matter how beloved he was. Vian was certain that the Royal Navy would build no more of the giant battlewagons.
Vian wanted to fight and the long months of waiting in the Chesapeake for war between the U.S. and Germany to break out had been hell on his nerves. He understood the American position and appreciated the fact that the Yanks had provided shelter and succor for his ships and their crews. He further understood that it would have been awkward at best for the United States to have permitted the Royal Navy ships to steam to the Pacific to fight the Japanese, even though both nations were at war with them. At one time, the Royal Navy’s presence would have been welcome, but the Americans appeared to have the Japanese navy well in hand. Of course, his handful of aircraft carriers would have acquitted themselves well against Japanese suicide planes because of their armored decks. That armor, however, weighted down the carriers, which meant they carried fewer planes than the American ships.
When war came, if it ever came he thought angrily, the carriers, escorted by battleships and cruisers would seek out and destroy the growing horde of German U-boats.
However, the situation was changing. Tonight’s dinner on Vian’s flagship would be a very significant signal of that. Admiral Ernest King, Chief of Naval Operations, would be his guest at dinner tonight. Tall, lean, abrasive, hard-drinking, womanizing, and rude, King appreciated the danger Germany presented. Despite the rage King felt by the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor, he’d come to see Hitler as the ultimate enemy. Japan would be defeated soon, although the Japanese seemed to be hell bent on committing national suicide before they did and dragging the United States into a monumental bloodbath.
Dinner with King was intended to present Vian’s wishes and hopes that, when war started, America would support the Royal Navy’s sorties out into the Atlantic. It galled Vian to admit it, but the Royal Navy was totally dependent on American good will for food, fuel, and even ammunition.
He was also concerned that the still-functioning government in London would order him to stay put so as not to upset the Germans and cause them to retaliate.
Vian was reasonably confident that he could win over the crusty Anglophobic admiral. He had a secret weapon with which to charm the irascible King — liquor. It was served on Royal Navy ships.
Now all he had to do was convince London to turn him loose when the time came.
Deputy sheriff Wally Curran hated squatters. Since the Depression, they’d been a bloody damn nuisance. He sympathized with the fact that many of them had lost homes and jobs, but that didn’t mean they could go around taking over other people’s property. It was stealing, no matter how you sugar-coated it. Thus, when the report of a bunch of strangers hunkered down at a hunting cabin came in he decided to check it out.
The county’s five year old Chevy patrol car creaked and banged down the rutted dirt road like something important was going to fall off, making Curran realize that he might have made a mistake. He was just too old for this kind of shit. He’d been retired for several years when he was asked to fill in for one of the younger guys who’d been called to active duty in the army. Curran was as patriotic as the next man, so how could he refuse? He was too old to serve in the army, but he could take the place of a man who could. Hell, if his old boss, Sheriff Charley Canfield could serve, so could he, although in a different manner.
The phoned-in report said that a small group of men had taken over a hunting cabin about ten miles from where he was when he got the report. Since it wasn’t hunting season for anything, it meant that they could be poachers. Under any circumstances, it was highly unlikely that the men had a right to be in that cabin. There was a slight possibility that the owners, a family who lived in New Jersey, had loaned out the cabin to some men for a week of drinking and card-playing away from work and wives, but he thought that was unlikely. However, if the guys were indeed legit, he’d tell them to enjoy themselves and drive on.
Curran had given thought to asking for backup, but the department was short-staffed and, what the hell, if he couldn’t scare a handful of drifters into leaving someone else’s premises, he didn’t deserve a badge. His real concern was that the squad car would break down leaving him in the woods until he could be rescued by other deputies who would laugh their asses off at his predicament. Well, his radio worked and headquarters knew where he was. It would be embarrassing, but not a disaster.