Himmler inclined his head. “Albert, please make the arrangements,” he said. Kesselring, delighted at his good fortune, gaped at him. “There is no point wasting men trying to change what cannot be changed,” Himmler said. “Please see to it at once.”
Kesselring saluted and left, trying to forget that it had been his idea to withdraw from Sweden. Himmler had been right, of course; trying to hold Sweden was a waste of time. He smiled; once the Americans and the Communists got to grips, as they might… well, perhaps there would be opportunity there.
Himmler steepled his fingers and looked at Horton as the man entered. “You heard?” He asked. “This would seem to be a fine time for Operation Peace Makes Plenty, would it not?”
Horton allowed himself a moment to consider. Operation Peace Makes Plenty had been named and conceived by Himmler himself, who was acting as his own Foreign Minister. Joachim von Ribbentrop, who was disliked by the entire SS and much of the Wehrmacht, had been shot out of hand after Himmler had sealed his grip on power.
“By abandoning Sweden, you would show that you were willing to give up some of your gains,” Horton said finally. His mind raced rapidly. “If you did so and return control to the Swedish Government in exile, they might…”
“The Soviets would not allow it to stand,” Himmler said. “Although… there would be no reason why we could not make such an offer, along with the other offers.”
Horton nodded. Operation Peace Makes Plenty intended to show the British and Americans the cost of continuing the war… and then offer a fair peace agreement. Spain, France and Italy would regain their independence; Germany would even allow the creation of a rump Poland.
“Yes, I think we’ll do that,” Himmler said. “Even with the new weapons, it should take Patton some time to force his way all the way to the tip of Sweden.” He sighed. “We’ll give it a week, and then make the peace offer.”
Roth watched grimly as Werner Von Braun’s presentation was displayed on the wall. He nodded to the SS man who had attached it and picked up his notes. Von Braun, one of the most important people in the Reich, lived somewhere in Bavaria, hidden from Allied bombings and the British precision weapons. Roth had no doubt that the British knew who Von Braun was, and if they knew where he was, they would seek to kill him.
He smiled. Stewart, his lover, had claimed that the British had sworn off political assassinations, but he knew better. The death of Admiral Darlen remained unexplained, and then there was the loss of the American General MacArthur, who the Americans claimed had killed himself.
“Professor Von Braun has been working on our own rocket program, now we have a working V2 design,” he said. The original terminology for the tactical rockets had been kept at Hitler’s insistence. “Finally, we have a working model of a V3; a long-range strategic rocket.”
Himmler examined the display with interest. The rocket didn’t carry an atomic warhead, even though the basic design had been intended for a futuristic warhead. What it could do was hit American directly, or even Russian bases in the Urals.
“And there is no way that the British can stop it?” Himmler asked finally. “How accurate is it?”
“Professor Horton believes that the British might be able to shoot it down if it came at Britain, but he wasn’t certain if they had many of the rockets required,” Roth said. He scowled; few of the hostages knew much about that part of the British defences. “If it were to be launched from French territory, it would not pass within range, we hope.”
“You hope,” Himmler said. “How accurate is it?”
Roth frowned. “We can hit a city,” he said. “The rocket has a large warhead and it will cause major damage, but there’s no way to be certain that we would hit a given target, such as the White House.”
Himmler considered. “Would they be able to see the rocket?”
“Oh, yes,” Roth said. “They will certainly be watching for rocket tests of ours, which is why we have kept them undercover for the most part.”
Himmler nodded thoughtfully. “So, when can we fire the first rocket?”
“Once we pick the launch site, a week,” Roth said. “It’s merely a matter of assembling it under cover of darkness.”
“They would see it on the ground,” Himmler agreed. “See to it.”
Roth hesitated. “Professor Von Braun has an idea about handling the British presence in space,” he said. It still seemed like American science-fiction to him. “With the information we have collected from our agent in the American space program and the other agents we have in America, we know it’s orbital course around the Earth.”
He lifted the first display image, revealing a second concealed underneath it. “The space station proceeds around the Earth on a regular course that cannot be changed easily,” he said. “It is also the largest thing in orbit, although their new construction may be larger – not that we have any idea what its for.”
Himmler nodded. The German observatories had turned their telescopes on the British station with awe and a growing amount of horror. Even for the finest telescopes in Germany, predicting orbital paths wasn’t easy, even though it did help them to hide objects from British view.
“The point, Mein Fuhrer, is that the station cannot simply be moved along a different course,” he said, deciding not to go into the details of orbital mechanics. Professor Von Braun had explained them all to him at great length. “It must follow its course… which makes it vulnerable.”
He put up the third picture. “Professor Von Braun made the decision to proceed with a very basic design of rocket, one that could be mass-produced and fuelled very quickly. In fact, Professor Von Braun believes that we can move quickly to a solid-fuel rocket, which will be far safer and easier to deploy than a liquid-fuelled model. However, for our current problem the design is capable of launching a satellite into space – or a weapon.”
He smiled. The rocket had been copied from a future design, one that their main agent within the US had stolen from the Military Space Agency, and was – barely – within German capability to duplicate. Professor Von Braun anticipated a high failure rate, but even one success would awe the British.
“The weapon doesn’t have to be big,” he said. “In fact, carrying the speed of the rocket and inserted into an orbit that would bring it on a collision course with the space station… even an empty bomb would shatter the integrity of the space station and spill its inhabitants out into the void.”
Himmler smiled. “How long until we can launch our own satellites?”
Roth smiled; Hoover had proven very helpful in that regard. “There is no intrinsic reason why we could not proceed with it right now,” he said. “The American designs are very simple and within our own reach, and we have the aid of the laptops in calculating the orbital trajectories. Unfortunately, we would have to rely on the technique of returning the films to Earth, rather than transmitting the signals, because of…”
“Jamming,” Himmler said. “I understand the problem.”
Roth nodded. The German transmission capabilities were not up to British standards, particularly with live imagery, and they had no way of preventing the British from simply jamming the signals.
“We also have to add an anti-tamper system to the satellites,” Roth explained. Himmler nodded. “The British could quite easily, Professor Von Braun assures me, attempt to intercept the satellite while it was in orbit.”