“That’s fine, Sergeant. All I expect to do in my quarters is sleep. When I get the chance.”

  And Ray Spruance sat down to his days delayed breakfast.

  § § §

  March 21, 1944; 4 PM

  Prime Minister’s Office

  Tokyo, Japan

  Prime Minister Isoroku Yamamoto sat in his office and scanned the reports from the negotiating team in Honolulu with a growing sense of satisfaction. An inveterate poker player, Yamamoto had gambled for the biggest prize of his life when he had arranged for peace talks with the Americans and the British.

  The initial meetings in Kabul, Afghanistan, had resulted in the broad outlines of a truce and eventual peace between the warring parties. This happened despite an attack by the mujaheddin that killed several members of the various parties to the talk, including Admiral Shimada, a lifelong friend of Yamamoto’s.

  The time of uncertainty following the attack had terrified Yamamoto. However, the American president, Harry Truman, had driven the thing through to a conclusion. So now, representatives of the American and British governments were meeting with the Japanese delegation in Honolulu to iron out the details and get a treaty signed. Even then, the bombing of the Royal Hawaiian hotel by someone who was once again under the Soviets' influence had convinced Yamamoto that the talks would be scuttled. Yet, they proceeded.

  Now, it appeared that the participants in the talks in Honolulu were hammering together a treaty. The Americans were firmly committed to achieving that goal, even though Japan started the war with the sneak attack on Hawaii. And this was despite the actions of the Japanese soldiers in the murder of American and Australian civilians on occupied Hawaii and Australia. This had driven the allies into a blind rage.

  Yamamoto had concluded that the industrial accident in the American Northwest was far more grave than generally known in Tokyo. A group of Japanese scientists had been working to tease the secrets from the uranium and plutonium atoms. They had assured Yamamoto that it was technically possible to build a powerful weapon that would explode due to the fission of the radioactive elements. They also informed him that the byproducts of the manufacturing process produced poisons that would remain deadly for hundreds of thousands of years.

  If that was indeed what the Americans had been working on when they had their accident, they were dealing with a disaster of the first order. The results of the accident drove the Americans to the peace table. Yamamoto was tempted to use this as a way to wring more concessions from the Americans. But, his gambler’s instincts told him it was time to call the game. Being meek and reasonable would pay dividends in the long run, and it was clear nobody wanted to return to the unlimited warfare that they had waged until recently.

  Yamamoto looked up as Hiroshi Ōshima walked into his office. The two men bowed and moved to their respective seats.

  “Thank you for seeing me today, Hiroshi-san,” Yamamoto said, opening the conversation.

  “I am honored that you would invite me, Prime Minister. How may I be of service?”

  “As you know, our diplomatic team is in Hawaii negotiating with the Americans and the British. It looks like we shall soon have that war wrapped up.”

  “And that is a good thing, too,” Ōshima said. “I know that our losses of late were beginning to be serious.”

  “That is perhaps an understatement. What I wanted to speak with you about is the situation in China.”

  “I am willing to serve.”

  “I thought you would be the best person in the government to undertake our next initiative in China since you are now friendly with Mao.”

  “Friendly would be an exaggeration, I believe. The man has no friends, only tools.”

  Yamamoto chuckled. “Well said, Hiroshi-san. Let me explain. To summarize, I believe we will need to withdraw entirely from China, except possibly for Manchukuo.”

  Ōshima’s eyebrows raised. “You wish to bring everybody home?”

  “I wish to do it in such a way so that I don’t suddenly have a half-million demobilized Army personnel on the streets without jobs. Otherwise, we would all be in trouble.”

  “And you want me to negotiate this with Mao?”

  Yamamoto nodded. “This will not be the easiest thing to do. But, we must find a way to extricate ourselves from China.”

  Ōshima leaned back and thought quickly. “What kind of incentives are we willing to give to Mao to facilitate our exit?”

  “Nothing,” Yamamoto said. “I want him to be so delighted we are leaving his land that he will not demand any kind of compensation.”

  “You know he is going to ask.”

  Yamamoto nodded in agreement. “Of course. If I were him, I would do the same thing. I would like him to be so anxious for us to leave, however, that all he can think about is how to help us board the ships more quickly.”

  “You know that he is likely to demand aid against the Kuomintang, don’t you?” Ōshima asked.

  “Yes, I am sure that is what he will ask. Frankly, I would be just as happy to see the Kuomintang and the Communists bleed each other dry. But, we must establish commercial relationships with whoever ultimately wins in China.”

  “It might be better if we quietly gave aid to both sides,” Ōshima suggested. “That way, the eventual victor will be indebted to us, whoever it might be.”

  “That is an inspired idea. I will leave the details to you. I would like a report once per week of your progress.”

  “I’m going to need a small team and other resources, as well as a budget,” Ōshima requested.

  “Very well. First of all, you should develop a document outlining your needs. Send it to me to look at, and we will talk again. And Hiroshi, this needs to be kept quiet. This operation is black as midnight.”

  “I understand, Prime Minister.”

  Yamamoto watched as Ōshima walked from the office. He was confident the man would marshal the necessary resources to extricate Japan from the quicksand of China. And he was delighted it was something he would not have to manage directly.

  The Japanese Prime Minister had a surfeit of problems to solve, things that could not remain unsolved. And he had yet to spend time contemplating the list of long-term issues that required long-term thinking. But, at the end of each day, he was happy if he could cross one item off his list.

  CHAPTER TEN

  March 25, 1944; 4 PM

  Reich Chancellery

  Occupied Berlin

  “No wonder the Nazis are insane,” General Ivan Smirnoff commented. “If I had to work out of this office for any length of time, I would go insane too.”

  “It’s no worse than the Kremlin,” Party Secretary Nikita Khrushchev replied.

  “I rest my case.”

  Khrushchev burst into raucous laughter. “You should be careful where you say things like that,” the stocky bald man shook his finger.

  “What are they going to do? Call me back to Moscow and shoot me? In our current position, we have the freedom to be completely honest with one another.”

  “Have you given up then?”

  “I won’t give up until the point where we are handing our weapons over to the Germans.”

  “But you are not optimistic about the outcome,” Khrushchev stated.

  “Our people have been radically strict about conserving fuel and ammunition. We have enough to carry us through about three days of intense operations. I think we could break through back to the Oder River, but if the rest of the Army isn’t there to meet us, we will be done. We have enough food to feed the troops for maybe another two weeks. There is not a lot of time, comrade.”

  “But, we hold the other side of the river. That should surely count for something.”

  Smirnoff shrugged. “That is all well and good, but I don’t think they have the forces to manage a crossing over the Oder. And I know we don’t. And let’s be honest: our orders don’t give us a lot of latitude.”

  Khrushchev shook his head. “Comrade Stalin’s orders don’t give us any latitude. We are to hold Berlin at all costs.”

  “And that is what it will be, comrade. We kicked off the offensive before we were ready, and I will accept responsibility for that. But we failed to plan for success. We should have had enough men and supplies in the pipeline to support us once we got across the river.”

  “I appreciate you not reminding me that this was my task.”

  “No one can criticize your efforts to keep the Red Army supplied on the Western front, comrade. Your accomplishments amount to a miracle.”

  “Oh, I can assure you, my enemies in Moscow will freely criticize me,” Khrushchev said. “And let’s be honest; whatever the extent of my accomplishments, they were not enough. And we are dancing all around this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The solution in front of us is not military; it’s political. We have a choice in front of us, Comrade General. We can break out and try to get back across the Oder. If we do not destroy ourselves in the process, the general secretary will finish the job. Or we can negotiate a surrender to the Germans. That will save the lives of our men. But if we ever get back to Moscow, we are dead men. Very likely, the lives of all the men under us would be forfeit as well.”

  Smirnoff folded his arms across his chest and leaned back in the chair. “Following your reasoning, I would ask the question: what is best for the Soviet Union?”

  Khrushchev chuckled. “A wise question. I have been pondering that very question. But let me turn it around. What would you suggest we do?”

  “I did not expect that question,” Smirnoff said with a look of surprise.

  “Come, now. You are a general in the Red Army. You are expected to think for yourself.”

  Now, Smirnoff laughed. “Right. I will think for myself all the way to the front of the firing squad.”

  “No, no, no, no.” Khrushchev waved his hands as he shook his head. “You are expected to have opinions and express them as long as they do not contradict party doctrine or comrade Stalin’s expressed wishes. Within those constraints, you can think whatever you wish.”

  Smirnoff rolled his eyes and looked out the window. He thought he knew where Khrushchev was going with the conversation but was frightened at the implications.

  “Come now, Comrade General, I need some help here. I am not able to figure out this dilemma on my own.”

  “And I don’t have a solution, either.”

  “I believe we agreed to that ten or fifteen minutes ago,” Khrushchev said icily. “Given a multitude of possible bad decisions, what would you do?”

  Smirnoff leaned forward and placed his arms on the desk. He idly wondered how Schloss managed to get any work done here. The general was angry with the party secretary and was not bothering to conceal his emotion. He risked a lot in taking liberties with a senior Communist Party official, but this was not a normal situation.

  As he thought about it, Smirnoff concluded he really was in the driver’s seat. He was effectively out of Moscow’s reach. Khrushchev and the battalion commissars represented the party, but the party no longer had an enforcement mechanism that could affect him. The party secretary had inadvertently driven the general to the point where he now understood he had an enormous amount of liberty to make decisions.

  “Very well, Comrade Party Secretary, here is what I would do. First, I would make sure I had plans for a breakout back to the Oder River. It would be a last-ditch effort, and I think we could call it our go to hell option. I would also look for a way to establish communications with the German high command, or failing that, Schloss. If we reach the point where we must surrender, it would be helpful if we understood the Germans better.”

  Smirnoff stopped speaking and leaned back in his chair again, challenging Khrushchev with his glare. The stocky bald man glared back in return but then began to talk.

  “You see, Comrade General, that was not so difficult. You should continue to work on plans for the breakout, and I will work on opening negotiations.”

  “No, Comrade Party Secretary, I will make plans for the breakout. I will also lead the negotiations.”

  “Now that is where you are going too far, Comrade General. I will handle the political side. It is my job, after all.”

  “And it was the political side that got us into this mess. No, I will accept whatever help and guidance you can give me. But I will make the final decisions. Do we have an understanding?”

  Nikita Khrushchev was a survivor. Throughout the dark days of the 1930s, he organized the purges in Ukraine and kept his scheming away from the ears of the NKVD. He was an adroit politician and played the game with a subliminal awareness of the balance of power in any given situation. And there was no mistaking the fact that the balance of power has shifted decisively here in occupied Berlin.

  “Very well, Comrade General. I will give you every assistance, and I will do so enthusiastically. I only hope for both our sakes that you can retrieve us from the fire.”

  “Thank you, Comrade Party Secretary. We will need to count on each other to keep ourselves out of the line of fire. Now here is what I would like to do.”

  § § §

  March 25, 1944; 4 PM

  SS Headquarters

  Frankfurt, Germany

  Karl Rainer struggled with the mounds of paper that had followed him across Germany to his office in Frankfurt. The Russian occupation of Berlin had shifted the priorities of the SS. First of all, it was his task to protect the citizens of the Reich. This also involved sending teams behind the Russian lines to render aid to those citizens who had remained behind. Fortunately, as the Russian army pulled itself tightly into Berlin, Eastern Germany became relatively peaceful.

  With a large percentage of the red Army trapped in Berlin, the Russian saboteurs had dramatically increased their activities in Germany. The Russians were in a panic over the situation and throwing resources everywhere to open up an opportunity to reinforce Smirnoff.

  The saboteurs had caused considerable damage to the German infrastructure, but the price was steep. Increasingly the SS was catching the teams either during ingress or egress from their targets. The attacks began to taper off, and Rainer assumed that the Russians were running out of experienced teams to send across the Oder River.

  Rainer’s success in managing the flow of paper through his office was in part from his ability to concentrate. So after reading a particularly turgid report, he tried to think about what he had read because it made no sense at all to him. He looked up from the paper to renew his focus, and he saw Misty Simpson seated in the chair across from his desk.

  It seemed, without thinking, he was out of his chair and around the desk to her. When she stood up, he pulled her into a tight embrace. He was embarrassed at his profuse weeping but could not stop.

  “Oh Misty, Misty, Misty,” he wept.

  “It’s okay, darling. I am here.”

  “I was so afraid that I had lost you. I could not bear the thought of that.”

  She chuckled deep in her throat. “Your friend Otto Skorzeny is very effective. His people saved my life.”

  He wondered why she was speaking through clenched teeth and studied her closely. “Your mouth…”

  “Those Afghan pigs broke my jaw. The Judaean doctors had to wire it shut so that it could heal. The missing tooth actually comes in quite handy. I can get a straw through it.”

  “But, really, how are you?”

  “I won’t lie to you, Karl. Without a doubt, this was the worst experience of my life. But I survived. They didn’t.” She shook her head. “But the price was so high. But, if it gets that insane war with Japan stopped, it will have been worth it, though.”

  She pulled a handkerchief out of her purse and began dabbing his eyes. “We need to get you cleaned up, mein Herr. We can’t have people in your office worried about you.”

  “There are no secrets from the people in my office, I’m afraid. How did you get in here, anyway?”

  She chuckled again. “I don’t believe anyone in your office would try to keep me out of here. They seemed glad to see me.”

  “Yes, I suppose they were glad to see you. I am glad to see you. When did you get in?”

  “Just this afternoon. There is no room for me to stay in the consulate, and Gordon Smoke has promised to find me a place to stay for tonight. Bless his heart, he seemed glad to see me.”

  “I suspect he is going to have left a lot of loose ends for you to pick up for him.”

  “That is what frightens me. My God.”

  “If you would like, I can have someone find permanent housing for you. It’s hard to come by at the moment.”

  “That might be a good idea, Karl. I don’t have a lot of faith in Smoke’s skills.”

  “I would be delighted to take you to dinner, Misty, but what would you eat?”

  “As long as I can get it through a straw, I should be fine, Karl.”

  “There is so much we need to discuss.” He walked over to the door and opened it. “Have my car brought around, please.”

  “You can just leave in the middle of the afternoon like that?” she asked.

  “For you, I am willing to do anything.”

  “After what has happened, do you still even want me?”

  “It may be in poor taste to suggest this, but we could get married this afternoon.”

  “That may be a bit soon.”

  “I understand. Shall we find an early dinner?”

  “That is very acceptable, Karl.”

  The workers in the office smiled broadly as Karl Rainer swept out of the room with Misty Simpson holding his arm.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  March 28, 1944; 11 AM

  Buckingham Palace

  London, England, UK

  It had been a reasonably productive morning, Colin Marty decided. Because Queen Margaret was the head of state and also the head of the government, there was no shortage of work for her private secretary. Marty was adept at shuffling paper off to subordinates in the Queen’s administrative office so he could focus on managing the day itself for her Majesty.