The Long Hard Road

Chapter Six: Those Who Have Fallen

Safe House

Washington DC, USA

30^th March 1942

For one brief shining moment, he had been the de facto supreme ruler of America.

J Edgar Hoover, former director of the FBI, threw the newspaper away from his chair with a snort of disgust. He had once been disciplined, but six months cooped up inside the safe house – one that no one, but Tolson knew about – had taken most of his edge away. His eating habits, combined with his very limited opportunities for exercise, had had an… unfortunate effect on his paunch; he was now almost pot-bellied. Drink and heavy smoking had damaged him further, to the dismay of the house’s keeper, Mrs Cosmopolitan.

As always, his mind swept back to the glorious day. His men had marched out to purge America of communists, subversives, and a number of people that Hoover had had nothing incriminating on. His files might be stored well away from Washington, but he knew the contents of the files without having to visit them. His men had made a clean sweep – the darker elements of the FBI having been more than willing to simple execute the subversives on the spot – all of which could have been covered up or pardoned under the administration he had worked so hard to bring into existence.

They failed me, Hoover thought. It had seemed perfect; MacArthur was obsessed with his own martial glory, Bankhead too concerned with the trappings of the Presidency to pose a threat to Hoover’s plans. Whatever the real nature of the man’s claim to the Presidency, Hoover could have made him a king.

Instead…

The images refused to leave his mind. The shock of discovering that the man who had dominated the United States for so long was dead. The panic when they realised that Roosevelt could no longer give them the legitimacy that would have overcome the problems with putting Bankhead forward as the President. The long delay – too long – when they searched for Truman… and planning to declare him dead hadn’t come quickly enough.

“Bastards,” Hoover scowled, looking down at the computer. He’d taught himself to use it over the past few months, learning about the British technology, which was derived from American technology from the future. He didn’t like the sound of Microsoft – its founder didn’t sound like the sort of person he wanted in America – but at least it had been American.

“Edgar?”

The voice wasn’t a surprise and he smiled upwards tiredly. Clive Tolson, his friend and companion, stepped into the shelter. They couldn’t meet that often; after the stories told about them in the blue press, they weren’t so comfortable together.

“You look like shit,” Tolson told him bluntly. His slicked back hair had been brushed forward in one of the new styles, sticking up like a garden rake. Hoover scowled; he didn’t like the look, but he had to admit that Tolson looked nothing like his past self.

“I feel like shit,” Hoover said. “Is there any news from the political front?”

Tolson shook his head slowly. Hoover wanted action, needed action, but with the massive shake-up in the federal and state governments it was hard to tell whom they might have dirt on who could still help. Tolson had been trying to make contact with the remnants of Hoover’s organisation, but it had been fragmented pretty badly.

“Most of them are either niggers or loudly proclaiming their loyalty to the new regime,” Tolson said grimly. Many of the people they did know something about – something that could be used for blackmail – were lower on the totem pole. “We might make contact with that guy in Alabama, but he’s… well, not one of the ones that we have something really incriminating on.”

In olden days, Hoover would have pounded the table with his hand. Now… now he no longer had the strength. In time, he was certain, opposition to Truman’s regime would rise, but by then he might be dead or in exile.

“Do we have a choice?” He asked. “The files we have alone could be very helpful for him.”

Tolson frowned. “It’s possible,” he said. “Sir… Edgar, if we do that, we may be giving up our only card.”

“We still have money,” Hoover said. He smiled. The remains of his former service had seized his properties, but they hadn’t found any of his hidden funds, the ones used to pay agents the FBI at large hadn’t known about. “We could provide a great deal of funding.”

“True,” Tolson said. He didn’t mention their one attempt to assassinate Truman, paying an assassin to take pot shots at the President. It hadn’t worked, and the security around the White House was as tight as ever.

“Of course, perhaps we could go to South Africa,” Hoover continued, and smiled. A lot of southerners were going, recruited by a government desperate to get their hands on as many white men as possible. He grinned; they’d even started purchasing prisoners, something that would not delight the current President.

Tolson shrugged. “I could always lay the groundwork,” he said. “Unfortunately, they’re taking a closer look at everyone trying to leave the country.”

Hoover scowled. “True,” he said. “Still, there are other ways to leave the country.”

There was a knock at the door. “I’ll get it,” Mrs Cosmopolitan shouted, heading down to open the door. The two men grabbed their weapons, prepared to go down fighting… and then Mrs Cosmopolitan sent their visitor down to see them. Hoover blinked; he knew who the man was… but what was he doing here?

I wonder if I’m being foolish, Nikolaus Ritter, Abwehr agent for the United States of America, thought grimly. It had been sheer luck, seeing Tolson leaving the congressman’s office, and recognising him. If he hadn’t spent time worrying about disguising himself – the remains of the FBI must know what he looked like now – he would never have seen Tolson under the face of a stranger.

He smiled. No one knew if the rumours of homosexuality between the two men were true, but they were clearly living together. It was foolish, in his opinion they should have stayed apart, but Hoover was a pathetic shadow of his former self. All of his power and influence had deserted him; all he had was Tolson… and perhaps his files. The mere rumour that they remained in his possession had prevented many in Congress from screaming for him to be hunted down and killed like a dog.

“Good evening, Director Hoover,” he said, keeping his voice even. Part of him wanted to smile, to gloat at his opponent’s downfall, but he resisted the temptation. He knew what he was doing was madness, but he no longer cared; the thrill of the chase was burning through him.

He smiled as Hoover and his so-called boyfriend gaped at him. They knew who he was, he realised; they were both fingering pistols. The expressions on their faces were priceless; did the woman running the house know what was happening?

“I may be seated?” He asked, taking a seat. “I have a proposition to put to you.”

Hoover’s face resumed its famous bulldog appearance. “I know who you are,” he growled.

“That’s wonderful,” Ritter said cheerfully. “Then you’re in no doubt at all about my offer.”

“You are responsible for a gun-running ring that is smuggling weapons north to Canada,” Hoover said. “You are the agent of the SS within America.”

“The Abwehr,” Ritter corrected. It didn’t matter that much; the last he’d heard the Abwehr had been merged into the SS, along with the Gestapo. “Yes, I have been doing a little gun-running… but then, I didn’t have anything to do with your coup.”

“We would have cleaned up you filth,” Hoover said. Beside him, Tolson stiffened. “We would never have accepted help from you.”

“Now, now, Mr Hoover,” Ritter chided. “Drowning men can hardly complain about the quality of the straw that saves them.”

He had Hoover’s interest, despite the tough-guy act. He could tell. “We have an offer to make to you,” he said. “We both have some interest in the war coming to an end… and we believe that you could help us do that.”

“You want me to turn traitor?” Hoover asked. “You expect me to betray my country?”

Ritter smiled; the bait had been taken. “We know that it was not us, nor the Soviets, who destroyed a large portion of New York,” he said. “We don’t possess atomic weapons.”

Hoover glared at him. The information would appeal to his prejudices, but it had to be done carefully. “You’re trying to get them,” he said.

“If we had them, we would use them to force the British to back off,” Ritter said. “My dear Hoover; the British blasted a large part of New York, just to keep you in the war. Hell, they might even have planned it so your coup would fail.”

He watched Hoover’s face twisting. He knew – with a lifetime’s worth of experience in the military intelligence world – that the British were unlikely to be able to do anything of the sort, but who knew what they could do with their advanced technology?

“The British want you to destroy us,” he said. “We… have some interest in preventing that from happening. You’ve seen their advanced technology… they were apparently pretty powerful in the world they left, but nothing compared to America. This world… they will own.”

Tolson lifted an eyebrow. His expression as he looked down at Hoover was concerned. “You feel that the British have plans for world domination?”

“I would, in their place,” Ritter said honestly.

“I am not going to work for Herr Hitler,” Hoover said. Ritter shrugged; Hitler had been dead for a while now. “I will, however, be willing to trade information.”

“Which is all I expected,” Ritter said. “Tell me, how many of the remaining senators and congressmen could you influence?”

Hoover thought for a moment. “Perhaps a hundred at most,” he said finally. “They could be convinced to take an anti-British line quite easily.”

Ritter smiled. “A word of advice then,” he said. “I would get out of Washington and go someplace else.”

Hoover shook his head. “Here… is as safe as anywhere else,” he said. “Perhaps…”

Ritter shrugged. “I look forward to helping you regain your former prominence,” he said. He smiled; he knew that it was delusion. Hoover wanted revenge for his problems… and men like that were easy to manipulate.

Testing Zone

Nevada, USA

30^th March 1942

The scorching heat of the Nevada Desert passed across William J. Donovan’s body as he watched the preparations running around the rocket mounted on the pad. He ignored the heat, wondering again at his decision to come watch the launch in person; the Military Space Agency had had more than its fair share of disasters.

He studied his briefing notes while waiting for the launch. The new Office of Strategic Services had been set up the day after the Wet Firecracker Rebellion had been ended, tasked with controlling all intelligence operations within and outside the United States. Somewhat to his surprise, he’d been so successful in the other history that Truman – who’d apparently sacked him during the original history – had ordered him to set up the OSS without demur, and granted him considerable authority.

He smiled. The Military Space Agency, the new organisation designed to prevent in-fighting between the Army and the Navy, was tasked with putting America in space, by whatever means necessary. Truman might be good friends with the British Prime Minister, but no one was so foolish as imagine that the British would quite happily continue to share intelligence from orbital reconnaissance once the war was over… and if some of Ambassador King’s projections about the use of space weapons were true, they could not be allowed unchallenged control of space.

“Mr Donovan,” a voice said. Donovan nodded politely as Doctor Wilson, the director of the project, strode up to greet him. He had a flat intense face, with short steel-grey hair and grey eyes, and would have been handsome a few years earlier. “I assume you’re here to watch the launch?”

“Of course,” Donovan replied. He smiled to himself; Wilson’s intense manner matched his face. “What sort of success do you hope for this time?”

Wilson didn’t quite glare at him, but he looked very much as if he would have liked to have done so. “We’re concentrating on recon satellites of our own design,” he said. “It’s basically simple; the satellite orbits over the planet, its camera’s timed to trigger at the right time, and then it drops it’s films back to Earth.”

“Very impressive,” Donovan said. “How good is it compared to the British designs?”

“We’re getting there,” Wilson said defensively. “We do have the designs for the rockets that were being built in America, and we’ve even purchased a few hundred. Unfortunately, the British mix and match their technology and our technology, which is why they have a nearly one hundred percent success rate.”

Donovan nodded. “Have they tried to interfere with your launches?”

“No,” Wilson said. “They have insisted upon a liaison team, which as we have one at Churchill isn’t such a bad idea, and they have insisted upon notification of flight paths, just to avoid a collision between their space station and our rockets.”

Donovan lifted an eyebrow. “How likely is that?”

Wilson smiled grimly. “Pretty much non-existent,” he said. “For the moment, we’ve been putting things into decaying orbits, rather than stable ones. Still, it makes sense that they would be concerned; they don’t have anything like the lifting capability to evacuate their station in a hurry.”

Donovan frowned. “Could we do it, if we had to?”

Wilson hesitated. “Perhaps,” he said finally. “It would be very difficult, however; the orbit would have to be precisely calculated.” He narrowed his eyes. “You are considering war, Mr Donovan?”

“No,” Donovan said, not quite certain if he was lying. He liked the British, at least the ones he’d met before 1940 and the Transition, but he had to admit, they were taking space far more seriously than anyone else. “Tell me, what about the British statement of principle on space access and development rights?”

“Opinion is divided,” Wilson admitted. “I’m in favour; others are not.”

Donovan nodded and then turned to watch the launch site as the countdown began to count down the final moments to launch. The British had stated that anyone who reached a space object, the moon or an asteroid, would own that object, provided they made use of it within a set period. President Truman hadn’t disagreed, but Donovan suspected that he should have done, if space was as important as the British clearly believed it was.

“Blast-off,” Wilson said, as the rocket slowly lifted itself into the sky. Donovan, who had been expecting a whoosh and the rocket vanishing into the distance, was almost disappointed. “Now we find out… what we find out.”

Donovan nodded. As head of the OSS, he understood that. “What about the manned space program?”

“We don’t have anything like the capability required, yet,” Wilson said. “Building either a space capsule or a space aircraft is tricky. We’re working on a spaceplane design using a simplified version of a 2015 design, but it might just be a glorified death trap.”

Donovan felt a flicker of dismay. “You still have volunteers?” He asked. “They’ll allow you to risk their lives like that?”

“Oh, yes,” Wilson said. “They can’t wait to go.”

Wilson’s mobile phone rang. Donovan stepped to one side as Wilson listened before putting the phone back in his pocket. “They’re still picking up telemetry from the rocket,” he said. “It’s managed to separate properly, according to the British satellites.”

Donovan smiled at the irony. “Let me know what the results are,” he said. “I for one look forward to knowing what they are.”

The satellite, almost a guided missile, orbited the Earth several times very quickly, moving below the British space station, passing over the Reich and then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Donovan retired to his quarters on the base while waiting, considering the reports from his own people. He’d been working hard on infiltrating agents into German-held territory, but it was very difficult; the Germans were cracking down harder and harder on the French and Italians who served them.

He smiled to himself. The British had been more than willing to cooperate with the OSS, but even they were having problems; the SAS was perfect for sneaking around, but not for making delicate contacts with possible sources. The OSS had contacts in the Mexican embassy in Germany – and the Germans were selling weapons to the Mexicans, much to America’s annoyance – but it was harder to move around in Berlin.

Donovan shook his head and checked the other reports. The China Lobby was very keen on sending supplies from the Philippines into China, to arm the Chinese factions. That wasn’t easy either; one faction was very pro-Russia, particularly since Mao was killed by the Japanese – or at least everyone said he was killed by the Japanese. Donovan snorted; the NKVD would have had little hesitation in terminating a man who would be such a pain to Stalin in the future.

“The so-called Nationalists are corrupt, vernal and couldn’t fight a battle to save their own hides,” Stillwell had said, and flatly refused to have anything to do with the project. He’d wanted to simply give up on China; between incompetent rulers, the Japanese and deadly disease outbreaks, there was little hope for assistance in the future.

He jumped out of his musings when a plane flew overhead. The only way to recover the photographs was to have a plane catch them as they fell; he glanced at his watch and was astonished to notice that several hours had gone by without him noticing.

“I must have been asleep,” he said, and stumbled out into the main centre. Wilson waved to him and dragged him towards the darkroom, where the photographs were being developed. “What do they look like?”

“They’re… not bad,” Wilson said, as the wet images were laid on the table. Donovan considered them; they were nothing like as neat and precise as the British images, but they were a start.

“A good start,” he said aloud. “Now… how many more can you put up in a day?”