Designated Targets

“Excellent work, Brasch, just excellent. Those idiots were completely taken in.”

“Thank you, Reichsfuhrer. It was simply a matter of not doing my job.”

Himmler smiled at the weak joke.

They met in a secure room, in the German section of the command compound. It was swept for listening devices every two hours, but none had ever been found. The Russians weren’t all that sophisticated. Their own command buildings, however, were thoroughly covered by German surveillance. Listening devices built into the very fabric of the Soviets’ command center had never been detected, and provided a wealth of intelligence for the SS to rake through.

The room in which Himmler and Brasch met was small and bare, just a few hard wooden chairs, a table, and a notice board on which was pinned a single yellow piece of paper, displaying the times at which the room had been cleared by the technical services section of the SS. They had been through ten minutes before Brasch was ushered in. The two men drank real coffee and nibbled at Dutch honey biscuits.

“You’ve done good work out here, Colonel. I shudder to think of the resources we’ve put into this place. But we must show our willingness, yes?”

“The Russians still don’t trust us,” said Brasch.

“No reason why they should,” Himmler replied. “We will destroy them in good time, and they know it. I doubt this is the only investment they’ve made as a hedge against the future. But as long as we control their access to the technology, they remain beholden to us. We took our boot from Stalin’s throat when we could have crushed the life out of him.”

Brasch said nothing. Both of them knew that as awful as were the Red Army’s losses in 1942, it had been the beginning of the end for the German conquest.

Before the silence could become uncomfortable, though, Brasch filled the void. “The fuhrer is well? We do not have much news out here. Just rumors.”

Himmler arched one eyebrow. “Really? And what might those be?”

“Terrible rumors, Herr Reichsfuhrer,” said Brasch. “I have heard of treachery at the highest levels of the Wehrmacht and the Kreigsmarine. Not so much with the Luftwaffe. I’m not sure why. And of course, not at all with the SS. At any rate, if even a fraction of the talk is true, it is a crime how some have abandoned their duty to the Fatherland.”

Himmler appeared to regard him as a teacher might size up a dim pupil who had just said something profound, but quite by accident. Brasch worked hard at maintaining a slightly worried, somewhat bovine look on his face. Eventually Himmler took off his glasses and polished them with a handkerchief. Brasch recognized the gesture as a sign that the man had relaxed just a little.

“We have had a terrible time of it,” Himmler admitted. “It has been a shock to us all, but naturally the greatest burden has fallen upon the fuhrer himself. I have done what I can to protect him, but . . .”

He trailed off for a moment.

“A regiment of the Afrika Korps revolted when Rommel was recalled. Actually turned their guns on the men sent to collect him.”

“The whole regiment!” Brasch gasped. “How?”

“No, not the entire regiment,” said Himmler, somewhat exasperated. “Just a few men in a headquarters company at first. But then it spread through the ranks. The defense of El Alamein was thrown into chaos, and that pervert Montgomery took advantage—it was a disaster, Herr Oberst. Not at all like the spirit of Belgorod, eh?”

Brasch allowed himself a confused shake of the head. “No, not at all like Belgorod.”

“There was a similar uprising when Canaris was exposed. Rebellion in both the Abwehr and the Kreigsmarine. An entire Waffen SS Division was required to put that one down.”

“Good God!” said Brasch, who was genuinely surprised that the rumors he’d heard turned out to be true.

Himmler finished polishing his glasses and replaced them on his small, ratlike nose. “You understand these are state secrets, Brasch. They are not matters for idle chitchat.”

“Indeed Herr Reichsfuhrer. Of course, but why . . .” He trailed off.

“Why do I tell you? Because you need to know, Brasch. The Fatherland needs men it can trust. I am afraid the counterattacks on the criminal gangs who would undermine our leader have rather drastically thinned out our upper ranks. They have not weakened us, mind you!” he hastened to add. “But some of those swine held important positions. They must be replaced.”

The room seemed to become hotter, and closer. Brasch tried not to let his hopes get the better of him. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Am I to be transferred? My work here—”

Himmler held up one, thin, pallid hand to cut him off. “Your work here is done. Stalin is convinced that our cooperation is sincere, at least in the short term. And your efforts here have played a large part in that. He knows there must come a final settlement between us, and we know he is frantically building his forces in the Far East, where he thinks himself beyond our gaze. It doesn’t matter. When we have dealt with the immediate threat of the Allies, we shall turn on him with weapons he has never dreamed of. The trinkets we let him play with here will not save him, nor will those fleets of antique tanks he is building.”

“I understand that, Herr Reichsfuhrer. My mission briefing was quite specific. But what now?”

“Now,” said Himmler, leaning forward. “You are going home. These idiots will think you have been transferred in disgrace, after today’s failure. But you have proved yourself adept at working under extreme pressure, and there are projects that require your attention back in the civilized world.

“We are going to take the British Isles, Colonel Brasch. And you are going to help us.”

6

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA, CORAL SEA

It was as if they were counting her shots. Captain Jane Willet knew Yamamoto was lurking off to the north of New Guinea, well beyond the range of her Nemesis arrays. The Havoc had been out on point duty, hundreds of miles ahead of Admiral Spruance’s diminished Task Force for nearly six weeks now. No Japanese ships had made it past them. Spruance may have had just the Enterprise and USS Wasp to call on for carrier-borne strike missions, but with the submarine’s advanced sensor suites and battle management systems to act as a force multiplier, he could deploy his precious aircraft to devastating effect. Yamamoto, meanwhile, could not move directly against him, for fear of losing his capital ships to the Havoc.

The Japanese grand admiral seemed to be waiting her out. Sending a long line of tempting targets her way, hoping she would run down her stocks of torpedoes and cruise missiles. Willet assumed he knew what she was packing. Some of the basic specs for the Havoc were available online, and the Indonesian tubs had been linked into Fleetnet. God only knew how many pages they had cached before the Transition, but it would be prudent to assume that the Japanese were somewhere with an abacus, or a flexipad, ticking off every kill she made.

“Five contacts, Captain,” reported her intel chief, Lieutenant Lohrey. “Good returns from the drone. We can have visual in ten if you want me to reposition.”

The commander of HMAS Havoc leaned over her shipmate’s shoulder to check out the data for herself. “You make them out to be transports, Amanda?”

“At least three, with a couple of destroyers for escort. No air screen, again.”

Willet chewed her lower lip, but in the end the decision was easy. “Well, I’m not wasting any taxpayers’ money on this. Especially as the taxpayers haven’t even been born yet. Squirt a position fix to Spruance, see if they can vector a couple of those American subs on them.”

Lohrey turned in her chair. “Begging your pardon, Captain, but the ’temps still haven’t completed the changeover of their torpedoes. If they’re packing Type Fourteens, they might as well shoot spitballs at ’em.”

Willet nodded ruefully. The sub-launched torpedoes carried by American boats from this time had major problems with their running depth and warheads. Depression-era budgets hadn’t allowed for proper testing, and the