A Mighty Endeavor (3 page)

The Duke saw its effect in Churchill’s eyes and bearing; he made a private note to himself to have this man discretely but carefully watched tonight. “Winston, why not sleep on this problem? In the dawn, things may come to us that will not be clear tonight. Evans will show you to your room.”

Churchill nodded, his eyes swimming with misery and despair. Then he followed the butler out of the room. As he did so, he glanced at the Duke. Beauclerk raised one finger and touched it lightly to his eye. In a relationship between families that had been handed down, father to son, for generations, that was all it took. There would be a suicide watch on their guest tonight. After they had gone, the Duke remained sitting, staring into the fireplace much as Churchill had done. Quietly, he believed that Lord Halifax had done far more damage to the fabric of the realm with this day’s work than even Churchill had realized. Beauclerk looked out of the great windows towards the lights of Nottingham. It seemed to him that the darkness was already closing in.

Dumbarton Avenue, Georgetown, Washington, DC, USA

“Nell, there’s a telegram for you. From Switzerland.” It was a convention in this most unconventional of all households that telegrams from Geneva should be passed to Eleanor Gwynne first. She would take a quick look at the contents and decide whether it would cause an explosion or not. Usually, the answer was that it would; then some hasty diplomacy would be needed to prevent another row breaking out between Phillip Stuyvesant and Loki.

“Thank you, ducks.”

Dido Carthagina grinned conspiratorially and handed the envelope over. “Oh, it really is for me.” There was a pause and then a resigned sigh. “It’s relayed from Osborne in England. I’d better see Phillip about this right away.”

“They’re all in the living room. Whatever is going on has caused some serious angst in there.”

“Europe, probably. Phillip spent hours sitting, staring out the window, when he got back from Washington. Heading in?”

“Of course, ducks.” Eleanor flashed a smile at Dido and turned to the door of the living room. Quietly, she felt a little sorry for her friend. Once, a long time ago, Dido had made a bad decision, one that had catastrophic consequences for a lot of people. She’d never trusted her own judgment since and found making even simple decisions difficult. Like whether to disturb a meeting with an important message or what to order in a restaurant. Generally, she waited for other people to make the decisions for her. It was a passive way of living and one that the gregarious and social Eleanor found hard to understand. Mentally, she shrugged the reflection off and opened the door.

“Hi, Nell. Welcome to the plotter’s cabal.” Igrat was sprawled out on a couch, one leg hooked over the arm. The lighting in the room was dimmed right down. With Igrat’s pose and the number of empty glasses around, the place looked like a seedy night club after a very busy evening.

Across the room, Phillip Stuyvesant was looking through a stack of papers. He glanced up and saw the envelope in Eleanor’s hand. “Message from Britain?”

“In a way, ducks. It’s from Osborne via Geneva. In code. He says there’s trouble over there and he has something we want. That’s rare. Usually when I get a message from the family, it’s because they’ve done something foolish and need me to bail them out. I assume it came through Geneva because the lines from Britain are down. What’s going on?”

“Halifax took over from Churchill and he’s signed an armistice with Germany.”

Eleanor went white. “You are joking, ducks? How did that happen?”

“We don’t know, I need a constitutional expert to explain it to me. But, the outcome is clear. The war’s over, for a while at least. This so-called armistice won’t last long. The whole situation will break out again and we’ll be right in the middle of it. I’ve just been asked to work out how Germany plans to fight the whole world single-handed.”

“Guess what? I’m going to be the bosses secretary in a new Washington Department, the Economic Intelligence and Warfare Section.” Lillith also had a file and had reeled the name of her new appointment off without a hitch. “We’re all going to be in it, I guess.”

Stuyvesant nodded. “We’ll be staffing the section from us. I need people there who know how I work. Igrat’s going to be our courier again. Achillea and Henry, enforcement as usual. No sneaking off into the Navy this time, Achillea.”

“You want Mike for anything?” Mike Collins was the closest thing Igrat ever had to a long-term partner.

Stuyvesant shook his head. “He’s a lightweight, a butterfly. He’s got nothing to offer except the ability to throw good parties. If we need one of those, we’ll call him in. Nell, we’ll need you to be a liaison with the British, especially when the Nazis turn this armistice into an occupation.”

“You think they’ll do that?” Naamah spoke from a corner.

“Of course. Their occupation of Europe can never be stable while Britain is unoccupied. The British Isles are the great fortress that guards Europe from an attack based in the west or south and a perfect springboard for just such an attack. Which role it plays depends on whether the people in Europe are on the British side or not. Or, in this case, whether Britain is on their side. An Armistice won’t cut it. Somehow, the Germans will occupy and not too far into the future. I can’t believe that Halifax doesn’t understand that.”

“And then the British will fight.” Eleanor sounded saddened, more by the news that her birth country had folded than by the prospect of a war being fought on English soil for the first time in centuries.

“And then they will fight.” Stuyvesant agreed. “All Halifax will have achieved in the end is to shift the battle from everywhere but England to England itself. The English are going to find out what it’s like to be occupied and when they do, they’ll start a resistance movement. Then they’ll find out what happens when resistance movements start fighting occupying armies. The next few years are not going to be good ones, people. What we have to worry about is working out how to strike at Germany from bases in the USA.”

“Bombing. At least that’ll mean no more fighting in the trenches.” Eleanor sounded pleased with that. Stuyvesant shook his head.

“Strategic bombing sounds good, but it doesn’t end with bombing armies. It goes to bombing the depots where those armies store their supplies, then the railways that supply those depots and the factories that produce the goods that are transported by the railways. It ends with the people who work in those factories and then goes beyond that to killing those workers in their homes along with their families. We’re not ending the war in the trenches, Nell; we’re extending it backwards all the way to the worker’s family in their house. This war is going to be bloody.” Stuyvesant looked out of the window. “Anybody want to bet on how long it will be before we have to have a blackout in Washington?”

Supreme Command Headquarters, Bangkok, Thailand

“But the Americans are opposed to us and the Japanese are not. The Japanese offer us arms and equipment; the Americans do not. The Americans criticize every move we make and the Japanese support us. Why, then should we position ourselves against the Japanese?” Marshal Plaek Pibulsonggram made the points carefully and rationally. In truth, he was afraid of the woman who was sitting in front of him with an enigmatic smile on her face.
A true Thai smile,
he thought,
one that could mean anything and everything.

“We’re not quite positioning ourselves against the Japanese. Not yet, at any rate. What we are doing is strengthening our economic base so that we can stand on our own feet. If we have to remain within the Japanese sphere of influence, then the proposed plan will allow us to do so on something closer to equality. If we do not, and I believe that our interests are elsewhere, then our plans will enable us to stand against the pressure the Japanese will place upon us. At the moment, this is a plan that grants us more freedom of action. That is all. As for the Americans, they are opposed to us because they see our nationalist movement as being akin to fascism. President Roosevelt is opposed to fascism with every fiber of his being. A part of our plan is to teach him that nationalism in a country such as ours is not fascism but a simple desire to rule our own lives. Expressed that way, the Americans will sympathize with us and come around to our side. And soon, they will be seeking every ally they can find.”

Marshal Plaek nodded in agreement at the last comment. “But, the Japanese offer us arms, equipment, aircraft. At prices we can afford. We need them and the Americans will not sell.”

Princess Suriyothai Bhirombhakdi na Sukothai dipped her head slightly in acknowledgement. “The Japanese offer us aircraft and weapons at a cash price we can afford. It is the political price that we cannot countenance. We are not short of goods we can sell in times of war. We produce enough rice and fish to feed most of the region. We produce gold and silver for export. We make the finest silk in the world and produce some rubber. Money is not a problem Field Marshal, not really. We are a hardy people; we can go short inside our country if doing so will make us strong. It is political strength we lack. In most of the world, people would find it very hard to find us on a map. The movement towards Japan saves in areas where we have a sufficiency and costs us where we are gravely deficient.”

Marshal Plaek considered the logic and found it did make sense. “So, what does your Highness recommend?”

“Field Marshal, your plans to modernize the Army must be accelerated. We are adopting German-designed equipment, mostly to be license-built at Lopburi. That equipment must enter service without delay. The German advisors we hired in the early 1930s have worked wonders with our forces and we must build on that. We must surpass our teachers, Field Marshal, and we have little time to do it in. We must adopt new ways, for the world has changed around us and the old ways are gone forever. There is an Air Force officer, Wing Commander Fuen, who has ideas on how to organize air support for the ground forces that are a remarkable advance on anything I have heard of. I believe they are worth considering.

“But it our political and economic strength we must attend to. That is why we will be suggesting that the great Hong Kong trading groups consider moving their headquarters to Bangkok. With Britain surrendering to the Germans, Hong Kong will not remain out of Japanese hands for long. The Hongs will be looking for a new home and we need to get them here. For that, we have to make many changes. We have telegraph connections in-country and a spur line down to Singapore. We must spend all the money we need to need to in order to make those telegraph connections as good as any in the world. With Britain out, India and Australia will be separated greatly in distance. We can become the bridge between them.”

“When one village has fish but no rice, and the other has rice but no fish, great wealth will not come to either village but to the man who builds a bridge between them.” Field Marshall Plaek quoted the Thai proverb thoughtfully. He could see where she was going with this. “But this depends on India and Australia staying in the war.”

“It does, and that is the first obstacle that we must overcome. But, if they do, then the center of Indian mass in particular is here.” Her finger tapped a map. “In Singapore. India must retain the great fortress of Singapore. But, it is an indefensible fortress against land attack. If the enemy holds the Malayan peninsula, Singapore will fall. The front line of defense for Singapore is not here at the Johore Strait, but here.”

Her finger moved and tapped the Mekong River. “And that makes us a very valuable ally for the Indians. An ally who will link us to the Americans again.”

“If India stays in the war.”

“Exactly, Field Marshal. If India stays in the war.”

Conference Room, Government House, Calcutta, India

“Does anybody have any idea what is going on?” Victor Alexander John Hope, 2nd Marquess of Linlithgow and Viceroy of India since 18 April 1936, was mightily offended. He had been the driving force behind the implementation of the plans for local self-government embodied in the Government of India Act of 1935. Those provisions had led to government led by the Congress Party in five of India’s eleven provinces. He had been quietly proud of that achievement. Yet he had torn it down when his appeal for unity in the face of Britain’s declaration of war on Germany resulted in the resignation of the Congress ministries. He got his Indian declaration of war on Germany at the cost of seeing his life’s work and proudest moments destroyed. Now, Britain had surrendered and nobody had even bothered to tell him what was happening or why it had taken place. It was an insult of monumental proportions and the Marquess of Linlithgow was not a man who forgot gratuitous insults.

“Your Excellency, there is no word at all from London. It is as if London has completely forgotten about us. I have heard from Prime Minister Robert Menzies in Australia, for all the good that has done us. The Australians have heard nothing either and they are not best pleased by the fact. Their National Party has paid a political price for entering the war on Britain’s side and to be left in the dark like this is unconscionable. It has insulted them, My Lord.” Gerald Tarrant, Private secretary to the Viceroy, spoke sadly. “They found out the same way we did, by hearing it on the World Service news broadcast.

“Outrageous. Sir Martyn, has the word spread to the Congress Party yet?”