Hogan, James P - The Proteus Operation

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The help and cooperation of the following is gratefully acknowledged:

Edward Teller, Eugene Wigner, and Isaac Asimov for their agreement to appear as "guest"

characters.

The Franklin D. Roosevelt Library, Hyde Park, New York, for permission to reproduce the

Einstein letter.

Robert Samuels of the Department of Chemistry, Georgia Institute of Technology

Mark Looper, Mike Sklar, and Bob Grossman of Princeton University

Brent Warner of the Department of Physics, Ohio State University

Steve Fairchild of Moaning Cavern, Murphys, California Lynx Crowe of Berkeley, California

Charley, Gary, and Rick of Charley's Bookstore, Sonora, California

Ralph Newman and Jack Cassinetto of Sonora, California

Dorothy Alkire of Manteca, California

Dick Hastings and the staff of Tuolumne County Library,

Sonora, California

U.S. Navy Treasure Island, San Francisco

U.S. Air Force, Langley AFB, Virginia

And, of course, Jackie

Proteus

OLD MAN OF THE SEA of Greek mythology, to whom all of the past, present, and future was

known, but who would assume various forms to avoid revealing it.

Only when he was captured and constrained to a particular manifestation could the future

be determined with certainty...strangely reminiscent of the collapse of the quantum-mechanical

wave function.

THE

PROTEUS

OPERATION

PROLOGUE

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1974, dawned sullenly over the Virginia coast, with raindrops

spitting from a wet, overcast sky, and ill tempered squalls scuffing white the wavetops of a

choppy, gunmetal sea. Looking like a flecked carpet unrolled upon the surface, a straight, foamy

wake extended out of the eastern mists to mark the course of the nuclear-driven attack submarine

USS Narwhal, now within sight of its home base at Norfolk and being escorted over the last few

miles by a flock of lazily wheeling seagulls, filling the air with their raucous lament. From the

sinister black of the submarine's hull to the dirty off-whites of the seagulls and the spray, the

world was a composition of soggy grays.

The grayness seemed fitting, Commander Gerald Bowden thought as he stood with the first

navigation officer and a signalman, looking out from the bridge atop the Narwhal's twenty-foot-

high "sail." Color came with babies and flowers, sunny mornings and springtimes: new things

beginning. But corpses were pale; the sick, "ashen-faced"; the ailing, "gray with exhaustion."

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Along with strength and life, color drained from things that were nearing their end. It seemed

fitting that a world without a future should be a world without color also.

At least, barring some kind of miracle, the free world of the West that he was committed

to defend -- what was left of it -- had

no future. The latest Japanese provocations in the Pacific were clearly the long-expected

prelude to a move against the Hawaiian Islands, aimed at the final strategic isolation of

Australia. There was no possibility of the U.S. 's meekly acquiescing again to such an aggression,

as had happened with the annexing of the Philippines to the Japanese Empire five years previously.

War would automatically mean taking on the might of Nazi Europe plus its Asian and African

colonies, too, with the Fascist South American states doubtless joining in at the last moment to

pick up their share of the spoils. Against such odds there could be little doubt of the outcome.

But the nation and its few remaining allies were grimly resigned to go down fighting if they had

to. President John F. Kennedy had spoken for all when he pledged America to a policy of "No more

surrenders."

Bowden shifted his gaze from the harbor entrance ahead to the fourth figure on the bridge,

whose Russian-style, fur cap with backflap turned down against the wind, and paratrooper's

jumpsmock worn over Army fatigues contrasted with the Navy garb of the ship's officers. The dress

was an assortment of oddments from the ship's stores that the soldier had changed into from the

workman's clothes he'd been wearing when the Narwhal picked him and his party up. Captain Harry

Ferracini, from one of the Army's Special Operations units, commanded the four-man squad and its

accompanying group of civilians that had come aboard several days previously at a rendezvous with

a fishing boat off the southwest English coast. What their mission had been, who the civilians

were, and why they were being brought back to the U.S., Bowden had known better than to ask; but

clearly, for some branches of the U.S. military, an undeclared, undercover war against the Third

Reich and its dominions had already begun.

Ferracini had clear, still predominantly youthful features, with fine, handsomely

proportioned lines, smooth skin, and a sensitive mouth. His complexion was dark, his eyes large,

brown, and brooding, as befitted his name. If he felt any sentiments about the fate of the nation

or the demise of democracy, his expression revealed no hint of them as he took in the indistinct

Norfolk skyline, his eyes missing nothing, but shifting with the practiced laziness of somebody

adapted to existing inconspicuously for long periods in hostile surroundings. Bowden guessed the

soldier to be in his late twenties, although his disinclination to smile and the air of

seriousness that he wore most of the time were the characteristics of an older man grown cynical

with living.

True, Ferracini's kind of business bred inscrutability as a safeguard and taciturnity as a

habit; but in their few, brief conversations, Bowden had discerned a remoteness in the young

soldier's manner that went beyond professional habit and revealed an emotional chasm by which he,

and others like Ferracini whom Bowden had met on previous missions, seemed to distance themselves

from the world of personal feelings and everyday human emotions. Or was it from the world of

meaningful things with beginnings, which now meant nothing and led nowhere? Bowden wondered. Was

it a sign of a whole generation reacting instinctively to protect itself from the knowledge that

it, too, had no future?

"Welcome home, Narwhal," Melvin Warner, the first navigation officer, read aloud as a

light began flickering from the harbormaster's shack at the end of the outer breakwater. "Pilot

dispatched. Regret lousy weather."

"Somebody's awake early," Bowden said. "Either they're expecting VIPs today, or the war's

started already." He turned his head to address the seaman. "Make a signal back. 'Thanks.

Compliments on speed of service. Weather better three hundred feet down."

"Launch approaching, starboard bow," Warner reported as the signalman's lamp began

chattering. He gestured toward the lines of sleek, gray warships moored in the outer harbor.

"There's one of the big carriers in, Gerry. Looks like the Constellation."

"Reduce speed, open up for'ard, and prepare to take on harbor pilot," Bowden said. He

turned toward Ferracini while Warner translated the command into orders and relayed them below.

"We'll get you and your people ashore first, Captain. That'll free you up as quickly as we can

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manage." Ferracini nodded.

A message had been received in mid-Atlantic, sent by a Navy VLF transmitter in Connecticut

on the long wavelengths that submarines could pick up while submerged, advising that Captain

Ferracini and Sergeant Cassidy were urgently required for other duties and would be met at the

dock to receive further orders. "They don't give you guys much of a break," Bowden commented. "I'm

sorry you'll be going so soon. At least it isn't that way all the time, eh?"

"Not quite all the time, anyhow," Ferracini said.

"Just when we were starting to get to know one another."

"That's the way it is sometimes, I guess."

Bowden looked at the soldier for a moment longer, then abandoned his attempt at

conversation with a sigh and a barely perceptible shrug. "Okay, well, we'll be docking in a few

minutes. You'll need to be getting back down to join the others in the wardroom." He extended a

hand. "A pleasure to have had you aboard, Captain. Glad we were able to help. And good luck with

whatever they've dreamed up for you next."

"Thank you, sir," Ferracini said, sounding formal. He shook hands first with Bowden, then

with Warner. "The men asked me to express their appreciation for the hospitality. I'd like to add

mine, too." Bowden smiled faintly and nodded. Ferracini climbed down into the bridge hatch and

began descending the ladder below.

From the compartment below the bridge, Ferracini squeezed through another hatch and

entered the pressure hull of the ship, beyond which yet another hatch and a third ladder brought

him into the forward end of the control room, with its confusion of machinery, consoles, dialed

panels, and equipment racks, the purpose of most of which he didn't understand. Crewmen were busy

at stations extending away on both walls aft of the twin periscope stand and huge chart table. On

the port side stood two padded leather chairs with cockpit-like control columns and arrays of

hooded instruments, looking more like an aircraft flight deck than the helmsman's and diving

officer's positions on a ship. The seats were fitted with safety belts, which said enough about

the Narwhal's maneuvering capabilities; the dynamics of handling fast submarines came closer to

flying through water than anything that resembled sailing in the traditional sense.

Bowden's executive officer and a detail of seamen accompanied Ferracini forward through

the passageway leading between the captain's cabin and sickbay to the wardroom, where the

passengers had been given bunking space for the voyage. He found Cassidy and the two privates,

Vorkoff and Breugot, packing away final items of kit and helping the eight people they had brought

out of England into top clothes suitable for going outside. Several of the civilians still looked

drawn and emaciated, although traces of color were beginning to show on their faces after four

days of rest, proper medical care, and the Narwhal's generous rations.

"Pretty well done, Harry," Cassidy drawled, zipping up the last of the bags he had been

packing. "How are things doing outside? Are we almost there?"

"Just coming into harbor. They're taking on the pilot," Ferracini replied.

"So how's home sweet home?"

"Wet, cold, and windy. Everyone ready down here?"

"All set."

Mike "Cowboy" Cassidy had a long, lanky frame, which he carried with an easygoing

looseness that could be disarmingly deceptive, clear blue eyes, thick yellow hair, and a ragged

mustache. Special Operations troopers were trained to work in pairs, and he had been Ferracini's

regular partner for over three years. By all the measures of mood and temperament that the

psychologists made so much of, they should have been incompatible, but each had refused

obstinately to work with anyone else.

While the seamen carried the kit out, Ferracini looked around at the people in the

wardroom. This would no doubt be their last time together as a group. Just as they had begun

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getting to know something about one another after four days in the cramped confines of the

submarine, the voyage had ended, and they would all be whisked away in different directions. It

was like life in general -- nothing permanent; nothing lasting; nothing to attach roots to.

Ferracini felt weary at the futility of it all.

The two scientists, Mitchell and Frazer, were still wearing oddments of the homemade

uniforms of the Prison Guard Section, British Security Police -- effectively a locally recruited

branch of the SS -- in which they had contrived their escape from the political concentration camp

on Dartmoor. In earlier years, Mitchell, a specialist in high-temperature corrosion chemistry, had

been forced to work in the program that was supposed to have led to the first German lunar landing

in 1968. Frazer had been working on inertial guidance computers before Berlin ordered his arrest

for alleged ideological failings.

Smithgreen -- certainly not his real name -- was a Jewish Hungarian mathematician of some

kind who had managed, incredibly, to evade detection ever since England's surrender to Germany on

the first day of 1941. Maliknin was an escaped Russian slave laborer who had worked on the German

ICBM silos in northern Siberia. Pearce -- again, undoubtedly a pseudonym -- had bleached his hands

and facial skin and straightened his hair in order to survive the African genocide of the sixties.

Then there was the woman who was called "Ada," slumped in a chair at one end of the

wardroom table and staring vacantly at the bulkhead as she had for most of the voyage. England

might have surrendered in 1941, but Ada never had. She had continued fighting a one-woman war

against the Nazis for over thirty years, ever since the day when, as a young schoolteacher in

Liverpool, she had watched her husband, father, and two brothers being marched away as labor

conscripts for deportation to the Continent, never to be heard of again. Revenge had become her

way of life. Using forged papers, disguises, and a score of aliases, she had reputedly killed one

hundred sixty-three Nazis, including a Reich Governor, three district commissioners, the Gestapo

chiefs of two British cities, and dozens of British collaborators in local government. She had

been arrested repeatedly, had suffered interrogations, beatings, and torture; she had been

sentenced to death six times, escaping on four occasions and twice being left for dead. Now, in

her fifties, she was burned out, aged prematurely by a life of hatred, violence, and ordeals of

the kind evidenced by the gnarled scar tissue at the ends of the fingers of her right hand, where

nails used to be. Her fighting was done, but the information that she carried in her head would be

priceless.

Ferracini's survey of the wardroom finally brought him to the young man with the mustache

and the blonde girl who were known only by their code names "Polo" and "Candy." Both of them were

U.S. agents returning home after an operational tour. Ferracini had no idea what they had been

involved in, and it was better that things should remain that way.

Vibrations shook the structure, and the sounds of machinery came from nearby. There were

no pointless dramatics among the company, or pretensions that their relationships would endure.

After briefly muttered thanks and farewells, Ferracini and Vorkoff led the way out into the

wardroom passage, down a level, and forward into the torpedo storage room, where one of the main

loading hatches had been opened. They exchanged more good-bys with the ship's officers standing

around the ladder below the hatch and then preceded their charges up and out through a hooped

canvas shelter onto the narrow working space crowning the ship's precipitous sides. Ferracini went

ahead up the gangway to join the sailors who had carried the kit ashore, while Vorkoff stayed at

the hatch to help the civilians across the wet steel plates. Cassidy and Breugot brought up the

rear.

The first thing that Ferracini saw as he came up to the level of the dock was a naval

lieutenant standing in front of a bus that was waiting to take the civilians. The second thing he

saw was the olive drab Ford sedan bearing government plates and parked fifty or so yards back,

with a uniformed driver inside and an indistinct figure watching from the back seat. Although the

window was misted, making details impossible to distinguish, the figure, with its rounded facial

silhouette and the floppy hat jammed squarely on its head, could only be Winslade. That the car

was flying a general's pennant and Winslade wasn't even in the Army meant absolutely nothing. In

fact, it would have been typical. He should have expected as much, Ferracini told himself. He had

never heard of personnel on active duty being intercepted for the next mission like this, before

the current one was officially over; and whenever things started moving in the direction of the

highly irregular, Winslade was usually involved somewhere.

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The lieutenant, it turned out, wasn't authorized to accept the handover documents for the

civilians. The bus was just to take them to the airfield on the far side of the base, he informed

Ferracini, where planes were waiting to fly them to their respective destinations. The people who

would be taking charge of them formally were at the airfield. "I'll see what's happening here,"

Ferracini told Cassidy. "You'll have to go with the bus to take care of the formalities. We'll

pick you up later."

Cassidy nodded. "I'd hate to see 'em all sent back because we did the paperwork wrong."

"You guys can go with Cassidy, too," Ferracini told Vorkoff and Breugot. "You'll be able

to find out over there about transportation back to base."

They exchanged farewells with Ferracini and boarded after the civilians. The naval

lieutenant followed last, and the bus pulled away. Ferracini looked up and saw the white-capped

figure of Commander Bowden watching from high on the Narwhal's bridge. The figure raised a hand,

and after a few seconds Ferracini raised his own in response. Then he shouldered his kitbag,

turned away, and walked across the dock to where the Ford was waiting.

The driver, who had got out and was standing in front of the car, took Ferracini's bag and

stowed it in the trunk. Inside, Winslade leaned across to open the door opposite him. Ferracini

climbed in and shut the door. Succumbing to the texture and smell of the padded leather

upholstery, he stretched back with a grateful sigh and closed his eyes to savor for a few precious

moments the unaccustomed feeling of luxury and warmth enveloping him.

"I take it we have to collect Cassidy," Winslade's precisely articulated voice said while

the driver was getting in. "Where to? The air base?"

Ferracini nodded without opening his eyes. "He's taking care of the papers."

"The air base," Winslade said, in a louder voice. The car moved smoothly away. "So, Harry,

how did it go this time?" Winslade inquired genially after a few seconds.

"Okay, I guess. We got set up as planned. We got them out. We brought them home."

"All of them? I counted only eight."

"The three that were supposed to come through from London didn't show up. We never found

out what happened. Pluto thinks there's a leak at that end."

"Hmm...that's unfortunate." Winslade paused and digested the information. "Does that mean

Pluto's compromised?"

"Maybe. He's closing down the operation as a precaution -- moving to Bristol and opening a

new shop there, probably inside a month."

"I see. And our dear friend, Obergruppen f?hrer Frichter? How is his health these days?"

"Lousy. He won't be hanging any more hostages."

"How tragic."

Ferracini opened his eyes at last and sat up with a sigh, at the same time pushing his cap

back off his forehead. "Look, what is this, Claud?" he demanded. "There are proper places and

procedures for mission debriefings. Why are you handling it, and why are we riding around in a

car?"

Winslade's voice remained even. "Just my personal curiosity. The regular debriefing will

be held later by the appropriate people. However, there's more pressing business to be attended to

first. To answer your other question, we're not simply riding around, but going somewhere."

Ferracini waited, but Winslade left him hanging. He sighed again. "Okay, I'll buy it.

Where?"

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"We were going to the air base, anyway -- flying to New Mexico."

"Where, specifically?"

"Classified."

Ferracini tried another approach. "Okay -- why?"

"To meet some people whom I have no doubt you'll find interesting."

"Oh, really? Such as?"

"How about JFK for a start?"

Ferracini frowned. He knew that while Winslade had a way of playing with people sometimes,

he never joked frivolously. Winslade smirked, his pale gray eyes twinkling behind rimless,

semicircular spectacles, and his mouth stretched into a thin, upturned line.

In his late fifties at least, with a rounded face, ruddy complexion and nose to match,

medium build, and white wisps of hair showing above his ears, Winslade would have cut a good

figure as a jovial but slimmed-down Mt. Pickwick. In addition to his soft, floppy-brimmed black

hat he was wearing a heavy gray overcoat with fur-trimmed lapels, a dark silk scarf, and brown

leather gloves. He was clasping the carved top of an ornamental cane standing propped between his

knees.

The most anybody seemed to know about Winslade was just as much as they needed to, which

was never very much, usually no more than he chose to disclose. Ferracini, for sure, had never

really figured out exactly who Winslade was or what he did; but he did know that Winslade walked

in and out of every department of the Pentagon with impunity, dined regularly at the White House,

and seemed to be on first-name terms with the directors of nearly every major scientific research

institution in the country. Also, in talking with Winslade over the several years in which their

paths had been crossing intermittently, Ferracini had formed the distinct impression of Winslade

as a man who was far from new to the business of undercover operations -- and not only

theoretically, but in terms of hard, firsthand experience as well. He suspected that Winslade had

been operationally active himself once, long ago, possibly; but he couldn't be sure because

Winslade never talked much about himself.

The sedan slowed as it approached the gate leading out of the dockyard area. The barrier

rose, and a Navy Police corporal waved them through while the two guards presented arms. Once

through the gate, the car accelerated and turned in the direction of the air base.

Refusing to play further question-and-answer games, Ferracini clamped his jaw tight and

thrust out his chin obstinately. Winslade shrugged, then smiled and reached into the briefcase

beside him to draw out a neatly made, pocket-size portable radio, with a black front panel, silver

knobs, and chrome trim. It was smaller than anything Ferracini had seen before, apart from secret

military devices, and had a hinged cover on the front.

"Empire-built Japanese," Winslade commented as he flipped the cover open with a thumb.

"You won't see anything like it here, but the children there carry them around in the streets. It

even plays recordings on magnetic cassette tapes. Want to hear one?" He produced a tiny cartridge,

inserted it into a space behind the cover, snapped the flap shut, and pressed a switch. Then he

rested the radio on his knee and sat back in his seat, watching Ferracini's face.

Ferracini stared in disbelief as powerful, swinging music poured from the speaker, with a

clarinet leading over several saxophones to a lively, thumping rhythm of accentuated bass. It was

unlike anything that he had ever heard. The popular music of the seventies tended to be a mixture

of militaristic and patriotic marches, Wagner and the dreary dirges of the people who thought

America could save itself by going Fascist, and the wailing about doom and destruction of liberal-

minded adolescents. But this? It was crazy. It didn't go with the times, either -- or with

Ferracini's present mood.

After a few bars of incomprehensible vocal harmonizing, a male soloist came in with the

lyric. Winslade tapped his fingers on the armrest beside him and nodded his head in time with the

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beat.

'Pardon me, boy,

Is that the Chattanooga choo-choo?

Yeah, yeah, track twenty-nine,

Boy, you can gimme a shine.'

Ferracini brought a hand up to cover his brow and shook his head, moaning tiredly. "Claud,

gimme a break. I've just got off a sub that we've been cooped up in for days. We were over the

other side for six weeks...I don't need this right now"

'You leave the Pennsylvania station 'bout a quarter to four,

Read a magazine and then you're in Baltimore,

Dinner in the diner,

Nothing could be finer,

Than to have your ham n' eggs in Carolina.'

Winslade turned the volume down. "Glenn Miller. Would you believe I used to dance to

that?"

Ferracini stared at him incredulously, as if seriously wondering for the first time if

Winslade really had gone insane. "You? Dance?"

"Certainly" A faraway look came into Winslade's eyes. "The Glen Island Casino was the best

spot, off the Shore Road in New Rochelle, New York. That was the prize booking for all the big

bands then. It had the glamour and the prestige. The main room was up on the second floor, and you

could walk out through big French windows and look right across Long Island Sound. All the kids

from Westchester County and Connecticut went there. Ozzie Nelson played there, the Dorsey

Brothers, Charlie Barret and Larry Clinton...You really don't have any idea how the world was

before the fall of Europe and the Nazi atomic attack on Russia, do you, Harry?"

Ferracini stared dubiously at the box in Winslade's hand and listened for a few seconds

longer. "It doesn't make sense," he objected.

"It doesn't have to make sense," Winslade said. "But it's got a positive, confident sound

to it. Doesn't it give you an uplift, Harry? It's happy, free, alive music -- the music of people

who had somewhere to go, and who believed they could get there...who could achieve anything they

wanted to. What happened to that, I wonder."

Ferracini shook his head. "I don't know, and to be honest I can't say I care all that

much, Claud. Look, if you want to take off on a nostalgia trip or something, that's okay, but

leave me out of it. I thought we were supposed to be talking about the assignment that Cassidy and

me were radioed about, that you said had something to do with the President. So, could we get back

to the subject, please?"

Winslade cut off the music and turned to look directly into Ferracini's face. Suddenly his

expression was serious. "But I never left the subject," he said. "This is your next mission...or I

should say, our next mission. I'll be coming along, too, this time -- heading up the team, in

fact."

"Team?"

"Oh, yes. I told you we're on our way to meet some interesting people."

Ferracini struggled to make some kind of connection. Finally he shook his head. "So where

are we going -- Japan? Someplace in the Japanese Empire?"

Winslade's eyes gleamed. "Not where, Harry. We're not going any where at all. We're

staying right here, in the States. Try asking when."

Ferracini could do nothing but look at him blankly. Winslade made a pretense of being

disappointed and nodded toward the radio as if giving a hint. "Back then!" he exclaimed.

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Nonplussed, Ferracini shook his head again. "It's no good. Claud, I still don't get it.

What the hell are you talking about?"

"Nineteen thirty-nine, Harry! That's the next mission. We're going back to the world of

1939!"

CHAPTER 1

TWENTY-FIVE MILES SOUTH of London, near the town of Westerham in the Weald of Kent,

Chartwell Manor and its estate stood amid a rolling landscape of woodlands, fields, and sleepy

farming villages lying chilly and damp in the bleakness of an English February afternoon. Although

cluttered now by such signs of modern times as clumps of roofs spreading among the tree-covered

hillsides, buses and motor cars vanishing and reappearing along roads hidden by high hedgerows,

and bridges and viaducts carrying railway lines south to the coast, the basic character of the

scenery was as it had been for centuries.

Chartwell itself was a massive, two-storey, red-brick affair of indeterminate

architecture, some parts going back to Elizabeth I, standing in spacious grounds and approached

from the road by a curved gravel driveway. A lawn at the rear separated the main building and its

outhouses from a cheerfully rambling layout of walled kitchen garden, rose gardens, greenhouses,

stable, and summer pavilion, interspersed with flagstone terraces and copious shrubbery. Running

water pumped from a reservoir at the bottom of the grounds returned via a system of fishponds,

duckponds, cascades, and rockeries to enliven the gardens and provide a soothing background of

rustling and chattering. Solid, immutable, and serene, the house and its setting epitomized the

English ideal of secure, comfortable, leisurely contentment.

The Right Honorable Winston S. Churchill, parliamentary member for the electoral

constituency of Epping, gazed out at the scene from behind his desk in the south-facing, upstairs

study. Such serenity had not arisen of itself, as part of the natural order of things, he

reflected. It had been fought for by a nation struggling for generations to win and hold a

survival niche against forces of disruption, destruction, and violence that were not of its

invention, but which had existed as part of human nature's darker side for as long as humanity had

existed. Freedom had been won only at heavy cost, and to survive, it had to be protected

jealously. As in the gardens below the window, the blooms and fruits of civilization, carefully

cultivated over long periods of time, would soon be overrun by the weeds of barbarism if the

gardeners relaxed their vigilance. Churchill made a brief note of the analogy for possible future

use, then turned to relight his cigar from a candle kept burning on a side-table for the purpose.

He blew a stream of smoke across the desk and resumed reading the speech that he had made to his

constituents five months previously, late in August 1938.

It is difficult for us...here, in the heart of peaceful, law-abiding England, to realize

the ferocious passions which are rife in Europe, he had said. During this anxious month you have

no doubt seen reports in the newspapers, one week good, another week bad; one week better, another

week worse. But I must tell you that the whole state of Europe and of the world is moving steadily

towards a climax which cannot be long delayed.

That had been before the Anglo-French capitulation to Hitler at Munich and the throwing of

Czechoslovakia to the Nazi wolves. The weeds were threatening to engulf the garden, and the

gardeners were still asleep.

Churchill and a small group, predominantly of Conservatives, had tried to waken them. For

years now, although persistently excluded from cabinet office and the inner ranks of

government, he had been trying to waken them. Germany's withdrawal from the League of Nations and

the Disarmament Conference in 1933, just nine months after Hitler came to power, should have given

ample warning. But the nation hadn't heeded. The Nazi blood purge of the following year, clear

evidence that a powerful, industrialized state was being taken over by criminals and subordinated

to the gutter ethics of street gangs, had failed to provoke the indignation that could have

extinguished Corporal Hitler's grotesque social and political experiment in its infancy.

And it had been the firm reaction of Mussolini, before he changed sides, not of the West,

that had foiled a premature Nazi coup in Austria shortly afterward, in which the Austrian

Chancellor, Dollfuss, had been murdered.

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In 1935, when Germany openly defied the Versailles Treaty by introducing military

conscription and announcing the existence of the Luftwaffe, the Allies had responded by sitting

down at Stresa and solemnly registering an empty protest; then the British had rushed to make

atonement by concluding a naval agreement that permitted unlimited German construction of

warships, including U-boats -- without so much as consulting their French partners.

"Peace at any price," the cry had been. And what was the result? That an extortionate

price had been extracted, there was no doubt: Italy lost from the Allied cause, and Abyssinia

surrendered to brazen, unprovoked aggression; Japan permitted to maraud across China with

impunity; the Rhineland reoccupied by three German battalions flaunting themselves under the very

guns of the French, who had done nothing; preachings of non-intervention in Spain while Franco was

being installed with the help of German bombs and Italian bullets; Austria seized by brute force;

Czechoslovakia abandoned to threats of force. Yes, the price had been high indeed.

And the gain? Not a penny's worth. There would be war yet before the reckoning was done,

Churchill was certain.

In fact, the result had been a grave loss. If there was going to be a war anyway, it would

have been better fought on the terms of the previous September than on those confronting the West

now, in 1939. Czechoslovakia had been intact then, with one of the most capable and well-equipped

armies in Europe. Churchill was convinced that the French should have fought. They should have

fought in September 1938, when the Czechs rejected Hitler's ultimatum to Chamberlain at Godesberg

and mobilized their army, and the British Cabinet was on the verge of rebellion against further

appeasement. Then Russia would have come in through the treaty that pledged her to follow France's

lead -- and the Russians had been eager to act -- after which Britain would surely have been drawn

in, too, even without a treaty obligation. Public opinion would have seen to that, if nothing

else. Then, the chances of crushing Hitlerism might have been good.

Instead, Chamberlain had rushed off, clutching his umbrella, to obey the summons from

Munich, and while he was in the very act of handing the victim over to blackmail, he had publicly

proclaimed his trust in the F?hrer's good will and honesty

"We have sustained a total and unmitigated defeat," Churchill had told the House

afterward, only to be greeted by jeers and a storm of protest. But delirious crowds had welcomed

Chamberlain back from Munich, applauding rapturously when he waved his piece of paper and promised

them "peace

in our time."

In Paris, Frenchmen had wept for joy in the streets as the news spread that war had been

averted. "The fools!" Daladier, the French Premier, muttered as he was being driven back from Le

Bourget airport. "If only they knew what they were cheering."

Churchill sighed, shifted some papers, and took a sip from a glass of Scotch whisky and

water. Reluctant as he was to admit it, he was forced to conclude that his own career, which at

times had appeared quite promising, was leading him now, at age sixty-five, only toward an

outcast's lonely failure. His political burial was already as good as arranged by the architects

of national policy, still persevering in their belief that tolerance and appeasement would

eventually satiate the dictators and win concessions in return. How many times now had the

delusion been exposed for all who wished to see? Yet the blindness remained.

However, the end of a political life didn't mean the end of living, he reflected

philosophically. He had tried his best to uphold what was right as he saw it, and he had never

deviated from the guidance of the moral principles that he believed in. Not many men could say

that, even at the end of lifetimes usually judged far more successful. That was adequate

compensation in itself. He had a comfortable home and a devoted family. There were some stock-

raising ventures that he wanted to experiment with. His History of the English-Speaking Peoples,

begun ten years ago now, awaited completion. And there would always be plenty of painting..

No. It was no good.

He thrust out his lower lip and shook his head. There could be no disguising the sadness

and bitterness. It wasn't so much any sense of personal injustice that dismayed him -- anyone

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choosing a politician's life should be prepared for the risks, after all -- but the prospect of

watching the institutions of freedom and democracy, which he had devoted his life's work to

defending Passionately, debasing and prostrating themselves before tyranny, brutality, and every

other antithesis of decency and civilization. The consequence of giving the world such a precedent

to learn from could only be a calamity.

But why was it happening? Nobody could be as blind as some people were pretending to be.

The only explanation could be that they didn't want to see.

That was what was disturbing him more: his suspicions about the motives of some sectors of

the influential social and political circles from which he had been ostracized. The West had been

too eager to pour loans into bankrupt Germany. Too many occasions when firmness might have put an

end to Hitler had been allowed to slip by on flimsy pretexts. Too much Nazi propaganda circulated

too freely in too much of the English and French press. Too many apologists for Nazism were at

work among the West's trend-setters and opinion-molders.

The rich and the privileged, he concluded, saw a resurrected and rearmed Germany, Nazified

or not, as a shield against Russia. They would preserve themselves and their lineages by erecting

a barrier that would prevent Communism from expanding farther westward.

That was something that Churchill would never be a party to. There could be no

justification for protecting oneself from a thief by hiring a murderer. Heaven alone knew

Churchill was no friend of Bolshevism, and he was not about to start unsaying any of the things

now that he had been saying all his life; but the response to one odious ideology couldn't be to

inflict a second upon the world. No end could be justified by setting loose the Gestapo, the SS,

and the rest of the hideous apparatus of the totalitarian Nazi state upon the hapless, helpless,

long-suffering peoples of Europe.

The tinkling of the telephone on the desk interrupted his ruminations. He picked up the

receiver, took his cigar from his mouth, and rasped, "Yes?"

"Mrs. Sandys is calling from London," the voice of his secretary informed him from the

room downstairs that she used as an office. She was referring to Churchill's eldest daughter,

Diana. "She insists on speaking to you, I'm afraid."

"Oh, no trouble, Mary. Do put her through."

"Very well." A buzzing sounded on the line, followed by clicks.

"Yes? Yes?...Is anyone there? Oh, confound this damn thing!"

"You're through, Mrs. Sandys." Click.

"Papa?"

"Oh, you're there, Diana. What's up? Is something wrong?"

"No, nothing's wrong. It's just that Duncan and I thought we'd do some shopping this

afternoon while we're in town, and perhaps see a play later this evening. So we won't be back for

dinner after all."

"I see. Well, thank you for letting me know. Have you told Elsie?"

"Mary said she'd take care of it. Is there anything you need that we can get while we're

here?"

"Hmm...I don't think so, really...Was that all? Mary

made it sound like a matter of life and death."

Diana laughed. "No, that's not all. I wanted to say hello, too, and make sure you're

feeling all right. You sounded as if you might be catching a cold this morning. I hope you weren't

busy."

"Never too busy for you, my dear. No, I feel fine, thank you. It must have been just a

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Hogan, James P - The Proteus Operation

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