Oliver narrowed his eyes. “What is the meeting about?” He asked directly. “I’m a very busy man, you know.”
“I can promise you commercial opportunities beyond your wildest dreams,” Hoover said, almost whispering. “We’re going to retake our country.”
The Quiet Room was set in a quiet woodland estate, hidden neatly from view. Cars – some older American designs, some of the newer British designs – swept up to the house, disgorging their passengers and a small army of FBI agents, who took up guard positions and displaced the British staff of the house. Oliver had arranged overtime payments and a night on the town for the entire staff, just to reduce the number of possible eavesdroppers.
The recorder on his mobile phone buzzed once as the security fields jammed it up, inserting white noise into its receptors. All ingoing and outgoing signals were jammed, preventing anyone from calling for assistance or relaying a signal out to a watching spy team. Inside, the rooms were all tastefully decorated, including some artwork that would be very valuable indeed in sixty years.
Long-term investment, Oliver thought, and smiled. There were entire warehouses of such materials, collected by him and a handful of British art collectors.
“Ah, Mr Oliver,” a man said. It took Oliver a moment to recognise him as Field Marshal Douglas MacArthur, the disgraced military commander. He spoke in a booming voice that admitted no defeat. “How nice to see you here.”
“Thank you,” Oliver said, wondering what sort of small talk he could make. MacArthur solved the problem by wandering off and shaking hands with another newcomer, Congressman Martin Dies, founder and chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, the infamous HUAC. Oliver blinked; Congressman Dies had refused to pursue the Ku Klux Klan, despite more than enough evidence of its ‘un-American’ nature.
Oliver stepped into the main meeting room and took a seat, counting heads and making mental notes. Apart from Hoover, there were other Congressmen and Senators, a couple of Southern Governors, a handful of figures that seemed to be military… and Douglas MacArthur. All were white, all were clearly rich and influential; he spotted several industrialists in the crowd. He was on friendly terms with a few of them.
“Thank you all for coming,” Hoover said. His voice instantly silenced the room. “Our nation is under threat, from without and within. From the outside, we stamp over Norway while our so-called ally, Britain, snatches the most valuable bits of land, and from the inside, a communist-dominated plot to unleash race war upon us all.
“I have it on good authority that there are communist agents close to the President, even in Congress,” Hoover thundered. “Henry Wallace, new decryption methods make clear, is a communist agent! The men he plans to appoint to the Cabinet, should he become President, Laurence Duggan and Harry Dexter White, are known traitors feeding information to Moscow! Look; did Wallace not take the lead in demanding that President Roosevelt recall the patriot Field Marshal Douglas MacArthur?”
Hoover glared around the room. “The history files make it clear that President Roosevelt ordered Field Marshal MacArthur out of the Philippines, but who mentions that? What sort of a soldier refuses to obey orders?” There were some chuckles. “Throughout our country, strong action is required… and we intend to take it!”
Oliver shivered as he looked around the room. Many of the movers and shakers in America were seated in the room, including the Speaker of the House of Representatives, William Brockman Bankhead. Oliver winced; Bankhead was third in line to the Presidency… if something happened to Roosevelt and Truman.
“We have no role in the war,” MacArthur said. “The war could be ended in a week if the British unleashed their hell-weapons. Why haven’t they? They want us to bleed for them, while they save their strength!”
“We have to return to isolation and put our own house in order,” Bankhead said. “Naturally, we expect your support for this.”
There was a long discussion. Oliver listened carefully without saying anything, except when an industrialist asked what he was doing in the room. Hoover’s mischievous explanation – that the British government would want his head on a platter if certain matters became public – settled some nerves. They actually believed that they could make a coup succeed!
Oliver considered some of the people in the room and swore. Given some luck and determined leadership, they might just succeed. Hoover was thinking several steps ahead; the British might just cut off technology imports if America left the war, but if Oliver was there to help them, America would catch up quite quickly.
Holy shit, he thought grimly, as the discussion went on and on. What the hell do I do now?
Chapter Thirty-Six: Preparations
Churchill Space Centre
French Guiana, South America
8th June 1941
The massive shape stood on the launch pad; a single massive cylinder, propped up by two rockets. It was basic space shuttle technology, modified in ways that only the truly innovative could have thought of, matched with the political will to make it work, whatever the cost.
“They made fun of this in the papers,” Goddard said. He’d been delighted by the proposal; the new computers made calculating little details like orbital paths and velocity easy. “They kept asking what was the point of sending up empty tanks.”
Dashwood chuckled. “Reporters only have imagination when it comes to imagining romances and scandal,” he said. “The very concept of building a space station in space from fuel tanks never seemed to occur to any of them, even though we’re launching three Goddard rockets a week.” He waved a hand at the rocket on the pad. “Look at it, Doctor; an Armstrong-class tank launcher.”
He grinned madly, pacing around the room. “It’s a very simple device to mass-produce and it’s cheap as anything; hell, you could buy a car for the cost of the rockets, now that I got some good accountants working on the budget. All that is needed is the tank itself, then once its in LEO, the team can build themselves living quarters.”
“We also have to continue the Goddard launch schedule,” Tempest reminded them, consulting his PDA. “Now that we have corrected the… bad quality control on the Goddard-class, we can continue launching satellites and complete the satellite grid.”
Dashwood scowled at the reminder of the launch disaster. The three successive successful launches hadn’t quite dimmed the concern that had spread over the Ministry of Space, even though the name was hardly official yet. Even so, the reconnaissance over the entire planet was improving steadily; the RAF, for one, had been delighted, even though MI6 had been working hard on sending agents into enemy territory.
“The main priority now is to get the station built,” Dashwood said. He glanced down at his own PDA. “By next week, I want all of the first tanks in orbit, just so they’re there for us. According to the manufactory, we should have the first Clarke-class heavy lift rocket in a couple of weeks, by which time we’ll have launched most of the supplies into space. How are the astronauts coming along?”
“They’re doing fine in the rigged-up water tank, although we did have to swear upon a massive stack of bibles that it wasn’t a trick,” Tempest said. “That dratted show really buggered up the public’s trust in space flight.”
“Bastards,” Dashwood agreed. “And the simulations?”