Per their agreement, they both wore civilian clothes to disguise their differences in rank. He wondered if it mattered any more since they were becoming so comfortable together. He wore a jacket, dark slacks, and a sweater, which she laughingly said looked almost like a uniform. She wore the roughly the same ensemble, but slacks were plaid and, of course, were tighter where it counted, and reinforced his opinion that she had a lovely figure. The bruises and scars on her face were continuing to fade and were now barely noticeable. She thought she would have a hairline scar above her lip where the stitches had begun. A badge of honor, she'd said.
Tom was curious about her hair. Many women died their hair, but a lot did so to look blond, which meant they had to contend with dark roots. Alicia, on the other hand, had blond roots intruding on her darker hair. When she caught him looking, she said she'd tell him the story some time, but not now. He was smart enough to keep still.
"Along with the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier," she said, "this is a part of the cemetery that enthralls me."
They were beside the strange and stark structure that had been the mast of the U.S.S. Maine, the battleship that had blown up in Havana harbor and caused the United States to go to war with Spain in 1898.
"Do you wonder how it happened?" he asked. "I have. In fact I wrote an essay on it back at West Pointe."
"What was your conclusion?"
"That the cause was unknown and likely to stay that way. There are two major theories, of course. One is that the ship was hit by a mine and the second is an internal coal fire explosion. Both theories are a stretch. Along with getting a mine to make contact, the Spanish would have been either careless with their mines, or stupid to attack the ship. As to the fire, the Maine's captain and her crew knew full well the dangers of coal fires and would have been on the lookout for something smoldering and the heat that would have been given off. Their lives literally depended on it."
"So what does that leave?"
"Something else, maybe. Perhaps it was a rogue bunch of Spanish officers acting on their own, or a crewman on the Maine doing something incredibly careless or stupid."
"What did you get on the essay?"
"I got a 'B'. The instructor said I had a great imagination."
She laughed and then turned grim. She tucked her arm in his as they walked around the graves. "I taught American history a couple of semesters and the Spanish American War was part of it,” she said. “One of the crewmen killed was an officer named Friend Jenkins. I thought it strange that someone named Friend would be killed in an event that started a war. I went looking for his grave here in Arlington, but found that he was buried somewhere around Pittsburg. There are a hundred and sixty or so crewmen buried here and nobody really knows why they died. That's one of the reasons I feel compelled to come here. It's also in honor of the men who died at Pearl Harbor and who are either unknown or entombed in the Arizona and the Oklahoma. I think everybody who dies should have an honorable burial and everyone should know just why a man dies."
"I have no idea how to respond to that."
"Then don't try. Someday I think I'd like to come out here and serenade the dead with my violin."
"I'll come with you when you do."
She squeezed his arm. "I'll have to practice some more. Right now, even the dead wouldn't like the way I'm playing. They might get up and leave. In the meantime, why don't you take me to lunch? Someplace away from Washington would be nice and not just because nobody would recognize us. To paraphrase Rhett Butler, I frankly don't give a damn."
Tom grinned. Neither did he.
Secretary of State Cordell Hull was seventy-four years old and had served in that position for eleven years. Prior to that, he'd been in the House of Representatives and then in the U.S. Senate. At one time he'd had aspirations of becoming president, but those had faded as reality set in.
Hull was in ill health and had been contemplating retirement when the war began. He felt that he should stay on to ensure that American interests were best served. He had no illusions. He knew he wasn't irreplaceable. No one is. He had a reputation for bluntness and his illness was making him irascible as well.
Hans Thomsen, the German Charge d'Affairs sat across from him in Hull's office in the Main State Building on C Street NW in the Foggy Bottom area of Washington. There had been no German ambassador in Washington for a few years, just as there was no American ambassador in Berlin. Hull sometimes thought that was a mistake. However, one plays the cards one is dealt. Thomsen was in his early fifties and rumor had it that he was not a fervent disciple of Hitler.
It didn't matter to Hull. As Hitler's representative, Thomsen was due for a scolding.
"My dear Mr. Thomsen, please tell me, do you want war with us or not?"
Thomsen smiled at Hull's bluntness. It was expected. "I would hope not and I would never want war. Our two countries should never clash over matters that are so trivial."
Hull glared at him. "Trivial? What is trivial about German warships on the Great Lakes and what is trivial about them shooting at American soldiers who were simply doing their duty? And why was that damned E-boat in American waters in the first place? And what was it doing shooting up small craft that might have been American boats containing American citizens who were simply out fishing or some other legitimate enterprise? It seems damned rash to me."
Thomsen was prepared and responded quickly. "The shooting of your soldiers by our boat was regrettable. The captain thought he had been taken under fire and retaliated. The death of an American soldier is more than offset by the two dead and five wounded on the E-boat. And the E-boat is scarcely more than an armed patrol craft, and not a warship."
"Then get rid of those torpedoes. A patrol craft in the Great Lakes does not need torpedoes. Torpedoes are intended to sink major warships and that makes the E-boat a major warship herself."
"I will take that point under advisement. As to the fact of the E-boat firing on small craft, it was in hot pursuit of what was believed to be a number of smugglers and simply didn't realize they were so close to shore in the night."
Smugglers my ass, Hull thought. "You know as well as I do that they were refugees and not smugglers. And you also know that the E-boat's skipper knew precisely where he was."
"Regardless, the resulting mistake was tragic."
"There have been too many tragic mistakes lately," Hull snarled. "And, yes, that includes the botched attack by the Canadian Legion on an army courier in Washington itself."
Thomsen wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. "I think we can safely say that a number of young men in the Canadian Legion were far more enthusiastic in support of the Reich than they should have been. As in so many new situations, the matter is fluid and the men uncertain."
Hull sat back in his swivel chair. He felt so tired. "So, we have another mistake and another apology. Frankly, sir, I am getting damn sick and tired of them."
"As am I, Mr. Secretary. May I remind you that the Reich has repeatedly complained that you have given sanctuary to the major portion of the Royal Navy and the ships’ crews? I would also remind you that the Reich has complained about the existence of so-called governments in exile that fled from England to here. I mean, of course, the shadow and illegal governments of Norway, Holland, Denmark, and Belgium. We would also like Mr. Churchill returned so he can be tried as a war criminal in accordance with the rules established by the League of Nations."
"The League is defunct and Germany quit it in 1933, around the same time that Japan quit, while the United States never joined. Therefore neither of us is bound by the League's unenforceable rules."