“It’s good to see you again,” Oliver said. Not normally a demonstrative man, he bent over and kissed her before taking a seat. He smiled at her. “I don’t suppose we have time…”
“We’ll make time,” she said. It had been a week and her body missed him dreadfully. Afterwards, she held him in the bedroom that was part of her office; she lived in the building itself when she wasn’t back in New York. “So, what happened?”
“Oh, not much,” Oliver said. “I had a meeting with the Mayor of New York, who wants to buy Geiger counters for removing the radioactive materials, and such items are covered under the Treaty. They’re prohibited, so I discussed the matter with the folks back home and they agreed to loan a MOD clean-up team for the remains of a radiological attack.” He smiled and gently stroked her breast. “It’s not quite what they wanted, but its better than anyone else got.”
“And Groves wasn’t happy?” Cora asked. She grinned as Oliver smiled wryly; she wasn’t meant to know about Groves. “One would have thought that his… lot could have supplied the counters, if not the radiation-protection suits.”
“Groves thinks that the rubble holds the keys to expanding the program I’m not supposed to tell you about,” Oliver said. “It doesn’t, I’m fairly certain; there wasn’t that much radioactivity. The only real danger, apart from the explosion itself, will be long-term for anyone who might have sucked in some of the poisoned dust.”
Cora shivered. Everyone knew about atomic weapons now; the only reason that there hadn’t been a major panic was that everyone also knew that the Germans had no way of launching bombers over the Atlantic, and the Coast Guard was searching every ship that tried to dock. She shivered again; Oliver had once commented that what everyone knew wasn’t always the truth.
“I hope you’re right,” she said absently. She’d seen the videos of the terrible war in the future. “After all, wasn’t that why you obtained that controlling interest in that oil company?”
Oliver smiled. She hadn’t understood, at the time, why Oliver had spent so much money to gain control of a major oil company… except it had held a great deal of stock in Saudi Arabia…which was now the Republic of Arabia. Any new contracts with the Arabs would be done on a sensible basis.
“Yes,” he said finally, before pulling himself out of bed and heading for the shower. “They did quite enough damage before I got control and stopped them howling about what imperialism had done to their profit margin.”
She heard the shower start. A wicked thought struck her and she padded after him, slipping neatly into the shower. “So, what did the USAAF have to say?”
Oliver kissed her as the water flowed down over their bodies. “Thank you for the bombers… more!” He said. “They want two thousand of the B-29’s and they want us to get the jet B-52s in the air as quickly as possible. They have big plans, now that Kaiser has his Liberty Ships on the production line; they have big plans to pound Germany into the dirt. They’re thinking about bases in Africa, Britain… and most of all Norway.”
Cora frowned. “Will there be anything left of Norway when they’re done?”
“I hope so,” Oliver said seriously. “Between us and the Germans, the entire infrastructure has been wrecked. The bastards are shipping Swedes out to Poland, to provide them with new settlers, and the Russians are just killing anyone who even looks at them funny. We’re at least trying – thank God for the grain harvest last year – to feed those in our territory, but shipping is a pain.”
Cora blinked. “I thought that the Germans had been forced out of the Atlantic,” she said.
Oliver smiled. “Turned out that the bastard Russians had copied the Nazi u-boat designs… once all of the Royal Navy’s asserts were turned to the Mediterranean or the Far East.” He chuckled as she started to wash his back. “Incidentally, we picked up a lot of contracts for Australia; they seem to be having ideas about launching an island-hopping campaign.”
Cora lifted an eyebrow, knowing that he couldn’t see her. “They told you that?”
“What else can one do with landing craft designed to make a landing under fire?” Oliver asked dryly. “Anyway, the Red Navy or whatever they called it had a couple of weeks of happy time with the ships of the United States Navy, but once alerted to the threat Admiral King counter-attacked and borrowed ASW asserts from England to help out.”
He snorted as she finished washing his body and turned to wash hers. “Speaking of the Navy, they were very keen to get their own B-29s, just to prevent the Army getting all the glory. They’ve been fitting the test models with anti-submarine weapons and bombs designed to take out ships – which history suggests won’t work – for the defence of the Philippines.”
Cora considered. She’d had a fairly complete brief on the alternative future and on the changes being made by the future Britain. “Does Japan have the capability to launch an invasion?”
“Perhaps if MacArthur was still in command,” Oliver said dryly. The dead General was the butt of jokes all over the United States. “He would send a poodle and a little boy called Maurice out to fight the Japanese.” He shook his head. “Between their losses in Australia and the loss of pretty much all of their navy, its hard to see how they could take the Philippines.”
“They really are looking for excuses to get their hands on aircraft the army can’t use,” Cora said. She sighed as his hands passed over her private place. “What are they going to do with them? Bomb Japan?”
“The President hasn’t declared war on Japan,” Oliver reminded her. “Congress felt that two wars were enough, and both Germany and Russia look pretty intimidating.” He stepped out of the shower and picked up a towel. “Their current nightmare is the Germans building a B-52 of their own and flying it to Washington.” He snorted. “Not possible, of course, and even if it were, aircraft from Britain could intercept it with ease. Far more likely, of course, is rockets; the Germans had a pretty advanced program before we arrived and seeing the Ministry of Space at work will only push them forward.”
“I suppose,” Cora said. “What else are we doing for lots of cash?”
She smiled as Oliver’s eyes travelled up and down her body as she stepped out of the shower. “We’re building a small force of airliners,” he said. “Mainly for hopping around America and the Caribbean, and perhaps further down. We’re building some jet fighters, although its something of a waste of time at the moment, so its lucky we’re also building Mustangs and Hellcats.”
“Whose idea was that?” Cora asked. “Don’t they trust your people to give them fighter cover?”
“It’s not a bad idea,” Oliver said. His voice sounded amused. “Mainly Admiral King, however; he’s been controlling the crash-program to build the Essex and Midway class of carriers; perhaps he knows something we don’t about the future plans.”
“Or maybe he just wants to make certain that the Navy gets its share of the funding,” Cora said. “What about the tanks?”
“Ten thousand fireflies; ten thousand Franks,” Oliver said. He stepped out of the shower and into the main room, pulling on his suit and tie. “How does life as a director suit you?”
Cora started to dress as well, changing her underwear and motioning for him to pick up some of his clothes. “Not too bad,” she said. She smiled; he asked the same thing every week. “I do wish that we could see more of each other though; I do love scandalising the upper-class nuts.”