Hanover smiled tiredly to himself. He’d never married; never produced children. There were times that he regretted it, or considered an affair with one of his female friends, but he’d finally dismissed the thought. It didn’t befit a Prime Minister to have affairs during office, even though most of them had indeed had affairs.
Still, his rooms looked very empty, without the detritus of children, or even a wife. Running the country had been his only interest for the six years since the Transition; he’d finally had enough of the job. He could have stood for re-election, and he would have won, but the job was far harder when Britain was a superpower. He smiled; it would be McLachlan who would have to handle the problems in Egypt, or the security guarantees for Hong Kong… everything that Britain had said goodbye to when the Empire had been wound down – before they’d been offered a second chance.
He smiled. McLachlan had offered him a cabinet post, but he’d declined them all, yielding only to one request, from Prime Minister Nehru. India needed a Governor-General; he’d been nominated for the role. These days, it was supposed to be purely ceremonial – the Princes who had been wastrels had been quietly removed – and it would be a good place for a long rest. As a voting member of the Commonwealth, India would hardly allow him a serious role within their power structure, confusing as it was.
“Prime Minister,” his aide said, too conditioned to call him by that title to change now. “Major Stirling is here to see you.”
Hanover nodded. Stirling had gone on to serve in a combat command – a necessity for anyone who wanted to reach high office – before being assigned to the Ministry of Space. He’d been surprised when Stirling had asked for a meeting, but as a former aide, Hanover could hardly refuse.
He smiled when Stirling entered. Four years hadn’t changed him much; his hair was as blonde as ever. A wedding ring sat on one hand and Hanover felt a flicker of envy, before extending his hand for a handshake. Stirling’s grip was firm; a combat command had clearly agreed with him.
“It’s good to see you again,” he said, sincerely. “Who’s the lucky woman?”
Stirling smiled, a little abashed. “You won’t have heard of her,” he said. “It’s good to see you again too, sir.”
Hanover smiled. “I’m no longer Prime Minister, Major,” he said. “You may call me Charles.”
Stirling smiled. “That’s one of the things I wanted to ask you,” he said. “Why did you resign as Prime Minister?”
“I didn’t exactly resign,” Hanover said. “I merely hand-picked the next leader of the Conservative Party, and then didn’t stand in the election. John will do a good job; he knows how to compromise, and that’s a talent the Commonwealth will need.”
“The Commonwealth is strong,” Stirling said. “Your work, sir…”
“The Commonwealth hasn’t faced a really serious threat yet,” Hanover said. “Once such a threat appears, then we’ll see how strong it is.” He shook his head. “I was tired, Steve; tired of making the hard decisions, the ones that keep a person awake at night.”
Stirling seemed to want to ask something. Hanover waited patiently. “Is Elspeth Mortimer’s story true?” He asked finally. “Did we really sink an American SSBN?”
Hanover smiled sadly. “She’s too ambitious for her own good, that one,” he said. “Seeing that she has all the charm of a killer cobra, she has to work through people with more charm.”
Stirling lifted an eyebrow. “Like you?”
Hanover shook his head. “She wants a puppet,” he said. “I have greater ambitions for the rest of my life.”
Stirling smiled brightly. “Rumour has it that you destroyed his career,” he said.
Hanover frowned. “He did it to himself,” he said. “He gambled everything on one toss of the dice… and then a gust of wind blew them over.” He looked up at Stirling grimly. “Do you know why we’re not like America?” He asked. “The Americans say that they want a leader, but Hitler or Stalin were both leaders. The President determines his country’s attitudes; he is both Head of Government and Head of State. For us… we like being quieter.”
“Speak softly and carry a big stick,” Stirling said.
“Exactly,” Hanover said. “For us, with four major political parties, compromise is a requirement for getting anything done, even now. Mortimer… was too loud at the wrong time, damaging his own party and they expelled him, merely to make it clear that they had nothing to do with him.” He chuckled. “Break the rules so badly; you get broken.”
Stirling sighed. “Did we really sink an American submarine?”
Hanover looked up at him. “What do you think?” He asked. “Do you believe the story?”
“No,” Stirling said finally. “There are too many holes in the story, too many things that remain unexplained, starting with the fact that nothing else has come out of the future since we did… unless the submarine was there all along, but under the water. We should never have gotten a sniff of it, but if we had, we would have been able to talk to it and…”
Hanover sighed. “The story is impossible to disprove,” he said. Stirling nodded. “That was, of course, something of the point; any American captain, seeing his country’s future threatened by us, might consider firing on London. As a story, it provides an explanation that is just believable enough for people so they don’t dig any further.”
“The Artful sunk the American battleship and our liner,” Stirling said. “Why?”
Hanover sighed. “Thousands of Americans, mainly industrial experts, some nuclear UN personnel, military officers from the bases here, businessmen… all of whom had spent their internment learning all they could about history and technology, were on those ships,” he said. “We needed time; time to ensure that we were in a position to build our own base and industries.”
“They couldn’t have done that much,” Stirling said.
“More than you might think,” Hanover said. “Merely knowing that something is possible is half the battle.” He sighed again. “And, of course, we needed the Americans in the war.”
Stirling nodded. Hanover could follow his thoughts; the moment when it seemed that the Axis powers would break the fragile thin red line and smash any chance of victory before it was too late and Europe would have to be destroyed. They had needed the Americans, and Roosevelt had been reluctant to get directly involved…
“Did you organise the coup in America?” Stirling asked suddenly. “Did you supply Hoover with those bugs?”
Hanover snorted. “You’re thinking wonder-man, the Bond villain who knows everything and does everything according to a grand plan of pure evil,” he said dryly. “Can’t control everything, you know. I don’t know where those bugs came from… and, before you ask, we didn’t have anything to do with New York either.”
“The Germans did that,” Stirling said. That had come out when the SS’s records had been studied. “They wanted to expand the war as well.”
“How nice of them,” Hanover said. “We should have sunk that ship, and would have done if Roosevelt had been able to get his thumb out of his butt.”
Stirling frowned. “Speaking of sunken ships, what really happened to the Artful?”
Hanover lifted an eyebrow. “What do you mean?”
“We lost three submarines in this war,” Stirling said. “One was an SAS insertion submarine, one was an Australian submarine that got too close to Japan, and the Artful, which should have been indestructible by anything the Japanese had. I don’t buy it; I don’t believe that the ship that sunk the American ship then went off to the Far East and suffered a critical engine failure.”