He smiled as Hoover and his so-called boyfriend gaped at him. They knew who he was, he realised; they were both fingering pistols. The expressions on their faces were priceless; did the woman running the house know what was happening?
“I may be seated?” He asked, taking a seat. “I have a proposition to put to you.”
Hoover’s face resumed its famous bulldog appearance. “I know who you are,” he growled.
“That’s wonderful,” Ritter said cheerfully. “Then you’re in no doubt at all about my offer.”
“You are responsible for a gun-running ring that is smuggling weapons north to Canada,” Hoover said. “You are the agent of the SS within America.”
“The Abwehr,” Ritter corrected. It didn’t matter that much; the last he’d heard the Abwehr had been merged into the SS, along with the Gestapo. “Yes, I have been doing a little gun-running… but then, I didn’t have anything to do with your coup.”
“We would have cleaned up you filth,” Hoover said. Beside him, Tolson stiffened. “We would never have accepted help from you.”
“Now, now, Mr Hoover,” Ritter chided. “Drowning men can hardly complain about the quality of the straw that saves them.”
He had Hoover’s interest, despite the tough-guy act. He could tell. “We have an offer to make to you,” he said. “We both have some interest in the war coming to an end… and we believe that you could help us do that.”
“You want me to turn traitor?” Hoover asked. “You expect me to betray my country?”
Ritter smiled; the bait had been taken. “We know that it was not us, nor the Soviets, who destroyed a large portion of New York,” he said. “We don’t possess atomic weapons.”
Hoover glared at him. The information would appeal to his prejudices, but it had to be done carefully. “You’re trying to get them,” he said.
“If we had them, we would use them to force the British to back off,” Ritter said. “My dear Hoover; the British blasted a large part of New York, just to keep you in the war. Hell, they might even have planned it so your coup would fail.”
He watched Hoover’s face twisting. He knew – with a lifetime’s worth of experience in the military intelligence world – that the British were unlikely to be able to do anything of the sort, but who knew what they could do with their advanced technology?
“The British want you to destroy us,” he said. “We… have some interest in preventing that from happening. You’ve seen their advanced technology… they were apparently pretty powerful in the world they left, but nothing compared to America. This world… they will own.”
Tolson lifted an eyebrow. His expression as he looked down at Hoover was concerned. “You feel that the British have plans for world domination?”
“I would, in their place,” Ritter said honestly.
“I am not going to work for Herr Hitler,” Hoover said. Ritter shrugged; Hitler had been dead for a while now. “I will, however, be willing to trade information.”
“Which is all I expected,” Ritter said. “Tell me, how many of the remaining senators and congressmen could you influence?”
Hoover thought for a moment. “Perhaps a hundred at most,” he said finally. “They could be convinced to take an anti-British line quite easily.”
Ritter smiled. “A word of advice then,” he said. “I would get out of Washington and go someplace else.”
Hoover shook his head. “Here… is as safe as anywhere else,” he said. “Perhaps…”
Ritter shrugged. “I look forward to helping you regain your former prominence,” he said. He smiled; he knew that it was delusion. Hoover wanted revenge for his problems… and men like that were easy to manipulate.
Testing Zone
Nevada, USA
30th March 1942
The scorching heat of the Nevada Desert passed across William J. Donovan’s body as he watched the preparations running around the rocket mounted on the pad. He ignored the heat, wondering again at his decision to come watch the launch in person; the Military Space Agency had had more than its fair share of disasters.
He studied his briefing notes while waiting for the launch. The new Office of Strategic Services had been set up the day after the Wet Firecracker Rebellion had been ended, tasked with controlling all intelligence operations within and outside the United States. Somewhat to his surprise, he’d been so successful in the other history that Truman – who’d apparently sacked him during the original history – had ordered him to set up the OSS without demur, and granted him considerable authority.
He smiled. The Military Space Agency, the new organisation designed to prevent in-fighting between the Army and the Navy, was tasked with putting America in space, by whatever means necessary. Truman might be good friends with the British Prime Minister, but no one was so foolish as imagine that the British would quite happily continue to share intelligence from orbital reconnaissance once the war was over… and if some of Ambassador King’s projections about the use of space weapons were true, they could not be allowed unchallenged control of space.
“Mr Donovan,” a voice said. Donovan nodded politely as Doctor Wilson, the director of the project, strode up to greet him. He had a flat intense face, with short steel-grey hair and grey eyes, and would have been handsome a few years earlier. “I assume you’re here to watch the launch?”
“Of course,” Donovan replied. He smiled to himself; Wilson’s intense manner matched his face. “What sort of success do you hope for this time?”
Wilson didn’t quite glare at him, but he looked very much as if he would have liked to have done so. “We’re concentrating on recon satellites of our own design,” he said. “It’s basically simple; the satellite orbits over the planet, its camera’s timed to trigger at the right time, and then it drops it’s films back to Earth.”
“Very impressive,” Donovan said. “How good is it compared to the British designs?”
“We’re getting there,” Wilson said defensively. “We do have the designs for the rockets that were being built in America, and we’ve even purchased a few hundred. Unfortunately, the British mix and match their technology and our technology, which is why they have a nearly one hundred percent success rate.”
Donovan nodded. “Have they tried to interfere with your launches?”
“No,” Wilson said. “They have insisted upon a liaison team, which as we have one at Churchill isn’t such a bad idea, and they have insisted upon notification of flight paths, just to avoid a collision between their space station and our rockets.”
Donovan lifted an eyebrow. “How likely is that?”
Wilson smiled grimly. “Pretty much non-existent,” he said. “For the moment, we’ve been putting things into decaying orbits, rather than stable ones. Still, it makes sense that they would be concerned; they don’t have anything like the lifting capability to evacuate their station in a hurry.”
Donovan frowned. “Could we do it, if we had to?”
Wilson hesitated. “Perhaps,” he said finally. “It would be very difficult, however; the orbit would have to be precisely calculated.” He narrowed his eyes. “You are considering war, Mr Donovan?”
“No,” Donovan said, not quite certain if he was lying. He liked the British, at least the ones he’d met before 1940 and the Transition, but he had to admit, they were taking space far more seriously than anyone else. “Tell me, what about the British statement of principle on space access and development rights?”