“Opinion is divided,” Wilson admitted. “I’m in favour; others are not.”
Donovan nodded and then turned to watch the launch site as the countdown began to count down the final moments to launch. The British had stated that anyone who reached a space object, the moon or an asteroid, would own that object, provided they made use of it within a set period. President Truman hadn’t disagreed, but Donovan suspected that he should have done, if space was as important as the British clearly believed it was.
“Blast-off,” Wilson said, as the rocket slowly lifted itself into the sky. Donovan, who had been expecting a whoosh and the rocket vanishing into the distance, was almost disappointed. “Now we find out… what we find out.”
Donovan nodded. As head of the OSS, he understood that. “What about the manned space program?”
“We don’t have anything like the capability required, yet,” Wilson said. “Building either a space capsule or a space aircraft is tricky. We’re working on a spaceplane design using a simplified version of a 2015 design, but it might just be a glorified death trap.”
Donovan felt a flicker of dismay. “You still have volunteers?” He asked. “They’ll allow you to risk their lives like that?”
“Oh, yes,” Wilson said. “They can’t wait to go.”
Wilson’s mobile phone rang. Donovan stepped to one side as Wilson listened before putting the phone back in his pocket. “They’re still picking up telemetry from the rocket,” he said. “It’s managed to separate properly, according to the British satellites.”
Donovan smiled at the irony. “Let me know what the results are,” he said. “I for one look forward to knowing what they are.”
The satellite, almost a guided missile, orbited the Earth several times very quickly, moving below the British space station, passing over the Reich and then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Donovan retired to his quarters on the base while waiting, considering the reports from his own people. He’d been working hard on infiltrating agents into German-held territory, but it was very difficult; the Germans were cracking down harder and harder on the French and Italians who served them.
He smiled to himself. The British had been more than willing to cooperate with the OSS, but even they were having problems; the SAS was perfect for sneaking around, but not for making delicate contacts with possible sources. The OSS had contacts in the Mexican embassy in Germany – and the Germans were selling weapons to the Mexicans, much to America’s annoyance – but it was harder to move around in Berlin.
Donovan shook his head and checked the other reports. The China Lobby was very keen on sending supplies from the Philippines into China, to arm the Chinese factions. That wasn’t easy either; one faction was very pro-Russia, particularly since Mao was killed by the Japanese – or at least everyone said he was killed by the Japanese. Donovan snorted; the NKVD would have had little hesitation in terminating a man who would be such a pain to Stalin in the future.
“The so-called Nationalists are corrupt, vernal and couldn’t fight a battle to save their own hides,” Stillwell had said, and flatly refused to have anything to do with the project. He’d wanted to simply give up on China; between incompetent rulers, the Japanese and deadly disease outbreaks, there was little hope for assistance in the future.
He jumped out of his musings when a plane flew overhead. The only way to recover the photographs was to have a plane catch them as they fell; he glanced at his watch and was astonished to notice that several hours had gone by without him noticing.
“I must have been asleep,” he said, and stumbled out into the main centre. Wilson waved to him and dragged him towards the darkroom, where the photographs were being developed. “What do they look like?”
“They’re… not bad,” Wilson said, as the wet images were laid on the table. Donovan considered them; they were nothing like as neat and precise as the British images, but they were a start.
“A good start,” he said aloud. “Now… how many more can you put up in a day?”
Chapter Seven: Affairs of Public Interest
BBC Headquarters
London, United Kingdom
30th March 1942
Baron Edmund enjoyed his work, most of the time. Even before the Transition, a series of careful and forward-looking decisions by the BBC staff had placed the Corporation firmly at the forefront of British television – defeating Sky and the other American news services – by developing pay-per-view technology to allow immediate access to almost any program. A viewer who had paid the proper fee could access any program at once from a BBC satellite or Internet server.
He smiled to himself as he read through the briefing papers. The entire world network of reporters had – naturally – vanished after the Transition, but the BBC was recovering, moving neatly into competition with the American newspapers and radio stations. The sudden proliferation of Internet-capable computers across America, combined with the sudden development of newer systems, had threatened the BBC, but the Corporation still had what it took.
The Americans never had the imagination to see what we could do, Edmund thought, not without pride. Collecting TV licensing fees was difficult, but if you made it necessary for people to pay to watch without heavy-handedness, it made the cost of collecting the fees unnecessary. CNN had complained about hackers hacking into their systems; the BBC had simply made it easy for people to do it without committing a crime.
“And, of course, it protects Kristy,” he said aloud, and smiled. Kristy Stewart remained in Germany, sending back footage that was both approved and not approved by the Nazi elite. She’d broken the news of Hitler’s death, coming hard on the heels of Roosevelt’s death, and that of Himmler taking control. As long as the Germans didn’t pay their subscription fees – which of course they didn’t do – the fact that there was more material than the Germans knew about would remain a secret.
He glanced down at his schedule for the day. He had a board meeting later, arranging materials so that the Corporation could continue to send embedded reporters into combat alongside the British troops, and then a meeting with the American ambassador, seeking permission for reporters to be attached to the American troops. If MacArthur had remained alive, he was certain that they would have been allowed, but Patton was different.
He scowled. Patton, in one of his rare press conferences, had spoken of the need for winning the war, not of open government or his commitment to America. Eisenhower was more newsworthy, but he just didn’t have the glamour attached to Patton, who was famous for real reasons.
His speakerphone buzzed. “Sir, Jack Roberson just called and asked if you could check your email,” his secretary said. Edmund sighed; Roberson was a great presenter, but his grasp of the modern world was slight, at best. He opened the email and skimmed though; it was a proposal for a new television show, one researching the effects of future knowledge on people.
“Wasn’t it bad enough with the future criminals?” He asked. Mary McManus was doing several years in an Irish jail cell, although with all the civil unrest in Ireland she might be sent to Britain for the rest of her sentence. Women’s rights groups were already protesting, along with groups that wanted to shoot paedophiles on sight, on the grounds that all she’d done was kill a known child molester.
Still, it might be interesting, he decided, after reading through the entire notes. Not only were there criminals, like Nixon, but ordinary people who’d had affairs, or saved money their wives didn’t know about… the ripples of the Transition were spreading across the world.