“This would be despite the agreement with the Leader of the Opposition, Ken Barton, that the normal four-year cycle would be continued?” Charlene asked. “It seems safe enough to me.”
“We don’t have the Smith Government any longer,” Mortimer pointed out. “Barton could consider the agreement null and void. Even so, I didn’t sign the agreement.”
Mortimer smiled to himself as the hot sexy reporter departed, taking her cameras with her. He was careful to conduct a basic ELINT scan – some reporters had developed the habit of leaving electronic bugs around – but Charlene had behaved herself; there were none in the room.
“She’s gone then,” Elspeth stated, wrinkling her nose. “Crafty bitch.”
“I wonder whose side she’s on,” Mortimer mused. She had been pretty. “Perhaps we could recruit her.”
“She doesn’t have a brain cell in her head,” Elspeth snapped. “Whatever she thinks – assuming she thinks anything – the BBC is pro-Hanover. You’ll sound like a right moron or a pro-Nazi on the evening news.”
Mortimer shrugged. “Perhaps that will be beneficial,” he said. His mind worked rapidly, calculating the angles. Hanover had a solid majority, but not all of his supporters got on with the other supporters. If Barton could be induced to join him – or, more likely, if most of his coalition could be induced to join him – he would have a solid base to build a campaign on.
“We don’t want an election at once,” he said thoughtfully. “We need time; time to get our message out to the public and time to gauge reactions. We also need to push Hanover at every possible point, such as handing Palestine over to the Republic of Arabia.”
“Which is our ally, as opposed to the Grand High Pompousness of Jerusalem,” Elspeth pointed out. The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, fanatically anti-Jewish, had been shot for war crimes.
“Ah, but what will that do to the future of Israel?” Mortimer asked. “There are nothing like as many Jews here as there are in America, but all of them want a Jewish homeland. What will they think when Hanover starts forbidding Jewish immigration?”
“It won’t be his fault,” Elspeth said practically. “Either the Republic of Arabia is a Commonwealth member, and a honoured supporter of the Commonwealth Provisional Protocols, or it is not. You know as well as I do that revoking the immigration clause would be massively unpopular here.”
Mortimer shrugged. “They won’t know that its not Hanover’s fault,” he said. “Besides, what will happen if the Republic of Arabia starts disrespecting the clause on religious and sexual equality?”
“If they do,” Elspeth said. “Many of them come from here, you know.”
“It’ll all end in tears,” Mortimer predicted. He looked down at his notes. “What do I have to do next?”
“There is a sitting at the house to debate funding for the American air force bases in Britain,” Elspeth said, slipping back into secretary mode. “You’re in favour of isolated compounds, but will give in to the majority if adequate security is provided, not American military police, who were just part of the problem.”
“It’s good to know that I have a position,” Mortimer said wryly. “What next?”
“You are supposed to give a speech at a local school,” Elspeth said. “They’re not exactly anti-war, because London was bombed, so tone that down a bit.”
Mortimer scowled. “I want this war over,” he said. “I want it to end.”
Elspeth nodded. “Unfortunately, the Germans would hardly recognise our neutrality,” she said. “We – Britain – has no choice, but to fight the war to the end.”
Mortimer scowled again. “We should just threaten to nuke them until they glow in the dark,” he said. “That would bring them to heel.”
Elspeth, as always, was coolly practical. “And what happens when they call our bluff?”
Permanent Joint Headquarters
Northwood, United Kingdom
2nd April 1942
“Bastard,” General Cunningham snapped, glaring at the TV screen through his moustache. “Look at him; new-come MP criticising the Government.”
Stirling lifted an eyebrow. General Cunningham had disliked Smith intensely, regarding the man as a weakling with the morals of a toad in the hole. Prime Minister Hanover was more to his taste; a strong Thatcher-figure whom he could follow with a song in his old heart. General Cunningham knew that if there had been the slightest question of his competence during Smith’s tenure, he would have been resigned without ever having the chance to fight a major war.
Hoping to spare himself the agony of having to answer, Stirling cast his eyes over the threat board, which had been updated with 1940 political borders rather than 2015. Ships, aircraft and infantry units were marked on the board, tracked by satellites and the orbiting space station. Several units remained on Britain itself, useless for all, but politics; the largest number of modern units remained in Iraq.
How depressingly familiar, he thought.
“That bastard dares to say that the war is being run badly,” Cunningham snapped. “What would he do? Land in Normandy and march all the way to Berlin?”
Stirling shook his head. Such an operation had been war-gamed several times in the PJHQ, always to British defeat. The forces that had existed in 2015 might have been far more powerful than their German opponents, but their supply lines were not. The most optimistic result had been the successful capture of Belgium, followed by a protracted war while new supplies were brought into the war zone.
Stirling shuddered. With the hundreds of German aircraft in Germany and France, it could have been a slaughter – would have been a slaughter.
“Most people don’t fully understand the complexities of military operations,” he said, trying to be reassuring. It didn’t work. “He’s probably just posturing for the newspapers.”
“Someone ought to say something in his ear,” General Cunningham snarled. “Perhaps something like… ah, know what you’re bloody talking about before you open your fat mouth.”
“No one would say that to him,” Stirling predicted. “I have the report on deployments for the liberation of Iran, as your requested.”
Changing the subject worked, if only for a few moments. General Cunningham nodded. “We have four armoured divisions and six infantry units in the Middle East,” Stirling said. “The Bundeswehr is currently incorporating the couple of thousand men who had agreed to join its ranks, so they’re out of action for a month. On the other hand, one of the heavy infantry divisions is from the Republic of Arabia, fighting beside us for the first real time as a unit.”
General Cunningham snarled. “I understand Rommel’s point,” he said, “but he could easily send a division to help us out without harming his unit. More experience would do them good.”
“He does know the value of training,” Stewart said wryly. “Although it’s hard to be certain, the Soviets have been busy; they have upward of half a million men – including nearly two thousand tanks – in the Middle East. Some of them are staving.”
“I’m not surprised, after someone passed around a rumour that the supplies were contaminated,” General Cunningham said. “That said, perhaps they were too ignorant to know what radiation poisoning is.”
“Perhaps,” Stirling said. He didn’t find it unbelievable that the Government of Soviet Russia, under Stalin, would quite happily feed their conscripts radioactive gruel, let alone the rations they were supposed to have. He remembered, some years before he was born, that Argentinean quartermasters had made their position worse by selling the troops the rations they were supposed to have – and Soviet quartermasters were apparently doing the same thing.