"Yes, I do," Theisman admitted unhappily, and ran his hands through his hair, glaring at nothing in particular for several seconds. Then he sighed and looked back at the President.
"How bad is it?" he asked.
"Not good, I'm afraid. Arnold's been a little more circumspect about dropping hints on me than I would have expected from him, but he's made it pretty clear he knows about the 'black' aspects of the budget, about the existence of the shipyards, and that you sent Shannon Foraker out to take charge of them. Whether or not he knows what's actually going on out there is a bit more problematical, but judging from his attitude, I wouldn't bet against it."
"Crap," Theisman repeated, even more sincerely, and it was his turn to lean back in his chair with a sigh.
There were very few things Rob Pierre and Oscar Saint-Just had done with which Thomas Theisman found himself in complete agreement. Operation Bolthole was one of them, although Theisman was scarcely happy about the circumstances which had made Bolthole necessary.
The thing that most amazed him about Bolthole was that Pierre and Saint-Just had managed to pull it off in near total secrecy. Theisman himself hadn't heard so much as a whisper about it until he'd taken over as commander of Capital Fleet, and virtually no officer outside the project itself below the rank of vice admiraland damned few senior to thatknew about it even now. Which was a state of affairs Theisman intended to preserve as long as possible.
"Tom," Pritchart said, as if she'd been reading his minda possibility he wasn't prepared to discount, after watching her in action for over three years"we're going to have to take the wraps off of Bolthole sooner or later, anyway, you know."
"Not yet," he replied with spinal-reflex promptness.
"Tom"
"Not yet," he repeated even more firmly, then made himself pause for a moment.
"You're right," he acknowledged then. "Sooner or later, we'll have to admit Bolthole exists. In fact, I doubt we'll be able to hide the funding for it for more than another year or two, max. But I'm not 'taking the wraps off' until we've produced enough of the new ships and hardware to deter the Manties from a preemptive strike."
"Preemptive strike?" Pritchart arched both eyebrows at him. "Tom, we can't even get them to respond to an offer of a formal peace treaty after better than three full T-years of trying! What in the world makes you think they care enough about what's going on inside the Republic to worry about preemptive strikes?"
"We've been over this before, Eloise." Theisman said, then reminded himself that despite her long Navy association as Giscard's people's commissioner and even her own career as a guerilla commander, the President was essentially a civilian by inclination and orientation alike.
"Right this minute," he went on after a second or so, "the Manties are completely confident that no one poses a significant threat to their naval superiority. Their new missile pods, their new superdreadnoughts, andespeciallytheir new LACs give them a degree of tactical superiority which would make it suicide for any conventional navy to engage them. Janacek may be an idiot, and he may have brought in other idiots to help him run the Manty Admiralty, but it's obvious that they recognize their technical advantages. That's the only possible explanation for their build-down in conventional hulls. They're actually reducing their fleet to very nearly its prewar size, Eloise. They'd never do that if they weren't so confident of their tech edge that they figured they could hack extremely heavy numerical odds if they had to.
"But look at what that means. Their entire current strategic stance is built on that edge in technology, and their First Lord of Admiralty is stupid. He's going to be upset enough if he suddenly discovers Pierre and Saint-Just managed to build a shipyard complex even bigger than the one here in the Haven System without anyone in the Star Kingdom so much as suspecting it. But if he figures out what we've had Foraker and her people doing out there for the last couple of T-years, he's not going to be upsethe's going to panic."
"Panic?" Pritchart shook her head. "Tom, this is your area of expertise, not mine. But isn't 'panic' just a little strong? Let's be honest. You and I both know the Manties kicked our butt up one side and down the other. If Saint-Just hadn't managed to snooker them into 'truce talks,' White Haven would have smashed straight through Twelfth Fleet, punched out Capital Fleet, and dictated terms right here on Haven. I was there with Javier and Lester. I know there was nothing we could have done to stop him."
"Of course there wasn't...then," Theisman agreed. "But that's my very point. We know that, and they know that. Worse, they're depending on it. Which means they have to be certain they maintain that technological edge, especially in light of the reduction in their total tonnage. So if they realize Foraker is busy building us an entire new navy specifically designed to offset their advantages, they're also going to realize they've created a situation which effectively allows us to begin even with them in the new types. Since their entire defensive stance requires them to retain their advantage in those types, one solution would be for them to hit us before we have enough of the new designs available to defend ourselves."
"But that would violate the terms of our truce," Pritchart pointed out.
"Which is just thata truce," Theisman emphasized. "The war isn't over. Not officially, anyway, which is exactly what Giancola keeps pointing out. Hell, the Manties keep pointing it out! I'm sure you saw the same analysis I did on their Prime Minister's most recent speech. They're still 'viewing with alarm' where we're concerned, if only to justify the tax structure they're retaining. So there's no formal treaty to dissuade them from resuming the war any time they choose. And if we openly acknowledge that we're building an entire new fleet capable of standing up to them in combat, the temptation to nip the threat in the bud would have to be intense. Worst of all, Edward Janacek is stupid and arrogant enough to recommend to High Ridge that they do just that."
"I can't help feeling that you're being alarmist," Pritchart told him frankly. "But you're Secretary of War, and I'm not prepared to overrule you on a judgment call like this one. It certainly won't do any harm to exercise a little caution which may turn out to be excessive, and the Manties aren't likely to panic over something they don't know anything about.
"In the meantime, however, your desire to keep the Star Kingdom in the dark may create some domestic problems. To be honest, I'm not entirely comfortable maintaining such a high level of security where Bolthole is concerned, either. Leaving aside the fact that I'm not at all sure burying 'black' funding in the budget is constitutional, whatever the Attorney General may think, it's a little too much like the levels of secrecy Pierre and Saint-Just routinely maintained."
"In some ways, I suppose," Theisman acknowledged. "But I've kept the Naval Affairs Committee informed. That keeps Congress officially in the loop the way the Constitution requires."
"Be honest, Tom," Pritchart chided. "You haven't told them everything about your new toys, now have you?"
"Maybe not everything," he admitted. "But I've kept them fully informed on the purpose of Bolthole, and they know at least a part of what Foraker is doing. If they didn't, the Senator couldn't have 'spilled the beans' to his brother."
"Agreed. And that's precisely the domestic problem that most concerns me. Most of our senators and the members of the Cabinet are still a bit more diffident than I'd really like them to be in a lot of ways. For one thing, if more of them would grow spines and build up other power bases I could use to balance Giancola, it would help a lot when it comes to reining him in. They won't do it any time soon, though, and in the meantime there's still entirely too much of the reflex acceptance of restrictions on information simply because the government says it's 'necessary.' That's the only way we got the budget to keep Bolthole running through without debate in the first place. But if Giancola keeps on pushing more and more strongly for us to take a harder line in the negotiations with the Manties, then sooner or later he's going to start bolstering his arguments by dropping some of the details his brother has obviously fed him. Which is going to bring the Department of State into direct conflict with the Department of War."