Donovan leaned back. If that was all he was going to lose, things weren’t too bad. “Nothing else?”
Naamah looked at the clock. Over 45 minutes since Donovan had started eating. “Just one thing, you really shouldn’t have had Igrat beaten like that. She’s a nice girl. She sleeps around a bit, well a lot really, but she never did any harm to anybody who wasn’t threatening her. There was no need to do all that to her.”
“So what are you going to do, kill me?” Donovan’s face was split with a grin, one that quickly changed to a grimace as his stomach cramped. He gasped and doubled up, slumping over the table.
“I already have, General.” Naamah picked up his fork and pushed a tiny fragment of mushroom left on his plate. “Have you ever heard of death cap mushrooms?”
“Warning Boss, Mike’s on his way up.”
“Right Lillith, action stations.”
The Seer sat back and relaxed, he’d been expecting this. He’d reckoned it would take the morning for Mike Collins to get over his grief and work up a head of steam. Then, he’d be coming this way. Well, it looked like he’d got here. The door suddenly hurtled open, bounced off its hinges and almost laid out the man storming through.
“You bastard Stuyvesant.”
“Actually no, Mike, my mother and father were married when I was born.”
Collins blinked, then set out again. “You sent a wee girl to do a job rather than risk your own cowardly hide. And she got smashed up because of you. So get out from behind that desk and fight like a man.”
Styvesant grinned. “Mike, look behind you.”
“You’ll not fool me with that old trick.”
“Just humor me, look on it as respect for tradition if you wish.”
Collins glanced behind him. Then turned his head a little more carefully. While he’d been shouting, Lillith and Naamah had quietly entered the office and were pointing M3 sub-machine guns at him. They were carefully positioned so they could kill him without endangering anybody else.
“Hiding behind women again?”
“If necessary Mike. Won’t be the first time. I do what’s necessary to win Mike. Whatever is necessary. Always remember that.”
“And you’ve not the courage to fight fair like a man.”
“Mike, I’ve always believed if I get into a fair fight, it’s because I made a mistake. I never fight fair. I never have and hopefully I never will. Just remember, if you’re within ten feet of me, you can be sure there’s a gun pointing at your back somehow. Now calm down. Igrat’s going to be all right, it’s just you’ll have to look after her for a while.”
“And then you’ll send her on a courier mission again.”
“Of course, it’s something she’s superbly good at. Don’t try and take that away from her, Mike, not unless you want to lose her. Iggie’s a free spirit, try and protect her with cotton wool and she’ll smother. Just settle down with her and go along with the ride.”
“So send me along with her.” Collins was calming down and Stuyvesant waved Lillith and Naamah away.
“Mike, I can’t do that. Her safety depends on her own abilities and those of her bodyguards. You’re a lightweight, a playboy. Ask yourself, if she was going out again with somebody like you protecting her, would you be happy about it?”
Michael Collins thought about that for a long moment. “No, I would not.”
“I thought not. Want a drink? I’ve got some Irish whiskey.”
“I’ll not say no, though drinking with you is not what I thought of doing when I came here.”
Stuyvesant poured out two shot glasses of whiskey and added a drop of water to each. Collins took one and sipped it gently. “Good stuff. I’ve not had this good in many a year. Will Ireland ever recover?”
Stuyvesant drank down his own glass and looked at the drop left in the bottom. “Recover? Perhaps. They’re a tough people but they’ve never had it this bad. They have a chance, I’ll say that.”
“They’ll have a chance and you’ll not say more than that. You’re a heartless, cold, man Stuyvesant. I would not want to be you.”
“You don’t have to be. But just ask yourself what you do want. Holiday’s over, Mike. You’ve had your party and you’ve had a vacation. Now decide what you want to do with your life. Winter’s passing, spring is on its way and this war will be over one day. Just try and work out what you and Igrat want to do in the spring.”
“Gentlemen, the room is secured and no unauthorized personnel are in attendance. The meeting may now proceed. Firstly, although General Donovan was invited to attend this meeting, I regret to tell you that he was taken seriously ill this afternoon. He collapsed in the building and was rushed to Walter Reed Hospital. There, it was determined that he has suffered from complete renal collapse and advanced cirrhosis of the liver. He is currently in a coma and is not expected to recover consciousness. The prognosis is that his condition is terminal and he has two days, perhaps three before toxemia kills him. We will therefore proceed without him.”
“No great loss.” LeMay grunted from his seat.
“Curt, he won the Medal.” General Groves was shocked at the attitude in the room to the news.
“I know, we honor him for what he did then, just as we condemn him for what he tried to do today. Philip, what he tried was beyond reason. I’m sorry Les, I can’t find it in me to forgive that. Trying it was bad enough, trying it and fouling up was worse. I’m glad he’s out of this meeting.”
“I didn’t even know he was cleared for ‘Dropshot’.” General Groves was curious.
“He was not. He would have been here for discussions related to conventional bombing only.” The Seer passed around the packages of data received from Geneva. “Gentlemen, this information relates to the plans made by the Germans for countering the effects of a strategic bombing offensive against their industrial heartland. Naturally, they were preparing for conventional bombing only.”
There was silence in the room for almost half an hour as the members of the Dropshot Supervisory Committee read through the translated German papers. Eventually, General LeMay put his pile down, shuffled them into a neat stack and spoke quietly past his pipe. “Well, that ends any thought of a precisely-targeted bombing offensive.”
“I must agree General.” The Seer also spoke quietly. “There’s no point in trying to take out a key industrial sector. If we succeed, they’ll just strip less essential sectors to repair the damage. There are no key sectors, not ones we can destroy anyway. If we try, it’ll be a battle of attrition, trying to run them out of industry before we run out of bombers.”
“You know what this means don’t you?” Groves was also speaking quietly, the secrets of the B-36 and the atomic bomb were so huge that they made any attempt at drama look absurd. “Conventional strategic bombing was always doomed to fail. We can’t do enough damage fast enough to take down a complete industrial infrastructure.”
“I hate to say it Les, but you’re right. Back in the 1930s, we were wrong. No other way to say it. We couldn’t do it with B-29s, we sure as hell couldn’t do it with B-17s and we won’t be able to do it with B-36s. It has to be nuclear.”
“And I hate to say it Curt, but you and Stuyvesant were right. We can’t just take down a portion of their industry and expect them to fold. These documents show they mean to keep fighting as long as they house a machine tool in a brick outhouse. For the record, I formally withdraw my reservations on waiting for The Big One. We have to take the whole lot out at once. The Little One and the interim variants cannot work.”