Washington lay under Fog as the Pre-Dawn twilight was ruptured by the sirens of police cars racing towards the Lincoln Memorial, and from there, across Memorial Bridge over the unseen waters of the Potomac before bearing left.
As squad cars and motorcycles raced ahead and behind the convoy, blocking traffic and clearing a path, a handful of odd looking vehicles, the tiny, open-topped MB trucks, with men astride them holding M2 Machineguns. And then there was the the black limo in the center of the convoy, wherein the President of the United States and the Secretary of State he despised, and had been forced on him by the party, discussed the news that had roused him out of his much needed sleep.
“Intelligence has gotten rather spotty,” the Secretary said in his polished transatlantic, offering as all well-bred members of the American elite do, an attempt at the classic British understatement. “Before I arrived at the White House I spoke shortly to General Vandenberg at G2. I’m sure Secretary Stevenson will have more information, as that is his department. But what F-5s did make it back to Plattsburgh indicate things are far worse than Ottawa will care to admit. A total breakout is underway. It can only be a matter of days before the Wehrmacht reaches Quebec City now…”
Paul V. McNutt, faced the papers being passed into his hands but didn’t actually read them. Instead he stared, moved his photos to look at some of the painfully grainy photos, some no more than sploshy bits of white in the darkness. Had he not served his time in the last War the US had fought, it would have been impossible for him to even recognize them as the blasts of cannon. Welles, a man he viewed as nothing so much as a pervert and British bootlicker, was going on about the photos, all business. “Those were taken over the Gulf of Saint Lawrence. We believe those are the von Berlichingen, von Hutten, and either Bismarck or Tirpitz, but as I said Admiral Ramsey will be…”
It took a lot for McNutt not to roll his eyes. It wasn’t as if he gave a damn about which German ships had steamed out of those massive anchorages the Reich had built in Greenland over the last three years. And anyway, he was sure as hell not going to care about Welles take on them.
And so he continued to stare at the papers and take nothing in.
Finally they arrived at Fort McPherson, and the large block of offices that had been built there a decade ago, when Tom Dewey had allowed himself to be pushed by the war-mongering crowd towards an expansion of the War Department. The large rows of offices, slightly more modern cousins of the munitions office at the National Mall, while ugly were at least out of the way here, and kept the Army Chief of Staff and Chief of Naval Operations further away from the real work in Washington that would only suffer by their presence.
Unfortunately, though McNutt he wasn’t the only arrival on the scene. For some reason it appeared the whole cabinet was arriving. Harriman, Thurmond, and even goddamn whoever had made that call, the Vice President, who back straight was quickly cleaning his glasses with a handkerchief as the Presidential Limousine rolled up.
The Hellraiser offered his hand as soon as McNutt stepped out. Giving him a once-over McNutt quietly wished for at least the thousandth time that they hadn’t forced this man on him at the last convention. Or that Dave Walsh was still alive, that had been a man he could work with.
And he’d known the Vice President’s place.
The Hellraiser on the other hand thought that running an Artillery Battery half a century ago enabled him to turn his office into some sort of Chief of Staff, regardless of McNutt wanted it or not. And the problem with that was, he was becoming damned popular doing so. And as always the old haberdasher was in a better suit than his Commander-in-Chief.
“Mister President, the Fallschirmjäger appear to have taken River-du-Loup,” McNutt grinned at the southerner’s mispronunciation, enjoying the quiet knowledge that for all the Hellraiser’s bluster he was still a useless little know nothing, a partner of the snobs like Welles who in turn showed no expression, but viewed the world as patrician know it alls. “We can expect Von Luck’s Panzer Corps to reach them by mid-day now. Field Marshal Foulke’s Army Group 1 is probably a complete loss. They can hold out for a few days, but its been broken into three, five medium to large pockets. There’s no was Slim’s Army Group 2 can redeploy in time, not without leaving the road to Ottawa wide open.”
Welles, for once, had nothing to say, as he turned a shade of pale that McNutt would have thought he would have reserved only for the idea of having to have relations with a woman, and one of his own race at that.
“Well then,” The President offered, “We have no time to waste then, do we?”
In the primary briefing room, a place McNutt had first suffered In 1946 when the Brass and his old Cabinet had panicked in the face of the Amery-Attlee alliance being ousted by Hoare, and peace coming to Europe. He was sure, staring at the various Generals and Admirals and Cabinet members and key leaders of both parties in both houses of Congress, that they were thinking of that day too. They should have been thinking about what had happened to Secretary of the Treasury Wilkie after he’d gone to the press and tried to use McNutt’s pun about the Paris Peace Talks against their boss.
Instead he was sure, they were blaming him for the current state of things.
It was Doolittle, the balding, childish, hot-shot commander of the Air Corps who gave the briefing, as the rest of the Joint Chiefs deferred to him. And so with a pointer and the large map that had been placed up on the wall opposite the President, the one-time newspaper hero droned on. Battlegroups, U-boats, Airborne and Panzer Divisions, “crack” SS Corps, Junkers over Quebec and Montreal, a midnight raid by one of their jet squadrons on Ottawa, supposedly being an attempt at a “Decapitation Strike”.
As always, reports from some tired old has been, Eisenhower this time, commanding an Army in Maine, of refugees and fleeing Brits and Canuck troops trying to cross the border for interment.
Quickly drawn lines showing the lines of attack that Field Marshall Schörner was driving forward with. Where the Canadians and their Free British were cut off.
McNutt knew what was coming. And in no way was surprised when it was the Hellraiser who went over and helped pull over a clear plastic sheet over one of the maps, adding a newer, theoretical, more horrifying dimension to the conflict.
Welles knew about it before hand too, and so, to McNutt’s disgust did Senator Taft, who had been invited as the Republican leader in the Senate, and probably because he’d challenged McNutt in 48, as both men were staring at him rather than the map.
Now it was Fredendall’s turn to speak as the senior-most staff officer.
“Generals Eisenhower and Clark will drive north directly towards the St. Lawrence...”
“...Task Force 51 under Arleigh Burke will launch attacks on Iceland, while Task Force 55…”
“...General Walker into New Brunswick…”
“...LeMay, as attache is on his way to speak with Field Marshall Slim about air support missions…”
By the end of it, no one was looking at the boards anymore with their arrows and hash marks and lines. Or to Fredendall. Or amongst themselves anymore.
No, they were all looking at the Commander-in-Chief.
“At your command, the first strike can commence in under an hour. B-29 Strikes against their shipping at these new beachheads will have the greatest impact now, Mr. President.”
McNutt didn’t nod, but instead looked about the room.
They all thought they were smarter than him, in their own ways. All forgot he’d been an officer himself too once, that he knew all too well about how their predecessors had set the world on fire in 1917, and tried again in 1940, 1946, and 1949. That they’d tried this with him before.
“I have to remind you all it seems, the mandate I was elected with Gentlemen, and what that means in the Constitution. We don’t have an alliance with the British. Or the Canadians. or their Queen Margaret. They aren’t Panama up there. Or Cuba. Or even Brazil. The fact that they have refused peace before hand, does not mean that we owe them our sons now.”
Robert Taft let out a breath he had been holding.
Sumner Welles rubbed his mustache.
The Hellraiser at once lost the jovial, stupid expression that always was smeared across his face as if he was Frank Roosevelt.
“Neither your nor President Dewey ever repudiated the Roosevelt Declaration of 1940.” Welles said eventually. “This Hemisphere is our own.”
“Canada was never part of that deal, not so long as they tied themselves to London, or now, the madmen who had to flee London when calmer heads finally prevailed. And anyway, the country repudiated it themselves, when they kicked Frank out on his ass.”
Several of the men in the room shifted uncomfortably at that. They, the party established, had never much liked McNutt the “upstart” to their little club, and probably dreamed that Franklin could have lasted forever in office, or let the whole country enter the storm in 1939, so that yet again Yankee boys could have died Over there, turning farce into an orgy of violence, with Roosevelt joining Chamberlain and Reynaud in fighting Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin, a mass murder on a continental stage from Narvik to Rotterdam to Malta to Baku.
As if the American People would have been taken in by such warmongering.
As if their little clique for war would have been able to last against the upstarts, men like McNutt who had vowed at the birth of the American Legion that there’d never be another war like 1917.
“So you would have Hitler, Heydrich and Franz Six sitting right on our borders now?” Asked Taft, unironically pretending he too hadn’t been a man of reason and isolation until he decided it was a means of attacking his opponent in the White House.
“There are ways to prevent that without starting a Second World War.” The President replied, finding himself more angry than he had been before. “Not that the lot of you care.” He gestured to the crowd. Looking at Fredendall he asked the question he knew they all were terrified of. “What our our defensive options short of deciding to drag us into this fight with the Axis?”
The Army Chief of Staff stood their for a moment before he responded.
“General, you will tell me now or you will be fired this instant.”
“We have plans for flying columns to drive on the provincial capitals in the west, in the event that a Protectorate-based solution is decided on. But that leaves us powerless to deal with those territories already under Nazi control. Or Ontario or Free Quebec for that matter.”
“Of course not General, that's what diplomacy is for.” The President stated before turning to Sumner Welles. “Who is your bright young thing in Ottawa at the moment, Rockefeller isn’t it? You’re going to send Nelson an ultimatum to pass on for us. Gardiner has one last chance. To resign. Whoever they pick has to declare a ceasefire immediately. And they’re going to stand down any forces in the West, not one shot is to be fired at us anywhere, and we’re driving all the way up to those frozen islands at the North Pole. The chargé in Berlin is going to speak to von Ribbentrop. He’s going to offer them the right to pick the next PM of whats left of Canada so long as they depart the mainland after a Cease-fire. And PEI for that matter. They can keep Newfoundland though, that failure of a state. They’ll take it, They’ve been fighting this war since 1939. Hitler will agree. Twelve Years will have been more than enough.”
“And then what?” It was Harriman this time, as if the Secretary of Commerce mattered.
“And then we have Peace.” The President offered, giving a sardonic smile to the crowd. “Queen Margaret ships off to Australia and gets to play ‘Monarchies-are-still-relevant’ with the clowns in Tokyo, or Siam, or the little East Indian tin-pot Kingdoms. We add a few more states. We get the Carribean. The Germans get a few bases for their precious navy, and now that the need for it will be gone, that won’t mean a thing. Let them rust in St. John’s Harbor for all we care, they’re going to bleed themselves dry in the Urals anyway!”
“Speaking of the Ural Insurgency,” Offered that damned, contempt-filled transatlantic “It is a reminder of what happened to the last power that thought they could make a lasting peace with Hitler.”
The President laughed. “Do you honestly think we’d fail as badly as Stalin? I’m telling you, Berlin will get it, Schörner won’t leave a man behind. And so Ottawa and Halifax get to enjoy some souped up dictatorship? They’ll be smart boys, like Trujillo, they’ll see which way the wind is blowing and be ‘Our Bastards’ soon enough.
The German Economy is already falling apart. You’ve told me yourself plenty of times Welles. What, did you think I forgot? They need peace to last even five more years. And when the five years are up, they’ll be too anyway. We’ll be secure again without a shot fired on our part! Avoid the whole monstrous war you all want to start. We don’t need to pretend it's 1918 all over again.”
The Hellraiser, surprisingly, nodded. He still stood on the far side of the room, by the Generals.
“I’m sorry to say I was right, Gentlemen, he’s not going to see reason on this.”
Around the room, men nodded.
“I don’t like this, but there’s no other choice left.” Said Taft, rising from his seat and walking over to the Vice President.”
“The Chief Justice should be at Congress by the time we arrive.” Offered Welles.
Confused, for a moment McNutt considered what two sodomites like Welles and the Chief Justice had planned. But as the Hellraiser pulled a paper out of his pocket, while at the same time shaking Robert Taft’s hand, it clicked.
“I am still the President of the United States!” A copy of what could only be a pre-written Impeachment, passed hands, and Taft began to read it over. At the same time, in his peripheral vision, the President noted, amid the red he could see, a Secret Service agent walking towards him. “This is a Coup!” He declared. “A Warmonger’s Coup!”
“No, Sir.” General Doolittle shook his head. “The Military is taking no part in this. We are only following legal orders.”
“Well, mostly legal,” offered The Hellraiser “we’ll iron it all out for the history books. Walker and the rest can’t miss the best chance we’ll ever have because it's going to take a few hours to officially get you out.”
As a strong hand suddenly grasped President Paul McNutt’s arm. He watched in horror as the Peace he had fought to keep since 1945. Since 1940. Since 1918, died. The upstart, turned to Fredendall and gave an order, which the General, ignoring every oath he’d ever taken replied to in the affirmative. “Commence War Plan Black-R.”