Final impact

Such evidence as was available all pointed to his involvement in thwarting Hidaka’s attack. But still the committee had returned an open verdict, saying that nothing could be settled until after the war, when the enemy’s own records might be inspected. It had taken all of Jones’s moral strength not to see that as insult directed at him. God only knew there were plenty of people who were more than happy to characterize it as a strike against his own reliability.

Now, as he sat in his small cabin on the Kandahar, finalizing his personal affairs in preparation for what promised to be a terrible slaughter, a couple of lines of text floated on the small screen in front of him, threatening to unbalance the frail equilibrium he had sought to achieve between his personal ill feelings about the ’temps-or some of them, anyway-and his loyalty to and love of the corps and the country he had served all of his adult life.

My Dearest Brother

I hope you get this message, for I do not think we shall ever meet again. You will know by now that my ship has arrived here, but we were captured by the Germans during our incapacity after the Emergence…

Jones frowned at the word, but having materialized in the Atlantic and been taken prisoner, Philippe would have used the Axis terminology without thinking. He read on.

I have little time. I am watched so closely by the Nazis I could not send this message before now, and even now I cannot send it directly. I have encrypted a pulse to go out with the launch of the missiles on Hawaii. I can only pray it finds a Fleetnet node somewhere and eventually finds you. I have done what I can to impair the fascists’ plans but I fear it is not enough. There is no more time. When they discover what I have done my life will be forfeit, but I shall do what I can before the end. I do not know if you will ever see Monique again but if you do, please make her understand that I did not dishonor my family or the Republic. Vive la France. And good-bye, brother.

Philippe

Stony-faced, keeping the tightest rein on his emotions, the commander of the Eighty-second Marine Expeditionary Brigade opened two encrypted files that were attached to the mail. In the first he found a list of names: the crew of the Dessaix and brief notes explaining the fate of each man after their capture. At a glance it looked like most had been tortured and killed by the Gestapo for refusing to cooperate. A few, like Philippe-with the consent of their CO, Captain Goscinny-had pretended to work with the Germans in order to have a chance at sabotaging the vessel. Only his brother-in-law had survived long enough to sail into the Pacific.

In a separate section, Philippe named a handful of crewmembers who had genuinely gone over to the enemy.

The second file was a technical log of all the actions carried out by Philippe and the other saboteurs. It was mostly beyond Jones’s understanding, but it seemed impressively long. It made him wonder what might have happened without their interference.

Poor kid, he thought. It must have turned pretty fucking ugly on that boat when Hidaka realized what had gone down. He sent a quiet prayer to his brother-in-law before closing the e-mail and its attachments.

He hadn’t even realized Philippe was on the Dessaix until a couple of boxheads from ’temp Naval Intelligence turned up in the Zone to ask him about it. There was nothing to be done now but send a copy of the message to Kolhammer and Spruance, with a letter asking that they make sure it got back to the relevant authorities in Washington and London, where the French government-in-exile still had its headquarters.

But then, after a moment’s consideration, he opened his address file and pulled up an address for Julia Duffy. She’d written some good stuff about that business with Margie Francois sanctioning those camp guards in the Philippines. And she’d gone into Hawaii with the battalion when they took it back from the Japanese. She was a good embed. She could be trusted, and she wasn’t beholden to the chain of command. Not like the admirals.

General J. Lonesome Jones knew he could trust Kolhammer and Spruance. But the guys above them?

As if.

After all, look what had happened when Francois came to him with that DNA match on Anderson and Miyazaki’s killer. They’d taken it to Kolhammer, who’d taken it right up the chain, and he’d been assured at every step that it’d be dealt with.

The bottom line? Two years on and the murdering prick was not only walking free but living off the fat of the land.

Jones grunted in disgust.

He knew that Kolhammer had made the case his personal jihad, but he also knew that in the end it hadn’t counted for anything. The ’temps weren’t about to have one of their heroes perp-walked, not on this one.

There’s no way the thing would have been so completely smothered if the victims hadn’t been a nigger and a Jap. Well, there might be nothing he could to do for them, but at least he could prevent Monique’s little brother from swinging in the breeze.