Final impact

By way of contrast, the defense minister and navy chief looked physically ill. As well they should. Okhotsk had been a disaster of the first order. Yumashev had assured them all that he possessed the resources to carry out the invasion and protect the beachhead. Now he was dead, luckily for him, and Kuznetsov would be forced to deliver the report, but Soviet maritime power, and its prestige in the East, had been comprehensively fucked. When Beria thought of the resources that had gone into the building program at Vladivostok-the millions of men and the staggering sums that had been spent so profligately to create a modern Pacific fleet, virtually from nothing-it was a disgrace. If just a fraction of those funds and a few hundred thousand of the laborers had been devoted to his projects, then he would not have had to suffer through the fear he had endured.

“So, Admiral Kuznetsov,” Stalin said as he seated himself at the head of the table. “Tell me exactly how you failed.”

Stalin’s voice was quite low, almost inaudible. Beria noticed a few of the others straining forward to make out his exact words.

The man for whom they were intended had no difficulty understanding their import, however. He blanched a sort of gray-green shade and began to babble about some sort of secret Japanese terror weapons, and possible interference by the Americans, possibly even by Kolhammer himself.

While he spoke, Stalin used his fingertips to trace patterns on the polished wooden surface of the conference table. His pipe lay in front of him, but he never moved to fill it, or to light it.

“All of our intelligence spoke of Yamamoto moving south to engage the Americans at the Marianas,” Kuznetsov said. “Our liaison staff in Washington and London confirmed the same. The Americans expected to meet him. They told us they were moving to engage him decisively. And these rocket bombs. These suicide attacks. Nobody had seen the like before-”

“Rubbish!” Stalin shouted, smashing an open palm down onto the table so hard that a few drops of water sloshed out of Beria’s glass a good three meters away. “The Japanese have been using kamikaze attacks for months!”

“But not with these sorts of planes,” Kuznetsov pleaded. “They were like the missiles we heard of, the ones that smashed the Americans at Midway. They were so fast, and since they were being piloted they were able to adjust course to avoid flak and to pick and choose their targets. If Spruance had encountered them without warning, the result would have been the same.”

“Ah, but there you are wrong, aren’t you, Admiral,” Stalin said. “Because we now find out that Spruance has encountered them, and completely neutralized the threat. Something of which you have proven yourself incapable.”

“But…no, I did not-”

The supreme leader of the Soviet Union cut him off by slamming his hand into the table again, this time in a closed fist. “Enough! I have had enough excuses. Timoshenko, do you bring me excuses about the Western Front? Beria, what about you?”

Beria did not want to let the defense minister escape by the agency of his success. He stared the man down.

“We are stalled at the Oder,” Marshal Timoshenko said. “The fascists have created an impenetrable boundary with these nerve weapons. But in Southern Europe we progress. Our forces have overrun Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Albania. They have entered Greece and northern Italy, the southern regions of Austria, and fresh air assault divisions are being readied to jump into southern France. I can guarantee that within two weeks Vichy France will be ours. The Allies will hold the northern half of the country. I foresee a border that stretches probably from Belfort to La Rochelle. Italy will be cut off entirely. Switzerland can be neutralized.”

Timoshenko’s delivery had been forceful and confident. Beria was grudgingly impressed. The man had somehow made a virtue of failure. For the inability to break through at the Oder was surely failure of the worst sort.

Stalin, however, seemed mollified.

“And Project One,” he said, turning to Beria. “I hope you have something positive to report. Have you finished the two bombs?”

The NKVD chief couldn’t help himself. He smiled.

“No. I have finished three.”

D-DAY + 40. 13 JUNE 1944. 0629 HOURS.

KORYAK RANGES, FAR EASTERN SIBERIA.

The T5 was wearing off, but they had everything they needed to know.

Ivanov finished writing up his report for the compressed data burst. The glow of his flexipad was the main source of the light in the fetid-smelling cave where they crouched. A couple of whale oil candles flickered farther down the narrow tunnel, filling the cramped space with dark smoke and a pungent aroma.

“What will we do with them?” Vendulka asked.