“Okay. I’ll call Nimitz. I’m sure he can sort out the turf war. And then I’d better see if I can raise Kolhammer, but I’ll be buggered if we can contact him so far. I’ll tell you what, Captain, I’d sell my arse for just one little satellite.”

Chapter 20

20

GORMON FIELD, LOS ANGELES COUNTY, 0406 HOURS, 9 JUNE 1942

A cold, unseasonable wind blew down off the California mountains, across the howling wastes of saltbush and hardscrabble. Outside the corrugated iron arch of the Quonset hut, grit hissed through the air and dead leaves spattered against windows covered with heavy blackout curtains. Dust devils swirled across the new concrete tarmac. A single oil lamp lit the knot of men gathered in the Spartan setting.

A rifle squad stood at ease at the rear of the room, separated from two loose knots of men in uniform and civilian clothes at the other end. The two groups coalesced around a frail figure in a wheelchair. He had a blanket draped over his legs and was forced to shoo off a young officer who unwisely attempted to wrap another around his shoulders. An older man, one of the civilians, detached himself from the conversation he’d been caught up in and wandered over to the wheelchair. He sported a shock of white hair, and his deeply lined face had worn a perpetually harassed and haunted expression for years. His wife had died not long ago, but that wasn’t what lay behind his melancholy. He hadn’t laughed freely since fleeing from Germany in 1933.

He affected a cheeky smile now, however, and offered up a book of matches.

“Mr. President. Do you need a light?”

“Why, thank you, Professor. I wouldn’t have thought it would take a genius to work that out,” said Franklin Delano Roosevelt, throwing a severe glance at his disapproving aide, the one with the blanket.

As Albert Einstein struck a match and leaned in to light the Camel at the end of FDR’s long black holder, a distant roar reached them, like a single bass note from a thunderstorm, drawn out for an impossible length of time.

“They’re here,” said Einstein, as the tobacco caught light and the president took in a deep draft of smoke.

“I want to see this,” FDR declared.

His aide hurried forward.

“Mr. President, I don’t think—”

“Just push me to the door,” snapped Roosevelt. “I want to see these rocket planes.”

He stubbed out his cigarette with a show of annoyance.

“There! You can wrap me up like a granny, if that makes you feel better. But I’m going to see these things with my own two eyes.”