“Is there a point to that, miss?” asked Admiral Bill Halsey. “Or are you just rubbing our noses in it?”

Rachel was familiar with Halsey’s reputation as a blunt speaker. She struggled not to take it personally.

“I’m just doing my job, Admiral. You have the information I was asked to provide. Making decisions on the basis of that information is not my responsibility.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant,” said Captain Halabi, forestalling any reply from Halsey. “Does anybody have any questions relating to the presentation?”

Rachel handed over the data stick that held the briefing information and extended background notes. Halabi inserted the stick into her flexipad and broadcast the files around the room. Rachel could see that each of the contemporary officers had been provided with a flexipad, and she wondered how many would actually use them.

“Lieutenant, how long will it be before those POWs are dispersed to labor camps?” asked Colonel Jones.

“The first group of about three thousand have already left from Changi in Singapore for the Burma–Thailand railway. Another fifteen hundred will go on July eighth. All of the officers will be moved on August sixteenth. Casualties among Allied POWs in Japanese camps will run between thirty to forty percent, depending on the individual situations at each camp. I’m afraid that hundreds of Americans have already perished on the forced march from Bataan to prison in central Luzon.”

Nimitz, who clearly was tired and grappling with an infinitely more tangled web of problems than he’d ever imagined might arise in this war, rubbed at his eyes and spoke quite irritably, which Rachel knew was unusual for him.

“I don’t see where this advances the discussion of our strategic options, Colonel Jones. Nobody has to tell us what a bunch of bastards the Japs are. There’ll come a heavy reckoning for their crimes in the future, but the best we can do for those men who’ve been captured is to defeat the enemy that’s torturing them.”

“In fact, Admiral,” Colonel Jones said carefully, “that may not be true.”

Nimitz was beyond understanding. He gave the marine commander a blank look and indicated with a weary gesture that he should explain.

“If they were our men,” Jones said, “we’d go and get them.”

Two hours later, Rachel couldn’t keep her eyes open. She’d been sent back to her office after her presentation to further research the POW issue. She had been awake for all but four hours of the last forty-eight, and was nearing the time when she would have to sleep or get a stimulant patch. Those things always gave her hideous nausea, so she was hoping to grab a little shuteye, but she was called into Halabi’s temporary quarters aboard the Clinton to present her supplementary data.