Pearl Harbour - A novel of December 8th by Forstchen

Author:Forstchen [Forstchen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Alternate history
Published: 2012-06-15T07:49:00+00:00

Pearl Harbor 24 June 1941

Lieutenant Commander James Watson wearily sat back in his chair, looking at his wristwatch: 4:00 a.m. He should have gone off duty ten hours ago. Any other woman except Margaret would have been motivation enough for him not to go home now. He had promised a Friday evening in Honolulu, a movie--she liked musicals especially with Astaire, he preferred Westerns and historical pictures. Standing her up thus, he knew it would be musicals for the next month or so as payback. But otherwise she understood, amazingly understood, even to the fact that he could only tell her he was working at CinCPac and nothing beyond that.

The cautionary tales had already been circulated to him on day one how more than one man had been washed out of the intelligence business because his wife finally coaxed the information out of him, often because the poor guy could not explain why he would often disappear for two or three days at a stretch without a mistress hidden away somewhere, and then when told what he was really doing she went and shot her mouth off to neighbors or friends.

The Japanese had changed their naval code yet again.

Everything was in an uproar since the evening of June 21. Half a world away it was the morning of 22 June 1941 and Hitler’s legions had crossed into the Soviet Union. Former allies, one of which was a potential foe of the Japanese, were now at war, and three days later early reports were that the Soviets were reeling from the hammer blows of the blitzkrieg.

And the following morning the Japanese navy had changed its code yet again. It was maddening. The hundreds of laborious hours to even partially crack a single message, cross-comparing that to other messages to see if the decoded words matched up and might then yield another few words. The complex cataloging of each message received, often with typos since the listeners on the radio rarely had a good grasp of Japanese and would often make mistakes as they tried to keep up with the streams of telegraph and occasional voice transmissions.

It was like running a marathon race, when you see the finish line just ahead, and then the bastards run out and double the distance to be run yet again.

The big question was, would Japan now jump and turn against the Soviets? The code change within hours of the start of war between Germany and the Soviet Union could either be a standard precaution, perhaps prearranged weeks ago, or a stepped-up security move on the eve of launching a strike.

If the Japanese attacked the Soviets, then what, he wondered? Would the president respond with a tougher embargo? The thought of Japan and Germany dividing up the corpse of that colossus was frightening, but what exactly would Japan gain?

In the face of increased German activity, President Roosevelt kept shifting ships out of the Pacific and into the Atlantic. It was clear that Washington thought the threat from Germany was a lot bigger and more urgent than any problems with Tokyo.

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