George Washington's Ghost

“I was Prime Minister at the time Project Poseidon was initiated, Your Majesty,” he confessed to the King of Prussia. “That was prior to the signing of the Submarine Treaty but I acquiesced, when the decision was taken to redouble the Empire’s efforts to build a viable atomic weapon and to harness the power of the atom for future civil, and as a priority, military uses. We suspected, and later became aware – in general terms – that the nuclear planning and design bureaus active in the German Empire prior to the Treaty, had not been disbanded post-signature and ratification. Likewise, we were cognisant of the German Empire’s experimental establishments on Rugen Island and upon the Peenemunde Isthmus. As for the Walvis Bay facility, we have been monitoring that for some years, at first because we assumed it was a base from which agents of the German Empire and their Boer collaborators, were attempting to foment an uprising against our interests in the Cape. Later, we detected traces of radioactive contamination some miles offshore, and in the northern Cape, and drew the obvious conclusions that relatively small Uranium bombs must have been tested somewhere in the Kalahari Desert. That would have been about three years ago.”

Wilhelm’s mouth opened and shut.

Words would not come as the revelations assailed him, pummelling him from every direction as if he was a defeated pugilist being driven across the ring in the last seconds of an already lost prize fight.

A dreadful rage began to play, like fire, in his dark eyes.

He had come to humbly abase himself before friends; and they had treated him like a dummkopf...

His honour meant nothing to these people!

“What you mean is that you meant to come to Berlin and present me, as the new Kaiser, with a fait accompli!”

“No, that was not our intention, Willie!” The King remonstrated irritably.

The King of Prussian glared at him.

“It might not have been your plan, Bertie. But what of your government?” Wilhelm waved derisively at George Walpole. “You bring with you the man who sees himself as the puppet master of the civilised world! The man who would keep the German beast in its cage! The man who wrote the Submarine Treaty to ensure that the German Empire could never achieve the living space it needs, or to obtain the oil it must have if it is to ever rival the industrial might of New England!”

Lebensraum…

Oil…

“Unbelievable!” Wilhelm cried out. It was like a roar of pain; signifying the final betrayal. “I come here to try to make things right with people I once thought were my family, my friends and what do I get? Stabbed in the back! That’s what I get for trying to do the right thing! I seek peace and what I discover is that you ‘people’ have been laughing behind my back, behind my father’s back, behind the back of the whole German people!”

If the King, Queen or the immediate object of Wilhelm’s ire had been so naïve as to take comfort from the fact that they were being berated by the King of Prussia, not the Kaiser, they were soon to be disabused of the last scintilla of their complacency.

“Damn you, Bertie! Damn you! I thought you at least were a man I could do business with!”

“Willie, I am a man you can do business with!” The King barked angrily, which was probably the worst thing he could have done.

“Seriously?” The King of Prussia bellowed. “I came here to make things right. To start my reign with a gesture of good will. I was going to offer to scrap Projektende der Tage...”

Project End of days…

“I’d have sent half the bloody Kaiserliche Marine to the breakers if that was the price for a treaty that gave the Empire lebensraum and access to the oil fields that we need to fulfil our rightful racial destiny!”

Nobody tried to gainsay him.

“Why on earth would I make a deal with the bloody Russians if we could sort everything out with our Aryan brothers in England and its White Dominions? But, oh no! You have to trip us up at every bloody turn! I don’t know how you did it,” Wilhelm shouted at Sir George Walpole, “but if you think persuading those dummkopfs to Elect that prissy old fart Ludwig is going to stop me,” his face was red, he was sweating and when he spoke spittle flecked the air, “you’ve got another bloody thing coming!”

With which, he turned on his heel and stormed out of the Charlottenburg Palace.

Chapter 19

Tuesday 2nd May

Gravesend, Long Island

Alex Fielding had been a little – just a little because the events of the last year or so had confirmed him in the opinion that faint hearts never won a damned thing in this world – thoughtful about bringing his wife and baby son back to what had been the Fielding family home of his youth.

On the face of it the Jamaica Bay Road district was not exactly Leonora’s style but he suspected that these days neither the high life, or living in a Shinnecock Hills mansion was her thing, either.