It was Agna. “My favorite book is Hoffmann’s Der Struwwelpeter. Do you know it?”
“I do.” Dr. Carroll’s voice gentled as it always did when he spoke with the child Agna.
“Am I banished?” she asked, looking around, eyes wild. “I must be. I’m in my room and I can’t get out. Mother must have locked me in!”
She flung herself on the narrow bed and began to weep. “I don’t know what I do to her! She’s always locking me places—the closet, the pantry. She locks me away! Sometimes she forgets about me!”
“Is that what you think is happening?” the doctor asked.
“Isn’t it? And I don’t even have my dolly. Or my books.”
“Well, surely a book wouldn’t hurt,” Dr. Carroll said. “I’ll see if I can hunt up a copy of Der Struwwelpeter for you. I’ll bring it tomorrow.”
Agna smiled.
Churchill was in bed, surrounded by a half-eaten breakfast and various papers and files, as well as his precious Box of top-secret documents, wearing nothing but his dragon-embroidered silk dressing gown. “Cars and refrigerators!”
“Sir?” Churchill’s long-suffering manservant, Mr. Inces, was unruffled by his boss’s sudden exclamations.
“The Americans!” The Prime Minister crumpled a memo and threw it into the fireplace, where it burst into flame. “While we fight for our last breath, American factories are producing cars and refrigerators, not planes and tanks!”
“Yes, sir,” Inces agreed, tidying up the overflowing ashtrays and drained brandy snifters.
“Their ships are being sunk by Nazi U-boats in the Atlantic, and still they make cars and refrigerators! Meanwhile, Kurusu goes from Hitler’s snake pit in Berlin to Washington, DC. ‘Special envoy’ my arse.”
“I thought Admiral Nomura was the Japanese Ambassador to the United States, sir?” Inces remarked.
“Looks like Tōjō’s sending in reinforcements,” the Prime Minister growled. “The Japs are up to something … And where the hell’s the Japanese fleet? Well, don’t just stand there—get me Mr. Sterling and Mr. Greene!”
“Yes, sir,” Inces said.
The two private secretaries reached the P.M.’s bedchamber less than three minutes later. “Yes, sir?” David managed, out of breath.
“The bloody Japanese are up to something. Get me all of the intelligence reports from Bletchley. Call my Chiefs of Staff. We need to consider all options—Japan may attack our holdings in Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines—maybe even they’ll attack Russia, now that they’ve signed that blasted pact with the Nazzies.”
“And what if they do attack us in the Pacific, sir?” John knew as well as anyone that all of Britain’s power, not that it was much, was tied up with defending her home island.
“Just get me the goddamn papers!” the P.M. roared. “And find out where the damn Japanese fleet is!” he thundered, flinging a pillow at the two young men, who departed hastily.
Minutes crawled by until the two private secretaries reappeared in his doorway. “No one seems to know where the Japanese fleet is, sir,” David reported.
“Not good enough!” the Prime Minister shouted. “Gimme decrypts!” Bletchley Park had broken the Japanese naval and diplomatic codes. Still, the codes only gave part of the picture.
Churchill pulled out one particular piece of paper from the rest. “What’s this one mean?” he asked, putting on his gold-framed spectacles to take a closer took. “ ‘Climb Mount Niitaka 1208’?”
“It’s a JN-25 transmission from Tokyo, sir,” David replied. “It went out on the second of December.”
The P.M.’s face hardened. “Where the hell is Mount Niitaka?”
“I—I don’t know, sir,” David stammered.
“Well, bloody well find out! That’s why I have you young pups here! Why the devil—”
“Mount Niitaka is the highest mountain in Formosa, even higher than Mount Fuji. It’s often referred to here in Britain as Mount Morrison,” John interposed.
“Highest mountain … A naval message to climb a mountain?” the Prime Minister growled. Nelson, who’d been curled up at the end of the P.M.’s bed, had endured enough and jumped off. “That’s an attack code! That’s a bloody attack code!”
John and David looked at each other, realizing he was right. “Yes, sir,” they both managed.
“And 1208—the eighth of December?” John ventured. He’d run his hands through his hair, causing it to stand on end as if he’d been electrocuted.