“No, sir. We—we could always give it to the Navy, sir.”
French shot him a deadly look. “Do you think the weather will be more cooperative for the Navy than it is for the Army?”
The young man shrank in his seat. “No, sir.”
French thought. “Well—then we’ll have to send the damn thing as a telegram! Call Western union !”
“Yes, sir. Right away, sir.”
In his bed at his home in Honolulu, Kimmel was woken up by a shrill telephone. “Kimmel,” he grumbled into the receiver, feeling the effects of both the late night and the cocktails.
He listened. And sat up, eyes widening. Then he spoke. “Do you mean to say a submarine was reported, and shots were fired, and it’s taken you this long to report it to me? No—I don’t care if it still hasn’t been confirmed. I should have been informed immediately! Get the report and confirmation over to my office! On the double!” He threw both the telephone and receiver at the wall. It fell with a crash and the tinkle of bells.
“Honey—” his wife murmured from the bed, pushing away the quilt and rubbing her eyes.
“Not. Now. Dear,” Kimmel growled as he went to put on his uniform.
It was barely dawn in Honolulu when the telegrams finally came in to the Western union office. “Messages for Admiral Kimmel and General Short, sir,” said a clerk, painfully thin with wide-set eyes.
“Are they marked urgent?” the manager asked. He was older, grayer, and had a cup of hot coffee and a Portuguese sweet roll on his desk he wanted to get back to.
The clerk looked over the document. “No, sir.”
“Then just type them up and put them in their respective boxes. Their secretaries’ll pick ’em up Monday morning.”
“I don’t have all the fancy anesthetic you might expect, being from London and all,” Dr. McNeil said, scrubbing his hands with soap and hot water. “But we Scots do claim Joseph Lister as our own—so no need to worry about infection.”
“That’s all right,” Maggie said, gritting her teeth.
“I think I have some brandy somewhere, if you want it …”
“No. No thanks.” Her hands gripped the table, her knuckles turning white.
Dr. McNeil examined the wound. “It’s close to the surface—that’s good,” he said, cleansing the area with raising antiseptic fluid on a cotton pad.
Just do it! Cut it out! was all Maggie could think.
And then he lowered the scalpel.
Clara felt in the darkness for the reading glasses she had next to her book. Dr. Carroll had even been kind enough to give her a leather case. Clara smiled as she opened it, then took out the glasses. She opened her blackout curtains and let the moonlight stream in.
She took the glasses and broke off both earpieces. She put one of the lenses under the leg of her chair, placing the glass carefully so that only one half of the lens would be crushed under the chair leg. She pushed down on the seat of the chair. Nothing happened. “Scheiß,” she muttered.
She sat down on the chair, and heard a satisfying crunch as the glass shattered. She knelt down to inspect the damage. There were splinters and shards of glass, which glinted in the moonlight. But there was one large piece.
She picked it up, holding it in her palm, almost as if weighing it. “Yes,” she said. “This will do. This will do nicely.” In the light of the moon, she smiled. “Through a glass darkly,” she muttered.
And then she slit her wrists.
Yamamoto waited in silence in his office, at his desk, eyes closed, a globe next to him.
There was a knock at the door, and “Sir!”
“Enter.”
The officer could barely contain his excitement. “Tora! Tora! Tora!” he exclaimed. “The strike force has achieved complete surprise!”
Yamamoto opened his eyes, his shoulders dropping slightly. He looked at the officer. “What about the U.S. aircraft carriers?”
The man’s face dropped. “At sea, sir.”
“And when did the U.S. government in Washington receive our final notification? Before hostilities commenced?”
“We’re still waiting to hear, sir. There have been some issues in getting a signal through to Washington.”
Yamamoto closed his eyes again and folded his white-gloved hands, as if in prayer. “The game hasn’t even begun.”
After hearing about the USS Ward’s bombing of an unidentified submarine in Hawaiian waters, Kimmel had canceled his golf date with General Martin and called for his driver. Even though it was Sunday morning, he was going in to the office.
There was a roll of thunderous noise from outside, but it went on too long to be thunder. Kimmel, uniform still unbuttoned, ran down the stairs to the front garden, along with his wife and the rest of the staff. From his front lawn he had a perfect view of Pearl Harbor.