Curtin visibly blanched.

"So these things could be anywhere. Under anyone's control."

MacArthur took the suggestion somberly. To Robertson, he looked like a man considering an important move in a game of chess. The day was growing even darker outside, and Curtin turned on a green-shaded desk lamp to give them some more light.

The American rubbed at his West Point ring as he spoke.

"It's possible," he conceded. "Judge was less concerned about the British and French vessels than the Indonesian one. He said those ships could look after themselves. But he said that the Indonesian ship, the Sutanto, didn't have, uhm, Combat Intelligence, I believe he called it. It's like a machine that can fight the enemy even when the crew is incapacitated. So the Japs could conceivably capture them. On the other hand, the Indonesian boats are much less capable."

There was something profoundly disturbing in that line of argument. It sounded to Robertson like a sales pitch.

"But surely the danger of the Japanese getting their hands on these ships lies as much in the knowledge they contain," he said.

Holding up the data slate, he went on.

"I understand these machines are a bit like having a whole university at your fingertips. What's to stop them or the Germans from learning how to build superweapons like the ones that destroyed the American fleet at Midway? Granted they couldn't leap right into the next century. But they could give their scientists and manufacturers a hell of a boost."

Prime Minister Curtin slowly rubbed his face with both hands. He was a picture of despair. MacArthur took in the questions without visible anguish, but neither did he exhibit any of his usual confidence.

In the end he could only shrug.

"We have to strike first."

The dispatch from Her Majesty's man in Hawaii arrived at Admiral Sir Dudley Pound's club late in the evening. The first sea lord received the long typewritten note from his man in Pearl Harbor, Rear Admiral Sir Leslie Murray, just before midnight. Pound had suffered from quite terrible headaches for some time, and an absolute blinder was keeping him awake when the Royal Navy courier arrived with a brown leather briefcase handcuffed to his wrist.

Pound took delivery in the club's library. He wasn't the only member who was padding about at that time. Many of the older members found their repose had been so badly disturbed by the war and especially by the bombing of London that they slept in fits and starts at all hours of the night and day. A few of them dozed in soft leather armchairs. One had nodded off over a copy of The Times, which had spilled onto the rich Turkish carpet where it lay until spied by a passing servant. Another had propped open Livingstone's original African journal on his lap, but had fallen asleep halfway down the Zambezi River. A couple of retired brigadiers, one of whom had been quite handsomely shot up with the New Zealanders at Gallipoli, pushed chess pieces around a board in the far corner.

Sir Dudley was deep into his third brandy of the evening when a footman showed through a young man from Naval Intelligence. Quietly grateful for some work to distract him through the graveyard hours, Pound thanked the officer and broke the seal on the dispatch from Sir Leslie.

Three paragraphs into the report he snorted a mouthful of brandy through his nose. With remarkable understatement the Royal Navy's liaison to the U.S. Pacific Fleet gave a detailed account of the arrival of Kolhammer's task force.

"I must report a most unusual event in the Pacific theatre," the message began, before describing in quite spare prose the destruction of the American fleet and a British carrier HMS Fearless. Murray relayed the astounding capabilities of the arrivals in equally detached terms, but it was clear to Sir Dudley that his stiff upper lip failed him when it came time to report on the individuals who had arrived in the ships.

"A most remarkable bunch," he wrote. "A more confronting collection of half-caste upstarts and hysterical women you would not find outside a whorehouse in Cairo!"

Murray recommended in closing that the British ship HMS Trident, which had arrived with Kolhammer, be reassigned immediately to the Home Fleet and staffed by reliable men drawn from the present-day Royal Navy. Some of the twenty-first-century personnel could, of course, be kept on to provide whatever training and familiarization was needed. The CO, Captain Halabi, was a curiosity at best, and a disaster-in-waiting at worst. Murray's opinion was that she and her crew would be of little use in a high-intensity theater of war such as the Atlantic. Allowing himself what seemed to be a moment of wit, he wrote that their major utility seemed to be to act as a warning concerning England's future immigration policy. He suggested that perhaps a position might be found for them in the coastal patrols of the various West Indian colonies. After all, so many of them seemed to hail from there.

Pound twice read the two-thousand-word communique, shaking his head and grunting in disbelief each time. It was nearly one in the morning when he finished, too late to check on the credibility of the story through independent sources. So he summoned another brandy and decided to send a cable directly to Honolulu in the morning. Sir Leslie Murray had obviously gone insane, and would need to be replaced.

He hauled himself upright and lay in a course for his sleeping quarters.

Strangely enough, he slept like a baby for the first time in months. Not even a large raid over the East End could wake him.

Thirty-six hours later Sir Dudly stood outside the prime minister's office, deep beneath the rubble-choked streets of London. Though well rested, he was still reeling from his meeting with the American ambassador, Mr. Kennedy. The former bootlegger had confirmed that yes, he'd received much the same information as Pound. No, he didn't really believe it either, but what the hell was he gonna do? Roosevelt himself had sent a handwritten note, confirming many of the basic facts. And Roosevelt had always tried to keep his personal communications with Kennedy to a minimum. They didn't get on.

Pound waited in the cramped anteroom, watching the concrete walls sweat, while he wondered how on earth to explain all this to the PM. A young woman in a dark blue Royal Air Force uniform ignored him while she hammered away at a typewriter, producing a sound not entirely unlike a machine gun. He was developing a headache, and each clack speared into his head like a sharpened knitting needle.

A slight tremor in his hands betrayed his anxiety.

Churchill, still dressed in his gown and slippers, suddenly appeared at the door and took in Pound's presence through rheumy eyes and a slight haze of gin fumes.

"Come in, Admiral," he said. "I hope you've brought glad tidings for a change."

Pound clutched his briefcase tightly and followed the prime minister through the door. The sound of rapid-fire typing ceased as the secretary jumped up to follow them. "Would you like your breakfast now, sir?" she asked Churchill.

"Kippers and toast," he barked back.

"And would you like some tea, Sir Dudley?"

Pound said he would, and they seated themselves as she hurried off.

"So, Admiral, what's this business in the Pacific? I've heard some wild rumors so far. I hope you're not here to add to them."

Pound took a breath and jumped in at the deep end.

"I'm afraid you're not going to believe me, Prime Minister, but I have to do this anyway."

He pulled out the dispatch from Rear Admiral Murray, and a copy of Ambassador Kennedy's report, which the American had helpfully given him, along with Roosevelt's handwritten cover note.