Read Pearl Harbour - A novel of December 8th for Free Online Page A

war; thus his knowledge was more colloquial than formal, and he knew he was making mistakes.
    The whole thing had been a bloody embarrassment, not a single question asked by the cadets afterward, a sure sign they had been ordered to behave thus.
    The obligatory reception afterward had been polite but relatively short, the various staff of the academy quickly begging off, claiming papers to correct, reports to write, and given the cool reception to James’s speech, Cecil had finally led him out on the excuse that their American guest had endured a most exhausting day and needed to ship out come morning.
    “So, how is it here?” James asked. “I mean really?” He paused and looked around a bit cautiously.
    Cecil laughed and shook his head. “We can talk freely. No one is listening. They would see that as underhanded and rude to a fellow naval officer to try and eavesdrop or wire my place. Really, on a personal level most of the blokes here have a love of His Majesty’s Navy, more than a few of them serving alongside us during the last war. We can talk.”
    James nodded.
    “The lads are a delight to work with, best I’ve ever seen. Our navies could use a dose of them, and that’s no mistake. Most come from the back country, curious, same way you have so many in your navy from the Midwest. Entrance exams are brutally competitive, and as you know more than a few have committed suicide when not accepted.”
    “They endure eighteen-hour days with no letup. Usual range of subjects, but strong emphasis as well on either English, German, or Russian. Of course that’s where I come in.
    “English is the most popular, and it does make me wonder is it because their navy is patterned after ours because we helped them build it, even supplied their first ships,” he sighed and took a drink, “or is it because they think the next fight will be with us.”
    “What I would wonder” ..James paused, and instinct actually made him stand up, walk to the edge of the veranda to look over the porch, before settling back down.
    “Your houseboy?”
    “Gave him the night off.”
    James nodded.
    “All right, old friend,” Cecil asked, “out with it.”
    “Just that some higher-ups remembered you and I worked together in the war. I was asked to come down here and have a chat with you and see what you think. You have your ear to the ground. What do you think?”
    “Ah, so you might say I was sent here to spy?”
    “Dirty word that,” James replied, imitating Cecil’s clipped style of speech when stirred, “let’s just say, observing.”
    “But first you,” Cecil said, and he reached over, putting his hand on James’s knee. “I’m so sorry about your son, James.” James nodded, unable to speak. It had been a year now since his son had died. He knew that if he started to talk about it, he would break down. He coughed shyly, motioning for a refill of his drink, and the two old friends smiled.
    Both could be defined as spies, though their specialty was a new field, of radio signal intercepts and cryptology. It had been their job together in the last war, but in peacetime more than a few of the higher-ups were of the old school that “gentlemen did not read gentlemen’s mail” or for that matter intercept their signals and try to decode them, especially if the other gentleman was allegedly an ally. It was a specialization that was a guaranteed slow track for promotion.
    Cecil looked off, the crescent moon touching the horizon on the far side of the bay. The campus was quiet, lights out having already been sounded.
    He sighed. “It’ll come,” he said softly.
    “Go on.”
    “They think they’re us in a way.”
    “How so?”
    “Well, we bloody well ran riot over the world for a couple of hundred years. Plant the flag, build the Empire, assuage any sense of guilt by spreading the gospel and calling it the white man’s burden, but it was imperialism plain and simple; and now that’s done, we see ourselves as being proper