Chapter 9

Home, finally.

Sort of...

The military transport that shuttled me home was quite comfortable. Being a two-star general might have had something to do with that.

You know...

Could have been at least somewhat connected.

Clair flew into my arms, while Jenny held my son, Phillip Rasmussen, Junior. Being engulfed in love and kisses kept me from meeting my namesake for several minutes, but it was worth the wait. Phillip Junior, or Two, as I immediately started to call him, was simply beautiful. When my mission here is over it will hurt to leave this little one behind. Thinking about dying was what got me moving away from the base so that Clair and I could take our little boy home.

The next four weeks was down time for me. My assignment would have to wait. Like so many others, I was gone to war a long time and my family was going to have me for a month. Jenny was about to deliver when I got back and gave birth to a beautiful baby girl less than a week later. Jenny insisted on naming her Evelyn Clair. We all agreed that Jenny would be the third member of our marriage and the children would be raised knowing them both as mothers. It might be complicated but it was our decision.

The next six months flew by as World War Two ended rather dramatically, with Adolph Hitler ordering the wholesale slaughter of the entire German High Command following a series of losses that backed the Third Reich into a corner it was going to take a miracle to survive as an army. The Nazi Generals took swift control of the situation, executed Hitler and ended the war before they were totally destroyed.

To avoid the worst boondoggle in United States military and diplomatic history, I got to several highly placed military leaders and convinced them to convince Roosevelt to hold on to Berlin, not permit it to be divided and refuse to cede Eastern Europe to Stalin. This avoided the Berlin blockade and accelerated the economic recovery in Europe. Franklin Roosevelt was in a strong position but weak due to the effects of polio. He needed key advisors to keep him from handing over the continent the way he did the first time.

So much had changed since the universe dropped me on Hawaii to alter the outcome of Pearl Harbor that it was impossible to keep up. FDR died in April of nineteen-forty five just like last time and Truman stepped in and undid almost every single positive thing we’d accomplished since I was sent back. His concept of foreign relations resembled the work of a convenience store owner, in a bad neighborhood. He insulted those from whom he needed support, was gracious to people he should have ignored and bumbled along like broken toy left out in the rain too many times. I prayed there was enough left of our strategic advantage by the Ike would take over in nineteen-fifty.

On the day the war ended my team and I were in Denver chasing a clue that seemed to be leading us on a wild goose chase when the entire city erupted in celebration. We were rightfully perplexed until people passing by screamed the news to each other. The city-wide block party took off and lasted for days.

It was during this time with everyone distracted by the news from Germany that we got a break in the hunt that had us distracted from the merriment. One of my investigators paid a local street sweeper a nice one-hundred dollars in ten dollar bills for the location of a certain apartment where the resident bought information and doled out five dollar bills in exchange. Feeling stiffed by the pittance he’d received from the Russian the street sweeper gladly shared the address.

We waited until late in the evening, then sent one of our team disguised as a milkman to the door with a story about surplus military hardware for sale in Pueblo, about a hundred miles south. The spy was so transparently guilty that when we stormed the apartment it was everything we could do not to just shoot him and be done.

Our quarry was surrounded by dead bodies. When he realized we were on top of him, he killed everyone that could testify against him. The only problem with that was we had no intention of taking to court. His trip would be shorter, tougher and had an expiration date attached to it.

It was good that we stilled the hand of vengeance, for this spy gave up the arrival information of a shipload of recently trained, deep cover agents, who would be picked up at the port and disbursed all over America. He really didn’t want to share that information and we had to be excessively stern about hearing all the details. Things got so excessively stern that he managed to swallow both of his testicles before beginning to crack.

I believe it was the sound of his own teeth cracking through his balls that finally broke him down enough to talk, but my lead interrogator claimed it was the way he carefully carved his girlfriends’ initials into the groin of our captive. You have to give Harvey some credit, because he used a blow torch to carve those initials in the first place ... so ... there you go.

The news of Germany’s surrender was the catalyst that got us all called back to D.C. and our travels were curtailed for a few months while the new Department of Defense got organized and operational. Being a General made me an appropriate choice to be recalled to lead a section of the new department. Since I was Secretary of Defense once upon a time, I actually had some experience, training and skills to lend to the job.

My pre-knowledge of the Department of Defense helped me help those in charge as things got off the ground. When James Vincent Forrestal became the first Secretary of Defense – a year earlier than the first time – I knew he needed guidance but had an ego that was going to be tricky.

Forrestal grew up near Beacon, New York, when the berg where he lived was known as Matawan. After World War One in which he was an aviator, he went home and won his fortune in the markets. For whatever reason, he decided that the Democratic Party needed leadership and became active in campaigns for his neighbors in nearby, Poughkeepsie, New York. One of those neighbors was going to run for Governor of New York, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Forrestal guided his successful campaign, winning FDR the seat and cementing a friendship that would result in him working in the Roosevelt Administration and being selected to be the nations’ first Secretary of Defense by Truman.

Forrestal’s wife was a drunk and a mental case, which might explain why she lived in Poughkeepsie and he lived in Washington, D.C. Talk around Defense was that she often wandered the halls of their mansion, taking on any man that she saw working, thinking he was her husband. Apparently she found her lifestyle quite compatible, for she lived a long time in that dark shadow world in her mind.

On the home front, the five of us were working just fine. The children were too small to question our living arrangements and neither Clair, nor Jenny complained about sharing me. Our decision to have a joint family didn’t hold up for a very long time because Clair was diagnosed with breast cancer before the year was out and I lost her in the spring. It was nineteen-forty-five and the medical profession had none of the new drugs, or procedures available to them. Clair never had a chance and wasted away over the course of a couple of months. Jenny was holding Phillip beside her when she cried out and died.

At her funeral we were supported by some of the highest ranking officers in the United States Military, as well as a number of foreign dignitaries that came out of gratitude for what our team to help them survive the Nazi scourge. She was laid to rest in the graveyard of a nearby church where Jenny and Clair went for special days and Christmas Eve. Jenny and I were married less than a year later. We raised both children as if Jenny and I were always married.

Losing Clair was like losing an arm. She and I clicked like nobody since Colleen and having two small babies to care for made it impossible for us to grieve normally. Jenny grieved for months and I requested and was granted a special dispensation to work in D.C. rather than resuming the vagabond lifestyle that everyone was accustomed to knowing with me. I needed to be with her and help with the babies. We had each other but each lost an integral part of our lives, so continuing to be a couple was natural and unusual at the same time.