The Oval Office was dim, its curtains half drawn against the midday glare.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat motionless behind the Resolute Desk, his fingertips pressed together beneath his chin.
The recording had finished playing only moments ago.
Silence lingered like smoke.
"Jesus Christ," murmured Secretary of War Henry Stimson, breaking it. "He said it outright. Called us out by name."
Roosevelt didn't reply. His eyes, glassy with fatigue, stayed locked on the darkened radio receiver that had just finished airing Bruno's speech, translated in real time by the State Department's German desk.
The words were still ringing in his ears.
We shall resist to the last breath of man and horse… Even against a world of enemies…
The President inhaled slowly, as if the very air had become heavier.
He had just barely been able to drag his name out of the mud after the fiasco in Spain, and the negotiations that ended the Second Philippine Insurrection.
