The Oval Office was quieter than usual. Not solemn but tense. The kind of tension that coiled beneath every breath, like a wire pulled too tight.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt sat behind his desk, a half-drained glass of bourbon beside him.
His fingers drummed softly against the polished wood. Across from him, Secretary of State Cordell Hull, Director of the OSS William Donovan, and a cadre of aides stood like specters in a funeral hall.
The aerial reconnaissance images on the projector wall told the story none of them wanted to say aloud.
Monrovia, gone.
Not bombed. Not razed. Erased.
Every image of surveillance captured only devastation: blocks flattened into cinders, charred bodies still smoldering in the cratered streets, smoke plumes thick enough to blot out the coast for miles.
A modern Pompeii delivered by German Fernbombers that came and went like ghosts.
