The Situation Room beneath the White House had gone silent.
The large projection screens still showed the aerial photographs, grainy, ghostly, half-obscured by clouds; but the implications were already understood.
Where the port of St. John's had stood that morning, there was now only a gray smear of twisted steel and burning oil slicks.
The Atlantic, once considered the moat of democracy, had turned into its open wound.
President Roosevelt sat hunched forward at the head of the table, hands clasped beneath his chin.
His cigarette burned untouched between his fingers.
To his right, the Chief of Naval Operations spoke in a voice that wavered between disbelief and outrage.
