Well Kampus Majore, this is a new chapter
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*No new characters in this chapter
The world war just had started. This was the first such war in history. Great Britain and USA, now commonly reffered to as “Allies” fought against Lithuania. Allied forces if combined were obviously larger than Lithuanian ones, but only USA was able to engage in land battles. Great Britain lost huge numbers of ships and it’s capability to transport troops to mainland Lithuania was severely damaged. Now key mission of Lithuania was probably not to fight of US troops as quickly as possible as many could though, but to even more damage British navy. If second fleet would now destroy British ships near Moscow and later ones near Odessa, Great Britain would be lost approximately half of their navy in the war.
Just as Aukstaitis expected, phone rung – he just didn’t knew if this was Alisa Toraite wanting to tell about some journalists who wanted interview Aukstaitis, or someone on more serious purposes. Aukstaitis answered. It seems colonel Kristupas Paulauskas called, his voice wasn’t calm at all:
“Good evening… Mister president… I… I… What should I do now?”
“Don’t panic, we need calm heads at the government…” although president knewed colonel Paulauskas ussually wasn’t able to remain calm, he was quite a good choice for minister of defense position because of that – it was almost impossible that he would betray president in the way Jonaitis did “Just obey to my orders and everything will be OK again…”
“I… I understand… But I ask what your orders are…”
“No new orders, everything remains just as I told you before” Aukstaitis didn’t wanted to say important strategic orders on telephone because of possible listening by enemy intelligence “I shall tell more on junta meeting. Did you called everyone?”
“Yes, but… But where will the meeting take place? In your office?”
“No, it would be unsafe here…” president remained silent for several seconds, he was most likely thinking a place Paulauskas knowed so he could just tell him some clue instead of address “…Let’s do the meeting at the building where we all got drunk after overthrowing the government…”
“But it is now…” Paulauskas wanted to same something, but he was stopped by Aukstaitis:
“Not on telephone. I know that building and you know it. And all junta members also knows it, so don’t tell them adress but instead give them the same clue I gave you. This is a thing definitely nobody besides of us know, so we will have nothing to fear and will be able to talk about everything.”
“OK, I will tell that to the junta”
Aukstaitis stopped talking. He started looking to the city and thinking, probably about the tommorrow’s meeting. The place it was going to be held at was an abandoned house at the outskirts of Klaipeda, which once used to be a restaurant. Although enemy intelligence could dig that up, but it was almost impossible for them to get the info and put microphones at the place in just half a day remaining until the meeting. This meeting was going to be the first one after several years. Although Lithuania had no parliament or something like that and “junta” (people, who were the major supporters of the revolution) was the only such branch of government, Aukstaitis himself took more and more power into his hands in recent years. Also members of junta themselves weren’t such interested in governing anymore – most of them were already quite old, they wanted calm and peace and they were willing just to obey president’s orders and not raise their own opinion. President Donas Aukstaitis was the youngest member of junta also he unlike most other people there didn’t imagined the rest of life somewhere in country having good house, several cars and many maids. He had almost no spare time but he enjoyed that.
Aukstaitis turned on the TV. It seems it was the first time in several days International News Television showed not a destroyed Warwick. Some army trainings, probably US army, were being shown and reporter commented:
“News from the war: it seems the first minor battles were fought at Lithuanian/US border. Unlike most of people expected, Lithuania didn’t invaded American lands and instead taken up defensive positions in the hills near the boundary. Some US forces tried to invade, but were ambushed. Lihuanian sources claims they destroyed a brigade of troops and a battalion of tanks. American army admitted only the loss of soldiers, but not even whole brigade, but just 15 scouts. More news from the war – it seems British ships near Moscow were engaged by Lithuanian fleet. We will provide you a more detailed report on that once we will have more info” US army training site disappeared and instead Lithuanian Supreme Tribunal building was shown “today, after several hours, the case of supposed spy former Lithuanian minister of defense Jonas Jonaitis will be started. Judges will tell the sentence about 12 AM. Most of people around the world protests about such fast case and suggest Lithuanian Supreme Tribunal to search for more evidence. However, minister of justice Antanas Ruda told there is already enough evidence against Jonaitis”
Aukstaitis turned the TV off immidietly after last report and started calling Ruda. Minister of justice answered:
“Good evening president. How’s war?” Ruda always liked black humour, which sometimes weren’t even funny.
“Good evening. So the case on Jonaitis going to start soon?”
“Yes. After several minutes”
“Could you please tell the jury to vote for a maximum possible sentence?”
“OK, but… You once said you won’t interfere into the decitions of Supreme Tribunal”
“I know, I know… But sometimes it just has to be done. I think you should understand”
“Yes, I do” from the voice of Ruda it didn’t seemed he really understood
“Also just by the way – as you know, current time is very dangerous… There might be lots of tryings to spy us. I will talk more about preventing of this in the meeting tommorrow morning. But still be careful”
“I am always careful, sir”
President stopped talking. He went to bed and waited until television will broadcast the decition of Supreme Tribunal. Every major dection of it was always broadcasted live on national TV. Until then, he looked through the windows. Tommorrow was going to be very important day. Junta meeting at the morning, possible invasion to Odessa in the afternoon, putting first fleet back to water in the evening, also news on sea battles near Moscow, land battles on Lithuanian/American boundary, more air raids to Warwick. And, not only that, some major decitions had to be doe tommorrow. Like how to defend the almost undefended Lithuanian/American boundary in southern Cordabe, do or do not use planes to attack USA or start an offensive campaign against US positions or not. Aukstaitis expected to hear some suggestions from junta members in the meeting. Some of them were former (and some even current) military leaders after all.
Soon enough Aukstaitis was asleep, but he immidietly raised up when he heard something about the Supreme Tribunal. Grand Jury were already telling sentence. The juryman said:
“Today I, in the name of Supreme Court, Republic of Lithuania, Lithuanian people and the almighty God, announce the sentence for Jonas Jonaitis, who was accused of spying. We do consider him a criminal and sentence him with a maximum possible sentence – capital sentence, done by burning the criminal on fire in the main square of the capital city. The execution will start tommorow 5 PM”
Then TV showed Jonaitis’s face. He seemed to be trying to control himself, but he wasn’t able to do that. When guards started leading him to his cell, he cried. He didn’t looked like a fearless man anymore. Most of other people at the court also seemed to be quite shocked by a sentence, which, although permitted by a constitution, was not done for the last 10 years. Later however some people begun to clasp.
Aukstaitis turned off the TV and fell asleep while looking through the windows to the already sleeping city.
*to be continued*
