by Bill Walker
“I’m sorry, sir, he passed away last year. I thought you knew.”
A flicker of sadness passed over the major’s features and was gone a moment later. Reaching into the pile of papers, he pulled out an envelope and handed it to Kruger.
“These are your orders for tomorrow. You are to report to 21 Army Group HQ and assume duties as the general’s new aide.”
“Montgomery, sir?”
“Who bloody else?”
“Begging the major’s pardon, but doesn’t the general have an aide?”
Crutchins looked at him and sighed. “You’re just like your father, Liddington, always asking questions. General Montgomery deems it necessary to add you to his staff temporarily.”
“Right, sir.”
“Now as to your quarters—”
“Sir?”
“What is it now?” he said, becoming annoyed.
“If it’s all the same, I have quarters arranged.”
“Where?”
Kruger smiled conspiratorially. “A certain lady friend has extended the hospitality of her modest home to a needy soldier.”
As Kruger had hoped, the old man echoed his smile, picking up on the not-so-subtle hint of debaucheries to come.
“Aye, just like your father, all right.” He stood and saluted. “Can’t keep the lady waiting, Lieutenant, eh, what?”
“No, sir,” Kruger said, returning the salute.
He turned to leave but stopped when the major called out.
“Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir?”
“Your car will be leaving from here precisely at oh-eight hundred. Don’t be late.”
Kruger smiled. “Have no fear, sir. I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
“Miss what?”
“Whatever it is,” Kruger said, recovering nicely.
Picking up Liddington’s bag, Kruger strode out the door. He retraced his steps and passed the sentry, who paid him no mind this time. Reaching the street, he turned and began whistling a jaunty tune, his footsteps marking cadence. A moment later he was swallowed by the swirling fog.
Chapter Nineteen
London, England
14 May 1944
The icy wind whipped across the Thames, blowing away the last of the fog. The sky in the east turned gray, signaling the dawning of a new day. Jack and Denise snapped into existence in the shadow of the Tower Bridge, hidden by one of the monstrous abutments. Jack leaned against the venerable stone and tried to keep his head from spinning. The move they’d just made in both time and space made him want to throw up. Like Denise had described, for the briefest of moments, he’d felt wired into the pulse of the universe, stretched over eons of time and infinite miles of space. The price for that experience was a throbbing headache and a woozy stomach.
“You okay?” Denise said, putting her arm around him.
“I feel like I’ve been put through a cosmic meat grinder.” His teeth chattered and his lips felt raw and chapped. “How ’bout you?”
“Freezing, tired, and I need a goddamn drink. Let’s find a hotel.”
“Scheiss, Malloy, you drink too much.”
She laughed. “You better lose those German curse words, if you know what’s good for you.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s just get out of this wind before I catch pneumonia, all right?”
“You sure are a fussbudget, aren’t you?”
He snarled, half in jest, and began walking along the riverbank, huddled against Denise. About half a mile on, they spotted a lone taxi and took it to a small hotel near the West End. There’d been a near panic when Denise realized they had no money, but the kind driver waved them out of his cab with a cheery good night.
The hotel, The Royal Arms, had seen better days. The lobby was seedy, run-down, but it somehow added to its charm. Both Denise and Jack were taken aback by the number of people, some in uniform, who slept on the various chairs and couches. The air smelled of cigar smoke and cheap perfume.
“They must be full, Jack.”
“They also don’t appear to mind if people sack out in their lobby.”
Jack glanced over at the registration desk and saw no one there. Even clerks had to sleep, and manpower was in demand elsewhere. Scanning the room, he spotted an empty love seat.
“Come on,” Jack said, pulling Denise with him.
“What if these people are paying?” she whispered.
“We’ll find out, won’t we?”
“Damn!” she hissed after tripping over a soldier’s duffel bag.
“Ssssssh!”
Denise gave him the eye, as if to say, “No kidding!”
They both fell into the small couch, exhausted. When a sailor seated nearby offered Denise a pull from his flask, Jack resisted the urge to rip it out of her hands. Let her have it, he thought. After what she’d done, maybe she deserved a whole case. He shifted in his seat and his eyes grew heavy. Even the spring he felt digging into the small of his back did not keep him from falling into a deep and immediate sleep.
“Hey, shithead. How are you?”
Jack’s eyes snapped open as Wiley’s voice faded into his subconscious. The dream shook him to the core. He’d been back in the hotel room again, only this time, he’d seen Kruger pop in, place the extra pillow over Wiley’s head, and pull the trigger. Feathers flew about the room, the report like a muffled cough. Wiley’s body jerked once and lay still. Jack had tried to scream, tried to move, do anything to stop it, but it had felt like he was chained to the spot, forced to watch as some sort of ghoulish penance for some unknown sin.
He closed his eyes and inhaled.
“Excuse me, sir?”
Jack opened his eyes to find the hotel clerk standing above them. Pert and petite, she exuded the studied charm of someone accustomed to dealing with the public all day long.
“Yes?”
“You and your lady friend will have to vacate the lobby, sir.”
“Why?”
“It’s past six.”
Shaking the grogginess from his mind, he looked about the lobby and noticed they were the only ones left.
“Sorry,” he said, sitting up.
“That’s okay, sir. It’s hotel policy. All transients out by six.”
Awakened by Jack’s movement, Denise groaned as she stretched her body.
“Cute ass,” she said, watching the departing clerk.
Jack shook his head. “Get your head out of the gutter, Malloy. Time to move out.”
She smiled lazily and saluted. “Yes, sir, General.”
Out on the street, they found themselves overwhelmed by the pandemonium. Cars vied with military vehicles in a never-ending stream. Cabbies screamed out invectives that made even Denise blush. Horns honked incessantly while unflappable Bobbies directed traffic, making their directions known with abrupt hand signals and piercing blasts of their whistles.
“Where do we go from here?” Denise shouted.
Jack studied the street, trying to get his bearings based on a London he’d visited only once, and one that wouldn’t exist for forty years. Suddenly, he remembered.
“SHAEF headquarters!” he said.
“How far is it?”
That was something he couldn’t guess at. He shrugged and started to walk. Frustrated, Denise followed.
“You mean you don’t know?”
“No, I don’t. All I know is it’s in Grosvenor Square. That help?”
Denise shook her head and muttered something Jack could not hear over the street noise. Up ahead, he saw a familiar sign. It read: London Underground.
“Come on!” he said.
Taking the stairs two at a time, Jack descended into the tube station, his eyes ignoring the quaint old advertisements, on the lookout for something far more important. A second later he spotted it behind a knot of passengers waiting for the next train: a map of the subway system.
It took only a minute to find out that Grosvenor Square lay a little over a mile away, only two stops on the
tube. Again, the problem of money arose.
“How about I do my impression of Bing Crosby,” Denise said. “Maybe people will throw money in our hat.”
“We don’t have a hat. Besides, you sound more like Bob Hope. They’ll probably arrest us for disturbing the peace.”
Denise frowned. “And I suppose you could do better?”
“Never mind, I’m sorry,” he said stepping over a sleeping woman wrapped in a frayed blanket. The entire station appeared to be a home away from home for dozens of people lounging about, waiting for the next air raid. Whole families sat huddled together, boiling pots of tea over small alcohol lamps.
“Well, I’m waiting for one of your bright ideas,” Denise said, nearly tripping over a small boy playing with a set of lead soldiers.
Jack scanned the crowd, wondering what to do. Despite the depression and the wartime shortages, panhandling was not a common sight in Britain. He had no idea how anyone would react. Would they scream at him to get away or ignore him completely like some insignificant piece of trash?
He spied a young couple alighting from one of the trains. The young man looked snappy in his Royal Navy uniform and the young woman stared at him, her eyes filled with love. No doubt they had spent the night together. Jack started to move toward them, figuring they might be sympathetic, when from out of the crowd behind them, a man ran out and grabbed the young girl’s purse. She screamed, startling her boyfriend, who stood rooted to the spot, his mouth gaping.
Jack ran toward the thief and hit him with a cross-body block, the kind he’d learned in high school football, and knocked him flat, then ripped the purse out of the man’s hand. Stunned for only a moment, the snatcher grimaced at Jack, his ferret-like features taking on an expression of pure venom. Before he could do anything, Denise ran up. Now that the odds had changed, the little man scrambled to his feet and melted into the crowd.
The couple ran up, breathless.
“My God, I’ve never seen anything like it. Are you all right?” the man asked.
“Yes, I’m fine. Here’s your purse.”
“You’re American, aren’t you?” the young woman asked.
“Guilty as charged,” Jack replied.
The young woman smiled, relief spelled out all over her face. “We can’t thank you enough. I don’t know what I would have done. All our savings are in here. We’re off to buy a ring.”
She smiled again at her fiancé.
“Excuse us,” he said, sticking out his hand, “Roger Demming, and this is my fiancée, Honoria Williams.”
Jack grinned and made the introductions.
“I had to do something,” Jack said. “The same thing happened to us.”
He ignored Denise’s puzzled expression.
“Oh my! What did you do?” Honoria said.
“There wasn’t much we could do. He got clean away.”
Honoria opened her purse and pulled out two five-pound notes and handed them to Denise. “You must take these. Roger and I insist on it, don’t we?”
Roger nodded, but Jack could tell he was less than enthusiastic.
“I can’t take this,” Jack said, playing it out.
For a moment he thought Roger would overrule his fiancée, but he shook his head. Obviously, he knew when to keep his mouth shut.
“Nonsense. And you’ll join us for breakfast.”
Rather than argue, Denise pocketed the money and the four of them went above ground and took breakfast in the station café. The food, typical English fare, tasted bland and greasy. Still, he was hungry, and had to force himself to eat slowly, for fear of looking boorish. Their conversation tended to the banal until Roger brought up the invasion.
“It’ll be soon, mark my words. We can’t let Jerry go on with this mess, that’s for sure.”
“I don’t doubt it, Roger.”
Of course, Jack could not tell him what he knew about Overlord. He wondered what lay in store for the young sailor. Would Honoria end up a widow after only a few scant weeks of wedded bliss? Jack preferred not to think about that.
“How come you’re not in uniform, Jack?”
Jack felt a stab of panic.
“Punctured eardrums,” he said, spouting out the first thing that came to him.
“Sorry, old chap, bad show. By the way, those are smashing shoes you have on. Where did you get them?”
Jack looked down and saw the white running shoes and felt panic lance through him again. The rest of his clothes were nondescript, more or less blending with the fashions of the day. But how the hell was he ever going to explain a pair of Nike jogging shoes? He had to get rid of them.
“Jack?”
“What?” he said turning to Denise. She nodded toward Roger, frowning with concern.
“Oh, I’m sorry, you were asking about my shoes. Uhh, They’re an experimental athletic shoe. I used to work for a shoe company back in the States. Never caught on, I’m afraid.”
Roger smiled. “Too bad, they look quite practical.”
After breakfast, they parted ways. Jack tried to give back the money one last time. Fortunately, Honoria stuck to her guns. Jack and Denise watched them disappear down the block.
“I wonder if—”
“Me too,” Jack said.
“Well, at least we have some walking-around money. Not much, though.”
“You’re forgetting your history, Malloy. A British pound was worth about five bucks in nineteen forty-four.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “What?”
“Yeah, they gave us the equivalent of fifty dollars, nearly two weeks’ salary for most working people these days. It’ll get us around for quite a while.”
“No wonder you were trying to give it back. God, I feel awful.”
“I know. That story I gave them obviously hit the spot.”
“You should be ashamed.”
“I was, for about a minute—until I remembered Kruger. Come on. We’ve got to go,” he said, grabbing her hand.
Their first stop was a secondhand store where they bought clothes more apropos to the period. The clerk eyed Jack’s running shoes like they were some grotesque artifact from a far-off world. Jack told him to keep them. The whole bill came to £1.15.0. He still couldn’t get over how far money went even in an economy plagued with shortages.
Now dressed in the height of 1944 fashion, Jack and Denise dashed back to the tube station, jumping on a train just as the doors slid closed. It was crowded and smoky, so Jack let Denise take the last remaining seat and stood next to a man reading The Times. He scanned the front page, seeing nothing about any murders or disappearances. Liddington was either still alive, or his body still lay undiscovered.
After the first stop, the train emptied out, allowing him to take the seat next to Denise. She rested her head on his shoulder and fell instantly asleep. Jack chuckled softly, wondering how she could do it, and desperately wished he could do the same. Moments later, the train pulled into their stop: Bond Street. Emerging at street level, they strolled toward Grosvenor Square and into the full bustle of downtown London. He heard a clock chiming the hour: 0800.
“Which building is it, Jack?”
Jack squinted, trying to see through the bright haze of reflections bouncing off the hundreds of cars thronging the square.
“Over there,” he said, pointing to a red brick building across the square. “The one with all the sandbags.”
The adrenaline began to flow when they dodged through the traffic. Even with its minimal fortifications, the building looked like a hundred others, had no sign to signal its importance, yet it contained men and women who held the future in their hands.
“Halt!”
They stopped in their tracks. The sentry stepped forward, a sergeant in the Military Police. His waxed mustache looked comical, but Jack wasn’t laughing.
“State your business,” the MP said.
Momentarily startled, Jack remained speechless.
“We’ve come to see General Eisenhower,” De
nise said.
If the request appeared out of line, the soldier didn’t react. He snapped out his hand.
“Your papers, please.”
Jack felt his heart sink. They had nothing to identify themselves. What they did have now lay in tatters, fifty years in the future.
Denise made a great show of looking for their ID.
“Oh, honey! How could we be so stupid? We passed right by the front desk and forgot to get our passports. Mamie is going to kill us if we don’t stop by and see how Uncle Ike is doing.”
Jack thought he saw something flicker in the MP’s eyes. Could it be worry? Denise turned to the sentry and turned on the charm.
“Couldn’t you let us in just this once? I’m sure Uncle Ike wouldn’t be mad.”
Her bedroom eyes would have melted stone, but the MP’s features hardened, and he thrust his rifle to port arms.
“These are restricted premises, ma’am. Military personnel only,” he said, his tone clipped and strident.
It was completely obvious they would get nowhere with the guard. Frustrated, they turned and walked back to the sidewalk.
“Well, it was worth a try,” she said. “Why don’t we hang out and wait? Maybe someone important will come out?”
“And then what? We start babbling about time travel and a Nazi America? They’ll lock us up. At the very least, they’ll ignore us.”
Denise sighed. “What’ll we do?”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of walking and taking trains. Let’s grab a cab and get to the school.”
“Where is it?”
“In Hammersmith. About six miles that way,” he said, pointing west.
“Why spend the money?” Denise said, grabbing his hand and pulling him into a nearby alley.
“Oh, no, Denise!”
Before he could stop her, he felt the familiar flash and they landed on the corner of Hammersmith and Blyth Roads. The school grounds lay a quarter of a mile away. Jack wanted to throw up.
“Damnit, Denise! Why do you keep doing that to me?”
She laughed, a deep, throaty laugh he found appealing in spite of his anger. “We’re here, Dunham. What’s the beef?”