“I need to be alone…!” She insisted, her voice little more than a hoarse whisper. “Get out… please…!”
“As you wish,” the Reichsmarschall conceded, almost bowing in deference to her request. “If you need any assistance, you need only call: we shall remain very close…”
She began to sob in earnest as they left the room, arms covering her face and hands clasped about her head as she curled into a foetal ball, her defences falling away as she finally allowed her mind to process the shock and terror and violation she’d just experienced.
“It might’ve been better not to have thrown that pistol out the window…” Ritter pointed out as they sat at that same small table in the darkness of Reuters’ room some minutes later.
“Perhaps,” the Reichsmarschall conceded with a shrug, “or it might’ve been just the incentive that schwein needed to actually go and report all this rather than keep his mouth shut. Better we be seen by the others to be ‘meek little mice’ rather than lions, yes? The less attention we have these next few hours the better.”
“Indeed…” Ritter agreed, raising an eyebrow. “In that case, why did you decide to help her?”
“Why, indeed…” Reuters sighed sadly, staring out at the stars through the open window as he thought about exactly that. “Honestly? Guilt, I suppose, as much as for any other reason. Yesterday I acted like a coward… a coward...!” He repeated firmly, cutting Ritter off as he began to object. “I lived day-to-day under the threat of nuclear weapons for seventy years, and now I allow one bloody bomb to fill me with such mindless terror? I was ashamed of myself, and I had no intention of compounding that shame by standing around and allowing those bastards to defile a defenceless woman! ‘Honour in Germany’… I told you that once, yes?” He asked pointedly, drawing a nod as he recalled events of years past. “It was not your fault that you were too late to save a mother and daughter that night,” he continued with another shrug. “This time, there was the chance to do something about it.”
“I – I was afraid…” Ritter admitted, his own shame showing through now. “I was thinking only of my own family – that I might never see them again if I intervened…”
“You were human…” Reuters countered with a sad, knowing smile. “There is no shame in wanting to see your wife and children again…” he added, pausing for a moment as a lump of emotion almost caught in his throat “…or a son who’d give anything to see his father one more time… Plenty of time for that later, anyway,” he declared, rousing himself before his own thoughts got the better of him. “We still have that bloody knife he left behind, and that might be useful if we’re to try getting out of here this morning! I’ll go over and collect it later… when…”
“You mean this ‘bloody knife’…?” Eileen asked from the doorway, and both men turned quickly to take in the sight of her standing there in full uniform, the tanto held out in front of her. Although neither was able to see the redness of her eyes or the streaks of tears on her cheeks in the darkness of that room, the quavering hollowness of her voice spoke volumes as to the fragile nature of her current mental state.
“Captain, is everything all right…?” Ritter asked again, repeating his earlier question as both men rose instinctively with the arrival of a woman in their presence.
“Um… no… everything is most definitely not all right, colonel,” she managed haltingly, almost forcing a thin smile, “but I am dealing with it. May I have a word alone with your commanding officer?”
Of – of course,” he nodded immediately, heart in his mouth over what they might possibly talk about and forcing all sign of that fear away from his tone and expression. “I shall wait outside.”
“Sit… please…” Reuters offered stiffly, as uncomfortable with the situation as she was.
“I… I didn’t feel like I should be alone... right now…” Eileen stammered, hating herself for admitting it as she took Ritter’s vacated seat and placed the tanto carefully on the table between them.
“There is no need to explain…” he replied with a faint shake of his head.
“I – I owe you… some thanks…” she added softly, despising herself even more for that.
“That cannot have been easy to say…” Reuters observed, surprising even himself with the lack of hatred in which those words had been said, although there was nevertheless the faint hint of bitterness all the same. “Some things, it seems, transcend any differences in loyalty or ideology. You and your colleagues have come a long way in your fight against us… against me…” He released a soft snort of mirthless laughter as he stared out through that window again. “It must be difficult to see that we’re perhaps not all the rabid animals you imagined…?”
“Easy to forget that your enemies are human beings too…” she conceded reluctantly.
“Sometimes, at least… hmm…?” He suggested drily, but there was a hard edge showing through faintly beneath his tone now. “I don’t like you, lady: make no mistake about that,” he added, fixing her with a pointed stare as Ritter sat in the room opposite and listened nervously to the entire exchange. “I don’t like any of you who judge us and what we do for Deutschland by your rose-coloured, post-war standards. I lived through the worst of what the occupation did to us! I make no excuses for what I’ve done, or for the wrongs I’ve been party to, but you have no right to judge unless you’ve lived as we have lived… until you’ve suffered as we suffered…
“Neither, of course, do I expect you to suddenly change every idea or opinion you have of me, just because of what has happened tonight, and decide that I am some kind of hero,” he continued with a mirthless smile that was almost a sneer, “and under the circumstances, we may still all end up dead, so what does that matter anyway, yes? It appears – for the moment at least – that we have been thrown together in all this, to the benefit or delight of neither party. You are welcome here for what it is worth – better to keep us all safe if we work together while this lasts. There are beds aplenty here,” Reuters suggested, waving a hand in a vague gesture toward the doorway. “Choose whichever you prefer: one of us will stand guard. In the morning, we shall talk some more, perhaps, on this unenviable situation we all find ourselves in.
A myriad of dark thoughts whirled about in Eileen’s mind; accusations… arguments… any number of facts she might’ve thrown up against what he’d said: that all the suffering in the world could never excuse the devastation the Nazis had wrought upon the rest of the world… that there could never be justification enough to excuse the genocide of The Holocaust and the wholesale murder of millions… that every fibre of her being and everything she’d ever known and believed reviled the actions and even the very existence of the man sitting opposite her at that moment.
And yet he had saved her life… saved her from death and something so much worse.
Ritter may have swayed him… may have turned the decision, perhaps, but the fact remained that he could never have acted – never have come to her aid – had Reuters not given the order. And it was painfully clear that the Reichsmarschall of the German Wehrmacht had not only allowed Ritter to intervene but had joined in himself, making himself a party to whatever retribution might follow. As unlikely as it was that the Japanese might risk Hitler’s wrath by harming him aside, he’d taken that risk nevertheless, when all the man might’ve done instead was to not become involved with the killing of an enemy.
There was no way to ignore or to reconcile that fact, and in her shaken and exhausted state, she found she wasn’t even about to try. She had been in need, and someone had come to her aid, almost certainly saving her life into the bargain. Who that someone had been – for the time being at least – hardly mattered at all.
“Thank you… again…” she whispered eventually, head lowered and still shaking faintly. “Thank you…”
As Donelson and Reuters were locked in conversation, Langdale and Watson pulled the small, rigid-hulled inflatable boat up onto the beach, landing at Cape Batuanjut, not far s
outh of Eri. It had taken roughly thirty minutes to cross the bay, the small electric motor almost completely silent as it had pushed them along at a cracking eight knots. Save for a few tense moments backtracking in the middle of the bay to avoid a patrolling sub chaser, the journey itself had been relatively uneventful.
“You okay?” He asked with a grin, sitting back on the side of the raft and taking a moment to catch his breath.
“I’ll manage,” she nodded eventually, chest heaving as she plonked down cross-legged onto the sand by the bow. “I know you were doing most of the work anyway,” she added, fixing him with a shrewd stare.
“Dunno what yer talkin’ about,” he grinned back, feigning ignorance with sweat beading on his forehead beneath the brim of his cap.
“What else did they send you?”
“Apart from the raft?” Langdale grinned in return, patting the four-foot-long aluminium canister that still lay inside the boat, the second of two they’d received via air drop, three hours earlier. “More weapons, about five pounds of ammo, extra batteries for my radio and – thank Christ! – about four days’ worth of ration packs and ten litres of fresh water.”
“Ten litres…?”
“About two gallons,” he explained with another grin, noting the quizzical tone of her voice.
“And more weapons… guns…?” She growled softly. “What do we need more guns for?”
“I reckon those’d be for us…” an unexpected voice observed softly from behind them, and as they both spun about in shock, they found themselves face to face with Lieutenant Bill Jinkins and four other Australian soldiers, all armed either with M2 assault rifles or Japanese Type-100 SMGs.
“Bugger me…!” Langdale exclaimed angrily. “Bloody good way for you blokes to get yourselves shot, sneakin’ up on someone like that!”
“Some of us have to work at it, mate: can’t all blend in like a blackfella…” one of the riflemen called drily as they spread out to take up guard positions.
“That’s ‘Sergeant Blackfella’ to you... private…!” Langdale warned, not in any mood to put up with racist remarks.
“Pull yer head in, Bluey, for Christ’s sake… the rest of you watch yer bloody mouths as well!” Jinkins snapped sharply, cringing as he stepped up to where Langdale and Watson were now standing. “Sorry ‘bout that, Sarge: he’s not a bright bloke at the best of times!”
“How many are you?” Langdale queried, moving right on to business as he threw one last glare in the rifleman’s direction.
“I’ve got what’s left of two platoons back in the trees about a hundred yards,” Jinkins replied immediately, cocking a thumb back over his shoulder toward the dark, featureless jungle.
“That’s all…?”
“Not much, eh…?” The lieutenant agreed with a resigned shrug. “We’ve not had any luck linking up with anyone else – there are Jap patrols all over the bloody place still and a small garrison holding Eri, just up the road. Just luck we happened to have got hold of a radio, and picked up the broadcast from Darwin about you comin’ over…”
“So we dunno how many more Aussies are still at large?”
“Oh, there’ll be plenty south of Eri: Colonel Roach should have the better part of at least a company somewhere down there… only problem is exactly where, right at the moment. Doesn’t help us much either way, I reckon. Where’s your mate?” Jinkins added, of course meaning Lloyd, and the sharp expression of pain that question evinced from Langdale left him instantly regretting he’d asked.
“He didn’t make it…” He replied softly, glancing down at the sand for a moment.
“Shit… shit, I’m sorry, mate…” Jinkins muttered, receiving a single nod of acknowledgement from Langdale as the others all observed a moment of respectful silence. “Okay…” he continued, changing the subject back to the present once more. “We’re all you’ve got at the moment: whaddya need us for?”
“Well, let’s get all this crap off the beach, for a start,” Mal suggested, also happy to move on to less painful subjects. “After that, we can set up camp somewhere away from prying eyes and work out exactly that…”
“Are we gonna like it?” Jinkins asked with a wry, knowing smile.
“Not a chance,” Langdale answered with a grin.
“Figured as much… come on, fellas: let’s get a move on!”
Carson’s Airfield,
Northern Territory
It had turned chilly after midnight, and there was some real bite in the air as Thorne made his way toward the main hardstands out front of the 2nd ARDU hangars at around one that morning. Dawn was still many hours away, but there was already much activity as ground- and aircrew alike swarmed over the huge, black aircraft before him, carrying out the last of pre-flight checks. Still a dozen yards or so away, he stopped for a moment, hands on hips, and took in the breathtaking bulk of the XB-42 Boomerang bomber.
She’s a beauty, all right…
“That she is…” he agreed softly, nodding faintly.
He knew the design it had been taken from well enough. Years ahead of its time in the history of Thorne’s era, the Northrop YB-49 had seemed like something out of a science-fiction movie that had promised much but had ultimately fallen foul of US Air Force chiefs through a lethal combination of mounting technical difficulties, conservatism and back-room politics that at the time had stretched as far as rumours of industrial sabotage. The aircraft he was staring at now was almost identical to that Realtime design, save for a slightly lengthened rear fuselage, a small, vestigial rudder mounted above it, and a set of winglets curving upward from the outer tips of the flying wing’s huge main lifting body.
“Magnificent, isn’t it…?” Trumbull observed softly at his right shoulder.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Thorne agreed with a sheepish smile, deciding not to let on how close he’d come to needing a new pair of shorts as his friend had unexpectedly spoken after a completely undetected approach.
“Doesn’t quite handle like a fighter, but it’s a bloody close contest at altitude.”
“Listen… Alec…” Thorne began awkwardly. “I was out of line earlier…”
“Were you, air vice marshal…?” Trumbull asked with a perfectly-feigned lack of comprehension. “I’m not sure I follow…”
“You’re gonna make me squirm for this, aren’t you…?” he growled drily with a grimace.
“I meant what I said, Max… every word,” Trumbull advised with equal parts seriousness and caring concern. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you have the potential in you for a greatness the rest of us can only guess at. I see that as clearly as I see you standing before me right now…”
There was the flash of a desire to make a sarcastic remark at that moment – to make reference to the fact that it was one in the morning and that it wasn’t all that bright, or something similar, but for once – for a change – Max Thorne managed to resist that urge… managed to instead remain silent and lower his head in humble acceptance of a compliment he so badly wanted to deflect with humour or self-deprecation.
Well done…
“…Every single one of us can see that, Max,” Trumbull continued, oblivious as the little voice in his head faded out once more, “and every single one of us will follow you to the end of the earth if we must.” His expression softened further then as he added: “But none of that will be possible unless you believe in yourself. We’ve been friends for a little while now, Max, but I have no idea what your life was before Hindsight joined us. I know you’ve suffered through great loss, but in real terms I still actually know very little about you… I suspect that most people – even Eileen – know very little about you, in spite of their best efforts, no doubt.”
“That… is quite possible…” Thorne conceded eventually with a grimace.
“I don’t want or need an apology, air vice-marshal,” Trumbull continued with a wry smile and a faint nod of understanding. “What I need – what we all need – is to see y
ou at your best; and I for one don’t think that’s come yet… not by a long shot!”
There was a long, silent pause as Thorne considered everything the man before him had just said, very uncharacteristically at a loss for words in that unexpected moment.
“Thank you…” he managed finally, nodding his assent and suddenly unable to meet Trumbull’s gaze as he stared down at the tarmac beneath their feet.
“What…? No quick quips…? No razor-sharp repartee…?” The pilot observed with a raised eyebrow not at all unkindly.
“No… just… thank you…”
“My goodness, this has been an interesting night…”
“You’re flying out soon…” Thorne pointed out, finally managing a soul-saving deflection.
“In about thirty minutes…” Trumbull confirmed, glancing at his watch and letting him get away with it. “Your show will be all over by the time I’m on target, I should think.”
“Let’s hope so,” Thorne agreed with a nod, silent acceptance passing between both of them that the previous subject was settled for the time being. “You sure you’re ready for this: for what you have to do…?”
“No, quite frankly,” Trumbull admitted with a deep intake of breath, grimacing. “Not sure at all. Personal request from The Palace, however, so not really something I can pass on, even if I wanted to.”
“There are other pilots…”
“Yes, there are…” Trumbull agreed. “And some of them could probably fly this thing just as well as I can, if not better, but honestly: I’d not wish this responsibility on anyone else, much as I don’t want it either.” He snorted softly, considering the dark irony of it all. “What I’ll to tomorrow may save millions of innocent lives… by taking another million in the process. If there are demons to be faced in this, I shall deal with them later…”
“Good luck, mate,” Thorne offered with a nod of complete understanding, extending a hand.
The Dead Alone (Empires Lost Book 3) Page 98