by RR Haywood
‘Do nothing. If they suspect anything we’ll be executed. Bravo won’t hesitate. Not a word. Don’t act differently. Not even at night in our bed. Nothing.’
‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Our bed? I like that. We’ll have our own bed one day. Me and you somewhere in history . . . I’m with you, Alfie. No, Alfie doesn’t sound right either. Alpha. You’re Alpha.’
‘I’m Alpha.’
‘Oh wow, fancy another quickie?’
Twenty-Four
Berlin, Bundesstraβe 2, 2 February 1945
‘RUN . . . GET TO COVER . . . GET TO COVER.’ The words are shouted all around him and he runs with his heart jack-hammering in his chest and adrenaline coursing through his veins and looks up at the hundreds of silhouetted planes in the sky and the puffs of smoke coming from the AA guns. He can even see small black objects falling from the planes that seem to tumble gently through the sky to hit the ground, which heaves and shakes from the constant detonations. A hand on his collar yanks him along and the face of an older man screams at him. ‘DON’T GAWP . . . GET TO COVER . . .’
‘Yes, sir,’ Konrad mumbles, nodding in panic. He runs with the crowd down the street and, like them, he covers his head with his hands to protect it from flying debris, dodging and weaving through the old men and women, through the mothers clutching babies and the women running from the buildings.
‘IDIOTS,’ the old man shouts, making Konrad look over to see five men huddled under the archway of a railway line and to the last they adopt expressions of worry and angst. ‘DON’T STAND THERE.’ The man points at the archway above their heads as he runs past. ‘THEY’RE BOMBING THE TRACKS . . .’
Konrad veers off quickly, weaving to get to the edge of the running crowd while turning to snatch more glimpses of the five men. He pretends to stumble and cries out in pain at his twisted ankle. He half expects someone to stop and try to help, but there are a thousand USAAF planes over Berlin and right now it’s every person for themselves. A few seconds go by and through the running crowds he sees them. Then he sets off, running back the way he came, against the flow of people heading for the shelter at the end of the road.
Time and again he whacks into shoulders, trips and stumbles, but keeps going while constantly looking back at the five figures and also up at the hundreds of aircraft in the sky. The noise is terrible. The explosions are terrible. Everything is terrible. A bomb hits a building on his left side, blowing masonry and debris across the street. Women scream out in pain with shrill voices heard over the drone of the planes and the solid rattling of the distant AA guns.
He spots the uniforms coming towards him. A unit of German soldiers consisting of old men and young boys with a one-armed hard-faced leader in front clutching a Luger. His instinct is to hide or run the other way, but he rushes on and doesn’t have to fake the fear on his face.
‘GET TO COVER . . . GET TO COVER . . .’ The soldiers shout the words over and over. The high-pitched tones of teenage boys and the hoarse voices of old men with red faces and grey whiskers. ‘WRONG WAY,’ one shouts at Konrad.
‘YOU.’ The one-armed officer points the Luger at Konrad. ‘WRONG WAY . . . GET TO COVER . . .’
‘My unit,’ Konrad shouts, pulling papers from his pocket. ‘MY UNIT IS THAT WAY . . . I HAD LEAVE FOR A DAY . . .’
The officer glances at Konrad, seeing the Germanic features and hearing the accent that is pure Berlin. The papers he waves are the right colour too. Bought from Mishka’s store in Lambeth-not-Lambeth, although they detail that Heinrich Schmidt was declared deceased in 1944. That glance is enough, though, and the officer leaves, instantly forgetting about Konrad, who waits for a second before running on.
At the end of the street he turns sharply, ramming into a wooden door that yields to let him stagger into the darkened hallway. A flight of wooden stairs that he runs up and the muffled sounds from outside now seem sinister for the drop in volume. He goes up and up, panting harder and harder until finally reaching the top floor and staggering down the hallway to the end door that he bangs on and tries to call through while gasping for air.
The door opens. A big hairy hand comes out, grips his collar and takes him off his feet through the opening.
‘It’s . . . I . . . it . . . Oh my god . . .’
‘Slow down,’ Harry says gently, holding Konrad up. ‘Take a breath.’
‘You need to do some phys,’ Safa tells him. ‘How unfit are you?’
‘Report,’ Miri orders.
‘Them,’ Konrad blurts, sucking a huge lungful of air while grateful that Harry is still holding him up. ‘Saw them . . . at the end . . . Arch . . .’
‘Fucking hell, Kon,’ Safa says. ‘Breathe, for god’s sake.’
‘I saw them . . . at the end of the street under an arch. Alpha and the others.’
‘Are you sure?’ Miri asks.
‘Yes, them,’ Konrad says. ‘Same men that surrounded me and Malc outside the warehouse . . . They’re dressed like locals, old clothes . . .’
Ben moves to the window, angling to stare through the grimy glass and down the street. ‘Show me,’ he says.
‘It’s not safe,’ Konrad says. ‘There’s, like, a thousand planes dropping . . .’
‘This building is fine,’ Ben cuts in. ‘We checked it.’
Konrad wipes the sweat from his eyes and takes in the street below him, the people running and the smoke billowing across it from the blown-out building he ran past. Something catches his eye. The German soldiers all coming to a stop as the one-armed leader speaks to a man. ‘There . . . that’s one of them!’
‘Where?’ Ben asks as the others crowd forward to look.
‘See the soldiers? That officer is talking to one of them . . .’
‘That’s Charlie,’ Emily says, recognising him even from this distance. ‘Alpha and Bravo are to the side, Delta . . . and there’s Echo.’
‘Can I go now?’ Konrad asks.
‘Hang on,’ Ben says. ‘Might need you.’
‘What for? Emily and Miri speak German . . .’
‘Yes, but they’re women,’ Ben says. ‘We’ve been through this, Kon.’
‘They’re asking for papers,’ Harry says. ‘The officer doesn’t like the look of them . . . Bloody Nazis are switched on. See, he’s ordering his men to cover them. Men? Old men and boys by the look of it. Bloody Nazis. Excusing my French, but I fucking hate Nazis.’
‘Harry,’ Emily says in shock as everyone looks at the huge man glowering out the window.
‘SHIT,’ Ben cries out as a Mustang fighter roars down the street with the wing-mounted machine guns spewing flame as it weaves and bobs. It goes past at their height, close enough for them to see the pilot screaming out in victory as he lifts the aircraft up into the sky straight into the AA fire that blows it apart. When they look back to the street the officer is dead, gunned down by the plane, and his old men and young boys are now running with everyone in complete fear, but they see the last British agent going into a doorway and a few seconds later a slim woman rushing out.
‘And there he is,’ Bravo says. ‘The one-armed Kraut challenging our dear Charlie . . . We all look very scared and suitably worried.’
Alpha watches out the window, seeing the same thing.
‘Any second now,’ Bravo says, leaning over to look for the Mustang. ‘Oh, there he is, swooshing down to strafe the whole bloody street. Watch out for civilian casualties, eh? And a rat-a-tat-tat and . . .’ His voice drowns out as the Mustang roars past outside, the machine guns booming to kill the German officer and anyone else caught by the bullets. ‘. . . and up into the sky and puff . . . there he was dead.’ Bravo sighs, finishing his commentary. ‘How’s the filly?’
‘Kate? She’s okay,’ Alpha says, scanning the street. He’d suggested they commence counter-surveillance as soon as he got back to the complex after visiting 2095 with Kate.
‘We undertake four visits to Herr Weber in Bundesstraβe 2 before we deliver the bomb, so it makes sense Maggie will co
nduct surveillance,’ he said to Mother, but she barely glanced at him and seemed entirely focussed on the tablets and screens glowing all around her. ‘Is that okay?’ he asked when she didn’t reply.
She looked up sharply then, fixing him with her now bloodshot grey eyes. ‘Are you a fucking child? You don’t need consent. You’re Alpha. You’re getting soft . . .’
Alpha then told the agents, but made it clear there was no point in all of them going.
‘I’ll take Bravo for the first one. We’ll stay dressed in period clothing – the rest of you stay kitted and ready for immediate deployment.’
He wasn’t sure how they would react, but if anything they seemed relieved at finally having something to do.
‘Still no changes to the old timeline, eh?’ Bravo asks.
‘Nope,’ Alpha says.
‘They must know by now; Maggie Sanderson was a bloody good agent in her day.’
‘Maybe they do,’ Alpha says. ‘Maybe they are behind us now holding guns to the backs of our heads . . .’ A second’s worth of silence before they slowly look at each other and turn to check behind them and smile at the absence of anyone pointing guns at their heads.
‘Time travel,’ Bravo says, looking back out the window. ‘The mind boggles. Here we are watching the old us, while looking for them watching the old us, so we can see them . . .’
Alpha shakes his head, blinking in response as though struggling to take it in. ‘When you put it like that . . .’
‘Still, better than sitting round that complex with our thumbs up our arses. Having said that, I think our Delta has shoved his thumbs up a few arses by now, and a few other digits into orifices too.’
Alpha wants to see the others, but he doesn’t want to see them. He wants to know they are doing something and reacting, but he doesn’t want Bravo to see it. He scans and stares, taking in the people as they run by while glancing frequently at Herr Weber’s building.
‘Old Charlie’s getting in on the action too,’ Bravo says conversationally. ‘I don’t think we’ve ever been together in one place for this long, have we?’
‘No, we haven’t,’ Alpha says. ‘I did a course with Echo for a week; he was instructing on explosives.’
‘I did that course after you,’ Bravo says. ‘Good course.’
‘Was a good course,’ Alpha says. ‘Come on. They must be reacting by now.’ Every rule in the book tells him Maggie will deploy to here first to determine who organised the bomb being dropped on London. She will insist they start at the beginning and work from there, but then she is Maggie Sanderson and she could be any of the women he has seen run past in the street. The woman was a master at her trade.
‘Not long now,’ Bravo says, nodding at Herr Weber’s building.
Alpha scans harder, willing them to show, while not knowing how he will react if they do. The best thing is for them to show another day when he isn’t with Bravo. Echo will be the best one. Echo is the quietest and Alpha knows he stands the best chance of getting Echo on side. Charlie and Delta he isn’t sure about. They’re brilliant agents, exceptional really, but he just doesn’t know if they are dedicated to the service, to Mother or to him. The British Secret Service doesn’t promote allegiance to individuals, but then Emily Rose turned and if she did it then there might be some hope. Not that Alpha has a plan. He doesn’t have a plan. He has no idea of what he is doing other than the fact that he must be Alpha.
‘There we are,’ Bravo says, spotting the old them coming out of Herr Weber’s building. ‘And there you are holding that microscope to woo young Kate.’
Alpha smiles at the way Bravo says it and the view of himself holding the shiny brass implement to his side.
‘I am a handsome chap you know,’ Bravo quips, watching himself go down the street.
Alpha snorts a dry laugh and turns to look up the other way and only the combined years of his training and skills prevent him from showing a visible reaction to the glow of a blue light shining from a room on the top floor of a building at the far end.
His mind immediately recalls the street layout from the maps they used in planning their incursions. A bird’s eye view looking down with Arch 451 at the far end facing the opening to the street, which uses the European method of house numbering with odd numbers one side and even numbers on the other.
His own position now, their OP, or observation point, is in building number eight on the left side, more or less opposite Herr Weber’s building, number thirteen, on the other side. He calculates quickly, counting up the street to work out that Maggie’s OP must be in number twenty-five on the same side of the street as thirteen, but when he looks up to the window on the top floor the glow is gone.
‘Got something?’ Bravo asks, seeing Alpha staring up.
‘Negative,’ Alpha says, sighing as though frustrated. ‘Where are the old us?’
‘Down at the arch,’ Bravo says. ‘We’re just going into the dingy little room in the arch.’
Alpha checks the view, seeing himself bringing up the rear, then going through the weathered door into Arch 451.
‘Right,’ Bravo says. ‘Jolly great shame, but I declare that a no-show.’
‘Looks that way,’ Alpha says. He wants to stay. He wants to reset the device and come back a few minutes ago to be sure of what he saw, except he can’t. He can’t do anything, but he knows what he saw. Maggie’s team is reacting and that means they have very little time left before Mother becomes aware.
‘Are we going back?’ Bravo asks, seeing Alpha staring up the street.
‘Affirmative,’ Alpha says smartly. He is Alpha. Believe it. Be Alpha.
They step from building eight Bundesstraβe 2, Berlin, into the portal room of the complex and a noticeably charged atmosphere of heads down and people working in silence.
‘Mother wants to see you,’ Gunjeep tells Alpha, his tone low, his face betraying none of the usual humour the man has.
The two agents walk through the complex, both sensing a change in the air. The workers they see don’t smile or say hi. They pass offices full of people looking tight-lipped and grim-faced.
‘See you in a minute,’ Alpha tells Bravo, stopping at the door to Mother’s office. He knocks and waits, hears the call to enter and pushes on to see her rising from the desk with a look of expectancy.
‘Nothing yet.’ He shakes his head and walks deeper into the room that smells of coffee and a lack of ventilation. Musty almost.
She slams her hands down on the desk and kicks back at the chair, sending it wheeling away into the wall. She doesn’t say anything, but her whole body tenses, trembling with rage while the veins in her head protrude through her thin grey skin.
With what seems a great effort she pulls composure into her features and addresses him formally. ‘Check the comparison software. If there are no changes then deploy for the second visit to Berlin . . . If there are no changes after that then keep going. In the meantime, I have ordered for preliminary plans on the extraction of a hydrogen bomb.’
His heart misses a beat, his mouth goes dry and his vision threatens to close in at the sides, but he suppresses any visible reaction. ‘I see,’ he says mildly.
‘We go bigger,’ she says, staring at him, into him, through him. To the depths of his soul where she can see the lies and the doubts and the changes within. She sees it all laid bare because she knows the secrets of humanity and will use them to destroy everything to win.
‘Okay,’ he replies dispassionately.
‘We’ll also consider a release of anthrax in a major population zone: New York or Mumbai, London, Paris . . . Tokyo . . .’ She throws her hands up and smiles. ‘All of them.’
‘Good idea. That’ll certainly draw them out,’ he says firmly.
‘Good,’ she says lightly. ‘On you go then, chop chop. Good luck.’
‘Echo, get ready. We’re deploying,’ Alpha orders, walking through their room to his office.
‘On it,’ Echo says smartly, rushing off.
Charlie and Delta exchange a look while Bravo idly tracks the lead agent across the room. ‘All well?’ he calls out as though only mildly interested.
‘Yep,’ Alpha says. ‘Have you heard?’
‘Just did, old chap. H-bomb, eh? Anthrax too.’
‘That’s the plan,’ Alpha says.
‘I see,’ Bravo says deeply, drawing the words out.
‘Stay ready to respond,’ Alpha says, marching back into the main room to address the others. He didn’t need to go into the office at all, but such is the worry and anger that he is already doing things without thinking. He has to be calm, be Alpha and show that distinct lack of reaction he would normally adopt. ‘Getting a bit claustrophobic in here,’ he remarks under his breath.
‘Fucking right,’ Delta murmurs.
‘You feeling it too?’ Alpha asks him.
‘Just a bit,’ Delta replies. ‘Never been in one place for so long, not like this I mean.’
‘The only reason you are whining is you have exhausted your supply of available women,’ Bravo says, giving Delta a wry smile. ‘You’ll be starting from the beginning again soon.’
‘Are you enjoying it then, Bravo?’ Charlie asks.
‘My dear boy, I enjoy all of our work.’
‘Get it done, get it reset, then we can go back to our day jobs,’ Delta says.
‘Amen,’ Charlie adds.
‘Reset?’ Bravo enquiries lightly.
‘That’s the plan,’ Delta says.
‘Of course,’ Bravo says. ‘Of course it is.’
‘Isn’t it?’ Delta asks, sitting up straighter and looking at Alpha. ‘We catch them, reset what we’ve changed and go back, right?’
‘Affirmative,’ Alpha says firmly. ‘Echo?’
‘Almost ready.’
‘You understand that resetting means stopping the old us, don’t you, old chap?’ Bravo asks Delta. ‘And by stopping I mean killing. We have to kill ourselves . . .’ He says the words slowly, staring hard at Delta as though looking for a reaction.