The Fall of Night

by Christopher Nuttall

  An old man appeared in front of her. She sensed him wrinkling his nose; after so long without a proper bath, or even proper sanitation, she had to smell pretty bad. He wasn't a fine-smelling person himself; the absence of water supplies for a day had probably had all kinds of nasty effects…

  But his voice was kind. “Are you all right, love?”

  “Yes,” Hazel said shortly. He couldn’t help her; the police station was right in front of her. It dawned on her suddenly that she had no proof, nothing that she could show them; would the Police believe her when she told her story? She staggered into the police station and came face-to-face with a grim-looking Police Sergeant, his face scarred by some great heat; he looked as if he should be in hospital. “Constable, I…”

  Her legs buckled and she collapsed on the floor. “I’ve got you,” the Policeman said. His voice sounded as if it were coming from a far distance; her vision blurred, and then stabilised as she pulled herself back together. “I’m Sergeant Adams, of the Edinburgh Police, recalled to duty since the war began. Are you all right, love? I can call the nurse if you want, or even a doctor, although our doctor has been tending to victims of the airplane and we might have to take you to hospital.”

  Hazel burst into giggles. Adams reacted smoothly and called a nurse from the depths of the police station, who tended to Hazel’s arm, which had been squeezed tight by the handcuffs, as she told her story. They didn’t believe her at first, until the nurse pointed to the injuries on her throat and wrist; she was still covered in plaster dust from the wall and the pipe. One of the older Police officers had some experience with Special Forces and recognised the injuries…and then the Police got very interested indeed.

  ***

  “Form a line with your documents and national insurance card,” a voice bellowed, in front of the job centre. Ustinov watched dispassionately as thousands of young Scottish men, some of them old enough to be doing a real man’s work, lined up as if they were about to be put in front of a wall and shot. The grim face of the Scottish Sergeant standing near the side of the building was easy to read; the young men could use some military discipline. Some of them were listening to music on their headphones, others were looking around as if they were searching for a way to escape; their nightmare was hard work and people ordering them about.

  He carefully pulled himself back from the window before he was seen. The radio broadcasts on the emergency channel had been clear and to the point; every young man who had been on the dole was being conscripted into work battalions to help repair the damage that Britain had suffered during the first stage of the war. Failure to respond to the call was not an option; a welfare-dependent person – as the radio had put it – would receive no rations or other supplies if they failed to report for duty, or even face arrest. There had been the promise of a week to report, but Ustinov was pretty certain that most of them would be bending their minds trying to think of some way out of the nightmare; they were trying their hardest to avoid the sergeant’s disgusted gaze. The thought of actually being shot at…

  He nodded once as Ossetia appeared at the end of the stairwell; they would have to move quickly if they were to take advantage of the opportunity. A simple bomb would destroy the job centre and the recruits; Moscow had been very clear on the need to hit the British where they lived. Britain, he had been told, was unique; they would have a chance to pull themselves back together before it was too late, something he hadn’t understood until he had seen the news reports of Russian armies grinding their way into Europe. The very fabric of British society had to be attacked…and if the young men who were conscripted felt that there was a chance that they would be blown up…they would be more reluctant to report. Even better, more of the population, normally law-abiding, would be reluctant to force them to report.

  “Time to go,” he said, already cataloguing what they would need. If they were really lucky, their attack would be blamed on a terrorist group, but even if it wasn't, it would hardly matter. All that mattered was attacking the very fabric of British society; Iraqis had known for years that Saudi Arabia was behind their woes after the American Invasion, but they hadn’t been able to muster the determination to rebuild and crush Saudi, because the insurgency kept burning away at their new fabric. His force had been trained in destabilisation; a single car bomb could do the work of thousands of air bombs if placed in the right place. “Once we get back, we’ll find a way of using Hazel’s car to take a bomb past the job centre.”

  Security in the heart of Edinburgh and around the aircraft crash site was pretty heavy, with nervous armed police officers patrolling some parts of the streets. There were fewer cars on the streets; posters had already begun to appear, printed off by some wag, about the need to conserve fuel. IS YOUR JOURNEY REALLY VITAL? One asked; GO HOME, HENRY – ALL THE VILLAGE KNOWS YOUR JOURNEY IS NOT IMPORTANT, another warned, with the image of a beaten middle-aged man being kicked off by a railway guard. Edinburgh was slowly coming to grips with the thought that it was at war; as he turned into the street that held Hazel’s house, he saw other signs of panic. Some of the buildings near their building had been abandoned the day after the war began; he’d watched the people going with only a few suitcases, abandoning the rest to the looters.

  “Home again,” Ossetia commented dryly. They climbed out of the car and locked the doors. There was a droll tone in his voice; after they bombed the job centre, they would have to change their bases before some bright spark with a CCTV system and supporting footage put everything together and found them. “Are you going to feed your pet…?”

  Ustinov opened his mouth to reply, and then he saw them; men appearing from the houses, weapons held high. They weren’t police; they held themselves with an easy confidence, an ease of motion, an awareness that they were the best, that screamed Special Forces at him. Somehow, they had been detected; somehow…

  “HANDS IN THE AIR,” a voice bellowed, loudly enough to shake the entire neighbourhood. They had to have all been evacuated; somehow, the British security forces had managed to get into position without them even noticing that they had driven right into a trap. If they had still been in the car, escape might have been possible, but in the time it would take to get back in, they could be killed several times over. “THIS IS YOUR LAST WARNING…!”

  Ossetia snatched up his pistol and fired once towards one of the figures; a sniper bullet blew the top of his head off, before he could even hit one of the SAS soldiers surrounding them. Ustinov stared at them, calculating, and knew that it was futile; he could only get himself killed, not even taking one of them with him. They had him directly in their sights and he knew it.

  Carefully, he raised his hands above his head and waited for the end.

  Chapter Thirty-Five: Rats and Sinking Ships

  The problem with collaboration is that most people will never collaborate…until it seems to be the only rational choice. If the wind changes, the collaborators find themselves facing their outraged countrymen…in many cases merely for having tried to do the best they can. It is not given to humanity to know the outcome in advance – sometimes, it seems as if the best choice is to sell out for the best terms you can get.

  Christopher Nuttall

  Moscow, Russia

  The terminal was dark and cold.

  Prime Minister Zdeněk Kundera of the Czech Republic waited with as much patience as he could bring to bear on the situation. A kindly, almost scholarly man, Kundera knew that he was not cut out for the interplay of political power and naked violence that determined the future of most of the world, but then, the Czech Republic had never intended to play a major role in the world. The Czech Republic had been willing to commit itself to the European Union, but it had never imagined that it would be called upon to fight a serious war; commitments to peacekeeping missions and the occasional EUROFOR operation had been the limits of its involvement…until the 1st of June.

  Kundera remembered the terror as missiles had crashed down into Prague, only shee
r luck keeping him safe as buildings had shattered around him and the remains of his close-protection detail struggled to get him to safety. That had been found on a military base that had been lucky enough to survive almost intact; Kundera had found himself Prime Minister in the middle of a war. The President was dead; nearly a third of the Czech Armed Forces had been wiped out in the opening shots. Kundera had struggled to try to pull a defence together, but it had seemed futile; the sheer violence of the Russian attack into Poland and later Germany had stunned him. He knew where he was debating in Parliament, or making points in front of the cameras; he was completely out of place in a war zone. Russian aircraft were flying in and out of his airspace, and he was unable to issue orders…

  And then the Russian Ambassador had appeared. Kundera had never liked the Russian Ambassador; he was too…slick, with an ‘I know something you don’t’ attitude that grated on Kundera’s own sense of the appropriate. It had been obvious since the missiles had fallen what he had known that Kundera hadn’t known…and his role in the disaster that had overtaken the Czech Republic was obvious. Polish refugees were flooding into the Republic’s territory…and Russian soldiers wouldn’t be far behind.

  “Go to Moscow,” the Ambassador had said, after an agonising session of insincere pleasantries and half-hidden gloating. “They’ll meet you there, perhaps offer you something you want, an end to the war you didn’t expect.”

  Kundera had stared at him, wanting to throw it back in his face and not quite daring. “Or what will happen to the Republic?”

  The Ambassador had leaned forward. His breath smelt terrible…or was Kundera imagining it? He had never considered that he would be in the position, one day, of accepting or rejecting what was an ultimatum in everything, but name. Russian forces were only ten kilometres away from the Polish border; his military officers had warned him that they could be halfway to Prague within a day, and the Czech Republic had nothing that could stop them. Kundera knew that he had no choice, but to listen; he just wanted to block out the screams.

  “They’re prepared to offer you a place in the new world order,” the Ambassador had whispered. There was nothing subtle about it at all; there was none of the nuances and polite inanities that Kundera knew and loved. “If you refuse the offer, as generous as it is, your country will not like the second offer at all.”

  And so Kundera stood on the tarmac in the dark, waiting. He understood the reason, of course; his briefers had worked desperately to brief him on what the Russians might do to convince him that further resistance, such as it had been, was futile. The wait was one reason, a less-than-subtle way of informing him that President Aleksandr Sergeyevich Nekrasov did not consider him important enough to arrange for either rooms, or an immediate meeting. The cooling metal of the aircraft that had flown him to Moscow, escorted all the way by Russian fighters, ticked in the night; the crew remained inside, wondering if they would ever be allowed to leave again.

  Kundera waited…

  A black car detached itself from the shadows and headed towards him. Kundera refused to allow himself to show fear as it came to a halt near the aircraft, the rear door opening to reveal a strikingly beautiful woman with long blonde hair and an almost perfect body. Her eyes were cold and distant, however; she eyed Kundera as if he were a mouse and she were a cat. Kundera kept himself calm; the woman, whoever she was, wouldn’t be the one making the decisions.

  “Welcome to Moscow,” she said, in flawless Czech. “I am Colonel Marina Konstantinovna Savelyeva, aide to President Nekrasov. I have been ordered to escort you to his presence at once.”

  “Thank you,” Kundera said, calmly. A Presidential Aide could hold vast influence, but she wouldn’t be the official face of the Russian regime. “I look forward to meeting him.”

  Marina opened the door for him and motioned him into the car. The inside of the car smelled leathery, a smell that reminded him oddly of the car he’d used on his wedding day. The vehicle itself hummed almost silently as Marina sat next to him, commenting from time to time on places within Moscow; the city seemed to be almost bursting with curiously ordered life. On one corner, a blue European Union flag was being burned; American and British flags were already being prepared for a burning. Kundera realised that he was being shown everything purposefully; the Russians were trying to intimidate him.

  It was working.

  “As a mark of respect for your status, we have decided that you can pass through the security checks,” Marina informed him. Kundera heard the almost-hidden mocking in her tone and winced; it was a blatant slap in the face, a reminder that the Russians didn’t take him or his country seriously. “I will take you directly to the President in the War Room.”

  Kundera had never visited the Kremlin before and, after hearing about some of the humiliation that Czechoslovakian leaders had suffered there, had never wanted to visit in his life. Marina’s brief tour of the strange, very…Russian building hadn’t been reassuring; the building was almost alien to his eyes, a strange mixture of different elements, all devoted to power. Marina’s running commentary had surprised him; some of the artworks on display had been looted from the Warsaw Pact countries and long believed lost. The Russians had had them all that time.

  “This is the War Room,” Marina said finally, as two doors opened in front of them. The room was dominated by a massive plasma screen, showing Europe…with a massive wave of red light moving over the continent, heading west. Marina said something, but Kundera missed it almost completely; the sight before him terrified and awed him. If it was reliable, Denmark and over half of Germany had fallen, and there were Russian advance teams as far west as France and Norway. He knew, now, that a global shift in the balance of power was taking place; Russia had shattered Europe for the foreseeable future. Even if the European forces rallied…

  “Perhaps the Prime Minister would care to hear a briefing from my military leaders?”

  Kundera turned, slowly, and came face to face with President Nekrasov. The leader of the Russian Federation seemed more amused than anything else with Kundera’s sudden paralysis; he didn’t seem inclined to make a diplomatic incident out of it. Then, Kundera reasoned, why should he? He already had most of Europe in the palm of his hand. He hardly needed an excuse to send the Russian Army into the Czech Republic.

  “That won’t be necessary, thank you,” Kundera said, after a long moment. “I understand what is happening.”

  “Splendid,” Nekrasov said, his Russian seemingly soft, but with a hint of pure steel underneath. The presence of four bodyguards paled as Kundera took in the sight; there was no mistaking the leader in the room. If they had all been naked, still there would have been no mistaking it; Nekrasov was the master and they all knew it. “We will repair to one of my private rooms and discuss…matters.”

  Kundera followed him into a smaller room, trying to grasp an image of Nekrasov in his mind; his sheer personality swallowed up little details like face and body. Nekrasov was shorter than he had expected, or than he had seemed on the photographs that had been sent around the world after his rise to power. His stocky body was topped with a head of white hair, almost as white as snow. His handshake, as he waved Kundera to a seat, bespoke hidden strength.

  This is a very dangerous man, Kundera thought, as Nekrasov took a seat facing him. Marina stood at the rear of the small, comfortable room, her hands crossed below her breasts; the bodyguards remained outside the room. I can’t relax, not even for an instant…

  Nekrasov played the gracious host. “Would the Prime Minister care to dine with me?” He asked. He sounded almost jovial. “Or perhaps something to drink? Coffee? Tea? Vodka? We even have some fine wine that the President of France sent me last year, if you would prefer it…?”

  “No, thank you,” Kundera said. “I would prefer to get down to business.”

  The transformation was frightening. The jovial host vanished, to be replaced with a cold-blooded calculating soul, eyes studying Kundera as if he was a hunted anima
l. Nekrasov stared at him for a long moment, perfectly calculated to unnerve, perhaps even unman, him, before nodding slowly and leaning back in his chair. It was a chilling display The knowledge that Nekrasov could do almost anything he liked terrified Kundera to the very depths of his soul.

  “Let me discuss military realities,” Nekrasov said, very softly, but no less menacing. “I have ten divisions in a position where they can roll into your country and brush your defenders aside. I have hundreds of bombers that can be over Prague in an hour, reducing your capital to rubble, and you are powerless to prevent it. I have a large occupation force of FSB soldiers who will occupy your country and ensure that the Czech Republic takes its orders from Moscow and Moscow alone.

  “These are the parameters of our conversation,” he said, after a chilling pause. “I would like you to bear them in mind at all times. It will make this so much easier.

  “We started this war for various reasons, partly to gain revenge for various European acts that were against Russian interests, partly to gain access to European resources that we need for the future. The military balance of power is so firmly on our side that we can guarantee the occupation of Europe as far west as the Pyrenees within a month at most. The shift of power is impossible for any state, even America, to alter; the balance of power is firmly in my favour. Do you understand me?”