The Fall of Night

by Christopher Nuttall

  Like everyone else, she had grown to dread the knock on the door. When it came, she almost lost control completely before walking towards the door, noticing a single man standing there, and opening the door in hope…only to come face to face with Rashid Ustinov. The Russian looked taller, somehow, than he had been when he had held her prisoner; there was a new scar on his cheek.

  “You!”

  “Me,” Ustinov said mildly. Her father appeared and stared at him. “May I come in?”

  “I don’t think that we can stop you,” Hazel observed bitterly, as he followed them into the lounge. She had thought that she was free of the two Russians forever. “What do you want?”

  “They wanted to arrest you for interfering with an FSB operation,” Ustinov said shortly. “I talked them out of it.”

  There was a pause. “Why?” It was her father who had spoken. “Why…?”

  “Because in Russia, rank, power, responsibility and authority don’t always go together,” Ustinov said. “We have Captains who give orders to Generals under certain circumstances. There are Admirals whose only job is to look good, while their staffs do all the work; I once had two colonels and a lieutenant-general reporting to me. I am one of the FSB’s heroes following” – he made a sweeping hand gesture – “and they will give me a great deal of latitude, within reason.”

  Hazel had only one thought in her mind. “And what about Stuart?” She asked, almost pleading. Tears were falling down her face; her father gently placed a hand around her shoulders. “What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know what happened to him,” Ustinov said. There was a grim tone in his voice. “There’s no record of finding his body, nor was he captured, but there were a lot of bodies that even DNA checks would have been hard-pressed to identify. I checked; the bodies of several men known to have served under him were recovered, but there was no sign of him personally.”

  He paused. “One possibility, the people involved with tracing the remaining soldiers thought, was that he was with you,” he said. “Of course…they wanted to arrest you, but I blocked them…”

  Hazel shrugged off her father’s hand and leaned forward. “Why?”

  Ustinov looked down. “Because…because you reminded me a lot of my mother,” he said. “Because…you handled yourself well back when…well, that’s in the past now. Because…you were kind to us when you thought we needed help. Because…you have suffered enough and…there was never anything personal, you know; none of us who went into Britain hated you, even Sergey. Hurting you would be spite.”

  He reached inside his pocket and brought out two passes. “There are some flights leaving Edinburgh airport over the next two months, convoying Americans and other foreigners who were caught in Britain when the war started,” he said. “These two passes will get you out of the country; the Americans and Canadians are taking in refugees, so I expect that you two will find refugee there.” He dropped a third pass into her hand. “If he should happen to turn up…”

  “Thank you,” Hazel said. She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You could come…”

  Ustinov laughed. “I don’t think that that would be a good idea,” he said. “Goodbye, Hazel.”

  He left, not looking back.

  ***

  They were at the very edge of the range of Russian aircraft.

  Admiral Geoffrey Bradford Wilkinson watched as the final helicopter came in to land, the fleet turning slowly and heading out towards America. They would meet up with elements of the American Navy – HMCS Lethbridge from Canada had already joined the force – soon enough, but he had wanted to remain as close to Britain as possible, if only for a few more days. The ships they were escorting carried thousands of refugees; they had to be protected, even if the Russians seemed to be ignoring them. One way or the other, they would be leaving soon; the Russians had already begun to take over bases on Ireland and Britain itself. The loss of the CJHQ meant that there would be no centre of organised resistance left on British soil.

  There was no time left at all.

  He gave the order.

  The remains of the Royal Navy – and a handful of surviving European ships - turned and sailed away from Britain. Few words were spoken as the fleet headed towards America, the crews lost in their own private thoughts; what would happen to them in the future. Historical precedent was not good; French ships that had escaped the fall of France in 1940 had had friends and allies, they had…few friends and no allies if they were to fight to regain their homeland. A few hundred sailors had demanded to be put ashore as the fleet neared Britain, too late to be useful; they had been granted their wish. Wilkinson could only hope that they would have time to see their families before the Russians rounded them all up; the Russians had already placed a motion before the United Nations to declare the remaining ships pirates.

  He turned his back on the distant hills of his homeland.

  He wondered if he would ever see them again.

  Epilogue

  He came back to awareness in a burst of pain, memories flickering at the back of his mind; a Russian, an attack; grenades…the pain ebbed and flowed away as a soothing balm flowed over his body. Darkness rose and fell over the coming weeks as his body was slowly repaired, the latest in American medical science rebuilding most of his body. The doctors had warned him that he would be crippled for a very long time, perhaps permanently disabled, but he would otherwise make a full recovery.

  It was a month before they told him what had happened. He had raged then, screaming at them, demanding to know why he had lived when others were spared. They tried to tell him about the medics who had pulled out most of the wounded from England, convoying them to Iceland and then onwards to America, but he hadn’t listened; he was the last survivor of his unit and he was miles from his wife. Eventually, they filled him in on some of the details, but the true horror had to wait until he was well enough to escape from the hospital bed and manoeuvre a wheelchair to a computer terminal. They found him there, crying, as he took in the news about the fall of night across the whole of Europe, the new Iron Curtain descending remorselessly around the continent. His wife…

  They looked, of course; there was no mention of a woman fitting the name and description she gave in the registered refugees. Thousands had escaped the fall of night, some of them heading to Canada or Australia instead of America; she might have escaped the country, but as the Russians clamped down, it seemed less and less likely that she had escaped. The news was grim; it always was these days. Greece had signed a pact with the Russians to avoid a Turkish invasion, while a holy war was raging over Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily as the natives resisted the invaders with everything at their disposal. Spain was transformed into a nightmare of civil war, but the remainder of the continent seemed to be surprisingly peaceful; resistance seemed almost non-existent.

  He had cursed them too as he raged.

  The staff hadn’t quite known what to do with him. One of them, a scholar and expert in sociology, tried to explain to him; most people only wanted a quiet life. The Russians weren't hammering them directly, so they cooperated and remained low, avoiding the Russians as much as possible. Some would resist, but the Russians were getting better and better at ferreting out resistance networks…and not all Europeans liked the thought of getting rid of the Russians. People who had been terminally unemployed, suddenly finding themselves with honestly earned money in their pockets, liked the Russians, others just liked the camps that been set up for Muslims, criminals and socialists…and politicians. Russian television had even broadcast views of Germans and Frenchmen jeering the detained politicians before they were whisked off east for an uncertain fate.

  The staff had wondered what would happen to him; he didn’t seem the type to just settle down in America, and even if he did offer his services to the government-in-exile, he was in no fit state to be inserted back into Britain, or to join the American Army. He himself had just given up; what was his life without her?

  Two months
later, she arrived.

  She knew him at once, even though he was still wounded and hadn’t been taking care of his appearance; she flung herself into his arms despite being heavily pregnant. The staff had smiled to themselves as they had watched the touching scene; the man might have been a problem patient, but they were used to those. He had deserved to escape; he had deserved to be reunited with his wife…

  Stuart Robinson, no longer a Colonel or a Captain, held his wife tightly and felt her tears trickling down her cheeks. They had been the lucky ones; they had escaped the nightmare and found a new home in America.

  For countless others, the nightmare was only just beginning…

  ***

  Nikolai Lvovich Serdiukov – who had been known as Zachary Lynn, or Control, in another life – walked calmly down the corridors of the detention centre that had been established near Dorking, first for British soldiers who had been captured, and then for policemen and political prisoners. The serious criminals had been treated in the standard Russian manner; a handful, however, had been spared and told that they had a choice between working for the FSB, or death. Serdiukov smiled; few had refused the offer…

  The President had made it clear at their meeting, when he had pinned the medal on his face personally; Britain was going to be the hardest European country to rule. The British had had time to develop all manner of resistance cells and the records in the country’s computers had all been wiped…well, mostly. Serdiukov was confident that Russian computer experts would eventually piece together a complete list of who had been in the army, or the police force, but for a few years everything would be chaotic. The Russians had to be ahead of the game.

  There were two guards on the door ahead of him; they saluted him and opened the door, allowing him entry into the single cell. She sat there, hands handcuffed behind her back and secured to the chair, her legs shackled to the floor. It was overkill, restraints that would have been overkill for anyone, but a trained commando, but Serdiukov had wanted to make a point. She was completely helpless; she was completely at his mercy. Unlike so many others of her kind, she had a brain; Serdiukov knew that if she could be broken, she could be used.

  “Good morning, Daphne,” he said. He spoke in English, making his voice bright and cheerful. “How are you today?”

  Daphne Hammond looked up. Her eyes widened. “Zack?”

  “FSB Colonel Nikolai Lvovich Serdiukov,” Serdiukov said. “I suppose you could say that I was one of those infiltration and destabilisation agents that you spent so much time accusing the Americans of creating and sending into” – he allowed his voice to become sardonic – “poor helpless counties who have never done anything wrong…”

  Daphne glared at him. “Let me go,” she snapped. “What do you want with me?”

  “Well, we owe you,” Serdiukov said. “Without you…perhaps it would have been harder to complete the conquest of Europe…but then, your sources will have told you what happened in Hanover and a dozen other places in Germany. The new world order has no place for your kind.”

  He paused, enjoying the moment, before continuing. “You have a choice,” he said. “You can continue to work for us as a…legitimate politician trying to steer the ship of state through some troubling times…or you can die. No one knows what happened to you since your government grew a pair and dumped you in one of their detention camps; your supporters, most of whom believe that you believe the kind of stuff you come out with, will believe that it was the British Government that had you killed.”

  He saw fear flicker into her eyes. It was good to be able, finally, to laugh in her face. She was no innocent; she had taken people who had wanted to build a better world and used them to create power for herself, power that might have pushed her beyond the level where she needed the innocents who had believed in her…and then she would have betrayed them. She had no principles, no redeeming features; she wanted power and power alone.

  She wilted. “Daphne,” Serdiukov said, “I can have you thrown to the soldiers for their own amusement, or I can make you powerful if you work for us. Choose.”

  There was a long pause. Her body was shaking. “All right,” she said finally. “What do you want me to do?”

  Several thoughts came into Serdiukov’s head; he dismissed them. “Oh, you’re going to run Britain for us,” he said. “Your assistance will be invaluable.”

  Daphne thought about it. He could almost see the wheels turning in her head. It was power and power was what she wanted. She would do anything for it; he would have considered a whore more honest in her work. “You would make me the power behind the throne?”

  Serdiukov smiled. “I think that Prime Minister Daphne Hammond has quite a nice ring to it, don’t you?

  ***

  But every story has its end,

  The tale has its final bend,

  And set to wings of stone,

  Must gently fly away,

  The piper plays his saddest air,

  The day is done, the shadows fall…

  The lonely night comes to the land,

  And darkness takes us all…

  -Ian McCalman

  The End

  Afterword

  The Fall of Night holds the record for my fastest-written book. I wrote at the staggering rate of 5 chapters per day (roughly 15’000 words per day) because the story just seemed to want to come out. Then or since, I have not matched that speed. Maybe, even then, the story was important – or, more likely, the idea just soaked into my mind and I ran with it.

  Staying in the tradition of the better pieces of ‘invasion literature,’ I deliberately wrote the story with a downer ending. (See The Battle of Dorking, available online, for a sample of pre-WW1 invasion writings.) Such books were not attempts to write military thrillers, per se, but attempts to warn of the dangers of poorly-considered decisions that, in the minds of the authors if nowhere else, were likely to lead to a serious risk of military defeat. They rarely included a happy ending.

  I wrote The Fall of Night in 2009. Now, if anything, it has become even more relevant.

  The tactics I had the Russians use are ones they planned to use during the Cold War, merely modified to some extent. They intended to use commandoes, they intended to incite radical factions to war, they intended to use terror tactics ... and they intended to put down all resistance swiftly and effectively. And how would such tactics work if aimed at a society as open as our own?

  ***

  The world is a dangerous place. If anything, the end of the Cold War – while removing the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation – has made the world far more dangerous, while the spread of modern transport technology has lowered the distance from one side of the world to the other. A problem that would once have remained localised – the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, for example – now takes on global implications. A band of terrorists hiding in caves in Afghanistan can hijack aircraft and slam them into towers in a city on the other side of the world. And a bunch of pathetic cartoons (and some astute political manipulation) can trigger off riots all over the world.

  Nor is it lawful. Law is effective only as long as it can be enforced – and so-called international law has rarely been enforced. Dictators such as Saddam mocked international standards of decency simply by existing; states such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and North Korea spit in the face of any concept of international human rights. International law could only be made workable if there was a force with both the capability and will to uphold the law. There is no such force. Nor is one likely to exist. The Western faith in international law is, at best, naive. The response from a dictator to demands that he comply with the law is going to boil down to ‘oh, yeah? Make me.’

  And yet, successive British governments seem unwilling to face up to the simple fact that the world is dangerous.

  It is absurd beyond belief, despite the assertions of several politicians, that we can stay out of the War on Terror. Even if we hadn’t joined the American invasion of Afghanistan (and la
ter Iraq) we would still be targeted by terrorists. We would be targeted because we are a liberal free country with freedom of religion, freedom of the press, sexual freedom ... all freedoms that are anthemia to our enemies. Indeed, we would be targeted because we represent a better way to live than a return to doctrines that were little more than attempts to impose a standard of behaviour on an entire population. The terrorists hate our freedoms because we might well seduce their potential recruits away from them.

  Nor are terrorists the only threat facing Britain’s security. We have dependencies in various global locations that are threatened, constantly, by nearby states. Despite losing the last war – despite the oft-expressed wishes of the population – the Falkland Islands are still claimed by Argentina. Gibraltar, too, has been claimed by Spain. Indeed, in both cases, the wishes of the local population have not been taken into account by the hostile power. The belief that they would be taken into account is, like the faith in international law, the refuge of fools.