TS01 Time Station London

by David Evans

  “Oh, yes, Bri, yes. Let’s … go to my room.”

  After coffee early the next morning, Brian left for London. He felt remarkably refreshed.

  Time: 1133, CET, June 20, 1940

  Place: Hauptquartier des Abwehr,

  Unter dem Linden Strasse,

  Berlin, Germany

  Sunlight filtered through silver-green leaves on Linden Street. In the third floor, Berlin headquarters of the Abwehr, German Intelligence, its director, Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, sat in the high-backed leather swivel chair at his desk. Through his round, steel, wire-rimmed spectacles, perched on the end of his aquiline nose, he read from a top secret report that had arrived only moments before.

  It had come, by way of clandestine radio transmitter, from an exceptionally well-placed German asset in England. Admiral Canaris frowned as the meaning of the content became clear to him. Most fortuitous that this came into our hands, he mused. The admiral reached out and turned the bell crank on the ultramodern intercom. The earpiece buzzed at him when his summons was answered.

  “Rudolf, come in here, please,” Canaris spoke sharply, his aristocratic features grave.

  His deputy arrived a moment later from his office across the hall. Tall, spare, and scarecrow-lean, Colonel-General Rudolf Drucker paused in the doorway, his uniform crisp and razor-creased as usual. He parted his black hair in the middle and combed it back on the sides. “Jawohl, Herr Admiral?”

  Canaris waved to a chair. “Come, sit down, and leave the formality at the door, eh, Rudi?”

  “As you wish, Wilhelm.”

  “I have only now received a very important communiqué from Freiadler. It foretells of grave consequences for the Kriegsmarine.”

  “And what is that, Wilhelm?” Colonel-General Rudolf Drucker asked.

  “The English Parliament and the War Office are working on new plans to intercept our submarines in the open and clean them out of the North Sea. Admiral Raeder will be interested in that, I’m sure. Freiadler will, of course, try to get a copy of the completed plans, and any subsequent operations orders.”

  Drucker looked surprised. “He can do all of that?”

  Canaris projected confidence. “Certainly, Rudi. He is placed in an ideal position to accommodate us. See that a copy is made of this and sent to Raeder at once.” He handed over the message form.

  Rudolf Drucker remained a few minutes, during which the two intelligence experts discussed the current situation inside and outside the Reich. Poland was going well, and the Russians had not raised a single objection. Holland and the other Low Countries still had some sporadic resistance units active. Shipment had already begun there for “undesirables.” In particular Canaris emphasized the need for the Gestapo to be tasked with breaking up the resistance cells that were springing up in France.

  “They call themselves the Maquis. Since the capitulation, they are becoming an embarrassment to the Fuhrer. Actually, so far we have lost only a few soldiers. And these French fanatics have blown a couple of trains off the track. It would be best if this were nipped in the bud, so to speak.”

  “What about Pétain?”

  Admiral Canaris drew his thin lips into a moue of contempt. “The President of the Vichy government is as much a figurehead as anyone in the Vichy government. No, my dear Rudi, it is we Germans who must bear the burden of rooting out these misguided patriots. Draw up orders for my signature to our operatives in France to the effect they are to cooperate with the Gestapo. And do see that Raeder’s headquarters receives that before noon, Rudi.”

  After the departure of Colonel-General Drucker, Admiral Canaris made a note to see that funds would be placed in the Swiss bank account of Freiadler, that superlative, noble Briton, Sir Rupert Cordise.

  Time: 1640, GMT, June 20, 1940

  Place: Office of Sir Hugh Montfort, MI-5 Building,

  London, England

  Brian Moore swallowed down the Earl Gray tea in the fragile bone china cup given him by Sir Hugh Montfort. He sat facing his superior across a wide expanse of age-darkened oak desk, in a corner office of MI-5. Patiently he endured this obligatory ritual of British society, wishing for a good cup of coffee. At last Montfort got to the purpose of the summons to his lair.

  “We have bloody hell breaking loose around us, Colonel Moore. German agents keep cropping up all over the place. So, as the most proficient rat catcher, I’m putting you in charge of sniffing out the Huns and bringing an end to their dirty tricks.”

  Brian hid the elation he felt. He would have given himself this task, in order to gain access to the rogue travelers who dealt with the Nazis. “That’s ... a big assignment. I hope I shall not give cause for you to lose trust, sir.”

  Sir Hugh smiled warmly. He actually liked this young man. “Oh, I daresay I shan’t. I’m afraid there aren’t many active files on these bleeders. You’ll have to do those yourself. Pick as many of our people as you need. Up to five, that is.”

  Brian repressed a smile. What with the capitulation of France, and Hitler’s boasts of invading England, there never seemed to be enough manpower to go around. Up at Sandhurst, in a special area, MI-5 turned out counterintelligence agents by the dozens. Yet training took time, weeks in fact. Those shortages reflected in the availability of men and women for permanent assignment. Brian felt flattered to be offered five.

  “Thank you, sir. I’ll make do.”

  “I’m sure you will. Ah—this Miss Trillby, Lieutenant Trillby? How’s she working out?”

  For a moment Brian wondered if everyone in MI-5 knew he and Samantha were sleeping together. Then he realized that Sir Hugh must be referring to her professional ability.

  “Fine, sir. She has expressed the opinion that she is merely spinning wheels in monitoring for unauthorized radio transmissions. Though what actually annoys her is doing background checks on military and government personnel with Germanic surnames. She says that most of their families came over here back in the time of Ger—er—George Third.”

  Brian bit his lip. He had almost let slip German Georgie, an anachronistic, purely American sobriquet for the most despised of English kings. They still taught that bit of historical trivia when a thoroughly confused half-breed Brulé Sioux boy named Steven Whitefeather had been suddenly transported more than a thousand years beyond the time Sam Adams had coined it for one of his broadsides against the Tyrant King. He recalled his bewilderment in that Temporal Warden novice school, as he sat in the eighth grade classroom, wearing the uniform of white shirt and short pants. It brought a red tinge to his coppery complexion. Montfort appeared not to have noticed the slip.

  “Nothing to worry about. All new agents enter the Service fired up and ready to take on whatever enemy is out there. I’ve read your summaries, but I’ve not had opportunity to see one of her reports, get the flavor of how she thinks and draws conclusions. D’you think she would work well with you on this new task?”

  Even better than he had hoped for. “Yes, I do. Might get her out of her doldrums, too.”

  “Fine, then,” Sir Hugh said by way of dismissal. “Cut orders to that effect.”

  Time: 1800 GMT, June 20, 1940

  Place: Time Station London,

  Thameside, London, England

  Vito Alberdi looked up when Brian Moore entered the Time Station. “We have a line on one of the rogues, Brian.”

  Brian nodded. “That’s good. I need to access the communications terminal.”

  “Something come up?”

  “You might say so. I’ve been assigned to tracking down new German agents involved in espionage. And we know they are dealing with the rogues. This makes our job easier. We can go after the ones we want without raising questions about who disappears.”

  “Makes a neat package,” agreed Vito.

  Brian sat at the terminal and logged on with his personal identity code: 8668MRE. The monitor
screen blanked and came back with the Temporal Warden Corps logo. Quickly Brian keyboarded his route address for Arkady Gallubin. Again the screen blanked and came on in MSGFRM mode. Brian keyed in his information about his change of assignment with MI-5. When he cleared the monitor, he made ready to leave.

  Vito stopped him on the way to the stairs. “Oh, by the way, do any of you James Bond types have a line on a German agent named Freiadler?”

  “No, why?”

  “You do now. This came through during the night.”

  Vito handed Brian two sheets of paper. Brian read the brief bit of information. It detailed transfers of large sums of money from the Deutsches Landwehr Bank of Berlin to the Swiss Bank of Bern. It also referred to a Freiadler file in Abwehr headquarters. “Any idea who he is?”

  “None. Or even if it is a he. But if he’s for real, from what they say there, he could make some mighty big ripples in the Timeline.”

  “I’m ahead of you on that. Looks like our Free Eagle goes to the top of the list.”

  Time: 1830, GMT, June 22, 1940

  Place: Rooming House of Sandy Hammond,

  Gloucester Street, Coventry,

  Warwickshire, England

  Sandy Hammond sat on the floor at the feet of Wendall Foxworth in her small flat. She rested the dark brown pile of curls that covered her head against his leg. They had brought home tinned meat pies and heated them in the gas oven in her kitchen. Nothing like homemade, Sandy acknowledged, but hot and filling. Her thoughts drifted to a different place; a different time…

  She was thirteen and gawky. Her name was not Sandy Hammond then. And she was not English. She knew the boot of the oppressor, though, when it trod on the backs of her people. Most of them came from an island nation, called the Commonwealth of Great Britain. She hated and feared them with an intensity hard to imagine in one so young. Most of all on this particular day.

  She had been forced to stand, along with her parents, in the dooryard of the family cottage to witness the punishment of her older brother. Oh, how she loved and adored Garak. He was strong and handsome, and had a devilish sense of humor. None of it showed now as the occupation troops lashed his arm to the toprail of the picket fence.

  Garak made not a sound as the cords bit into his wrists. His eyes glared defiance. Only a white tightness around his lips revealed his true feelings. Bowed horizontally at the waist, head up at an uncomfortable angle, the girl who became Sandy Hammond looked on in horror as the leader stripped the shirt from the back of her brother. Then a burly sergeant stepped forward and raised the lash.

  “Twenty of your best, if you please, Sergeant Major,” the foppish officer commanded.

  Later, after the oppressors had departed, stripped of his flesh, bleeding, and in shock, Garak died. When he did, there was born in the eventual Sandy Hammond a fierce resolve to somehow even the score…

  … And she had found that way. Brushing off her vision, she looked up at her man, smiling even with her hazel eyes, as he reached down and began to play with her hair.

  “This is cozy,” she murmured.

  His light blue eyes fixed her. “Yes, it is. Though my taster is hinting at a need for a pint or two. What say we take in the Blind Goose?”

  Sandy turned slightly to face him. “Do you, really? I thought we’d stay in and ... do other things.”

  Wendall’s eyes glowed. For all his trying, she had never let it get this far before. “Such as?”

  “Ummmm. Fun things, like we’ve been doing, don’t you know? And ... maybe a bit more?”

  Wendall felt his throat tighten. Could it be tonight? He’d only just touched her so far. Stroked one precious melon of a breast, a hand on her thigh. He cleared his throat, though to no avail. His voice came out a squeak anyway. Sandy came to her feet with him.

  “I’ll get us a bottle of beer to split.”

  “Good. Bring it to the bedroom.”

  Time: 2110, GMT, June 22, 1940

  Place: A Row House in Soho District,

  London, England

  Clive Beattie passed his cool, blue gaze over each of the five men seated with him around a table in the basement of a Soho row house. His sandy-brown hair stood nearly upright above a wide forehead and pair of horn-rimmed spectacles. He carefully kept his expression neutral, masking the contempt he felt for these minor Nazi agents he operated for his control, Major Karl Webber.

  Three of them were convicts. Dull of wit and long on brute force, they had been released from prison by the Gestapo. One, Dieter Ganger, an arsonist, had to be constantly watched. Clive had detailed Reiner Holst to that duty. Holst was the most intelligent of the quintet. Twice he had reported that he had been compelled to physically restrain Ganger to keep him from setting fire to unessential targets. One of them had been a school.

  None of them had any idea about the history of Clive Beattie. Born Gunther Bewerber, in 2575, to parents of German descent, he was an avid reader, of history in particular. He had become a fanatic admirer of Adolf Hitler. In his real persona, Clive/Gunther was the recruiting poster image of the ideal Aryan superman, with clear blue eyes, nearly white blond hair, and fair complexion. At six two, he made the perfect SS type. He also became a rogue time traveler at the age of thirty-one. He made it his goal to “correct” the events of which he did not approve, in order to have a future in which the Germans won World War II.

  To that end, he began at once when a sixth agent entered through the street-level cellar door. “Alfred, Hermann, you are to take a boat down the Thames. The bomb will be waiting for you in it. After dark, Hermann will go over the side and take the magnetic mine to the keep of the frigate Trafalgar. Attach it and set the timer. Then swim back to where Alfred will be waiting.”

  “At vaht time am I zetting it?” At the best of times, Hermann’s English was heavily accented.

  “Ten-thirty. That’s 2230 hours. Make certain it does not go off sooner. Now, Holst, you and Dieter will take care of that warehouse fire. It is to go off at precisely 10:45.

  “Manfred, you and Jergen are to plant explosives on the Dover line, to take out the bridge outside Battersea, with the Night Flyer, loaded with military supplies, on it, at exactly eleven o’clock.”

  “Vaht is the purpose of such prezise timing?” Dieter asked. His low, jutting brow and deep-set, black eyes gave him the look of an ape.

  Clive fought down his flare of irritation. “It is intended to cause a great deal of inconvenience to the Home Guard and the fire brigades. That is why.”

  It will also direct attention away from the center of London, Clive thought smugly. In particular that jewelry store on the first floor of a certain building in Piccadilly Circus, with that large collection of diamonds of which he intended to avail himself.

  Time: 1025, GMT, June 25, 1940

  Place: Office of MI-5, Bayswater Road,

  London, England

  Although not a Time Warden, Samantha Trillby proved adept in her intelligence tradecraft. Brian brought her down from Coventry on Monday of the last week of June. She remained unaware that the Nazi agents they sought were in fact rogue time travelers, although it did not diminish her enthusiasm for the work.

  “The first one is the most important and a bit of a mystery. All I have on him is his Abwehr code name, which is Freiadler, or Free Eagle. We will have to concentrate on getting a name and description. Never fail to ask any of those our dragnet hauls in about him. Here’s the second.” Brian showed her a grainy black-and-white photograph of a rat-faced, balding man outside a storefront. “His name is David Cowerie.”

  “Does he work there?” asked Samantha.

  “He owns the place. He’s a pawnbroker.”

  “It looks rather seedy.”

  “It is. His business with the Germans is his main occupation. Cowerie doesn’t take in more than a dozen legitimate items for pawn in a week. Tony
and Hank are watching him now. They’ll call in if anything important happens.” Brian handed her another 8 x 10 glossy. “The third on our list. Brian Gallager. He’s not German, obviously, just an angry Irishman, out for revenge. We’ll find him in Liverpool. No hurry, he’s small fish really. Now comes a tough one. We have a name for him, but no photos. The problem is that he’s so well fixed, we don’t dare put a hand on him at present.”

  Samantha looked at him sharply. “Oh?”

  “Oh, yes. Friend of prime ministers, invited to Buckingham Palace, a real charmer. He’s also selling information to the Nazis in wholesale quantity. His name is Clive Beattie.”

  Tony Bellknap and Hank Simmons slouched low on the front bench seat of the Humber panel wagon, bored, though attentive. A light mist shrouded buildings along the Soho street. They had consumed all the tea in the thermos jug with the resultant strain on their bladders. Tony touched a match to his tenth Players and sucked smoke into his lungs.

  “I’d give a fortune for a trip to the loo,” Tony sighed out through a cloud of smoke.

  “What’s the matter? Tiny bladder problems?” Hank quipped.

  “Get stuffed.”

  “My croaker says cigarettes aren’t good for you,” Hank observed. He eyed the dapper, patrician young man beside him. Looked the right proper bloody lord, he thought, though not with rancor. Dressed the part, too. Oh, well, it got them in lots of places they would otherwise not.

  “Does he?” Tony responded as usual to the frequent remark by his partner in MI-5. “And does he smoke?”

  Hank frowned, recalling. “As a matter of fact, yes, he does. Like a bloody factory stack.”