by David Evans
“An’ we’ll be doin’ what, sor?” Wigglesby inquired.
“I’ll reach the others by wireless and find out where they are located and where the target can be found, then we join them. We take that one first.”
At 10:15, five men crouched outside a two-story house near the industrial district of Coventry. Brian Moore had placed Tony’s driver, Cpl. Phil Nichols, to watch the front door, with Isaac Ruben in the rear. Brian and Tony would take the German agent, with Wigglesby as backup. Before they could move, the faint, high-altitude drone of aircraft engines reached their ears.
Brian exchanged glances with Tony. “They’re coming, right enough.”
Tony Bellknap spoke quietly, “Do you think it could be Coventry this time?”
“I doubt it,” Brian evaded. “There’s still too much of strategic value in Birmingham.”
Tony gave a shrug and glanced at the house. “I hope you’re right.”
“We’ll soon find out. It’s time to take our friend upstairs.”
“Right.” Tony drew his Mk 2 Enfield .38 and glanced at the open end of the cylinder. “It’s funny, but I’ve never had to fire this, except at the range.”
Brian looked at him levelly. “The first time is always hard. You’d be surprised how quickly it gets easy. We want to do this without killing him, if possible. So, relax. No matter how tough a person is, he’ll get mighty squirmy when someone points a revolver that big at him.”
Together they walked up the steps. Brian tried the knob, which did not yield. He and Tony put their shoulders against the panel and shoved. The door did not give.
“Try ringing the bell,” Tony suggested.
“Why not?” Brian agreed. He turned the little knob that protruded from the center panel of the door. A bell clanged on the other side of the partition.
Brian and Tony tensed as seconds blended into half a minute. Scuffing footsteps neared from the opposite side. The lace curtain pulled aside and a woman’s face appeared, pale and crowned by a nightcap.
“What do you want at this ungodly hour?” she demanded, voice distorted by the closed door.
“Is your husband in, madam?” Brian asked.
“No. He’s out. Out pub-crawling again, I’ll wager.”
Brian remained persistent. “Is there anyone else in there with you?”
“Our so—No, there’s not. Our son is out with his university friends.”
Brian produced his identification. “It’s a matter of national security. May we come in and see for ourselves?”
She tried bluster. “You’d not believe me? You’ve no right to enter without a proper warrant.”
“Yes, we do. Under the Wartime Emergencies Act, we have the authority to suspend the warrant. Either let us in, madam, or we will force entry.”
“Step back, please, ma’am,” said Tony in a placating tone. “We’re coming through.”
“All right, all right. One minute. I swear, your kind are no better than the Nazis.”
Draw bolts scraped in the frame and the door swung inward. Brian rushed inside, his .45 Webley leading the way. Tony followed. They did not bother with the ground floor, rather started directly for the staircase.
Face pale and strained, the woman of the house raised one hand in an appeal to halt them. “No! Please. There’s no one up there.”
Brian gave her a hard look. “I’ll be the judge of that.” To Tony, “Check out the first floor, I’ll go on to the attic.”
Tony had a warning. “Wait until I get there before you do anything.”
Brian proceeded directly to the top of the flight of wooden stairs. There he paused outside a door. Dim light streamed around the jamb. Tony joined him in three minutes.
Tony made a terse report. “I found the husband in bed. I cuffed him.”
Brian gave him a glance. “Let’s do it.” He stood to one side, revolver ready. Tony squared off and raised a big size-twelve shoe.
With a powerful stroke, Tony kicked open the door. Brian spun around the side of the casing, eyes searching, .45 extended. A startled noise came from a slight figure, crouched over a small black box on top of a dusty table.
“MI-5! Hold it right there!” Brian shouted.
“Gor-blime, I’m caught out right proper,” came a plaintive wail. Then the youth exploded into violent action.
He hurled the transmitter at Brian, ducked to the left, and made a dive for an old, stuffing-spouting couch. Brian fired a wild round that deadened his ears and missed the slender legs that disappeared behind the piece of furniture.
Muzzle fire brightened the attic room as the traitor shot back. Automatically, Brian changed his point of aim, fined his sight picture, and squeezed off another round. A low groan answered him and a spray of blood decorated the wall behind the belligerent youth.
“Heil Hitler! Heil Hitler!” shrieked the university lad. He rose up, mouth frothed in his fanaticism and terror, and emptied his 7.63mm Pistole Polizei in the general direction of Brian Moore.
Brian had gone to one knee and returned fire. Beside him, Tony fired his .38. They proved the more accurate. Struck twice, the boy flew backward to slam into the steep ceiling of the attic and rebound onto the floor. Pale and shaken, Tony Bellknap walked over to him.
“Dead. My God, he’s dead.”
“I certainly hope so,” Brian responded.
“N-now what?”
Brian looked down at the corpse and sighed. For all his superior knowledge of the present and the future, he could never understand people like this. What drove them to hate their own kind so?
“We take the man and his wife into custody for espionage. Then we go after the other one.”
Time: 2255, GMT, September 28, 1940
Place: Rooming House of Sandy Hammond,
Gloucester Street, Coventry
Warwickshire, England
Sandy Hammond finished sending her brief message. Carefully she disconnected the antenna leads and coiled the length of wire. She had hurried home from her air raid warden assignment and turned off the directional beacon ten minutes ago. Quickly she hid it away, choosing her telegraph key and transmitter. As always, she sent in the blind, uncertain that her contact in France was listening.
Not until she keyed the last code groups, MESSA/GE END/SXXXX, did she hear the three-letter group, RCDXX, and know she had been heard. Now the Abwehr knew that 57 Squadron had the best night vision and had just gone on night patrol. All she need do was wrap her equipment, including the encoding machine, and put them back in the old sewing machine box.
She came upright from her kneeling position to do that when, with a splintering crack, the attic door flew inward and slammed against the wall. An instant later, a man filled the opening, a terribly large gun in his hand menacing her.
Surprise registered on the face of Brian Moore as he aimed his .45 Webley dead center at the chest of the young woman in the attic room. He knew her. She was the attractive young Home Guard air raid warden who was dating the RAF pilot. He nearly lost his concentration. Under other conditions it could have proven fatal.
She was slow in reacting. She had barely reached for the finely made Luger pistol when Tony Bellknap brushed past Brian Moore and slapped the weapon from her hand. All thought of resistance fled her then and she dissolved into tears. Her shoulders heaved with heavy sobs, and she turned away from the men who had invaded.
Sandy recovered quickly. The man who faced her seemed familiar. Then it struck her: She had seen him around town several times. Usually with that attractive Samantha Trillby, who worked for Warwickshire Royal Movers. A sudden chill struck Sandy. She had seen him just this night.
He had been with five other men in Coultree’s. Had she but known then. Yet the information she had obtained from Wendall had been priceless. She would get ... With quick intuition Sandy realized she would not be getting any more
from the Germans. Without a doubt, she would be hanged for espionage. Hope bloomed in the secret knowledge she possessed.
If only she could reach her PTTD. Then the next stop would be the safety of the Trans-Amazonia Free State far in the future. That was something none of these British counterspies knew about. She had been born during the last years of the crumbling Free State. When chaos replaced order, and the Euro Alliance had sent a peacekeeping force, the enforcers had been British soldiers. The oppression ordered by the Euro Alliance government was horrendous.
In later years, after the occupation ended, and she had grown to adulthood, she made contact with the underground and learned of the bootleg time travel equipment. Given access to it, she began to plot her revenge, Whatever she had done to harm them now, in their Past, they richly deserved. It would not bring back her beloved brother Garak, but it helped.
Her thought process had lasted only half a second. Now it urged her to instant action. Her hand darted to the top pull-drawer in the sewing machine body.
From it, she took the 9mm Luger pistol her Abwehr control had given her. She kept it loaded, with a cartridge in the chamber and safety on. Her preparations lacked only one element. She had failed to devote regular practice to drawing, releasing the safety catch, aiming, and firing that weapon. That omission cost her dearly.
Sandy hardly had the Luger pointed in front of her when another man dashed into the room in a diving stride and snatched the pistol from her hand. The frightening image of a gallows flashed through her mind and she lost it. Great, wracking sobs came from deep in her chest. Scalding tears coursed down her cheeks and her shoulders slumped in resignation. She barely heard the man she knew as Samantha’s boyfriend when he spoke softly, though firmly.
“MI-5,” Brian Moore informed her. “You’ll have to come with us, miss.”
Outside in the plumber’s panel truck, Brian Moore sat alone and shivered with relief. Silently he cursed himself for even for a second suspecting Samantha of being the female agent in Coventry. Then the realization struck him.
According to Arkady, this one was a rogue time traveler. A search of her apartment soon uncovered several packets of germanium, which verified that. How could he separate her from the others? The rear half of the moving van had been converted to a holding cell. Handcuffed, and in leg irons, the man and his wife and this young woman sat on hard benches along the sides. He would have to pull some sort of magic trick to separate her from the others ... Her papers identified her as Sandra Hammond.
Obviously not her real name. She had the coloring and features of a descendant of pure-blood Portuguese. One of the fair-skinned stock from the northeast. Well, Sandy, Brian thought to himself, you do pose a problem. Whatever the solution, it would have to wait until they returned to London.
Once there, he could make absolutely certain with a portable mind scanner. Knowledge of the future would register in her thought patterns. Until that had been accomplished, there was nothing else he could do.
Isaac Ruben approached Brian Moore. “What shall we do about those other signals we picked up along the flight path to Birmingham?”
Brian answered without delay. “Coordinate that with Derek. Mark it on the maps and I’ll buck it upstairs to Sir Hugh. He can have them picked up tomorrow. Now let’s secure all the evidence we’ve gathered and head out of here.”
Time: 0740, GMT, September 29, 1940
Place: King’s Court Hotel, Queensway,
London, N.W. 1, England
Early Sunday morning, Brian Moore took his dilemma in the form of Sandy Hammond to Dianna Basehart. Over thick mugs of black tea and a basket of flakey buns, Dianna heard him out without a change of expression. She breathed in deeply.
“I follow your situation easily enough. What have you decided to do about it?”
Ball back in his court. “That’s what I came to you for. Now that she’s been taken into custody, how can I get her out of the hands of MI-5?”
An amused smile on her full sensuous lips, Dianna considered it. “How about letting them hang her?”
Brian rejected that prospect. “Regulations say we send them to Temporal Warden Central for punishment.”
Dianna nodded. “By-the-Book Whitefeather we call him. So why not use a PTTD?”
Brian appeared dubious. “I doubt I’d get to use one. You know how expensive it is. And with fuel for only six hops. Accounting frowns on squandering them on a simple matter like this. We have to get her to the Time Station.”
“Why not take her out for special interrogation and ‘lose’ her?”
“I thought of that. It would jeopardize my position with the Service. If anyone takes a close look at Brian Moore, he is going to collapse like a house of straw.”
“So that leaves us what?” prompted Dianna.
Glumly, Brian answered her question. “An engineered escape, or a PTTD. I suppose the thing to do is bump it up to Arkady.”
Time: 2140, Warden Central Time
Place: Temporal Warden Central
Arkady Gallubin scowled over his immense desk at Temporal Warden Central. The source of his discontent lay before him. The message had come in from Steven Whitefeather. It appeared that he had caught the female rogue traveler. Only it had been in the presence of contemporary MI-5 agents and she was being held in their facility. Whitefeather wanted permission to use extreme means of retrieving her and sending her back to Now.
However it came about, it would be sticky. One of the PTTDs at the London Station had been set up to look like a 1938 Morris Minor, a small, ugly two-passenger automobile plentifully available in 1940 London. It had been equipped with a two-cylinder motorcycle engine and ran like an ordinary car. Theoretically, it could be used in the manner described in Whitefeather’s proposal for dealing with the rogue.
Yet Arkady did not like the large element of risk to Master Time Warden Whitefeather inherent in the plan. Should his timing be off the slightest bit, should the guards be more than usually alert, should any number of other prospects occur, it would be all over for Whitefeather. Be that as it may, Arkady Gallubin thought, his fork unconsciously reaching for a bite of blini drenched in strawberry sauce and sour cream, if anyone could pull this off, Steven Whitefeather could. Yes, that’s what he would do. Leave it up to the agent on the scene. Approve, but not recommend.
Time: 0945, GMT, September 30, 1940
Place: Offices of MI-5, Bayswater Road
London, England
Brian Moore reread the message he had received from Arkady Gallubin the previous afternoon with a grim expression. His plan had been tentatively approved, yet without the endorsement of the Deputy Director. Which left it up to him. He got busy on it at once.
“Military Tribunal Court. How may I help you, sir?” The female voice came crisply over the telephone wire.
“This is Colonel Moore. MI-5. We have completed our interrogation of the German agents captured two nights ago. Papers were sent over to your office this morning. I would like to inquire if a trial date has been set.”
“Yes, of course, Colonel. Hold the line if you will, please?”
She left the phone for three minutes. “Here we are,” she began when she came back on the line. “The Thompsons are scheduled for the fifteenth of October, Prisoner Hammond is due for Monday, the fourth of November.”
“Thank you. I shall see that all witnesses from our office are aware and will be there.” He rang off, vastly satisfied that he had a chance.
Time: 1537, GMT, September 30, 1940
Place: Time Station London, Thameside,
London, England
In the Beamer room at London Time Station, Brian alerted Vito. “Beam me forward to the fourth of November. And be sure to activate a TCAF, because I’ll already be there. I’ll signal on the Trac Link when I want to come back.”
Vito raised coal-black brows. �
�You got it, Boss. May I ask what this is in service of?”
“We need to know how and when we can snatch our rogue lady and send her back to the future.”
Vito grinned. “I see. Powering up.”
Brian took his position within the Temporal Field and waited while Beamer droned and hummed itself to life. The shimmering field sprang into existence, and Brian left September 1940 for the fourth of November.
Time: 0840, GMT, November 4, 1940
Place: Time Station London, Thameside,
London, England
Brian stepped out of the Beamer into the Time Station. The atmosphere felt strange, cool and damp. According to plan, Vito was not present. No need to change clothing, his workman’s garb would serve quite well. He did seat himself at the makeup table and applied a shade darker complexion, along with bushy brows and touches of gray to his temples and mustache. Plain glass spectacles adorned his nose. That accomplished, he climbed the stairs, waved to Frank Matsumoto, and walked out of the travel agency.
A sharply cold November day greeted Brian outside the building. Only a few brown, desiccated leaves clung stubbornly to the trees. A strong breeze whipped along the quay and riffled the water of the Thames. Although neat and presentable, his coveralls and cap had a well-used, worn quality to them. He chose to walk to Hull Street and on to the Assizes Court building, which had been taken over by the Military, located next to the Old Bailey. Not surprisingly, Brian found hardly a soul waiting outside for admission to the day’s proceedings. When the bailiff opened the tall gilt-edged, green doors, only three other persons entered with him. Brian found a seat far back in the gallery, one from which he could see without being seen by the accused.