Jackboot Britain: The Alternate History - Hitler's Victory & The Nazi UK! (6 page)

It was the grumble of an old man; taking advantage of a lull in the wind, he retrieved a thin wooden pipe from the multifarious interior of his great coat, and emptied a tiny clump Dunhill tobacco from a crinkled pouch into its small opening. “Bloody curfew. Makes you feel like a bleedin’ child.”

The swarthy man, sat beside him on the garden square bench, murmured his agreement.

“Be indoors at
closing time
; anyone caught out after a pint liable to be denaa’nced… makes your heart bleed, don’t it?”

The weatherbeaten Londoner took a thoughtful toke on his cheap cigarette; some low end brand from the black market, which variously did and did
not
taste of tobacco, depending on the week. Its red tip and the two silvery smoke plumes were the only lights in the square.

~

Leaves noisily fluttered over his feet as the dark figure clad in thick woollen fox-fur-collared overcoat crept over the cold, dry cobbles, stepping smartly past the public square which he watched warily; too many times had he wandered unwittingly past some assailant hid in undergrowth, or from the shade of a tree. The two old men ceased their grumbling instantly, on hearing his footsteps, and raising themselves up as quickly and quietly as possible, they silently crept away. The silent figure paused behind the square’s foliage that grew over that section of fence, waiting until satisfied that he was alone. Crossing the empty road, with the Royal Oak in sight, he kept to the shadows, quiet steps echoing horribly loudly to his ears in the silence of an eerie London night.

The wind all but flung Jack Harrison into the public bar of the Royal Oak as he shuffled in; recovering his poise, impassive, wary. The 1930’s had taught him that he lived in times in which walking through the wrong door with the wrong look was a potentially fatal mistake, and on this occasion, as ever, caution prevailed. The young man surreptitiously glanced left and right in a quick appraisal of the scene, but his poise visibly relaxed as he strolled loosely towards the bar, leaning on it with a practised casual air.

Strange memories of Spain loomed up in his mind. In Catalonia; ears pricked for the dialectical or behavioural idiosyncrasies of an outside spy.
Here and now
; familiar but occupied ground; informants replacing a ‘fifth column’; the four columns in power, holding the country to ransom in an iron grip. The odious and malignant unspoken presence of the secret police lingered in the air like a foul smell of death. Jack had lived through similar times – the bitter, cannibalistic internecine intrigues of Republic Spain, and following fascist victory, the police round-up squads that later became Franco’s
Brigada Político-Social.
They, however, had nothing on the Gestapo with regards to combining competence with murderous intent.

“All right?” Jack intoned to no one in particular.

There was a non-committal grunt from the two older men. The old barman polishing his glass smiled; a wide split in the middle of a ruddy face.

“No worries,” Jack muttered. “Don’t all get up.”

The Royal Oak’s public bar was all wood; known as one of the finest looking pubs for miles around, its owner took great pride in its appearance. What had been a well-stocked bar ran along a wide public bar, around the corner of which stood a grand piano, to Arthur’s back. There was nothing in the old pub landlord’s manner to suggest he was aware of Jack’s presence, lounging casually at his bar with a nonchalant air. Instead, he turned to serve the bleary eyed regular who lurched to the bar behind him, adjacent to where Jack stood.

“Pint of stout, Arthur,” he mumbled, three days of stubble evident on his strong chin. Arthur served him with a smile.

“There you go, Super,” he said kindly. “This one’s on me.”

The unshaven man nodded, seeming to barely hear him. He was former Superintendent John Thomas of the London Metropolitan Police, and had been relieved of his job when the SD background checks of police officers in southern England unveiled him as a former card-carrying communist party member. The SD was the intelligence service of the SS, set up by Reinhard Heydrich and a sister organisation to his Gestapo in the ‘Reich Security Main Office’, which was now the responsible body for UK police policy and direction, as well as Germany’s own secret, political and criminal police forces.

They’d not arrived in force yet, but their jurisdiction held; Heydrich’s position as INTERPOL President transcended national boundaries, with the help of German military conquest. John Thomas had been rapidly flagged, with a speed that dismayed him. Told to go home, the veteran policeman was advised in strong terms by a stern, tall young blond man in SS uniform to not attempt to leave the capital “pending further investigations.”

With no wife, married to the job and devoted to the Met, Superintendent Thomas had slunk home to be haunted by his empty house, spending most of the subsequent weeks in the Royal Oak, stewing in a stagnant pit of his own loathing and listlessness, solidly drinking through the palpable fear.

Now, Arthur turned to Jack Harrison.

“Good evening, Sir, what will it be?” He smiled expectantly. Jack returned it, amused by the formality.

“Pint of stout please, old boy. How goes it?”

“Could be worse, son. Could be a lot
better
, mind.”

“You’re not wrong, mate.” Jack gestured towards the two glum, familiar figures sat on tables in the public bar with a tilt of his head. “Three sheets to the wind?”

“Blotto,” Arthur replied, quietly. “Both absolutely bollocks’d. Both been in since I reopened. Don’t have the ’eart to refuse them, truth be told…”

Much like before the occupation, public houses continued to close for several hours in the afternoon, before reopening later for the evening crowd, men and occasionally their wives whom had just finished work and were in need of a pint.

Jack looked to the piano, nestled around the corner of the bar to his right, past where the morose figure of Thomas was sat unresponsively, close to a slouched man who had the disorientating aura of a powerful prize-fighter gone to seed. His name was Bill Wilson, and he had been a regular at the Royal Oak for nigh on twenty years. Few paid him attention; the man was as taciturn as the table he sat at, and less conversational than a mute lunatic; just another mental casualty from a doomed war generation of young corpses, haunted cripples and orphans. Countless parents who’d outlived their children. A lost generation.

Arthur’s head was balding, cheeks rosy, nose red and streaked with tiny burst blood vessels, giving him the air of an ageing drunk whose body was in the midst of betraying him after years of substance abuse. But his eyes remained alert and wary. They followed Jack’s gaze again, with a knowing look. “Brushing up on Wolfgang,” he said, with just a hint of sardonicism.

“Any complaints?”

“From this lot?” was the murmured rebuke.

Jack briefly closed his eyes to the music. “I always loved Mozart,” he smiled. The pianist was quietly playing
Requiem
– Jack recognised ‘
Dies Irae
’ and surmised that he was around ten minutes in to the epic composition.

“Yes,” Arthur intoned, smile fixed. “Wonderful music. Fitting, I thought.”

Jack marvelled. The unctuous manner and classical German composition was the perfect foil to con a Gestapo informant or operative, while few drinkers would make the connection between the hated occupiers and the piano’s discreet lull. Plus, Mozart was magnificent, Jack thought.
Absolutely magnificent, heavenly music
.

He leaned in to Arthur.

“Mozart is fantastic.”

Jack’s impetuous nature had long ago been quelled by necessity in the intrigues of Spain, but caution still frustrated him. Arthur finally relented, recognising a somewhat teasing determination in Jack’s eyes, and he dropped the act.

“Aye. But…” and the old publican’s voice dropped to a barely audible, croaked whisper, “this is not the Germany we know.”

Arthur turned his face ruefully, and began to pour Jack a pint, his hands slightly tremulous.

“No. And these aren’t Mozart Germans.”

Only as he said it did the full realisation dawn on Jack that he was profoundly disturbed, and saddened by the thought. The nation of Mozart, Beethoven, Goethe, Nietzsche and all the other names whose work William had introduced him to, and whose
magnum opera
he’d greedily absorbed… that nation no longer existed, to him; replaced by automatons, repeating slogans and racial ideals screamed at them by a crippled dwarf, a fat Renaissance emperor-complex opiate-addicted narcissist and a syphilitic moustachioed psychopath; three maniacs. That nation, a sophisticated country of culture, music, literature and psychology had been supplanted by a nation of strong-armed Aryan supermen; ideal soldiers, machine men, with obedient, unthinking minds and pitiless logic replacing human kindness. The conformists praised, and exalted; the ruthless rewarded; the dissidents, rebels, dreamers, thinkers and heroes tortured, interned, brutalised, killed. Vanished from history.

And now, that will happen to us, Jack realised. These robotic sauerkrauts will inflict that soulless system on us; good blood isn’t enough, conformity is of equal necessity. The neurological ability to critically analyse and process information forever switched off,
Ja mein Führer
in its place. Nothing less than a reshaping of human thought.

The thick beer frothed over the top of his glass, and Jack noticed the small wince that crept across Arthur’s thin lips. Beer had not yet been rationed, but with the prosperity of the average man fading under Berlin’s rule, and the wealth of England already reportedly being bled out of her flanks, even the pubs were being hit. The German mark had been fixed at 9.6 to the pound sterling, but the existing British currency was still being widely used; pennies, shillings and the like. This was still a good rate for the Germans, and their legal purchases were of a notably good value, to say nothing of the illicit siphoning away of art, gold and iron ore that had been quietly reported. Göring, it was said, had obtained some priceless arts for his collection at Karinhall.

Arthur set his beer down in front of Jack. “Thank you, Sir, that will be six and three pence please.”

“Cheers.”

Jack laid the money down in front of him, a full shilling; three pennies more than had been asked for. Arthur took it gratefully, nodding towards the door leading into the saloon bar where the rooms were partitioned.

Jack turned on his heel and headed through into that section of the pub, its floor thickly carpeted in red and booths replacing tables and chairs. He slid into the furthest booth, occupied by a young man and woman of similar age – mid-twenties – both dressed similarly. No words passed between them, but almost as though by instinct, their hands slid across the smooth table surface and meet, grasping each other firmly.

“Any joy, old boy?” William asked quietly.

He was slightly taller than Jack, with near-shoulder-length dirty blond hair from which he had long since deflected any suggestion of cutting for anonymity’s sake. A quiet and more scholarly nature than the others in their collective merely disguised the same burning desire they all shared. His convictions had been expressed in no less violent a manner, at times, though he was free of the almost compulsive impulsivity of the others.

Jack shook his head slowly. “No joy at all.”

He sipped his beer thoughtfully, and looked at Mary, sat directly facing him, her dark, Latin eyes scrutinising his. He added quickly, “the rendezvous didn’t happen.” Theirs was a bond that neither required nor allowed for melodrama or one-upmanship.

“Why,” she asked simply, the ‘y’ lingering a little with the Latin lilt on her tongue. She tilted her head curiously.

“I don’t know.”

She pursed her lips. Jack loved her unique movements, the way she physically presented each spoken sentence, though he was careful to keep that view private from William, her lover and fiancé. Jack had long since resigned himself to never acting on any impulse with her, nor expressing his deep lust and affection; quite deliberately spending little time over the past four years with her without William, Alan or another comrade being present.

“I’ve no idea,” he admitted.

Beats of dejected, contemplative silence, before Jack realised the inpact of his words, and he hurriedly elaborated. “No word at all from recon. No message to, or from, anyone. Forget the War Office, there’s no word even at recon level if there’s any kind of organised…” before William could hiss at him to be quiet, Jack nodded quickly, recognising his friend’s expression. He whispered “…
I know
… no intel, no radio operators broadcasting, no word if there’s even an organised resistance movement left, what happened or what’s going on now. There’s silence in every direction.”

No one spoke for a moment. They all knew the gravity of being cut off, acting independently. It wasn’t in their nature to just turn their backs on the responsibilities they’d been entrusted with. But with no discernible support network, for supplies, information, instruction; they were adrift. The three of them all knew that their life expectancy could be measured in weeks, if not days, if they went ahead with any mission whatsoever.

Jack leaned across the well-polished table to William. “I take it you didn’t get a note with your change?”

William shook his head.

“No such luck. Old Arthur hasn’t heard anything but radio static since the Germans took London.”

“He was supposed to be our bloody focal point of information,” Jack hissed. William shrugged at him, pointing out the flawed logic.

“We were
supposed
to kick Jerry’s arse in France. Hitler was
supposed
to be happy with reintegrating the poor Sudeten krauts back into kraut-land with the other sauerkrauts, one big happy kraut family of non-aggressive sauerkrauts,” William complained, his lilting Scottish accent more pronounced as he warmed to the sardonic commentary. “Munich was
supposed
to be ‘Peace in Our Time’.
Bald
olini and the Iti’s were
supposed
to keep Hitler out of Austria. Someone, somewhere, surely, we supposed to help the Republic when the fascists revolted – never underestimate the Catholic Church, of course. Versailles was
supposed
to keep Germany docile. The League of Nations was
supposed
to
prevent
war. The word ‘supposed’, all things considered, is evil bollocks.”