TS01 Time Station London (4 page)

He took it as the challenge it was meant to be. “If you can accomplish that—my appreciation, that is—I’ll put you in for captain.”

Her generous, wide, smiling mouth formed a straight line for a moment. Then she quirked up one corner. “Deal?”

Brian studied her shapely figure, nicely presented in a two-piece woman’s suit and—he noticed—a pair of real silk stockings over well-turned legs. “Done. And I’ll be fair. If I do learn to like cockles, I’ll admit it.”

Sweetness and light spilled from Samantha. “Now, you’re the sort of boss I’ll like working for. Where do I start?”

“For the next few days, I would like for you to review the files on Nazi agents already apprehended. Give you an idea of how we work in the field as opposed to the textbook solution.”

Her wit and humor again broke through. “Oh-ho! Are you implying that we spies do not go by the book like His Majesty’s Coldstream Guard?”

Brian laughed. “Exactly. Only one error. We’re
counter
spies, Trillby.”

“Please, if I’m not being too bold, please call me Samantha.”

It had started there, though neither of them had been aware of it. Gradually, their working arrangement had metamorphosed into a personal relationship, then into a romance. At the end of the first week, Brian had asked her out to dinner.

The blackout-draped windows of the buildings along the way made navigation difficult for their cabbie, yet he found the restaurant easily. After a delightful meal, Brian suggested a couple of hours of dancing. Samantha registered her surprise at once.

“Where? With the blackout, and a possible raid, no one goes out much, surely. We don’t in Coventry.”

“Not to fear, Samantha, The nightspot I’m thinking of is in the subbasement of a large commercial firm. Actually, it’s the canteen for MI-5, but you’ll enjoy yourself, I promise you that.”

They saw each other at least once a week after that. Five weeks after Samantha had joined the Home Office, she reciprocated with dinner in Coventry, her assigned post, since she had lived there all her life. They ate in the best hotel dining room, then strolled around the town. The ancient cathedral stood stolidly against the stark January sky. They talked, and Brian’s hand stole over and took hers. She suggested a nightcap at her place.

That night they made love for the first time and slept together in her narrow bed. Brian drove back to London the next morning, feeling lighter and more refreshed than in months, although he had enjoyed only three hour’s sleep. They had been lovers ever since, and Samantha had no regrets.

Time: 0759, GMT, June 13, 1940

Place: MI-5 Offices, Coventry,

Warwickshire, England

Her hair be damned, she thought in irritation. She certainly would not tell Brian to stay away over something that insignificant.

Time: 1720, GMT, June 13, 1940

Place: The Blind Goose Pub, Coventry

Warwickshire, England

Smoke swirled in thick eddies under the darkened beams of a Coventry pub named the Blind Goose as Sergeant Wendall Foxworth, an enlisted pilot in a Hawker Hurricane squadron of the RAF, eyed a particularly attractive young Home Guard air raid warden. She had stopped in to check the blackout curtains. His inspection completed, he bent his head to a fellow pilot.

“Coor, she has a lovely turn of leg, does she not?”

“Aye,” replied the sergeant beside him. “But she’s much too fine for the likes of us, what?”

Foxworth pulled a face. “I’d not be so sure of that, Kip. That pixie face, pug nose, an’ them freckles tells me she’s a right one for a good party. ‘Ter all, she’s about our age. And we
are
pilots, right?”

“I have a fiver says you’ll not get more than a hullo outta that one. She’s officer bait, she is.”

“Done, Kip. I’ll use your five quid to take her out to dinner.”

“You’re a confident sod, Wendall, Done, then.”

Sgt. Foxworth turned a sappy, inviting smile on her and received one in return, along with a wink. He cut his sky-blue eyes to his companion Kip and hoisted his pint to his lips. Slowly he produced a smile before quaffing of the brew. He made a signal to the barman for another round.

Wendall and Kip played a round of darts while she went about her duties. A laughing Wendall accepted the one pound note from his companion when he made “Outs,” having gone down to an exact 0 from 300. When she had made her inspection, Wendall Foxworth signaled for her to come over to where he stood at the bar.

“Hullo,” she said in a low, throaty voice.

“Hello to you.” Foxworth beamed in a total lack of originality. “I’m Wendall Foxworth. I’m a pilot with the Thirty-four Squadron at Hamphill.”

She eyed him coolly. “Oh, really?”

“Um—yes. Enlisted pilot, that is. Sergeant Foxworth.”

“Sandy Hammond. As you can see, I’m in the Home Guard.”

“Yes. And the loveliest Home Guard I’ve encountered. Most are potbellied old men, don’t you see?”

She joined his laughter, then sobered. “What is it you wanted?”

“Well—ah—what I really had in mind was to ask if you’d return, after your rounds are finished, and have a pint of bitter with me.”

Sandy seemed to consider that a moment, then smiled cheerily and nodded in the affirmative. “I’d be delighted.”

After she departed, Foxworth turned to Kip and extended his hand, palm up. “I’ll take that fiver now, if you don’t mind.”

Time: 0745, GMT, June 14, 1940

Place: MI-5 Offices, Bayswater Road,

London, England

Early the next morning, Brian had only settled himself behind his desk, his mahogany-stained tea mug steaming beside his blotter frame, when his sophisticated pager went off. Designed some five centuries in the future, it was tied into the historical log system and discreetly announced a summons to Temporal Warden Control. Odd, he reflected, Resident Wardens were rarely recalled, once established in their selected time period and locale.

A quick glance at his appointment calendar showed a blank morning. Might as well do it now. He retrieved his bowler and umbrella from their proper places and stepped out into the reception area. He stopped short. It appeared Sgt. Parkhurst had become embroiled with a rather pushy tradesman. Brian stepped forward and fixed his gaze on the offensive man in coveralls, bearing a clipboard.

“I’m sorry,” Sally Parkhurst was saying insistently, “you cannot have the correct address. We did not order a plumber, and I am not going to pass you through to talk to the supervising director.”

Taking a bold step forward, the visitor insolently patted Sgt. Parkhurst on one cheek. “And who might he be, sweet face?”

“I am he,” Brian stepped into the exchange to announce.

Quickly the burly tradesman sized up Brian. A bit under six feet, not bulked up whatever, a sissy, upper-class face. No problem here. Snarl a bit and the little twit will scurry out of here in a wink. He extended a big splayed hand and gave Brian a one-finger shove to the middle of the chest.

“Buzz off, Jock-o. This bird an’ me’s just getting friendly. She’s gonna let me in to see the boss, an’ after I’m gonna fix her plumbing for her.”

Brian kept his voice low, unnaturally calm under the circumstances. “Do not touch me again.”

“Or what? You’ll cry and run off to Mummy?” He emphasized his insult with a sneer and another shove.

Suddenly the impudent tradesman found how seriously flawed had been his earlier estimation. He no sooner had touched the poof’s chest than he went flying across the room.

Extreme pain exploded in the area of his elbow and he realized, in a terrifying moment before he hit the wall headfirst, that his arm was broken. Daylight rapidly receded, along with the pain ... for the time being.

Brian made a quick search of the unconscious man. He carried no identification, though Brian found a suppressed Walther PP. He turned back to Parkhurst. “It appears we have a Nazi assassin on our hands. Have Wigglesby come up and dispose of that garbage,” he instructed.

Sally Parkhurst wore an expression of awe and unease. “Lor’ love a duck, Colonel. I’ve never seen anything quite like that.”

Brian shrugged it off. “Some commando muck-up they taught us at the RAF flight school.”

Actually, it had been one of the more basic moves in
Guai Gee Do,
a highly proficient, advanced martial art of the far future. Brian tapped the empty file trays on Parkhurst’s desk.

“We’ve nothing on for this morning. Why don’t you close up shop and take some time for lunch with that Tank Corps friend of yours?”

Sally Parkhurst blushed furiously. “Y-you mean, you know about him, Colonel? I—I’m terribly sorry.”

“You shouldn’t be. I understand he’s quite dashing in those high boots and leather tank helmet.”

“You—you’ve quite undone me, Colonel. Though I am grateful. Yes, I think I will. Are Tony and Hank coming in?”

“Later today, yes.”

“Good, then. I’ll not worry about them showing up and not finding me here.”

They parted with a friendly wave. Downstairs, Brian raised his brolly imperiously to summon a cab. Not a soul passing on the street would have considered him other than an upper-class barrister or some lesser nobleman. Certainly not from his dark, expensive, three-piece pin-striped suit; snowy shirt; celluloid collar; and regimental tie. He would have to stop at his flat and change before going on to the London Time Station. His present garb would attract far too much—and unwanted—attention.

Time: 0820, Warden Central Time

Place: Temporal Warden Central

Brian Moore stepped through the shimmering curtain into a room that, except for the bulk of the Beamer, looked entirely different from the London Time Station from which he had departed. Ranks of electronic equipment lined walls painted a soft green. Indirect light gave a soft though bright illumination from above. The hum and click of equipment weighted the air. He greeted Isai Takamoto, the Temporal Technician on duty, and crossed the laboratory-like, immaculately clean area to a door that automatically irised open at his approach.

Down the hall, he went through a routine security check. Retinal pattern, DNA match, and voice print were all evaluated before giving him access to the office of his boss, Deputy Director of the Temporal Warden Corps, Arkady Grigorovich Gallubin. As always, Brian could not avoid being impressed by the spectacular view of the delicate, gleaming white spires and towers of this Future Culture city, seen through the large Omega window behind Gallubin’s desk.

Opposite it, at the far end, was the Alpha window, which looked out on a far more mundane vista—the military-like barracks of the Temporal Wardens, and beyond that, the wide, square hover pads of the space port that served the orbiting shuttles. The monthly Mars shuttle was on final approach as Brian entered. Gallubin smiled expansively and shoved a forkful of
blini
into his mouth, then greeted Brian.

“Eto dobro,
Whitefeather, right on time.” Then he laughed at his badly shopworn joke. His complexion, usually ruddy from too much vodka, had a pale, waxen quality today, “Come, sit down. You would like some
blini?
Yes? No?”

“I would prefer a blood-rare bison steak, about two inches thick, if possible.”

Arkady made a shocked face, the twinkle deserting his ice-blue eyes.
“Real meat?
No one is that barbarian. You come close to making me ill.”

Brian suppressed a smirk. “They still do in the North American area. The Old Ones were right, the buffalo have come back. There are thousands of acres devoted to feeding bison for market. Bison has the most protein per gram and is the most easily metabolized.”

Arkady looked genuinely ill. He raised a thick-fingered hand to ward off any further such talk. “No. Please. Stop this. Eating meat is ... is
obscene,
and it’s illegal.”

Smiling, Whitefeather corrected his boss. “It is here in the Euro-Republic. North America rejected that regulation centuries go. Actually, bison’s quite tasty. It makes you strong. Maybe that’s why there are so many Americans in the Corps? And remember,” he added with a droll expression, “I ate bison almost exclusively for the first thirteen years of my life. Now, seriously, you didn’t send for me to discuss vegetarianism. What is the problem?”

When Arkady had recovered himself from the stark recollection of the thin, amber-skinned, big-eyed little boy who stood before him fifteen years ago, dressed in moccasins, loincloth, skin shirt and elk hide robe, he quickly explained. “You are to have a new assignment; no, not quite right. Another assignment, in addition to your usual duties.” Brian lifted a quizzical eyebrow. Arkady enlightened him. “You are to look into the illegal activities of certain rogue time travelers. They have gotten their hands on a bootleg Beamer and are using it to loot valuables from businesses, churches, and museums in wartime England, France, and other countries, before they can be bombed out.”

Brian frowned into Arkady’s pause. “A Beamer consumes enormous amounts of energy. Haven’t you been able to trace it from this end?”

“No. It probably came from the Trans-Amazonia Free State, where so much bootleg equipment originated.”

Personal irritation at the intransigences of the mostly Native South American citizens of the old Trans-Amazonia Free State flared up in Steve Whitefeather/Brian Moore. Damn it, his people could have had it that way, instead of being the Province of Trans-Mississippi, of the North American Republic, only one subordinate entity of nine Regional provinces of that autonomous state. Yes, the Crow, the Cheyenne, his own Sioux, not to mention the Navajo, Hopi, and what remained of the Five Civilized Tribes, could have had it all, from coast to coast in what had been the contiguous forty-eight states of the old United States. Trans-Amazonia had been a power unto itself, as they could have been. His displeasure took an odd form.

“What good was the planetary government that allowed freebooters to set up their own nation and run it by their rules?” The anger fairly buzzed in his words.

Conscious of an explosive humor in his prize agent, Arkady adopted a prim composure. “It worked excellently for Mars. And for Luna.”

“Yes, but they were colonized a hundred years after the World Federation of Republics government ceased to exist.” Brian took a deep breath, regained control as he let it out in a long hiss. “All right. You were telling me about my new assignment?”

“Yes. These rogue travelers are highly organized and utterly voracious in their hunger for the priceless artifacts and works of art lost in the Battle of Britain. Some of them are also selling British ‘secrets’ to the Germans,” Arkady continued.

“One of them in particular. A young woman whose identity we have not yet pinned down in the present or the past. She is involved in something that could create a very damaging Paradox. You are to work on her in particular. For the others, knowing, as they do, what the future holds for Hitler and his mad-dog Nazis, they apparently feel they can peddle their military secrets without any pang of conscience, and at enormous profit.”

Whitefeather considered a moment. “I can understand the art objects. Collectors will pay anything, in any time, for ‘antiquities,’ but with what of value, that’s easily portable, could the Germans pay for information?”

Arkady’s expression became grave. “The medium of exchange between the Nazis and the time rogues is germanium, which has grown incredibly scarce in our Home Culture.”

“What makes it so important, and how expensive can it really be?”

“Germanium is what is used to manufacture microchips. It has always been. Even centuries ago, back in what was called Silicon Valley in your homeland. Whitefeather, let me give you an example. Only fifty years after 1940, germanium will sell for $25,000 a pure ounce. Five times the value of gold, while in our present, it goes for $250,000 per ounce.

“One can pack forty to sixty grams of pure germanium into one of those pocket lighter devices of the period. So you can see why it is so popular with our thieves. A kilo or two, brought forward, could buy them half the world’s assets: real estate, corporations, goods, and services rolled into one. We can’t let that happen.”

“I’ll return at once, sir,” a suitably impressed Whitefeather declared, painfully conscious of his added burden. Back at the transport room, his uniform exchanged for the workman’s clothes of 1940, he hailed the technician. “Isai, it’s back to 1940 for me.”

“You set a TCAF before you left?” the Tech asked.

Brian gave a casual wave of his hand. “Do I ever forget?”

Isai looked grave, despite his wry grin. “If you happen to, neither of us will ever know.”

With that, Brian stepped into the Beamer and walked out into war-torn 1940 England.

Time: 0911, European Standard Time, June 14, 1940

Place: Jagdfliegerführer HO, Beauvais, France

Removed by 150 miles from Brian Moore in London, Colonel Werner Ruperle paced the floor of the pilots’ sheet metal-clad ready room of his
Luftslotte.
He cursed the exposed studs of the unfinished walls, the coffeepot steaming on the oil-fired stove, and cursed the stove itself. They had been moving across France so rapidly the last two weeks that construction work never caught up with the next advance. Most of all, he cursed the chill rain that swept across the runways, dripped from the wingtips of the parked aircraft, and pattered like wind-driven sand against the small, square panes of the single window in the cold, damp room.

Abruptly, he stopped in mid-stride and turned to face his executive officer, Capt. Frederich Kleiber. “It is this
verdampten
weather that is our real enemy. Only one more mission, the one cancelled for this afternoon, and I would have been qualified for two weeks of leave. Oh, how good it would feel to be back in Diessen. To taste Hilda’s cooking and hold her again. To see her and the boys and our dear daughter. And to know they are safe and far removed from this war.”

For a moment, his pleasant images of homecoming and family soured when he wondered silently if Bruno, his twelve-year-old, had joined the
Hitler Jugend
as yet. He hoped the boy could avoid it, at least a little longer. Although he passionately loved his country and did not stint in his loyalty to the Luftwaffe high command, to Col. Ruperle, this cultlike adoration that had grown up around the Fuhrer seemed to be a little much.

Self-consciously he glanced at the framed portrait of Adolf Hitler that hung on the nonexistent interior wall, crudely nailed to a stud. Hell, there was one of these, or another pose, on some wall in every house, business, and office from the French coast at Calais to the borders of Germany and Austria. They had even shown up in hospital rooms.
Heil
Hitler, he thought irreverently. But he was a soldier and it was his duty to give total obedience to his superiors.