“The prostitutes would have used contraception, surely,” Stirling said. “Prime Minister, did you see the bit on BBC about the American who found the transvestite?”
“An inadequate male who turned himself into a fake female,” Hanover said. He chuckled. “Was that where one of the fights started?”
Stirling nodded. “Of course, we don’t know if that was the incident that started it, of course,” he said. “Still, he wasn’t expecting that.”
“How true,” Hanover said. “Can you see Ike? You have to convince him to have every American who went to Newcastle checked for AIDS; it can be stopped if we act quickly.”
“Yes, Prime Minister,” Stirling said. “Shouldn’t you see him yourself?”
Hanover shook his head. “I think he’d be tired of me,” he said. “Hell, I’m tired of him. The sooner we get this war over, the better.”
Camp Tommy
Nr Newcastle, United Kingdom
29th April 1941
General George Patton was a soldier’s soldier. Everyone said so, and looking at him Private Max Shepherd understood; Patton extruded magnetism and determination to win, whatever the cost. Today, however, Patton was not smiling. His short form radiation anger and disappointment, and he slapped a riding crop against his leg as he paced to and fro, talking at a level volume that cost a great deal to hold.
“You men have disgraced the name of America,” he snapped, and the soldiers recoiled. Patton’s disappointment was worse than facing enemy shellfire. “How can we trust you to defeat the blasted Germans, the scum who have disgraced the name of war, if you ruin an ally’s town?”
Shepherd shuddered. He’d been lucky; his girl had sheltered him and helped him to get back to the camp after they’d made love against a wall. She hadn’t been forced, and she clearly hadn’t complained – the British had some way of identifying a man who’d slept with a girl – and she’d even given him something called a ‘mobile number,’ so he could call her again. He wanted to be sick; the drug was slowing working its way out of his system, but at a cost.
Patton was speaking louder now. “And you,” he snapped, swinging around to face the military police, “what were you thinking?” Some of the soldiers smiled, enjoying the sight of the MPs in trouble for once. “Using your clubs against girls, some of them barely out of their first decade? Attempting to fight the British Police?” He glared at them. “If I’d had my way, you would have been left to rot in those cells; they were better than you deserved!”
Some of the soldiers were now openly nudging one another and grinning. Patton’s glare froze them in their tracks. “Those of you who were accused of a crime will be confined to camp, except on training and the war itself,” he snapped. “After the war, you will be sent back here to face charges… and if you try to desert I’ll shoot you myself! If you want to face charges now, instead of fighting the war, just say so; I’m sure that the British will be less dangerous than the Germans.”
He glared around the camp. “We have only a short period of time to get ready for our role,” he said. “From tomorrow, we will be training harder and harder… and God help the man who slacks!”
Patton stalked off into his office. Captain Caddell stepped up. “The following men are confined to barracks,” he said, and read out a list of names. Shepherd blinked; the list included Private Buckman and Private Manlito.
“What did you do?” He muttered out of the corner of his mouth. “Kill someone?”
Buckman glared at him. “There was this… hooker who agreed to let me do her if I paid, and then she said I didn’t have enough money,” he said. “I offered to come back, but then she started screaming and the fight was still going on and the police grabbed me.”
“Well, don’t run away,” Shepherd said, only half-joking. “There’s a war on.”
“Women like that should be locked up, not their victims,” Buckman groused. He kept on grousing until the rest of the Marines realised that it had been his fault. After the third ‘accident’ he shut up. There was far more training to do, after all, and the Marines were building up a good head of steam for the Germans.
He suspected that they were going to need it.
Chapter Sixteen: Out of Time
Nr Bergen
Norway
6th May 1941
Captain Dwynn hadn’t been too bothered by Britain; unlike the situations in the books recommended by the Oversight Committee, Britain was intact and almost exactly the same as it had been in 2015. Arabia hadn’t looked too different, and he’d never visited Malaya and Singapore before the Transition… but Norway was very different. In a future that might never be, NATO had kept a supply deport near Bergen… which was no longer there. There was a quaintness about the Norwegian city that it had lacked, seventy years in the future, and it brought home to him what had happened.
“I came her with a girl once,” he said. “She loved visiting the museum.”
“At least you get to go into the town,” Corporal Chang said, watching through the binoculars as the German patrols marched through the town, backed up by brown-shirted Norwegians carrying Billy clubs.
“You’re lucky,” Dwynn said, watching through the sensors. Chang’s face, so oriental, would alert any German with half a brain that he didn’t come from Norway. “It’s bloody terrible down there.”
He shuddered. He’d gone down to the town from the remote hut in which they’d made their main base, in the company of a Norwegian fisherman who’d been discovered by a British submarine six months ago. That near-disaster had cost the SAS one of its insertion submarines, but it had given them the beginnings of allies among the Norwegians. The resistance movement was tiny, but aided by radios the Germans couldn’t track and probably wouldn’t recognise them, they could supply information to the liberators.
“That bad, huh?” Chang asked, checking the screens again. “What’s it like?”
Dwynn scowled. “Oh, on the surface its very civil,” he said, “but there’s an air of… fear around the town. The Germans are polite – Hitler seems to think that the Norwegians are worth keeping around – but very firm. Quisling can boast all he wants of pan-Aryan solidity; the people know who’s in charge.”
“And, of course, the Royal Family has gone,” Chang agreed. The Norwegian Royal Family had been in Britain when it had been replaced by the 2015 Britain, and had vanished. “There’s no focus of resistance.”
“I suppose,” Dwynn said. He made a face as he stared down at the maps; the Germans hadn’t defended too much of Bergen, but what they had defended would make a formidable obstacle. Bergen wasn’t a town – city – that you could just sail up to and attack; it had a gigantic island blocking the direct approach. Dwynn snickered; some of the PJHQ staff had been plotting the attack based around bridges that hadn’t been built yet – and wouldn’t be until 1960.
“They’re going to have to be careful,” he said aloud, and cursed. The need for on-site intelligence was great enough to risk the SAS team, but their capture would be disastrous. The Germans would have no need to honour the Geneva Convention if they caught the SAS out of uniform – not that they would have done anyway – and anyone could be made to talk, given the right incentive.
“They’ll have to take a battleship up the fjord,” Chang said.