- 4 -
At least McCally had managed to get the stove going in the hut, although it was cramped inside with all eight of them in a space that looked to be made for no more than two or three men. Hughes, Patel, and Wilkes sat tight together on the bottom bunk, Wiggins was stretched out on the one above them, Parker and McCally were by the stove, with a kettle on and a pot boiling up some of the thin soup that passed as their rations. They all looked up as Banks entered.
“At ease, lads,” he said. “The brass needs some thinking time. Four hours till next check-in, so smoke them if you’ve got them.”
“So what do they think it is, Cap?” Wiggins asked. “Some black ops bullshit cobbled up during the war to try and make us shit ourselves?”
“Aye,” Parker said. “I’ve seen that film. Nazi UFO in a tube station in London, wasn’t it? Fucking ace that was.”
“This is no black ops,” Hynd said, and the room fell quiet. “We all saw the bodies, and the rust on the walls, and the age of the paperwork. It’s all too good; in fact, it’s fucking perfect. It’s exactly what it looks like. No more, no less.”
“But, Sarge,” Wiggins said. “Fucking NAZI UFOs? That’s just sad-sack internet conspiracy theory bollocks.”
“Not anymore it isn’t,” Hynd said. “You saw it. We all saw it.”
McCally came over from the stove and put a pot of soup on the table and some bowls and cutlery. The room was already warming up, so much so that Parker and McCally had taken off their outer jackets.
“Get it inside you, lads. We found enough wood to keep the stove running for a while, so at least we won’t freeze our nuts off for the next four hours.”
“Turn it down a tad,” Banks said. “And eke out the wood as much as you can. We might be here a bit longer than four hours, if my gut’s right.”
Banks and Hynd let the squad get to the soup first. Hynd had been as good as his word and been among the paperwork in the canvas kit bags they’d brought out of the base.
“This all looks legit, Cap,” the sergeant said. “But it’s as weird as fuck.”
“In what way?”
“Well, there’s orbital mechanics and flight plans and the like, everything you’d expect if they really were trying to attempt to get that fucker off the ground. But there are all sorts of other bits of shite along with the technical stuff. Take those gold markings on the floor under the saucer, for example. If I’m reading this right, it’s a fucking pentagram.”
“What, black magic, demonology, all that old bollocks?”
“Exactly. I’d heard the Nazis were mad for that kind of crap, but I never expected to find evidence all the way down here.”
“So what next? The fucking Lost Ark?”
Hynd shrugged.
“At this stage, Cap, very little would surprise me.”
Banks wasn’t really listening to his sergeant. His mind was back in the hangar, his foot on the gold circle, feeling the tingling vibration run through his body. His gut instinct was shouting loud at him now, but he pushed it down.
“Maybe Wiggins was right,” he said. “Maybe this is all some kind of black ops psychological shite.”
“Aye, maybe,” Hynd said. “But what if it isn’t?”
Banks clapped Hynd on the shoulder.
“Then we’ll just have to kick auld Nick in the nuts and fuck off for a pint,” he said. “Like we always do.”
His attempt at humor seemed to placate the sergeant, but Banks’ own mood was sour. After finishing the soup, Hughes, Patel, and Wilkes sat, tight together on the bottom bunk, and all three quickly went to sleep, accompanied by the snoring of Wiggins above them. Banks envied them the rest, but he couldn’t get his mind to settle. Parker, McCally, and Hynd got a card game going, but Banks was still thinking of the two names in the journal he’d found, still wondering as to their relevance to the current situation. He stepped over nearer the stove and sat leaning on the counter that served as chopping board and food preparation area. He got the old leather journal from his backpack, opened it up, and continued reading from where he’d left off.
Soon he had left the Antarctic behind, flying back to London, over a hundred years before.
I was expecting a parcel of books that Saturday morning, and when the knock came to the door in Cheyne Walk, I almost ran to answer, eagerly anticipating an afternoon of studious endeavor in my library among the pages of some new friends for my shelves. Instead, I found a tall, heavily built lad on my doorstep.
At first glance, I might have taken him for a policeman or a bruiser, for he had something of the manner of both, but his tone was polite, even cultured, as he handed me an envelope.
“I was told to pass this to you personally, sir,” he said. “It is for your eyes only.”
The envelope was plain, but of expensive paper, and the handwritten note was done most elegantly in the blackest of black inks with not the slightest smudge on it. The wording of the note itself was equally as terse as the deliverer’s message.
“I have sent my driver for you. Come immediately. It is of national importance.”
I suspected the name even before I read it. It was appended, simply, ‘Churchill.’ I knew the man well enough from our previous encounters to know he would not be an easy chap to refuse.
I took enough time to fetch an overcoat, a hat, and my pipe and tobacco. The burly young chap stood, stock-still, filling my doorway the whole time, and only moved aside to let me exit. Then I was, if not exactly bundled, enthusiastically encouraged into a waiting carriage and within seconds, we were off and away, heading east at some speed along the Embankment.
I had the interior of the rather well-appointed carriage to myself, the bearer of the telegram having stepped up to sit with the driver. Once we passed Westminster, and didn’t stop at Parliament, but continued to head even farther east, I realized it might be a longer trip than I had anticipated.
To pass the time, I read the note again, but it told me nothing new beyond the fact that Churchill was a man who expected to be obeyed. I hadn’t heard from him since our last encounter, but I remembered reading of his appointment as First Lord of the Admiralty in The Thunderer a month or so back. I wondered if this summons might had something to do with that, but I had insufficient facts to hand for such conjecture, and settled for lighting a pipe, trying to enjoy the journey, and not letting my curiosity turn to frayed nerves and a bad temper.
The carriage kept going along the north side of the river, past St. Paul’s and London Bridge, past the Tower, and headed into the warren of old quays and warehouses of the docks. I was starting to regret not having partaken of a larger breakfast.
I was still wondering quite how far I might have to travel when the carriage finally came to a halt at an old boat shed that, once upon a time, must have been one of the largest on the docks. There were a score or more of the young, strapping, silent type of chaps around. Some of them had made some kind of attempt at disguising themselves in old, frayed and worn clothing in an effort to pass themselves off as dockhands. But they weren’t fooling me. This was Churchill’s work all right, and these were his lads. I guessed they were military, or rather, given Churchill’s post, Navy chaps to a man, and they were hard men, trained to kill by the look of them. I decided I had better be on my toes and keep my nose clean as I stepped down from the carriage onto the quay.
Churchill was there to meet me. He had grown more stout and portly since our last meeting, and his belly strained rather too tightly against his waistcoat. Compared to his lads around us, he looked out of place on the dock, his walking cane, heavy silver fob chain, tall hat and tails being much too grand, and more suited to the rarified atmosphere of the House.