“I see,” Thane said. “So, perhaps…”
“What’s to stop us just selling them ourselves, or even sending them for free?” A man demanded. He was fat and greedy; the type of person who had been born to wealth, rather than earned it. Oliver despised him on sight. Such people talked for years about the hardships of being poor, and gave away their money to every charity they saw; completely unaware of what it was like to be poor.
“That would be a very stupid move,” Oliver said calmly. “For a start, you left it too late to join the coalition, and, as a charity and multinational organisation, you would not be eligible to take part. Secondarily, if you give away the laptops you will face even angrier creditors and even more laptops. Thirdly, trade unauthorised by the Home Office is an offence and you would be tossed in jail. Does that answer your question?”
“I believe that it does,” Thane said. His eyes were cool, calculating. “We would like to discuss the proposal alone.”
“Of course,” Oliver said, rising from the table. “I’ll be waiting outside.”
It took nearly an hour before they called him back. Jeeves paced impatiently; Oliver himself waited calmly. He’d spent time in a Gestapo jail; waiting in a comfortable foyer was hardly a challenge.
“We have come to a decision,” Thane said finally. “We will sell you a controlling interest in AIMworks. However, we have conditions.” Oliver lifted an eyebrow. “We want you to agree that you will continue the laptop for all program once the restrictions are released.”
“I had something like that in mind,” Oliver admitted. “I trust that that’s the only condition?”
Thane nodded. Oliver passed over the contract. The committee read it quickly, and then signed in one quick motion each. “Thank you,” Oliver said, as he made to leave. “A pleasure doing business with you.”
The car pulled out of the estate and set out along the motorway, heading back towards Glasgow. Jeeves flipped through the radio, checking for raid warnings, but there were none; the Germans were concentrating on the other end of the country. Oliver smiled; the Germans were working hard to adapt what he’d given them, but not all of it was useful.
He checked the list of companies on his lap. Selling advanced technology to America, for example, would bring in enough money to establish a covert – and commanding – position within the new global structure. Someone like Bill Gates, who became involved early enough to have an interest in all of the developments, would stand to make a fortune. Mr Bracken, the enigmatic figure, could be the figurehead.
The list was clear. Several companies stockpiled old mobile phones, ones that had been designed while they were in fashion, and then headed out of fashion and into recycling. What sort of effect would releasing thousands of them have on the global market? The Americans wouldn’t care if they were ‘old;’ the black market would be grateful for as many as they could get.
Grinning, Oliver worked though the list. The only problem was to ensure that Britain continued to benefit; it would discourage investigations from taking place. By the time that his people were building factories in America, well away from German bombs, they would be untouchable…
Metropolitan Police Headquarters
London, United Kingdom
4th September 1940
“His name is Olaf Stevenson,” the coroner said. From his corner, Home Secretary and Leader of the Opposition Kenneth Barton retched; the body was black and blue. “He’s a Contemporary, one of the Swedish delegation.”
“I see,” Barton said. “What the hell was he doing?”
He scowled. He’d half-expected Hanover to have pushed him aside, but instead he’d been given very real responsibility. As the former Home Secretary, Hanover kept a close interest in the works of the department, but he didn’t meddle. For once, Barton was regretful; Hanover would have had more ability to make his displeasure at being summoned out of bed known.
“I don’t know,” the coroner said. She was a pretty Chinese woman; her nametag read REIKO. “I do know that he was mugged, severely beaten, and transported to hospital while in a coma. He never recovered; despite some attempts to awaken him he remained asleep, and died this morning. Preliminary examination suggests that the beating was the source of death.”
Barton studied the corpse. “I would have thought that that was obvious,” he said. “Why was the Code Red system activated?”
“Because of these,” the MI5 duty officer said. Barton hadn’t been introduced to him. “These documents contain a summery and details of our defences, with special attention to airbases and navy ports.”
“I… see,” Barton said grimly. Code Red was only used when a possible spy, or intelligence agent, was injured on British soil – carrying implicating evidence. “Who was he working for?”
“Impossible to say with any accuracy,” the MI5 officer said. “Unfortunately, I asked the MI5 history department to look him up – and his name turned up on a list of German spies within Sweden.”
“Fuck,” Barton swore. “He was here to spy on us?”
“Given what he was carrying, I don’t think that there’s any other possibility,” the MI5 officer said. “Which leaves us in a bit of a pickle.”
“What a charmingly understated way of putting it,” Barton said. “Has anyone informed his embassy?”
“Not yet,” the officer said. “Do you think we should?”
“I’m going to put this in front of the war cabinet,” Barton said. “I want you to sit on this until I call, understand?”
“Now that’s a problem,” Hanover said, once the new Home Secretary had finished detailing the problem. “Was he working for the Germans at the time?”
Stirling, who’d been ordered to find out as much as he could in an hour, shrugged. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “That particular spy ring was only discovered in 1970; the East Germans apparently took up the controls and threatened exposure if the stream of information was not continued. In 1970, the Swedes stumbled over it – and the truth came out. Quite when the Germans recruited him…”
“You’d think that seventy-five years worth of history books would have conferred upon us some advantages,” Hanover muttered.
“Most of the source materials, science-fiction novels, have something a little… smaller than the entire nation going back in time,” Stirling said. “My… second cousin wrote a book about something similar, and the problems that they faced. Our problems are worse; the Germans read English better than most of our citizens. Any of our books, such as the late Stevenson proved, can be used by the Germans; I suspect that they’re learning more and more from their prisoners – we teach World War Two in our schools.”
“A good thing that history was reduced to an elective,” Hanover said, who’d voted against that. The irony of the situation didn’t escape him. “Still, when you think about what the average citizen must know, and of how many ideas it would give to the Germans and…”
“So, what do we do about it?” McLachlan asked. “Do we tell the Swedes about the spy ring, and for good measure about the other Soviet ones? Coming to think of it, should we try to assist the Finns?”
Hanover, who’d been thinking about it, shook his head. “Whatever the… virtues, from the moral point of view, of assisting the Finns, we simply don’t have the resources. How do we slip them weapons without the Germans noticing?”
McLachlan nodded. “It’ll look bad on history’s rewritten books,” he said, “but I take your point.”