“I need you to answer a question,” Shalenko said. “Where is the command post?”
Briggs shook his head. “I have no idea,” he said, honestly. Langford had never shared that information with him. “I was never told that.”
Shalenko looked down at him sadly. “That’s not good enough,” he said. He nodded to two burly-looking Russians, who seized Briggs, handcuffed him, and marched him off towards a large truck. “It would be much easier on all concerned if you just told us what you know.”
“I don’t fucking know,” Briggs protested. The two Russians could have given the worst policeman lessons in brutality. The pain in his arms was utterly beyond comprehension. “They didn’t tell me…”
“Take him to Maliuta Vladimirovich,” Shalenko ordered tiredly. He still spoke in English. “Tell him to get what he can out of him.”
They marched Briggs away to an unknown fate.
In the end, it took nearly a fortnight to locate it, despite the British command post being right under their nose. Shalenko hadn’t wasted the time; occupation authorities had reached as far north as Newcastle and would reach the lowlands of Scotland before too long, while Wales and Cornwall had felt the touch of Russian power. There had been an entire series of skirmishes with the remainder of British forces, but most of the surviving soldiers had either been captured, or had gone underground to await the chance to either escape, or launch a war against the Russians. Other elements of the Russian program had been launched almost at once; prisoners had been divided up as they had been in Europe, and the entire male Muslim population of southeast England had been conscripted to help repair the damage caused by the invasion.
There had been a brief, very brutal fight, before the Classified Joint Headquarters had been penetrated, a last ditch attempt to trigger a self-destruct system thwarted in the very nick of time. Shalenko entered the complex and examined it, pausing in passing to salute the body of a short blonde woman who had commanded the defence, her resistance finally ended by four bullet wounds to the chest. Others lay strewn around the complex, including a young Indian girl who had been shot down by a nervous commander, and a helicopter pilot who had used the helicopter’s guns to mow down soldiers before he had been killed. A few more moments, Shalenko reflected, and he might have made it out and escaped.
“Impressive,” he said finally. The CJHQ had only been discovered by chance. There might well be others out there somewhere in the English countryside, or somewhere far to the north in Scotland; time alone would tell. The Russians had put all of the civil servants, those who had survived, back to work; they had been interrogated, repeatedly, to see what they knew. None of them had known about the CJHQ; without that little bit of foresight, how long would it have been before the British pulled themselves back together. “I think we can make use of this compound, Anna; it could come in useful.”
He sat back as the helicopter headed back to Buckingham Palace. The President had been delighted with his work and his success, even though there were still so many urgent requirements to handle before Britain could be termed truly pacified, but then… who knew what would happen in the future? Perhaps he would have the honour of the invasion of Spain, once the conflicts there had burned out, or…
For General Shalenko, the future looked bright and full of promise.
For Khadijah, the future had become a nightmare, one that was reaching out to embrace them all in its claws. She had never been superstitious, as opposed to religious, and she knew that parts of Islam’s holy writings were parables, rather than direct orders — a point that many extremists missed — but she had the sense that something unpleasant was about to happen. She could feel it, right at the back of her head, even while she had been kept in Manchester General Hospital; something was going to happen.
She had been treated for smoke inhalation once the ambulance had finally arrived, her survival more a matter of luck — or Allah’s blessing — than judgement. Khadijah had become an ideal patient at the hospital, helping out as best as she could with the thousands of other wounded, but finally it was time for her to be discharged. The nurse had told her, in whispers, what had happened to London… and implored the young Muslim girl to hide and sneak west to hopefully find a ship to Ireland or somewhere else that was free. Bad Things were happening to Muslims…
Khadijah had had no choice, but to go home. As a hospital patient, she had had no choice, but to be left out of the first wave of registration, but as soon as she was on her feet, she had to go register. Manchester looked, in places, as if it had been turned into a war zone; the Russian authorities had very strong ideas on what should happen to people who revolted against their rule. She saw, hanging from a lamppost, a young English boy… one of her tormentors from the burning mosque. He hadn’t died well…
The Russians had taken her details, cross-checked them with other details in their vast database, and then asked her dozens of questions. Still terrified because of the body, she answered as many of them as she could, before the Russians gave her an ID card and told her the rules. Stay in your homes after curfew, unless there is a medical emergency; ideally, stay in your homes unless you have work. Report yourself for duty if summoned; do not attempt to leave the city without written permission.
Khadijah cried, afterwards; her world had shrunk, once again, to the four corners of her room…
…And bad things were coming.
Hazel had held out hope that she would hear something for weeks, but as the Russians entered Edinburgh and tightened their grip on the city, she started to wonder if she should fear the worst. She was four months pregnant and her chest was starting to swell, but there was no word from her husband. The Russians had posted lists of prisoners who had been executed — including the infamous Edinburgh child molester, who had raped twelve children and had been remanded in custody for a mere twenty years — but her Stuart’s name wasn't on the lists anywhere. She had searched them all, time and time again, wondering if she dared ask the Russians directly… but fear held her back.
Her father had taken her in; she had registered under her maiden name, rather than as Hazel Robinson, terror of Russian spies and terrorists. She cursed that decision, afterwards; if they had found a body, who would they have known to tell? The penalties for lying to the Russians were grim; a shopkeeper who had lied about something had been assigned to one of the work crews, fading further and further every day through his month-long sentence of hard labour. Others had not been so lucky; Princes’ Street Gardens had been full of bodies hanging from poles, people who had tried to resist the force of Russian might.
Like everyone else, she had grown to dread the knock on the door. When it came, she almost lost control completely before walking towards the door, noticing a single man standing there, and opening the door in hope… only to come face to face with Rashid Ustinov. The Russian looked taller, somehow, than he had been when he had held her prisoner; there was a new scar on his cheek.
“You!”
“Me,” Ustinov said mildly. Her father appeared and stared at him. “May I come in?”
“I don’t think that we can stop you,” Hazel observed bitterly, as he followed them into the lounge. She had thought that she was free of the two Russians forever. “What do you want?”
“They wanted to arrest you for interfering with an FSB operation,” Ustinov said shortly. “I talked them out of it.”
There was a pause. “Why?” It was her father who had spoken. “Why…?”
“Because in Russia, rank, power, responsibility and authority don’t always go together,” Ustinov said. “We have Captains who give orders to Generals under certain circumstances. There are Admirals whose only job is to look good, while their staffs do all the work; I once had two colonels and a lieutenant-general reporting to me. I am one of the FSB’s heroes following” — he made a sweeping hand gesture — “and they will give me a great deal of latitude, within reason.”