Hazel had only one thought in her mind. “And what about Stuart?” She asked, almost pleading. Tears were falling down her face; her father gently placed a hand around her shoulders. “What happened to him?”
“I don’t know what happened to him,” Ustinov said. There was a grim tone in his voice. “There’s no record of finding his body, nor was he captured, but there were a lot of bodies that even DNA checks would have been hard-pressed to identify. I checked; the bodies of several men known to have served under him were recovered, but there was no sign of him personally.”
He paused. “One possibility, the people involved with tracing the remaining soldiers thought, was that he was with you,” he said. “Of course… they wanted to arrest you, but I blocked them…”
Hazel shrugged off her father’s hand and leaned forward. “Why?”
Ustinov looked down. “Because… because you reminded me a lot of my mother,” he said. “Because… you handled yourself well back when… well, that’s in the past now. Because… you were kind to us when you thought we needed help. Because… you have suffered enough and… there was never anything personal, you know; none of us who went into Britain hated you, even Sergey. Hurting you would be spite.”
He reached inside his pocket and brought out two passes. “There are some flights leaving Edinburgh airport over the next two months, convoying Americans and other foreigners who were caught in Britain when the war started,” he said. “These two passes will get you out of the country; the Americans and Canadians are taking in refugees, so I expect that you two will find refugee there.” He dropped a third pass into her hand. “If he should happen to turn up…”
“Thank you,” Hazel said. She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You could come…”
Ustinov laughed. “I don’t think that that would be a good idea,” he said. “Goodbye, Hazel.”
He left, not looking back.
They were at the very edge of the range of Russian aircraft.
Admiral Geoffrey Bradford Wilkinson watched as the final helicopter came in to land, the fleet turning slowly and heading out towards America. They would meet up with elements of the American Navy — HMCS Lethbridge from Canada had already joined the force — soon enough, but he had wanted to remain as close to Britain as possible, if only for a few more days. The ships they were escorting carried thousands of refugees; they had to be protected, even if the Russians seemed to be ignoring them. One way or the other, they would be leaving soon; the Russians had already begun to take over bases on Ireland and Britain itself. The loss of the CJHQ meant that there would be no centre of organised resistance left on British soil.
There was no time left at all.
He gave the order.
The remains of the Royal Navy — and a handful of surviving European ships — turned and sailed away from Britain. Few words were spoken as the fleet headed towards America, the crews lost in their own private thoughts; what would happen to them in the future. Historical precedent was not good; French ships that had escaped the fall of France in 1940 had had friends and allies, they had… few friends and no allies if they were to fight to regain their homeland. A few hundred sailors had demanded to be put ashore as the fleet neared Britain, too late to be useful; they had been granted their wish. Wilkinson could only hope that they would have time to see their families before the Russians rounded them all up; the Russians had already placed a motion before the United Nations to declare the remaining ships pirates.
He turned his back on the distant hills of his homeland.
He wondered if he would ever see them again.
Epilogue
He came back to awareness in a burst of pain, memories flickering at the back of his mind; a Russian, an attack; grenades… the pain ebbed and flowed away as a soothing balm flowed over his body. Darkness rose and fell over the coming weeks as his body was slowly repaired, the latest in American medical science rebuilding most of his body. The doctors had warned him that he would be crippled for a very long time, perhaps permanently disabled, but he would otherwise make a full recovery.
It was a month before they told him what had happened. He had raged then, screaming at them, demanding to know why he had lived when others were spared. They tried to tell him about the medics who had pulled out most of the wounded from England, convoying them to Iceland and then onwards to America, but he hadn’t listened; he was the last survivor of his unit and he was miles from his wife. Eventually, they filled him in on some of the details, but the true horror had to wait until he was well enough to escape from the hospital bed and manoeuvre a wheelchair to a computer terminal. They found him there, crying, as he took in the news about the fall of night across the whole of Europe, the new Iron Curtain descending remorselessly around the continent. His wife…
They looked, of course; there was no mention of a woman fitting the name and description she gave in the registered refugees. Thousands had escaped the fall of night, some of them heading to Canada or Australia instead of America; she might have escaped the country, but as the Russians clamped down, it seemed less and less likely that she had escaped. The news was grim; it always was these days. Greece had signed a pact with the Russians to avoid a Turkish invasion, while a holy war was raging over Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily as the natives resisted the invaders with everything at their disposal. Spain was transformed into a nightmare of civil war, but the remainder of the continent seemed to be surprisingly peaceful; resistance seemed almost non-existent.
He had cursed them too as he raged.
The staff hadn’t quite known what to do with him. One of them, a scholar and expert in sociology, tried to explain to him; most people only wanted a quiet life. The Russians weren't hammering them directly, so they cooperated and remained low, avoiding the Russians as much as possible. Some would resist, but the Russians were getting better and better at ferreting out resistance networks… and not all Europeans liked the thought of getting rid of the Russians. People who had been terminally unemployed, suddenly finding themselves with honestly earned money in their pockets, liked the Russians, others just liked the camps that been set up for Muslims, criminals and socialists… and politicians. Russian television had even broadcast views of Germans and Frenchmen jeering the detained politicians before they were whisked off east for an uncertain fate.
The staff had wondered what would happen to him; he didn’t seem the type to just settle down in America, and even if he did offer his services to the government-in-exile, he was in no fit state to be inserted back into Britain, or to join the American Army. He himself had just given up; what was his life without her?
Two months later, she arrived.
She knew him at once, even though he was still wounded and hadn’t been taking care of his appearance; she flung herself into his arms despite being heavily pregnant. The staff had smiled to themselves as they had watched the touching scene; the man might have been a problem patient, but they were used to those. He had deserved to escape; he had deserved to be reunited with his wife…
Stuart Robinson, no longer a Colonel or a Captain, held his wife tightly and felt her tears trickling down her cheeks. They had been the lucky ones; they had escaped the nightmare and found a new home in America.