For countless others, the nightmare was only just beginning…
Nikolai Lvovich Serdiukov — who had been known as Zachary Lynn, or Control, in another life — walked calmly down the corridors of the detention centre that had been established near Dorking, first for British soldiers who had been captured, and then for policemen and political prisoners. The serious criminals had been treated in the standard Russian manner; a handful, however, had been spared and told that they had a choice between working for the FSB, or death. Serdiukov smiled; few had refused the offer…
The President had made it clear at their meeting, when he had pinned the medal on his face personally; Britain was going to be the hardest European country to rule. The British had had time to develop all manner of resistance cells and the records in the country’s computers had all been wiped… well, mostly. Serdiukov was confident that Russian computer experts would eventually piece together a complete list of who had been in the army, or the police force, but for a few years everything would be chaotic. The Russians had to be ahead of the game.
There were two guards on the door ahead of him; they saluted him and opened the door, allowing him entry into the single cell. She sat there, hands handcuffed behind her back and secured to the chair, her legs shackled to the floor. It was overkill, restraints that would have been overkill for anyone, but a trained commando, but Serdiukov had wanted to make a point. She was completely helpless; she was completely at his mercy. Unlike so many others of her kind, she had a brain; Serdiukov knew that if she could be broken, she could be used.
“Good morning, Daphne,” he said. He spoke in English, making his voice bright and cheerful. “How are you today?”
Daphne Hammond looked up. Her eyes widened. “Zack?”
“FSB Colonel Nikolai Lvovich Serdiukov,” Serdiukov said. “I suppose you could say that I was one of those infiltration and destabilisation agents that you spent so much time accusing the Americans of creating and sending into” — he allowed his voice to become sardonic — “poor helpless counties who have never done anything wrong…”
Daphne glared at him. “Let me go,” she snapped. “What do you want with me?”
“Well, we owe you,” Serdiukov said. “Without you… perhaps it would have been harder to complete the conquest of Europe… but then, your sources will have told you what happened in Hanover and a dozen other places in Germany. The new world order has no place for your kind.”
He paused, enjoying the moment, before continuing. “You have a choice,” he said. “You can continue to work for us as a… legitimate politician trying to steer the ship of state through some troubling times… or you can die. No one knows what happened to you since your government grew a pair and dumped you in one of their detention camps; your supporters, most of whom believe that you believe the kind of stuff you come out with, will believe that it was the British Government that had you killed.”
He saw fear flicker into her eyes. It was good to be able, finally, to laugh in her face. She was no innocent; she had taken people who had wanted to build a better world and used them to create power for herself, power that might have pushed her beyond the level where she needed the innocents who had believed in her… and then she would have betrayed them. She had no principles, no redeeming features; she wanted power and power alone.
She wilted. “Daphne,” Serdiukov said, “I can have you thrown to the soldiers for their own amusement, or I can make you powerful if you work for us. Choose.”
There was a long pause. Her body was shaking. “All right,” she said finally. “What do you want me to do?”
Several thoughts came into Serdiukov’s head; he dismissed them. “Oh, you’re going to run Britain for us,” he said. “Your assistance will be invaluable.”
Daphne thought about it. He could almost see the wheels turning in her head. It was power and power was what she wanted. She would do anything for it; he would have considered a whore more honest in her work. “You would make me the power behind the throne?”
Serdiukov smiled. “I think that Prime Minister Daphne Hammond has quite a nice ring to it, don’t you?
Afterword
The Fall of Night holds the record for my fastest-written book. I wrote at the staggering rate of 5 chapters per day (roughly 15’000 words per day) because the story just seemed to want to come out. Then or since, I have not matched that speed. Maybe, even then, the story was important — or, more likely, the idea just soaked into my mind and I ran with it.
Staying in the tradition of the better pieces of ‘invasion literature,’ I deliberately wrote the story with a downer ending. (See The Battle of Dorking, available online, for a sample of pre-WW1 invasion writings.) Such books were not attempts to write military thrillers, per se, but attempts to warn of the dangers of poorly-considered decisions that, in the minds of the authors if nowhere else, were likely to lead to a serious risk of military defeat. They rarely included a happy ending.
I wrote The Fall of Night in 2009. Now, if anything, it has become even more relevant.
The tactics I had the Russians use are ones they planned to use during the Cold War, merely modified to some extent. They intended to use commandoes, they intended to incite radical factions to war, they intended to use terror tactics… and they intended to put down all resistance swiftly and effectively. And how would such tactics work if aimed at a society as open as our own?
The world is a dangerous place. If anything, the end of the Cold War — while removing the threat of mutual nuclear annihilation — has made the world far more dangerous, while the spread of modern transport technology has lowered the distance from one side of the world to the other. A problem that would once have remained localised — the Iraqi Invasion of Kuwait, for example — now takes on global implications. A band of terrorists hiding in caves in Afghanistan can hijack aircraft and slam them into towers in a city on the other side of the world. And a bunch of pathetic cartoons (and some astute political manipulation) can trigger off riots all over the world.
Nor is it lawful. Law is effective only as long as it can be enforced — and so-called international law has rarely been enforced. Dictators such as Saddam mocked international standards of decency simply by existing; states such as Saudi Arabia, Iran and North Korea spit in the face of any concept of international human rights. International law could only be made workable if there was a force with both the capability and will to uphold the law. There is no such force. Nor is one likely to exist. The Western faith in international law is, at best, naive. The response from a dictator to demands that he comply with the law is going to boil down to ‘oh, yeah? Make me.’
And yet, successive British governments seem unwilling to face up to the simple fact that the world is dangerous.
It is absurd beyond belief, despite the assertions of several politicians, that we can stay out of the War on Terror. Even if we hadn’t joined the American invasion of Afghanistan (and later Iraq) we would still be targeted by terrorists. We would be targeted because we are a liberal free country with freedom of religion, freedom of the press, sexual freedom… all freedoms that are anthemia to our enemies. Indeed, we would be targeted because we represent a better way to live than a return to doctrines that were little more than attempts to impose a standard of behaviour on an entire population. The terrorists hate our freedoms because we might well seduce their potential recruits away from them.