He was wracking his brains for something else to say when Sergeant Ronald Inglehart appeared in the command tent. “Captain,” he said, “the journalists have arrived.”
Robinson had to smile at his tone. He couldn’t have announced the arrival of child molesters and rapists with more disdain. “Thank you,” he said, as he put the laptop aside and came out of the tent. Two women stood there, one of them clearly British, the other Polish; he remembered Captain Jacob Anastazy telling him about the Polish reporter. She was some relative of his, he recalled; a heart-stopping young woman with honey-blonde hair. Robinson found himself surprisingly tongue-tied as he faced her. “Welcome to the camp.”
“Thank you,” the Englishwoman said. She was dark-haired and surprisingly attractive in her own right. “We won’t be staying long, Colonel; we merely need to get some background interviews.”
“Of course,” Robinson said, watching as two of the soldiers played court to Marya Jadwiga. Anastazy was looking more and more grim as they chatted about nothing in particular. Robinson had read, once, that American soldiers had often brought home a Polish bride; looking at Marya, it was easy to see why. “What do you need to know?”
“I’m Caroline, by the way,” the woman said. Robinson blushed at the amusement in her voice and reminded himself that he was a married man. “How are you enjoying your time out here?”
Robinson laughed at the question. “It could be better,” he said, “but so far it has been more like an adventure holiday than anything else.” He had gone on an adventure holiday with Hazel once; he had found it trite and easy after actually soldiering with people trying to kill him. The instructor hadn’t known half as much as he had; he shuddered to think what an SAS trooper would have made of it. Mincemeat, probably. “We’re just sitting here waiting for something to happen and monitoring this particular section of Polish airspace.”
Caroline seemed to understand. “Do you get bored out here?”
“It beats Sudan,” Robinson admitted. He had to smile when he looked over at Marya; if the poor girl wasn't careful, she was likely to end up with a very different kind of background interview. He had had to discipline a soldier once for sending a request to a female correspondent for a more revealing photograph and had been laughing too hard to make a proper job of the chewing out. “In a week, we’ll be somewhere else, perhaps guarding somewhere even more important, but until then…”
Caroline nodded in understanding. “And don’t you want a real barracks?”
“Most of us would sooner sleep naked than sleep in a soviet-built barracks,” Robinson said. “Have you ever slept in one?” She eyed him carefully, and then shook her head. “It explains why many Red Army soldiers were nasty bastards; they just couldn’t sleep properly.”
“Ah,” Caroline said. “What about the Poles? Do you have any contact with the locals?”
Robinson opened his mouth to answer, and then stopped. There was something wrong; he could feel it, right on the edge of his instincts. He couldn’t have explained it to her; it was just a sense that something wasn’t quite right, somewhere. He had had it in the Sudan, just before some refugees had brought out swords — swords, for the love of God — and started to hack apart their fellows.
“No,” he said slowly. “It’s very tranquil out here.”
London, United Kingdom
Major-General Charles Langford stepped out of the Convent Garden Royal Opera House with the sense that, finally, something was going his way. He had always loved the opera — not the depressing and seemingly endless Wagner operas, but the light-hearted Gilbert and Sullivan operas — and going to see a properly produced version of one was delightful. The Mikado might have run afoul of the Race Relations Board, but the sheer torrent of protest had brought the Board to heel for once; only a handful of people could be bothered to picket the first production since the edict was repealed.
The sun was fading in the sky as he climbed onto the underground train, waving his ID card at the young Pakistani manning the barrier, who glanced around and then gave Langford the finger. The temptation to report the young man was overwhelming, but Langford forced it down; it wasn't easy getting a job these days. There were times when Langford wondered if it wasn’t just worth taking early retirement, or even leaving the country altogether. England was no longer what it once was…
He got off the underground train — technically, over half of the network was actually above ground — and walked up the hill towards his flat. His mother had left him her house in Croydon when she had died, but it was large enough for a family and Langford lived alone in Redhill, near London, but not quite part of the city. He passed a group of grieving Indians on the way, the weeping women dressed in brightly-coloured clothes, and headed out onto the hill. He was on leave, technically, even though he didn’t really want to go anywhere. There was plenty of reading he wanted to catch up upon, but for the moment, all he wanted to do was pace. The hill was empty; most of the young men and women who used it would have gone to the community centre, even though it was turning into a haven for crime. It was starting to look if Britain was already dead, and men like him were only struggling against the inevitable.
Trying to banish such thoughts, he sat on the bench and looked out towards the sunset. It all seemed so safe and tranquil.
Interlude One: Tick… tick… tick…
Tick… tick… tick…
They waited.
In Belarus, in Serbia, in Algeria, in Russia itself, they waited. Soldiers checked their weapons obsessively as they waited for the dawn; their commanders checked their intelligence and battle plans, some of them wondering if they would be worthy commanding officers, others, more relaxed, tried to sleep. Missile crews checked their missiles carefully, ensuring that all of them had their guidance systems locked onto their targets, hoping that nothing would go wrong at the worst possible moments. Under the waves, Russian submarines made the final GPS checks to ensure that their targeting data was up to date, while aircraft revved their engines on hundreds of runways across Russia.
Tick… tick… tick…
In the darkness of the European night, commandos moved closer to their targets, preparing their weapons for action. In every major European city, other commandos prepared their strikes, to unleash terror and destruction right across Europe. In hidden bases, human voices spoke hatred unheard since Cain murdered Abel, inciting a hatred that would soon burst out into the streets. In nondescript rooms, cyber-warriors prepared to hack into and disrupt countless computers right across Europe; the population would wake to find themselves trapped in a nightmare, from which they would never escape.
Tick… tick… tick…
Warships moved silently under the waves, closing in on their targets; Naval Infantry prepared themselves for the desperate dash across the water. Hunter-killer submarines moved closer, their targets long identified and selected; their captains waited impatiently for the countdown to reach zero. Others kept their ships well back from any risk of detection, waiting for the final moments before they moved in for the kill. They would not miss their targets; surprise would be absolute.
Tick… tick… tick…
Thousands of targets had been designated; thousands of separate acts of sabotage planned. High overhead, cold mechanical eyes peered down, refining the information now that it was too late, while other objects moved into firing position in the dark of space. The intelligence had been better than any Russian had dared to expect; the Europeans had taken almost no precautions for the first total war of the 21st Century. Europe was asleep… and by the time it awoke, it would be too late.