He shook his head as the room fell quiet. The BBC hadn’t heard about it yet, but Radio Berlin was screaming about the attack, claiming that an entire city had been vaporised. It was nonsense, of course, and Hanover knew that some of the population would believe the lies. Nuclear warheads were linked up with civilian deaths; everyone knew that, didn’t they?
“Major Stirling?” Hanover asked, still staring out of the window. Stirling had been bothered about something later; Hanover had no idea what. It was a mystery on top of a whole stack of mysteries, starting with the current status of the German bioweapon program.
Stirling spoke to Hanover’s back. “The blast faded within two miles of the impact point,” he said, “with a steadily degrading damage radius after the first mile. Although its impossible to be certain, radiation should be minimal, all concentrated within the target zone. Satellite observations are far from perfect, but the blast does not seem to have caused a radioactive cloud.”
Hanover nodded slowly. “Unfortunately, a lot of German civilians seem to have panicked, because of Radio Berlin,” Stirling continued. “The German police and SS are on the streets in force, trying to prevent a mass exodus from the site, but everyone nearby who saw the blast is panicking.”
“Serves them right for trying to convince our own people that we’re barbarians,” Cunningham commented. “Did we get all of the germs?”
“We think so,” Stirling said. “Certainly, we subjected the entire place to a massive blast of pure heat, so if any survived there, it will be a dark miracle. It would have taken seconds to vaporise them all.”
“Microseconds,” Cunningham corrected pedantically.
Hanover coughed. “Does it matter?” He asked dryly. “Carry on, Major.”
“Yes, sir,” Stirling said. “Mengele, the captured doctor, swears blind that there are no other facilities, but it wouldn’t be hard for them to have several more running without him knowing about it.”
Hanover nodded. “The agent involved is to get the Victoria Cross,” he said. There was no argument. “Has Mengele told us anything else useful?”
“Apparently, he thinks he cracked the secret behind the contraceptive,” Stirling said. “Ironically, if he had been allowed to experiment, he might well have turned it into a disease and sterilised everyone. The really interesting information, however, is what Stewart’s camera was able to tell us.”
He adjusted the display. “As you know, the device stored information that we were never able to relate to anything before,” he said. “Thanks to being in emergency mood, everything was secured and stored on the camera itself, including hints as to the location of Himmler’s bunker.” He paused. “From what we asked Stewart – she’s not in good shape – Himmler seems to have dug under all of Berlin.”
Cunningham scowled. “That’s why we were never able to make sense of the transmissions we did get,” he said.
Hanover nodded. “Interesting, for the moment,” he said. “How is she?”
“We have her at RAF Lyneham for the moment,” Stirling reported. “She’s not in good shape at all; she was beaten, raped several times and then lost a lot of blood for Mengele’s experiments.” He frowned. “There is massive scarring inside her vagina; she may never be able to have children, and the Germans were clearly interested in examining the remains of the broken leg she’d had when she was twelve. Mengele was competent enough to repair the surface damage, but the bastard couldn’t be bothered to do it right.
“Mentally, she’s fighting back, which is a good thing,” Stirling concluded. “She’s working hard on trying to recover, although it will be a long time before she’s fit to go back to work. She was apparently talking earlier and wants to meet the team that saved her; she seems to think she can interview them for the BBC.”
“Baron Edmund is going to have problems with that,” Hanover observed.
Hathaway cleared her throat. “There is, of course, the minor problem of her sleeping with the enemy,” she said. “It didn’t go down well with the public; you saw the demonstrations outside the BBC buildings in London and Manchester. Parliament was debating a private member’s bill for heavy punishment of collaboration.”
Hanover frowned. The bill would have covered Oliver, and he wanted to keep Oliver alive. Oh what a tangled web we weave, he thought absently.
“Don’t you think she’s been punished enough?” Noreen asked sharply. The Asian woman knew what rape was like. “She’s been beaten and raped and came very close to being used as a Typhoid Mary.”
“Is she contagious?” Cunningham asked sharply. Stirling shook his head. “Thank god,” Cunningham said.
Hanover held up a hand sharply. “Enough,” he said. “Noreen… I think we can avoid prosecuting her; Anna, see to it.” Hathaway looked rebellious, but nodded. “It’s not a government issue or concern about what happens to her with her employment at the BBC, although if her information is useful enough… well, Baron Edmund owes us a favour.”
He smiled. “That’s not the most important matter at hand,” he said. “What about the vaccination program?”
Armin Prushank coughed. “We broke open the stockpiles of vaccine, broad-spectrum vaccine, as soon as we got the news from the agent in Germany,” he said. “So far, we’ve managed to inoculate every medical person, politician” – he rubbed his own scar absently – “police officer, fire officer and we’re moving down the list now.” He scowled. “Reaching people has been a problem; we have stockpiles of the vaccine moving out to GPs and just as quickly vanishing into people. Schools have been ordered to inoculate their children and to act as a centre for inoculating parents and older children, and of course the military was already immune.”
He shook his head. “We weren’t anything like as ready for it as we thought we were,” he said. “All the drills came to nothing when reality hit. If there’s an outbreak in the next two days, I don’t know if we can cope with it.”
“That’s the problem with drills,” Cunningham said. “They have everything… except the emergency.”
Hanover scowled. “Smallpox,” he said. “What an oversight.”
“And from the Oversight Committee too,” Prushank said. “Perhaps we need an enquiry…”
“Now hold on a minute,” General Cunningham snapped. “Who in their right mind would have imagined that even Hitler would sink so low?”
“Himmler,” Hathaway said. “It’s Himmler now.”
Hanover turned back to the table and glared around it. “We can slander each other and place the blame and clear our own names when it comes to writing our memoirs,” he said. He smiled; Spike Milligan’s Goon Show had broadcast a new version of Tales of Men’s Shirts, in which the war had begun with the British and German Generals writing their autobiographies. “We have a crisis on our hands.”
“If we manage to have most of the population inoculated, we should be safe,” Prushank said. “Then we can hold the enquiry.”
“Balls to the enquiry,” Cunningham said rudely.
“Silence,” Hanover said. The single word spread out and produced silence. “I’m due to address Parliament in” – he checked his watch – “two hours. It should prove to be a horrifying experience. One last point; Major, how is Rommel taking this?”
“He understands,” Stirling said. “He’s not happy about it.” He paused. “Sir, I took the liberty of sharing the information about Himmler’s whereabouts with him. He wants to put together a mission to capture him.”
Hanover sighed. “We need all of the special forces for the operation in the Netherlands,” he said. “Perhaps after that.”