Ernst saw that it was true. And the boy at the centre of the circle of men must be Alfie. Looking closer now, he saw how Alfie wept as he played, and blood trickled from his fingers.
Ernst didn't think about it. He just ran, out of the line, across the road.
He heard running footsteps behind him. 'Oi! You get back here!' There was a shot, but it was in the air. People scurried out of his way, a woman screaming. He saw military police and soldiers converging on him; if not for the crowds he would surely have been gunned down. He got to the circle of soldiers before he was grabbed by a huge military policeman. 'That's as far as you're going, Fritz.'
Struggling, he called, 'Viv! Vivien!'
The girl turned, confused. He saw how her scalp was scraped where it had been brutally shaved. A drunk soldier was holding her arm, trying to get her attention. Ernst had heard of this; soldiers from both sides saw a shaved head as a sign a girl was available. She called, 'Ernst! Oh, Ernst! Make them stop, make them stop! They say they'll kill him!'
'Vivien!'
'Now what the Sam Hill are you doing here, Obergefreiter?'
Another familiar face swam before him. It was Gary Wooler from Richborough, who had taken him prisoner in the bunker. Ernst said, 'Corporal – please-'
The MP made to drag Ernst away, but the corporal held up his hand. 'Hold on, Angus.' He glanced at the girl, the boy who held the violin in his bloody fingers. 'What's going on here?'
Alfie blurted, his accent strong Sussex, 'I've got to play, and when I stop they'll shoot me. That's what they said. I've played for hours already, and I can't, my fingers, I can't-'
'Oh, come on, Gary, it's just a bit of fun.' Another man came out of the circle of soldiers. 'Look at the little prick. He's a Jugend! I mean we weren't really going to do it. But these lads say this pretty-boy took a pot-shot at them, out on the Folkstone road.'
The corporal's face darkened. 'You asshole, Willis.'
'Anyhow we're celebrating. Think of it. England's been invaded before, but not once have the invaders been chucked out. Boadicea couldn't get rid of the Romans, the Saxons couldn't kick out the Normans. We're the first!'
'Never mind bloody Boadicea.' Wooler waded into the circle, dragged out the boy, and pushed him into the arms of his sister. 'Just clear off home, and take that fucking Nazi jacket off. And you, Willis – come with me.'
'Where are we going?'
'Richborough. We've got another job to do.'
Viv and Alfie walked away. Viv put her arm around her brother's thin shoulders. She looked back once, at Ernst. Then she said, 'Come on, Alf, let's find Mum and Myrtle. But, listen, I have to tell you about Dad. Dad and Jack…'
The MP dragged an unresisting Ernst back across the street, and threw him hard against the wall, back in the line.
'You arsehole,' said Heinz. 'Get your bloody head shot off doing that.'
'If I hadn't been here you'd have done the same.'
'Well, that's true. But it's the principle. Hey, Tommy! How about a cigarette for an old man?'
The MP ignored him.
The soldiers who had been tormenting Alfie gathered in their circle again, passing around cigarettes and alcohol. A few girls came out to join them. One couple danced, though there was no music. The light was fading now, but the town was brightening, the lights of candles and oil lamps and even electric bulbs glowing out of windows, as for the first time in years blackout curtains were torn aside.
And Gary Wooler was coming back to Ernst. 'On second thoughts, Obergefreiter, I think you should come with us.'
XIV
6 July
Ben woke to a symphony of gunfire: the boom of heavy artillery, the angry cough of mortars, the popping of small-arms fire. Was it 1940 again, had he finally come unstuck in time and drifted into the past?
But he felt the bed under him, the prison-camp pyjamas that covered his nakedness. He was still here, still in the laboratory. Still embedded in the Loom, a Jewish fly caught in a Nazi spider-web.
His mouth felt sour, and there was an edge to his consciousness, a brittleness – a kind of false colouring to his sight, a high-pitched ringing in his ears, a scent of antiseptic in his nostrils. He knew these signs. Julia had made him sleep again. She had put him under and brought him back with opiates and stimulants, controlling him with a smooth expertise that had grown over the months, and yet left Ben with a sense of fizzing disorder each time.
And just as every time he woke, he felt a gathering dread of what Julia Fiveash might have used him to achieve while he slept.
One big crump, a shell landing nearby, was enough to make the bed shudder. That gunfire was real enough, then. The war had come to this place of horror, at last.
He opened his eyes.
The hard light of the electric lamps above him glared into his head. The glass wall of his cage was only a foot from his face. It wasn't as pristine clean as it used to be; a patina of dust covered it, plaster shaken from the roof. He could see his own reflection, a face half-buried in a pillow.
And he saw another face beyond his. Beautiful, hard, on the other side of the glass, it was Julia. He remembered how in Princeton he had woken to see that lovely face looking back at him, blonde hair tousled, how his helpless heart had hammered. In the end it had been just another supine seduction by a monstrous figure who had sought only to use him, in a long line of such seductions, such monsters. But even so he would never have imagined then that the two of them would be reduced to this, that she would use him so.
'He's awake,' he heard her say. 'I think it worked. So that's Aethelmaer's Codex sent back, Josef.' She glanced away; Ben saw the curve of her neck, the supple muscles above the collar of her uniform. 'Step one complete. Come on, man, show a bit of enthusiasm. We have changed history – again!'
Ben's vision was misty, blurred by drugs and dusty glass. Beyond Julia he could see the calculating machine, a wall of glistening metal and wire, and the hunched figure of Josef Trojan before a flickering grey screen. There was another man too, in a dark blue uniform, sitting silent in a chair Ben was shocked to recognise George Tanner.
'You might explain that to the Allied units who are even now besieging Richborough,' Trojan said. 'Whatever we've done hasn't made a blind bit of difference, any more than the Menologium did.'
'You know very well this is a two-part process. We have sent back the weapons; we must still send back the motivator, the Testament of Eadgyth. Then it will be done – America defeated before it is spawned. Kamen just needs a bit of time to get the drugs flushed out of his system and a brush-up from the mnemonic tapes before we send him under again.'
'We may not have the time.' He sounded panicky. 'We have rushed this programme, rushed to complete the research, the calculations. And now it comes down to this, the last hours, and still it is not done-'
'I can't believe you're drinking. At a moment like this!'
'It is our last bottle of the Fuhrerwein. A gift from the Fuhrer to Himmler on his birthday, and from Himmler to me. Drink, drink! Do you want to leave it for the English? Maybe your pet policeman lover-hostage would like some too. Or Ben Kamen!'
'Try to conceal your cowardice,' Julia said. 'You know, Josef, the only thing I ever admired about you, the only thing, was your brashness. The way you used to bully your brother pointlessly – I liked that. I saw something of me in you, I suppose. Now you merely disgust me. Ah, let us work; we still have that in common.' She turned back to Ben, looking into his eyes. 'The work! How marvellous it is, how intellectually bracing. Don't you agree, Ben Kamen?'