Nazi Germany rules from the western coastline of France to the Urals in Russia. Darkness has descended over the continent, with uncounted millions marched into extermination camps or forced to labour for the greater good of Nazi Germany, while Hitler and his followers reshape Europe to suit themselves. Old towns and cities are demolished so they can be rebuilt in the Nazi style, vast numbers of people are relocated to create room for German settlers, and freedom is a fading dream. There are eyes and ears everywhere, and none dare speak for fear of being disappeared …
The Reich appears invincible. The German Army has bested all its foes, the German Air Force is deploying newer and better jet aircraft, the German Navy is launching ships that will challenge British dominance of the North Sea and the Germans are experimenting with rockets that could hit London – or New York. For SOE, working desperately to keep the flame of European resistance alight, it appears they are fighting a hopeless battle … until they get a message, an offer they can’t refuse.
Werner Von Braun, the founding father of the Nazi rocket programme, wants to defect …
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There is a great deal I could say about the – completely predictable – turmoil plaguing Hollywood, ever since became clear that Humza Yousaf was simply not up to the job of Scottish First Minister. It should have been evident from the moment Nicola Sturgeon drove her career onto the rocks – making a serious number of unforced errors in the process – that the SNP needed change, not continuity, and selecting Yousaf as her successor was merely delaying the inevitable reckoning. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that Kate Forbes would have made an infinitively better choice. But that is now water under the bridge.
The SNP had one job. In order to accomplish the goal of an independent Scotland, it had to prove that an independent Scotland was viable and that the SNP could be trusted to govern it. This was a difficult task. Scotland was not – and never has been – a state held in bondage, certainly not in any real sense of the word. Scotland is not Russian-occupied Ukraine or Chinese-occupied Tibet or even Kurdistan, a ethnic region divided between four countries that agree on very little, beyond the refusal to allow the Kurds any real degree of independence. The SNP needed to prove that it could do a better job than Westminster of governing the country. It also needed to make a case for Scottish independence that was practical, addressed many issues that would result from independence (from the division of government property between Scotland and England to membership in the European Union) and avoided, as much as possible, wishful thinking and hand-waving. This would not have been an easy task at the best of times, but the SNP has proved that is simply not up to the job.
The core of the problem is that the SNP has increasingly lost touch with the Scottish voters. It needed to address concerns held by those voters, both pro- and anti-independence, and make it clear that is taking those concerns seriously even if it disagrees and/or feels that they are exaggerated or rooted in prejudice rather than legitimate issues. At this, the SNP has comprehensively failed. It has chosen to grandstand on global issues, which are not a part of Hollywood’s remit, and fight cultural wars that are of little importance, compared with the rising cost of living, the decline in public services, and the ever-growing number of people who no longer have any faith in the government (Westminster as well as Hollywood) to do its job. Worse, it has displayed strikingly illiberal traits that are alarmingly close to fascism, a willingness to smear detractors instead of taking their concerns seriously, and a paternalistic ‘we know best’ attitude that cannot fail to irritate the voters on whom its government depends. Like many other modern governments, the SNP is more focused on looking good than actually being good, but it is no longer capable of maintaining the illusion that Scotland is a smoothly functioning country.
I recall the day when it became clear there would be a new Scottish Parliament. Like many other Scots, I believe that a devolved government would be better for Scotland. It was simple common sense. A government based in Edinburgh, much closer to the average Scot, would be – I thought – far more responsive to their concerns. In this, I and the rest of Scotland have been bitterly disappointed. The SNP might be a Scottish party, but it has lost touch with the average Scotsman and is simply incapable of representing their interests or addressing their concerns. Indeed, its bid to put itself on the right side of history led to its worst nightmare: a clash between Westminster and Hollywood where the Scottish people were, largely, on the side of Westminster! It is the SNP’s great good luck that it has not faced any serious external challenger, yet even that is turning against them. The decay of the Conservative government in Westminster is mirrored in the decline of the SNP government in Hollywood. I imagine the irony is not very amusing to Yousaf and Sturgeon.
The SNP needs a prolonged period in the political wilderness. It must address the very serious questions about the conduct of its senior leaders, both financial and political, and seek out new MSPs who have close ties to their constituents and can be relied upon to put their interests ahead of political expediency and cultural war. It must abandon the urge to be progressive, to try to be on the mythical right side of history, and address practical issues that are extremely important to the voters. It is not easy to address such issues – and the SNP’s failure ensures that the next government will have to spend more and take more time fixing those issues – but it must be done. Above all, it must recommit itself to the essential building blocks of democracy – free speech, free debate, and compromise between two sets of entirely legitimate points of view.
It is a deep irony that Braveheart, a movie renowned for historical inaccuracy, served – for many people – as their first introduction to Scottish nationalism. Braveheart might have had its virtues as a movie, but it presented a deeply warped impression of both mediaeval Scotland and England (as well as Edward I, Edward II, Isabella of France, William Wallace and Robert the Bruce). It was deeply popular at the time, yet it is now regarded as deeply embarrassing.
The SNP, today, represents the people of Scotland no better than the film represents the past. It is time for a change.
Anne Boleyn knelt on the cushion, her hands bound behind her back, and waited.
There was nothing else to do. She knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that her fate was sealed. She had made a bargain with an entity and the price, she had been told, was that she would not live to see the promised land. She had thought she would die, perhaps in childbirth, and barely live long enough to see the newborn before she passed on to the great unknown. It seemed a sick joke, as she waited for her execution, to die in such a manner, to be accused of unnatural crimes and be sentenced to death by the king she had once lobed, but …
She felt calm, unnaturally so, as she waited. She had kept her side of the bargain. She had drawn the king’s eyes, then played her role to perfection. She would not be a mistress, like her own sister, but a wife and a queen. Her child would be legitimate, the result of a tryst between a married man and woman; her child would be in line to inherit the throne. It had been difficult to play the game to perfection, to make it clear that the king’s desire would only be sated if he married her; she had teased and flirted, without ever quite crossing the line until the die had been firmly cast. She felt no guilt, for all the former queen’s partisans – and the king’s daughter – considered her little more than a whore. And yet …
Anne closed her eyes, thinking of her child. Their child. Elizabeth would be Queen – Anne knew it, with a certainty that could not be denied – and yet, she would have a long and hard life ahead of her, even after she sat on her father’s throne. Anne knew, all too well, that the king had wanted a boy, that he had broken with his first wife and parted from Rome out of a desperate need for a male heir, but she took comfort from the prophecy. Her daughter would be queen, her reign would be blessed, and the Folk – the few remaining magicians – would have their gates to the other world. They would live forever in a land of magic, parted from the Burners; they would live their lives as they should be lived, rather than hiding in the shadows as the hunters closed in, searching for the last traces of magic. Anne felt cold – the last of her magic was long gone – and yet, she knew her name would be remembered for thousands of years to come. She would go down in history as the mother of salvation, as the witch who had sacrificed her life for her people. She would be known long after the king’s memory passed into dust.
Her lips twitched in bitter amusement. She had been charged with adultery and incest and witchcraft, the latter charge the only one that held any truth. She doubted there was a single man or woman in London who believed the charges, even in an age where the last traces of magic were still visible if one cared to look. The idea that a decent god-fearing woman would commit adultery was bad enough, but incest? It was outrageous, born of ignorance and malice and a king’s desperate need to pretend he wasn’t to blame for his lack of a male heir. No queen was ever alone, not even in her most private moments. Anne could have proved her innocence, if her husband had been interested in listening. But he’d steeled himself to the task of disposing of her, and her family, and that meant …
The clock ticked, once. Anne tensed. Time was running out. She would be taken to the block and beheaded … she wanted to think escape was possible, but she knew better. There was no one in London who would put his life at risk for her, even the learned men and religious thinkers she’d patronised when she had thought that reformation would save the Folk from extinction. The king was the only one who could spare her, and she knew better than to think that he would. She had to die, to secure her legacy and her daughter’s future … she wished, not for the first time, that she could take the child in her arms one final time, yet even that had been denied her. She would have cried, if she hadn’t known her daughter would survive. Her legacy would live on …
The clock ticked, again.
Anne tensed, feeling something behind her. Her skin prickled, her blood turning to ice. She hadn’t seen anything supernatural since the night she’d made the bargain, not a single dancing fairy or even a ghost. She had wondered if she’d lost her sight, although she was painfully aware that the magic was leeching away and the creatures that depended on it were going away too. And yet …
She took a breath as the presence grew stronger. Time itself seemed to slow down, the interval between clock ticks growing longer and longer. Her heart raced as she forced herself to keep her eyes closed, even though she wanted to turn and look at the entity. She knew better – to lay eyes on such a creature was to court death – and yet, she felt the urge to let everything go. She didn’t have to let herself be marched to the block, to rest her head on the wood and wait for the executioner to end her life. She didn’t have … but she did. The farce had to be played out, right to the very end. Her blood would stain the soil, her life sealing the bargain she’d made so long ago. Perhaps that was why the entity was here, after so long. It had come to claim her personally.
Her breath caught in her throat. “Why?”
There was no answer. She hadn’t expected one. She had been taught, time and time again, of the danger of bargaining with supernatural creatures. Some were unpredictable, some were inhuman, some were outrightly malicious. They would keep their bargains, she had been assured, and they wouldn’t break their world, but they were very good at keeping the letter of the agreement while overlooking or ignoring the spirit. Be careful what you wish for, she had been told years ago, for fear you might get it. She wondered, suddenly, if their desperation to save what remained of their people had blinded them to the risks. If they had made a mistake …
A breath brushed against the back of her neck. Anne shivered, helplessly.
“Why?”
She barely had a second to realise the entity had spoken before her mind was assaulted, an endless stream of images bombarding her thoughts. She was trained in mental defence – the small subtle charms to twist a person’s mind were about the only form of magic that still worked reliably, and if she had lacked those defences she would have been hopelessly vulnerable to the hidden witches at Court – and yet, there was nothing she could do to keep the barrage from flooding her mind. The images were strange, some so incomprehensible it hurt to even look at them; she saw a red-haired woman sitting on the throne, she saw the gates opening, she saw her people striding into a brave new world …
Tears prickled in her eyes. She would die, but her people would live. It would be worth her sacrifice.
The stream of images kept coming, the world shifting in ways she could barely understand. A dying queen. A young fool of a king. A commoner who would reign like a monarch … an endless series of images that twisted in front of her mind, something that bothered her at a very primal level. Anne knew she was far from stupid, but she was also all too aware of her own ignorance. Far too much magical knowledge – dangerously won knowledge – had been lost over the centuries, or hidden away for fear of the Burners. She didn’t understand what she was seeing and yet, the world was folding …
… And twisting into something new. Something apocalyptic.
“No!”
The images stopped, abruptly. Anne opened her eyes and threw caution to the winds, looking behind her. The chamber was empty. The entity was gone … her blood ran cold as she realised what it had been trying to tell her, in the last few moments before she was marched to the block. She had been given what she wanted, and yet the price was far more than her life. She saw it all now, far too clearly. The Folk would survive, but so would their enemies …
Keys rattled in the lock. It was time.
Anne closed her eyes, as the door opened to reveal the guards, and wept for the end of the world.
Prologue II: York, England, Now
Polly stared at the laptop, trying to understand what was happening – and what, if anything, had gone wrong.
Lord Burghley had told her and the rest of the staff to remain behind, in the manor, and wait to hear from the invasion force. Polly had been glad to do as she was told, all too aware that she was a novice in magic and that there was no point in her going to St Champions and putting her life at risk. The gates would be opened one final time, she’d been told, and the Brotherhood would take possession of a whole new world. Polly couldn’t wait. She’d felt enough magic, since she had been recited, to want more. The promise of power – real power – drew her, like a moth to the flame.
But something had gone wrong.
The reports were confused, chaotic. Large swathes of the internet appeared to have dropped out completely, servers and relay stations vanishing without trace. The country’s hardened electronic infrastructure wasn’t in any better state. She had high-level access to everything from government communications nodes to CCTV cameras, yet even they appeared to be worse than useless. What remained was contradictory, babbling reports that made no sense at all. She knew the plan, knew the gates should have been opened by now … it couldn’t be a coincidence, she thought, that the crash had happened just after zero hour. The odds against that were staggering …
The ground shook, sharply.
Polly tensed. An earthquake? Earthquakes were rare, almost unknown, in Britain. Polly had heard they were more common than most thought, but she’d never felt one. She checked the live feed from the manor’s security cameras, out of habit, and saw nothing … nothing, apart from a handful of security guards checking the perimeter. It hadn’t been that long since the flash mob had appeared out of nowhere, pressing against the walls and shouting and screaming about nothing in particular … she wondered, suddenly, if the manor was about to be attacked again. It wasn’t impossible. Her boss had been looking for the refugees from the other world for the last few months, and it was quite possible they were looking for him too. And they’d sent Norris – both Norris and Norris2 – into the other world from the manor.
And that makes us a target, she thought. If the other worlders are fighting back, we might be targeted first.
Another message popped up in front of her, someone babbling nonsense about dragons, of all things, and ranting about Game of Thrones coming to life. Polly tried not to snort in disgust as the idiot went on and on about fire-breathing dragons burning the Houses of Parliament to the ground, never mind that his location was in York and there was no way in hell he could see what – if anything – was happening in London. She checked, just to be sure, and noted that the Houses of Parliament were still intact. She tried not to feel disappointed. She’d seen too much, in her career, to have any faith in politicians, but Westminster was still the Mother of Parliaments. And yet … she knew her boss, and his peers, were the true rulers of the land. Perhaps it would be better if they came out of the shadows …
Light flared, a wave of magic that pressed against her senses in a manner that was almost painful. Polly was halfway across the room and hiding behind a wooden cabinet before her mind quite caught up with what was happening, her training taking control before she could freeze … the light burned through the cabinet, as if it was more real than anything else. It felt as if she were under the sun, the sunlight burning her skin, her muscle, her bone … she felt, just for a second, as if the entire world was burning away, leaving only the soul behind …
… And then the light just … went away.
Polly staggered. She would have collapsed if she hadn’t already been on the floor. The world was dark, so dark she was afraid she’d been struck blind before her eyes started to grow accustomed to the gloom. She stumbled to her feet, the world spinning around her like a dreamscape … she pinched herself, hard, and winced at the pain. It was no dream. She forced herself to walk to the desk and look down at the laptop. It was dead, the keyboard smoking slightly … she cursed under her breath as she looked up, realising that half the lights were dead too. Someone shouted outside … a guard, she guessed. The entire manor had been hit by … by whatever the light had been, and that meant … she reached for her smartphone and discovered it no longer worked. Her mind raced. An EMP? No, she’d seen – felt – the magic. Her skin was still prickling. She had the weirdest sense she was standing in the open, the sun concealed behind a cloud and yet feeling it’s presence. The feeling was coming from her master’s office. It felt … wrong.
She hesitated, then forced herself to walk to the door. She’d been told, in no uncertain terms, that she was not to enter the inner office unless she was invited, yet … she swallowed hard as she rested her hand against the wood, checking for fire and wards, telling herself that it was vitally important she knew what was happening inside. The wards – the little charms that made it hard for anyone to even see the door, unless their attention was drawn to it by someone who already knew it was there – were gone. She pushed the door open and peered inside, feeling an alien warmth brushing against her bare skin. The office was dark and yet she could see something – someone – standing by the desk, the form alight and yet wrapped in darkness and shadow. Polly’s eyes hurt as she tried to make out the shape, a sudden stab of pain forcing her to close her eyes …
… And when she opened them, Cecil Burghley was standing in front of her.
Polly sucked in her breath. Her master had always been handsome, in a way that could not be described as classically handsome and yet drew the eye in a manner that could not be denied, but now … he looked strange, almost alien. His face had always been sharp, as if his jaw and cheekbones had been cut from rock, yet now he had a strange glamour that caught her attention and held it firmly. His eyes were dark, almost pools of darkness staring at her … she had the strangest sense, just for a second, that there was something hidden behind him, around him, a faint shimmer of something moving … she blinked and it was gone. Her master seemed almost human ….
… No, he was human. Wasn’t he?
“Polly,” Cecil Burghley said. His voice dripped honey and battery acid. He sounded as if he were learning to talk again. “Why …?”
Polly found her voice. “What happened …?”
She wanted to ask so much more, to demand to know what had happened to the invasion force or the other world, or … but she couldn’t think of the words. Her legs felt wobbly, as if she were caught in a nightmare … she told herself, for the second time, that she wasn’t dreaming. And yet, everything had an air of unreality about it that made it hard – almost impossible – to think clearly. Her eyes met his and … she stumbled, suddenly convinced the man in front of her wasn’t her master, but something else wearing his face. She blinked …
… And the thought was gone.
“We have much work to do,” Cecil Burghley said. He sounded more human now, more his normal self. Polly blinked, again. “Contact the Prime Minister. I must speak with him immediately.”
Polly nodded, even though she knew it would be difficult – if not impossible – to arrange an immediate meeting. She had been an administrative assistant – a secretary, by any other name – at the very highest levels long enough to know the Prime Minister would have been whisked into a government bunker by now, hiding away for fear of nuclear attack. His staff would know even less about what had happened than her, but there were contingency plans for EMP strikes and those plans would be put into action … good thinking on their part, she was sure. Whatever had happened, it had enough in common with an EMP for the plans to be workable.
“Yes, My Lord,” she said, finally. She forced herself to ask a single question. “What happened to the invasion?”
Cecil Burghley seemed oddly nonplussed, as if he didn’t quite know what she was talking about. That was bizarre. He had been the one who had recruited Norris and sent him into the other world, priming him to open the gates to allow the invasion to begin. Polly had no idea what had happened afterwards, but it was clear something had gone dreadfully wrong. The world felt as if it had been tipped on its axis, perhaps taken apart and put back together again in a manner that wasn’t quite right. Her head hurt, the more she tried to think about it. The world no longer made sense.
“We have a new priority now,” he said, finally. He smiled, revealing too many teeth. Polly blinked, again. She’d been seeing things. Hadn’t she? “Destiny awaits.”
Chapter One: London, England, Now.
“Where are you, you little monster?”
Alec kept his head low as he fled into the garden, all too aware his stepmother was right behind him. The woman had never liked her stepson, to the point she’d openly suggested Alec’s father should send him to boarding school or even give him up for adoption. Alec didn’t pretend to understand why his father didn’t send the woman away instead, but he knew there was no point in arguing about it. The woman had been drinking and grim experience had taught him that it was better to be well out of her way, when she opened his father’s drinks cabinet and started pouring wine down her throat. She was unpleasant at the best of times, but when she’d been drinking she was unbearable.
“Come here, now!”
He ignored the woman’s demands as he ran into the darkness. The garden seemed larger than ever before, giving him plenty of room to hide. His father would be back soon, he told himself, and … even his stepmother wouldn’t dare touch him in front of his father’s very eyes. He wondered, not for the first time, if the woman had cast a spell on his father, something to make him fall in love with her. Alec had read enough stories about evil stepmothers – and stepfathers – to convince him that all stepparents were unpleasant, nothing more than hermit crabs crawling into the space left by an absent parent and turning what had once been a pleasant home into a nightmare. He wished, desperately, that his mother hadn’t died, that his parents had stayed together … he shuddered, helplessly, as he heard heavy footsteps coming after him. He’d hoped the darkness would protect him, but … for a moment, the garden seemed both immense and very small. Tears prickled at the corner of his eyes. His stepmother was coming closer and …
“Why so afraid, child?”
Alec stopped, dead. There was a … a something sitting on a leaf, clearly visible even in the darkness. His eyes hurt to look at it, a stabbing pain that felt as if invisible hands were twisting his eyeballs, forcing them to roll in directions he knew to be impossible. He blinked, the pain vanishing in an instant, and opened his eyes again. A little man was sitting on the leaf, no larger than his hand and yet perfect in every detail. He stared, feeling a touch of awe that washed away his fear. He’d been told there were fairies at the bottom of the garden, years ago, but he’d never actually seen one. And yet, he’d believed …
The fairy was tiny, clearly visible and yet the details were hard to pin down. Alec found it hard to see anything, save for the shimmer behind the tiny entity’s back. Wings, Alec supposed, beating so rapidly they could barely be seen. The face was ageless, young and old; the eyes were dark, more like a bird’s than a man’s. His imagination filled in the details, suggesting clothes and a stance that was both friendly and wary. It was impossible to believe the fairy posed any threat and yet, he couldn’t force himself to look away. The fairy gazed back at him, calm and composed. Alec wished, just for a second, he could sprout wings and fly away, to Neverland or Fairyland or somewhere – anywhere – else, as long as his stepmother wasn’t allowed to follow him. He’d thought about running away before, when the old woman had shouted and screamed at him, but now … he could do it.
“I hate her,” he said, feeling all the buried anger bubbling to the surface. It wasn’t fair! Why had his mother died? Why had his father married again, to a monster in human form? Why, why, why …? “She hates me.”
“You’re safe now,” the fairy said. The words appeared in his head, without passing through Alec’s ears. Alec couldn’t even see the entity’s mouth move, as it spoke. It seemed perfectly normal for such a tiny creature. “You can stay with me.”
Alec didn’t hesitate. He trusted the entity … it crossed his mind, a moment too late, that perhaps he shouldn’t, that perhaps talking to a fairy was no better than taking candy from a stranger, but the fairy couldn’t be worse than his stepmother. It just couldn’t. Alec was seven years old and he couldn’t stand the thought of spending another eleven years with his stepmother, not when there was another possibility. The woman hated him. She didn’t even try to hide it.
“I will,” he said. He had no idea what would happen next – if he’d grow wings, if he’d be shrunk until he was as small as the fairy – but he didn’t care. “I …”
Something crashed through the garden, behind him. Alec froze. His stepmother burst into the tiny clearing, a giant smashing through the bushes and trees as if they were made of paper and cardboard. She was a towering woman, large enough to scare him; her eyes, harsh and cold, fixed on him. He cowered back, trying not to breath, as the stench of her breath washed over him. She stank of alcohol and cigarettes, of adult things he knew better than to try until he was a great deal older. She reached for him and her stumbled back, trying to escape as the real world crashed with the fantasy. The fairy …
The fairy was hovering between them.
His stepmother stopped, dead. She had yelled at him, time and time again, for making things up; she had never listened, when he’d told her about his day at school or the stories he’d told with his stuffed toys or building blocks. She wouldn’t have believed him if he’d told her about the fairy … no, she was staring at the tiny creature, her eyes going wide with horror and astonishment. Alec felt a surge of pure glee as she started to step backwards, fear clearly visible on her face. He’d never seen anything actually scare her before. And now …
The fairy spoke a single word. “Mine.”
It changed, so rapidly it made Alec’s eyes hurt. It grew larger, teeth and claws shimmering around it’s growing form, and lunged forward. Alec’s stepmother had no time to run before it was on her, her body seeming to explode into a fountain of blood and gore. Alec saw her eyes explode, followed rapidly by the rest of her head; he fell backwards, his head pounding as pieces of flesh and bone fell everywhere. He hit the ground hard enough to hurt badly, smacking his head against a stone. The fairy seemed to flicker, the tiny form he’d seen earlier somehow transposed with something far darker, and nastier. It was …
Alec opened his mouth to scream, but it was far too late.
***
Sergeant Kenneth Oswald cursed under his breath as he drove through the estate.
The call had been a prank, probably. A dangerous animal, loose on the streets … he had no idea why the dispatcher had ordered him to investigate, not when all hell was breaking loose elsewhere. The police radio net had partly crashed, messages from the nearest station contrasting oddly with bursts of talking and laughter that sounded distinctly inhuman. Kenneth suspected someone had hacked the net, probably intending to distract the police while they did something … or perhaps it was just another prank. The days in which prank callers, kids wasting police time, actually faced any sort of consequences for their crimes were long gone. A few years in jail, or even a month or two picking up litter, would teach them a lesson, but it was politically impossible to do anything of the sort. Kenneth cursed the uniformed politicians in police uniforms under his breath as he parked the car, reminding himself he only had a few years to go until retirement. He’d leave the force, move to a small town miles from anywhere, and forget the nightmare enveloping the cities. It wouldn’t be his problem any longer.
He clambered out of the car, gripping his flashlight in one hand as he looked up and down the street. It was surprisingly dark, the only source of light the stars overhead. The streetlights had been vandalised long ago and never been replaced, leaving the estate trapped in the shadows. Kenneth winced as he locked the door and started to walk, pacing himself as he made his way down the street. The hopelessness was almost a physical force, a grim reminder that anyone born on the estate would be lucky if they made it out. There were too many pitfalls for young men and women – drugs, prostitution, radical politics – and too few chances to leave the estate behind. It was almost a black hole, sucking its inhabitants into the gravity well and keeping them trapped. The wind shifted, blowing a hint of burning embers towards him. Kenneth tensed, eyes flickering further down the street. There was nothing there …
… And yet, his instincts were sounding the alarm.
He kept moving, keeping one hand on his truncheon. The proposals to arm every policeman in London had gone nowhere, and perhaps that was for the best, but his instincts were screaming at him to turn and run. He hadn’t felt so nervous since the first day he’d stepped onto the streets as a uniformed office, empowered to enforce the law and charged to protect the population, even from themselves. It wasn’t easy to be the iron fist in the velvet glove, to be calm and reasonable and yet firm; he knew, deep inside, that it was just a matter of time before he made a career-ending mistake. There were too many provocations, too many radicals intent on embarrassing the police or … he shook his head as he reached the end of the street. It was quiet. Too quiet.
His lips twitched at the thought, although it wasn’t really funny. London never slept. The ordinary law-abiding folks might be indoors, the doors and windows firmly bolted, but the streets were never truly empty. Here, so far from Westminster, the darkness belonged to the druggies or the radicals. His eyes lingered on a boarded-up home, soon to become a drug den if it wasn’t already. The walls were covered with obscene graffiti, making it hard – impossible – for whoever owned it to sell or rent, at least to anyone remotely desirable. And that meant …
Something shifted, a gust of warm air brushing against him. He looked up and down the street, his head spinning – suddenly – as he realised something was there. It was hard, almost impossible, to force himself to see it. A giant hulking shadow, with immense wings and huge red eyes, perched in the middle of the road … his brain stopped, just for a second, as he felt his legs buckle. The creature – the dragon – was simply impossible. It was … a wash of panic ran through him. There might be something in the air, something hallucinogenic … it wasn’t impossible. He’d seen fellow officers get poisoned, when they raided drug lairs, and it was quite possible he’d breathed in something dangerous. His hand dropped to his radio, his mouth suddenly dry as he tried to think what to say. The dispatcher wouldn’t believe him … he found the emergency beacon, concealed in his belt, and pushed it. Every policeman in the area would be on the way within moments, converging on his position. An officer in trouble took priority over nearly everything else.
The dragon moved, rising on its hind legs until it was towering over him. Kenneth found himself stepping backwards, unable to take his eyes off the best. It was impossible – it had to be impossible – and yet, he found himself believing what he saw. The dragon was real in a way he found impossible to deny, a presence that was simply too big … he saw it open its mouth, revealing too many teeth, and stumbled backwards as it breathed fire into the air, illuminating the entire street. A wave of heat brushed against him, an instant before the dragon took flight. Kenneth found himself on his knees as he saw it vanish into the air, tears prickling in his eyes …
It was impossible. He had to be seeing things. But he couldn’t bring himself to believe it.
***
Syeda Ali rubbed her eyes as the plane turned again, cursing under her breath. It should have been a simple flight from Glasgow to London, an hour in the air followed by five hours in the airport before they boarded the flight to Bangladesh. Her aunt had been proud of the bargain she’d secured, booking a very late flight from Glasgow and then a very early one from London. She hadn’t known that their landing would be delayed for hours … Syeda hid her amusement with an effort, even though there was nothing really funny about it. They were already dangerously late for the second flight, if it hadn’t been cancelled completely. She had no idea what was going on below them, but what should have been an hour’s flight had somehow morphed into four hours over London.
She told herself to be glad of the delay, even though she knew it wouldn’t last forever. Her aunt had been tight-lipped about quite why they were going to Bangladesh, suggesting – to a young girl of marriageable age – that she intended to introduce Syeda to a young man and ensure they married before she returned to Britain. Syeda had seen it happen before, time and time again. A youngster would be taken abroad and told they had to marry someone they didn’t know, for the good of the family, and if they said no … Syeda shuddered inwardly, trying to brace herself for the tidal wave of emotional blackmail she knew was in her future. If she said no … she didn’t want to think about what would happen. She would be lucky if she wasn’t completely disowned.
Tears prickled in the corner of her eye. It wasn’t fair. She wanted to get a job and marry someone she chose, but one was impossible and the other … she knew girls who had been forced to leave their jobs, after they married someone who was unable to cope with a wife who earned more than them, or only held their jobs with their husband’s permission. She had dreamed of rising high, of reaching the top of her profession, but it would be impossible if she married the wrong person. She would be reduced, very quickly, to a wife and mother and little else … she shuddered, trying not to think about how her in-laws would treat her. Her mother had treated her sister-in-law like a servant, and now …
She swallowed, inwardly, as the sun rose. The plane was descending, finally. They’d land and see if they could get another flight, and then … she wanted to run, to simply leave, but it would mean cutting ties with her entire family. She would never see her parents or siblings again. She wasn’t even sure where she’d go, if she could go anywhere. There was little hope of escape.
Something moved, in the brightening sky. Syeda leaned forward, wondering if it was another plane. The pilot hadn’t been very informative, but he had told his passengers that they weren’t the only aircraft that had been delayed. Perhaps … she frowned, realising the moving object – objects – were getting closer. Too close … they were coming right at the aircraft. She felt too tired to be afraid, even though she was starting to wonder if they were missiles. Perhaps there had been a terrorist attack, perhaps …
… And then the objects came into view.
Syeda stared in disbelief. Three youngsters, no older than herself, were flying on broomsticks … it was impossible. She was seeing things. A ripple of shock ran through the aircraft as the passengers stared, some standing upright to peer out the windows as the flying people came closer. Syeda swallowed, hard. Two young woman and a young man, wearing robes … their faces were alight with sheer delight, in their own freedom, their hair blowing in the wind as they closed with the aircraft. She felt an odd little lump in her throat as she saw their joyful faces. They were free, able to go wherever they liked, while she …
“It has to be a stunt,” an older man said. There was no conviction in his voice. He was trying to convince himself he wasn’t seeing what he was seeing. “A publicity stunt.”
The flying teenagers flew next to the plane for a long moment – a girl looked at the aircraft, her eyes meeting Syeda’s for a long moment – and then they were gone, vanishing into the distance so fast they were gone before she knew what was happening. Her cheeks felt damp … it took her a moment to realise she was crying, sobbing silently as the real world reasserted itself. She was crying for her own freedom, the freedom she’d lost well before she’d known what freedom was. The girl had grown up with a power and freedom Syeda had never known existed … she knew it to be true, even though she couldn’t have put the feeling into words. She wasn’t the only one, she realised numbly, as the plane flew lower, the airport slowly coming into view. They’d seen a glimpse of a better world, a land of freedom and wonder, a land denied to them … she swallowed hard, forcing herself to sit back in her seat. The older man was still babbling, insisting they hadn’t seen anything, but he was a fool. He couldn’t even convince himself. And …
The war is over, but a new world is fighting to be born.
The Allied Lands exist in name only, with powerful kings throwing off the shackles of the alliance, powerful magicians scheming to go their own way and revolutionaries fighting for freedom, democracy, and a chance to stride into a brave new world.
On a peace mission, desperately trying to hammer out a settlement that will keep the radicals and reactionaries from starting yet another civil war, Emily is attacked by Marah, a young woman rescued by her enigmatic master and turned into a living weapon to start the chaos.
Seeing something of herself in the girl, and knowing that she would face a fate worse than death if she were left in the kingdom, Emily takes her as an apprentice, both to give her a better chance at life and to use her to track down her mysterious master, who appears to have plans of his own…
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I’m currently putting together my plans for the rest of the year, deciding which projects to do sooner and which to explore at some later date. I would prefer to do an SF trilogy as I have several other fantasy pieces of work to do too, so … which would you prefer?
Future Shock
(With apologies to John Birmingham, although I did run the idea past him first.)
The year is 2250. Humanity has expanded into space and come into conflict with a hostile alien race, human nations and factions suddenly forced to unite against a common foe, when a fleet from the future arrives, the last survivors of a far greater war against a far greater threat. As the newcomers try to adapt to the past, and the distrusts the human race left behind a long time ago, their arrival sets off utter chaos as their alien allies see their own chance to rewrite history …
The Resistance
Earth has fallen, the once-proud space navies crushed by a vastly-superior alien race. The remnants of the human fleet are forced to serve alien masters (think Vichy France) or remain on the run, lurking in the shadows and working with other aliens in a bid to free humanity before it is too late …
Exiled to Glory
(This one probably needs another name.)
The empire is young, bursting with energy, and trying to unite the rest of humanity under its banner before a second interstellar war can destroy the entire human race. A young officer-candidate has a promising career in front of him until he was caught in bed with the academy commandant’s wife. Unable to discharge him – his scores were too high – the establishment promoted him instead, assigned him to command a rustbucket, and sent him to the far side of incorporated space, a region infested with pirates, rebels and other threats.
They thought it would be the last of him. They were wrong.
Fifty years ago, a human covert operations team – The Firelighters – raided Belosi, a world held in bondage by the alien Tichck, and rescued thousands of Belosi from slavery, taking them into space to form the core of a future liberation force. Since then, a cloud of secrecy has descended over Belos, with no word of the fate of the trapped Belosi allowed to escape the system. Now, with the Tokomak War over and the Galactics in disarray, the Solar Union intends to honour its promises to the exiled Belosi, by supporting their fleet in a bid to reclaim their stolen homeworld.
But the Tichck have plans of their own, and with the former masters of the universe no longer a threat, they can finally make their own play for supreme power.
The first war is over. The second is about to begin.
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The book that started it all, now available through Kindle Unlimited as well as paperback and audio!
Emily is a teenage girl pulled from our world into a world of magic and mystery by a necromancer who intends to sacrifice her to the dark gods. Rescued in the nick of time by an enigmatic sorcerer, she discovers that she possesses magical powers and must go to Whitehall School to learn how to master them. There, she learns the locals believe that she is a “Child of Destiny,” someone whose choices might save or damn their world… a title that earns her both friends and enemies. A stranger in a very strange land, she may never fit into her new world…
…and the necromancer is still hunting her. If Emily can’t stop him, he might bring about the end of days.
The Flight Of Werner Von Braun is a stand-alone alternate history novel. It forms part of the backstory for The Twilight Of The Gods series, otherwise known as the Nazi Civil War, but is intended to be more or less completely stand-alone. All you really need to know is that Hitler did not declare war on the United States in 1941, leading to America staying out of the European War, a German victory over the USSR and now an uneasy Cold War between the Third Reich and a British/American alliance. It is now 1949, and Adolf Hitler is dying. His cronies are now positioning themselves for the inevitable struggle that will follow his death.
The novel is set within Nazi Germany and Nazi-occupied Europe, and represents my attempt to depict the horrors of a victorious Third Reich. If this offends you, please don’t read.
(It also needs a better title – any suggestions?)
You can borrow the first book in The Twilight Of The Gods series from the Amazon Kindle Unlimited link below:
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He did not, normally, indulge. He was a celebrity within Nazi Germany, high in the favour of Adolf Hitler, and yet he was all too aware that allowing himself to get drunk, to lose control of himself, raised the risk of saying the wrong thing in front of the wrong set of ears. He liked to think he was apolitical, that the ebb and flow of politics in the Third Reich meant nothing to him as long as the government kept funding the space program, but even he understood the dangers. Good men – loyal men – had vanished from the site, and even the world itself, because their enemies had pounced on the slightest hint of disloyalty and used it to ensure their disappearance. Werner was one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and even he couldn’t find out what had happened to the disappeared. He knew better than to ask.
And now Korolev was dead.
Werner ground his teeth in silent frustration, cursing himself for a fool. Korolev and his men had been spared, in the wake of the Reich’s conquest of the Soviet Union, to lend their considerable talents to the growing rocket and missile program. Werner had had to argue hard, back in 1942, to convince the SS to take the Russian scientists alive, even going to the Führer himself to override Himmler’s conviction that Slavic Untermenschen could not possibly have anything of value to contribute. Werner knew better. He was a scientist and engineer above all else and he was almost painfully aware that the Reich’s decision to drive Jewish scientists out of the country had been a dangerous mistake. No one was quite sure if the Americans had managed to produce an atomic bomb, but they certainly had a lead on the Reich’s nuclear program. He supposed that explained the sense of urgency pervading the Reich’s government. They knew what they would do, if they had a superweapon, and they assumed the Americans would do the same. And yet …
He took another sip of his drink, the fancy alcohol tasting sour in his throat. He was an engineer as well as a scientist, he knew things could go wrong. The rockets were put together using labour from the nearest concentration camp, by workers who were underfed and demotivated, following designs that were pushing the limits of human technology to breaking point. The process needed to be extensively tested before being streamlined, but the Reich was desperate. The Americans could not be allowed to develop intercontinental missiles first. They could not. It was bad enough that they had massive airbases in Britain, with heavy bombers that could carry atomic weapons into the heart of the Reich, but missiles would let them strike the industrial complexes in the ruins of Poland or even destroy Berlin itself. And the push for a success – any success – had led to disaster.
Werner felt sick, as helpless as he’d been when the SS led Korolev away to be executed. They’d blamed the disaster on the Russian, as if the Russian’s work hadn’t been checked by a dozen German scientists with impeccable bloodlines, and on a multitude of concentration camp workers. Werner had tried to close his mind to the suffering, only a few short miles from the missile complex, but even he knew what was happening now. Hundreds of workers, most innocent of any real crime, were being executed, pour encourager les autres. And there would be more soon, if the next test launch failed …
He shuddered, cursing himself for a fool. He had dreamed of space for his entire adult life and he had thought the Nazis, the sole party devoted to the renewal of Germany, would be able to put the human race in space. To stay. It had worked, at first – Werner knew his team had made magnificent advances – but the demands of war had slowly pushed space exploration back, time and time again, until it was no longer important. Werner had tried, hard, to argue the military importance of control of space, yet … the government wanted missiles to strike London or Washington, or rocket planes capable of flying across the United States, or …
Himmler needs something he can use to climb into Hitler’s place, when he is gone, Werner thought. It felt wrong to even consider a Reich without Adolf Hitler – and anyone who voiced the suggestion out loud would be on a short trip to the nearest concentration camp – but the Führer was dying. He hadn’t been seen in public for the last year, as far as Werner knew, and if he hadn’t had a private meeting with Hitler only two months ago, before the disaster, Werner would have wondered if the Führer was already dead. He needs proof he can steer the ship of state.
He shivered, helplessly. He was a brave man – he had put himself in danger time and time again, just by being on site when prototype rockets were tested – and yet Himmler scared him. The Reichsführer-SS was cold and calm, a bureaucrat who was also a fanatic; a man who had no qualms about rounding up workers and putting them to work, forcing them to work until they dropped. Himmler had few emotions, if Werner was any judge, and no sense of human decency. He wasn’t an outright sadist, unlike some of the other Nazis Werner tried to forget existed, but that almost made him worse. It was distressingly easy to convince himself that Himmler would calculate a nuclear war was winnable, as long as the Reich preserved a tiny fraction of its population, and push the button to launch the missiles. And he had thousands upon thousands of loyalists who would set the world ablaze for him.
And if Himmler becomes the Führer, Werner asked himself what happens then?
He took another sip, the alcohol burning through all the evasions and justifications he had used – over the last two decades – to convince himself he was doing the right thing. He had turned a blind eye to so much, in the name of science and simple self-preservation, but it was clear – now – that he had been cheated of the reward he had been promised, when he sold his soul. His rockets would be used for war, not space exploration; atomic science would be used for war, not lighting and heating the Reich … even the half-baked plan one of his subordinates had devised, to use nukes to launch a spacecraft into orbit, would be better than Himmler’s plans for the future. He tried to tell himself that Hermann Göring or Albert Speer would win the coming struggle for power, but he could no longer convince himself of anything. Himmler had the edge, and even if he lost his bid for the title he would still have immense power. And that meant …
It was hard not to laugh, bitterly. Once the rockets are up, who cares where they come down?
You didn’t, his conscience answered. How many are dead, because of you? How many will die, because of you?
Werner stared at his glass, then forced himself to stand and walk to the window, looking over the vast complex. He was proud of the missile and rocketry site he’d designed and built over the years, proud enough to hide from the grim truth that it had been built by slave labour and turned into a vital part of the Reich’s war machine. The younger men didn’t see it – they’d been raised in the Reich, taught only what the government wanted them to know – but Werner could no longer hide from himself. His complex was producing weapons of war, from small antiaircraft rockets to much larger antishipping or even city-busting missiles, and once the latter were mated with atomic bombs … Werner wanted to believe atomic weapons were a dream, or a nightmare, but he knew better. The science was sound. All that was left was engineering, and – given time – there was no engineering problem that couldn’t be cracked. The Reich would have the bomb and throw the world into the fire.
He took a long breath, his mind spinning in circles. Retirement was not an option. He knew too much for Himmler to let him go. Suicide was a possibility, but it would be the coward’s way out. He knew better than to think he could damage or destroy the complex himself … and even if he did, the damage would be repairable. The Reich would rebuild and carry on and … he swallowed, hard. There was only one choice left, one that might let him make up for his foolishness, and for the horror he’d helped unleash on the world.
Werner Von Braun was going to defect.
Chapter One: Berlin, 1949
“And to think,” Sir Cuthbert Dudley said quietly, “this used to be a great city.”
Kathleen O’Brian said nothing as the ambassadorial car carried them through the streets of Berlin, their driver steering neatly between the rows of government and military vehicles that dominated the roads. Her mother had left Germany when she’d been a teenager, well before the Nazis had been anything more than a minor threat, but Kathleen had grown up hearing her stories about how peaceful and tolerant Berlin had been, before Hitler. Now … she could feel a shadow in the air, a fear that was all the more dangerous for never being openly acknowledged. The Reich was feared by all, even the Germans themselves. Kathleen understood, all too well. To say the wrong thing in the wrong place was to sign your death warrant.
She sucked in her breath as the car drove past the towering new buildings, heavy gothic architecture making a statement to the world that the regime was here to stay. The bombing in the later years of the war had done immense damage, but the regime had taken advantage of the devastation to redesign the city to suit itself, giant new buildings overshadowing the remnants of an earlier age. Speer had an unlimited budget and unlimited manpower – guest workers from the east, slaves in all but name – and it showed. The towering grandiosity of the state was all too clear. There was nothing elegant in the design, nothing that showed a sense of historical awareness, just a plain blunt statement that chilled her to the bone. She’d seen the figures. She knew how many guest workers had died to build even one of the monstrous buildings. She wondered, numbly, just how many of the locals on the streets knew who’d done the work and why. Not many, if she was any judge. Far too many Germans preferred to look the other way, rather than risk drawing the gaze of the state. It was almost always lethal.
Her heart twisted, painfully, as she spotted a sign on the walls, ordering the Germans to watch for Jews, Communists, Homosexuals and others the Nazi regime considered undesirable. Kathleen was all too aware that most of the undesirables in Berlin had already been slaughtered, if they hadn’t been smart enough to get out before it was too late, but the regime showed no sign of slowing down. They were still butchering their way across the eastern territories, what had once been the USSR, and poisoning the minds of the young. The only upside was that the propaganda was so bad the undesirables could probably remain unnoticed, as long as they kept their heads down. But even that wouldn’t be enough to save them if they were denounced…
“They’re still there,” Sir Cuthbert said, quietly.
Kathleen followed his gaze. A handful of women stood in front of the gates, bravely protesting the regime. They were about the only ones who dared, these days, and Kathleen suspected their cause was futile. The Nazis had had to make use of feminine labour in the later days of the war, when every able-bodied man was required to go east and fight, but the regime was steadily driving women out of the workforce and back into the home, turning them into second-class citizens at best and property of their menfolk at worst. Kathleen had seen the crude propaganda, ordering women to marry and produce children for the regime, and she knew it masked a far darker reality. The regime might be unwilling to openly crush the female protesters – it might spark a riot – but that didn’t mean it was powerless. Their menfolk would already be under immense pressure to bring the women in line, or else. She couldn’t help feeling the protest was doomed.
She kept her thoughts to herself as they passed a handful of civilian trucks, carrying guest workers to their workplace. The men would be worked to death. The women would be assigned to Germanic households as slaves, handling the chores so their mistress could have as many children as she wished without needing to worry about housework or childcare. It was a horrific system, a nightmare given shape and form … Kathleen thanked her lucky stars, every day, that her grandparents had been smart enough to get out of Germany before it was too late. She would be dead by now … no, she wouldn’t exist at all. Her parents would never have met, let alone married. And she would never have been given her father’s name.
Her blood ran cold. She’d been in Occupied France. She’d been in Vichy France. Berlin was worse.
The driver stopped outside the Reich Hall, a towering monstrosity that was as ugly as the rest of the rebuilt city. A red and black flag flapped in the evening breeze, a grim reminder that the Nazis had left their mark everywhere; a set of SS guards stood outside, snapping to attention as the driver opened the door to allow Sir Cuthbert and Kathleen to leave the vehicle. Kathleen couldn’t help feeling a frisson of fear as the guards looked her up and down, then motioned for them to enter the hall. If they had known about her mother, they wouldn’t have been so welcome. But then, they couldn’t tell a Jew when they saw one.
Sir Cuthbert offered her his arm as they walked through the inner doors and down the steps to the ballroom floor. It was as oversized as everything else in the city, bigger than a football stadium, but the floor was teeming with people. The walls were decorated with red and black banners, a large portrait of Adolf Hitler positioned neatly against the far wall. Kathleen kept her face under tight control as she spotted the uniforms, feeling as though she was walking into a lion’s den. The rival power blocs were taking shape and form – the Luftwaffe, the Wehrmacht, the Kriegsmarine, the SS – all trying to position themselves to take advantage of the chaos that would inevitably follow Hitler’s death. Kathleen had wondered if Hitler was already dead – he hadn’t been seen in public for months – but their sources within the Reich’s government suggested he was still alive. Pity. She didn’t really believe the Reich would fall into civil war, upon his death, but she had hopes. There might be nothing else capable of stopping the Reich from taking the world.
“Ah, Sir Cuthbert,” a man said. Kathleen silently placed him as a diplomat, probably working directly for Ribbentrop. The man was a fool, but beloved by the Fuhrer. “I must say …”
Sir Cuthbert gave Kathleen a sharp glance, conveying a pre-planned message. Go mingle. Kathleen nodded and allowed herself to be swept away by the crowd, a handful of young officers – and others not so young – inviting her to dance. There weren’t many women in the room, apart from the serving girls, and they were under strict supervision. It said something about the sheer importance of the Reich Hall, she supposed, that the servants were all German girls, rather than guest workers. The young girls should be getting married and having children, according to the regime. But then, who knew who they would meet at the gathering?
And if half the stories about the elite are true, she thought coldly, the lucky girls will be the ones who go home without a mate.
She forced herself to listen as the dancers swept her around the hall, silently picking up information that might be useful later. Men liked to brag, particularly when they thought their dance partner was too ignorant to understand what they were saying. One officer talked about a redeployment to the eastern front, chasing partisans, and another talked about being sent to the Iron Wall in Occupied France. Kathleen filed both pieces of information away in her mind for later, when she could discuss them with the analysts at the embassy. The Nazis might be having problems in the east – it wasn’t as if they’d ever given the partisans any reason to believe they would be allowed to live, let alone any degree of freedom, if they gave up and went under the yoke – or they might be planning to invade England. It would be hellishly risky, and it would mean war with America as well as Britain, but it wasn’t 1940 any longer. The Kriegsmarine might be the junior service, as far as the Reich was concerned, yet it hadn’t wasted the six years of relative peace. They had – theoretically – the ability to land an invasion force on British soil. Would they try?
“My regiment is being rearmed with the latest Panzer X,” another officer said, bragging to his companion. Kathleen listened with interest. The latest tanks were supposed to incorporate all the lessons of the last war, with everything from better armour to heavier guns. “The latest guns are really something and …”
“We came back heroes, and all the girls are married to the boys in black,” a third officer moaned. He wouldn’t have talked so freely if he hadn’t been well on the way to being drunk. “Doing their duty by their men … pah!”
Kathleen memorised his face for later attention, if he survived the night. They’d heard rumours of discontent between the Wehrmacht and the SS before, but the disputes had largely been kept under wraps. After Hitler died … the SS received huge benefits from the regime, from increased living allowances to preferential treatment, and she wasn’t surprised it sparked resentment. She’d even heard rumours that racially pure SS officers had been encouraged to take multiple wives, to increase their chances of siring a small army of blond blue-eyed children. That had never been confirmed, but if it turned out to be true … there would be trouble. The regime had promised its fighting men loving wives. If those promises weren’t kept …
A fat man caught her arm and pulled her away from her current partner. Kathleen had to bit her lip to keep from kicking him in the groin, particularly as her former partner backed away without a fight. The newcomer was almost certainly much higher up the hierarchy. His uniform was laden with medals, half of which were only awarded to officers who had served on the front lines. This man … Kathleen let her eyes roam up and down his body. She’d never seen a combat soldier quite so overweight before.
“It is quite offensive that your government allowed the publication of Anne Frank’s book,” the officer said, instead of the sweet nothings mingled with titbits of useful information she’d heard from other dancers. “The Reich protests in the strongest possible terms.”
Kathleen gave him her most gormless smile. Her cover story suggested she was nothing more than a pretty face, with some typing skills. Sir Cuthbert might enjoy looking at her – they’d played that up, whenever they’d been in public – but the idea he’d actually take her seriously was unbelievable, as far as the regime was concerned. A flicker of paranoia ran through her … if her cover had been blown, she was deep in the heart of Nazi Germany. Escape would be tricky …
“I’m afraid I know nothing about such matters,” she said, lying through her teeth. She knew a great deal about the whole affair. Anne Frank’s diary had exposed the true horror of being a Jew under Nazi occupation, and its publication had kicked off a major diplomatic incident. The Nazis seemed to want to hide what they’d done, and yet – at the same time – they wanted to glory in it. “I can pass your concerns to the ambassador, if you wish.”
“Such lies cannot be allowed to stand,” the officer said. He pressed closer to her, trying to make her uncomfortable. She had been in worse places, and she’d dealt with worse men. “It is nothing more than a conspiracy against the Reich.”
Kathleen gave him another gormless smile as he whirled her around the dance floor, his eyes leaving trails of slime over her body. He wasn’t a good dancer, not even trying to let her enjoy herself as he monopolised her attention. His chatter was crude and rude and largely pointless … she guessed, despite herself, that he was pointless too. It wasn’t uncommon in the modern day. The men who had built the Reich, or had served before the war, were being increasingly sidelined by the new elite. They weren’t taking it very well.
“You must make the ambassador understand that the Reich will not take this lying down,” the officer continued. Kathleen wasn’t sure if he was passing on a message, or merely venting. Either was possible. It wouldn’t be the first time a message was passed onwards in a thoroughly deniable manner, just in case it led to a diplomatic incident. “And there will be consequences …”
“Excuse me,” a polite voice said, as the musicians paused. “Can I have this dance?”
The officer started to object, then went quiet. Kathleen looked up and saw … Werner Von Braun. It couldn’t be anyone else. Ice prickled down her back as the officer let her go, allowing Von Braun to take her hand. He might be one of the most famous people in the Reich, his picture regularly displayed in newspapers and textbooks, but she had been told Von Braun rarely made public appearances. And he was here in front of her … it was one hell of an opportunity, if she could take advantage of it. She could feel eyes lingering on them as they started to dance, her former partner heading off to harass the serving girls instead. Kathleen felt a stab of sympathy for them. The Bund Deutscher Mädel was supposed to protect the girls in its charge, even as it indoctrinated them with Nazi ideology, but she doubted any of the grim-faced matrons would dare stand in the way of a senior officer. The concentration camps took women too.
She found herself unsure what to say as they circled the dance floor. Von Braun was a surprisingly good dancer, but he was incredibly tense … Kathleen was good at reading people and Von Braun felt more like a teenage boy asking a girl to walk out with him than a middle-aged rocket scientist. She wondered why he was here, although … she supposed the rocket forces would want to stake a claim to power in the post-Hitler world too. British Intelligence had worked hard, trying to figure out how the rocket forces were actually funded and organised, but there was a great deal they didn’t know. The man in front of her could answer all those questions, if he wished. Would he? Everything they’d heard about Von Braun suggested he was a loyal German.
Her heart sank as she saw the eyes watching them. One man, so tall and blond and handsome he could have stepped off a recruiting poster; other men, wearing a number of different uniforms, eyeing them with calculating eyes. The first would be a minder, she was sure. The Nazis hadn’t taken power in Germany, and then kept it, through being overly trusting. Kathleen had heard rumours that senior officers, men who had risen before the Nazis and the war, were working against Hitler … she suspected, rather sourly, that those rumours were nothing more than lies. If the officer corps hadn’t moved against their Fuhrer when he had been on the verge of launching a seemingly-suicidal war, in 1939, they weren’t likely to do anything now, after the regime had conquered much of Europe and Russia.
Von Braun leaned close as they whirled around another couple, his hands suddenly too close … and dropping something into her pocket. It happened so quickly Kathleen had to fight to keep her expression under control, even as his hand darted back and they danced back into view of his minder. She leaned into him for a moment, her head spinning. It wasn’t the first time she’d been passed a secret message, but …
The music came to an end. Kathleen stepped back as the dangers started heading for the washrooms, hastily emptying their bladders before the speeches started. Kathleen didn’t blame them. British politicians could be pompous windbags at times, but the Nazis had them beat. The speeches would go on for hours, until the following day. And the locals had to pretend to pay attention to each and every one of them. Kathleen wondered, idly, if she could get away with hiding in the washroom.
She stepped into the washroom, silently relieved there weren’t many other women in the hall. The washroom was empty. The BDM girls would have their own washroom … probably. Kathleen hoped they did, for their sake. Their uniforms were incredibly awkward, designed to be difficult to remove in a hurry, and they wouldn’t have much time before the speeches started. She glanced around, trying not to roll her eyes at the décor as she carefully checked for peepholes and cameras. The Gestapo had a reputation for having eyes and ears everywhere, and at least some of those eyes and ears were mechanical. SOE was all too aware they were in an arms race, trying to circumvent ever-improving surveillance even as the Germans developed newer and better ways to spy on people. There was little freedom in the Reich, even for pureblood Germans, but even that would be curtailed, she was sure, as the regime found new ways to spy on its citizens.
The thought chilled her as she entered a stall, shut the door behind her, and checked her pocket. Von Braun had shoved a piece of folded paper into her pocket, folded time and time again … she kept her mouth firmly closed as she unfolded it and scanned the paper. It was a missile diagram, something she wasn’t qualified to evaluate, and a note.
Kathleen gasped, despite herself, as she read the handful of lines.
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He went item by item through the editor’s evidence. I disputed all of it. Wrong, wrong, wrong. The basic facts, the details, it was all wrong. I then questioned Marko. Who the hell is this editor? Loathsome toad, I gathered. Everyone who knew her was in full agreement that she was an infected pustule on the arse of humanity, plus a shit excuse for a journalist. But none of that mattered, because she’d managed to wriggle her way into a position of great power and lately she was focusing all that power upon…me. She was hunting the Spare, straight out, and making no apologies for it. She wouldn’t stop until my balls were nailed to her office wall.
My feelings about Harry have always been a mixture of sympathy and irritation, and reading Spare did not change that in any measurable way, but it did remind me of something I had been meaning to write about for some time. Harry grew up in a goldfish bowl, with his every move watched by the media (he minces no words in describing his feelings about the paparazzi, as you can see above), and subjected to a storm of savage, ruthless and often quite sadistic criticism whenever he made a tiny mistake. It was a much better read than I expected, but the very strong impression I got from reading the book is that Harry had been criticised so heavily that he could no longer tell the difference between reasonable criticism and de facto bullying, and consequently he rejected any and all pieces of criticism regardless of the source.
It struck a chord in me, because I made a tiny mistake at a former workplace that led to me being scolded by no less than six different people, and by the time number six rolled around I was ready to kill. And when I made the mistake of saying that I had had enough, I was told I had no right to complain.
When faced with criticism, or scolding or rebukes or whatever, and these are repeated time and time again, I think most people run through this sequence:
1st Scolding – Acceptance – “Thank you for letting me know.”
2nd Scolding – Irritation – “I got the message. Thank you for letting me know.”
3rd Scolding – Exasperation – “I got the message. You can shut up now.”
4th Scolding – Anger – “SHUT THE F*** UP RIGHT F***ING NOW!”
5th Scolding – Rage – “I’M THE VICTIM NOW! F*** YOU AND THE HORSE YOU RODE ON!!!”
This leads to two separate points:
First, there is a limit to how many times you can make the same criticism before people get sick of hearing it.
Second, there is a limit to the number of times you can criticise someone, even if each successive criticism is different from the last, before they get sick of you.
The incident I mentioned above was a minor safety violation. There was no real danger and it would have gone unnoticed if someone hadn’t spotted me. Perhaps I deserved to be told not to do it again. But I could not go back in time and retroactively prevent myself from committing said minor safety violation. No amount of scolding could give me the power to make sure it never happened. And with each successive scolding, I got more and more exasperated. It turned from a reasonable discussion to outright sadism, and I lost all respect for them.
I think this is fairly universal. No matter what you did, from something minor like leaving the toilet seat up or something major like a very serious crime, there are limits to how much criticism you can endure before you just lose the ability to take it. The more you have your nose rubbed in your failings, the angrier you get and the less inclined you become to listen to further criticism. And when that criticism is entirely valid, this causes problems.
For example, a great deal of criticism aimed at Prince Harry in the last few years pointed out the hypocrisy of lecturing commoners such as myself on climate change while at the same time taking private jets everywhere. It is not unreasonable to question the sincerity of anyone who points to a crisis while at the same time doing things that make the crisis worse, or demanding sacrifice from someone while declining to make the sacrifice himself. But judging by his book, Harry is unable to realise that this criticism is entirely valid and not listening to it only undermines his case.
It is also true that no one likes a critic. Well, sort of. A good critic, when it comes to writing, is worth their weight in gold. But a critic who constantly repeats criticisms that cannot be fixed easily, if at all (in the absence of a time machine), is one who is fundamentally incredibly irritating. The more you criticise, the less anyone wants you around, which is … unfortunate … if the criticisms you are trying to offer are entirely valid. Like I said in an earlier post, by the time the critic had an important point to make, he had already spent all of his social cred and everyone generally ignores him. Donald Trump would not be so popular today if his critics hadn’t spent the last thirty years criticising every Republican candidate they didn’t like, to the point that Republican voters got sick of it and just stopped listening.
On a personal level, it is quite reasonable for your wife to complain if – on your wedding night – you forget to put the toilet seat down after using it. If you kept making the same mistake over and over again, your wife would be entirely justified in being annoyed. But if you did it once, and your wife kept banging on about it for the next ten years of marriage, your marriage has problems. And if that was happening, I would recommend divorce.
But we have the same problem on a much greater scale.
There is much to criticise in the world, but there’s a limit to how much people can actually do about it. There is no way to change the past. You can learn from it, and you can use what you have learnt to avoid making the same mistake again, but you cannot go back in time and change it. Nor can you go back in time and change a mistake made by your ancestors, nor can you accept criticism levelled at you because of what your ancestors did. It is fundamentally irrational to blame someone for the crimes of their ancestors, even if they were genuine ancestors, and doing so proves that you cannot be taken seriously. And when you have genuine valid criticism to offer, this is really unfortunate!
A great many problems in the world today stem, I think, from people becoming unwilling to listen to any more criticism. No matter what the criticism is, there are limits to how much people can take. They get angry, and this anger blinds them to valid criticism. Worse, this means that very real problems are not fixed because people shift their mindsets from ‘this problem has to be addressed’ to ‘addressing this problem guarantees more criticism’ and then refuse to do anything to address the problem.
There is a fundamental and yet unspoken quid pro quo in criticism and that is that when you address a piece of criticism, the critic lets the criticism go. This is not always easy. On one hand, if someone points out a spelling mistake that mistake can be easily fixed; on the other, problems that need long-term commitment to be tackled cannot be fixed instantly, no matter how loud or obnoxious the critic. And, like I said, something that has been done cannot be undone. The more you try to make someone feel guilty about something they did, even when it was genuinely their fault, the more they will grow annoyed with you. And when it really isn’t their fault, when it happened before they were born, why should they listen to anything else you happened to say?
It’s really easy to criticise. It is a great deal harder to actually solve the problem. And it is very easy to criticise the problem-solver to the point he just gives up.
“If you look around the world you’ll notice something. The real dead-end basket case countries and regions are usually the ones where old injustices or perceived injustices are most remembered and most important to people. [SNIP] None of this is to say that ignoring history is good, or even that ignoring old injustices is good. The reality though is that both the villains and the victims of history are for the most part dead, or have one foot on the banana peel … [SNIP] … The other reality is that dwelling on those old injustices tends to lead to situations where the guys who would normally be holding up convenience stores end up running around with AK-47s and RPGs in the service of one side or the other in the dispute.
“When that starts happening on a major scale, anyone with brains and/or money heads for the nearest exit. You end up with a downward spiral as jobs evaporate and people fight ever more bitterly over the remaining scraps of value. And of course a whole new generation of injustices are created, which will undoubtedly be used to justify the next round of victimizations. ‘Get over it’ isn’t the perfect answer. It does have some downsides, but it does work.”
The Chrishanger 