TS01 Time Station London (22 page)

Place: Offices of MI-5, Bayswater Road,

London, N.W. 1, England

Brian returned to his office grossly dissatisfied. The plan to allow Coventry to be bombed deeply worried him. Samantha was there. She could be killed. He also knew that Coventry
was
bombed. What could he do?

Blinded by love, he thought of violating his directive and notifying everyone in the Coventry office to get out on the evening of October 30. Offer no reason, nothing even hinted at, that could give them a clue as to why. Simply tell them, “When you leave work today, leave town. Do not go back until told to.”

That would work. And it would also leave him with his rear end hanging way out.

Time: 2200, GMT, October 8, 1940

Place: The Sky over Lincolnshire, England

Messerschmitt 110 Bf-1’s swarmed the sky. It was worse even than the previous night, Sgt. Wendall. Foxworth thought, his palms sweaty inside their flying gloves. The pilots of 57 Squadron swept across their cruciform silhouettes. Streams of tracers sought out and punched holes in the fish-belly white undersides. Wendall Foxworth centered his sights on the wing root of one medium bomber and then slacked off to port to allow for the proper lead. His finger tightened on the trigger.

Hammer blows vibrated the cockpit as the eight .303 machine guns fired in synchronized order. Despite the nearness to the enemy, Wendall looked on fascinated, as eleven tracers disappeared into the point where the wing joined the fuselage. At the last instant, he turned off, circled wide, and blasted the center of the black-and-white Prussian cross on the side of another. A slight raise on the nose and he hopped over that one.

Around again and in on the one he had first fired upon. This time he stitched four lines along the top side of the damaged wing. The new incendiary rounds did their work on the fuel already spilled by his first strafing run. Tongues of orange flickered feebly, then bloomed into a huge ball as the fumes exploded, ripped the wing off, and sent the Messerschmitt into a mortal tumble through the sky.

Wendall had to hand it to Capt. Marsh. For all his unpleasant ways, he knew his combat gunnery. At his instigation, the entire squadron had reregistered their guns to converge at 250 yards, rather than the regulation 600 yards. Their kill ratio had quadrupled within a week. It was a tactic worked out by Wing Commander Douglas Bader. One which Capt. Marsh had agreed with wholeheartedly, much to the relief of Sgt. Foxworth. Wendall dropped a wing and turned to starboard to find another target.

A high-pitched whine alerted him to his sudden danger. An Me-109 had lined up on his tail in a diving sweep that soon put the German pilot “in the slot.” Hail on a tin roof, Wendall Foxworth thought as the 7.9mm bullets tore into his tail assembly. He did not hear the roar of the three 20mm cannons when they fired, though he became immediately aware of the result. His entire aircraft began to vibrate violently, the stick a live thing in his hands.

“Able Leader, Able Leader, this is Able Nine. I’ve been hit badly. Over.”

“Able Nine, can you maintain aggressive action? Over.”

“Not bloody likely. There’s this great bloody hole in my port wing. I’m leaking petrol like a ruptured barrel. Over.”

“Able Nine, I see you now. Got a one-oh-niner on your tail. Break off. Break right now. There’s a Spit on the way. Able Leader out.”

Wendall eased his wounded bird to the right and sighed with relief as he saw a Spitfire swoop down from above and take on the Messerschmitt nose-to-nose. The Spitfire won. Wendall knew it when a great orange balloon flashed behind him. The Spitfire dropped his starboard wing and turned sharply. Wendall fumbled with a knob on his radio and dialed the Spitfire squadron frequency.

“You’re a right rare bloke. Thanks, mate. I owe you one. Over.”

“Get yourself home now. You can come up to our digs and stand me a couple of pints in the Mess. Over,” the Spitfire pilot responded cheerily.

“I’ll do that, believe you me. Able Nine out.”

Wendall Foxworth fought the controls all the way to Hamphill. With the loss of nearly half his fuel, the rest mostly burned, he was flying on fumes when the soft blue glow of the runway boundary lights came into view. Slowly he eased downward. Judiciously he applied throttle to maintain air speed. Gradually he lined up the white line down the center of the macadam strip. Three hundred feet now. His port wing kept wanting to rise. Wendall dropped the flaps. Gear down. His air speed bled off in a rush. The stall warning blared at him. He gave it more throttle. The braying horn silenced. A hundred feet. Fifty. Twenty-five. He could feel the ground effect. Twenty. Fifteen.

Wheels down! Abruptly the Hurricane engine gave a polite cough and quit running. The momentum kept the wounded craft hurtling down the runway even so. Only a short way. A Land Rover appeared at an intersection. A yellow flare of torchlight illuminated the FOLLOW ME sign. Wendall applied brake. The plane would not obey, due to no power. He waved at the ground crewmen as the Hurricane flashed past. He would have to let it run itself out.

Ahead the end of the runway loomed large in Wendall’s sight. It grew nearer with terrible swiftness. Then he sensed a slowing, a rocking of wings. With a final creak and groan, the Hurricane came to a stop, three feet from the grass verge. Trembling with exertion, Wendall Foxworth lowered his head to the instrument panel and released the long held breath that threatened to burst his chest.

Time: 1040, GMT, October 11, 1940

Place: Time Station London,

Thameside, London, England

Dianna Basehart entered the Time Station twenty minutes after she had called Brian Moore at his MI-5 office on the morning of October 11. The sparkling light in her cobalt eyes testified to her success. She waved a sheaf of papers under Brian’s nose. “I’ve got a solid lead on Clive Beattie.”

Brian smiled with sincerity. “Good. How did you do that?”

“Finished the last notation in the Cordise diary. They were to have had a meeting two nights ago. So the
Abwehr
knows by now that Cordise has been taken.”

Brian’s worried frown surprised Dianna. “Yes. And they’ve acted upon it. We’ve had an Enigma intercept from the headquarters of Admiral Canaris. The head of the
Abwehr
has authorized Beattie’s cell to proceed with the assassination of Churchill, as scheduled. It is in retaliation for the loss of an agent named
Freiadler,
whom we know as Rupert Cordise, The message was sent to an agent with the code name
Chamäleon,
or Chameleon. Any bets that it’s none other than our face-changing friend, Beattie?”

“What does that buy us?” a doubtful Dianna asked.

“Possibly a chance to get a look at the illusive Clive Beattie. It instructed him to meet a U-boat at certain coordinates tomorrow night. He is to get reinforcements, and a special weapon.”

Through a spreading grin, Dianna completed his thought. “And we’ll be there to meet them.”

“Sort of. If it looks right, we’ll take the whole lot right there. If not, we can follow Beattie and grab him later.”

“That’s awfully close to the fifteenth.”

“I know, Di. I’d like to have a lot more time, too. Remember, there will be a number of MI-5 agents there. We simply can’t grab Beattie and whisk him off to the future. I’d like for only the two of us to handle this—” He stopped abruptly, then brightened as he recalled his conversation last Monday with Sir Hugh Montfort. “Maybe there is a way. If so, the door is open to handle Beattie with no one knowing what actually happened.”

“Are you going to tell me?”

“Yes. It has to do with you volunteering to join Ml-5.” At Dianna’s startled elevation of eyebrows, Brian hurried on. “Only temporary. Sort of call this a trial balloon. Surveillance on Beattie. You’ve shown that you can get close to these dangerous types and maintain an outward calm. Also dazzle them so much they don’t know they’ve been diddled until the cuffs are snapped into place. You can tell Sir Hugh that you want to see this one through to the end, then you’ll take the school.”

“Only instead, I hop back to the Home Culture and disappear from this Now in London forever.”

Brian smiled, nodded. “Can you think of anything better?”

Dianna knotted her brow. “Not right offhand.”

“Right, then. We had better get this in motion.”

Time: 1330, GMT, October 12, 1940

Place: The Strand, North of Skegness,

Lincolnshire, England

Brian Moore and Dianna Basehart crouched behind twin thickets of salt grass at the edge of the strand north of Skegness on the east coast of the Midlands. Armed with hampers of thick ham sandwiches, wedges of cheese, crackers, sweets and vacuum bottles of coffee, they had taken position in early afternoon. The sun beat down, unseasonably warm for this time of year. Only once was their stakeout jeopardized, when a gaggle of six small boys, who appeared to be about eight or nine, came down to brave the chill waters of the English Channel.

Quickly stripped bare as the day their mothers birthed them, the little imps cavorted on the sand and splashed in the shallows. Then one of them, in the lead of a footrace, spotted Dianna and Brian in turn. He stopped in a shower of sand to turn full face to them, completely oblivious to his state of undress.

His mouth formed an “O” of surprise and the bare toes of one foot scratched idly at his other calf. A mop of snowy flaxen hair waved in the onshore breeze and he gazed at the couple with wide, sky-blue eyes.

“Gor, you two out here to fool around som’at?”

“C’mon, Tommy, why’d you fall behind?” another lad chirped in the distance.

The interruption gave Brian time to frame a proper reply. He gave the boy a big wink as he confided, “If we were here to fool around, it wouldn’t do for a lad your size to be watching, now would it?”

A nail-bitten thumb stole to Tommy’s mouth. Swiftly as it happened, he forcibly abandoned the childish habit. “I sees me sister an’ ’er boyfriend from time to time.” He winked back.

Brian put a little heat in his words. “Then you’d bloody well be satisfied with that. Be good for you to show me some heels right now.”

Gulping, the lad spun to his right and streaked down the beach. “Hoy, fellows! You won’t believe what I saw back there,” he squeaked excitedly. “There’s a man an’ his girl about to do
it.”
Though in truth, he had not the first idea what
it
was.

“Damn, how do they get so worldly-wise at so young an age?” Dianna queried rhetorically.

“It’s the war,” Brian suggested.

“Do you think they’ll sneak back to watch?”

“I wouldn’t doubt it, Di.”

“They’ll sure be disappointed.” Her fleeting smirk drew a laugh from Brian.

“We don’t have to disappoint them.” Brian’s rejoinder brought him an intense stab of pain. Instantly the specter of Samantha raised between them. He made hasty retreat. “Forget it. I didn’t mean it at all.”

Dianna chuckled, though she agreed. “Yes, we are on a mission. Wouldn’t do for Beattie to come upon us in the throes of wild passion.”

They laughed together and resumed their watch. After a short while, Brian offered a question. “It isn’t all over for you, Di, is it?”

Dianna’s smile lasted only a short while. “No, it’s not. I still… think about you a lot. What about you?”

“I could never forget you. We have had many a good time together. I haven’t given up hope that we can again.”

Dianna favored him with a soft, happy expression. “I’ve not either. That’s a sweet thought to fill the empty hours with, isn’t it?”

Time: 0001, GMT, October 13, 1940

Place: The Strand, Outside Skegness, Lincolnshire, England

Clive Beattie arrived at long last. If indeed the hunchbacked, balding man of late middle age who shuffled through a stand of mixed walnut and yew was Beattie. He lacked any resemblance to the Aryan superman in the holograph from the future. Not a sliver of moon lighted the scene, so Brian could not be certain. A short while after the newcomer walked out onto the beach and shined a flashlight across the water, the thrumming swish of electric motors and brass propellers drifted in on the tide.

A few moments later, a foam of alabaster bubbles caught the starlight and the black silhouette jutted up out of the water. The truncated periscope and antenna masts of a U-boat took on a patent-leather sheen in the white frost of the constellations. The hull glided majestically above the waves and the submarine came to full stop.

Figures appeared on the deck. Brian and Dianna watched in fascination while they inflated a rubber raft. Five figures came from a hatch and went over the side into the bobbing boat. With a faint sputter the craft swung shoreward and made headway toward the sand. Beattie walked to the waterline and caught the painter tossed to him.

He backed up to ground the vessel, then greeted the occupants. One of the U-boat’s crew handed a small box to Beattie, who pocketed it. Three of the men remained, while the other pair turned around the rubber boat and headed back to the sub. Watching through night glasses, Brian studied the faces of the new arrivals. He needed to memorize them in the event something went wrong. Dianna moved over beside him.

“Where’s the special weapon?”

“I don’t know.”

“There’s only four. Do we take them now?”

Brian looked at her. “We let that U-boat submerge first. That should get this bunch into the trees where they can’t hear us close on them.”

Up to that point it went exactly the way Brian planned it. He and Dianna moved soundlessly through the undergrowth and came to within ten feet of the German agents and Clive Beattie. Then Brian stepped down on a dead branch. Its crack sounded as loud as a gunshot.

“Was ist das?”
came a guttural demand.

“Gar nichts. Ein Tier,
” responded Beattie.

“If it’s an animal, it walks upright on two legs,” the suspicious Nazi countered in rapid German. “Look over there.
That is
no animal.”

Starlight barely outlined Brian Moore. It proved enough to encourage instant response from the enemy agents. Three shots cracked loudly in the cricket-filled night. Fortunately for Brian, the Germans were poor shots. Especially with handguns in the dark. In contrast, Brian had the advantage of evolution and training to give him superior reflexes and gun-handling ability.

With a solid, flat report, the Webley in Brian’s hand spat a slug at the nearest enemy agent. With a soft groan, the man went to his knees. Brian fired again. The Luger dropped from the Nazi’s hand. To Brian’s side the air sizzled and gave off a tinge of ozone as Dianna fired an Attenuated Lazer Pistol at another German.

Virtually silent, the futuristic ALP operated on a microbattery with a built-in chip that allowed it to recycle in under a quarter second. She had cleanly bisected her target, both sides of the wound completely cauterized. The still-living upper portion of the German continued to live long enough to fire a 9mm slug at Dianna. The blue-green light lashed out from her hand almost immediately.

Deprived of a head, the Nazi agent ceased to function and fell to the ground, behind his lower half. Dianna changed her point of aim. Neatly severed from the trunk, a branch fell on the back of Clive Beattie, who had the moment before bolted from the encounter. It knocked him flat on the ground.

“Oh, damn,” Dianna spat.

“You weren’t trying for him, were you?” Brian asked as he sighted in on the last Nazi. He fired a fraction of a second later.

Before he went down screaming, the German got off a round that burned a hot line along the left side of Brian’s rib cage. Then the suppressed Walther PP dropped to the bed of leaves and its owner clutched his belly.

“Liebe Gott! Das verlessen ist,”
he whimpered. It must have hurt a lot, because a moment later his groans turned to piercing screams.

Brian closed on him, while Dianna checked the other men. “Help me,” the German begged in English. “Don’t let me die.”

“Too late, I’m afraid.”

“Brian, the first one you shot has gotten away,” came Dianna’s unwelcome report.

They quickly found that, ignored by them, Clive Beattie had also escaped. They stood in silence a moment. In the distance they heard the blundering crash of the fleeing pair. Without the slightest consideration for the seriously wounded Nazi, they started off as one in pursuit.

It took only a short time to close the distance. Immediately, shots ripped through the night. Brian and Dianna heard only polite coughs and the crack of bullets. Not even muzzle fire revealed the shooters. The Temporal Wardens dived for cover behind looming tree stumps.

“Split up and keep low,” Brian advised. “If they get beyond the trees, meet me at the car.”

Twelve minutes later, Dianna Basehart approached the car at a brisk walk. “We lost them,” she summed up the evening’s operation.

“Yes, I suppose we did. Any idea where to find them?”

Dianna nodded down the road. “There can’t be many cars out at this hour. Not with the threat of air raids.”

“You have a point. I caught a brief glance of our quarry when they pulled away. Beattie has a big, black Austin four-door sedan. He can’t make very good time, those things have governors on them. They have been gone only five minutes. I say we go after them.”

Seated in the MG touring car, they drove off at high speed. Tape had made tiny horizontal slits of the headlight beams, which cut dizzying swaths along the black tarmac of the roadway. In five minutes they caught sight of dim red slices in the distance, hurtling along the highway in reckless haste. Brian lifted his left hand from the floor-mounted gearshift and pointed.

“That has to be them. No one else has reason to be speeding like that.”

A weak tone answered him. “Speak for yourself, Whitefeather. I’ve never gone so fast in anything with wheels in my life.”

“What about your Hov-V?”

Impatience joined the pain in Dianna’s voice. “It’s a ground-effect car, Whitefeather. It has no wheels.”

Brian protested, “I’m only doing seventy.”

“My God! We’re going to die.”

Brian snorted through his grin. “By the end of the twentieth century, race cars routinely ran in excess of two hundred miles per hour.”

“On wheels?”

“Yes, on wheels. Of course, they raced on closed tracks, not out in open traffic.”

Dianna scrunched down lower in the bucket seat and pointed forward. “You’re getting sort of close, aren’t you?”

Brian returned his gaze to the road. The high, rounded back of the Austin sedan loomed large only a dozen car lengths away. Suddenly the entire of the windshield spider-webbed and a hole appeared between the occupants. They had to be using suppressed weapons, Brian reasoned. How could he stay so calm and analytical?