by Ian Andrew
She shrugged in response.
They sat in silence, drinking their coffees, each contemplating the reality that they now found themselves in. Eventually Leigh put her cup down and leant sideways into him. He moved his arm around her shoulder and she laid her head on his chest. They stayed like that, comfortable, secure and lost in their own thoughts. When finally Heinrich moved to put his cup down she had to prop herself up and then sit upright. As he went to lay back she reached out to him and hugged him hard.
She raised her face and met his gaze. She felt again the light, yet intense kick in her stomach and the tingling sensation across her whole body. She looked to his lips and back to his eyes. He bent his head forward. As his lips touched hers she opened her mouth slightly and felt the heat of him. Their tongues touched delicately and lightly and she sucked him into her mouth, gently but insistently. She heard him moan a low, feral sound and felt his arms tighten around her, surrounding her, holding her, protecting her. She felt his mouth, his breath, his chest against her and she twisted so she could lie back on the sofa. She pulled him down and felt his kisses grow more passionate. She responded in kind and was aware of his strength pressing against her, holding her pinned. Somewhere deep in her consciousness she knew that she had never felt like this before. The fairy tales she had read as a little girl spoke of first kisses between soulmates but she had never believed in them. She had never had any faith that there was a ‘someone’ out there for her. But now she was being convinced. He ended the kiss and pulled away a little.
She leant up, holding his gaze and gently, very tenderly kissed him again. Her mouth parted and this time she let her tongue explore his mouth and he bit gently on her lower lip. She pressed hard into him whilst his tongue circled the tip of hers and then ran across her teeth, exploring the inside of her lips. He drew back and ran his hands through her hair, grazing his fingertips against her scalp. She closed her eyes and rhythmically moved under him, sighing as she did. He moved her hair aside from her neck and placed his mouth next to her ear. She tensed in anticipation that he would kiss her or blow lightly against her skin but instead he gently breathed in. The rush of air was something she hadn’t experienced before. It was intense and caused her to respond by straightening her back and allowing a small moan from her lips.
“Let’s go to bed,” she managed to say.
Chapter 43
Afterwards, they slept contentedly in each other’s arms. At some point he woke and she was curled up in front of him. He leant forward and kissed the nape of her neck. She murmured something intelligible. He repeated the kiss and she moved to nestle her back against him. When he kissed her a third time she rolled over and faced him. She looked comfortable and at peace. He bent his head to kiss her again. She smiled and stroked his forehead, “Are you okay?”
“Oh yes, more than okay. You?”
She responded with a soft hum and nuzzled into him. They dozed off again.
It was gone 03:00 when he awoke. He eased himself up out of the bed but as gently as he tried she woke as well.
“Heinrich, what is it?”
“Nothing. I’m just going to get a drink of water. Would you like one?”
She sat up and yawned and stretched, “No, but a coffee and cigarette seem like a good idea.”
He was dressed in her bathrobe and she had on jeans and an old friendly, woolly jumper. She sat at the outdoor setting on her roof garden and smoked while he stood gazing out across the city.
“Heinrich?” she spoke quietly in a mellowed tone that barely carried to him on the other side of the small garden. He looked across to her but said nothing and waited for her to continue.
“I’m scared.”
“About us?”
“No. Not that. I’m scared to ask you what you meant when you said that Berlin wouldn’t be able to stop a Projection. I need to ask you what you meant, but I’m scared. Terrified in fact. This whole thing’s been a game of what-ifs in my mind since I spoke to Mary because I always had the safety net of Berlin. I knew we couldn’t actually do anything. It made it safe. I couldn’t see a way round the security protocols and I couldn’t see them signing off on a Projection that’s designed to wipe them off the face of the planet.”
“I know.”
“It’s the same reason I never asked you about what you did in Berlin when you were there.” She finished the smoke, crushed the butt in the ashtray and joined him to look out over the cityscape. She slipped her hand in his, “I suppose I have to ask so, go on then, what did you mean?” She sounded defeated, like she had struggled not to come to this point but that it was inevitable.
He led her back downstairs and took a seat at the small dining table. As he was about to start talking she interrupted.
“Hang on, stop. Are we going to sit up the rest of the night and discuss this?” she had looked at her ForeFone and it was 03:21.
“I suppose so, why?”
“Right! Shower, dressed, pots of coffee. Then at least we can sit and talk for a few hours and feel more focussed.”
“You’re stalling,” he said it plainly and without criticism.
“I know, but pander to me. This may be the last chance you get.” She winked and sprung up before adding, “We get to share the shower.”
It was almost 04:30 by the time they finished with each other in the shower and got dressed. Leigh made toast as well as coffee and Heinrich rustled up some microwave scrambled eggs. Climbing the spiral staircase they emerged into the silver sphere of the pre-dawn light. They decided not to spoil breakfast with talk about plans for an uncertain future that would alter the past and destroy the present. They simply enjoyed the moment.
After they had eaten they sat still and watched the first yellow rays breach the horizon. Leigh sighed deeply, “Did you ever know where my mother’s phrase came from?”
“Which?”
“The years leave a mark.”
“Not really. I just thought it was a family saying.”
“It’s from a Haiku.”
“A what?”
“A Haiku. It’s a Japanese type of poetry but when it’s butchered into English it doesn’t work as well. There are lots of rules about subject and seasons and all other stuff but the main thing is that it’s made up of three lines and seventeen syllables. It’s meant to read, five-seven-five.”
“I’m sorry, I’ve never even heard of them before.”
“Didn’t you get a literary Masters from Oxford?” she teased.
“Yes, in English Lit, there wasn’t much Japanese on the curriculum.”
“Probably would have been if you’d gone to Cambridge and got a proper degree,” she said in a mock sotto-voce.
He laughed and stuck his middle finger up at her. “So what’s a hack oou then?” and managed to butcher the pronunciation deliberately.
“A Haiku,” she corrected and playfully raised her eyes at him, “they were a pastime of ours, my mum, dad and me. I even had a cat called Haiku.”
“Did he only have three legs?”
“Oh ha-ha! No, but he had seven toes on his front paws and five on his hind.”
“You’re serious? Was it a cat or a genetic experiment?”
“Aw! Don’t be mean. He was lovely. We got him from Cornwall. He was a polydactyl cat.”
“Wow! Well, I do learn something new every day.”
“Yeah, most days I bet,” she grinned at him and he feigned hurt. “So you never heard the full version of the poem?”
“No.”
She nodded at the climbing sun and said, “The years leave a mark, through the Swastika’s winter, till the sun rises.”
“Your mum wrote that?”
“Yeah.”
They returned downstairs and sitting together on the sofa Heinrich told her what had happened in Berlin. He took her through his visit to the Reichsführer, the Archives, what he had looked for and what he had found. Finally he explained what he wanted to do. She argued and he countered. He argued and she coun
tered but in the end, after more than an hour of to and fro, it came down to a few simple questions.
“If we do this Heinrich and nothing changes, then what’s the point?”
“The point is we’ll have tried.”
“And Konrad goes to his death?”
“Yes. And Mary.”
“No harm to her, but I’m more concerned for my friend.”
“If we don’t try they both go to their death. If we don’t try we’re stuck in a world with no hope of redemption and future generations are damned before they’re born.”
“And if we try and succeed?”
“You said yourself Leigh, nobody knows what happens. At best we find ourselves in a world of peace and harmony again.”
She nodded her head and took his hand, “And at worst, everything is destroyed. Utterly destroyed. We’d rip the fabric of the planet apart.”
“Isn’t that what you said the physicists that made the Reich’s first nuclear weapon worried about?”
“Yes, but they were wrong.”
“What’s to say you’re not?”
She shrugged, “Maybe that isn’t the worst anyway. Maybe the worst is that we really do succeed. Me and you, Leigh and Heinrich, cause two thousand years of warfare and death. How’s that feel?”
“Honestly? I can’t say how it’d feel because we probably won’t know a thing about it. Our lives would be forfeit.”
“Forget about us; we might kill hundreds of thousands, millions even.”
“And how many have the Reich killed so far? Isn’t there a balance sheet in play here?”
“What, you’re saying that if we kill less than they have then we’re winning?” she was getting tense.
He stopped and said nothing for a long moment. “I don’t want to argue Leigh. I want to know that you’ll do this with me. I can’t do it alone.”
“I’m scared.”
He reached out to her and she snuggled into his chest again. He spoke quietly, “So am I. But maybe that’s why we’re here, together. I think it comes down to three questions. Do you think Mary’s right about needing less certainty? Do you think that saves us from an all-powerful Reich?”
She bit the inside of her cheek to stop the tears from coming, “Yes, probably,” she bit harder, “to both.” She maintained control of her voice and her tears. “That’s only two. What’s the third?”
“If you believe we can do something that just might reset this world and we don’t try, then when they take Konrad, will you be able to live with yourself?”
She stood up and removed one of the seat cushions. Reaching down she eased a flap of material away from the side of the upholstery. Easing her hand further down into the guts of the sofa she retrieved a wooden box. He watched intrigued as she opened it and then he sighed as he saw. She lifted her family’s Wheel of the Messengers out and offered it to him. He set it down carefully on the table.
“Can we say the Creed together before we go?”
Part Three
A Time for Peace
and
A Time for War
Chapter 44
08:35 Friday 22nd May 2020 - London
He drove them both back to Todt, via his apartment first so he could change into uniform and retrieve some items. It was a busy morning in the city so the trip out to the Isle of Dogs took an age but they passed most of it in silence.
As he turned off Eastferry Road he double flashed his headlights. The guards on the gate had grown familiar to his sleek, black BMW and waved him through without an ID check. They saluted as he passed under the raised gate and he returned a nod in their direction.
“You know you’re speeding?” she asked him.
“Marginally.”
“And no one is going to stop you and have a word?”
“I’m Standartenführer Steinmann of the Allgemeine-SS, Special Investigations and Security Directorate. Who on the whole of the Todt Laboratories Complex is going to rebuke me?”
“I suppose I should be glad.”
“Why so?” he said as he pulled into the closest reserved spot next to the ‘Jewel’ steps.
“Because that’s the same reason no one’s going to ask why you and I are going into Oscar when the rest of the team is stood down for the day.”
As they passed the Wehrmacht security detail prior to reaching the Tubes she looked to see if Obergefreiter Dieter Fischer was on duty but she could see neither him nor young Schütze Lukas. She knew that likely meant that their shift pattern was over and Dieter would probably be at home with his beloved Margarethe. She had a deep and sudden pain in her heart and a solid weight in the pit of her stomach.
Heinrich noticed her frown. “Leigh, are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. Just… Never mind. I’m fine.”
They exited the lifts and padded along the rubber walkway. The inner security door was opened for them before they reached it and the soldier on duty stood and saluted Heinrich. He returned the compliment and said briskly, “Carry on.”
Leigh walked a little ahead of him as she headed down towards Oscar. Every other lab she passed was busily getting on with their specific fields of study and experimentation. They would be briefed on Konrad’s departure in due course but for now they had no knowledge of what had occurred so she had to smile and say ‘Hi’ and nod at the few people who passed her in the corridor. She tried desperately not to think of what might happen to each and every one of them if she and Heinrich managed to do what they were here for.
He came up alongside her and pushed open the heavy-duty PVC doors. The motion sensors detected them and turned on the lights as they walked into the main lab. She led them across to the cleanroom, through it and on to the High Powered Laser Lab. Leigh swiped her card and keyed in her security code to the door and waited for Heinrich to do the same. Instead he stayed behind her.
“Heinrich?”
“What?” he asked with a tinge of surprise to his voice.
“You need to swipe your access card and enter your code to get into the HPL.”
“But I don’t have access down here.”
She frowned at him and said a little crossly, “You’re kidding, right? This is a double entry security door. You watched me and Franci swipe to get you through here on Monday. You watched my whole team double swipe to get us in here for the Reid Projections.”
“No I didn’t Leigh.”
“You did, you must have. You’re head of project security, how do you not know this?” her voice was rising.
“I told you, the Wehrmacht secure the property, I don’t have jurisdiction over the real estate.”
“You are fucking kidding me!” she said it with force and noticed he looked rather shocked. ‘Good’, she thought before she added, “We’ve spent all of this time worrying about what we’re going to do and how it’s all going to play out and how we have the means to run a Projection and you didn’t even think of how we’re going to get into the lab?”
“I honestly didn’t see you and Franci swipe in here,” he said it quite calmly.
“How could you not, you were stood right there!” she said quite agitatedly.
“I’m sorry Leigh but I didn’t and as for the Reid Projections the door was opened for me, I just walked through.”
“Well that’s great. We’re stuffed before we start.” She looked down and shook her head.
“Hang on, I have Konrad’s swipe card as well as his Thule key,” he said getting a little excited.
“Great,” and her voice was heavily sarcastic, “only two things wrong with that; one, you need his security access number...”
“He’s across in a cell I control. I can go ask him,” he interrupted.
She waited for him to finish, “Yeah you could, except the second flaw is that Wolfgang had a set of procedures to carry out yesterday after Konrad’s arrest. One of those is to inform your Wehrmacht buddies upstairs that Konrad’s access was to be turned off. With immediate effect.”
“Bu
t when we talked about all of this earlier this morning you didn’t mention that,” he said, finally getting more exasperated with the situation.
“I didn’t need to. His Thule activation key that you took off him and kept is a physical device. If you have it you have it. His access card wasn’t important. I assumed you had access.” She stopped and looked at him. She knew she was red in the face again and she knew it wasn’t his fault. But, it wasn’t hers either. “Ah, sod it! Let’s go get a coffee,” she said.
He poured two cups from the percolator that she had prepared and they sat side by side on stools at one of the benches in the main Oscar Lab space.
“I’m sorry Leigh. This is my fault.” He held his hand out flat on the benchtop and she laid hers over it.
“Don’t worry about it. I should have realised. You did tell me that you didn’t have control over the physical security. I should have asked if you had lab access.” She took a mouthful of her coffee and winced. “Did you put any sugar in this?”
“No, there wasn’t any in the bowl.”
“No, sorry, I meant the little saccharin tablets I use? They’re in a little dispenser next to the percolator?”
He just shrugged so she got up and wandered over to the little bit of bench that was the lab’s coffee making area.
“Bugger it.”
“I’ll assume that’s a no then?”
“Yeah. Back in a minute, I’ve got some in my office drawer.” She walked off to the rear of the lab.
When she came back she grabbed a spoon and sat down beside him.
He looked round and smiled a half-hearted, apologetic smile at her. “All good?”
She waved the little dispenser in her hand and popped one into her coffee. Stirring the liquid slowly she said slightly under her breath, “Yeah, all good.” Then she reached into her pocket and produced a plain white plastic card and set it on the bench.
