“‘Business’…?” She repeated distastefully, as if having been unwillingly forced to utter a particularly filthy expletive. “You have a business to run? And what the hell am I to you? What was I to you these last few months… all those times you were happy to spend in my bed and talking about the life we all had before this all went to shite… the life we were going to have again when it was all over? We, Max… we…! That’s what you said, and you were damned clear that meant you and me…!”
“Circumstances change,” he pointed out, the coldness returning as he maintained his rigid stance by the bed. “The situation has changed, and sometimes we just don’t get what we want in this life…”
“Don’t you do that to me…!” She snarled viciously, taking another step forward and jabbing an accusing finger in his direction. “Don’t you dare do that to me…! You destroyed me once already in this lifetime, and I will not allow you to do that again! You will not give up on me… on Hindsight…!”
“Hindsight is dead…!” He bellowed, unable to withhold his own range and self-loathing any longer as he slammed a clenched fist against the doorframe beside him. “Hindsight has failed…! It’s all gone…!”
“What…?” She stammered, taken aback and momentarily lost for words. “What are you talking about? We’ve had a setback, yes, but there’s no reason we can’t –!”
“It’s over…!” He howled, fighting against the afterimage of that mushroom cloud in his mind now as the stress started to get to him. “Don’t you get it…? Over…!”
“But…” she continued haltingly, not able to accept that he could possibly be giving up. “You can’t –!”
“We had them!” Far softer in volume, the venom and viciousness in that hissed sentence cut her far more deeply as the realisation behind it smashed into her and her defences began to collapse completely. “We… had… them…! Right there, right in our hands! The chance to end it all and fix everything…”
“No…” she pleaded softly, already seeing into the immediate future now and not able to bear what was coming. “Max, please… don’t…”
“‘Don’t’ what…?” He snarled. “Don’t tell the truth…?” He took two steps forward, frightening her in that moment as she saw the rage of betrayal in his eyes. “I saw that bastard thing go off!” He hissed darkly, shaking now as the rawness of his own pain and vulnerability began to show through. “Not from miles away on some bloody chopper! I was there, staring at that vile, evil fucking thing from right across the bay as it tore the bloody trees right out of the earth around me! And all I could think about, during all that, was whether you were all right… whether someone had gotten you out of there alive and in one piece.” Another flashback plagued his mind then: one of a huge explosion in the desert at another moment when he’d feared Eileen dead, some months before.
“Baby… please…” she begged, sobbing openly now as she found herself backed up against the doorway leading out to the rest of the suite.
“It was only after I was evacuated, hours later, that I found out the truth. There were some others there – some wounded who hadn’t made it to the choppers before the bomb went off. One of ‘em was a rifleman from Gull Force: a bloke who’d been right there in the hospital with you and Langdale and all the others!”
“No… that’s not how it was…”
“Really…?” He growled archly, raising an eyebrow. “Then how do you know what I’m going to say…? You let them go…!” He spat with obvious disgust. “They were right there! The two most evil bastards in this whole bloody shit-show short of Hitler himself, and the only ones who could’ve given us exactly the answer we needed to set everything right again. You had the solution in the palm of your hand, and you let them walk away…!”
“It was Carl…” she tried to explain, sliding slowly down the wall in despair now as the true scope of what was falling apart between them came crashing down. “He was in the way… put himself in the way. We couldn’t shoot for fear of killing him. I thought… I thought you’d understand…”
“Understand what: that you singlehandedly ended the history of the world as we know it?” He shot back far too quickly, not clearly thinking about the consequences of what he was saying. “…That you willingly gave up the last hope we had of ever completing this Godforsaken mission and going home…?”
“Carl was one of us…!” She persisted, and in her desperation, the desire to tell him exactly what had happened to her in that barracks in the middle of that last night was almost overwhelming. Yet she held it back, the words blocked by a combination of undeserved shame and some strong, deep-seated understanding that such revelations would so unfairly tip the scales that she couldn’t bring herself to take that last step.
“Then he dies a bloody hero...!” Thorne barked in fury, surprising her with the blunt coldness of the reply. “…a bloody hero to both sides, the silly prick! How many millions more will die now, because they walked out that hospital door? How many more years will half the world suffer because they walked out that door…?”
“You… you wouldn’t have… couldn’t have…”
“My bloody oath I would’ve shot the bastard,” he snarled, lying through his teeth and knowing it. “And were the places reversed, I’d have expected him – or you – to do exactly the fucking same! They’ve taken the Time Displacement Units from us now! Do you not understand that? That was the last chance we may ever have, and it’s gone now… because…” his voice trailed off now, almost grinding to a halt as his lack of sleep and long nights of drinking finally sapped the last vestiges of his adrenalin-fuelled energy. “…Because… fuck…!” He spat in frustration, almost staggering across to the bed and slumping down onto it with his head in his hands as he heard the door open again, feeling too tired and angry to listen to one of Rupert’s condescending lectures.
“Because what…?”
The cold, bitter tone in Langdale’s voice was as much of a surprise as hearing the voice itself as his eyes snapped up to find the newly-promoted lieutenant standing in the doorway, fire in his own eyes.
“Because of what, eh? Come on…” he goaded, taking a step into the room. ‘You’re a bloody brave bugger, bangin’ on walls and shit when you’re arguing with a woman: why not finish what you were gonna say? Say it to my face and see how ‘good’ that feels.”
“Don’t get involved in this, mate,” Thorne began tiredly, not in the slightest bit interested in dragging anyone else into the situation. “We’re two adults here, sorting out our differences… just leave it be and come back a bit later…”
“You fuckin’ dickhead…” Langdale muttered in disgust, crouching down beside a sobbing Eileen and wrapping his arms around her as he helped her awkwardly to her feet.
“Mal…!” There was a warning tone in Thorne’s voice now as he rubbed heavily at his temples, trying to clear the blinding headache that was building behind them.
“I’ll deal with you in a bloody minute!” He shot back, guiding Eileen out of the room and into the waiting arms of a clearly-distraught Rupert Gold. “Get her to her room and keep an eye on her, mate,” he suggested, as Gold nodded and led her slowly away, her head buried beneath the guiding arm across her shoulders.
“Uncle Mal…?” Briony called softly, peeking out from behind her own partially-open bedroom door on the opposite side of the main suite. It was clear that she’d also been crying, and the terror in her eyes ripped through his soul in that moment.
“You better go with Rupe,” he suggested, nodding his head toward Gold and Donelson. “He might need a hand, and I think Eileen might need another girl around too, maybe…”
“I…” she began uncertainly, eyes flicking to the open doorway behind him as her loyalties were suddenly and impossibly split.
“You go on now…” he assured, recognising it for what it was and softening his tone accordingly. “Me and Max are gonna have a ‘chat’, but it’s gonna be okay… I promise…”
“You promise…
?” She repeated, sobbing a little in fear.
“You bet!” He nodded, forcing a smile. “I promise…”
With a final, hesitant nod, she stepped from her room and hurried off after the others, leaving Langdale alone in the suite with Thorne as he turned and stalked purposefully back into the main bedroom, closing the doors securely behind him.
Thorne was in the process of taking a brown bottle from a small ice chest by the bed as Langdale re-entered the room. His head was throbbing heartily now, and it was less of a walk to the beer than it was to the medicine cabinet for aspirin.
“I’d offer you one as well…” he began in a deadpan tone, sounding neither sarcastic nor particularly genuine “…but judging by your opening remarks, I suspect you’ll probably say ‘no’…”
“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Langdale hissed angrily, taking no more than a few broad, purposeful steps to cross the distance between the doorway and where Thorne was resuming his seat at the end of the bed.
“‘Me’…?” He snorted in return, almost finding the question amusing. “You bastards go and let the head of the fuckin’ Wehrmacht slip through your fingers – on purpose – and I’m the one with the problem…” He shook his head slowly, staring up at ceiling as he took a small bottle opener from the pocket of his robe and popped the lid off the beer. “Funny old world, ain’t it?”
“I should ‘a figured you’d find out about it,” Langdale spat angrily, not feeling guilty in the slightest over the revelation. “Should ‘a known one o’ those pricks would spill his guts!”
“You were calling me on the radio about it at the moment I was forced to punch out,” Thorne shot back quickly with a mirthless grin, voice quavering slightly as he recalled the shock and terror of being automatically blasted from the Lightning’s cockpit without warning. “You were whinging about the danger of her letting them go… I don’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to work out what happened next. You must think I’m a fuckin’ idiot…”
“You are a fuckin idiot!” Langdale spat sharply, noting the flash of fire in the other man’s eyes over that insult. “Yes, she made a bloody deal…” He began, not about to take a step back in that moment as Thorne began to open his mouth to pounce on the admission in self-righteous anger. “Stuck there, alone in a Jap prison camp, with not a hope of fuckin’ survival… yes, she made a deal…” He added, the completion of the sentence silencing Thorne momentarily. “A deal to work together and get them as far as the bloody hospital… after that, all bets were s’posed to be off, and she pulled a gun on ‘em in that hallway, meaning to do the ‘right thing’: to bring ‘em in and make you so fuckin’ proud…”
The venomous sarcasm in that last statement took Thorne slightly aback, and he suddenly found himself unable to stomach any more alcohol as the faintest sensation of self-doubt began to murmur at the edges of his consciousness.
“We had ‘em bang to rights! Had the drop on ‘em, no joke…” he continued, regret showing through now as he was forced to recall the scene, along with the terrible revelations brought with it. “And then Ritter goes and fucks it up by walking right out in front of em, saying we had to ‘honour our deal’ and let them all go… that we’d have to shoot ‘em all to stop ‘em leavin’.”
“Bollocks…! Why the bloody hell would he do that? He knows we need that date, and he damn well knows as well as the rest of us that those two were the ones to give it over! It would’ve meant the end of his bloody mission! The end of all of this shit! He’s been passing us information for two bloody years without a moment’s thought! Why the fuck would be piss all that away now over some misguided sense of bullshit loyalty?”
“Because he fucking knew…!”
“‘Knew’…?” Thorne queried with a frown, drawing completely the wrong conclusion. “Of course he bloody knew… we told him about Hindsight and what was gonna happen…”
“About Reuters, you dumb shit! About his son…!”
Oh, bloody hell… the voice in his head echoed at that moment, proving at the most inopportune moment that, as Thorne had somehow suspected, it had simply been playing possum rather than having actually been missing in action for some reason.
“But…” For the first time that entire morning, Max Thorne found himself completely lost for words, eventually managing: “But… how…?”
“How the fuck would I know? You’re the bloody genius around here with all the fuckin’ answers: why don’t you tell me…?” Mal fired back angrily, finding his turn for sarcasm. “He knew all right: sure as I’m standin’ here in front of you today, he… fucking… knew…! And knowing that, what d’you expect him to do other than protect his own bloody son? What else could he do, ‘Einstein?”
“He… he knew the risks…” Thorne stammered, the pounding in his head intensifying with stress as he struggled to assimilate this new and shocking revelation. “He knew the dangers…”
“Oh, and so we should ‘a just shot him right in front of his own son, then hauled the bastard away over the bleeding body? Is that it?”
“You’re damn right, we should have…” Thorne snarled, rising to his feet and casting the bottle aside as his temper began to boil.
“Bullshit…! All that crap about honour and decency... all that shit that’s supposed to make us better than the Nazis… than the Japs…” There was bitterness in his words now, as the memories of what he’d seen on Ambon came flooding back to him… memories of what in his mind he’d failed to prevent. “I heard what ya said to Eileen before I came in, and you, me and her know damn well that you’d do nothin’ of the bloody sort if the roles were reversed, y’ lyin’ sack of shit…! You’d have made exactly the same bloody decision!”
“It was my decision to make!” Thorne bellowed in return, the last piece of the puzzle over his building rage finally falling into place for both of them as he realised the truth of it even as the words came. “It was my decision… not hers…!” He repeated, anger now blending with anguish and despair as the tears came.
“And there we are!” Langdale nodded, throwing up his hands. “Now we come to it. You know, you talk a good game when it comes to equality, and trust and all that shit, but the truth is, you just couldn’t bear the idea of a woman… of anyone… calling the shots instead of you. I bet you told her it was all her fault, didn’t ya? Losin’ the Krauts; Solingen comin’ to take the TDUs away… all someone else’s fault… I can see it a mile off!”
“Hindsight is finished because of this!”
“Hindsight is finished because of you!” The accusation came as hard as a slap, all the more forceful because deep within his own subconscious, Thorne already knew that it was the truth. “All of this has been fucked up because of you! You’re the self-righteous prick who’s spent the last two years being so fucking hard to deal with that both the Yanks and the Aussies are sick of the bloody sight of you! You were the dickhead that ignored orders in North Africa and refused to evacuate when you were told, costing Davids his legs and nearly getting us all killed as well! You were the one who… who stopped me… when I could ‘a saved him…” he breathed finally his voice suddenly weak and mournful.
I think the commissioned officers got their heads chopped off first… maybe they’ll be too tired by the time it’s my turn…
The words were his own, and as they rose in his memories, angry and accusing, Langdale was momentarily unable to carry on. Staggering to one side, he raised an arm and leaned heavily against the wall, eyes closed as he fought against the guilt of not having done anything to save his best friend… the guilt that came with living on when Evan Lloyd was dead. In that moment, there was blame enough to go around, and any thought Langdale had held when he’d arrived of keeping his vow of secrecy dissipated like so much mist on heated glass.
“Oh, Christ, Mal…”
“They were gonna rape her; you know that?” He revealed in a dark, hollow tone, eyes still closed and head resting hard against the wall as his shoulders and chest heaved with the
stress. “Some sick fuck snuck into her room durin’ the night and put a fuckin’ knife against her throat. And where were you during all that, eh? Nowhere: the same bloody place you were when the cut Evan’s bloody head off…!
“Bet she didn’t tell you that, eh? She was so worried it’d force you to forgive her… because of what happened to yer wife… and she didn’t want to put you in that position! Can you believe that…?” he continued, turning to stare hard at a now-horrified Thorne. “So he was gonna do it, this prick, and who do you think it was that burst in and helped her? Not the Aussies; not the bloody Dutch: no one from her own side was within cooee. Instead, here come Ritter and an eighty-year-old fuckin’ Reichsmarschall to the rescue, and from what Eileen told me, the old bastard kicked that little Jap’s arse! Yeah, maybe it was your decision to make,” he added with a faint shrug, “but you weren’t there, and Eileen was left to make it for ya… all alone and with no help from you whatsoever.”
“Mal…”
“She gutted some poor bastard with his own knife… did those loud-mouthed bastards on Ambon tell you that?” He added, not knowing that he was speaking of Eileen’s would-be rapist. “One of ‘em took a shot at her – nicked her arm – and she charged him… opened him up from balls to brisket, and held his fuckin’ eyes open as he died so he could see it was a woman that done it! And you think she ain’t got the guts to make a tough call…? To do what needs to be done…? Your decision all right, and you know you’d have done the same damned thing!
“And then, what?” Langdale sneered as he continued, too angry to give any quarter now as the defiance began to fade from Thorne’s eyes. “You’d be the poor prick beggin’ for forgiveness and tryin’ to explain… Only difference is, Eileen would ‘a stood by ya! Eileen would ‘a had your back while the shit was flyin’. Eileen wouldn’t have been the fuckin dog that you just were to her, five minutes ago!”
The Dead Alone (Empires Lost Book 3) Page 116
