Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2)

by Charles S. Jackson

  “Hegel...” the Reichsmarschall croaked softly, savagely shaking his head once or twice as if that might clear the strange voice from his mind. “...Have him brought to me immediately!”

  “He – he left last night, Kurt,” Schiller stammered, staring intently at his CO and as he watched desperately for signs that something might be physically wrong with the man. Tension began building within him also as the unthinkable ramifications of what they were discovering started to register in his own mind. “Flew out to Stornoway by helicopter to meet an urgent flight back to Berlin... I – I thought you knew...” There was a very pregnant pause as both man stared at each other, neither willing to accept the enormity of what might be happening. “Kurt... he couldn’t have...” Schiller tried to reason, his head shaking faintly for emphasis. “Surely not even he could be that insane...?”

  “Release the dogs...” Kurt Reuters snarled coldly after another long pause. “I want the bastard taken into custody the moment he lands, wherever that is! I want an up-to-the-minute report on where that bloody ship is: I want it stopped and turned back to the nearest friendly port immediately!” As Schiller turned to leave, he laid a hand on the man’s shoulder, halting him momentarily. “...And Albert... find us a way off this stinking fucking island within the hour: the final assault in North Africa is due to commence in the next forty-eight hours and I am not waiting around here all Goddamned day for them to fix that Goddamned flying boat! I don’t care if we have to squeeze in the back of a bloody fighter-bomber – get us out of this fucking place now...!”

  As Schiller rushed off, orders in hand, Reuters turned his attention back to the three men still standing beside him at the bar. Although none really understood what it was they’d unleashed, all could nevertheless recognise that it was something significant and definitely something not good, and there was a certain amount of apprehension surrounding the fact that the whole thing had been started by their sticking their noses into the business of the highest-ranking officer in the Wehrmacht.

  “Now...” Reuters said slowly, words as cold and heavy as lead as he cast a dark gaze across all three “...you men are certain of what you’ve seen?”

  “Dead certain, Mein Herr,” Schmidt nodded, standing his ground before the withering glare as his men nodded in agreement.

  “And… taking into account you will have the full protection of the Oberbefehlshaber der Wehrmacht behind you… would you all be willing to swear the same before the Führer himself...?”

  “Jawohl, Mein Herr...!” All three chorused in unison.

  “Then you’d all better come with me,” he said finally. “If what we think is happening right now proves to be correct, and you lot are the ones who warned us of it, then you’ll all have earned yourself a promotion and probably a bloody Ritterkreuz as well before this week is out...!”

  He left the bar them also, the three SS officers in tow, and strode out into the drizzling rain toward the nearby communications shack, desperate to speak to the Führer as a sensation of outright terror twisted inside him the like of which he’d never before experienced.

  8th Army Defensive Lines near Agruda

  27km west of Suez, Egypt

  Another hot day faded away into a mild evening that threatened the chill of a cold desert night. Another day’s exercises had gone well, and again the overbearing threat of the final Axis assault had failed to materialise. Many of the newer recruits – men with little or no combat experience – had begun to develop feelings of complacency; a hope that perhaps the feared attack in fact wouldn’t come. The veterans knew better, of course...

  Max Thorne wasn’t a veteran in the classic sense of the word but neither was he optimistic about the days or weeks ahead. He also wasn’t a particularly happy man that evening as he sat alone by a small fire with a guitar across his lap, shielded from the faint night breezes on three sides by the hulking shapes of the Tunguska flak and parked prototype tanks. There’d been no official word back as yet regarding Kransky’s whereabouts, and the situation was beginning to play heavily on his mind for both professional and personal reasons.

  Of course, there was also the issue of what to do about Eileen Donelson; something that left him feeling very awkward and uncomfortable for reasons that were purely personal. As he was wont to do on occasion – when the mood took him and he was afforded the opportunity – he’d decided to make an attempt at relieving the stress he was experiencing by finding somewhere peaceful and alone and playing on his guitar. Its felt-lined protective case lay open beside him on the sand.

  An immaculately crafted instrument of spruce, rosewood and herringbone with a neck of solid Queensland maple, the Australian-made Maton Messiah EM100C was a fine instrument that Thorne would be the first to admit was far too good for the likes of him – if in a partially humorous tone at least. He loved playing it all the same and he was inwardly pleased enough of his own meagre abilities to not be particularly self-conscious about playing around others, although he still preferred playing alone nevertheless.

  It had been several weeks since he’d played last, and the constant travel had clearly had its effect on the instrument. He spent at least twenty minutes with a small electronic tuner clipped to the neck of the guitar, carefully tuning each string until he was happy with the result. Once he’d finished, he glanced around for a moment, almost self-conscious, before settling the Maton properly into his lap and beginning to play.

  With eyes closed and head tilted to one side, the choice of music came to him in an instant as the erratic glow of the crackling fire flickered across features that had suddenly become a mask of serene concentration. With a single gentle strum of the strings, he released that first rich, lustrous chord and launched into his own rendition of Razor’s Edge, a song that was a personal favourite and one that had been a huge hit for an Australian group of the Realtime early 1980s known as Goanna.

  Thorne began the first verse, rusty at the start but warming to the words and intentionally accentuating his own accent as he attempted to mimic Shane Howard’s distinctly Australian vocals. There was an off note here or there, both with his singing and playing, but he didn’t mind so much: everything else disappeared when he lost himself in the music as he had in that moment.

  He played through the song to a close, singing softly along with his eyes shut the entire time. As he finished, he opened them once more and stared up into the darkness, completely unsurprised to be staring straight at the person he’d heard approaching halfway through the third verse.

  “Been a long time, Max,” Eileen observed with a fond, gentle expression as she looked on from the other side of the campfire, and he was surprised to see the hint of tears at the corner of her eyes. “Long time since I’ve heard you play and even longer for that song in particular.”

  “Was I that bad…?” He grinned, giving a dry little smile but making the remark with kind intentions all the same. It was a half-hearted attempt at humour at best: having known Eileen Donelson for well over ten years, it was patently clear to him from seeing her expression and body language that she had things on her mind she wanted to talk about – something that also left him feeling quite ill at ease.

  “Just takes me back, that’s all…” She explained, dabbing a finger at her eyes and smiling also as she moved around the fire and sat down beside him. “…Takes me back far too far.”

  “…Not far enough for me…” Thorne countered with a broader, characteristic grin, “but I’ll do for the moment. It’d be nicer if I could string four notes together in a row without playing a dodgy one.”

  “That was perfect,” Eileen shook her head, refusing to hear any criticism.

  “No, it was not,” he shot back, still smiling, “and you, Miss Perfect Pitch, would be well aware of that!” He relented somewhat, deciding not to be too hard on himself after all. “…Very kind of you to say so, all the same…”

  “So formal now…?” She asked, attempting to hide a sudden feeling of sadness over his distant
reaction. “A year in The States has taken its toll, I see.” She leaned slightly sideways and gently bumped his shoulder with her own. “You’re a busy man nowadays, or so I hear.”

  “Busy isn’t the word!” Thorne grimaced, shaking his head. I was lucky to find the time spare to come out here at all. Thank Christ I’ve got Rupe looking after everything in my absence. The man’s a bloody genius! Best thing I ever did, taking him on board: whoever that bloody Brandis bloke is, he did me a favour sending Rupert Gold my way. He’s working ten hour days most of the week as well and I’m still being snowed under with work.”

  “Too much work to write a letter every now and then too, I gather...?” She’d taken more time than usual to work herself round to the real subject she wanted to discuss, but Eileen had gotten there in the end.

  “Ah...” Thorne responded softly, eyes lowering as he did his best to hide the guilt flared within him. “...I guess I have been... mostly…”

  “...Even to respond to some of mine...?” Eileen added with tears again in her eyes, more hurt than angry over a year of receiving no reply to any of her heartfelt letters. “Where have you been, Max?” She demanded softly as she found she no longer had any stomach for dancing around the issues within her mind. “Forget all the jokes about American accents and all that… you’ve been avoiding me since you got here, and you’re not the same man I kissed goodbye at Circular Quay twelve months ago when he was heading off to the US.”

  “Am I really so different?” He asked with a wry smile, although for a change he quite uncharacteristically felt no urge to openly make light of the situation. “I don’t feel any different,” he lied outright, but managed to cover that up, “but I guess it’s hard for me to call that one…” He shrugged. “…Or anyone else for that matter, I suppose. I’ve a thousand people working under me in New York already and a similar number in offices around the world, yet Rupert’s the only bugger I really talk to… when he’s there, which he hasn’t been all that much for a few months now.”

  “But you still couldn’t find the time to write back to an old friend…? Couldn’t reply to even one of her letters...?”

  “Look, Eileen, I wanted to…” he answered eventually, his mind searching desperately for some excuse that would be good enough to deflect her line of attack. “I just…” his voice trailed off as he realised he truly had no excuse he could give that was even close to being reasonable. By the same token, part of him also felt that there was no real reason for him to provide a valid reason.”

  “A lot of the time I have been too busy,” he began again, mostly managing to keep the vague indignance he felt out of his tone. “There have been endless business meetings and military conferences and congressional hearings and appearances before the US War Department Joint Board... you have to go through three or four layers of government bureaucracy to even have a chance to see someone who can get anything done, and even then it takes months sometimes to cut through the red tape. Half of the people in that bloody country don’t want anything to do with helping us, and most of the rest barely tolerate our presence. The Canadians are a big bloody help, and we’ve made some headway building new shipyards in Vancouver and Halifax, but the Yanks are where the industrial gold really is.” He shrugged again. “Unfortunately, there’s a lot of hard work and political ‘drilling’ required to get to the mother lode.”

  “I feel like I should be taking notes,” Eileen replied drily, not really buying much of the spiel he’d just given her. “Remind me to brush up on my shorthand before our next ‘heart-to-heart’.”

  At that he gave a third successive, dismissive shrug of his shoulders; something that didn’t go unnoticed by Eileen and contributed to a level of annoyance that was already smouldering within her mind.

  “I’m not trying to give you any excuses, Eileen,” he advised, intentionally allowing a little authority creep into his tone now. “I’m just stating facts…”he relented slightly in that moment, although it had more a desire not to cause a scene than any real desire not to hurt her feelings. “…However, I am sorry I didn’t make time to write to you. I did think about it… many times…” that at least was no lie “…but in those first few months at least I became so absorbed in the work that any moment to myself became an opportunity to sleep rather than anything else.”

  He paused for a moment to take a deep breath and his shoulders sagged, almost as if in resignation as he allowed a little real emotion to show for the first time. “...After that...? Well… I guess after that, so much time had passed that I’m not sure I knew what to say to you anymore...” He stared deep into the flames of the campfire as he spoke, not willing to meet her gaze as Eileen watched him with silent intent. “What were you doing...? What was your life like back there now...?” Another pause… “Who were you seeing...? I know... I know...!” He added quickly, heading off the protest he knew would come following that remark. “I know it’s all ridiculous...” He gave a dark, sardonic grin that carried a hint of self-loathing “It’s easy to say you don’t believe in vampires when the sun’s shining...” he added softly “...but then sometimes, alone in the dead of night, you think you hear that strange creak outside the door and suddenly the ridiculous doesn’t seem quite as impossible anymore...”

  “The answers to all those questions were in the letters, Max, if you took the time to read between the lines...” she observed softly, laying a gentle hand on his shoulder before adding, with just the hint of a quirky smile: “Some of the answers were even actually in the lines...”

  “I can’t give you an answer as to why I never wrote back to you because I don’t have an answer,” he said honestly, staring into her eyes now for the first time. “Something just seized up inside me every time I even thought about picking up a pen...” He released a long, drawn-out sigh of frustration as Eileen knowingly remained silent. “There hadn’t been too many others before ‘you-and-I’,” he continued slowly, picking is words carefully as he picked ideas selectively from the minefield of his own repressed feelings. “Not many... and there was only one after...” His voice almost broke then, and Eileen gave his shoulder a faint squeeze as he lowered his eyes momentarily, unable to speak his dead wife’s name. “And then there was only you again... after we came here... …God knows there’s been no one since...” He made a face that was mostly a grimace of acceptance. “I’ve grown accustomed to living alone... had a lot of practice after all. Got my first taste of it as a kid and I got used to it again – after a fashion – when Anna died...” He forced himself to say her name then. “I guess it was just easier to go back to it when I got to the US...” he shrugged, looking up into her eyes once more.

  “I wanted to talk to you... I did,” he continued with renewed intensity, “but how do you do that when someone’s ten thousand miles away? I couldn’t just pick up a mobile or ‘flick you an email’... to sit down and write out a goddamn novel about what I was feeling, put a stamp on it and wait months for a reply to come back...? It’s such a tedious way of trying to keep in touch...!”

  “Oh, my poor love!” Eileen breathed softly, realisation dawning in her mind for the first time over what was going on behind words that were growing more desperate as Thorne went on. “Can it be the culture shock’s finally hit you...? You’ve been there for each and every one of us along the way... When Lyness was hit and Nick died... when the invasion came at last... when we all fled England and landed at Tocumwal after twenty-four hours of flying, not knowing what was to become of us...” She reached up and softly caressed his face, brushing away an imaginary hair. “There you were, solid as a rock and strong as an ox; pushing us all on and leading us through each successive ‘wilderness’ until we’d all found our feet again...”

  “I don’t believe any of that psychobabble crap,” Thorne began sullenly, shaking his head in support of the denial. “It was no use after I lost Anna, and I’m damn sure I don’t need it now. Life’s what you make of it, and things get done by knuckling down and doing them.”<
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  “The last of the great ‘dinosaur’ males,” Eileen countered with a grin, “which is quite ironic considering the era we’re in. You bottled up all that grief of losing Anna and channelled it into your work once... if you’ll recall, that didn’t end all that well last time, and I’m not at all happy to see you drinking again… not that it’s any of my business so long as you’ve got it under control,” she added quickly, finding her turn to pre-empt an indignant protest. “Just one letter would’ve been enough, love… you know I’d have been on the first plane going back!”

  She leaned in and kissed him then. It wasn’t necessarily a lover’s kiss – although they’d certainly shared many of those in the past – yet it lacked nothing in its intensity as her lips joined softly with his and the fingers of her right hand ran through his hair, caressing the back of his neck. Thorne almost resisted, but he caught himself at the last moment, realising how much further that would damage their already problematic relationship at that moment. It ended quickly in any case, the movement transforming into a deep embrace that lasted a long time as Thorne’s initial resistance finally collapsed and he allowed himself to find some solace in the contact.

  “I think we need to talk properly, love...” she said slowly as they separated, both hands still resting on his shoulders as she stared deep into his eyes. “…Sit down somewhere comfortable and have a real talk. I have a couple of nurses from the casualty clearing station billeted in my tent but I’ve no doubt they’d be happy to give us a little privacy for a while.”

  “I...” he began slowly, unsure of how to convey his reluctance without offending.

  “Just talk, I promise you...” she reassured, laying a hand on his and mistaking his ambivalence for vulnerability. “Just a chat: you and I in private... a chance to get stuff off your chest for real...”