Winds of Change (Empires Lost Book 2)

by Charles S. Jackson

  But he couldn’t maintain the anger in the end; weariness of both mind and body were such that he had no stamina for self-righteousness or rage. Half sitting and half allowing himself to fall backward, Brandis dropped back onto the kitchen chair and ran the dirty shirt across his face once more.

  “You bastards...” He muttered softly, his voice hollow and broken as he again stared at his own pathetic reflection and tears welled in his eyes. “You rotten, gutless bastards...!”

  Alone in that kitchen, Brandis felt a greater sensation of abandonment that he’d ever experienced in his living memory. The tears began to stream freely down his cheeks as continued to stare forlornly at his own reflection, desperately seeking a response that would never come.

  Dunluce Castle ruins

  County Antrim, Reich-Protektorat Nordirland

  Ten hours behind Australian time, it was drawing close to evening on the first day of October as the alert came through at Dunluce Castle. Chilly winds whipped about below leaden, overcast skies that threatened rain but as yet had failed to deliver, although there was a distinctly moist feel in the air even so. Brendan Behan and Seán Michaels were keeping watch on approaches to the castle’s landward side as they first heard and then finally caught sight of the motorcycle’s approach from the south along Ballytober Road.

  Sheltered inside the remains of the outbuildings guarding the stone bridge across to the main castle structure, Michaels was quick to ready his German-made G1 rifle but was instantly advised to remain calm by Brendan. He recognised the rider immediately as one of their local IRA volunteers and walked out of the ruins to meet him as the old Norton coughed and spluttered to a halt nearby.

  “‘Conas atá tu, Liam…?” He called out by way of greeting, raising a hand as the young rider worked quickly to remove his goggles and leather riding helmet. “You’re in an awful hurry this afternoon.”

  “Aye, that’s true enough, Brendan,” Liam replied, breathing heavily due both to exertion and nerves. “Word from Dublin is the SS is working their way across the Antrim countryside searching house-to-house and farm-to-farm. Latest is they’ll have got as far as Bushmills and Portballintrae by nightfall.” Liam Creegan was all of twenty-two years old, tall and thin to the point of being scrawny with a mess of wiry brown hair that refused any attempt to be combed or tamed in any way.

  “No time to piss about then,” Brendan remarked immediately, clapping the man on the shoulder. “Bring the bike ‘round back and we’ll get take you to see Kelly.”

  “There’s a van comin’ as soon as it’s dark to take y’all across to Coleraine, and then on to Dungiven if it’s safe,” Liam explained further as the pair wheeled the motorcycle out of sight behind the nearest ruins. “We’ve got someone there who can put you up for a few days while Dublin organises something a bit more permanent. “O’Leary thinks they’ll try to get you across at Derry or Strabane.”

  “Reckon the Nazis will have somethin’ t’say about that, but I’ll be happy for the chance to get back on the other side of the border all the same,” Brendan growled with a grimace as they leaned the bike against one of the stone walls and he gestured toward the bridge. “Come on then: let’s take you to see the ‘boss’ and see what he has to say about it.”

  Michaels stayed at his post, rifle clenched nervously in both hands as he watched them walk off toward the castle. He turned back to the road as a light drizzle finally began to fall from the darkening sky, adding to the chill of foreboding that suddenly swept through him.

  1st ARDU, RAAF Tocumwal

  New South Wales, Australia

  Group Captain (RAF) Alec Trumbull didn’t like having his sleep interrupted. He was just twenty-eight years of age, and while it was true that he was most certainly at the peak of physical condition, the extremely full and quite active daily workload he assigned himself from dawn to well after dusk meant that he valued the few hours of sleep he did get very highly. He was therefore in an incredibly poor mood as he lifted the receiver of the phone that lay on the side table by his cot, as much to silence the raucous ringing as any real interest as to whom might be mad enough to call him at such an ungodly hour.

  “Trumbull here,” he mumbled groggily, not having cleared his head enough to sound angry as yet but prepared to take the time to build up a really good head of steam.

  “Alec, its Rupert…” That it was Max Thorne’s personal assistant was a cause for some pause and a little consideration: that the man sounded quite distressed even moreso. “Max is in trouble…”

  “Max is often in trouble, Old Man”, Trumbull countered through the middle of a deep yawn, surrounded by the darkness of the room as he sat up in bed for the first time and rubbed heavily at his eyes. “He seems to excel at getting himself there, generally…” he made a show of bugging his bleary eyes in an attempt to focus them on the luminous hands of his wristwatch, then pulled a rather over-exaggerated face of pure dismay as he noted the actual hour for the first time “…but that doesn’t necessarily mean he’s in any danger…” another yawn “…and a fine ‘hello and good day’ to you too, by the way…” he added, not without sarcasm “…what makes you think otherwise…?”

  “I – I’ve received… information…” The emphasis in that last word went some way toward cutting through the fog of sleep that fought desperately to hang onto the edges of Trumbull’s mind. “…I know where he is, and he needs our help… the Germans are going to attack soon… we need to get him out of that bloody desert now… it may already be too late-!”

  “Jesus wept, Rupert!” Trumbull exploded, instantly cutting him off. “Not on an open line, for pity’s sake! Where are you?”

  “I’m in Tocumwal... at the railway station: just arrived a few minutes ago.”

  “What on earth are you doing there? There are trains from Melbourne at this time of the morning?” Trumbull asked with a frown.

  “No, there aren’t any bloody trains at this time of the morning, Alec!” Gold replied, sounding more than a little testy. “We’ve driven four bloody hours to get here, only to discover one of the sodding hotels has burned to the ground, the others are either closed or full, the base won’t let anyone in this late, and the only bloody place I could be certain of finding a public phone was the railway station...!”

  “All right, Old Chap... no need to go flying off the handle,” Trumbull placated, his nicer sensibilities suggesting he consciously avoid any unkind thoughts about the histrionics of homosexuals. “I’ll call through to the guard house – they’ll be expecting you by the time you get here...” As he hung up the receiver, he rose from the bed to get dressed and released a frustrated sigh in recognition of the fact he wasn’t likely to see any more sleep that morning.

  Dawn hadn’t come but it’s arrival was certainly being forecast in the brightening of the sky above the trees on the eastern horizon as Rupert and Alex sat down alone in the Officer’s Mess twenty minutes later, an orderly having provided both men with a steaming mug of hot coffee.

  It wasn’t a cold morning and Trumbull was quite comfortable wearing standard CWD (or ‘combined working dress’) that comprised a normal RAF-blue shirt with rank and insignia over DPCU fatigue pants and boots. Disruptive Pattern Camouflage Uniform was the standard-issue dress for Australian military forces in combat theatres and comprised irregular blotches of orange-brown, mid-brown, leaf-green and dark green over an overall background of a light greenish sand colour. Colloquially referred to by the men themselves as ‘Auscam’ or ‘hearts and bunnies’ (due to the common shapes of some of the coloured blotches), it had proven incredibly effective in most Australian temperate and tropical zones. Troops serving in North Africa wore a modified pattern with different colourings more suited for use in a desert environment.

  Rupert Gold wore the same three-piece suit (sans jacket) that he’d been wearing in his office the day before and he looked exactly the way he actually felt: utterly and completely exhausted. Any number of different varieties of native birds could b
e heard chirping joyously outside in anticipation of the dawn, and there was nothing so draining to the young man’s mind as that otherwise joyous sound when heard just before sunrise after a long night of no sleep whatsoever.

  “Now what’s all this about...?” Trumbull pressed gently as Rupert took his first sip at the coffee and found it to be excellent, his eyes widening slightly as its warmth and stimulant effects began to instantly flow through him. “I won’t ask you how you came to be aware of Max’s actual whereabouts – the bloody man’s well known for his complete inability to keep a secret – but what’s so desperately all-important that it’s dragged you up here at this hour?”

  “I’ve received information suggesting there’s going to be a major attack in North Africa within the next forty-eight hours or so. There’s grave danger Max will be either killed or taken prisoner.”

  “Well, we could ill-afford either of those two scenarios,” Trumbull acknowledged with little reaction, sipping at the coffee, “but what makes you think this is so urgent? No one doubts there’s going to be a full assault eventually, but the front lines have been static now for weeks – what information do you have that we don’t regarding this happening right now?”

  “Hard evidence...? None...” Rupert muttered evasively, not wanting to give a straight answer. “But the source I got this from is reliable and he’s rarely wrong: rare enough to warrant me changing my plans to get up here straight away.”

  “It’s that elusive Mister Brandis, is it?” Trumbull countered, taking the flicker of surprise in Rupert’s eyes as confirmation enough. “Max has mentioned him a few times over the years... told me that he used to be your employer and that he had many contacts in very high places back in England.”

  “That would sum the man up well enough, if a little briefly,” Rupert admitted after a moment’s pause. “Did he also mention that the man was obscenely rich and left most of his fortune in gold to Max for him to use as he saw fit in fighting this war?”

  “Yes, that came up in conversation,” Alec nodded in return, his curiosity piqued now. “We were all at a loss as to how someone could manage to squirrel away that much gold in one lifetime without affecting national economies, but Max seemed to have the impression even you really knew very little about the man’s background or his personal life.”

  “He was away ‘on business’ – as he called it – a lot of the time in the ten years I knew him,’ Rupert explained, “and those times he was home he seemed not to have any personal life whatsoever as far as I could tell. I wouldn’t know about collecting that gold in ‘one lifetime’ either: one of the gold bars he showed me was dated 1894 and there were other crates in there dated earlier than that... a lot earlier.” He shrugged. “James once told me that the warehouse he lived and worked in had been in the Brandis ‘name’ since the start of the Nineteenth Century... I didn’t think much of it at the time – everything was a bit of a shock – but I’ve thought a lot about it since. There were thousands of crates in that warehouse and I barely looked at any of them... who knows how far some of those dates went back to?”

  He shook his head dismissively, realising they had strayed somewhat off topic.

  “Anyway Alec, the important thing right now is what we can do to help Max out of this predicament?”

  “Aye, there’s the rub indeed,” Trumbull agreed, quoting one of Thorne’s favourite Shakespearean lines. “What can we do?” He narrowed his eyes a little as he considered the question, at the same time filing away a mental reminder that they should definitely continue a discussion on the previous topic at a later date. “North Africa’s not far short of nine thousand miles from here – not exactly a ‘brisk afternoon stroll’, I’m sure you’ll agree. We don’t have too many assets in that region to draw on that aren’t already tied up in operations elsewhere.”

  “No need to be coy, Alec,” Rupert countered with a thin smile. “I am Max’s personal assistant, and he’s pathologically unable to keep secrets, as you’ve already pointed out. I’m well aware that you have ‘assets’ right here at Tocumwal capable of covering that distance within hours that could evacuate him and both his new toys. How quickly can the Galaxy and the Extender be made ready for flight?”

  “Three M.D. would never give authorisation for that...” Trumbull began quickly, as if there might me more chance of winning any argument if the words were spoken fast enough. “Victoria Barracks is already unhappy that Max was allowed to take his prototypes over there in the first place... they’d never allow me to put the jets in that much danger also...” Although Tocumwal was situated in New South Wales, its proximity to the Victorian border meant the base actually came under the jurisdiction of the Third Military District, headquartered at Victoria Barracks in Melbourne (which was also the wartime GHQ of the Australian War Cabinet). “In any case, I happen to have it on good authority that orders for their withdrawal have already been signed off on in Melbourne – they’ll be out of there by the end of next week regardless.”

  “Next week will be too late, Alec!” Rupert shot back, not willing to give any ground. “It was made clear they need to get out of there this weekend. Anyway, technically-speaking, those jets are the property of Commonwealth Military Industries,” he observed pointedly, not particularly interested in dancing about the issue, “and as such, as Max Thorne’s P.A. I can – in theory – request their use for any purpose I see fit in his absence. At the very least, they would ultimately be the property of the British Provisional Government-in-Exile rather than the RAAF, and I’m fairly confident Prime Minister Trumbull would be happy to hear from me... CMI has been one of his most active supporters over the last two years...”

  “I don’t doubt my father would be happy to help Max in any way he was able,” Trumbull replied testily, allowing a hard edge to creep into his tone, “although I must say I do not appreciate the threat of having my own family used against me...”

  “I’m sorry, Alec – I truly am – but I need this to happen and I don’t really care how that comes about.” He softened his approach slightly in deference to a man he’d found significant respect for in the two years they’d known each other. “I’ve no doubt you don’t want to leave Max hanging either... and what about Eileen, Evan and the rest of his crew over there with him? Are we going to abandon all of them when we have the means to do something about their situation?”

  There was a long, tense silence as Alec considered that last statement. All of it was technically true: the aircraft were the property of Commonwealth Military Industries – the corporation Rupert had helped Thorne had set up two years ago in the aftermath of the 1940 invasion. That ownership had passed directly from the RAF under the direction of the British Provisional Government, and (again) technically, neither the RAAF nor the Australian War Cabinet had any say in the matter. Trumbull himself still remained an officer of the Royal Air Force, albeit on open-ended detachment to the RAAF.

  The fact also remained however that they were all living and working in Australia as guests – ultimately – of the Australian Government and military. While operations might not strictly require any Australian input or authorisation, there had nevertheless been an unspoken understanding that the local commands should be included in all intelligence and operations as a matter of courtesy and were also to be accorded a certain level of authority with regard to a power of ‘veto’ over any operation launched from that country’s shores – particularly anything that directly affected its own men in the field.

  Of course, there was the safety of Hindsight colleagues to consider on the other side of that argument, and loyalty to friends and family was something Trumbull took extremely seriously. Max had saved his life once, and he’d returned the favour during the invasion. They’d formed a bond of friendship during that time that had grown stronger in the years since.

  “All right...” he sighed finally, Rupert’s faint, expectant smile suggesting the man had known all along he would give in and had merely been waiting respectfully f
or Trumbull to reach that conclusion for himself. “All right... I’ll give orders for both aircraft to be prepared for immediate take off... but...” he continued, holding up a silencing finger as Rupert opened his mouth as if to speak “...But... we will only fly as far as RAF China Bay in Ceylon. I will not take those aircraft into a theatre of combat unless I get proof of there being an imminent danger. From there, Suez is only about six hours away, giving us a much better response time if we are needed.” He fixed Rupert with a classic officer’s glare that openly defied any disagreement. “Are we clear on that...?”

  Rupert Gold very much wanted to argue the point, but the power of that stare made him think twice about pushing his luck.

  “Thank you, Alec – I understand completely... how soon do you think we can be airborne?”

  “We’ll be ready to leave by mid-morning, Old Chap,” Trumbull shrugged, mostly hiding a smirk as he decided to argue a little more just for the fun of it, “but what makes you think you’ll be coming with us...?” The animated discussion that followed lasted at least fifteen minutes before the group captain decided he’d ‘fought on’ long enough and finally gave in.

  St Peter’s Church, Tocumwal

  New South Wales, Australia

  The first rays of sunlight were streaming in through open windows on the eastern side of the cottage, lighting the rooms and the hallway beyond the kitchen door. Briony found Brandis asleep at that same kitchen table, head resting against the tabletop in a position that couldn’t possibly be comfortable. She too was exhausted, her face sunken and drawn with lack of sleep, her eyes reddened from far too many tears. Yet she’d found no comfort in sleep that night and as she’d finally emerged from Brandis’ room to find birds chirping and the dawn upon her, she also discovered the house completely empty save for the two of them.

  The kettle had already boiled by the time her movement about the kitchen finally roused him, and he found a steaming cup of black coffee placed before him on the table as he slowly raised his head and stared up at her with his own bleary, red-rimmed eyes. His copy of Les Miserables lay on the table beside her and although he couldn’t guess at the reason, he somehow recognised that its presence was significant.