“Anyway, if that gold is worth one billion pounds Sterling, then that makes it the equivalent of about four billion US dollars at 1940 exchange rates — almost three times the wealth of Rockefeller when he died. Buffett… Gates… Branson… Alan Sugar… shit, even Ross Perot — all modern billionaires, and all recognisable names. I could throw in names from the past like Rockefeller, Henry Ford, Carnegie or John Jacob Astor, and most educated people would know of most, if not all of them.” He paused for a moment to add effect to his words. “You ever heard of a ‘James Brandis’? Anyone that rich, we would’ve heard of… no need to look that up in a database.” He paused for another moment to gather his thoughts.
“Think about it…” he continued. “Three thousand tonnes of gold doesn’t just appear overnight… and the name of anyone collecting that kind of amount is never going to remain practically unknown to the rest of the world. It takes years to amass that kind of fortune, even if you’re going about it openly, and you can also bet handing that lot over hasn’t cleaned him out. There’s no way ‘James Brandis’ is this bugger’s real name.”
“Supposing what you say is true,” Eileen countered, playing agent provocateur. “If this Brandis is using an assumed name, then who is he really? There are bloody few men of this era that know anything about Hindsight, and this fella seems to know enough about us to know the kind of good use we can put all that gold to…”
“Ay, well there’s the rub,” Thorne quipped, paraphrasing Shakespeare. “Who is he indeed? That’s something I think we should have our friends at MI6 look into for us and see what they can dig up.”
‘Shouldn’t be too hard to organise for the newly-appointed richest man in history,” Donelson observed, a faint smile crossing her lips.
“Don’t remind me!” He replied with a grin, mostly managing to stay in complete denial regarding the incomprehensible fortune that had just come into his possession. “All this wealth won’t change me though… don’t worry: I’ll still remember all my friends, Miss… ahh… Miss…” He feigned a momentary lapse in memory, as usual using humour to move away from a potentially threatening subject.
“Smartarse…!” Eileen growled in return, trying not to smile for a moment before another thought occurred to her, and the smile left of its own accord. “You’re really going to fly that attack yourself, Max?”
“That’s the idea,” he replied grimly. “Even if we could get a Halifax over the target, there’s no guarantee we’ll get it out again. Bloody likely we won’t manage it, and I’m not going to expect that of anyone else. Regardless of the shit Jack keeps gives me, I’ve got more flight hours on this bitch than he has — particularly in ground attack modes.” He was silent for a moment as they flew on at barely subsonic speed through the dark, English night. “Tomorrow morning, I’ll need you and Hal to arm one of the ‘Three Stooges’…”
“Jesus, Max, I was afraid that was what you were thinking about…”
“We’ve really got no choice now,” he reasoned slowly, not exceptionally happy with the idea either. “It’s the only option we’ve got that has a chance of really doing the Krauts some damage. If we can hurt them enough, we may be able to force them to back off and give us some breathing room.”
“And if it doesn’t stop them?”
“…Then Christ help all of us…!” Thorne replied, finally.
13. Lay Down Misere
Hindsight Training Unit, HMS Proserpine
Scapa Flow, Orkney Islands
Saturday
August 17, 1940
He was in the Soho lane again, but this time it was much darker. His wife was walking ahead in her woollen jacket, and the skinheads were behind him as usual. There was her scream, the fight, and suddenly he was no longer Max Thorne. In that moment, he instead became one of the thugs, and saw everything through the other man’s eyes. He waited for the Australian to dispatch the first two ‘Skins’ before coming in and putting him down. He felt the blow jar his leg as he threw the toe of his Doc Marten against the man’s skull. He saw everything, horrified as he felt the anticipation — the anticipation — as the animal turned and reached out for his wife. She was screaming continually now as his hands reached out for her, and as she turned toward him, the hood of her jacket fell away to reveal the gaunt, festered face of a decaying corpse… and it was still screaming…
Thorne awoke with a savage jolt, a cry on his lips and tears in his eyes. He slowly checked his watch, his chest heaving as he tried to calm down in the cold darkness of the early morning. It was just gone 3:00am — he’d had less than two hours sleep since they’d arrived back at HMS Proserpine — and although he knew it’d be ridiculous to even consider sneaking across to the Officer’s Mess, reason was in short supply at that time of the morning. He dressed quickly in windbreaker and track pants and slipped out of his quarters in search of the pointless oblivion of alcohol.
Up already and patrolling as usual, Kransky was the only man to notice as Thorne made his way slowly along the gravel path outside the billets and stepped inside the mess door. The American watched from a few hundred metres away and shook his head slowly, otherwise motionless and all but invisible in the shadows of a nearby stores building. Illumination within the base wasn’t great at night, but it was good enough for Kransky to recognise the Hindsight CO well enough. As he was often up and about in the wee hours of those cold mornings, the sight of Thorne sneaking into the Officers Mess wasn’t an unexpected sight in any case: it’d been happening regularly enough for the security chief to generally prefer to be elsewhere and save the awkwardness of knowing what was going on.
He couldn’t bring himself to do anything about it officially for a variety of reasons: he had a great deal of respect for Thorne, and whatever was destroying the man’s soul was surely powerful indeed. Kransky had seen his share of nightmares over the years, and still kept enough of his own ‘demons’ at bay to know how fine the line was. He didn’t seek solace in alcohol these days, or the other stupidities such as opium or morphine, but he knew how close he’d also come to going under in his time. So far, Thorne’s illicit nocturnal wanderings hadn’t caused any undue difficulty, so he let the man be.
Luftwaffe Airbase at Stavanger
Sola, Southern Norway
Last minute changes to mission orders were always problematic at best, and Carl Ritter had been more than a little unimpressed with the sealed orders he’d received from local HQ late on Thursday afternoon. The staff flight and I Gruppe of ZG26 was to be temporarily reassigned to Luftflotte Five and transfer immediately to Norway to become part a large-scale air assault scheduled for that weekend. Chaos had reigned as his staff flight and I Gruppe — barely returned to St Omer following completion of flight conversion to the new aircraft — underwent complete upheaval once more, with overnight bags packed and aircraft readied and equipped with extra fuel tanks for the long trip ahead. Departing early on the Friday morning, a four hour flight had taken the unit almost 1,000km north to Stavanger Airbase at Sola, Norway.