“It’s big like the Raptor… was it fast?”
“Yeah… pretty fast,” Thorne nodded, smiling as he remembered the joy he’d felt upon first qualifying to fly the jet. “Getting to the end of their life now though, after twenty-five-odd years of good service… the RAAF’s waiting to replace them with F-35s just like the one we have here… just waiting for their turn in the queue as production starts.” IT never occurred to Thorne, as he reminisced, that he was speaking in the present tense about events far away in a future that might never happen.
The next photograph was of a strangely built house on a block of open, brown-grassed land with the towering skyscrapers of a huge city rising imposingly in the deep background. A middle-aged man and woman stood in the foreground beside a large, white automobile of a type and style Trumbull had never before seen.
“My parents,” Thorne explained softly, the memories now not so fond. “They’re both dead… died years ago. That’s the house I grew up in as a kid.”
“The city: it’s huge…!”
“No, not really,” Thorne grinned with irony, thinking Trumbull’s concept of the word ‘huge’ wasn’t necessarily the same as his own. “That’s only Melbourne, mate: one of Australia’s state capitals. That photo was taken in 1975, just a few months before mum and I moved out to the country. The city covers a lot of area physically, but the actual density of population is pretty low in most Australian cities. Melbourne’s probably five times larger than London in terms of area, but even now — in 2010, I mean — there’s only about four million people living there.” Thorne grinned as he saw the surprise in the man’s face. “That’s not many for a big city: London has twice that many crammed into a space a fifth the size… not much different to what it has now.”
“Only four million people,” Trumbull muttered softly. He’d never really thought about how many souls were crammed into London’s streets and boroughs, but he knew he’d always felt the city to be absolutely huge whenever he had cause to visit there. Yet the city Thorne had grown up in as a child, with just half the population, covered an area of land five times greater. He knew Australia was a country many times larger than England… or even the whole of Britain for that matter… but that statement alone really did bring home the differences of scale between his world and the one Max Thorne knew. He flipped to the next photo and gave a happy smile.
“London!” He exclaimed in recognition… at least Trafalgar Square hadn’t changed all that much, although some of the buildings in the background seemed as strange and imposing as those in the previous photograph. A pretty young woman wearing a bright, summer dress and a playful expression on her face stood in the foreground by Nelson’s Column, her dark hair clasped behind her head and hanging down across one shoulder.
“I would say that that picture was taken five years ago, but instead I’ll just say it was taken in the summer of 2005.” Trumbull noted a changed inflection in Thorne’s voice… something different and hesitant in the tone.
“Your wife…?” He asked softly, and as he looked up he was more than a little surprised to see the man’s eyes were moist.
“Yes,” Thorne said simply, taking up his coffee cup and staring down into it.
“She’s very beautiful,” Trumbull complemented haltingly, a feeling of uncertainty creeping over him as he spoke. He knew there were many things about this man’s past that hadn’t been spoken of, and there were likely to be important reasons for that. He also suddenly realised that viewing these photographs might well have dragged his commanding officer into an emotional ‘minefield’. “It must have been difficult for you to leave her behind…”
“Not really,” Thorne replied with some difficulty, his voice almost breaking with sudden emotion. “She died two years after that photo was taken.”
“My God… I’m so sorry Old Man… forgive me!” Trumbull stomach lurched as if he’d just fallen into a deep pit… something his conscience would’ve preferred at that point.
“How were you to know?” Thorne replied, trying to smile and mostly succeeding. “As I said, it was a long time ago… nearly three years now…” He took a gulp of the coffee. “We’d been expecting it for longer than that, of course…”
“There’s no need to explain,” Trumbull began, fearing he’d insensitively opened a terrible old wound.
“No… it’s okay… really. Maybe it’s better if I do talk about it. You see, life in the 21st Century isn’t quite as simple as it is now for a number of reasons: there are some enemies you can’t fight so easily as Hitler or the Luftwaffe. My wife contracted a disease not long after we were married in 2004. We had no idea at the time… some test failed, or wasn’t carried out properly, and we just didn’t know — not that it would’ve made any difference anyway. The disease was called AIDS — Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome — and it could lay dormant in your body for many years before you knew something was wrong. It was early 2007 when the first symptoms were detected and diagnosed, and from then on she went downhill quickly. This disease… well it destroys the body’s ability to fight infections. AIDS wouldn’t kill a victim most of the time, but it stops them being able to fight all the things that do. A common cold got her in the end, and she fell into a coma just ten months after first diagnosis and died two weeks later.”
“There… there were no treatments?” Trumbull stammered, deeply moved by this outpouring of Thorne’s soul. He couldn’t believe that infection or disease might still plague a future so great and advanced as to produce such things as the Raptor and the Lightning.
“There was no cure… is no cure,” Thorne said with finality. “There was just nothing to be done…” There was a long pause, and the pilot watched the man’s actions as silence reignedThorne staring at a dead spot on the far wall and fighting a hard battle within his own mind.
“I see that you loved her very much…”
“Yes,” Thorne said finally, managing a weak smile. “Yes, I did.”
“I hope you can forgive me for bringing that up…”
“No problem,” the Australian shook his head. “I think it might actually be better for me to talk about this kind of shit every now and again…”…and he was surprised to discover he actually meant every word.
“Well any time you want to talk about anything, you can always count on me to listen, my friend.” Trumbull smiled warmly, patting Thorne on the shoulder in a comradely manner.
“I may hold you to that some time,” Thorne warned, grinning faintly and deciding that perhaps he did feel a little better after all.
Davies, Kransky and Donelson, the only other Hindsight officers present on the base at that time, arrived fifteen minutes later. It was as they all took their seats that Thorne revealed the reason behind calling the impromptu meeting: the presence of Oberstleutnant Carl Ritter, the prisoner they’d fished out of the water following the raid of two days before. All three were equally surprised at the synchronous nature of Ritter’s capture, but only Thorne had formed an idea — wild and unlikely as it was — as to how they might make full use of that opportunity.
“You wouldn’t believe that something as unlikely as this could happen.” Much like the rest of those present who were in the know, Donelson found the German pilot’s arrival a little difficult to accept as coincidence. “They send nothing for six weeks, then two air raids within days of each other and Ritter — of all people — is shot down in that second raid and lands right in our hands.”