Edmund looked up hopefully. “What is it?” He asked. “Please, if you can do something…”
Hanover smiled inwardly. Edmund had been on the verge of disowning Stewart when she’d been… imprisoned. “We have to establish what is going on,” he said. “Case the joint, in gangster vernacular.”
“You’ll send someone in?” Edmund asked. “Who?”
“None of your business,” Hanover said. “Baron; we will try to rescue her – I suppose we owe her that much. However, this has a condition attached; you must not, now or ever, reveal that anything is happening, or that you’re even aware of any change in her status. She filed irregularly, so no one will notice.”
“I understand,” Edmund said. “I’ll make certain of it.”
“Not one word,” Hanover said. “If there is the slightest hint that there might be a rescue mission, they’ll kill her or surround her with an entire brigade of Waffen-SS. If a single word gets out, we’ll hit the site from the air.” He smiled at Edmund’s expression. “It might be more merciful.”
Benjamin Matthews Senior had often considered that he had been born into the wrong time. His childhood had been filled with tales of Kim and similar figures, advancing over Central Asia, meeting tribesmen and impressing them with tales of British glory, and outwitting stupid slow Russian stereotypes. Naturally, he went into the Army, but the British army of 2015 frowned upon young Captains taking leave of the rest of the military and trying to play the Lone Ranger. His failure to complete the SAS selection course – much to everyone’s surprise – had left him without a mission; perfect for a recruitment by MI6.
“We do missions here that you’ll have only read about in books,” the recruiter had said, and Matthews had never looked back. From inserting into several different terrorist groups, to resuming a dissident from a Saudi jail, Captain Matthews had finally found his place. Too smart to remain in the Army, too… limited to grasp the real danger of his work, meeting the Prime Minister seemed to be exactly what he deserved.
“Mr Prime Minister, may I say that it is a pleasure to meet you at last,” Matthews boomed, shaking Hanover’s hand with gusto. “I understand that you have a mission for me?”
Hanover didn’t seem amused. “How’s your German?” He asked. “Are you prepared for a mission into Germany?”
Matthews grinned. “She’s fine, how’s yours?” He asked. Hanover stared at him; one of the few men who wasn’t either intimidated or exasperated with him. “I speak fluent German, thank you.”
Hanover rattled off a question in flawless German. “So, the pen of your aunt is in the garden,” Matthews said. “Is my mission to rescue her?”
Hanover smiled for the first time. “It is not normal for an agent to be briefed by the Prime Minister,” he said. Matthews, who wasn’t the idiot he enjoyed pretending to be, had worked out that that meant that the mission was very important. “This is a volunteer mission, so if you want to back out, now is the time to say so.”
“And miss out on a chance of scoring with some hot German birds?” Matthews asked wryly. He suspected that Hanover wasn’t fooled by the act. “I reluctantly accept.”
Hanover smiled. “Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to observe a German manor house and locate one Kristy Stewart,” he said. Matthews lifted his eyebrows in an exaggerated expression of shock. “Yes, she’s been finally brought face to face with the true face of the Nazis, and they seem to be holding her prisoner. We still have a location beacon coming from her camera.”
Matthews thought quickly. “That doesn’t mean that she’s with the camera,” he pointed out.
“I know,” Hanover said. Matthews was impressed; he’d met more than a few politicians who had an exaggerated idea of their own importance. “That’s why we’re sending you. Your mission is to find out what the situation really is.”
“Well, it might be interesting,” Matthews said, staying in character. “Besides, it beats working with the American SAS trainees.”
“We had to help them build their own force,” Hanover said. “Your helicopter will leave tonight, along with the bombers that will hammer the Germans and distract them from any other incursions on their air defence network.”
Matthews stuck out a hand. “I would be honoured to accept the mission,” he said. Hanover shook his hand firmly. “I’ll bring her back, alive or dead.”
“I’ll settle for having a clear idea of her location,” Hanover said. “The SAS can recover her.”
“Overrated bastards,” Matthews said. “Don’t worry, sir; you can leave it all in my hands.”
Major Steve Stirling had found himself somewhat at a loose end. The Prime Minister had found him an office within the main governing complex – in his role as Hanover’s aide – but there was very little for him to do at the moment. The Oversight Committee had branched out now that events had moved far from the original history, moving into issues of shaping a post-war world that would be best for Britain – and of course the world – and Stirling wasn’t needed any longer.
He smiled. The arrival of American troops in vast numbers would put him back in the front lines; such as they were, as the priority was to avoid a repeat of the riots in 1941. General Eisenhower wasn’t too keen on listening to such a junior officer, but he’d slowly come around to recognising that he served Hanover as a go-between. Still, for the moment, he had time to continue his investigation into HMS Artful.
The computers of Ten Downing Street were special in one way; they had immediate access to the entire military intranet, hiding information from the public, but never from the Civil Service. No one knew when the Prime Minister might want a briefing; the links were kept open at all times, protected by the sheer power of quantum encryption and the certain knowledge that if anyone in 1942 breached the centre of British Government, the war was over anyway.
Stirling accessed the Ministry of Defences files and started to work, whistling cheerfully to himself. What information wasn’t immediately available even to a senior Civil Servant was opened to Cunningham’s access codes, ones passed on to Stirling against all the rules governing the government’s computers. Sheer laziness beat security, every time.
“Now, that’s interesting,” he muttered, as he poured himself a cup of tea, using one of his precious supply of teabags. You just couldn’t get them these days, along with a lot of other luxuries from the world of 2015. “Why would the files simply… stop?”
Sipping his tea, he started to work on the files, launching questions into the entire MOD databank, searching for HMS Artful. The mere use of a question program was covered by the Official Secrets Act; the program had been carefully modified to allow access only to documents within his – or rather Cunningham’s – security clearance. The first file was the official log, which had attachments of the other logs on the vessel that were written by the other officers.
He chuckled. He wasn’t sure, but he suspected that the Royal Navy viewed the idea of anyone, but the captain, writing a log with some concern. Who knew what they might put in? Stirling didn’t; an entire chunk of HMS Artful’s logs were missing. It was as if they’d never been filed at all.
“That’s ridiculous,” he said aloud, examining the screen. It was a serious offence to fail to file a log, yet the last entry dated from 20th September 1940/2015, when Artful had departed Britain for a mission. It was possible, he knew, that Artful might have been sent directly to East Asia, to join the battle and meet its fate in the Dutch East Indies in December, but…