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Authors: John Birmingham
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England.
Himmler sighed.
The führer had calmed down and was standing at the table again, arms folded, chin on his chest as he bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet and pondered the diabolical strategic problems of the hour. The Allies must be kept from the Fatherland a little while longer. Soon the Reich would have its first atomic weapon, and there would be no more talk of unconditional surrender. Churchill and Roosevelt would be the ones groveling, begging for an accommodation.
Then, with the democracies checkmated in the West, they could turn their attention back to Stalin.
The map table did not extend beyond Poland, yet the vast steppes and the brooding Communist giant were never far from anyone’s mind. The cease-fire with Moscow was still holding, but it was beyond argument that the Red Army was using this time to prepare its defenses against another Wehrmacht attack, at the same time that the two states “cooperated” on a number of technical projects—all in the name of facing the “common enemy.” It was all horseshit, but the pause in hostilities suited them both.
Or rather, Stalin
thought
it suited him.
When the atomic warheads were finally delivered, the Slavic buffoon would be made to realize just how wrong he had been.
4
D-DAY + 5. 8 MAY 1944. 1833 HOURS.
PARIS.
Brasch had read somewhere that those who can eat well, and those who cannot, exist at all times on opposite sides of a gulf that can never be crossed.
It had been more than three and a half years since pastries had been legally sold in Paris, and about the same interval since fish, meat, chocolates, tobacco, and wine had been rationed almost out of existence. Nonetheless, sitting by one of the large windows in Maxim’s Le Bar Imperial, Major General Paul Brasch found himself adrift on the odors of fine French cuisine. The Parisians in the street below might have been getting by on starvation rations, but when
Reichsmarschall
Göring was in town looting the art treasures of the Republic, he loved to dine at Maxim’s, and so the wartime restrictions did not bite as heavily here.
Brasch nursed his Kir Royale and wondered whether or not he would ever have set foot in this place—or any like it—had it not been for the war.
Not likely, he mused. And truthfully, it wasn’t the war that had delivered him to this stool at the end of a dark wooden bar. No, it was the Emergence. Without the miracle of the time travelers’ arrival, he would probably be a frozen corpse somewhere in Russia by now. Instead he sipped at a cocktail, enjoyed the sour look on the face of his latest bodyguard,
Hauptsturmführer
Neumann, and wondered whether his data package would arrive before his dinner guest.
He would never know, really. The encryption software protecting his communications stripped off any identifying tags such as datelines. He alone would be able to read the file, and then for only ten minutes, before it disappeared from history altogether. And of course, he wouldn’t be cracking open his latest instructions from the British over a late supper with General Oberg, the SS commander in Paris.
Dining with human filth like Oberg was a necessary sacrifice. Brasch was a very privileged Nazi nowadays, one of the trusted few. He had even been invited to share a table at the Palais Luxembourg with the morphine-addled Göring, resplendent in his white
Reichsmarschall
uniform, encrusted with jewels and medals over which the fat criminal had vomited during the dessert course. The engineer had long ago learned to control the sensation of his balls crawling up into his belly, his flesh seeming to swarm with lice, whenever he mixed with the likes of Göring and Oberg. Since he had received word that his wife and son had safely reached Canada, he had even begun to
revel
in the double life forced on him as the price of their deliverance. It was a wonderful thing, mixing with these pigs, conniving in their downfall, and all the time knowing that the only
Himmler sighed.
The führer had calmed down and was standing at the table again, arms folded, chin on his chest as he bobbed up and down on the balls of his feet and pondered the diabolical strategic problems of the hour. The Allies must be kept from the Fatherland a little while longer. Soon the Reich would have its first atomic weapon, and there would be no more talk of unconditional surrender. Churchill and Roosevelt would be the ones groveling, begging for an accommodation.
Then, with the democracies checkmated in the West, they could turn their attention back to Stalin.
The map table did not extend beyond Poland, yet the vast steppes and the brooding Communist giant were never far from anyone’s mind. The cease-fire with Moscow was still holding, but it was beyond argument that the Red Army was using this time to prepare its defenses against another Wehrmacht attack, at the same time that the two states “cooperated” on a number of technical projects—all in the name of facing the “common enemy.” It was all horseshit, but the pause in hostilities suited them both.
Or rather, Stalin
thought
it suited him.
When the atomic warheads were finally delivered, the Slavic buffoon would be made to realize just how wrong he had been.
4
D-DAY + 5. 8 MAY 1944. 1833 HOURS.
PARIS.
Brasch had read somewhere that those who can eat well, and those who cannot, exist at all times on opposite sides of a gulf that can never be crossed.
It had been more than three and a half years since pastries had been legally sold in Paris, and about the same interval since fish, meat, chocolates, tobacco, and wine had been rationed almost out of existence. Nonetheless, sitting by one of the large windows in Maxim’s Le Bar Imperial, Major General Paul Brasch found himself adrift on the odors of fine French cuisine. The Parisians in the street below might have been getting by on starvation rations, but when
Reichsmarschall
Göring was in town looting the art treasures of the Republic, he loved to dine at Maxim’s, and so the wartime restrictions did not bite as heavily here.
Brasch nursed his Kir Royale and wondered whether or not he would ever have set foot in this place—or any like it—had it not been for the war.
Not likely, he mused. And truthfully, it wasn’t the war that had delivered him to this stool at the end of a dark wooden bar. No, it was the Emergence. Without the miracle of the time travelers’ arrival, he would probably be a frozen corpse somewhere in Russia by now. Instead he sipped at a cocktail, enjoyed the sour look on the face of his latest bodyguard,
Hauptsturmführer
Neumann, and wondered whether his data package would arrive before his dinner guest.
He would never know, really. The encryption software protecting his communications stripped off any identifying tags such as datelines. He alone would be able to read the file, and then for only ten minutes, before it disappeared from history altogether. And of course, he wouldn’t be cracking open his latest instructions from the British over a late supper with General Oberg, the SS commander in Paris.
Dining with human filth like Oberg was a necessary sacrifice. Brasch was a very privileged Nazi nowadays, one of the trusted few. He had even been invited to share a table at the Palais Luxembourg with the morphine-addled Göring, resplendent in his white
Reichsmarschall
uniform, encrusted with jewels and medals over which the fat criminal had vomited during the dessert course. The engineer had long ago learned to control the sensation of his balls crawling up into his belly, his flesh seeming to swarm with lice, whenever he mixed with the likes of Göring and Oberg. Since he had received word that his wife and son had safely reached Canada, he had even begun to
revel
in the double life forced on him as the price of their deliverance. It was a wonderful thing, mixing with these pigs, conniving in their downfall, and all the time knowing that the only
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