Part 17 (2/2)

Before the Doctor could elaborate, there was the sharp bark of a submachine gun. On the brow of an artificial hillock stood a n.a.z.i soldier in the black uniform of the Waffen-SS.

They had been warning shots, fired at the Doctor. Now he was yelling something at him in German. 'Are you all right, Leutnant?'

He thought that Cwej was a genuine soldier. Chris motioned that it was safe to come down, and made a threatening gesture towards the Doctor. His 'prisoner' played out his part, looking suitably terrified. The n.a.z.i clambered down. As he reached ground level, Chris elbowed him in the solar plexus, then punched him hard in the jaw. The n.a.z.i fell back, almost comically.

The Doctor blinked, bemused. He gazed at Chris for a second, then back at the fence. 'Yes. It's not perfect, but we don't have time for anything else. Lodge one of that man's grenades in the pipe.'

Chris did as the Doctor said, and they took cover. The grenade did its work, clearing the earth from the base, and even ripping the fence itself. The Doctor had broken cover and was heading that way before the smoke had cleared.

Chris followed.

'It's still live,' the Doctor warned. Chris was careful not to touch the wire mesh, and was acutely conscious of the stream water lapping around his feet, but the gap was easily large enough for him to ease himself through.

There were dogs barking behind them. The Doctor clenched his fists in frustration. 'I forgot to replace the dog biscuits.' Chris looked blank, until the Doctor explained, 'I had a bag of biscuits in my jacket to slow down the dogs, but the Germans took them from me when they emptied my pockets.

We'll have to hurry.'

Once they were on the other side, they ran upstream, water splas.h.i.+ng around their trouser-legs. Here, in the water, both their footprints and their scent should be obscured. They were soon ploughing through the woodland. Chris was surprised how fast the Doctor could run. As the Doctor predicted, the n.a.z.is had heard the explosion: Chris could hear the Alsatians behind him, almost at his heels, but the undergrowth was so thick that he couldn't see them.

9 Thought and Memory

They were meant to be looking for von Wer, the spymaster, but the search was proving fruitless. This didn't surprise Roz, of course, because she knew that the Doctor wasn't a German spy. What had surprised her was how easy British Intelligence had found it to pin the blame on the Doctor: they only had three sightings of him. The surveillance reports were astonis.h.i.+ngly mundane: the Doctor walked down Oxford Street, the Doctor bought a cup of tea and an iced bun, the Doctor caught a train at Paddington Station. He had never been seen with anyone else, he had never dropped anything suspicious into a litter bin, something that might have been a dead-letter drop. Despite that, and without any apparent reason, they had linked him with a dozen known German agents and three break-ins at defence establishments. The Doctor was an enigma, and successive a.n.a.lysts had decided that he was their problem. The more she looked at the 'evidence', the more Roz was convinced that there wasn't a spymaster at all. She continued to work on the 'problem', diligently plotting his movements.

Watching Reed across the desk, as the afternoon wore on, Forrester noticed that he was taking her for granted now, something Roz found flattering. While he had never behaved with anything other than impeccably good manners, there had always been a distance between them. She had been his Xosa Maiden, a dusky archetype from a schoolbook deep in his unconscious mind; someone he'd wors.h.i.+pped from afar from an early age, and had now come face to face with. Roz was uncomfortable being idolized. That gulf seemed to be narrowing. He accepted her on her own terms now, saw her as a person, a woman, a fellow officer.

Was she beginning to accept him, too? It had gone well beyond that. Looking at him now, as he jotted something down on a notepad, Roz realized that she could actually picture herself staying here with this man. The idea that she might live here with anyone - especially Reed - shocked her. Settling down had never occurred to her before, not with feLixi, not even with Fenn. She would turn a few heads, Roz mused, at a time when most English people had never seen a black woman. They could never have children, of course.

How could she bring half-caste babies into this time? They would be true aliens: mottled hybrids formed by the grafting together of two genetic strains kept pure for centuries.

What on earth was so attractive about this rather dull Englishman? Roz had an innate distrust of psychoa.n.a.lysis.

She had let the undergrowth grow up around her own unconscious, actively discouraged missionary expeditions, and stuck up a few shrunken heads to warn off the more persistent explorers. Judge a person by their actions, not their potty training, that was her motto. She had been there too many times when the Freudroid at the Lodge had confidentially announced that the serial killer they were looking for was a solitary academic type in his mid-twenties who fancied his mother, only to discover later that the real killer was four times older and just liked killing people so she could brag about it in bars and on chat shows.

But she had to admit that she found George Reed and his leisurely world attractive. It was so uncomplicated a life.

There was a clear distinction between good and evil. An emphasis on moral responsibility. Benevolence. Decency.

Christ, they even let you smoke in their offices without giving you a lecture.

There was something familiar about George, with his smooth, pale face, his neatly brushed hair and his precise accent. Deep in the dark continent that pa.s.sed for Forrester's mind, was there a longing for an English Soldier? The English had always been a part of her culture. Chief Xhosa had led his tribe into the Transkei in the early sixteenth century. Less than forty years later, fewer years than Roz's own lifetime, the Europeans had arrived. It was they who had introduced Christianity, capitalism, even the idea of nationhood. Xhosa ident.i.ty was defined by the English. In the nineteenth century, so close to 1941 that Roz could almost see it, her people had been split into two groups: those who opposed the British, and those that collaborated with them.

You couldn't ignore them. Roz's ancestors? They'd collaborated. The Rarabe Xhosa had fought with the British in the Fifth Kaffir War, against all the other Xhosa tribes. Did that make her people any less 'pure'? Look at the English: culturally, racially, they were a mix of Celts, Anglo-Saxons, Vikings, Romans, West Indians, Indians, Jews and who knows what else. Learning from the English had paid off: it had been the Western-educated, reasonable Christian Xhosa who won their country's freedom, not the Zulu with their spears and fierce independence. The first name of her people's great liberator had been Nelson.

Roz wasn't being nostalgic; she wasn't going native; she was being practical. The Doctor had vanished. Bernice hadn't made contact. Cwej had been sent to his almost certain death. If the Doctor, Benny and Chris were all dead then she had two choices: stay here, or go back to her own time in the TARDIS. Benny had told her that the British won Earth War Two, four years from now. After that, life must have returned to normal. Roz was in her early forties now, so she could reasonably expect to live for another century, even given the primitive state of medicine here. She would live through the Age of Legend if she stayed; she could fight alongside her family, help build the future she knew was coming. Her fight for Justice would continue.

George returned her glance, and smiled. Roz smiled back.

The Doctor sniffed the air. 'Cordite. Shots have been fired here.'

Chris felt his stomach tighten. 'Monique and Monsieur Gerard?'

'There's no sign of them. There are heavy vehicle tracks outside, but they could have been made by a tractor.'

'We have to search.'

The Doctor nodded thoughtfully. 'Yes, we have to, but we can't be long. The patrol will almost certainly catch our scent again. Do you know your way around?'

'Yes,' Chris muttered. The kitchen looked just the same as it had when he was last here. The range was still warm.

He had only been gone a couple of hours. What if he had led the n.a.z.is here? What if he had killed the brave farmer and his daughter?

Chris headed upstairs, the Doctor remained in the kitchen, keeping watch. The farmhouse had four bedrooms, one for Monsieur Gerard, one for Monique, one for both of her dead brothers. Once on the landing, Chris opened up each of the doors in turn. He had slept in the one nearest to the top of the stairs. This had been Luc's room. It was untouched from this morning. Chris had not been into any of the other bedrooms before, but it became clear as he checked them that they were empty, too.

The last room he came to was Monique's. He paused at the doorway. The room was feminine, with frilly white netting and floral-printed wallpaper. It smelt of her perfume. There was a spa.r.s.e dresser, a cluttered bedside cabinet. Monique had an old iron bed, with coral bedsheets. A doll had been carefully tucked into it. There was something else resting on the bed, something flat. A note? Chris stepped over to the bed. It was a sketch of him, drawn in pencil, from memory. A very good likeness, right down to the moustache.

He took it downstairs and showed the Doctor.

'She was a good artist,' the Doctor noted.

'What do you mean ”was”?' Chris said accusingly.

The Doctor bit his lip. 'I'm sorry, a slip of the tongue. I haven't found any blood. They might have got away. We could check the barn and the chicken shed.'

Cwej shook his head. 'No, like you said before, we can't stay. At least the n.a.z.is don't have this picture, so they won't be able to establish a link between me and Monique.' He folded the picture and slotted it into his tunic pocket.

'We'll go to Granville,' said the Doctor. 'Hartung might be there. It's probably where they've taken Monique and Monsieur Gerard. If not, at least Steinmann will be there.'

'Doctor, you're a bit conspicuous in those clothes.'

The Doctor patted the briefcase. 'Well, I've got plenty of money to spend on a new suit, but there's no gentleman's tailors for miles around. Do you think Monsieur Gerard would mind if I borrowed an outfit from him?'

'I doubt he'd mind, Doctor, but he's about as broad as you're tall.'

'Oh, that's not a problem, then, I'll just wear the clothes sideways. Isn't that what you humans call ”cross-dressing”?'

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