Part 30 (1/2)

Benny rolled her eyes. 'So why didn't you tell us all this before we came here?'

The Doctor s.h.i.+fted slightly. 'I didn't want to admit what I had done. Above all, I wanted to tread carefully. This war is a particularly delicate period: everything interconnected, everything so carefully balanced. Take Guernsey. It seems so insignificant, it's just a backwater, with no strategic importance. But the n.a.z.is spent a great deal of time and effort fortifying the Channel Islands. They used resources that could have been used to defend the French coast, and perhaps if they hadn't then the Germans would have been able to ward off the Normandy landings.'

'Doctor,' Benny asked, 'will Ma and Anne be all right?

The Doctor nodded. 'They both survive the war, Anne's fiance comes back as a major, and they get married and have two daughters. I visited them once in 1960; Ma was in her eighties, and had just become a great-grandmother. I wondered then why Anne had called one of her children ”Bernice”.'

'So now it's all over, Hartung's dead, the Germans don't have the planes, and can't build any more. It's all tied up neatly,' Benny concluded. She seemed to accept the Doctor's explanation.

'Nothing ever ends, Bernice. Munin is still sitting there in St James's Park.'

'There is another loose end,' Roz reminded them. 'Wolff.'

The Doctor's head snapped up, and he looked Benny in the eye. 'Joachim Wolff did this to you? He is here?' She nodded.

The Doctor was standing. 'Roz, I'll need your pistol.' Roz drew it and pressed it into the little man's hand.

'I'll deal with Munin,' Roz concluded.

The Doctor weighed the gun, and bit his lip.

It's time to finish this.'

14 Endgame

Perhaps it happened this way: The Doctor pulled back the bolts of the cell door and stepped inside. Behind him, seemingly unbidden, the bolts slid back into place. Wolff sat in the corner, slumped on an iron bed, his hands clasped to the back of his head. Even though he was subdued, Wolff was still a huge man. In the forced perspective of the tiny room, the Doctor appeared to loom over him.

'Good evening, Standartenfuhrer.'

Wolff looked up. The Doctor c.o.c.ked his head, curious about the eyepatch.

'Your friend, the black witch did this.'

'If you're playing for sympathy, Herr Wolff, it won't work.

I've seen what you've done to Benny. I know all about what you did at Mallesan.' The Doctor's voice was low.

Wolff laughed.

The Doctor drew the pistol, his arm swinging in a wide arc until the gun was aiming at Wolff's forehead. Wolff paused for a moment, but there was still a grin on his face.

'You're no killer. I can see the fear in your eyes, the sweat on your brow. You're a pacifist degenerate, a coward,' the n.a.z.i concluded.

The gun stayed level and the Doctor gave a wry smile.

'Things have changed since the last time we met: Hugin and Munin have been destroyed, Hartung is dead. The scheme you cooked up with Herr Steinmann has backfired. Now you are, in a prison cell, awaiting a firing squad. The British don t have a complete set of plans, so they won't be building any stealth planes of their own. They do have enough information to detect any German planes built along the same lines, though.'

Wolff smiled. Have you come here to kill me or to keep me up to date with current affairs?'

'Neither. I've come here to prove that you were wrong, that you have lost. That there is an alternative.'

'Oh yes, Doctor. You've seen the alternative: that Forrester, the woman who took out my eye, she's from the future, isn't she?'

'Forrester is committed to justice and fairness.'

'”An eye for an eye”?' Wolff chuckled. 'She is a vicious animal, I saw the hatred in her eyes. Her kind will be eradicated, we'll protect decent people from creatures like her. I'll do it myself... unless you kill me.'

'Killing you would change nothing. It won't bring back the dead, it won't save a single life. There's worse to come in this war: crimes against the universe itself. For now, Auschwitz, Pearl Harbour, Stalingrad, Dresden, Coventry, Hiros.h.i.+ma, Kwai are just names on a map. This war will give the words new and terrible meaning, definitions that will resonate through history. Killing you wouldn't stop it. No, I've come here to reason with you.'

Wolff sneered. 'A very nice speech. It almost brought a tear to my... eye. But you won't stop me with reason, You won't talk me out of it, you'll have to use that gun. If you really do kill all the Fascists, drown out our shouts, avenge the murder of your civilians by bombing our cities into the dust, well then, Doctor, it will just mean that n.a.z.ism has triumphed.'

The Doctor spoke in German. '”He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster... if you gaze for long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.”'

Wolff paused, trying to put what he felt into words. 'If the word n.a.z.i fills you with revulsion, if you couldn't stand to be in the same room as anyone who calls themselves a n.a.z.i, then how is that different from my hating the word Bolshevik or Jew? You tell me that I can believe what I like, as long as it meets with your approval. You grant me free speech, yet you won't let me say what I truly believe? I would rather you killed me. You can make all the moralizing speeches you like, but when it comes down to it, all you are saying is that you are stronger than me. The only thing that gives you authority is that gun you are holding. The only thing that separates us is that I would use it without hesitation.'

The Doctor pulled back the gun.

'As I thought,' Wolff spat, '”If I killed you, I'd become as bad as the n.a.z.is.” You haven't the stomach for the fight.

You'll be swept away, Doctor, you and all the weak. Do you really think Hartung was the only scientist at the Reich's disposal? There are a thousand more, all with their own secret weapons, all with their vision of n.a.z.i destiny.'

'Could you really live in a world built on foundations of human skulls? Cus.h.i.+ons stuffed with dead women's hair, candles made from human fat, lampshades with tattoos? A uniform world of concrete, perpetual war and hatred?' the Doctor said softly, looking down at the heavy black pistol.

'Yes,' Wolff said simply. Then, 'I challenge you to put that gun down and fight me like a man, with honour.'

'Hardly a fair contest, Herr Wolff; you demonstrated your fighting prowess on the beach, and again with my friend, Professor Summerfield. Thugs like you always find it easy to hurt those smaller and more vulnerable than themselves.

Your ability to gang up and kill unarmed civilians has never been in doubt. I do have a possible solution, though.'

The Doctor laid the gun on the bed beside Wolff.

The room seemed suddenly dark.

When the Doctor spoke again, his voice rumbled low as thunder in the mountains. 'I challenge you to a game, a contest of equals. Winner takes all.' The Doctor held out his hand; in it were three bullets. 'We'll take it in turns. I'll place the gun at my temple and I'll pull the trigger. a.s.suming that the chamber is empty, I then pa.s.s the gun to you. You do the same. One of us dies, one of us wins. There are three bullets in there, so it's fifty-fifty odds - I believe they call it Russian Roulette. We'll see what our destiny is, and who's the coward. The winner walks out...' the Doctor glanced at the cell door, which swung open '...of that door.'

Wolff glanced down at the gun.

'Do you want me to go first? Are you afraid?' the Doctor asked quietly, picking up the gun and pressing it to his temple. He squeezed his eyes shut and pulled the trigger.