Christopher Nuttall: Second Chance

Oliver smiled to himself. The factory was equal opportunity; blacks and whites mingled in relative peace and harmony. The future Ambassador to the United Kingdom had insisted on it, as part of the agreement to supply the new tanks to the American Army, and Oliver had agreed. Security around the factory was tight, both through some British muscle and some locally recruited men. Even if the Ku Klux Klan had decided to make its displeasure known – another black church had been burned to the ground only last week – Oliver was confident that they could be beaten off. This era hadn’t invented the super-lawyer yet; there would be no complaints if they shot Klansmen to death on their own property.

The ripples of the Transition were still spreading, he knew, and he was riding the waves. It was amazing how many Americans were prepared to buy older computers, such as the utterly-primitive BBC machines from 1986, and many British companies were becoming rich by flooding them over to America. The Bracken Consortium was in the lead; buying old mobile phones and transporting them to America.

He chuckled to himself as he left the room, heading for his private office. Smuggling was bringing in even more money; funds that government auditors would never know existed. The Government would get a great deal of money out of the Consortium, enough to fund the purchase of coal and other equipment from the Americans, but there would be plenty left over for him. Hoover had been delighted at the chance to purchase some electronic surveillance equipment; the FBI was very fond of him at the moment.

And, of course, there was the knowledge of the future. His people were meeting famous actors, singers, writers and many others, offering to fund them in exchange for a share of the profits. Many of the younger ones had no idea that they were earmarked for a percentage of the profits from work they had yet to produce; unscrupulous directors and producers had unaccountably failed to inform them of their sudden riches.

His mobile phone buzzed. His technicians had rigged up a private network for New York, one allowing his people to avoid using the British-supplied network that was covering the entire United States. So far, no one even had the technology to look; he suspected that MI6 had rigged up their own network as well. Already, he was reaching across the country, building up influence in the right – and wrong – places.

“Yes, Cora?” He asked. Cora was a young Negro girl – an African-American, in the parlance of politically correct 2015 America – whom he’d hired as a general secretary. She was smart, clever, determined to better herself – and easy on the eye as well.

“Sir, there is a man called Roth here to see you,” Cora said, and Oliver felt his blood run cold. “Shall I show him in?”

“Please, do,” Oliver said, drawing on the reflexes of a lifetime avoiding the law to hide his sudden fear. “Show him in, then cancel my next appointment.”

Cora opened the door. Her dusky brown skin contrasted sharply with Roth’s blonde hair. It was Roth, no doubt about it, and Oliver’s mind turned to the hidden pistol in his desk. He nodded politely to Cora and waved her out, before activating the electronic dampeners. If Roth wanted to record the conversation, he would have to work at it.

“You’ve done well for yourself,” Roth observed, as he took a seat without bothering to ask permission. “I must admit… from smuggler to businessman, you’ve made a hell of a jump.”

“Thank you,” Oliver said. “I believe that I paid you for my release…”

“Ah, but you never gave us anything really useful,” Roth said. “You showed us how to make V1s, and helped us to build some prototype jets, but nothing too treacherous, eh?”

Oliver ignored the sally. “What are you doing here?” He snapped. “You might have noticed that your country is at war with this country!”

Roth shrugged expressively, smiling. Oliver could have sworn he saw fangs. “Oh, you know Americans,” he said. “There is no security here at all; your factory is the only place in which I felt secure. Everyone obsessively minds their own business, as if it were a crime to consider security important. And, this Hoover, the closet homosexual… imagine the response if scum like that took on the duties of protecting the Reich .”

He smiled wryly. “For your information, I am here as part of a delegation from Sweden,” he said. “The Swedes are quite desperate to avoid… being invited to join the Workers Paradise, and as your people are too far away – and in any case failed to help Finland – they’re cuddling up to us. Sucking our cocks, I believe you would put it.”

“You’ve been spending time with one of us,” Oliver said. “Which one was it?”

“None of the people we captured,” Roth said. “You’ll be pleased to know that Professor Horton’s wife is with child.”

Oliver shrugged. “I never knew the guy,” he said. “So, what do you want?”

Roth smiled. “It’s quite simple,” he said. “We want you to spy for us.”

Oliver shook his head. “No,” he said. “I have work to do here.”

“For your criminal masters?” Roth enquired. “My dear Jim, what would happen if we were to… reveal your actions to your own people? I believe they still hang people for treason, don’t they?”

Oliver felt his face go white. “Sometimes,” he acknowledged.

“You have nothing to bargain with,” Roth said. “I don’t think that revealing the link between our embassy in Ireland and Spain – which is now one of our allies – will benefit you in any way at all. They doubtless already know about it. What else can you tell them?”

“I have money,” Oliver said. “You could live the high life here…”

Roth slammed a hand down on the table. “This is not about money,” he said. “This is about the life or death of the Reich . You will cooperate, or you will be exposed.”

“I could call the FBI now,” Oliver said.

“And then they’ll take you into custody,” Roth said dryly. “Please” – clearly noticing Oliver’s hand moving towards a hidden weapon – “don’t try to kill me here. If I don’t come back, my friends will be quite happy to tell the British Government everything from a safe distance. Of course, there will be no such thing as a safe distance for you.”

Oliver picked up a bottle of whisky and poured himself a glass. “I suppose I have no choice,” he said, his mind rapidly running through possibilities and coming up a blank. “What do you want me to find out?”

“Why, everything,” Roth said. He passed over a folder. “I imagine that you can supply us with more CDs, or even some more… direct method of transmitting information,” he said. “Your nation’s air defences, your technology, atomic science… everything.”

He grinned. “Welcome to a life of service for the Reich ,” he said.

The discovery that all of Britain was back in 1940 shocked the government and the people, the more so because of the discovery of a German aircraft appearing over Britain. (It was later theorised that the aircraft had been caught up in the temporal shift – examination of German documents revealed that no aircraft had been probing Britain that night.) Fortunately, the British Government was quickly able to establish the truth of the matter, and to take command using Defence of the Realm Act powers, which ironically dated from 1940 and before.

Food rationing, under a series of very tight controls, was instituted at once, using the social security network as a backbone. While this proved to be unpopular in many of the middle and upper class regions, it was very popular with the poor, many of whom hadn’t received so much food before. (Many of those who might have caused trouble were swept up into the army before July was out). Although a thriving black market sprang up, it was limited by the economic shambles and the sudden loss of most of the Internet, which had been partly based in 2015 America. While the British possessed a capable Internet infrastructure, rebuilding the Internet over Britain took time and effort.