Christopher Nuttall: The Fall of Night

Khadijah cried, afterwards; her world had shrunk, once again, to the four corners of her room…

…And bad things were coming.

Hazel had held out hope that she would hear something for weeks, but as the Russians entered Edinburgh and tightened their grip on the city, she started to wonder if she should fear the worst. She was four months pregnant and her chest was starting to swell, but there was no word from her husband. The Russians had posted lists of prisoners who had been executed — including the infamous Edinburgh child molester, who had raped twelve children and had been remanded in custody for a mere twenty years — but her Stuart’s name wasn't on the lists anywhere. She had searched them all, time and time again, wondering if she dared ask the Russians directly… but fear held her back.

Her father had taken her in; she had registered under her maiden name, rather than as Hazel Robinson, terror of Russian spies and terrorists. She cursed that decision, afterwards; if they had found a body, who would they have known to tell? The penalties for lying to the Russians were grim; a shopkeeper who had lied about something had been assigned to one of the work crews, fading further and further every day through his month-long sentence of hard labour. Others had not been so lucky; Princes’ Street Gardens had been full of bodies hanging from poles, people who had tried to resist the force of Russian might.

Like everyone else, she had grown to dread the knock on the door. When it came, she almost lost control completely before walking towards the door, noticing a single man standing there, and opening the door in hope… only to come face to face with Rashid Ustinov. The Russian looked taller, somehow, than he had been when he had held her prisoner; there was a new scar on his cheek.

“You!”

“Me,” Ustinov said mildly. Her father appeared and stared at him. “May I come in?”

“I don’t think that we can stop you,” Hazel observed bitterly, as he followed them into the lounge. She had thought that she was free of the two Russians forever. “What do you want?”

“They wanted to arrest you for interfering with an FSB operation,” Ustinov said shortly. “I talked them out of it.”

There was a pause. “Why?” It was her father who had spoken. “Why…?”

“Because in Russia, rank, power, responsibility and authority don’t always go together,” Ustinov said. “We have Captains who give orders to Generals under certain circumstances. There are Admirals whose only job is to look good, while their staffs do all the work; I once had two colonels and a lieutenant-general reporting to me. I am one of the FSB’s heroes following” — he made a sweeping hand gesture — “and they will give me a great deal of latitude, within reason.”

Hazel had only one thought in her mind. “And what about Stuart?” She asked, almost pleading. Tears were falling down her face; her father gently placed a hand around her shoulders. “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know what happened to him,” Ustinov said. There was a grim tone in his voice. “There’s no record of finding his body, nor was he captured, but there were a lot of bodies that even DNA checks would have been hard-pressed to identify. I checked; the bodies of several men known to have served under him were recovered, but there was no sign of him personally.”

He paused. “One possibility, the people involved with tracing the remaining soldiers thought, was that he was with you,” he said. “Of course… they wanted to arrest you, but I blocked them…”

Hazel shrugged off her father’s hand and leaned forward. “Why?”

Ustinov looked down. “Because… because you reminded me a lot of my mother,” he said. “Because… you handled yourself well back when… well, that’s in the past now. Because… you were kind to us when you thought we needed help. Because… you have suffered enough and… there was never anything personal, you know; none of us who went into Britain hated you, even Sergey. Hurting you would be spite.”

He reached inside his pocket and brought out two passes. “There are some flights leaving Edinburgh airport over the next two months, convoying Americans and other foreigners who were caught in Britain when the war started,” he said. “These two passes will get you out of the country; the Americans and Canadians are taking in refugees, so I expect that you two will find refugee there.” He dropped a third pass into her hand. “If he should happen to turn up…”

“Thank you,” Hazel said. She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “You could come…”

Ustinov laughed. “I don’t think that that would be a good idea,” he said. “Goodbye, Hazel.”

He left, not looking back.

They were at the very edge of the range of Russian aircraft.

Admiral Geoffrey Bradford Wilkinson watched as the final helicopter came in to land, the fleet turning slowly and heading out towards America. They would meet up with elements of the American Navy — HMCS Lethbridge from Canada had already joined the force — soon enough, but he had wanted to remain as close to Britain as possible, if only for a few more days. The ships they were escorting carried thousands of refugees; they had to be protected, even if the Russians seemed to be ignoring them. One way or the other, they would be leaving soon; the Russians had already begun to take over bases on Ireland and Britain itself. The loss of the CJHQ meant that there would be no centre of organised resistance left on British soil.

There was no time left at all.

He gave the order.

The remains of the Royal Navy — and a handful of surviving European ships — turned and sailed away from Britain. Few words were spoken as the fleet headed towards America, the crews lost in their own private thoughts; what would happen to them in the future. Historical precedent was not good; French ships that had escaped the fall of France in 1940 had had friends and allies, they had… few friends and no allies if they were to fight to regain their homeland. A few hundred sailors had demanded to be put ashore as the fleet neared Britain, too late to be useful; they had been granted their wish. Wilkinson could only hope that they would have time to see their families before the Russians rounded them all up; the Russians had already placed a motion before the United Nations to declare the remaining ships pirates.

He turned his back on the distant hills of his homeland.

He wondered if he would ever see them again.

He came back to awareness in a burst of pain, memories flickering at the back of his mind; a Russian, an attack; grenades… the pain ebbed and flowed away as a soothing balm flowed over his body. Darkness rose and fell over the coming weeks as his body was slowly repaired, the latest in American medical science rebuilding most of his body. The doctors had warned him that he would be crippled for a very long time, perhaps permanently disabled, but he would otherwise make a full recovery.

It was a month before they told him what had happened. He had raged then, screaming at them, demanding to know why he had lived when others were spared. They tried to tell him about the medics who had pulled out most of the wounded from England, convoying them to Iceland and then onwards to America, but he hadn’t listened; he was the last survivor of his unit and he was miles from his wife. Eventually, they filled him in on some of the details, but the true horror had to wait until he was well enough to escape from the hospital bed and manoeuvre a wheelchair to a computer terminal. They found him there, crying, as he took in the news about the fall of night across the whole of Europe, the new Iron Curtain descending remorselessly around the continent. His wife…