“Easy does it,” he said to O’Connor, strangely bothered by the odd notion that this man seemed so completely authentic in his role that he could be the real thing. “I have orders to report all contacts,” said Reeves, “and to get anyone found out here to the rear of our column. Perhaps you’d best tell your story to my Brigadier.”
O’Connor’s fate line was redrawn that day, when the history resounded with a strange echo, enacting his disappearance and capture right in the midst of the first German offensive. Yet there was one dramatic difference-he had not been captured by the Germans ofPonath’s 8th Machinegun Company, but by a bemused Lieutenant in the 12th Royal Lancers, in a British Army that would not exist for another 80 years.
Reeves elected to do the only sensible thing he could think of at that moment, and pass the problem along to the officers above his pay grade. So he radioed in to Brigadier Kinlan, and his report came at a most opportune time.
The Staff Officer leaned in, speaking quietly to Kinlan as he reported. “These were men claiming to be British soldiers, sir, dressed out in that same old style British kit from head to toe!” He gestured to Popski now, who was listening intently.
“A Sergeant Galloway, sir. Six jeeps and an odd bunch that look like they’ve been out here for a good long while. That’s how Reeves put it. But they had another man with them, and sir, the fellow claims to be a British General. Calls himself O’Connor.”
Brigadier Kinlan just stared at him. “O’Connor? Rubbish! What in bloody hell is going on here?” He looked down at his library pad again. There was the entry on the General himself in the data file, complete with a vintage photo from World War Two.
Fedorov heard the name O’Connor and his heart leapt. He immediately asked Popski if he had heard what was said.
“Sure enough,” his guide said. “They’ve done our work for us, Captain. So you won’t have to spin up thathelicontraption of yours any further. It’s O’Connor alright, along with some of my men! I caught several of the names that staff officer reported.”
Then to Brigadier Kinlan he said: “Just you wait and see now, sir. General O’Connor will be more than glad to straighten this matter out for you.”
“Will he now?” Kinlan did not seem happy at all, and he gave a sharp order to his Staff Officer. “Tell him to bring the whole lot in,” he ordered. “We’ll get to the bottom of this mess right now!”
Troyak had been unable to get through to Kirov, saying there was odd interference on every radio band. This news kept Fedorov in the dark, knowing that something terrible had happened again here, but unable to determine whether his team had moved in time again… until he heard that the British had found O’Connor. If this was so, if it was actually General O’Connor out there in the desert, then this new British General and his Desert Rats had somehow manifested here from the future! They were the interlopers in time, and not his own small contingent. But how did it happen?
He remembered that strange glow in the sky, the almost phosphorescent light in the blowing sand, and that odd moment when Orlov had yelped with pain dropping that thing he had found in Siberia-in the Tunguska river valley. He began to piece together the odd bits of the puzzle, thinking hard. This British General Kinlan had said something about a missile, an ICBM. Popski told him that they ‘got it first,’ before it could make an end of them, though he did not know what Kinlan meant by that. That could only mean they engaged it with anti-ballistic missile systems, but he gathered that the warhead had detonated, somewhere over the Qattara depression.
Kinlan thinks we’re a fifth column, he realized, finally understanding that remark about lazing about near the target area. He meant ‘lasing,’ but Popski would have never heard of that word, and translated it otherwise. Brigadier Kinlan thought we were here to paint the target zone and help guide the missile attack in. He questioned Popski further about it, and it was the only conclusion he could come to. If this were so, then Kinlan might see Popski and his men as saboteurs, even O’Connor. How could he possibly believe anything else?
Now he had come to one of those critical moments of knowing that could make all the difference in how this all played out. A nuclear detonation… a Tunguska fragment… a hole in time. It was the only possible explanation. That’s how Rod 25 must be working. It contained exotic residual material from the Tunguska event, and when lowered into the sublime nuclear dance of the ship’s reactor, the combination cut time like a razor, and anything within a given radius fell through the rift.
