30

These were the finest men Aryan blood had to offer, and he was immensely proud of them. There were only eight of them, two units of four men each, something they had learned from England's much-vaunted Special Air Service. The SS wasn't so arrogant as its opponents imagined. It was more than willing to adapt and improve upon their ideas. But if they wanted to think of his troops as mindless automatons, then let them.

He would laugh on their graves.

It felt strange, however, to be standing in front of an American aeroplane-a Douglas Dakota, they called it, captured in North Africa. Stranger still to be addressing men dressed in the uniforms of the enemy.

As the moment finally arrived, and Operation Sea Dragon began to unfold, Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler could have been at the missile base in Donzenac, or with his new airborne regiment at Zaandam. These eight men, however, were about to embark on a personal odyssey entirely of his own design. They were going to drive a dagger into the heart of England, and so he had chosen to join them on a small, nameless airfield at the edge of the North Sea.

Three of them spoke English perfectly; most of the others with a slight accent, hence the uniforms, which identified them as Free Polish forces. Englanders thought of all Europeans as essentially the same. Wogs or wops or some such insulting nonsense. That ill-considered sense of superiority would cost them dearly over the next few days.

Only Colonel Skorzeny, the commander of the group, would proceed without a thorough mastery of English. But he was the one man Himmler knew he could trust with a job like this. Given the need, he would walk through mountains if they stood in his way. The Reichsfuhrer's only regret was that he wouldn't personally get to watch as Skorzeny completed his mission. But if the colonel survived, he would entertain everyone at the Wolfschanze with his vivid tales of the adventure.

The giant storm trooper, who was dressed as a simple corporal, stomped up and down in front of his men as they stood in line like carven marble statues. "So who amongst you will slaughter this fat pig for the fuhrer?" he roared at them.

"I will, sir!" they all chorused in return.

"No," he boomed back, laughing like an elder God. "I will choke the life out of him, and you shall do nothing more than gather around to slap me on the back, and tell me what a fine fellow I am. Are we understood?"

"Jawohl, Herr Korporal!"

Skorzeny seemed to find that immensely funny, and another gale of his rich laughter peeled away into the night sky. It was uncomfortably chilly on the runway, which had been carved out of an ancient birch forest high above the waters of the Skagerrak, and Himmler wrapped himself more deeply into his greatcoat. He would never share the bond Skorzeny had with these men, the easy familiarity they had with each other and with the likelihood of their own deaths. But he could appreciate their camaraderie, and even Skorzeny's high spirits.

He coughed loudly, and the colonel yelled at the men to attend to his words.

"Please, please, stand at ease," said Himmler.

They unbent just a fraction.

"You men make me proud to be German," he said. "You have all volunteered for this most dangerous mission, and it will take you into the deepest recesses of the enemy's lair. You are few in number, but the effect of your actions will be unmeasurable. To me, you personify all that is great in our party. You are supermen, and my best wishes go with you. Heil Hitler!"

"Heil Hitler!"

Himmler bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment, and Skorzeny yelled at the pilots to spool up the Dakota's two engines. As they coughed into life, thick smoke and blue flame belched from the cowlings. Skorzeny slapped the first man in line on the shoulder and he turned with mechanical precision to climb into the cabin. The others followed, until only Skorzeny was left.

"The fuhrer has much to occupy him right now," said Himmler, "but he wanted me to tell you that he will be thinking of you and your men especially."

An uncharacteristic solemnity came over the SS colonel. "Thank you. That is most gracious, Herr Reichsfuhrer. We shall earn that honor, or die to a man in trying."

They saluted, and Skorzeny disappeared in through the darkened door of the plane.

MOSCOW, USSR

The lights hadn't been put out in the Little Corner for nearly a week. Even with Hitler's attention elsewhere, this was a very dangerous time for the Soviet Union. Josef Stalin had napped only fitfully during the last three days, although physically he felt fine, thanks to the medicines his physician had been given from the British ship named Vanguard.

Sitting in his office, the Soviet leader allowed himself a rare moment of relaxation, sipping from a long glass of hot tea, as he contemplated a world remade in his own image. It might take another ten years, and it would without a doubt be a bloody business. But at the end of it, the revolution would be safe from fascists like Hitler, traitors like Khrushchev, and imperialists like Churchill and Roosevelt.

There would never come a day when his statues were tipped over and melted down for scrap. Indeed, he amused himself by imagining a statue large enough to replace the Washington Monument. A great towering Comrade Stalin to keep a stern watch over the liberated workers of the United Soviet States of Amerika.

"More tea, Comrade?" asked Poskrebyshev. "Before the others arrive?"

"No, I will need a bucket under the desk, if I drink any more."

Stalin stretched his tired frame. A light dusting of snow lay on the cold stone laneways of the Kremlin, outside his window. He knew he would feel more secure once that white blanket was properly draped over the Motherland. Zhukov was doing wonders with the Red Army, now that he had time to train and equip his divisions properly. When the thaw came, no matter what the correlation of forces in the West, the Soviet Union would be safe behind an Iron Curtain.

That phrase, which Beria had taught him, was most appealing. Having faced annihilation at the hands of the fascists a few short months ago, Josef Stalin was much taken with the image of an iron curtain falling across the frontier with Germany, no matter who controlled it.

He suspected that it would be the Allies. Their industrial capacity supplied them with an advantage that would be nearly impossible to overcome. And now, augmented with the wonders of the next century, they would surely triumph over the fascists.

But he would not be helping them. Not if that support meant the eventual collapse of the revolution. Or the conquest of the Rodina by a- What was Beria's phrase? A digital Hitler. The situation had been so finely balanced that when that mincing dandy Ribbentrop had offered a cease-fire, he had not dared let the opportunity slip by. Not when the reports from the Pacific illustrated how powerful the weapons were that the fascists had obtained. For one very tense week, he'd actually expected Himmler's storm troopers to crash in through his windows at any moment, cocooned in armor that made them virtually invulnerable.

Of course, he'd been wrong about that. As it had turned out, those bastards had only picked up the table scraps, while the bulk of the windfall had gone to Roosevelt and his allies.

But that didn't matter now.

Stalin placed his empty drinking glass on a silver coaster and leaned forward to pick up the model again.

The NKVD had retrieved it from the Vanguard. It was a model of the ship that had materialized at the edge of the Siberian ice pack. A beautiful weapon; unusual, with its three hulls and featureless deck, but deadly looking nonetheless. Like an assassin's dagger. How strange that it had arrived a whole day before the Pacific Emergence.