“Yes, yes, so I have heard!” Oberg said approvingly. He had returned to his own meal without missing a beat. “It is a very exciting field, this genetic science. I understand you have been instrumental in pushing it forward.”

Brasch smiled abashedly. “It’s not really my field. I am a combat engineer. But any good German could see the importance of investing in such a thing. For starters, it will mean there is no hiding for the Jews. And the weaklings-the infirm, the cripples, and the mentally defective-will be detected before they have a chance to be born. Although I do not understand the science, I understand the opportunities for the Reich-”

“As do we all!” Oberg interrupted. “For me, personally, it is one of the most exciting developments to come from the Emergence.”

“Reichsfьhrer Himmler shares your enthusiasm,” Brasch remarked, suppressing the death head grin that wanted to crawl over his face.

He had championed the cause of genetic research because it was an exact fit with the worst of the Nazis’ paranoid fantasies, and because it was the perfect sinkhole into which he could pour billions of Reichsmarks. Every pfennig spent on a wild goose chase-like the search for a homosexual gene-was money lost to the development of lighter body armor or improved jet turbines. Brasch had never received any explicit instructions from Mьller’s controllers to sabotage the Nazi war effort in this way but, quietly, it was the work of which he most proud.

“There are, of course, those chattering fools who do not see the historic importance of such research,” he continued. “Admittedly, atomics are a more pressing concern at the moment, but even that research cannot be allowed to detract from our advances in the genetic realm.”

Oberg nodded sagely, like the fat, bigoted fruit seller he was, trying to prove himself the intellectual equal of his esteemed dinner guest. “Yes, yes, I understand,” he replied. “I’ve even heard that the atomic bomb itself will cause terrible damage to the breeding line of anyone who is exposed to it.”

“Exactly!” Brasch agreed. “So while we must push on with the atomic program, the purity of the race can only be guaranteed by a genetics program that proceeds apace with our nuclear research. There is no point to winning an atomic war if we all turn into mutants afterward.”

“My point precisely.” Oberg nodded, sloshing some of his wine onto the white damask tablecloth.

They continued like this for another two hours, with Brasch encouraging the wildest flights of lunacy to which he found most high-ranking Nazis more than a little prone. The entire time, however, he could feel the flexipad digging into his hip. The urge to haul it out and see whether he had received a secure transmission from Mьller was nigh on intolerable.

What had happened out there?

Was Mьller involved?

Was he dead? Or perhaps captured and already being tortured?

What would Brasch find waiting when he finally broke free of this odious little man?

The airfield lay ten miles outside of Bournemouth, on the coast of southern England, almost directly across the channel from Cherbourg. Thousands of aircraft flew overhead, all of them heading out and on to targets in France.

Hundreds of thousands of men and incredible tonnages of heavy tanks and trucks and other vehicles were on the move through the countryside down to the ports at Southampton, Portsmouth, and Bournemouth itself. But nothing moved out of the airfield for three days after the invasion commenced.

Then, on D-Day plus seven, the dull, bass thudding of a massed helicopter flight drifted across the green-and-brown patchwork of tilled fields and green pasture that surrounded the base. Two extended V-formations of heavy-lift choppers swept in from the northeast and set down on the makeshift helipad, which had been a village cricket pitch before the war.

“All right,” Prince Harry said to himself. “Game on.” He hadn’t thought it possible to find a more uncomfortable form of transport than a Chinook heavy-lift chopper, yet here it was: a reinvented 1940s analog of a Chinook.

Pounding up the rear ramp into the dimly lit interior at five minutes to midnight, Colonel Harry Windsor envied his ’temp troopers their lack of familiarity with the uptime version of the helicopter. To him, these facsimile CH-47As felt smaller, slower, and altogether more likely to fall apart in midair.

He’d studied the aircraft specs before the first operational squadron arrived at the regimental HQ in Kinlochmoidart, and it had made for unpleasant bedtime reading. The engines, although a significant advance on anything available locally just twelve months ago, were still underpowered. The craft could carry only twelve men, as opposed to sixteen. But there was an upside to that, he mused wryly-it meant there would be fewer casualties when the things fell out of the sky like fat, broken-backed dragons.

He cast around looking for the crew chief. Yes, there he was checking a galvanized-steel drip pan. The big helos were notorious for hydraulic leaks, and it was standard procedure for the chief to check the level of fluid in the drip pan before takeoff. If you didn’t see any leakage, the lines were probably bone dry and you were all going to die.

Harry adjusted his Bergen pack and automatically checked the safety of his personal weapon, just to get his mind off the hydraulic problems. The AK-47 copy was designated the AW/GLS-for “Automatic Weapon/ Grenade Launching System”-by the Royal Ordnance Factory where it was manufactured, but the popular tag Ivan gun had caught on, in recognition of its Russian heritage. The stamped-metal version of the infamous Kalashnikov was now standard issue throughout most of the British and commonwealth forces. They were much easier to build than the Americans’ more glamorous Colt carbine. His sported an underslung M320-style launcher.

Every other SAS trooper was likewise equipped. The launchers were harder to find outside the Special Forces. For the time being they tended to be restricted to squad and section leaders in the Main Force infantry units.

The chopper’s interior was bathed in a soft red light. His half troop of eight men were seated with their backs against the fuselage, packs between their legs, guns pointed down so that a misfire couldn’t damage the rotors or engines above. Of these men, only the Jamaican giant Sergeant Major Vivian Richards St. Clair, his senior NCO, had come through the wormhole with him. The others were all ’temps, but they were every bit as good as the troopers he’d left behind in the twenty-first. They’d have to be-he’d trained them himself.

“Evenin’, lads,” he called out over the whine of the Rolls-Royce Osprey engines. “So, anyone fancy a trip to France? I thought we might pick up a bit of duty-free, maybe catch a show at the Follies, and then pop down to Donzenac to kick the living shitter out of a couple of fuckin’ Nazis. What do you say?”

St. Clair roared from the front of the cabin, “We say cry God for Harry, England, and Saint George!”

For just a second the cheers of his men overwhelmed the sound of the engines cycling up. Harry grinned hugely and hauled himself the rest of the way up the ramp, giving each man a pat on the shoulder, or a nod, or a wink. Like the Special Air Service of his day, nobody walked into a squadron straight out of the recruiting office. In this here and now, in the Second Regiment at least, they had to have at least five years in service already, and a proven combat record had been a big plus on any application.

There was still an original, contemporary SAS, still being run by David Stirling, and it operated under slightly different rules-their own. There was a good deal of interplay between the two outfits, and constant traffic in training cadre, but in the end they did what they did, and Harry got on with his own business.