Above him, a single triblade soared, casting for the tiny flux-knots of its prey.

THIRTY-SEVEN

EARTH, 1942 AD

It was a returning Liberty Ship, plunging through North Atlantic waves at lesser risk on its way to New York than it had been travelling east, but only just. Wolf packs of U-boats would pick off whatever shipping they could, because every vessel contributed to the ongoing survival of a Great Britain unable to support itself while the Reich continued its expansion. Gavriela, puking over the rail, could not understand how Rupert had done this to her.

And Brian?

She had left Bletchley before his scheduled return from the London secondment. Their night of desperate lovemaking had awakened an itch in her, some long-repressed physicality that seemed to have little to do with Brian as a person. It was a conundrum she would hardly solve from thousands of miles away. It was hard enough to think at all, with the ship rising and plunging this way.

Sickness kept her shuttling between cabin and deck for the rest of the voyage. Down below was cramped, but she was the only occupant of her two-bunk cabin. Tiny streaks of rust underneath the porthole looked like tears. She tried to work – in her head, because a notebook would not be safe – reviewing everything she knew about atomic physics. The signal intercepts originating from the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute had already caused her to go back to her textbooks; but Rupert had set her a greater challenge.

What does he expect me to do?

Even a permanent relocation would make more sense than this short-term mission, except that Rupert had impressed this on her: gauging the Wehrmacht’s progress in building an atomic bomb was vital to determining strategy. That was plausible: it was less about helping the Americans than about her learning enough to judge German progress. Rupert’s objective was tactically sound; only his means, she thought as she threw up again, were questionable.

And so it continued, her voyage, until the Manhattan skyline was silhouetted magnificence against an eerie dawn sky, the New World reaching to take her in. Dislocated from her previous life, she hauled her small case down the gangplank, then stood on the solid dock, swaying.

‘Rough journey?’ The man wore a black overcoat and grey fedora. ‘I’m Charles Payne.’

He took the case from her.

‘Er, thank you. I’m Gabby Woods. My passport is, um …’

‘I recognize you from your photograph, ma’am. We can go straight to the car. It’s only a few minutes to Grand Central, where you’ll be able to freshen up. And there’s time for a New York breakfast before we catch the train.’

‘I … thank you.’

She felt safe as he took her upper arm and guided her to a dark, bulbous automobile. He opened the back door for her and settled her in, before stowing her case in the boot, except it wasn’t called that here, was it? Everything looked and smelled different; even the quality of sound seemed altered in this air. Behind the steering-wheel, the driver looked in the mirror and tipped his hat.

‘Ma’am.’

‘Oh. Hello.’

Then Payne was sitting beside her, and the driver was adjusting a stick poking out of the steering-column – it took a moment to realize it was a gear lever – and the car began to roll along the dock.

It might have been twenty minutes later when they stood in the marble space of the Grand Central terminus. The high hall was awash with echoing sound even at this early hour. Neo-classical, the concourse might have been in London, Paris or Berlin. Soldiers in well-tailored uniforms were numerous. The familiarity relaxed Gavriela, just a little.

‘We already have our tickets.’ Payne held her case in one hand, his own in the other. ‘Let’s go downstairs and eat.’

She was not hungry, but the small café below ground offered enticing smells. For the first time in over two years, she drank real coffee and nibbled from a bagel.

Then she rushed to the ladies room and threw it all back up.

The New Mexico heat was beyond anything she had experienced. Minimal humidity and a Martian landscape, the desert colours and the clarity of the air razoring into her vision: all of it was unexpected. Wherever she looked, some subliminal aspect would throw her off balance.

‘You’ll like the people,’ Payne told her.

But after a soldier accompanied them to the wooden house that was to be hers, while she laid out her spare clothes on the bed, she heard him say to Payne outside: ‘Begging your pardon, sir, but Sergeant McGregor sends his compliments, and says he’ll be available in Hut 17 at fifteen-thirty hours, if you’re up for another ass-kickin’.’

‘Tell the sergeant’ – there was a pause – ‘to save the last dance for me.’

‘Yes, sir.’

She leaned out of the open window, and saw the two men continuing up the dirt street between the rows of wooden buildings. Her watch read five past three.

It’s hardly my kind of thing.

As a woman and a scientist, she ought to consider what she had overheard to be working-men’s banter – assuming she had understood correctly – and not the kind of matter that men in her circle would attend to. But something about the New World told her that the old strictures were arbitrary; while something minimally remembered inside her spoke of the joy of violence, the committed focus of combat.

I’m dizzy with the heat, that’s all.

That did not explain her being out on the dirt street twenty minutes later, asking a jeep driver for directions to Hut 17 –in fact he drove her there, chewing gum as he whipped the jeep too fast around corners before screeching up outside the long hut – and walking up to the doorway, open because of the heat, then standing quietly to watch the men inside.

Perhaps she ought to go back. Earlier, the soldier who had seen her to the house had told her to knock on either of her neighbours’ doors, where the wives would make her welcome.

‘Ya gotta understand something.’ Inside, the man had a gorilla’s muscularity, running one huge hand across his buzz cut as he explained: ‘Ya poke someone in the chest when he’s just standing relaxed’ – he demonstrated on one of the other men – ‘he’ll say ouch, right? Do the same in the middle of a fight when punches are swingin’, he won’t even know you’ve poked him.’

There were nods from the men, some twenty or so, all in sweat-stained T-shirts and combat trousers. In the far corner, Payne, now similarly dressed, was limbering up.

‘Next time someone offers to show you his deadly nerve strike,’ said the instructor, who had to be Sergeant McGregor, ‘see if he can manage it while you’re beating seven bells of shit outta him, all right?’

Then he got the men in pairs to practise ramming the heels of their palms into each other’s chins, with control of sorts, following with knee-strikes to liver or spleen. Along one wall stood battered dummies formed of sandbags and wood; the men took it in turns to break off from partner practice to belt the dummies with full power.

Eyes attuning to the darker, sweltering interior, Gavriela made out the bold-scripted notice framed on one wall:

‘In war you cannot afford the luxury of squeamishness.

Either you kill or capture, or you will be captured or killed.

We’ve got to be tough to win, and we’ve got to be ruthless –

tougher and more ruthless than our enemies.’

—CAPTAIN W. E. FAIRBAIRN

Since her arrival in America, the war had seemed to draw away into some imaginary nightmare reality. Now, in this odd, baking-hot venue, the truth came pressing back to stifle her.

While part of her wanted to join in the combat training, however insane and inappropriate that might be.

‘Right, everyone.’ The sergeant, McGregor, was calling them to order. ‘Injuring your buddy weakens the unit, should we deploy into combat. That’s why we use control.’