Final impact

He ate the sandwich in three bites, amazed at how the small patch on his inner wrist had quelled his usual seasickness. A few sucks on the coffee bottle revived him even further. The ship’s cook brewed an excellent espresso. When he was finished, he swung his feet down and climbed into his boots. The British had given him new clothes, a comfortable civilian outfit. It was odd to think that he would never wear a uniform again. They had relieved him of his flexipad and sidearm, which was to be expected. Otherwise, apart from the guard on his door, he’d been treated with rare civility.

“Excuse me, sir.”

Brasch looked up from doing his laces. The guard had put his head inside.

“When you’re ready, General. The captain would like a chat, sir.”

Brasch nodded as he finished. Steadying himself, he waited for a sympathetic movement of the ship and used it to propel himself upward with at least some control. He had no idea how these nautical types put up with this rubbish. The Sutanto had been even worse.

The ship plowed into the base of a steep wave and began to climb. Forcing him to haul himself out of his cabin and into the companionway, where he found an additional guard waiting for him. Whenever he moved about the ship he always had at least two overseers, but they were unfailingly polite, even deferential, as far as it went.

The three men struggled along the corridor, flexing their knees as the deck shifted beneath them. About thirty meters down they climbed to a lower deck and doubled back, ending up somewhere beneath his cabin. Brasch swung in through the door as indicated and found himself in a darkened room, with a handful of Allied personnel gathered around a bank of large, glowing computer screens. Brasch had never made it aboard the Dessaix while it was being stripped, but he imagined it must have looked something like this. As advanced as the Sutanto had appeared to him at first, this vessel was obviously a great deal more sophisticated. The British had not been very forthcoming in answering his questions about it, though.

The Trident’s commander, the half-caste woman Halabi, was waiting for him with Prince Harry and a small group of men and women, none of whom he recognized.

“Good morning, Herr General,” Halabi said. “I’m glad to see you got your head up. I take it the Promatil patch is working.”

“Yes,” he answered. “It is working very well indeed, thank you, Captain. Is there something I can help you with? I thought I was supposed to be transferring to land today.”

Halabi, who seemed to have no trouble maintaining her balance in the difficult conditions, waved a hand at one of the screens. “My colleagues wanted your input on a few questions, if you wouldn’t mind.”

Brasch shrugged. “I imagine I’ll be doing nothing but answering questions for a long time to come.”

“I’m afraid so.” She pointed to a distinguished-looking man seated at the table, wearing a British army uniform. “Colonel Hart.”

The officer smiled unsteadily at Brasch. He was having a hard time with the violent movement. “Herr General. Young Harry’s been telling us of your adventures in Paris. Sounds like a smashing time.”

Brasch returned the smile uncertainly. “Like most adventures, it was best experienced in the telling, rather than the execution.”

“Marvelous,” Colonel Hart said. “Now, if I might. Would you mind awfully telling us if you chaps had any plans for using germ bombs, or poison gas?”

The abrupt change in topic caught him somewhat off-guard, and he had to search for an answer. It wasn’t that he wanted to hide anything. Rather, it was that he didn’t want to appear to be doing so.

“I didn’t work on any such projects myself,” he said at last. “It wasn’t my specialty. But I understand Himmler did have a special projects section of the SS investigating such weapons. When it became apparent that the atomic program might not deliver quickly enough, he was quite desperate to find an alternative. Why? Has someone used such a weapon?”

“Not on us,” Hart replied, before moving aside to give Brasch an unrestricted view of the large computer screen behind him.

Captain Halabi spoke up as he did so. “These images were captured by one of our drones a few hours ago,” she explained. “To my people, this looks like a bio-weapon.”

Brasch looked on with creeping horror as a movie played in a window on the screen. Shells burst among what he assumed to be Soviet troops. A few near the detonation were knocked down by the blast. Then within seconds their comrades had also dropped, their bodies racked by violent seizures. The small room remained in silence while the footage played. At the end of it, Brasch released a deep breath.

“I see. And how much of this…gas, I suppose…how much has been used?”

Prince Harry spoke up, his usually jolly personality held in check. “It’s impossible to say with accuracy, but we think at least five SS artillery regiments have been equipped with the stuff.”

“Only SS?”

“Yes. No Wehrmacht units, so far.”