Final impact

Brasch had rigged up some sort of claymore-type mine and triggered it as the Gestapo had entered. The first two men had taken the full force of the blast and nearly disintegrated. Their remains were embedded in the pitted, ruined hallway walls. The two commandos came in hot, hosing down a narrow arc in front of them with short bursts of tungsten penetrators. Designed to slice through monobonded plate armor, but meeting only plaster, brickwork, and wooden floorboards, they passed through like very small, hyperaccelerated wrecking balls, chewing the old brothel to pieces.

Pounding footsteps on the next landing warned them of somebody’s approach. Harry fired a full strip of penetrators into the ceiling, tracing a line along the axis of the corridor on the floor above them. He was rewarded with a strangled shriek, followed by a tremendous thump.

They took the stairs three at a time, their legs working like pistons. Ronsard made the next level first, firing a precautionary three-round burst to clear their way. He needn’t have bothered. The German lay in a crumpled heap of black leather trench coat.

“Clearance,” Harry called, and Ronsard ducked as the prince pumped two high-explosive rounds up through a gaping hole in the ceiling. Both men hunched over as the pellets triggered with a deafening clap of thunder. Half the ceiling seemed to collapse, and with it came the body of another German.

Hopefully not Brasch.

Harry trained his gun on the body as it crashed to the floor, landing atop a pile of fallen wreckage like a sack of concrete. It didn’t move.

“Major General Brasch,” he called out. “It’s Colonel Windsor. I think we’re clear.”

He heard grunts and the scrape of something heavy being shifted on the floor above. After a moment the German appeared, peering down through the gaping hole. He was dressed in civilian clothes, but wearing a holster into which he slipped his Luger.

“Your Highness, I hope.”

“And Captain Ronsard of the Free French Army,” Harry said. “Can you get down, General? Best we don’t stuff around too long here. Some more of your former comrades are keen to catch up with you.”

In the small pop-up window, Harry could see a gunfight just starting over on the Avenue de Villiers. It looked like a very disorganized affair. Claudel had not had time to set up a proper ambush. She seemed to have found three men to help her, but they were outgunned by the Gestapo, or SS, or whatever they were. The prince’s chivalrous nature urged him to tear over there and lend a hand, but a decade and a half of military training won through. The women had effectively offered to sacrifice themselves for the mission, and that meant getting Brasch safely away.

“Trident,” he said into the flexipad as Ronsard helped the German clamber down through the ruined ceiling. “I need a route out of here right now.”

“Already laid in, Colonel,” the sysop replied. “Feeding nav data through now. You’ll be heading south, toward the Champs-Elsyйes. The second team of hostiles is still three blocks away, but they are moving quickly. Best you get a move on.”

A large blue arrow appeared in the heads-up display, although it was a little premature since they were still inside. It pointed at a wall.

Brasch jumped the last, short distance and landed on the pile of plaster and shattered woodwork.

“Right then,” Harry said. “Let’s scarper.”

D-DAY + 33. 5 JUNE 1944. 1454 HOURS.

BERLIN.

It would be time to leave this particular bunker soon. It wasn’t wise to linger in any one place too long. The Allies’ ability to peer deep into the Reich was almost preternatural, and the Reichsfuhrer-SS had no desire to be turned into “pink mist,” as the Emergence types said.

He was waiting on a report from Paris, after which he would return to Bunker 13 for a few hours to check on the fuhrer’s progress before moving to another secure facility for the night. They had all been living like this for too long. It was demeaning, the way the Reich’s ruling elite had been reduced to scuttling about like petty criminals. Himmler removed his glasses and used a clean handkerchief to wipe the lenses. There was something about the recycled air in this subterranean hideout that seemed to affect them. He forever had to polish the things if he wanted to see clearly.

Not that there was anything worth seeing, or reading, in the pile of documents covering his desk. It seemed apparent now that Major General Brasch had betrayed them. What a foul, bitter irony given the number of innocent men who’d no doubt died in the purges following the Emergence. Himmler did not regret having taken the sternest measures to root out defeatists and conspirators within their midst. So high were the stakes, it was better that ten innocent men die than one genuine traitor go free. And the men he had killed to correct the false record of his own last days in the other world-well, they, too, had died for the Fatherland.