Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [3]
‘Ta-dah!’
Directly ahead of them, larger than she remembered it, was the Eiffel Tower, with the ground beyond sloping away towards the Seine. The broad, elegant gardens beyond it were not empty, as they had been during that weekend break she’d taken in her own time. Instead, huge temporary buildings crowded the iron structure. To the right, huge pillars rose in a square formation: there was a stylised eagle on its summit, its wings stretched half out. To the left, an equally massive classical structure was surmounted by enormous bronze human figures, their hands raised in triumphantly clenched fists. The people walking among the buildings and along the wide pathways were like Lego men in comparison. She could sense Fitz, standing next to her, trying not to look impressed at the sheer scale of the site.
‘The Paris Exposition of 1937. Every European country has an exhibition here,’ the Doctor explained. ‘To our left, the Soviets. To our right, the Third Reich. Hitler took the Rhineland last year, by the way.’
‘Stop showing off, Doctor,’ Fitz grumbled.
The Doctor looked faintly crestfallen as they walked down the path and into the shadows cast by the Tower. He paused, standing at the spot that marked the centre of the structure, and looked up. Anji joined him. Last time she had been here, she had been far too concerned with looking unimpressed, with being the weary cynic the end of the twentieth century had demanded. This time she grinned as she spun on the spot, looking at the crisscrossing network of huge girders. Trying to trace a path up the structure made her dizzy.
‘Did you know,’ the Doctor said, obviously still peeved by Fitz’s remark, ‘that when Paris fell to the –’ he paused, glancing about to check no one was paying attention, ‘to the Nazis, Hitler wanted to have a photograph of himself at the top of the Tower? What better symbol to prove he had taken France? Trouble was, the lifts and stairways had been made impassable by the keepers. Adolf had to settle for a press event in its shadow instead.’
Anji moved forward, and squinted at the eagle atop the German tower. Clasped in its gigantic golden talons was a crooked cross. ‘So they built these things to show the world how big and macho they were?’ she asked. ‘All a bit Freudian, isn’t it?’
‘Terribly,’ the Doctor answered, ‘but symbols have power, never forget that.’
Anji glanced at the swastika. ‘Oh, don’t worry. People won’t forget.’
‘You’ve stopped smiling,’ the Doctor noted sadly. ‘This is meant to be a break.’ He grabbed Fitz’s arm, then held his free one out to her. ‘Coming?’
She sighed, then looped her arm through his, letting him lead them both back into the sunshine. ‘So long as you don’t make us do the Monkees’ walk.’
* * *
The darkened cellar was oppressively humid, with a taste of mildew in the air. Nothing had been kept in it for a while so the rot had begun to take full possession. Empty wooden wine-racks lined the walls, their contents long since drunk during the early euphoric days of the previous July or perhaps sold, more recently, on the black market . At the furthest end, far beyond the faint light cast through the edges of the ill-fitting trapdoor, the largest, heaviest rack – so big it filled the whole wall – was hard up against a long disused fireplace.
‘We are rats, Luiz,’ an apprehensive voice whispered.
‘Quiet.’ The second speaker had a deeper, firmer voice, roughened from smoking.
‘We hide like them and we will die like them.’
‘Alberto, quiet.’
Alberto wanted to put on his glasses. He wanted to move, to stretch, to walk. It seemed like an age since he had stood upright, years since they had pulled the heavy rack across the fireplace. His injured arm ached abominably. He was not a nervous man, not the type to pace or fret or fidget but the injunction that he could not – must not – move was making him so. His senses were distorting and he wanted to move, to recalibrate