Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [77]
Closing her eyes, letting her head settle, Anji tried to think. This wasn’t ordinary. This was something that linked the missing Blair to the whole problem they had come here to resolve, she was sure of it. Something had remained, some persistence of vision from the flickering room. A bed? She opened her eyes and looked. Yes, in both versions a basic camp bed was set up in the corner. As she moved through the dancing images, images which flowed away from her and then closed in her wake, she finally saw the thing that was bothering her most.
In this bobbing, swirling montage of images were thousands of images of herself, Fitz and the Doctor.
* * *
The other men didn’t react when the first yells started up the street, so Fitz put his jumpiness down to unfamiliarity with the city. He had been slightly disturbed, out walking with the Doctor and Anji the previous evening, when his friends didn’t even seem to notice when someone let off a stream of semi-automatic fire somewhere in the back streets. He was still getting used to it though, still unnerved to see men and women with guns idly chatting over a cigarette. Then again, he also felt disturbed to realise that his two friends had spent almost six months in the city, stranded and waiting for him.
Outside the POUM offices it was busy with men on leave detailing their arguments over pay or invalidity. Alberto had suggested Fitz come here to look for Sasha, since the man could have been ‘advising’ one of the other organisations. ‘Not all Russians are good Party members,’ the academic had remarked over a beer, ‘and the POUM, we are all Trotskyists. Or so the Soviet press say. Maybe your friend is hiding from the Party not working for it, hey?’
Fitz had to admit that he hadn’t thought of that – he hadn’t realised the complex network of political allegiances and grievances that controlled the different anti-fascist groups. Russia’s interventions were seen as biased, helping their own comrades before the general population. They spoke of civil war, where the POUM and CNT still spoke of revolution. It was possible Sasha was a White Russian fleeing the Reds. Somehow though, Fitz doubted it. The inconsistencies, the way he had known a song from 1940 and had seen what Fitz saw at Guernica, these suggested Sasha had been an altogether different agent. He was angry: at himself for allowing himself to believe Sasha, at the other man for lying. Although, obviously, the other man would be lying: Fitz had been lying to him in return. He still felt frustrated at the deceptions though.
Despite his anger and his doubts, he had come down to the POUM offices near the bottom of Las Rambles to check. They still needed to find the Russian. The people hanging about chatting hadn’t jumped at the initial shouts but they looked up when a few distant shots became a sudden fusillade. There was a moment where time seemed to pause, everyone silent, waiting, listening. Then another burst of gunfire, the different note of the bullets suggesting a retaliatory attack.
‘It’s started!’ one of them shouted. The crackle of rifles popped and tore at the air, violently echoing down the streets. Suddenly, people were running to the sides, to cover, all talking at once. In amongst the babble, Fitz thought he heard ‘telefonica’. Most of the pedestrians ran for the Metro station, hurrying down into the relative calm of the underground system. Fitz glanced about, unsure. He didn’t want to get stuck in the crowds at the Metro, but he could hardly stay on the street when everyone else was abandoning it. He considered running back up Las Rambles to the Oriente, or looking about for an alternate shelter.
The crack of guns was suddenly much nearer, Fitz could even hear the whine of bullets. He ran the short distance to the shelter of the POUM doorway,