Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [99]
The car jolted into life, chugged a short way. Then Sasha was arguing with someone at the gate, a lengthy torrent of Spanish and French ending with some kind of command. Then the car was moving again, bumping and jarring over the uneven cobblestones, growling against a kerb when a corner was taken too tightly. The light flickered as Sasha drove them down sidestreets, looping blocks. Fitz lost all track within moments. The car slowed to a crawl as they drove through a long archway into a square, parked.
Fitz groaned as the front door opened and then slammed, the shock jolting through the body. The back door was being opened and the handcuff removed from his wrist.
‘Fitz? It’s OK. I think we’ll be OK for a while.’
‘Sasha?’
‘Yes.’
‘I looked for you. They said you didn’t exist. Yet here you are in Party civvies. Getting me out of a Party prison.’
Fitz opened his eyes and saw the genuine concern and hurt on his friend’s face. The Russian was lifting his bad hand up gently, turning it over as he inspected the bandages. ‘They did this?’
‘What? Yes. No. I mean, they fixed it up. Can’t have a prisoner dying on you, can you?’
‘I’m not party to that.’
Fitz barked a laugh at that. He used the ball of his good hand to rub his eyes, pressing it in so he saw colours swirling. Then he looked back at Sasha. The Russian was pulling more papers from an inner pocket.
‘Fitz. The TARDIS is just here, just outside. The Doctor gave me a list of instructions for you.’
Fitz frowned. ‘The Doctor?’
Sasha glanced away, out of the window to the twilight square. The huge lanterns in the centre were being lit, making the trees stark and huge, bright against the squared sky. Fitz continued to watch him. How had Sasha run into the Doctor? Why had the Doctor trusted him? Why should he even believe Sasha? The man had lied to him, was involved in some seriously grim stuff.
‘Look. He told me to say something, so you’d know to trust me. He said: “the planet is called Albert”.’
Fitz started to laugh then, hiccuping to a stop after a moment and grinning weakly at Sasha. Sasha grinned back, shrugged. ‘I don’t know what the hell that means, but he said you would.’
Fitz nodded. He closed his eyes briefly, letting his current situation vanish for a moment.
‘Fitz?’
‘Wha‐’ Sasha was shaking his good shoulder, peering at him in concern.
‘You blanked out for a couple of minutes then. Listen, the Doctor said you’re to use the emergency phone, dial a number,’ he held out a piece of ticker tape, with the Doctor’s odd copperplate scrawl over it, ‘and convince von Richthofen to use the VB/88 squadron in the attack on Guernica.’
Fitz nodded. Emergency phone. Richthofen. V-88. Guernica. He saw the flames again, the blood red sky and him helpless to stop it. The Doctor wanted him to...? ‘No.’
‘What?’
‘Killing thousands. Not right. I won’t.’
‘Fitz, the Doctor says you must. He says the consensus is shifting, that everyone believes the Reds did it themselves. You have to ensure there’s a documentary trail, evidence so that people believe the truth. He thinks there’s a link: that the Absolute’s system can be used to actually travel back to the right place and time and that the TARDIS can ensure you get there.’
An old farmer stood alone in a field, cut down with machine guns by a fighter. Another building crumbling and smashing, even the masonry burning. No. No, it was wrong. Thousands would die. But he’d seen it: the fighters, the bombers. And he knew that it was the version that people should be believing, the version that had screamed to the whole world that total war meant this utter destruction. That war was never civilised. But to be involved, to help in those deaths... just to ensure the reports communicated that horror. To create that horror...
‘He said you’d be able to do it, that he trusted you,’ Sasha said, nudging him gently.
‘I can’t.’
Sasha