Doctor Who_ Just War - Lance Parkin [108]
‘When an apple fell on his head, Newton discovered gravity. That’s how genius works: making associations, drawing inferences, putting the pieces together. I... came across his diary in the Soviet Union. The entry for the eve of the race in Cairo made it clear.’
Benny rolled her eyes. ‘So why didn’t you tell us all this before we came here?’
The Doctor shifted slightly. ‘I didn’t want to admit what I had done. Above all, I wanted to tread carefully. This war is a particularly delicate period: everything interconnected, everything so carefully balanced. Take Guernsey. It seems so insignificant, it’s just a backwater, with no strategic importance. But the Nazis spent a great deal of time and effort fortifying the Channel Islands. They used resources that could have been used to defend the French coast, and perhaps if they hadn’t then the Germans would have been able to ward off the Normandy landings.’
‘Doctor,’ Benny asked, ‘will Ma and Anne be all right?
The Doctor nodded. ‘They both survive the war, Anne’s fiancé comes back as a major, and they get married and have two daughters. I visited them once in 1960; Ma was in her eighties, and had just become a great-grandmother. I wondered then why Anne had called one of her children
“Bernice”.’
‘So now it’s all over, Hartung’s dead, the Germans don’t have the planes, and can’t build any more. It’s all tied up neatly,’ Benny concluded. She seemed to accept the Doctor’s explanation.
‘Nothing ever ends, Bernice. Munin is still sitting there in St James’s Park.’
‘There is another loose end,’ Roz reminded them. ‘Wolff.’
The Doctor’s head snapped up, and he looked Benny in the eye. ‘Joachim Wolff did this to you? He is here?’ She nodded.
The Doctor was standing. ‘Roz, I’ll need your pistol.’ Roz drew it and pressed it into the little man’s hand.
‘I’ll deal with Munin,’ Roz concluded.
The Doctor weighed the gun, and bit his lip.
It’s time to finish this.’
14 Endgame
Perhaps it happened this way:
The Doctor pulled back the bolts of the cell door and stepped inside. Behind him, seemingly unbidden, the bolts slid back into place. Wolff sat in the corner, slumped on an iron bed, his hands clasped to the back of his head. Even though he was subdued, Wolff was still a huge man. In the forced perspective of the tiny room, the Doctor appeared to loom over him.
‘Good evening, Standartenführer.’
Wolff looked up. The Doctor cocked his head, curious about the eyepatch.
‘Your friend, the black witch did this.’
‘If you’re playing for sympathy, Herr Wolff, it won’t work.
I’ve seen what you’ve done to Benny. I know all about what you did at Mallesan.’ The Doctor’s voice was low.
Wolff laughed.
The Doctor drew the pistol, his arm swinging in a wide arc until the gun was aiming at Wolff’s forehead. Wolff paused for a moment, but there was still a grin on his face.
‘You’re no killer. I can see the fear in your eyes, the sweat on your brow. You’re a pacifist degenerate, a coward,’ the Nazi concluded.
The gun stayed level and the Doctor gave a wry smile.
‘Things have changed since the last time we met: Hugin and Munin have been destroyed, Hartung is dead. The scheme you cooked up with Herr Steinmann has backfired. Now you are, in a prison cell, awaiting a firing squad. The British don t have a complete set of plans, so they won’t be building any stealth planes of their own. They do have enough information to detect any German planes built along the same lines, though.’
Wolff smiled. Have you come here to kill me or to keep me up to date with current affairs?’
‘Neither. I’ve come here to prove that you were wrong, that you have lost. That there is an alternative.’
‘Oh yes, Doctor. You’ve seen the alternative: that Forrester, the woman who took out my eye, she’s from the future, isn’t she?’
‘Forrester is committed to justice and fairness.’
‘“An eye for an eye”?’ Wolff chuckled. ‘She is a vicious animal, I saw the hatred in her eyes. Her kind will be eradicated, we’ll protect decent people from creatures like her. I’ll do it myself... unless you