Doctor Who_ Just War - Lance Parkin [32]
He drew open the curtains.
His clothes had been washed and ironed, and now lay neatly folded on a dresser. The Doctor crumpled up the jacket and trousers, then put them on. The pockets had been completely emptied, except for the folded hat and his abacus.
He would have to find some more dog biscuits, he reminded himself. He began searching the hatband for his TARDIS key before remembering that he had given it and the spare to Roz the morning before. The slip of paper was still secreted there. When he had finished dressing, he looked at himself in the full-length mirror by the dresser, placing his hat on his head and adjusting his scarf. The sun had almost fully risen over the horizon. The lights were going out all over Europe.
Church bells nearby struck seven o’clock. The Doctor checked his watch.
There was a knock at the door. Without waiting for a response, a young female Gefreiter stepped in, closing the door behind her.
‘Herr Doktor, your breakfast is ready, in the main dining-room. Oberst Steinmann will join you shortly,’ she announced in slightly awkward English.
‘I speak German,’ the Doctor replied. ‘What is your name?’
Gefreiter Fegelein.’
‘Your real name,’ he said gently.
Ulrilda,’ she smiled a pretty smile.
‘From Falkenstein?’
‘Yes, however did you know?’
‘A lucky guess. Time for breakfast.’ He took a last look at his reflection. ‘Don’t go avay!’ he ordered it in a mock-German accent.
He stepped from the room. If Ulrilda had glanced back at the mirror at that moment, she would have seen the Doctor’s image raise his hat, a broad grin on his face, before he slowly faded from view.
The Doctor hadn’t been there.
He had arranged to meet her by the TARDIS at eight, but he hadn’t arrived. This worried Roz more than she cared to acknowledge. It was an hour later now, and she was safely behind her desk at the Headquarters of the Scientific Intelligence Division, with work to do. Principally she was keeping her mind off what had probably happened to the Doctor and Chris. Annotated aerial photographs of London were scattered over her desk. Each crater was marked in tiny white writing, a record of each explosion which gave the location, the time it happened and the yield of the bomb used. Even with a computer, working out the course of events last night would be virtually impossible. Of course, this office hadn’t got a computer. When she’d asked about requisitioning one, they didn’t even seem to have understood the question. Why, then, did she have the nagging sensation that she was on the verge of making a major breakthrough?
Wishful thinking, probably. The British were dreading spring, thinking that as the weather got better, the Germans would dust off their plans for invasion, shelved last winter. The British had a codeword, ‘Cromwell’, meaning that an invasion had started, and they expected to hear it very soon. As far as Roz could tell, this war was dead-locked: the Germans had a powerful air force and army, but lacked the navy to carry through an invasion, and their bombers just weren’t powerful enough to do more than superficial damage. Britain had the navy, it was building up the air power, but Germany controlled so much territory on the Continent that invasion was out of the question for a long while yet. Had Hartung found a way to break the stalemate? If he had, what was it?
His field of expertise would suggest some new aerial weapon, but it might not be the superbomber that Lynch thought it was. She made a mental note to research the state-ofthe-art at this time. With her knowledge of the future, it might be possible to predict which technological developments were due in the next decade or so. Had they got atomics yet? Orbital platforms? Ballistic missiles? Any of those would tip the balance.