Doctor Who_ Warlock - Andrew Cartmel [9]
In the last days of the war Ludmilla had seen the German rocket scientists striking deals with Uncle Sam and she saw no reason why she couldn’t do the same.
There was only one fly in the ointment. She had attached herself to one of the leading Russian scientists, who continued research into the strange chemical that had already cost so many lives.
But the scientist was now deemed disloyal by the Party elite and he was scheduled for execution in one of their ruthless purges. Just as Hitler’s death camps were being shut down by the advancing Allied troops, so Uncle Joe Stalin was stoking his own hell ovens.
Scientists and intellectuals were being fed into the maw of this extermination machine. And with her scientist discredited, Ludmilla was in danger of joining the queue for the death camps. Guilt by association.
So she struck one last deal. The night before she was, due to leave for America she arranged with the KGB to hand over the scientist. She would trick him into giving himself up, thereby proving her loyalty. She would trade him for her freedom.
The scientist thought he was accompanying Ludmilla on the train going west. He believed that she loved him and that they were going to start a new life together in the golden land of the USA.
At midnight in the crowded bustling station yards of the railway terminus, Ludmilla made her move. Leading the trusting scientist deep into the chaos of the twisting railway tracks, she delivered him to the rain‐coated agents of the KGB. When he realized what was happening, the scientist made a futile break for freedom. He didn’t make it, but in the struggle Ludmilla’s glasses were knocked off and crushed underfoot.
The treacherous Soviet siren was otherwise unharmed and she watched with cold detachment as her lover was led through the freight yards to be put on board the train that would carry him to a mass grave in the east. She felt no sorrow as she turned away, to catch her own train, to freedom and wealth.
But this was where the raven‐haired Ludmilla’s luck ran out. Because her ice‐blue eyes were almost blind without her spectacles. Somehow in the steaming maze of the railway yards she took a wrong turn. Somehow she made a mistake. A fatal and final mistake.
In that dense steaming darkness, amidst the chaos and clamour of huge machinery, Ludmilla boarded the wrong train.
Instead of going west, she ended up being carried east, towards Stalin’s death camps. And once on board that train there was no way off again. And once in the camps there was no reprieve or escape, even for one as resourceful as Ludmilla. Helpless and near blind, she joined the masses scheduled for extermination.
Ludmilla had woven her final betrayal.
‘Serves her right,’ said Ace. She turned the old newspaper clipping over. On the other side there was a photograph of a smiling family dressed as if for the beach. They were peering through sunglasses at the distant shape of an atom bomb cloud.
Ace realized with a sudden chill that this was the same old piece of newspaper that had been lining the cutlery drawer for years. She looked at Benny. At that moment there was a small sound from the kitchen. They spun around to see the Doctor standing in the doorway. He smiled.
‘It’s always the article on the other side which is most interesting, don’t you find?’
* * *
What had once been stables on the estate had been converted in the 1920s into a garage large enough to house a dozen automobiles. Now over half of the space was devoted to the ever growing sprawl of the Doctor’s workshop.
Ace sat on one of the benches, swinging her feet. Benny sat on a polished wooden chest on castors, a chest big enough to be a very large coffin but which, with a bit of luck, merely contained an assortment of tools. In her lap she had an oven glove from the kitchen, a bright orange piece of quilted fabric in the shape of a smiling camel