Chapter 187
17th November 1941
RAF Airfield, Western Egypt
The band was waiting on the sandy strip of the base without knowing what they were waiting for. Orders had been to turn out and were to wait for a dignitary of some sort who would obviously arrive by plane, that much was clear from the waiting red carpet and the guards that had surrounded the base and the hangar. Why said dignitary was here was something that was didn't require much of a mental exercise either. But most of them were only busy with thinking about how long they had to wait here again, so when the retrofitted de Havilland D.H.91 Albatross they didn't look at it with anticipation but rather with relief. The aircraft flew past them and then their demeanour didn't change. The plane flew around the base twice, presumably the pilot was talking with the tower over the wireless and then the plane came in to land.
When it rolled to a stop the soldiers waiting immediately went to attention, not because they were ordered but rather because of the flag that was painted under the cockpit window. It was not the usual Union Flag that VIP transports such as this one used, it was the flag of the house of Windsor instead, making it very clear who was coming to visit their little backwater.
On the plane meanwhile the Prime Minister was still not pleased with the King insisting on coming along. When he had briefed the Palace, the King had been adamant about it, saying that it was the responsibility of the monarchy to smooth over these problems even though Palestine was not really a part of the British Empire as such. He heard the voice of his sovereign and looked up from his papers. The King repeated himself.
“It is my own responsibility Winston, not yours.” “That may be so, your Majesty, but the fallout should you be killed would be....”
“Still my own responsibility. I believe that my attending this rather impromtu conference will give our position much more weight. Besides, Princess Elizabeth might be young, but I believe that she is very capable should I be killed. If anyone can rule longer than my Grandmother, it's her.”
The plane stopped and prevented the Prime Minister from answering, and instead they rose from their seats and began to exit the aircraft. The King stepped out first, and and was greeted by the band suddenly playing the appropriate music. George VI spent almost an hour on the base, talking with the troops and generally raising morale, and the Prime Minister grudingly admitted that nothing raised the morale of the troops like the presence of their Monarch. It gave them knowledge that they weren't a forgotten backwater[1] and made willing to stay where they were. Soon enough though the motorcade that had swallowed the King and the Prime Minister moved from the base onto the road that led towards their destination.
The day before a lone Land Rover left an oasis near Cairo. The occupant was less than pleased to be again be taken from his work, but as his second in Command had said, if the King beckoned, Naval Officers, even Captains came running. Stirling had remarked that with such connections Ian would go far, but Ian had merely grunted and said that he would rather go on with screwing over the Germans. He had to admit though that it made sense for the head of the local SOE station to join the conference, there was after all the possibility that this whole thing was engineered and not the work of a single madman like people believed. Ian was to meet the train which would take the King and the Prime Minister into Palestine to the north-west. For some reason the meeting point had been set to be near a small train station in North-Western Egypt. Again from a professional point of view that made sense, because unlike the station in Cairo the one in the middle of the desert was easily defended.
He spent the better part of the day on the road, but when he came close to his destination, he stopped at the side of the road to have a look at the map. Even to a Naval Officer like him the position looked defensible, and he could almost see the British and Commonwealth troops making a stand there in a strange way against an Italian Force that had somehow penetrated that far into Egypt. He shook his head. The useless forces the Eyties had used in Lybia could never have made it, not without massive German and Soviet Help. Sighing and taking a swig from his canteen, he smashed the Landy into gear again and raced down the road towards a small train station, towards El Alamein.[2]
Once there he was stopped no less than five times before he actually was allowed to enter the small assembly of ramshackle houses and was had his papers checked again, but his rank and his Distinguished Service Order smoothed the way. From afar he could see a train waiting for her last passengers and supplies to be loaded. Ian readjusted his pack on his shoulder and stepped towards the troops that formed the last perimeter around the train. Here he was only asked for his name that was checked against a list one had on his clip-board, and he was allowed in. There he was immediately met by the Prime Minister's bodyguard who still remembered him from back when he had last met the PM outside of the Cabinet Bunker, and so Ian was was simply winked through this last layer of security. In the distance down the corridor of the carriage he could see Churchill entering the most spacious cabin at the back, but then Ian followed someone from railway personnel to his own cabin. Once there he sat down, and much to his amazement the train was beginning to move within less than twenty minutes and ending the utterly insignificant station's contact with history, soon to be forgotten until eternity. The train raced eastwards to it's destination, not into Palestine proper, but rather towards Suez where they would do their job. Ian was reading the briefing papers that he had been given a few minutes after the train had left the station. He was deeply immersed in his papers when someone knocked on the door of his compartment. He looked up from his papers and rose to open the door. Outside was an obviously uncomfortable civil servant who seemed to be slightly annoyed that a lowly Naval Officer seemed to be perfectly comfortable with the weather outside of the train, and that shone through when he said: “His Majesty and the Prime Minister would like to see you, Captain.” Ian decided not to express his annoyance and rather rose, dusted off his tropical Uniform as well as he could and followed the Civil Servant back. He entered the Cabin and stood at attention before the king waved it away dismissively and ordered him to sit down.
“You may wonder why you are here, Captain.”
It was the Prime Minister who opened the conversation, who didn't wait for Ian to answer.
“From our position the troubles in Palestine look like they are just the work of someone out to stirr up trouble. As a matter of fact we don't even have any reliable information on when this started yet, at least not here in this compartment, but it looks like it was just a chain of unfortunate circumstances.” Ian did not reply, but the other men in the compartment could sense the unasked question. This time it was the King who answered. “You are here because we cannot afford to take any chances. MI5 and MI6 have their stations here, but the Prime Minister and I think that someone from the SOE might see something that the others have missed..”
Ian creased his forehead and still felt that there was something he was not being told, but he could hardly accuse the King of withholding information, so he said nothing at first and took his time to phrase his answer carefully.
“With all due respect your Majesty, but the SOE is more on the operational side of things, and I left that other line of work long ago.”
Even though they were by no means forced to actually answer him, the two men decided to do it anyway. Both the Prime Minister and the King however decided that the man had earned honesty, and so he talked.
“While there is nothing, not even the slightest to indicate that this isn't what it seems to be, in the past you have proven to be someone who finds things where there aren't any...”
“And now you think that when you take me along not only in my position as the Head of Station for the Special Operations Executive I might be able to find indicators if there are?” Ian didn't know how he felt about being used as a snooping dog, but then again he and Felix had hunted spies for quite some time back in Blighty, and he had to admit that he had a sort of talent. It was not that he went and looked for trouble, it was more as if an unseen higher power was dictating his every move and kept throwing him into more adventures than most men didn't experience in a dozen lifetimes.[3] But alas, his was not to reason why, and he had to agree that the King and the PM had a point, because someone thinking along slightly different lines might see things that the administrators and college professors that still made up most of MI6 in the backwaters of the British Empire missed.
“So where are we going?”
“You weren't told?”
“No, Sir.” Ian denied. “All I was told was that His Majesty and the Prime Minister were asking for my attendance due to matters of gravest importance, and it didn't take a nobel prize winner to figure out what this has to do with.”
The King was once again the one who answered first.
“Good. This train is on it's way to Suez, where we will attend a conference on Palestine and.....”
For the next hour Ian listened as the Prime Minister and by a lesser extent the King explained. After that Ian went back to his own cabin and began to study the reports that had found their way to Cairo over the last few days. The violence in Palestine was dying down, mostly thanks to heavy patrolling by more than a Division's worth of Colonial Cavalry and Indian Infantry, and investigations carried out by the local police and the RMP had not yet yielded anything substantial, but from what little had been found out, the trouble had started in the Old City of Jerusalem. Rumours were flying about, but a substantial number of people said that it had started with an explosion near the Whailing wall, far too many people and far too many casualties in the hospitals that had operated the entire time were saying things to the effect, so the Commissioner was willing to accept this as the most likely conclusion. Ian shuffled through the papers he had been given and was inclined to agree, and indeed nothing except the timing, it was suspiciously close to the raid that had plagued North Africa, it had started just after many of the troops in Palestine had been moved to Lybia and Egypt. Many would see this as paranoya, but Ian had seen far too many such 'coincidences' to believe in them any more, but other than that there was nothing to suggest foreign involvement. Something about it all was bugging Ian though, and so far his hunch had mostly been right. He shook his head and decided to go and get a drink instead of sitting here and staring at papers that didn't really tell him anything new if he kept staring at them, tired as he was. He stepped out into the corridor and walked forward towards the dining car, he had almost an hour before the train reached Suez, and that was just enough time for something to eat and a good pot of tea.
Before he could sit down and let alone order, a brainwave hit and he suddenly realized what was bugging him. He raced back to his cabin, ignoring the annoyed voices that followed him. Once there he shuffled through the papers again and again until he had found what he was looking for. He placed the sheet of paper on the floor and then went through his bag and the papers he had brought, even though it was technically against regulations and standing procedures established by the SOE. Here the search took longer but eventually, as the train was pulling into the Station at Suez, he had found what he was looking for, even though this was not the time to approach the PM or the King, both were inspecting troops of some Regiment or other, and anyway, he had to formulate his arguments, even though now it was proof that there was a connection after all.
[Notes: This will all make sense...one day....
And as you can see, the Monarch of the AAO-verse is somewhat more involved, but nothing like in For King and Country. How far it
does go though is something I have to figure out, for now he merely reinforces the position the interests of the Empire and threads were elected officials can't go for whatever reason. Also the promised update for RHBF will have to wait, because Ian wasn't the only one with a brainwave, and between that and Fallout 3 I haven't got that much time left for Prussia, I am sad to say.]
[1] This can be sort of compared to the Burma front between 1941 and 1944.
[2] Now come on. I
had to give that place a spot.
[3] I have no idea at all what he is talking about. * whistles innocently *