Designated Targets

“Not a chance,” Harry replied quietly. “Not what we’d call ready, in any case. But I can’t see Hitler waiting until next spring to have a go. He knows he’s got to get in and finish us before the U.S. can build up enough combat-ready divisions and materiel. He’ll try it on well before Christmas, Viv. I’ve got an old- fashioned fiver says we won’t even see out the month.”

“Sorry, guv, can’t take that bet. Reckon I’d do me dough cold.”

Harry watched as the crowd swarmed around tables laden with venison and boar from his newly acquired estates. Piles of fresh vegetables, roasted taters, and Yorkshire pudding nearly buried dozens of smokehouse hams and chickens. It was a bacchanalian feast, given the wartime restrictions. Mutton pie and carrot pudding were the staples of the local diet. The sweets jars in the village shops were all empty, and the chocolate bars in the windows were made of wood. Only the wrapping was real. For Harry, the highlight of this evening promised to be the Hitler- shaped pinata stuffed full of real chocolates and toffees and boiled sweets that he had organized for the village children. When he lay in his bunk at night, he prayed that they, and his own men, would survive what was coming.

“You really put the wind up ’em, with that Kommandobefehl stuff,” St. Clair mumbled around a Thai chicken stick he had lifted from a table of “modern” foods. The curries and rice dishes were popular with the small twenty-first crew, but mostly provoked curiosity and a little fear among the locals. Harry had restricted himself to a small bowl of lamb korma. He scooped up a last mouthful with a piece of garlic naan, washed it all down with a slug of ale, and shrugged off St. Clair’s concern.

“Best they know, Viv. Should fire them up. Like that time we nearly got caught in Surabaya by old Ibn Abbas and his mob. A damn close run thing, what!” he mugged, dropping into a parody of an upper-class twit.

As the night wore on, Harry let himself bathe in the atmosphere of the room, both its actual warmth as the mercury dropped outside, and the balm of close companionship with decent people. He’d known very few moments like this since his college days. None since he’d returned to the regiment at the reduced rank of captain after a four-year spell in civvies. When the government had reintroduced conscription after the intifada, his brother, King William, had called all the royals together and made it clear that he would not have his subjects forced to endure dangers and hardships that the principals of the firm were unwilling to face alongside them.

Harry had actually been intending to return to uniform anyway, but as so often happened when Wills made one of his pronouncements, Harry ended up feeling as if his own decisions were being presented to him as a fait accompli. It was incredibly galling, but such was the fate of the second heir to the throne. Still, he missed his brother.

“You all right, guv?”

Harry let go a long breath he’d been holding. “Sorry, Viv. Miles away.”

“Years, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

“Your Highness, Your Highness!”

Harry’s spirits dropped at the sound of the voice, but his face somehow managed to light up with a credible imitation of surprise and pleasure, another benefit of royal training. Miss Deborah Jones, the schoolmistress, was bearing down on him with a couple of heifers in tow.

He’d paid a visit to the school one afternoon, to give a talk to the kiddies. Besides the village and estate children, a hundred evacuees from London had been relocated locally and were in attendance. He’d thrilled them with tales of the future, most of which were true, and it had been an altogether pleasant diversion for a couple of hours. But Miss Jones had been pestering him ever since, trying to set him up with one of the many dumpy red- haired lasses who were so common hereabouts.

Jones herself was a thin, painfully angular woman with a mouth like a puckered cat’s anus, and whenever excitement got the better of her—as it had at the moment—the anus would pucker all the more violently.

“Your Highness, Your Highness!”

“Please, Ms. Jones. It’s just Major Windsor.”

Viv, he could see, was grinning like a big black Cheshire cat.

“And who are these lovely young ladies, Ms. Jones?” asked the sergeant major, not so much as flinching when Harry dug a callused thumb into a very sensitive pressure point on his upper arm.

“This is Miss Lang, and this is Miss Biggins,” she trilled.

On closer observation, Miss Lang was what he and Wills used to call a bit of a six-pack, which was to say, if he threw down that much beer in a short space of time, he might just well have a crack at her on general principles. She wasn’t even afflicted with red hair. Perhaps . . .

“Major Windsor, sir?”

In his panic at being fronted by Miss Jones, he hadn’t noticed the dispatch rider who appeared through the crush of the room.

“Yes, Corporal.”

The rider was dressed for the road, in heavy oilskins, crash helmet, and goggles. He pulled an envelope from his satchel and handed it over, probably wondering why the woman with the cat’s butt for a mouth was glaring at him so fiercely.

Harry thanked him and then made his apologies, assuring the three women that Sergeant Major St. Clair would keep them entertained for the rest of the evening. He moved around the bar and into the relative calm of the pub manager’s office. Closing the heavy oak door behind him cut the sound of the party down to a muted roar. He broke the seal on the envelope, which came from Downing Street.

The prime minister had ordered that he proceed to London with all dispatch.

THE SOLENT, SOUTHERN ENGLAND

As a child, Captain Karen Halabi had retreated from a deeply unpleasant family life by hiding herself in books, specifically by seeking refuge in the lore and mythology of English seafaring. From her preteen years, when her school friends were plastering their bedroom walls with garish posters of pop stars, she dreamed only of running away to sea and escaping the prison of her father’s house. Her obsession was a mystery to all.

Not in its origin—because anybody who had endured the misfortune to deal with Khalil Halabi was soon possessed of the same desire to flee—but because Karen had no seafaring blood in her at all. Even on her English side, her late mother’s family ran back through an entirely unimpressive lineage of slum-dwelling lumpen proles. There was no reason why she should have been drawn to the sea, other than the obvious one: it was so much more pleasant than going home.

And it was still the place she chose as her home, she realized as the lighter carried her across the waters of the Solent, which separated the Isle of Wight from England, back to her ship and crew. Still the one constant in her painfully conflicted life.

The sea spray was cold and stinging on her coffee-colored skin as they motored into the chop. The sailors, ’temps, were used to her by now. They’d made the trip from Portsmouth to the Trident dozens of times, ferrying across crew and all manner of visitors. She had even organized a brief tour for them. After that, their initial reserve—which sometimes bordered on hostility—had gradually morphed into tolerance, if not outright acceptance.

She wondered if it would always be that way here. If she would forever be allowed to serve her function, grudgingly valued, but never appreciated for herself.

Halabi huddled deeper into the thick jacket and woolen scarf she wore against the stinging spray and sharp, biting wind. She could feel winter’s teeth in the chill of the sea air, and wondered idly whether she was just imagining that the autumn seemed colder here. The air was certainly cleaner, when you got away from the war. If only everything could be cleaner and simpler, but the longer she was here, the more conflicted she became.

She’d promised herself she would not become emotional over the snub she’d received in London, and for most of the return trip to her ship, she had managed to maintain an admirable detachment. But as the little motorboat thumped and beat against the confused swell of the Solent’s meeting waters, she found it increasingly difficult to contain her anger and distress. After all, the insult had been as much directed at her crew as at her.

She’d been in the capital only a short time. She had a briefing to deliver to the Combined Chiefs of Staff at the War Room and a meeting with Professor Barnes Wallis, the head of the government’s new Advanced Research