YANNA
A Belgian journalist, a woman, has an appointment with a renowned scientist who proves to be dead when she steps into his apartment.
Looking around she finds an interesting clue that, eventually, leads her to play a major role it the shaping of a new world.
When Yanna rang Dr. Andersen’s doorbell, there was no answer. He had told her over the phone to come as soon as possible, but no one answered the door. She knocked on the door and noticed that it was open. She walked in and saw that the apartment had been burglared. She found dr. Andersen in his study, dead, lying in a puddle of blood. Shot through the head, he seemed very dead even. Yanna had seen worse during her career as a journalist who had worked all over the world.
She actually didn’t know so much about Andersen except that he was Swedish, not married, had a vague girlfriend somewhere in Italy and that Andersen had gained some fame as a politicologist. Yanna had met him a few times after he had made some quite controversial statements at UN assemblies. Yanna had written a couple of articles about him and later they had had some private correspondence about political issues.
His laptop was still switched on, lying on his desk and some CDs were lying on the floor. Instinctively, Yanna suspected that the CDs might have something to do with whatever happened there and she put them in her purse.
Then she left the apartment and carefully closed the door behind her. She did not feel like calling the police and possibly be suspected of murder. It might take some time before someone found Dr. Andersen. She got on a streetcar that took her to Brussels’ South railway station. Three hours later she got off the “Thalys” TGV (high-speed train) in Paris and took a cab that brought her to her apartment at the Avenue Foch.
At home, she changed into a t-shirt and jeans, switched her laptop on, got the CDs from Andersen and looked them over. Nothing much interesting: just texts of conferences Andersen had held, old stuff.
But one CD got her attention: a nice collection of pictures of pretty girls. Quite pretty girls, even. But that CD was only half “full”, a bit strange for girlie CDs that are usually crammed full up to the last byte.
She got on the phone and called Rina, her best friend, total clown and computer freak. She told Rina to come over and to step on it.
Then she got an envelope from a drawer. The envelope contained a letter that Andersen had sent her a couple of months ago. The letter read that she ought to save it carefully, for it might come in handy one day and that she ought to look at it carefully when needed. It also had a single, long line of characters and figures.
Rina, again, looked the part: thick woollen pullover in mid-summer, short shorts, flipflops, hair in a knot, glasses as thick as coke bottle bottoms, old army bag.
- So where is the fire? Rina asked, barging in.
- No fire yet but something you might help me with.
- Get me a drink first.
- Coffee?
- Already had a gallon of it.
- Whiskey?
- Good idea.
Yanna gave her friend a bottle and a glass. Rina chugged a shot glass of the stuff down and then got another one.
- You drunk, Yanna said
- You slut.
Rina lit a cigarette, a French “Gitane Maïs”. Black tobacco rolled in yellow paper made of corn waste. In the past, the stuff had been known to make smoke stacks of steam locomotives puke.
- So what was so urgent? Rina asked.
- Got a nice CD in my laptop reader and I’d like to ask you to have a good look at it.
- Hot porn?
- No.
- Then what?
- No idea, but I do want to know what it is.
- Ok, show me.
Yanna put her laptop on the coffee table. Rina looked at the pictures.
- Nice, Rina said, would have been better without the bikinis. Don’t tell me I have driven here from the other side of town for this.
- No, I want to know what else there is on this CD.
Yanna gave Rina the strange letter she had from Andersen.
- Looks like an encryption key, said Rina.
- Please play with it I need to get some sleep.
- Make me some coffee anyhow.
- Ok.
Rina got started on that CD and Yanna laid herself down in Morpheus’ arms.
Two hours later Yanna got a wet towel on her face.
- I found something, said Rina.
- Yea ? Whot ?
- Sumthin’.
- What sumthin?
- Well, first there was a riddle hidden on that last CD you gave me, but I found out using that key. Then it says, “Take your glasses off and look everywhere”. The rest is gibberish, there must be another key.
- Nice.
- Must be very secret, huh.
- No idea, the person I got it from was very dead when I found it.
- Which is a disadvantage, of course, Rina said. But now I gotta run because I have a hot date tonight with something male, blond, athletic, six foot two, twenty-eight years old and that has money.
- And you are thirty-five, five foot tall, greying, and you have a big ass.
- Can’t be better, at least I have good taste and I don’t date dead corpses.
Rina caught the empty whiskey bottle that Yanna had aimed at her and put it back on the table. Then she ran.
Yanna didn’t know what to do; she had a CD with pictures and a head full of question marks.
“Take your glasses off and look everywhere”, Andersen had written,
Yanna didn’t know where to look. The pictures were nice, but nothing out of the ordinary. Yanna printed the forty pictures in A4 size and carefully looked them over, one by one.
She didn’t see anything special. Except for that one girl, maybe, the one wearing glasses. She looked a bit like Yanna, but Yanna was blonde, not a brunette.
As she kept looking at that one picture, she found it looking more and more like her. She got her magnifying glass. Ha! Something looked wrong at the neck. That smelled of Photoshop. That was not her body, but her head where someone had put a brown wig and glasses on.
Thinking away the glasses, what she saw was indeed Yanna, she got that right. But what now?
Andersen’s message said to look everywhere.
Ok, she thought by herself, then I will look everywhere and she studied the picture under the lens. There was something else in the background of the picture, something that did not look right, very small. The bullet nose of a 1951 Studebaker Champion, parked between modern cars. And its licence plate: 9R738, red and white 1950ies Belgian licence plate number. Yanna made a note of the number and wanted to call Rina. Then she remembered that Rina was probably busy doing something that her mother would have frowned upon when she was 15 and would not surface within forty-eight hours or so.
Yanna put some shoes on and a jacket, got her purse and walked the ten minutes to that yummy restaurant she knew, where she paid forty-five Euro for half a dozen very fresh oysters, smoked Scottish salmon as a second dish, kidneys in sherry sauce with sautéed potatoes as third, a choice from the cheese trolley (strong Munster) and a bottle of Beaujolais Villages. The fresh white bread was complementary, of course.
After her meal, when she got out of the elevator to her apartment, she found Rina sitting on the floor in front of her door. Rina looked angry. Yanna did not say anything, opened her door and let Rina in.
- What is it ? Yanna asked.
- Asshole, idiot, douche bag, nitwit, moron and he farts higher than his ass is.
- Drink?
- Yeah.
- Having good taste may have its disadvantages, Yanna said.
- Shuddup.
- Come on, tell me.
- Not worth the spit. After three hours of unstoppable blabbing about what a fantastic fighter pilot he is here in the air force, I got so sick of it that I just walked out on him.
- Learned something, huh.
- Sure did. And did you find something while I was gone?
- Maybe, have a look.
Yanna showed Rina what and how she thought she had found. Rina thought it was interesting and wanted to try something.
- Go ahead, Yanna said.
Rina added the code to the key and repeated the procedure. The result was quite different.
Instead of letter soup they got a clear text.
Yanna read:
Dear Miss Vangaver,
If you are reading this, I probably do not have the possibility anymore to communicate with you personally and the moment has come for you, as a journalist whom I know well and whom I trust, to publish some documents of the highest importance.
Explaining it all would take too long and it wouldn’t seem believable on a CD that anyone could have written. Therefore it is necessary that you obtain paper documents with original letterheads, signatures and stamps.
I entrusted those to a colleague, Dr. Hans Schepple, Rue du Lac 44, Geneva, Switzerland. He knows that he has to hand the documents over to you when you ask for them. He does not know what they are.
I am asking you to publish these documents as soon as they come into your possession.
I thank you and may Freya guard you.
Knut Andersen.
- Wow. Said Rina.
- What the fuck is this stinking creek I am up? Yanna said.
- Know what? Rina asked.
- What?
- Forget the whole thing, get drunk and tell me that you love me.
- Hey, I am not a lesbian!
- Neither am I, but it sounded good, Rina said, having her fourth drink.
- You gonna stay over?
- Yes.
- Want me to call an escort service for women?
- Are you nuts?
- Yes.
- Hit the sack, you drunk.
- Slut.
Sunday morning. Rina looked as if she had been run over by a couple of fire engines and Yanna also showed that her twenty-fourth birthday had been a while ago.
Both had wanted a career and both had a successful one. They were also paying the price. Hundreds of gallons of black coffee, whiskey, tobacco and Benzedrine now caused some renovation works to have to be undertaken in the bathroom.
Half an hour later both sat at the kitchen table. Coffee, cigarette, croissant with salted butter, more coffee. Yanna called Railways Informations and made a reservation for the 14:30 to Geneva. Rina asked if Yanna had gone mad.
Yanna gave her friend the finger and sent an e-mail to her editor.
In her bedroom, she dressed inconspicuously: jeans, sports bra, cotton panties with “Kiss My Ass” print on the back, T-shirt, hiking boots, boonie hat, jacket with 450 pockets. Her Minox DSC camera in her pocket, spare batteries, Swiss army knife, iPhone and a lot of other stuff. Apple portable in her travel bag. She looked as discrete as Bozo The Clown in a herd of nuns.
Rina started something like: don’t get involved… dead corpses… mysterious… dangerous… terrorists… Tony Blair… Swiss cheese and whatever came up in her head.
Yanna said she smelled “news”.
Their noon meal was pasta and each a liter of Evian. Rina took Yanna to the Railway station in her old VW 1600 bug.
The train left on time.
It was evening when Yanna arrived in Geneva Central Station. She found a room in the old hotel Cornagnôle.
After her evening meal in the hotel restaurant she decided to get a drink at the bar, where an elderly piano player did his best not to get shot. She ordered a margarita.
- Good idea! Said a man, in French, who sat a couple of bar stools away.
- What?
- A margarita is a good idea.
- Yes it is, said Yanna, laughing.
He looked at her, she looked at him. Fourty-ish, dirty blond short hair, tall, athletic, jeans, immaculate white shirt, close-shaven, Omega brand watch on right wrist, Hush Puppies, pack of Marlboro in shirt pocket, Zippo lighter.
Yanna decided not to be interested.
- I am Eric Vernier, he said, journalist at the Echo Du Valais.
- Yanna Vangaver, Le Figaro.
- Wow, Le Figaro, you must be good!
- It is a living.
- I guess it is. Working in Geneva?
- Not yet, maybe tomorrow.
- May I ask what you are planning to write about? Or are you a photographer?
- If I told you it was about the feeding habits of June Bugs in the High Middle Ages, I would be lying.
- I understand, you can’t say anything about it yet.
- Right.
- Would you join me for another drink?
- Yea, sure.
The pianist played “Sentimental Journey” while they were having their second margarita and when they got onto the third, “Fly Me To The Moon” did not impress anyone and Yanna noticed that Eric did not even try to “get closer” but only spoke about trivialities. She did not think he’d belong to “the other side” because he had already mentioned a couple of ex-girlfriends. Yanna thought he might not find her attractive. That was a first. She had always had a certain success with men. Strange.
She wanted to say something, but Eric cut her short.
- I wish you a very good night. He said, and left the bar.
There were no other customers although it was only eleven in the evening. Yanna ordered yet another margarita and listened to the piano player who, possibly also out of sheer misery, played The Blue Danube. Yanna liked that melody.
Monday morning, 8 AM, Yanna, early customer in the hotel restaurant, is having a couple of croissants and a pot of coffee that is as black as tar with lots of sugar.
One hour and a cigarette later, a taxi brings her to the Rue du Lac.
Number 44 is an old, somewhat boring-looking house. Yanna rings the doorbell.
A young woman answers the door.
- Madame?
- I am Yanna Vangaver, I would like to see Dr.Schepple.
- Is he expecting you?
- No, but I have a message or him from a colleague and I do not have his telephone number.
- Please come I, I will tell him you have arrived.
- Good morning, Madam, how can I help you?
- I am Yanna Vangaver; Dr.Knut Anderson gave me a message for you.
- I am Dr. Schepple. Please step into my office.
Schepple’s office was a huge heap of books, files and stacks of papers under which a desk was hidden, somewhere.
- So, what is it that my friend Andersen wanted to tell me? I suppose he is doing well?
Yanna gave Schepple the print she had made from Andersen’s message, with the crypto key omitted, of course.
This is what he wrote, Yanna said. And I must tell you that Dr.Andersen has passed away.
- Passed away? How so?
Yanna told Schepple that Dr. Andersen had been found dead at his home and that he had left a message for Yanna.
- That is indeed very unpleasant news, Schepple said; he was a very good friend of mine.
- Can you provide the documents? Yanna asked.
- Yes, of course, but I do not keep them here. I entrusted my notary with them, safest way to keep something. I will call him immediately.
- Thank you.
Schepple dialled a number, but got no answer. While he re-dialled a couple of times, he never noticed Yanna’s Minox.
- I am very sorry, Schepple said, no one is answering. I will try again later. How can I reach you?
- I am staying at hotel Cornagnôle. Maybe you can give me your number, I will call you.
- Yes of course. Schepple jotted a number down on a pad and gave it to Yanna.
- Thank you.
Yanna left Schepple and three minutes down the street she got a call.
- Yes ?
- Duvivier here, where are you? Yanna had expected her boss to call.
- Geneva.
- What the fuck are you doing in Geneva?
- Buying Swiss cheese.
- Stop that.
- I think I am on to something big.
- What?
- The invention of edible underpants made out of cheese.
- I told you to stop that, what have you got?
- No idea, to be honest.
- Give me a good reason not to fire you.
- Me, telling your wife about your secretary.
- So what have you got that will cost me a fortune in expenses?
- I do not know, but I am working on it. I will keep in touch.
Yanna clicked him away.
Yanna thought it was a bit strange that Dr. Schepple would keep Andersen’s documents in such a secure place. Schepple was not even supposed to know what they were about.
Little restaurant with view on the lake with the fountain. Asparagus soup, steak, salad, French fries, red wine, vanilla custard, coffee, cigarette. In that order. Peppered bill, too. Yanna decided to go window-shopping.
Sunny day, almost too warm. Yanna enjoyed the afternoon.
- Miss Vanguavère! Yanna smiled, whenever a non-Flemish native speaker tried to pronounce her name. The “soft g” is not easy to pronounce.
That was Eric Vernier, the one with whom she had a couple of drinks the evening before.
- What a pleasure of meeting you here!
- Good afternoon, Monsieur Vernier.
- Taking a stroll ? Looking for something?
- The Quadrature of the Circle.
- Hahahaha, you are very funny, Miss Vangaver.
- Thank you, so are you.
Vernier ignored those last words.
- Can I tempt you with a drink? Vernier asked.
- The Richemond has a nice bar, Yanna said.
- Yes, why not, it is just around the corner.
Le Richemond is one of the most expensive places in Geneva and Yanna had hoped that this would scare him off, but Vernier did not mind.
Afternoon cocktails may seem old-fashioned but Yanna didn’t care and the bartender poured two perfect Margaritas @ fifty Swiss Francs apiece.
-A Votre santé, cheers, from both sides.
Yanna had no idea about what to say to that man, but she did not want to be too impolite with a colleague-journalist either. She was thinking of something less trivial to say than “Nice weather, huh” when her iPhone buzzed. Saved by Rina. She apologized to Vernier and ran to the terrace to find a quieter place.
- What is it?
- Your place got burglared.
- What?
- Burglared.
- Tell me.
- Not much to tell. Terrace door lock forced, place trashed, lots of damage. They must have been looking for something but did not find it. I had taken that CD home with me.
I noticed the burglary when I came to feed your cat. Want me to call the cops?
- Yea, call them and call my insurance company, number is in my phone book. And throw that CD away.
- Ok. When will you be back?
- No idea, look after my cat.
- I will.
- Thanks, I’ll call you.
At first, Yanna didn’t know what to think of all that, but she was sure it must have had to do with Andersen. Someone must have known.
- Anything wrong? Vernier asked when Yanna climbed back on her bar stool, downed her drink in one gulp and ordered another one.
- My place got burglared.
- Not good, much damage?
- That is what my friend said. But that is for my insurance to take care of. On the other hand, I think something may reek of fish.
Eric Vernier got himself another drink too.
- Is there anything I can be of help with? Eric asked.
- Yes, have you got a car?
- Yes.
- Give me your mobile number, wait for me to call. That may take a little while, I will explain later.
Eric gave his phone number and Yanna ran off. She got a cab that brought her to her hotel, where she had one of the receptionists prepare her bill and make a train reservation for the next train to Paris.
Then she ran to her room, got her stuff, paid her bill and had the hotel porter hail a cab to bring her to the railway station.
In the station, she walked straight through it, to the back exit and called Eric.
- Eric ?
- Yes.
- You will find me sitting on a bench in the park behind the station.
- Between the junkies?
- Yes, hurry.
- On my way.
Ten minutes later she sat in Eric’s Volkswagen Golf.
- Now what? Eric asked.
- I ought to find a discreet place to stay for a few days.
- I know an old lady who rents me a room sometimes.
- That will do.
The room was not much: bed, cupboard, table, chair, lamp, ashtray. Old but very clean. The old lady, whom Eric knew well, did want to get paid on beforehand. Yanna gave her two hundred Francs and asked if she could bring something to drink. She could and brought Yanna a bottle of water, a bottle of “prune” plum spirit and two glasses.
- So, Eric said, what is now finally the matter?
- Hang on, what is the number of phone informations here?
- 1818
Yanna called that number and asked for the phone number of Eric’s newspaper. Eric gave her a weird look.
- The Editor’s office?
- Yes Madam.
- I got here a man with me who claims to be a journalist with your newspaper; he goes by the name of Eric Vernier, is that possible?
- Yes but you could have checked his press card.
- Many fakes around.
- Also true, now what did that son of a bitch do this time?
- Nothing yet, but can you tell me what the Eric Vernier you know looks like?
The man on the phone gave Yanna, laughing, a precise description of what Eric ought to look like.
- Thank you.
- You are welcome.
- Sorry, but I thought I had to do that.
- No problem, but was that really necessary?
- I fear for my life and I don’t want to go to the cops.
- Oh. What is wrong?
Yanna told her whole story. She ended by saying that she hoped that, with Eric’s help, she had put possible “interested parties” off track by creating the impression that she had gone back to Paris.
- So what are you going to do now?
- See if that Schepple can reach his notary and then I will see, but I am not sure about what to think of that Schepple.
- How so?
- It doesn’t make sense that he would have gone through the trouble of keeping the documents in a notary’s safe.
- Do I get exclusive rights to your sleuth story?
- Emm… yes, but not the rest.
- Ok, count me in, but tell me now how we take it from here.
- Go back to the Cornagnôle. I will call you. I will ask how you are doing. You must answer that things are bad. If you answer that all is good, I will know that you have been compromised in one way or another and then I will disappear.
- Ok, got it.
- Good night.
- You too, see you tomorrow or so.
Eric left the house and Yanna poured herself a glass of “prune” and lit a cigarette. She used her iPhone to check on some Belgian newspapers but did not find any mention of a murder in Brussels. The only thing that caught her attention was a couple of headlines about a sudden, worldwide outbreak of some kind of flu that had already claimed several hundreds of millions of deaths in Asia. Russia had also been hit hard. Yanna thought it was a bit strange that the news was only published after so many deaths had occurred already.
She got out of her shoes and her jeans and tried to get some sleep.
Yanna’s breakfast was a cup of coffee and a piece of cake she got from the old woman. Then she thought of something she should have thought of before. She Googled “Schepple” on her iPhone.
She found Prof. Dr. Hans Schepple. Author of… yadda yadda… and a picture that did not look like what she got on the little screen of her Minox. She called Eric.
- Hello?
- It’s me, Yanna, how are you?
- Not good, I caught a cold.
- Can you come over?
- Sure, I’ll be there in no time.
Yanna went for another cup of coffee.
- Interesting, Eric said, but what do we do with that info?
- I bet there is no one in that house anymore.
- You think so?
- Yes, and there is something else.
- What?
- That “someone” knew that Andersen might have certain documents and wanted to get them is something I can imagine. But that someone else except Rina and I would know about Schepple is something I do not comprehend. Unless… No, I can’t believe that.
- Unless what?
- Unless Rina…
- Who is Rina?
- My best friend.
- Does she know about all this?
- It was her who de-coded the Andersen CD.
- Oh. And you think she is with “the enemy”?
- No, not her, I would not know why or how.
- You sure about that?
- Wait a sec.
Yanna called Rina.
- Hi, it’s me.
- How are things going?
- Good question, but I have something to ask you too.
- What?
- Listen, let me line up a couple of things first: 1. You de-code the CD and then you meet that pilot. 2. You de-code the second part of that CD. 3. I leave. 4. You go home with that CD. 5. I have here a meeting that makes me think there was a leak in that CD while it was in your possession. Any ideas?
- You must be joking.
- You heard me, I have no other explanation.’
- You are nuts.
- Not more than usual, but I just cannot think about any other possibility.
- Believe me, Yanna, I did not say anything to anyone.
- When you went home the next day, did you sleep well that night?
- Very well even, why. Wait a minute, let me check something.
- Ok.
Yanna heard a keyboard cracking, followed by a series of swearwords that would have embarrassed Genghis Khan’s whoremonger.
- My computer log shows me some activity while I was asleep that night. Dammit, now I understand why that “pilot” did not even protest when I angrily walked out on him. And that I slept so well. That son of a bitch must have taken me by the short-and-curlies in some way and copied that CD here or so. So he might have found out about you. Looks like these are not ordinary thieves.
- No, this is not normal anymore. I will call you later.
Yanna told Vernier what Rina had said.
- Interesting, Vernier said, but that does not bring us any closer.
- I think, Yanna said, that that “Schepple” we met knew that he had to find something, but didn’t know exactly what and may have thought that I knew.
- That is possible, said Vernier. What about go back there and see what I can find out. I will find a pretext for a visit and he doesn’t know me.
- You can try that.
- Ok then, we will start with that. I will go there now and come back as soon as I can to report what I found.
- See you soon.
When Vernier arrived at Schepple’s house, he found two policemen on guard duty who told him that he could not go in. Vernier showed his press card and said that he wanted to report to his newspaper.
Then, two other men came out of the house and Vernier addressed a police commissioner, whom he knew.
- Could you tell me what happened, commissioner?
- Double murder, robbery, a certain Schepple and his servant, but that is all I can say.
- Could you tell what has been stolen?
- All I can say is that a safe was opened and emptied. That is all I can say.
- Thank you, commissioner.
- You are welcome.
- And? Yanna asked when Eric was back.
- You were right, the real Shepple and his servant were found dead, you met someone else.
- Who is gone now?
- Of course. And it also confirms your hypothesis that they don’t know what to look for.
- Probably. But that doesn’t bring us anything. We don’t know what we are looking for, either. Have you got any idea about getting any further? We have two burglaries now and three deaths and now I have become so intrigued that I cannot drop this.
- True, if we dropped this, go home and forget it, we will probably have to consider ourselves amateurs for the rest of our lives.
- I’d hate that, Yanna said.
- So would I.
- Good, but what do we do now?
- I may have an idea.
- Tell me.
- That Schepple might have heirs: children, brother, whatever. Now that he has passed away, we might approach them and maybe learn something more.
- That might be possible.
- Maybe we could start by attending his funeral, as soon as we find out when it will take place. We will not be able to do much in the meantime. It is Monday, give the coroner two days for the post-mortem and paperwork, count one day for funeral preparations and transport, add one day in reserve. That makes it four days. So the funeral will probably be on Saturday. Let us keep an eye on the obituaries in the papers.
- Sounds like a good start. I’ll call my editor and tell him something, but not too much, so I can stay here.
- I think I will do the same.
- Yes and let us stay far apart so that one does not drag the other with him in case something goes wrong. I have the impression that the “competition” is not amateurs like us. I will call you in the morning.
- I will wait for your call.
Eric left and Yanna climbed behind her laptop. She wrote a short overview about what she thought to be “newsworthy” and sent that to her editor.
It was late afternoon and Yanna got hungry. She found a Chinese restaurant nearby and ordered menu # 4. While she waited, she kept thinking about what could be so important that Andersen wanted to have so urgently published – and what others might want to prevent. It had to be special enough to kill three people for it.
Bill Hinckley and John Woods, two “Special Agents” belonging to an obscure US “Agency”, sat across the desk of their boss in the US Embassy in Bern. Their boss, Colonel Winters, was not pleased at all with what his men reported to him.
Hinckley apologized by saying that, if the Swiss authorities had collaborated and they would have been able to properly search Shepple’s place, something would have certainly been found.
All Winters could answer to that was that he had his orders and that the Swiss were not to be informed and that they had no other choice than to follow the Yanna Vangaver track. Moreover, he did not know either what had to be found exactly and that is why Yanna Vangaver had to find what she had to find. Retrieving it afterwards would have been easy.
- But now we lost the Vangaver woman too, Woods said.
- You guys are as useless as those dimwits we had at work in Belgium and France.
- Sorry
- See to it that you are at the Schepple funeral.
- Yes, Sir.
Two days later Yanna read in a newspaper obituary that Schepple would indeed be buried on Saturday.
And while both American gentlemen got busy with whatever and Vernier was thinking of Yanna while he tried to write something for his newspaper, Yanna had bought those newspapers not only for the obituaries but also just to read them.
The papers did not contain much more that the usual page filling BS of which she had produced some quantity herself in the past and while she browsed through the pages, a name caught her eye. A name one doesn’t see often anymore in the newspapers.
An article by the Schiller-Institute spoke of a plan by one Henry Kissinger in 1974 to drastically depopulate the world by the use of famine, illness and war.
Yanna didn’t think that was very original, since King George VI of England had already created a Royal Commission in 1944 about "Influencing the future trends in world population". A polite way of saying “How do we get rid of ninety percent of them?”
Yanna didn’t think much of it, at first, but couldn’t refrain of thinking about that it is very much proven now that HIV, Ebola and a number of other viruses are pure military creations that have been tested a few times. And that led her to think about that epidemic that already had caused millions of deaths in Asia and Russia.
I did not take her much of an effort to link this to the fact that neither an economy nor a demography can be based on an eternally growing model. It stops somewhere, it has to stop. Or someone makes it stop. And if one wants it or not, there they stand, helpless, the philanthropists, the ecologistst, the religious nuts, the genocided, the good, the bad and the ugly, you and me.
Somewhere, she thought, a decision will be made by some and now I think it might not take long. I hardly dare thinking of it.
Yanna poured herself a large shot of “prune” to help her chase away those ugly thoughts. She called Eric and asked him to come by. Twenty minutes later, Eric knocked on her door. Yanna asked if he’d feel like go eat something, somewhere. Eric proposed a place out of town and about an hour later they were comfortably seated in a rural “Gasthof”.
The food was good and so was the beer. Eric had said something about Swiss wine and as soon as he had pronounced the words “Fendant du Valais”, Yanna had preferred beer to that totally undrinkable and ridiculously overpriced vinegar that is famed in that area.
Yanna was a bit peculiar about food, she also loathed Dutch cheese which she called “salted yellow rubber”, unfit for consumption. She did love Dutch butter, though, although it had been declared illegal in The Netherlands by the chemical industry. Dutch cows get a big ass from eating real butter. Now they eat themselves sick in margarine and they still have a fat ass. Go figure.
Yanna does not have an oversized behind. She is thirty-eight, has dirty-blonde short hair and just looks attractive.
Yanna was still single, had had a dozen or so adventures but never wanted to tie herself with someone she would have to have to wake up with every morning. On the other hand, she did not really want to end up an old spinster.
And while she sat there anyway, she looked at Eric. He was also single and obviously uncompromised. Not an Adonis, but not ugly either. He seemed intelligent, friendly, not pretentious, maybe someone she might go on a trip with.
Eric didn’t say much and they ended their meal.
- Coffee? Eric asked
- Is that a good idea, in the evening?
- It is if you have a glass of brandy with it
- Two coffees and two brandies, please.
Two hours, four coffees and four schnapps later Yanna and Eric were still sitting there, but this time they were not thinking about writing anything of about what had preoccupied them the last few days. Eric had even dared to say that he was not feeling indifferent towards Yanna. Yanna thought that was not exactly being forward but she thought that Eric was also attractive to her.
While driving “home”, Eric didn’t drive very straight. He didn’t know whether that was because of the brandy or the fact that Yanna rested her hand on his right knee.
The next morning, Yanna thought it to be a bit strange to hear “Good morning” about three inches from her left ear and suddenly realized she had started something that would not be over in a short while.
- Coffee? Eric asked.
- Coffee!
Their landlady brought coffee and a breakfast and told Eric that he’d have to pay something extra for that. Eric shrugged and gave her a hundred Francs.
Yanna had her coffee and mumbled something about “looking up something” and half an hour later both were staring at the screen of Yanna’s laptop. Eric wanted to know why Yanna was so interested in an article, found on a newspaper’s website, written more than a year ago by Knut Andersen, about biological warfare.
- I am beginning to suspect something, Yanna said.
- What?
- That it is too late.
- That what is too late?
- Everything, you, me, everyone.
- Yanna dear, I am not sure that I am following you.
- We have to get out of here, far away.
- What do you mean?
- You live in the Kanton Wallis, huh?
- Yes, why?
- Any high mountains there?
- Certainly.
- That is where we want to go, now.
- Right now?
- Right now!
- But why?
- Let’s go, I will tell you underway.
Yanna got her stuff and they left, running.
- So, Eric said, where do you want to go now?
- High up in the mountains and equipped to survive a while there.
- What is “a while”?
- Couple of months maybe, three, four…
- What?
- You heard me. And now, buy a couple of newspapers.
Eric didn’t really know what to think but decided that Yanna would have a good reason for this “flight”. In the next town he bought some newspapers. Yanna browsed.
- Here, she said.
- What, here?
- That epidemic is spreading towards us. China, Ukraina, Poland, Austria, and really, really fast.
- Explain please.
- Already four million dead in Europe, this is not a common cold.
- So what do we do about it?
- Try to survive.
- Dammit, Yanna, we are far away from all that, what do we have to do with it?
- My dearest darling, Yanna said, I do not feel like being part of a forced restructuration of the world’s demography. But do I want to be able to write about it.
- You’ll have to explain that to me.
- That is not a problem.
- Shoot.
- It is very simple. The world is totally overpopulated. We are exhausting our resources and supplies to feed everyone, give them water and electricity and so on and so on. In the meantime, the world population keeps growing, to the square. There is no “soft” solution for that problem. And I fear that “someone” had decided to take action.
- How so?
- You spread a virus that is practically unstoppable and extremely lethal, you aim for total elimination of the population but you know that here and there some will survive who will have a chance to slowly re-populate earth. Nature will restore itself.
Of course, some “elite” groups will also survive in bunkers or so. The future masters of the New World who will enslave the few “natural” survivors.
- Hmmm..
- And I think that Andersen wanted to warn me. He may have had access to such a plan. Then, someone wanted to stop him. But it was too late by then.
- You may be right.
- Now drive, we want to get high. Heheh. And we need a larger vehicle, equipment and supplies.
- Vehicle is not a problem.
- I’ll call Rina.
Yanna called her best friend in Paris en started to explain when Rina interrupted her after a couple of minutes.
- Wait a sec, I have Hideki here.
- Who is Hideki? Yanna asked.
- Hi, I am Hideki Abe, Rina’s boyfriend. I am Japanese but I have been working in France for the past five years. I am a widower and I have two children.
Yanna kept her cool, although she had some questions about Rina having had a date with that "Pilot". She decided not to say anything about it.
- Hi, I am Yanna Vangaver, Rina’s friend. I did not know that Rina had a boyfriend.
- We’ve kept it quiet. Listen, I think that I know what you are talking about. I am a doctor. We are also heading for the mountains.
- We ought to go together.
- Yes, here is Rina for you again.
- Thanks.
- Listen Rina, tell your man to get a large vehicle with a trailer, something four-wheel-drive, get warm clothes, a tent or something and supplies. I am thinking about gone for three months or so, far away. You got my number. Come to the Kanton Wallis in Switzerland, a town called Brig. Call me when you are there. Bring my cat.
- We will leave tomorrow morning.
- See you in Brig.
Yanna also thought Rina was still the same slut she was when in college.
What did she have to date that “pilot” for anyway?
Yanna’s counsel about vehicles was not needed; Hideki had already seen to that, he had been busy for the last four days.
Eric bought a second hand Bremach 4x4 with driven trailer in Lausanne from a military surplus dealer he knew there.
That evening their vehicle was almost overloaded with all sorts of useful and less useful equipment and supplies and the trailer had three hundred gallons of diesel fuel in jerry cans.
Yanna drove the Volkswagen and Eric the Bremach to Brig. A couple of villages further lived Eric in what used to be his parents’ farmhouse. His parents had died five years before in an accident.
It was evening when Eric cooked supper and Yanna started to make an inventory of what they all had – and didn’t have. Eric, a bit more proficient in cooking than Yanna, had also bought three hundred military MREs –Meals Ready to Eat- in that surplus store in Lausanne. A box contains food for one person for twenty-four hours in a combat environment. It doesn’t matter if they are past their “best before” date. MIL MREs are meant to keep much longer.
Yanna also thought about their coffee and booze supply.
Eric was maybe not the best cook in the world, but he produced tomato soup, fried chicken, potatoes. He had a bottle of French wine and one of Cognac too.
The rest of the evening was spent with deciding what to take and what not, what to take from the house. No, not the kitchen sink. It all took lots of time and, around midnight, they decided to go to bed.
Saturday morning, 10 AM. While Yanna was taking her shower, she thought about Schepple being buried that day. And Andersen’s secret with him. But right now, she had other worries.
In the kitchen, she found bread and coffee and heard that Eric was busy outside. She had two cups of very black coffee and a marmalade sandwich and went outside.
On the lawn, Eric had spread out all their purchases and had started to properly pack everything into the Bremach truck. The trailer was already loaded with fuel and Eric added tools, a small drum of engine oil, a chain saw and a small generator. Yanna, who didn’t have any problem with getting her hands dirty, helped her man and most work was done in the afternoon. That is when her iPhone rang.
- Hi, it’s me
- You ok, Rina?
- Yea, sure.
- Where are you?
- Parked by the sign that says “Brig” at the town entrance, coming from the West.
- Eric will be there in a couple of minutes, look out for a red Volkswagen and follow him.
- Ok.
Half an hour later Rina and Hideki, together with the identical ten-year-old twins Rin and Ruko drove their Unimog with its Sinpar driven trailer up the yard by Eric’s house. Rin was holding Yanna’s cat, Miki, in her arms.
Greetings all around, Eric started something with pots and pans in the kitchen, Yanna poured drinks for her guests and the kids went on a recon mission through the house. Miki sat on the kitchen counter, carefully supervizing the thawing of some frozen meat.
- So where can we go? Hideki asked
- Eric says that, with our vehicles, we can reach an alpine refuge, high in the mountains. About two thousand meters high, by a lake. I hope we won’t have to stay long.
- It is nine o’clock; can we watch the news somewhere?
- There is a TV set in that high cupboard, Eric yelled from the kitchen.
- Hadn’t seen it, Yanna said.
News headlines were all about the progression of the epidemic and that hundreds of thousands had died in Poland, Slovakia, Austria even. There were also mentions about the same tragedy in both north and South America. Furthermore, there was the usual BS about how governments were prepared to stop the threat.
Weather forecast spoke about storms coming in from the West, which was not uncommon for that time of the year.
- The threat is moving from East to West, Hideki said, and I am sure that whatever toxin it is, it is borne by the wind. Here, the air is moving from West to East right now, so that can buy us some time. But we must not wait; we really have to get in the mountains as fast as we can. And I also brought something extra.
- What? Yanna asked
- Masks and particle filters, ultra-fine. I brought a box of hem from the hospital, from their emergency supplies. We have twenty masks and five hundred spare membrane filter sets. One set is ok for 24 hours. It will be very uncomfortable to wear these things constantly, but I fear that is all we can do. We do have to leave soon, though.
Eric had cooked something edible that even the children would eat and Yanna proposed to gather their last things, to go sleep in the vehicles and then to leave very early in the morning. Hideki thought that was a good idea.
- I have the impression that whatever toxin is being used is heavier than air – it would not be a good idea to have it floating around for years. That is why we want to get high. In altitude, I mean. How did you get that Idea, Yanna?
- Gut feeling. I once reported about a poison gas attack in Asia. That gas was also heavier than air, then.
The last thing that Eric loaded up was his Stg.90 rifle. Each Swiss man, after his military service, takes his rifle home, together with two sealed boxes of ammunition.
Except for the children Rin and Ruko and cat Miki, no one slept that night and at three in the morning they left, in the direction of the Simplon pass.
Three hours later, almost on the top of the pass they took a side road that brought them up to the Rotelsee lake and a bit further they ignored a sign “No motor vehicles allowed”, by a very narrow unsealed road that took them even higher up. Eric’s GPS indicated two thousand and two hundred meters altitude when they reached a large wooden cabin, a Refuge de Haute Montagne, high mountain shelter.
High up in the clear sky, planes were tracing their exhaust condensation trails.
Eric and Hideki parked the trailers next to the cabin. Yanna, Rina and the children helped to unpack what they thought they might need inside the cabin, especially Eric’s universal radio receiver, one with an uninterrupted range from 25 KHz up to 1.5 GHz.
Hideki walked down the road, carrying biohazard signs that he placed by the path leading to their “base”, hoping those might deter possible “visitors”.
All were busy till well in the afternoon when Eric had already heard the word “food” a couple of times. So he had to do something with some deep-frozen fish he had brought from home and that would stay good for a day or two.
Rina stayed by the radio and took notes of what she heard and seemed important. The children were bored stiff and it was not easy to have them stay inside. So they were given the task to look after cat Miki. They had much more room in the cabin than in the Unimog, and Hideki didn’t want to take any risks outside.
For a week it seemed that nothing had come closer than Austria and on the radio one mainly heard political BS about how governments had everything under control and what sacrifices they made to ensure the safety of their citizens. And that made Yanna remember that her own country, Belgium, once had a butcher, a barkeep and a drunk amongst its ministers.
Yanna tried to keep the children busy and those had, for reasons of their own, decided not to speak French anymore, but Japanese only.
One day later, the news sounded quite differently. There were deaths again in Austria, Poland, the South of Italy, even in Germany, The Netherlands, The United Kingdom. Another newscast said that most of Asia and the Americas had gone silent. No explanation followed.
Hideki thought this change to be very, very fast.
The Swiss broadcasting service announced a state of National Emergency and that Martial Law was in force. From then on, only classical music was to be heard.
Hideki gave everyone a mask and he and Eric sealed door and windows with duct tape. He also said that rations would be enough for five days. The others thought that to be a bit strange but half an hour later they had twenty gallons of water, thirty MREs. Five empty buckets that would have to serve as toilets. Two gallons of Sodium Hypochlorite bleach might help with the smell. Yanna was not very pleased with the fact that they could not take their masks off and had to eat and drink anyway. Hideki said that a certain degree of risk was inherent. They also had a good supply of Valium.
All were a bit scared in that cabin and Hideki tried to explain something. He started by saying that the pandemic could never have a natural origin, it started too fast, killed too fast, spread too fast and seemed to be able to suddenly stop and start again at an amazing speed.
- What are you thinking of? Yanna asked.
- A biological weapon, something new, and one that does not affect the biosphere, possibly genetically linked to the human species, something with a limited “lifespan”. And an ideal instrument in the hands of the banking, corporative and military "elite" to reduce the world's population fast and efficiently, if that was their plan.
- I hear you, Yanna said.
- I think that in five days’ time all will be safe.
- How so?
- Just wait and see.
The five days were not easy. Rin and Ruko were not the only ones who wanted to rip the mask off their faces. No one ate and that limited the use of the “toilets”.
The fourth day, the radio sounded quite different. Some sporadic transmissions, sounding military. No “ordinary” radio stations anymore, no amateur transmissions except for one in Alaska, another in Argentina and some in languages they could not understand.
The fifth day went by and Hideki proposed two more days, to be on the safe side. The eight day he decided to go outside. It was raining.
Hideki climbed on the roof of his Unimog and looked around. Nothing to see, nothing to hear.
But a couple of hundred meters further, he saw some movement. His binoculars told him it was a wild buck, grazing. Hideki pulled off his mask.
- I think it is over, Hideki said, when the others also got out of the cabin, including cat Miki, on her leash.
- What do we do now?
- Maybe wait for another two days and then carefully go back where we came from. What else?
Hideki didn’t know what to think. They had no idea of what had actually happened. The radio was as good as dead. Rina had the radio scanner running and all they could receive was that short wave station from Argentina that spoke about a conspiracy, biological worldwide attack and almost no survivors. Internet was dead.
Wednesday. Eric decided to go on a recon mission with Yanna, so that Hideki and Rina could stay with the children. They could keep contact with their portable VHF radios. Yanna proposed to reconnoitre a radius of fifty kilometers and come back. She had her photo and video cam with her. Eric gave Hideki his rifle.
When they reached the road to Brig, there was nothing to see.
Near the place of Eric’s house they saw the first unusual thing: a roadblock, obviously installed by the Swiss police. Eric who very much trusted the Swiss police, drove up to the roadblock that seemed unmanned, however. Some civilian vehicles stood there, properly parked, but empty.
Around all that there was nothing to be seen or heard. A bit further, two dogs crossed the road.
Eric used the winch of the Bremach to pull a heavy block away and they drove on towards Brig. Five kilometers further they found an ambulance from the Civil Protection, by the side of the road, parked with one wheel on the sidewalk, driver’s door half open.
Eric stopped twenty meters short of the vehicle and got out. Yanna climbed behind the wheel.
There was not much to see till Eric reached the ambulance and opened that half-open door. The driver fell out, dead; he had been leaning against the side of the door as if he had tried to open it to get out. The co-driver, on the other side of the vehicle was as dead as the first one.
Eric did not feel like opening the back of the ambulance, but he thought he had to do it anyway.
The uniformed men in the ambulance, lying on stretchers, were as dead as the drivers. Eric thought they might have been the men who had manned the roadblock. They were policemen, but in full combat gear like the military.
Strangely enough, the bodies did not smell. Eric called Yanna and asked her to take some pictures. Her Canon clicked already. Video did not make much sense, nothing moved.
Eric climbed in the ambulance and took all combat gear, weapons and munitions, from the policemen.
There was not much more to be seen so they continued towards Brig, a bit slower and keeping their eyes peeled. A black cat crossed their way and jumped up on a wall. Yanna thought that cat to be very much alive, just like the two dogs they had seen before. Strange.
Arriving in Brig, they found a strange-looking town: no traffic, no people. Only parked cars, some dogs. The parking lot near the hospital was full. Eric drove through the town, eastwards. He did not feel like stopping in town. Through town, the found another, unmanned checkpoint. It was no problem to drive around it.
They drove on for an hour and Eric halted by a small village. Yanna “stood guard” and Eric saw a dog leaving a house through an open door. He went to take a look inside that house.
As usual in Switzerland, the house was very clean but there was no one to be seen. Eric shouted a loud “HELLO”. No answer, as he had thought, but he decided to go look on the first floor anyway, expecting to see a sad scene. He took two steps and heard something. His heartbeat got faster when he took another step and heard something that resembled something being shoved over the wooden floor. And something like a faint voice.
Eric ran out of the house, grabbed his mask out of the truck and put it on. Yanna asked what happened.
- Someone is alive in there! Eric said and ran back to the house.
Eric ran up the stairs and got to the open bedroom door.
He saw a man and a woman, lying on the bed. On the floor laid a little girl who looked at Eric as if she wanted to say something. Her eyelids moved.
Eric didn’t know what to say or do. The child lifted her head up, an inch or so, uttered a word Eric could not understand and then her traits stiffened up and her head fell back onto the floor.
Eric almost cried. He took his pocked knife and held the blade in front of the girl’s mouth. No breath could be seen.
There was no one else in that house. Eric went back to the truck and told Yanna what he had seen.
- Damned! She said, maybe others may still be alive.
- Possibly, but what can we do about it?
- Probably not much.
- No, and if still alive, they are probably dying.
- Yea.
- But let’s be cynical for a while now. There is nothing we can do here and we have to think about our own survival. I propose that we don’t continue looking around here, but report to the others first.
Yanna got Hideki and Rina on the VHF radio and she told them they would be returning right now.
After an hour of driving slowly and observing around them Yanna and Eric were back on their “base”. Rina and Hideki wanted to know everything. Eric spoke and Yanna showed her pictures on the screen of her MacPro.
- Baka! (bad) Hideki swore in Japanese. Such bastards! The sons of bitches that thought this up were smart.
- How so?
- I gave it some thought. What “they” wanted to attain had to work fast without damaging the environment. Probably first a contamination with a virulent, fast-mutating virus. People get sick and vulnerable for a second attack but this time with a toxin but that oxidizes fast in the air and becomes neutral after a few hours. All who have been in contact with it are dead
- I even think that the bodies will not decompose but just dry out. That the animals survived doesn’t surprise me either, the active substances can have been genetically aimed at the human genus, not other species. Quite an achievement of genetic engineering. Not the work of amateurs.
- Ok, but what do we do now?
- Try to survive in this “New World”, try to reproduce. Sounds primitive, but that is it. And try to reach others; we have more chances to survive in a larger group. We will have to become farmers, not factory workers.
- And we may have to learn how to defend ourselves.
- It will be a completely different life.
- I think it is time to pack and go have a look of what remains of our world.
- We can drive in the morning.
- Good.
Morning. Instant coffee, canned bread and orange marmalade. Yanna got a thick felt marker and wrote on the door: “Eric, Yanna, Miki, Hideki, Rin and Ruko were here, still alive on May 16th 2010 and drove south”.
Eric and Hideki hooked up the trailers and the little wagon train went on its way towards its destiny. They drove south because they did absolutely not feel like overwintering in Switzerland and they were underway when they decided to try to make it to the Southwest of Spain. They could survive there as well as anywhere else.
Rina and the children looked at the deserted streets and roads with total astonishment. Hideki halted a few times underway to take a closer look at the corpses. He also took some samples of clothing, hair and skin tissue that he put in small Zip-It polyethylene pouches. Maybe later he would be able to find out what had killed most of the world’s population.
Everywhere, roads were open and quiet. Those who had become ill had obviously had the time to at least try to get home. Here and there they found a futile roadblock, abandoned army vehicles, some dead soldiers or policemen.
Occasionally, they got flashed by automatic speed check cameras, leaving behind a trail of movement and life without being fined for it.
They had to make a detour, around a village in flames, could have been caused by anything.
Nearing the town of Nîmes, they halted in a village called Remoulins. Stretch legs, find a toilet somewhere. And water. A small Super-U mart had a large stock of five-liter bottles of Evian. The trailers felt the extra weight.
And while they were there and slowly started to mentally recover from what they had lived and seen, they took another look around the store and found other goods except for the essentials that they already had: fruit, wine, booze, canned food, candy, toilet paper, dishwashing liquid, canned milk etc. etc. They would find other stores, too.
Yanna left a message on one of the large windows and the drove on, no need to get fuel yet. Instinctively, they kept following the secondary roads and avoided the freeways, maybe because these smaller roads gave them some feeling of safety, of closeness to the people who weren’t there anymore. Being almost alone on the world gave them a strange feeling of deep loneliness.
They had been traveling for almost a day now and had not seen any sign of life at all. They did not find a single European-sounding station on the radio.
Hotel-Restaurant du Midi, seven PM, on the station square of a village called Ceret, close to the Spanish border. The door is open; Eric decides to go take a look.
No one is there; neither is there on the first floor, no corpses either. The local water tower is not empty yet; they can get cold water from the bathroom taps. Meat and fish are still frozen in the cold room next to the kitchen.
Eleven in the evening and Eric has cooked a more than decent three-course meal. Luxury candlelight dining at the large round table in the middle of the dining room. Rin and Ruko were tipsy after a glass of Chateau Petrus 1969.
Nine in the morning. Hideki, who “stood guard” had already been awake for a couple of hours and had made coffee. At ten o’clock they started their vehicles and got underway towards Le Boulou, from where they would drive into Spain at La Junquera.
It was just outside Ceret when Yanna saw something unusual and asked Eric to slow down. Eric stops the truck and Yanna gets her binoculars. Hideki also comes near and asks what the problem is.
“Damn”, Yanna says, drive on, three hundred meters.
- What is it? Eric asks.
- Life.
- WHAT?
- Drive, dammit.
A bit further, by the side of the road lies a man, a folded jacket under his head for a pillow. Next to him, on her knees, sits a woman. Both look around forty-five years of age. The woman looks at Yanna with begging, desperate eyes when Yanna had jumped out of the Bremach and ran towards the couple.
“Helfen sie uns, bitte, Hans hat sich den Fuss gebrochen und wir können so nicht weiter”. (Help us, please, Hans has broken his foot and we cannot go on like this – in German).
Eric takes over.
- What happened?
- He broke his foot when he came running towards you.
- Do you live near?
- No, we fled.
- Fled?
Hideki had come near, said he was a doctor and examined Hans’ foot.
- Nothing broken there, but badly sprained. Keep that foot still for three weeks; I will give you a prescription for some drugs you can take.
Yanna burst out laughing.
- The force of habit, Hideki said. By the way, we need to loot a pharmacy somewhere, I did not bring a lot..
- I am Eric; these are Yanna, Hideki, Rina, Rin and Ruko.
- Pleased to meet you, I am Ute and my husband here is Hans. Hans and Ute Mauser.
- Where can we bring you both to?
- Nowhere, Ute said and started to cry.
- Where do you live?
- In Recklinghausen, in Germany. We were on holiday here when that whole affair began. We were high up in the Pyrenees here. We decided to stay some more time and when we wanted to go back home, we were attacked by a couple of men who stole our RV.
- Let’s bring Hans to the truck first.
Hideki and Eric helped Hans into the Bremach, where he’d be comfortable, Yanna told Ute to stay with her husband. Hideki gave Hans a morphine shot and then Ute asked what had actually happened. Eric tried to explain.
- We have to get home, Ute said.
- Why? Eric asked, there is nothing left there.
- Our house, both our sons, my sister and my mom…
- Did you listen to what I said, Ute?
- Yes, of course.
- No, Ute, you may have heard the words but you didn’t understand.
- How so?
- My love, Hans interrupted her, everyone is dead, there is no-one left in Recklinghausen. I understood very well what Eric said.
Ute said nothing at first, then she started to cry again and ended up in a full-size hysterical fit. Eric halted and got Hideki to give Ute a sedative.
- I suggest a pow-wow, Yanna said.
Insead of driving to Le Boulou, they found a quiet spot near the road, a deserted picnic area like there are so many along secondary roads in France.
Ute kept saying that she wanted to go home but Hans had already understood that that didn’t make any sense, no point either in going to sit there through a could and moist winter. Hans was very sad to know that his sons more than probably shared the fate of the rest of the population. Ute didn’t want to accept it. Hans explained to her that she would understand further underway. Ute shrugged.
Eric said that the best thing they could do now, was to find a vehicle and equipment for Ute and Hans. After that, they could decide to stay with the group if they wanted. All agreed with that except for Ute who just felt miserable.
Furthermore, everyone thought that it was somewhat comforting to know that they weren’t the only survivors. It was also time to think about some form of permanent settlement.
Yanna asked what Hans’ trade was. He was a trained welder and pipe fitter but had also worked more than ten years as a mechanic at an agricultural tractor dealership.
Ute was a farmer’s daughter from Ost-Friesland and had been a housewife since she had married Hans. Hideki thought she was very pretty although Ute had more biceps than Hideki had thighs.
Rin and Ruko joined in, each with a little bunch of flowers they had plucked from the roadside. Rin gave a bunch to Hans and Ruko gave hers to Ute while they told a whole story around it, in Japanese. They had decided that, because Ute and Hans didn’t speak any French, they might have spoken a more civilized language like Japanese and maybe they could understand them.
Hideki was quick to say that his daughters were a bit weird at times. Ute laughed when she noticed that both girls wore Nekomimi ears, cat ears that they could clip on their head, between their hair.
One month later, in July, not far from Jerez de la Frontera, South of Spain.
“The Family”, as they sometimes called themselves, had settled not too far from the town of Lebrija, near the port of Cadiz, where they had taken possession of an old mansion / farm. They had found six corpses which they had respectfully buried on top of a nearby hill.
Hans’ foot had completely healed and he proved to be a most valuable member of the small community that was very much busy with organizing itself for their new permanent residence.
They had everything. Whatever they needed, they only had to go and get it. For instance, there were several transport companies around were Hans could go get a semi-trailer and a tractor that they filled with diesel fuel from an abandoned fuel depot. Eight thousand gallons a time and now they had ten of those trailers on the grounds.
From an army depot they had four 250 KvA generators. Water was not a problem either, as soon as they had “reserved” the ducts from a local water tower for themselves. Hans looked after the pumps.
Rina, Yanna and Ute had gone on a library-looting trip for books about agriculture. Yanna and Eric knew enough Spanish for translations and Yanna also organized a course of Spanish for Everyone.
Every weekend Hideki taught a course of whatever he thought could be useful in case of accidents and illnesses. Eric spent most of his time with Hans so he could learn some of his skills.
Cat Miki supervised everything.
Rin and Ruko’s task was that of being the sunshine in the house, which they did very well but they looked as if they had aged a bit in the two months that they were there. It was also noticed that they had taken up tasks that no-one had asked from them: making beds, doing dishes, go fishing, shooting varmint.
In Jerez there was a golf cart dealer, so the girls got their own car too.
It was getting late in the year for harvesting but they had not seen a single drop of rain since they had arrived, so Hans, Eric and Ute rode off one morning with a "borrowed" Claas combine harvester, an MB Trak tractor and large trailer and another tractor with a generator to power the silo grain elevator. Two days later they were the happy owners of two hundred fifty tons of wheat and eighty tons of barley.
It was way too late for many vegetables except tomatoes, eggplant, bell peppers and not much more. Next year would be better, Ute said, they will be able to sow and plant in time, same with harvesting and she wanted a large vegetable garden. She also said that making one’s own preserves is much fun to do. She added that she would like to find out what kind of seeds would be available in Spain. There was a “Negocio en Semillas” a seed store next to the buildings of the Farmers’ Cooperative, ten kilometers down the road.
So Ute and Yanna got underway with Ute’s tractor, a 400 HP Mercedes MB-Trak, the one she had confiscated for the harvest. Ute thought that that they could as well travel in style. Her dad had never even dared to dream of such an expensive machine.
Their VHF was within range, they both carried a pistol but no clothes at all. Yanna wanted to say something witty about naked lewd farmers’ daughters but decided not to. She also did not see a point in wearing any clothes is such a hot weather. She also thought that prudes better go wash their ass in a vat of holy water, it’ll give them a holy pooper.
That Brass Bastard that some also call Laura poured liquid sunshine that melted the asphalt but they could not care less, the tractor had a very good airco.
The Cooperative was easy to find by the high silos that towered high above anything around. Ute took the dirt road leading there and, at first, she didn’t see a reflection in the distance but then she suddenly stood with three feet on the brakes. It made Yanna smack her head against the windshield.
- What the hell…Ute said, staring at something.
- What?
- Something is moving over there.
- An empty bag in the wind? Yanna asked, rubbing her forehead.
- No, it moves on wheels.
- Dammit, you’re right.
Yanna got on the radio
- Where are you?
- Near the Cooperative, on the road towards it, about one kilometer from the buildings.
- What can you see?
- Looks like a moving vehicle, but I don’t carry my binoculars.
- We’re on our way, is that vehicle coming towards you?
- No but I can see it moving near the silos. Can’t see what it is but it looks small.
- Color? Cannot distinguish.
- Stay where you are.
- Ok.
Ute reversed very slowly, back towards the main road. The “enemy” had the sun in their face and Ute thought they had not seen her.
A few minutes later, Hans and Eric arrived, each in a Jeep and armed up to their teeth. They even wore swimming trunks. And they had binoculars with them.
- What can you see?
- Two men, a small van, they are loading something up.
- Uniformed? Armed?
- Naked, bearded, no weapons that I can see.
- What do we do?
- Take a closer look, carefully.
Hans and Eric drove towards the Coop, slowly. When they got close the two men came towards them. They shouted something unintelligible and Hans and Eric halted and got out of their Jeep. Eric put his weapons aside and walked towards them. Hans kept his Stg.90 at the ready.
They were from Granada, meteorologists who had been at work high up in the Sierra Nevada during the “events”, three thousand meters high. Now they were on their way towards the sea. They had avoided the main roads, got lost a couple of times and had ended up here.
Hans joined them, said hello and called the women.
Both young men looked a bit surprised when they saw two naked women get out of that very large machine. Greetings again, after which one of the young men looked at Ute, looking alleviated. His name was Jorge.
- Senora, he said, I have something here, I do not know too well how to handle.
- Huh?
- I'll be right back.
Jorge ran towards one of the buildings and came back with a little girl on his arm, about three years old.
- Your daughter?
- No, we found her and I have no idea what to do with her.
- Mein Gott! Ute shouted out, took the child from Jorge, cradled her in her arms, got in her tractor and drove off, without saying a word.
- Looks like Ute knows what to do, Yanna said.
- You can come with us, Hans said.
At home, the two young men were welcomed and asked if they were going to stay.
Ute had disappeared and Hans said that it were better to leave her alone for the time being. The young men thanked for the hospitality but added that they could not stay. They would try to get themselves a boat, travel to Brazil with it and stay there. All wished them a good journey and the best of luck. They stayed for two more days and Rina let them listen to some recordings she had made of broadcasted messages from Argentina and Brazil.
Rina thought that it would be better if she’d also had a radio transmitter installed.
The boys left in the morning of the third day. “Vayan con Dios” Eric shouted as they drove off.
The life of The Family continued its pace. Ute reappeared two days later with “her” child that she had christened Ortrud. Little Ortrud didn’t say much, spoke three words in Spanish but Ute had already decided that Ortrud would be raised in the most solid of German traditions. It looked like the little one had readily adopted her new mom.
An old Roman once wrote about how fast the wax imprints in our hearts are wiped smooth to make way for new ones. And this was true, again. Ute had lost two sons but now she had a daughter and after a few days, everyone noticed how much more joyful and active Ute had become. Rin and Ruko were also very pleased with their “little sister”.
There were no frictions within The Family, possibly because all “social pressure” had disappeared. All came and went as they wished and all accepted the others as they were, in a natural-instinctive way.
The summer was hot and would be long and on one evening, when all were gathered on the terrace, Rina got a brilliant idea: they ought to elect a President. All agreed immediately and the twins brought pen and paper. Everyone got a sheet, where to write the name of the president of his or her choice on. All were very tense when Rina started to read the result, ten minutes later.
From the nine votes, two went to the Cookie Monster, one to Gonzo, one to Otto von Bismarck, four to Mickey Mouse, one to the Emperor of China and one illegible but Ute swore that Ortrud had voted for Bozo The Clown.
Yanna thought that these were the most intelligent election results ever and Eric shot the cork out of another bottle of Champagne to celebrate.
That summer everyone got sunburnt except for Rin and Ruko who both started to look like African Asians.
Slaughtering was a bit of a problem since no one really wanted to help and that was sometimes a bit much for Ute and Hans to do alone. This also led to an increased consumption of fish. The ocean was close by and they noticed that, even without only three months of industrial fishery, they could catch all the fish they wanted.
Rin and Ruko were the specialists. Also, those two could swim like otters and one day, Ruko had found an oyster, which earned her the nickname of “ama” –pearl diver-. There was no pearl in the oyster but it was very good, so Ruko brought many more.
Ute carried her child on her hip and was constantly talking to her. All thought those two were something special. Ortrud started to speak some words of German. Sometimes mother and daughter were seen in the kitchen, kneading dough for the bread, little Ortrud working with the seriousness of a grown woman.
One day, Ute complained that they were running out of butter. Rina said something like “Get a cow” and had to duck a flying rolling pin.
A quick look in a phone book and Hans found cold storage warehouses near the port of Cadiz. Fifteen thousand square feet, twelve feet high “Butter Mountain” European Community subsidized frozen butter. The sheer volume had been enough to keep it frozen all this time
A tank truck of diesel, two generators, half a day of work to hook that up. Vroom. Of course, they looked further and found other cold storage: a “Meat Mountain” and five hundred tons of frozen tuna. They spent the next three weeks in locating usable frozen foods.
Hideki concentrated on refurbishing and installing a small clinic. They also buried many people.
By the end of October, the weather got a bit cooler. The Family was well settled now. Hans had sown and planted vegetables, wheat, some other stuff.
They supposed that Jorge and Tony had reached their destination. Now they expected the winter, the days got shorter.
Rina was a bit surprised that she did not have heard any more broadcasts except the ones she already knew. In Cádiz, Rina had found a store that used to sell radio equipment and they had mounted an antenna mast. She spoke with those from Argentina but did not find out anything else than that they were in about the same situation and also just tried to survive. They were about thirty of them who had come from Patagonia. Rina told them about the Brazilian radio station and about Jorge and Toni, hoping they had found a place to live.
On the other hand, their GPS was still working, which Rina explained as automatic systems that may keep working until the satellites fall out of the sky and that could take another couple of years.
New year’s eve. On the beach east of the Bay of Cádiz. Four vehicles and a huge picnic and BBQ. The temperature did not drop under the 25 C, not even in late evening.
- Are we finally getting that Global Warming the have been promising us for so long? Hideki laughed while Hans was busy setting up some fireworks that they had found in a store in Jerez.
Bang, boom, fireworks. Little Ortrud finds it wonderful and Ute cries with happiness seeing her baby so happy.
Dancing on the beach. It is still warm when they wake up by the first sunlight; the twins are already playing around in the surf. A new year has began, a year without a calendar with pictures of little cats. Much to the dismay of Rin and Ruko who even considered themselves to be a bit “cat”.
Cats were not a problem, they had plenty of those, including Yanna's cat. Dogs were the problem. Spain already had lots of stray dogs. And hungry dogs hunt in packs. Not much to do about that, except shooting them. Hans and Eric had seen to that, but not without keeping some as guard dogs and The Family had then about five German Shepherds and something like fifteen cats. The twins were made responsible for the “domestic cattle”
Except for a few thunderstorms, some of which quite spectacular, the weather stayed good and heating was not a problem at all. The only problem seemed to be a slowly creeping boredom and a couple of not-so-soft-words had been noticed. Daily work was nothing hard and many hands make work light.
It was Yanna who already was the “unaccredited” schoolteacher, who came up with a working solution: everyone would go to school, four hours every evening. Actually, there was much to learn that would be most useful: Hideki could teach about his profession and so could Hans. Rina knew everything about computers and electronics; Ute was a Master-Housekeeper, which is an Art. Yanna and Eric knew several languages and all were in favour of speaking a same language. The twins immediately proposed Japanese but Ute also immediately rejected that proposition by threatening to slap them with a wet sheep if they dared proposing that again. All laughed.
It was decided that all would try to learn and speak Spanish because that was the country in which they were and all informative literature they could find was in that language.
Rina was also confronted with another language and script: one morning she heard a transmission, on a frequency of 500 KHz, the International Emergency Frequency, in Morse code. Rina did not understand but recorded it.
Rin and Ruko still spoke Japanese with each other. The Japanese they knew, but didn’t learn more. They did learn the Spanish that that Yanna and Eric tried to teach them but the girls thought that Spanish was not a good language to talk to the Gods withs. When Yanna heard that, she looked up with some astonishment. The Family had existed very closely for about a year now but religion had never been a topic. Yanna had assumed that all were atheist, much as she was. When she told Eric what the twins had said, Eric looked very worried for a while. Eric was a militant atheist who hated everything what he called “more than twenty centuries of lies and abuse of the underprivileged”. Yanna very much agreed with that.
- I have a really big problem with that, Eric said, they once tried to force me and other small children to adore a corpse that was nailed to telegraph pole or so. I think that is a hundred times sicker than any other form of child abuse. I am not the boss here and I don’t want to be, but I think we need a serious conversation about that. Religious madness really scares the crap out of me.
- I hear you, Hideki said.
In the days that followed, Yanna very carefully enquired with Rin and Ruko about who those Gods were and then she heard that everything was “Kami”: a pebble on the road, a fish, the river, you name it.
Walking by, Hideki overheard the conversation and asked Yanna if she was interested in Shinto. Yanna said that all might be interested in hearing more about it.
One evening, Hideki started by telling about the Sun Goddess, who was the most powerful deity in the whole Universe. Four hours later, all agreed that it was indeed very important to teach the children that they had to treat nature and each other with respect, to honour the ancestors, that greed is the most abject disposition there is. Much the contrary of all those aggressive, murderous and other greed-based, sick religions that had scoured mankind before.
Rin and Ruko told Ortrud that her little cat was also Kami and that she could not pull her tail like that. Ute smiled.
It was one Monday evening when Rina came running out of her room and yelled to all others to come and listen to her radio. All came running. They heard music. The Radetzki March, a composition from the 19th century. Hideki, laughing, said something like “interesting recording, where did you find it"?
- This is not a recording.
- What, no recording?
- No, this is a broadcast.
- By whom?
- You will find out in a minute.
Yanna was about to tell Rina to stop smoking dried cabbage leaves, when the music stopped.
- This is Radio Free Europe, sending from the princely palace in Monaco, on a frequency of 747 KHz. This is a broadcast for all who can hear us. If you have transmitting equipment and if you wish to do so, you can reach us on short wave radio, on a frequency of 3500 MHz.
The message was spoken in heavily accented French and was also repeated in Russian, English and some awful Spanish. Followed by another broadcast of the same military march.
All were flabbergasted.
- That took a while, Eric said, wonder who they are.
- They are alive, that’s for sure, Hans said.
- I will try to call them, Rina said, what do you guys think of that?
- Be careful with what you say.
- Yes, of course.
Rina adjusted her equipment to 3500 MHz and called in French.
- CQ station Free Europe, this is station The Family.
No answer. Rina called again and it took like five calls till they got an answer.
- The Family, this is Free Europe.
- Good day, Free Europe, who are you?
- We are eight survivors from Russia and we are located in France.
- There are nine of us and we are located to the Southwest of you.
- It is good to hear that we are not alone.
- Yes, of course.
- Are you settled or are you mobile?
- We are thinking of staying here. My name is Rina.
- I am Alex.
- Do you have any contact with others?
- Yes, some from the Haute Savoie, two Italians and a Spanish group.
- From Spain?
- Yes, from Spain.
- Alex, can you ask those Spaniards to call us on 3500 if you hear them again?
- Yes Rina, will do.
- Leaving now, Alex, be back tomorrow, same time.
- Understood. Free Europe out.
All kept as quiet as they were five minutes before. While they had considered their encounter with Jorge and Toni as quite normal, they saw this contact, after all this time, as if they had heard extraterrestrials. Rina also thought it to be very strange that they hadn’t heard any military.
- Now that was something new, Hans said.
- Yes, and we hear of a group of Spaniards we don’t know about.
- That too.
- So, we are less alone than we thought we were and what do these Russians do in Monaco?
- Maybe they like gambling, maybe they had this dream of living in a palace on the Mediterranean coast.
- Yea, maybe.
After that there was a daily, short conversation between Rina and Alex. Alex didn’t really say much and Rina also kept it discreet. The Family didn’t know those Russians, didn’t know if they they’d be friends or foes and the same for the Russians.
They all thought it “interesting” to have met “others” but no one felt like jumping into a car and drive over there. Yanna thought about that luxury yacht that was moored in the port of Cádiz, ideal to pay a visit to a Russian Prince in a Palace in Monaco. In style. She grinned that idea away.
A couple of days later, Rina got a strange question from Alex. Alex knew they were close to Cádiz and Alex wanted to know the width of the port entrance. He said that they wanted to pay a visit to The Family, if they would permit it. Rina answered she’d have to ask the others. Alex understood.
- Alex wants to come here, by sea, with a boat that is sixty meters wide? Yanna asked.
- He never spoke about a boat; he just wanted to know how wide the port entrance is.
- Flying boat? Hans asked.
- Also possible, we have no idea of who they are.
- I am not sure about isolating ourselves, Ute said, we will meet “others” sooner or later anyway and I don’t think we’d want Mad Max situations, everyone has the same that we have. And I don’t think that we are the only ones who are convinced that we must avoid the mistakes of the “old world”. Money doesn’t exist anymore. Gold is worthless.
- For the time being, Hans said.
- Ok, let them come then, said Yanna, but not more than four people.
Rina told Alex that they’d be welcome with four people. Alex laughed and said there would be only two of them. His wife and himself, the others would stay home. He added that he would reach the port of Cádiz around two in the afternoon. Rina wanted to ask with what kind of vehicle, but Alex was gone by then.
Except for a container ship that had run aground half a mile away, there was nothing special to see in or around the port of Cádiz.
Hans had started one of the harbour police boats with the idea that it might come in handy.
It was half past two when they heard loud engine sounds and Alex “landed” his ekranoplan just outside the port of Cádiz. Hans thought it was a strange-looking machine that slowly entered the port and made its way to the nearest slipway where it kept power on till Hans and Alex were able to help mooring.
Helena stopped the four jet engines. They exited through the front bottom ramp.
- Hello, I am Alex and this is my wife Elena. Alex spoke decent French but with a heavy accent.
- We are Hans and Eric and those standing on the pier are Rina and Yanna. Welcome. And what sort of an airplane is that?
- This is an ekranoplan, a kind of flying boat that relies on ground effect to fly on low altitude only. It is originally a Swedish design that was developed in Russia. It is not ideal but it can load a lot and is relatively fast. I am a certified pilot, said Helena.
- Wow.
At home, the Russians were given a warm welcome. They were friendly people, ex-military. Elena was originally a fighter pilot and Alex was a jet engine mechanic. Alex had learned French because he thought it might have brought him a promotion. They had traveled to France with some others because it seemed a dream destination to them and also because another group had already “occupied” the Crimea.
They had survived because during “the events” they had been in the North of Siberia on a transport mission. When they came back to their base by the Black Sea, all and everything was dead and they landed their Tupolev transporter on an empty airfield. There were eight of them and they are still together.
Their story was much the same as The Family’s. But Alex added something. As he was also most convinced that the “event’ had been a military operation of some sort, he asked if the Swiss anti-aircraft artillery had not been in action. Eric shook his head. Alex went on saying that, while they still were in Siberia, he had heard from others that Russian anti-aircraft artillery had been in action and would even have shot down something. He did not know what or whose. The Chinese? That seemed improbable. Chinese rockets would have been intercepted even before they would have left China. Elena could only think of one origin of the attack: US or UK or a combination of the two.
The Family listened with undivided attention. Yanna and Eric also explained why they thought of a global attack. Elena said that she had also thought of the overpopulation / depopulation idea, adding to that that no one would have organized such an attack without an own interest. And that liquidating most of the population, give nature some time to restore itself and hit later to bring the whole planet under one single rule might make sense to some greedy bastards. It got late and Ute proposed to get some rest.
The next day began like any other: shower noises, coffee and bread, barking dogs, meowing cats and the high-pitched voices of the girls.
After breakfast, everyone went to his or her daily task. Yanna and Eric took Elena and Alex, in a Jeep, on a tour of the six thousand acre “estate” that The Family now considered theirs.
Elena took pictures to show the others in Monaco. Elena thought that The Family was better organized than her own group and Alex also thought the same.
After dinner came the unavoidable question. The question Yanna had been waiting for. Elena carefully asked if “diplomatic relations” could be established between The Family and the group in Monaco.
Eric, laughing, asked if ambassadors would have to be exchanged, but Yanna cut it short.
- So you guys want to come and live with us?
- In short, yes.
- And that is why you flew here so fast.
- Yes. We think that we must be with a larger group for safety reasons. The world can be as dead as it is now, I think that there may be more survivors than we think and not all may be friendly.
- You are right. And there are more large estates around here; the choice is yours.
- Thank you.
- We will discuss that in the evening.
- Can I send a message from here?
- Go ahead, ask Rina.
Elena sent a short message and came back to Yanna after which both went to give Ute a hand at work and spend a moment with little Ortrud. Alex and Eric took a walk down the road. Hans and Hideki were occupied elsewhere.
- I hope you were wrong with that anti-aircraft artillery, Eric said.
- Yes, I know, the contrary would only lead to what I fear the most: a dictatorship financed by the most obnoxious sons-of-whores that ever soiled the surface of the planet.
- Whom are you thinking of?
- I don’t know what you are thinking, Eric, but who can be brought into relation with an organization that finances the murder of most of the world’s population, who produces strange condensation trails in the skies, who are targeted by the Russians and they are not Chinese.
- I think I know whom you mean.
- Yes and it will not take many years before we will notice them.
- What in the world would they want to get here? Spanish wine?
- Maybe only to affirm their presence. We have some distance advantage but on the other hand we don’t have the slightest idea of where and how they might try something, if our suspicions are right, that is.
- Not far from them?
- Probably and the UK is a bit too close for comfort, I think we have to watch what may come from that side, there must be survivors there too.
- Probably.
The “diplomatic relations” with the Principality of Monaco led to someone called Igor saying that they may meet soon.
The next morning, Hans helped to fuel up the ekranoplan from a kerosene storage in the port. Minutes later, four powerful jet engines screamed low over the sea, direction Monaco.
You can hear an ekranoplan, but it is difficult to spot, a fast white whatsit that almost touches the wave tops at 250 knots and below any radar.
Four days later, Alex sent a mock secret message.
- CQ farming family, this is The Palace
- Go ahead, Palace
- Two flying carpets underway, ETA 3 hours
- Roger, Palace.
- Palace out.
About two hours later, Elena’s ekranoplan landed first, followed by a much larger one. Instead of entering the port, they "drove" their machines up a nearby beach so they could easily lower their rear loading ramps, again showing the versatility of the ekranoplan design.
Elena and Alex were known. The others were Raissa and Nadia, together with Yuriy, Mikhail, Vladimir and Vasiliy.
Greetings all around and Yanna proposed that all would come home first, have a drink, something to eat and talks. Nadia and Raissa who were also a bit older were fighter pilots, but had been re-schooled on large transport planes. Yuriy and Vladimir were navigators and mechanics. Vasiliy and Mikhail had both been fire direction officers, Vasiliy on anti-aircraft rocketry and Mikhail in a “Topol” mobile ICBM unit. All were looking for a new home.
Yanna said that whomever they may meet in the future, all would be, more or less, up the same creek. Insofar they would not be “enemies”. And it didn’t make any difference at all if the Russians had flown there now with two hundred tons of stores or had swam with nothing. All they could ever need could be picked up anywhere.
Best part of the evening was a couple of one-kilo cans of first quality Beluga caviar. Vodka and Champagne were plenty.
Two days later.
Yanna, Raissa and Alex get a Jeep and take a tour of the surroundings, looking for a suitable place to settle, preferably not too far from The Family.
Not so easy really and the next day Yanna gave the Russians four Jeeps, a GPS and a map and sent them away alone. Eight Russians and eight Kalashnikov AKMs. They could feel safe.
Five o’clock, time for coffee. Eric and Hideki on the terrace of the house. Ute made pancakes. “Kaffee und Kuchen” as they say in Germany. Little Ortrud is getting coated in strawberry jam and the others arrive as well.
The twins hear “it” first: a low-pitched growling. Rina says something about Russians with a broken exhaust. Hans says that this is not a small Jeep engine and as he says that, something “hops” slowly over the row of poplars by one of the barns and lands in the unbelievably short distance of less than twenty meters.
All stare, astonished, at what looks like a small plane with a very large all-glazed cockpit.
Engine off, door open and an ear-to-ear grinning Nadia walks towards the house.
- Slow and low and hop over the trees, no one seen me, she says in Russian and no one understands her. No one had had time to react before the thing stood on the ground, either.
- Aaah, kofye, Nadia says and sits with the others.
They have to wait for Alex to know something more.
- This, Alex says pointing at Nadia, is a totally crazy woman but she knows what she does with an airplane. And that, over there, pointing at the airplane, is a Fieseler 156 “Storch”, built 1943 and obviously restored and parked on the airfield of the Jerez Flying Club. The only plane in the world that is still flying at forty kilometers per hour indicated airspeed and that could land in reverse, given some headwind. Nadia likes old planes. It is a reconnaissance plane, could be useful.
- And no electronics in that engine, Hans said.
- No.
- Was a bit of a scare, though, Hideki said.
It took another five days before the Russians agreed amongst each other about where to settle. Yanna had explained that they might easily hold out for another year with whatever supplies they could gather, but that they would eventually become farmers.
The Russians understood that and they chose another old and very large farmhouse that was situated on a hill about five kilometers South of The Family. Both houses could see each other with their binoculars. They had VHF radios for communications.
During the following days and weeks both ekranoplans were carefully unloaded, camouflaged and left on the beach, fuelled up.
Nadia and Raissa went to take a look at the Cádiz “Arsenal” that now had become a series of storage hangars of the Spanish Army. It also comprised the living quarters for some three hundred personnel that may have been at work there.
The year slid by. Hans’ agricultural experiments were very encouraging; the Russians installed themselves much in the same way The Family had done.
They were now in the third year after “the event” and all was quiet, as usual. Occupations were mainly agriculture and fishery. Rina was still trying to contact “others”, but to no avail.
Nadia and Raissa had “commandeered” two other planes they had found in a hangar of that Flying Club: two brand new Beechcraft Bonanza G36, probably ready to have been delivered to a customer. Much faster than the Fieseler and carrying the latest equipment. This was to be the Air Force of “Brigade West” as they called themselves.
It was on a beautiful spring morning that Raissa and Nadia made a reconnaissance flight, just for the heck of it.
They flew over land to Málaga and then followed the coastline, low. Navigation was easy; the GPS still received the automatic satellite signals. They had a flight plan that would take them over the Sierra Nevada. Raissa had read about that: snowy mountains in the very south of Spain and she wanted to see that.
Both admired the heights of the mountains, flew around them and were about to fly back to Base West when Nadia noticed something unusual near the white dome of the Sierra Nevada Astronomical Observatory, just there where the road to Málaga follows the crest: a plume of orange smoke.
Still thinking “military”, she called Raissa.
- West two, this is West one.
- Go ahead, West one.
- Smoke signal, orange, seven o’clock, ground.
Raissa looked down.
- Seen it, West one.
- Weapons free.
- Hahahahaaa, what weapons?
- Dammit.
- What do we do?
- Take a look but not too close.
- I have an idea.
- What?
- I’ll put my VHF on “scan”, see if we catch something.
- Ok.
The two Beechcrafts flew circles around the spot where someone had obviously popped a can of smoke. Another can was lit. On the ground, they saw human silhouettes. Someone unfolded what looked like a white bed sheet, square, followed by a Spanish flag. Raissa’s scanner stopped at channel 114, she heard a call in Spanish.
- West one, go to 114
- 114, understood
Nadia also heard Spanish that she did not understand either. But she answered anyway, in Russian.
- Zdravstvuytye, ya Maior Nadezhda Vassilyeva Semyagin, Russkaya Armiya. (Greetings, I am Major Nadezhda Vassiyleva Semyagin, Russian Army)
- Vosotros Russki?
- Da, da, mi Russkiye
- Nosotros Espanoles. Somos amigos!
- Amigo?
- Si, si, Amigo!
- West two, keep circling, I’ll go take a closer look.
- West one, understood.
While Raissa continued circling the mountain, Nadia made a low overflight over the “unknown position”. She saw about ten personnel, uniformed and armed. She also saw four vehicles, camouflaged, as well as two pieces of anti-aircraft machine cannon, single barrel, not following. Nadia made two more overflights and saw all who were on the ground waving at her.
- West two, mark your position, keep circling as long as fuel permits and then return to Base West. I will land here on the road.
- West one, understood.
Nadia landed her Beechcraft on the asphalted road near the spot she could still see some orange smoke. She shut off her engine, got out, her Makarov 9mm pistol locked and loaded in its holster, her AKM on its sling over her shoulder.
She heard an engine starting up and lit a cigarette. Raissa kept circling.
A Spanish Army Pegaso truck drove up along the dirt side road that led to the observatory and drove up the asphalt road.
A dozen or so uniformed men got out of the truck and came towards Nadia. One man came forward, saluted and introduced himself as Captain Juan Hernandez-Coll, Spanish army, Alpine Infantry. Nadia saluted back and also introduced herself. Nadia did not understand a word of what the Spaniards told her. She let them finish with eyes full of question marks.
Nadia spoke three words of English, but Capt. Hernandez seemed to speak it well.
- Me, Major Russian Army, Nadia said, Air Force. In air –Nadia pointed at Raissa- is other Russian officer. We now go Cádiz. We come back with man, speak Spanish. Ok?
- Oh, I’d love to know more. Where are you? Are there any others?
- Me no speak English. You come with me now? I come back soon with you.
Capt. Hernandez looked a bit puzzled at first. Then he called one of his men.
- Lieutenant Sorosa, take command. I am going on a recon with this Russian Major. If I am not back in 48 hours, execute order #2.
- Understood, Captain
- West two, we return to Base West, I am bringing a guest.
- West one, understood.
While Nadia started her engine, the Spaniards had already left the asphalt road. Three minutes later, both Beechcraft flew, in formation, towards Base West.
Capt. Herandez didn’t say much, he listened to what Nadia told Raissa, but didn’t understand a word of what she said.
Their flight was most uneventful and when they were within radio range, Nadia called Base West and asked for Alex to come to the airfield to meet a Spanish-speaking guest. Juan admired the precision with which Nadia and Raissa landed their machines.
Six Jeeps were parked near the grass runway, along with seventeen people. When they heard that they would have a guest, both The Family and the Russians had come to meet him. The twins had plucked a little bunch of flowers for their guest.
Greetings all over. The pleasantly surprised Spaniard rode in Yanna’s and Eric’s Jeep.
At home, many questions were asked, of course, many were answered. They heard that a platoon of Spanish soldiers was on a training course during the “event” in the Sierra Nevada and most had survived the “illness”. When Nadia and Raissa had spotted them, two sections were trying to establish contact to the “outside world” by radio, but had not succeeded.
The whole unit lived in barracks in Málaga and, of course, the next question was “What do we do now”?
Juan said that he first of all wanted to talk to his men about all this. Nadia proposed that she and Raissa could fly Juan and Eric over there. Eric could tell them the whole story. Nadia suggested that Eric could stay there for three days or so. Juan agreed with that. They would leave in the early morning.
Rina dragged Juan to her “radio room” where she showed Juan how she had contacted some stations and which equipment Juan could use. Juan’s unit only had VFH radios with a relatively short range.
Then, supper was served. Sauerkraut with Eisbein and Kartoffelklöße. A big Stein of beer with that.
At seven in the morning Mikhail and Vasiliy had already refuelled the two Beechcrafts and checked them.
So, Juan and Eric had both their private pilot. Two hours later, the two planes from Base West landed on the same -asphalted- road high in the Sierra Nevada. Nadia and Raissa saluted after which both planes changed into a couple of little spots over the Mediterranean.
Eric and Juan got on board the truck that was waiting for them.
Later, in the barracks, everyone wanted to hear everything from Eric. So Eric told his story and he had also brought pictures on his laptop. Eric asked THE question: would you guys like to come and live near us or stay in Málaga? Our argument is that there are probably more survivors, who may not necessarily be friendly and that, in a larger group, we have a better chance to defend ourselves and to survive in general. Also, considering future food supply, we will work more efficiently in a larger group with the modern agricultural equipment that we have, including fishery.
Juan also knew that Cádiz had a large military domain with storage and barracks, more than enough for the eighty men and women that they were.
Following Rina’s suggestions, “Group East” got a usable radio link with The Family and Base West. Rina had invented the name Group East. The two Beechcrafts would land on Málaga airfield instead of on that street when they would come to get Eric back.
The next morning, with everyone assembled in the barracks’ refectory, Juan asked for everyone’s attention. He said that, after carefully considering Eric’s proposition, he had decided that the whole platoon would move to the military base in Cádiz.
Juan told Eric that they would leave the next morning, with all their equipment. Eric answered that he wasn’t too sure about such a fast movement.
Juan answered that with a broad grin.
During the almost three years that Group East had been “stranded” in Málaga, they had continued their daily routines. Just to keep occupied, like any army does in peacetime.
First of all, they had cleaned up the barracks and buried the dead. After that, they had brought their unit up to material strength, so they had all vehicles, equipment, supplies, weapons and ammunition as if they were about to go to war. And then they had just continued their daily routines, day by day. And by the book.
At about 1800 Hrs, forty vehicles were “carburados y municionados” (having their fill of fuel and ammunition) and eighty soldiers had fallen in, fully equipped.
The next day, 0600 Hrs, the two Beechcrafts were waiting on the ramp of Málaga airport and a few minutes later the two pilots pushed their throttle control forward and the whole Air Force of Base West took off in formation. On the road that led west, they saw the vehicles, four groups of ten and about two hundred meters between each group. Nadia made a swift calculation: a convoy like that can do maximum 40 KmH, 350 divided by 40 is nine hours driving, add stops to that, a breakdown, whatever. She guessed twelve hours.
It was 9 PM when Hans and Eric led the convoy of Group East to the Cádiz Arsenal. Only one Pegaso truck with his 20mm anti-aircraft gun was being towed because of a fuel leak.
Eric told Juan that he would be back in two days. Juan agreed with that, he said they had all they needed.
About 48 hours later, eighty Spaniards were welcomed in their own country by a collection of people from different European countries plus three Japanese. Eighty people need space and The Family and Group West had done their best to organize some chairs and tables in one of the barns. Tables and chairs they had found in a school. Ute, Rina, Yanna, Rin, Ruko, little Ortrud, Elena and Raissa played waitresses and offered their guests wine, bread, chicken (from a deep-freeze reserve). Ute began to worry about those reserves.
Juan, discreetly, asked Eric who “the boss” was. Eric answered that they had held presidential elections and that Mickey Mouse had won. Juan thought that was a good choice.
The meeting between the three groups went very well, very enthusiastic even. But Yanna now began to think about some other issues: organized food supply became urgent; maybe a form of “central authority” might be needed
Yanna agreed with Juan, Nadia and Alex to have talks a week later.
One week later.
On the terrace of the house of The Family are Juan, Nadia, Alex, Hideki, Yanna.
Yanna started with the food supply problem and asked if Group East could collaborate with some form of organized fishery. She also asked who had any experience with slaughtering. Those two matters, she said, were to be solved most urgently. She also mentioned “defence”.
A quiet conversation followed. Each question actually already held its own response in itself, with as main consideration: maintaining the population and also expand it.
Everyone agreed that all ought to keep a maximum distance of anything that would even vaguely resemble any phoney “democracy” as they had known it before and that the word “politician” would be the coarsest insult in the community.
Defence: would, for now, be left to Group East.
Cattle raising and fishery were actually the most important issues. Base West would supply two men for cattle care, Group East 10 men for fishery. All to be done as required. Everything fitted together like jigsaw puzzle pieces.
Summer came and went, all were busy as they could and the three communities found a quiet existence. One might have become lazy. All pretexts were good to celebrate something and that is when little Ortrud invented “Cake Day”. All non-Spaniards tried to learn Spanish.
There was something, though, that annoyed Yanna enormously and most others had thought about it too.
Everyone was convinced that the world had been attacked by someone or something. But by whom? Why? And what now?
“Why?” looked as if there could be only one reason: to contain the exponentially growing overpopulation of the planet.
“Who?” was a much different question; it could have been anyone who had the intelligence and the technology to implement a worldwide biochemical attack. This, of course, immediately excluded Zimbabwe and Wallonia and didn’t leave all that much of a choice.
Nadia said that the perpetrators must have had unlimited and unimpeded access to worldwide air traffic. And that limited the choices very much: USA and UK. And then Yanna asked the most important question: Cui Bono? Who profits by it? She had her own ideas about that, but did not pronounce them because she thought that the answer might be just a bit to sensitive for some others. She said nothing, but was certain that she was not the only one with the same answer to that question.
Now and then, that question was raised, but that was where it stopped. “Cherchez la Femme” (seek the woman) Hans had joked one day and Ute had answered “Yes, Dame Fortuna”.
Yanna had answered that the Lady with the Cornucopia had come by them. They had everything. Ute answered that they, indeed, had everything, but no money.
Laughter all around. Who wanted money now?
Raissa said something about someone wanting power. Money is power.
That answer made Yanna shiver. She did not even dare thinking that they, sooner or later, might find themselves again in a system of corrupt politicians and world-ruling bankers. Ute’s remark had not been funny at all.
Just imagine that “the events” had been organized by the world’s most powerful: a “clean” world. They can start everything over and with a bit of planning, bring that new world under one dictatorship.
Just imagine that “those gentlemen” have a few thousand soldiers who have been sheltered in the hundreds of ex-cold war nuclear shelters, wait a bit till whatever is left of the “Free World” stabilizes itself and then subjugate those.
Who would do something like that? Who is so greedy for power and wealth? Yanna could easily imagine the only answer to those questions.
Later, Yanna spoke about this with Eric and Juan. Juan said that his had been a question that had been discussed often enough at the Military Academy he had attended and that simulations had been run. And that by a group whose common cause would have been Power and Money, enhanced by some abject religion. They had seen similar things happen during the last twenty-five centuries. The others did not say anything to that.
September of the third year.
Little Ortrud (who was six or so now) was helping mama plucking tomatoes. The heat of August had gone by, it was nicely warm, a cat was napping in the sun and the sky was blue, without a cloud.
That was when Ute noticed that her daughter was staring at the sky. She looked up herself and saw a very thin, short white line against the blue of the sky. She thought of the condensation trails of airplanes she had seen so often in the past. Instinctively she yelled for Rina, who came running, thinking something had happened.
Rina saw what the others saw and ran upstairs, got her camera, made some still pictures and a length of video. She called Nadia over the VHF. One hour later, “War Council” was held at the house of The Family. Nadia was the eldest and highest in rank, so the others listened to her first. Raissa was a bit nervous.
- It is certainly not a seagull that lost its way, Nadia said. It looks very high and that contrail does not look like one from a jetliner. It also looks too fast for a business jet. In my humble opinion, that is a fighter plane. I do not think the pilot is a civilian, either. All we can do is guess where the plane comes from. That is all I can say. I suggest that we drink a glass on Ortrud and her mama’s health.
- At least we know something, Yanna said.
- We know a bit more, Raissa added
- How so?
- That fighter comes from somewhere and maybe we can guess from where. That pilot is not on his own. The plane must be refuelled, checked, maintained, probably loaded with ammo and not only for his machine gun or cannon. Air-to-air rocketry or bombs isn’t something you handle with only two men, and those also need checking and occasional maintenance. If we would want to make a modern jet fighter operational right now, we’d need something like ten people or so.
- You can add something to that, said Juan. If this were a recon flight to observe people on the ground, why take a fighter that flies way too high, has a limited range and needs a long runway? Bit strange, all that.
- Well, we don’t know what it is, Nadia repeated, it has probably a range of two to four thousand kilometers or something, can fly for two to four hours, depending on equipment and stores. Its base can be far away from us, or close by. We have no idea what it wants. I suggest that we consider it “foe” for the time being and that we man an observation post. No radar, that would give us away.
That evening, Nadia asked Elena, Raissa, Mikhail, Yuriy and Vladimir to come to her “office”. In uniform, she had added.
- Listen, she said, we are about six thousand kilometers from “home”, three of us are certified for the Sukhoi Su27 long-distance fighter. Furthermore, we have an ekranoplan that can carry one hundred and twenty tons of cargo. The Su27 weighs maximum thirty tons, so that could solve a pilot problem.
We are being confronted here with a possible military problem and the only weapons we have are six old pieces of 20mm anti-aircraft cannon that might have been very useful during the Second World War.
I say that with all due respect for Juan and his men, but you know what I mean.
This is now my nation, my country, she said, I am a military and we all are and I think that I, that we must be able to defend our country. That is what we trained for, that is our life.
All respectfully listened to what that Lady of fifty years young, a well-built blonde who stood six foot two, had to say.
- My whole life was about airplanes, since the day that I heard that my grandfather in 1944, in his Sturmovik Ilyushin-2, was shot down by Hans-Ulrich Rudel in his Junkers 87.
I know want I can do with an airplane, although I have never fired a shot in anger. I am too old to have children, but I would just love to show what I can. Jacqueline Cochran flew jets when she was sixty and she was American. Well, I am a Russian Bear, goddamnit!
- I admire you, Raissa, grinned. And what do you want to do now?
- We are going to take a look how good we still are on our old Su27s!
Nadia underlined that with a smack on the table that sent a teapot flying. She added that she hoped that they would not be too late.
Nadia explained her plan: they had the personnel, of which three were fighter pilots, they had a heavy ekranoplan. They knew where to go and what to get. She estimated about a month and 30 personnel. The equipment she wanted to bring was three Su27s, a battery of anti-aircraft rockets and a battery of “Topol” (poplar) mobile ICBMs
- Thirty is not enough, Raissa said
- Ok, forty then.
- That looks more like it.
- We need to talk to Juan.
- Oh yes.
It was in front of a “general meeting” that Nadia explained the whole plan: they would load the large ekranoplan with personnel, supplies and five Jeeps so they would not be met there with vehicles that had a “flat” battery.
Two women would come back each with an Su27. With a range of about 4000 Km, they had some maximum distance potential of 8000 Km, which would be largely enough for the 6000 they had to fly. One Su could be partially dismantled and loaded into the ekranoplan.
Nadia wanted to add three spare engines plus other spares and ammunition.
Vasiliy would be in charge of transferring, by road, a battery of “Tunguska” anti-aircraft rocketry. And Mikhail could bring three Topol mobile ICBMs.
The advantage of these weapons is that each can function autonomously. One weapon, three vehicles, ten men were enough to set up, acquire the target and lock on, fire.
The mobile Topol were very also autonomous and they would typically deliver a 550 kiloton munition to the enemy.
Nadia thought it would be enough for the enemy to know that they had these. She did not very much believe in the actual use of them.
No one said much when Nadia ended her proposition. And since the assembly didn’t contain any ringbearded, bong-smoking high school teachers and other fake pacifists, there was no negative reaction to be heard.
It took about a week before the large ekranoplan had a camouflage scheme painted on top and fifty men (and women) were loaded up together with equipment and supplies. Elena started the generator that started the eight jet engines.
Elena estimated the flight to last some ten hours. After that they would have to drive to get to their old air force base. They had chosen this option because they were familiar with the equipment. They could have found enough transport planes in Spain but getting acquainted with them would have taken way too much time.
The whole enterprise may have looked like total madness, but Nadia was convinced that the whole affair was more than feasible. As soon as they got underway, everyone was actually enthusiastic about it. Some were not too sure when they were told that it was highly improbable that they would meet a single living soul.
The weather was good again, without any high winds or high waves and once over the Black Sea, their destination got nearer.
When they arrived at their “old” base, not a thing had changed except for heaps of dead leaves. They lowered the ramp of the ekranoplan and unloaded personnel, supplies and equipment as well as their Jeeps.
First of all, they went on a search for ten trucks and found them on the base’s “Avtobasa” (vehicle pool) about one Km from the runways. They chose MAZ-7310 8x8 trucks, 25-ton payload, 500 Hp Yaroslav diesel. Those would be good enough. Time for dinner.
The next day was spent checking and fuelling the MAZ, getting new batteries out of storage and charging them, loading them up with equipment and supplies and they left another day later, direction Stavropol.
They took their Jeeps with them. Eight hours later, they arrived and installed themselves in the barracks of the airbase.
Nadia had a sudden thought; actually they could leave the ekranoplan where it was, for the time being, if they found a two-seater Su27. They could fly three planes to Spain and after that she could come back with Elena to bring the ekranoplan back to Spain. They found an Su30, actually not much more than a modified Su27.
No Su27 to take apart. Good.
The next day, Mikhail and Vasiliy left with each two trucks and ten men. One for an anti-aircraft position about twenty Km out of town and the other for a Topol depot, about 150 Km the other way.
Alex helped the women with checking and maintenance of the three planes: they had chose planes that had been recently overhauled but it took them four days anyway.
With the personnel they had, they loaded the planes to their maximum capacity of fuel and ammunition and pulled them out of the hangar the next morning, to the runway. Nadia loaded a starting cartridge in the pneumatic starter of each engine and hit the lever.
Three women, three fighters, six engines and a whole lot of armament. The ladies saluted the men on the ground and six afterburners pushed the planes off the runway, into the sky.
They flew over the sea, as low as possible, to stay under possible radars. Their radar-assisted machine cannon were armed. They kept their air-air rockets safed to avoid stray-current accidents.
About three hours later, Nadia called The Family on their VHF, they would land in ten minutes or so. Eric came with a Jeep and they had some trouble finding the right adaptor pieces for refuelling but that was not a real problem. Nadia told Eric they will need to keep enough jet fuel in storage from now on since the Sus were rather thirsty.
In the late afternoon Nadia and Elena were back in Stavropol and helped composing a list of what spare parts they wanted to take for the Sus in Spain.
It took about two weeks to first go load up the ekranoplan (spare tires for the planes took a lot of space) and compose a road train with a whole battery medium-range anti-aircraft rocketry: five mobile launchers plus another five vehicles: radar, generators, loader, munitions carrier. Two MAZ carried even more extra ammo.
The three Topol had each their assistance vehicle in triangle tow.
The other MAZ were loaded with various weapons and ammunition, half a ton of caviar out of military stores (!), two thousand bottles of vodka, fuel and other miscellaneous stores.
So, in three weeks, the whole fitted, again. like a jigsaw puzzle. Each MAZ also carried a 13mm Degtyarev machine gun.
Nadia estimated that it would become a long trip. She counted on an average speed of 30 KmH, which was reasonably fast. One hundred and fifty hours of driving, eight hours a day, that would be about twenty days of travel.
Nadia and Elena left the group. Nadia brought Elena to the ekranoplan and waited till she would pass the Bosporus. Then she chased Elena.
And she had been right to do it that way. She was almost next to Elena when she heard that Elena was getting fired upon.
And indeed, she saw tracers coming from the East.
- Was to be expected, Nadia sighed, only one of those survives in the whole wide world, finds a machine gun and fires at anything that moves. The machine gun was mounted on a truck and Nadia saw three or four men around it. She promptly despatched them to paradise with a burst of 30mm shells.
- Thanks, west one.
- You are welcome.
- Damage?
- Please take a look at my left tailfin, I think I felt hits.
- Just a sec.
- West two?
- Yes.
- No holes in tailfin.
- No?
- Tailfin is gone, that is why.
- My elevator control feels a bit heavy. Can you keep an eye on me?
- Not a problem.
- Understood.
About an hour later Elena beached her ekranoplan in Cádiz and Nadia landed in Málaga.
Raissa was first to reach the ekranoplan on the beach.
- Problems huh, Raissa asked.
- Yea, got too close to Moronistan.
- We’ll have to see to that, one day.
- Yes, before they begin to reproduce like rats.
A bit later, Nadia was also at the house of The Family, while Juan’s men unloaded the ekranoplan.
- They will be here in about three weeks, Nadia said.
- Not bad, what have they got?
- More that we’ll ever need, three Topol to start with.
- And as anti-aircraft?
- Tunguskas.
- Wow, not to be laughed with, either
- Have you guys seen anything in the meantime?
- Not seen, but maybe heard.
- How so?
- The cats have a better hearing than we have.
- What has that got to do with it?
- Listen. Ute sat on the terrace with her child. Little Ortrud is playing with one of her cats that suddenly looks up. The kid also looks up and says “Cat hears something in sky, mama. You hear too? I hear”.
- Everything is possible.
- Yes, of course.
During the following weeks “Military command Cádiz” is a bit nervous. No news from Alex still. All they can do is wait. One afternoon, when Nadia sees the signpost “Aeropuerto Cádiz” again, she decides to go have a look anyway and she comes back, swearing like a Mongolian horse cart driver. They had never been there because, on their maps, the airport was mentioned with a runway of only 750 meters long. Bit short for the Sus. Printing mistake. The runway is 1800 meters. That same afternoon the three Su are much closer to home.
Alex and his convoy advance slowly. Fuelling is a bit of a problem since the MAZ consume much more than they had thought, so it was locating a gas station, opening the storage tanks, pump and then aim for the following one. They had done that already a couple of times till they found a large storage area with various tanker semi-trailers. One was full of diesel fuel. It took a while before they found a tractor unit that started. A full tanker would suffice.
Thirty days later they neared the Spanish border at Irun because they had decided to drive through France via the Western route. From there they would drive towards the South via Madrid.
When they, inevitably, passed by the Zaragoza Air Force base, something caught their attention: destruction all around, one bomb crater next to the main road even. They also saw burned-out wreckage that was still blackened by soot. Through his binoculars, Alex also saw bodies in advanced state of decay, not dried out like the ones from the “event”. Remarkable.
Alex ordered his men to go on avoiding the main roads and not to stop. In the dark they would drive with their “war lights”. Drivers would drive four-hour shifts and eat and sleep whenever they could. 900 Km to go.
Forty hours later they had Base West on their VHF. Nadia drove towards them. It was late when Group East finally parked their vehicles between the buildings of the arsenal, all got their personal stuff out and went to sleep first of all.
Gathering in the morning, debriefing and discussion. Alex read the inventory of what they had brought and what and how everything would be installed and/or stored. But it was when Alex mentioned what they had observed near Zaragoza that he had everyone’s undivided attention.
Yanna said something about a radio contact that Alex had with a Spanish “group” when they were still in Monaco. Alex admitted he had already forgotten that. Alex added that the sight of the wreckage had made him think of an aerial attack. He also mentioned that he had seen wreckage of a plane that might have crashed in line with the runway. Furthermore, there was one driver who thought he had seen a large orange “stain” on the sand, not far from there.
Nadia took some time to think about it.
- If I knot all this together, the conclusion might be somewhat disturbing, she said. Let me now think aloud for a minute and use some fantasy to close the holes.
1. Alex contacts a Spanish group. I was there. There was no follow-up to that contact, but it confirms the existence of that group. Location unknown.
2. We may have seen a condensation trail of an unknown fighter plane over our location. Origin unknown.
3. We observe recent destruction, most probably from after the “event”; we suppose an air attack with possible destruction of an airplane by “the enemy”. We suppose one possible survivor who might have saved himself with his ejection seat after his plane got hit shortly after taking off; someone saw what looks like an orange parachute.
Now this is my fantasy: the unknown plane, whose overflight we saw, was on a recon mission, but has not located us.
The same plane is seen (radar?) in Zaragoza by “friendly “planes. At least one Spanish plane gets airborne and gets hit by the “enemy” plane that also bombs the base, damages equipment and buildings, also kills personnel. Probably military.
- What you just said doesn’t sound like fantasy to me, Yanna said. Look at ourselves, how we got together and what we do, nothing weirder, there must be others, here and there, who are also trying to survive.
- What Yanna just said can be very much in concordance with what the theory that an “enemy” waited for three years before looking around, Eric said, I think we may hear more of them in the near future.
- I suggest, Nadia said, that we go take a look in Zaragoza and see if there are any survivors. If there are any, that may know more than we do, like who the “enemy” is, for instance.
It is about a thousand Km driving, too much chance to be observed if we fly. Juan, show us what your alpine troops are capable of.
- Yes, Major.
- A thousand kilometers, on an open road, is ten hours driving, Juan said. No point in driving faster, that would only cause accidents.
Five Jeeps, one of which as a fuel carrier so we don’t have problems with gas stations and pumping. Five modern diesel Jeeps may burn like fifty liters per hundred kilometers. Thousand kilometers back and forth is one thousand liters, which is eight hundred kilo in jerrrycans. We will take fifty jerry cans to be on the safe side, five per jeep, rest in the fuel carrier. That means that, over there, we have room to pick up possible survivors. Two of us per Jeep, each one machine gun plus personal weapons.
Rina. Can you think of something to keep radio contact over that distance?
- Nothing practical if you want to answer. That would all be too big and too heavy and would be heard by the whole world. CB would be theoretically possible, in Morse, over single sideband. But that would be very unreliable, depends on propagation of the moment and the location. Know what, I will give you a unit with an antenna and a Morse key, works on 12V of the Jeeps. Set it on channel 40-High, SSB. I will have my recorder on and will listen every evening between 2100 and 2200 hrs Zulu.
- Thanks.
The Chrysler-Jeep dealers in Jerez, Cádiz and Málaga had already done very good business with The Family, so five more Jeeps was not much of a problem, this time including two long wheelbase Cherokees that also could be used as an ambulance. They also had an airco. The most work was repainting them in disruptive patterns, matte dirty yellow and brown. Getting spotted was a risk but it was worth it. One day of preparations and they left in the early morning. Commando North was on its way to Zaragoza.
In the meantime Alex, Mikhail, Vasilily and Vladimir had, together with twenty men from Group East, been looking for suitable sites for the three Topol and the Tunguska batteries. The built-up areas were good from a camouflage point of view, especially against observation from above. There were vehicles parked everywhere anyway. For instance, one Topol was parked inside the high garage hall of a transport company, another one somewhere in a small industrial estate. One Tunguska launcher stood in the middle of the plumber’s nightmare that was a chemical production unit, almost invisible even with its radar mast erected.
The Tunguskas could be made ready to fire in less than ten minutes. The Topol needed a bit more time but that was not so important. Nadia hoped that she never would have to give the order to fire one of these, but she would not hesitate one second if she had to, either.
Around seven in the evening Commando North approached Zaragoza. They parked their vehicles in the shadow of a hill and Juan ordered a recon party to have a look around, from the top of the hills.
Someone saw the “orange stain” on the ground, about one kilometer Northwest of the airfield. Juan got a Jeep and two men and had another following his for cover.
It was, indeed, a parachute and a bit further they found a Martin-Baker ejection seat, empty. Its survival pack had been removed. Juan supposed that the pilot had survived.
The men also took a look around that spot and, about five hundred meters further they found another, identical, ejection seat. Binocular observation of the surroundings revealed two plane wrecks, about half a kilometer further.
They saw some vague footprints, but nothing indicated that the pilots had been wounded. Juan thought that they might have gone into town, on foot, that would have been the best way to hide and find a roof over their head.
All Juan had to do now was to find a way of attracting their attention and make it clear that they were “friends”. He thought of firing a machine gun in the air, that could be heard from far away, but it also could be interpreted wrongly. Then, he had another idea.
They drove into town and it was easy to find an abandoned store that used to sell audio stuff. It did not take long to find a big loudspeaker and a 12-volt CD-player. In the same store he found a rack with music CDs, some with very old songs on. In another store they also found a large Spanish flag.
Juan had the whole set up on the main road that passed by the city: the loudspeaker aimed at the city centre, the flag visibly spread over the hood of the Jeep and the music playing as loud as possible.
He played a song that all military in Spain would recognize immediately. A song from the Franco era. It would not mean much for a non-Spaniard: “Cara al sol, con la camisa nueva que tu bordaste en rojo ayer…” With all hundred Watts the amplifier could produce. After each pass of the song, Juan had a burst of three rounds fired from a machine gun. They did that over and over.
Private Francisco “Paco” Muñoz had brought forward another idea: connect the Public Address function of Rina’s CB to that CD amplifier, so they could yell a spoken message into that town. “Oigan, oigan, somos soldados Españoles… listen, listen, we are Spanish soldiers, join us on the main road by the Air Force base.
Then, it was waiting and hope that the pilots had not taken a vehicle and driven off to wherever.
What Juan and the others did not know, is that they had been observed all the time by two men. One was Major Luis Gomez and the other Colonel Ferrán del Bosch, Spanish Air Force. They had just observed Juan and his men and let them do, just to make sure who they were.
A week before, they had seen a convoy of unknown vehicles passing by, including what they thought to be Russian mobile missile launchers. They had gotten that right.
Around noon, it was major Gomez who threw a “stun” grenade, found in a police depot, on that main road, followed by a green smoke can.
That stun grenade was loud enough to get Juan’s attention. These things are so loud that they would easily wake up a herd of sleeping bishops in a brothel five kilometers away. The smoke was also well visible.
Juan and five of his men came forward and ostensibly put their weapons on the ground. Then they walked towards that smoke can.
The two officers also showed themselves.
All saluted very formally but the conversation very quickly became much looser. It took Juan some time to explain the Russian convoy. Luis and Ferrán listened carefully and after that they explained “in extenso” what they had been in.
During the “event”, Luis and Ferrán had been part of a particular survival exercise in one of the old nuclear shelters on the base’s grounds: twenty days underground after a simulated nuclear attack, in the company of a psychologist who had to study stress under isolation conditions. The exercise had gone well but they were very surprised with what they found when they came out of that shelter. That had been almost three years ago. What they had done in the meantime was very much the same than what Juan and his men had done. Till three weeks ago.
One of the radars that they had kept operational did not react to their IFF (Identication Friend or Foe). By the time they had two fighters up themselves, the base had already had two bombs and after that they were shot out of the air themselves. They both successfully ejected and ran. The attackers disappeared as fast as they had come.
Twenty dead amongst the ground personnel. After that, all decided to leave the base. One officer said “Now, I am going to bury my family”, got into the third F16 they had kept operational and had not been damaged in the attack, started up, taxied to the runway, saluted and disappeared in the roar of his afterburner.
Some others also said something about going to bury relatives, got into whatever vehicles they found and left Luis and Ferrán alone with a heap of questions about who and what and why. Luis added that he had seen that both fighters were Tornadoes that had an English cockade on their fuselage and wings.
Ferrán added that it was not clear to him how the UK could have become enemies and then he looked at Juan with a question in his eyes that he did not speak out: what with the “Fort Gibraltar”? Heavily armed, probably nuclear as well and not too far from Cádiz. What about that, Juan?
Juan’s Mediterranean complexion changed into that of a freshly laundered white bedsheet.
- “Mecagoenlosclavosdelcristoyenlamadredelhijodeputaquelosclavo”, he swore, in one word. We need to get in touch with Group East, fast.
Ferrán knew something about radios and in the evening they had a CB setup that might work. One of Juan’s men could signal in Morse code.
Juan composed a short message, written in a cryptic code he imagined on the spot and of which he thought would be understood in Cádiz but not by the English.
His message was: “Muy urgente, para Grupo Este de Comando Nord. Clavar pimpollo rojinegro en vez de la bandera. Urgente. Clavar pimpollo inmediatamente. Regresamos cuando clavado”.
He had that sent in clear because he thought it would take any English more than a couple of hours to figure out his message, more than the fifteen minutes Mikhail would need to fire a Topol missile.
So what was the meaning of that message? Very urgent. For Group East from Commando North. Plant the red-black poplar instead of the flag, Plant the poplar immediately. We will come back when the poplar has been planted.
So what did this actually mean? In times of Franco, the Spaniards swore to plant the red-black flag of Falange back on the rock of Gibraltar (clavar = to nail, as in clavar la rojinegra). So, plant the red-black poplar instead of the flag.
In clear: give that English base in Gibraltar, probably with survivors, a load of Russian Plutonium as a warning for those who attacked Zaragoza. Let them know that “their good old days’ are over. And that “we” want to fight for it. No more “democratic” bullshit in which bankers are the only winners.
Lieutenant Serosa translated and explained Nadia, who understood that Commando North must have a good reason for such a drastic measure. Mikhail, however, told Nadia that the Topols were not suited for such an attack. London, maybe, Washington, yes but Gibraltar: nyet. Too close for aiming and way too powerful. It would obliterate Cádiz as well.
Vasiliy cleared his throat, loudly.
- Yes, Valya? Nadia said
- Emm…ehh… we have, by mistake, also brought a Tunguska IV launcher, instead of the II
- So?
- Now we also have a ground-ground launcher, thousand kilometers maximum reach, minimum one hundred. Eighteen one hundred kiloton nuclear tactical missiles. Fires in twelve minutes flat, from start of engine.
Nadia had a naughty twinkle in her eye.
- Valya, fire one missile only. Now. Aim for Gibraltar base, set for explosion at 1 km altitude.
- Yes, Major.
About half an hour later, an enormous fireball flooded the whole of the base and Rock of Gibraltar. Ten times the power of the explosion in Hiroshima in 1945. Rin and Ruko admired the beautiful mushroom cloud that slowly drifted west, over the ocean.
- “Someone will have gotten the message”, Nadia said while the others had gotten very quiet. “And tell Valya he has earned himself a plastic
medal, third class, for varmint extermination”.
All laughed.
Rina sent a message “Poplar planted”.
For a while, Ferrán and Luis thought about getting each an F-18 out of storage and to bring them to Cádiz but they also thought about transferring spare parts and the availability of mechanics. Juan had thought about the same but they decided to put that idea to rest.
Commando North formed up in a convoy and drove home.
Hack Green, Cheshire, UK.
Five years ago, the enormous, outdated underground nuclear shelter complex meant to house the entire government in case of war (cold war era), had been closed for “maintenance works”. That means that the whole thing had been renovated and updated with the very latest equipment. During the “event” it had housed one hundred and fifty handpicked SAS soldiers and officers, some thirty civilians, and about one hundred “service personnel”, from secretaries to floor cleaners.
One civilian was in charge, a certain mister Blach, who had to be addresses with “Number One”. It was not known what had happened to the real UK government.
In the Charts Room there were some twenty people present, including a couple of secretaries, who were holding a “situation assessment” in the –now hermetically closed- bunker since Valya’s treatment of Gibraltar with a Russian missile on which he had personally written “Na Vashye zdorovye” (To your health).
Over there, in England, no one was very happy. Who had fired that thing? From where? Why? The Spaniards didn’t have any tactical nukes, only a couple of strategicals that could not be fired without authorization of the USA.
Someone said that he didn’t believe the Russians would use such a weapon against a UK target, and why? And why would the Russians get mixed up in a little test attack on an unimportant base like Zaragoza? And how would they have known about it?
So many questions, so many non-answers. The only thing they got from one of their still-operational satellites was the last two video seconds of the approach and hit of a relatively small missile. Image quality was not very good.
A fat, ugly and sweaty man named Sir Lucas interrupted the others with:
- So, Professor, your opinion please. You assured us that, from that whole world proletariat, only a small fraction of underdeveloped shit would survive and certainly not a military power that could start with bombing one of our most important bases into oblivion.
I have no idea, Professor, who they are but they are the only ones who, after 1945, made a nuclear attack against an “enemy”. Even WE do not consider such an option. I fear that we have to do with a power, not to be underestimated. Hell knows what else they have up their sleeves.
- You are right, Sir.
- Professor, you have full powers in this matter. We give you twenty-four hours to come up with an acceptable answer to the question “What do we do now”? Keep in mind that nuclear retaliation is NOT an option. We want to rule the new world, not destroy it.
The Professor nodded and left the room.
It was evening when the Professor entered Lucas’ office.
- I don’t have much to propose, he said. The only thing we can think of is to go talk to these people, whomever they are. And we don’t even know who they are.
- What do the US say?
- Nothing, we don’t have any communication with them anymore, at all.
I fear that they had too many survivors and that they may have been taken out during the uprisings they had last year. And that is also all we know. The US are a country with enormous climatologic differences, this may have disrupted the spread of the “spray”. We really don’t know what is going on there. And we did not hear anything anymore from the two recon flights over there last year.
To try to eliminate most of the population of a planet is one thing, but if the weather can interfere, it becomes quite a different proposition.
- Listen, Professor Schepple, or should I call you Doktor Stern, Lucas said, we have to do something and do it now. I keep you personally responsible for this mess. It is up to you now to get moving instead of sitting here on your lazy ass.
Contact them, we don’t even now their strength and that could be anything. We don’t even know where they are, goddamnit.
Sepple is Stern? Who is Stern? Who is that double person? Who was killed in Geneva then? Also some questions one would like to have answered.
Juan and Commando North arrived at Group East and the Spanish officers were received with honours. This was followed by a debriefing at the house of The Family. This had become some sort of tradition.
Nadia, Raissa and Elena impressed Ferrán and Luis very much. One of Nadia’s first remarks was why each of them had not brought a plane. Ferrán’s explanation was immediately wiped off the table by the argument that there were ten MAZ 7310 trucks doing exactly nothing.
Juan said that they could talk about that later.
The meeting was mostly about listening to Ferrán’s and Luis’ story. For Yanna, the most important part was that they had been attacked by UK fighters. Eric said that they might have come a step closer to the how and why of the “event”.
- The New World Order, Yanna said. If it is what I think it is, she went on, we can expect a whole lot more misery from that scum. If we only knew where exactly they are, I would not mind wiping that crap out once and for all.
- I think they are in the UK, Ferrán said.
- Three Topol on the UK? Raissa asked.
- Not enough, Nadia said, but we can go get some more, she said, laughing.
Ute interrupted the conversation by saying that you can’t think on an empty stomach and that dinner was served.
The Family’s house that once belonged to the Counts of Villanueva was actually a large mansion and it had a large ballroom that Ute loved to use for serving large meals. There were also always four cats on the long table. Ute had said that little Ortrud found that cats were so beautiful that every meal looked better if there were cats sitting on the table. Rin and Ruko shared that opinion. Table cats. No one could object to that. Ortrud had really taken the place of Ute’s dead sons.
The meal was three courses of fresh fish dishes, which meant that the “Military Fishermen”, appointed by Juan, did good work. And, after three years of practically zero fishing, the fish population had grown considerably. They also had fresh vegetables from the veg garden, fruit, old wine from the Rioja area. And goat cheese, the result of two years of experiments by Rin and Ruko, self-appointed Dairy Masters.
The twins now also had chickens, geese, ducks. They “sold” tons of fresh eggs. Prices ranged from rag dolls to all sorts of military equipment or jewellery or kitchen implements for Ute, who now had the best-equipped kitchen in the whole of Spain.
The twins had also become twelve years of age and beautiful.
Eric and Yanna, of course, worked with the others, just like anyone else and in their free time they wrote the Chronicle Of The Family. Rina lived amongst all sorts of electronic equipment. Hideki was doctor, surgeon, pharmacist, helped by two corpsmen from Group East whom he also instructed for the more serious tasks.
Then, a couple of weeks later, one afternoon, Rina came running out of her room, screaming YANNAAAAAAAA !!!!
Yanna scrambled up the stairs.
- What is it?
- You have to hear this.
- What?
Rina played back a recording and Yanna’s eyes widened visibly.
“This is the Military Government of the United Kingdom. This message is for the Command of the armed forces that are active in Spain. We wish to have an informal diplomatic exchange with you.
If you have a satellite telephone at your disposal, please call us on any channel in the UK. Hack Green out”.
They are sending that in clear, on 3500 KHz, the whole world can hear it because they are sending with enormous power. They repeat it every hour, in eight languages.
- They must have heard that firecracker in Gibraltar.
- You bet.
- Listen, Yanna, stay away from that satellite proposition. We can do it, I got all I need for that, but then they know immediately where we are. I think that they still have no idea at all about our location or us. And I bet they already have landed some crack SAS units somewhere.
- I’ll get the others
- Ok
With what they heard, they knew that the “enemy” felt threatened. Nadia thought that that message was a bit of a stupid initiative and she suggested to turning that into an advantage. How? By setting a trap, she said.
- Those bastards, said Nadia, whoever they are, over there in the UK –if they are really there- feel clearly threatened. They want an informal pow-wow? No way. They want to localize and attack us. That is a risk we cannot take. But on the other hand, we may well entrap them, find out who they really are and, in the meantime, prepare ourselves for a counter-attack or even a pre-emptive first strike and get done with them once and for all.
First of all we have to gain time, babble with them while we upgrade our armament.
Ok, ten MAZ for Ferrán and Luis, to get spares and ammo and two planes. One week of work.
One ekranoplan to bring drivers to Stavropol and come back with ten Topols. Got to talk to Mikhail about that.
We may have to keep them talking for four weeks.
Rina, could you install a medium-wave transmitter in the Su30? Then we can call them from Germany or Sweden or wherever. Rina said she’d do her best but she would need like 48 hours and help from a pilot to tell her what not to touch. Raissa would help.
Ferrán, Luis, Vladimir drove with two jeeps immediately to Zaragoza. Lieutenant Sorosa with twenty men and the ten MAZ also to Zaragoza to load whatever the pilots deemed useful. The pilots could fly back as soon as they could, preferably under any radar.
Elena, Mikhail and twenty men to Stavropol, get Topols.
Eric and Nadia: flying radio and trap. Raissa: cover.
The next morning all went to work, each to his task. Nadia, Alex, Eric and Yanna would set the trap.
The idea was to call the English from Denmark, flying circles, tell them that they were prepared to have talks in a few weeks. The radio transmitter was weak enough to generate a reasonably bad signal and not give a clear indication about who they actually were.
They also gave the English a clear warning about overflying all European territory, together with telling them to immediately retract all UK personnel, including their SAS or the whole of the UK would be immediately obliterated. A demonstration would be given soon.
Eric, aboard the Su30, spoke English with a brilliant and slightly exaggerated German accent.
Raissa, high up, flew cover circles, about one kilometer further.
And it was good that Raissa was there. He came from nowhere, right in front of Raissa and flying away from her, direction where Nadia had to be.
Raissa had the sun in her back so the enemy could not see her. She did not hesitate one single second and a burst of twenty rounds or so from the 30mm GSh-30-1 cannon of the Su27 reduced the attacker to some airborne scrap.
- West one
- Talk, West two
- One flying rat down.
- Understood, West two, we are out of here.
- West two out.
On Base West, Yanna saw the black soot trace that Raissa’s cannon had left on the fuselage.
- Drum roll? Yanna asked, laughing, Raissa who walked away from her Su27 while the “ground crew” was already busy refuelling and repleting ammo.
- Twenty-two rounds, Raissa said, and a lot of little pieces Tornado scrap
- English? Yanna asked.
- Angliyskiy pashook –English rat- Raissa said, not even dog food.
Nadia supposed the English fighter had been there by coincidence, before Eric had even pronounced his warning.
Nadia was still very much worried about the –almost certain- presence of SAS elite troops somewhere in Spain and she decided to really implement the “demonstration” Eric had mentioned. Nadia called Mikhail.
- Yes Major?
- Find the Isles of Lewis, northwest of Scotland and fire one Topol on that. Fry some sheep.
- Yes Major.
Half an hour later one could only imagine the damage done by the 550-kiloton warhead.
The next day, Rina received a message comprising only one single word: “Understood”.
Juan’s troops, nevertheless, got orders to shoot at ANY human looking being that would move or be in an unexpected place.
- Four more weeks, Nadia said. Let them guess, we won’t move till everyone is back home.
It took eight days before Luis and Ferrán and their men had gotten three F18 “Hornet” fighters out of heir hangars and had made them “flyable”. Two were immediately flown to Cádiz and Nadia then ferried Luis back to Zaragoza to get the third one. They hoped no one had seen them.
There were three more contacts with the English, in which Eric got rid of them with all sorts of pretexts at first, but then he had to give in and a rendezvous was scheduled for two weeks later. The convoy from Russia was expected in a week.
When they arrived, Mikhail decided for locations in the Pyrenees, difficult to detect in tunnels, and Rina had organized communications via a narrow-beam directional transmission, courtesy of Lieutenant Sorosa who had found the equipment in a military depot near Málaga.
Yanna and Nadia and the others were thinking of how they would present themselves to the English. They thought it were not a good idea to give them an indication about their real strength of barely something like one hundred and twenty men and women. Nadia said the English ought to think that they had a serious Russian/Spanish force to deal with.
And how would the meeting been worked out practically? Where? In any case, far from The Family.
It was Ferrán who came up with a feasible proposition:
* We are the “Group Centre”. We are part of a multinational protection force whose task it is to protect Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East against all possible influences such as the one that implemented the global “event”.
* Meeting place is the Madrid-Torrejon airport, military section, in a prefab building near runway #2. It will be marked by the Imperial Japanese war flag, The Rising Sun.
* The English can come with one propeller plane only, unarmed, carrying maximum ten personnel. Personnel can carry a sidearm.
* The meeting will last a maximum of two hours, after which the visitors must leave.
* All “enemy” planes or other vehicles will be fired upon and destroyed.
* The accepted languages will be Spanish and/or Russian.
* English visitors will be expected on September 3rd, 0900 Hrs Zulu.
* No amendment of this proposition will be made/accepted.
Signed:
Colonel Ferrán del Bosch-Sanchez.
Major Nadezhda Vassiyleva Semyagin.
Could not sound better, Nadia thought and all agreed. It would not take long before they knew what the English wanted.
Juan had his men load up all equipment they would need to set up the “reception barrack” and four Pegaso trucks drove off to Madrid to prepare whatever was needed there.
It was decided who would attend: Nadia, Ferrán, Yanna, Eric, Rin and Ruko. The twins could give the impression of some sort of Asian involvement too. All fitted neatly in the two four-seater Beechcraft. Raissa and Elena would fly cover, circling around the airport, The Sukhoi long-range fighters had plenty of fuel for that.
All markings were taken off everything and replaced by the Imperial Japanese War Flag: the Rising Sun. Why? Why not?
Also on the uniforms, easy to do with a screen print frame and some red paint.
Yanna, Eric and the twins also wore a uniform.
Eric asked what they were going to say.
- We will greet them politely, Yanna said, and that is where it stops. We want to hear what THEY have to say. After listening to them we will tell them that we have carefully noted their message and that, in time, we will formulate a fitting answer and let them know.
Eric couldn’t add much to that.
Rina relayed a message that six Topol-III had been installed in the Pyrenees. We wrote September 1st.
The next day, around noon, two Beechcraft left for Madrid, with one Su27 flying cover, after which Raissa returned to Cádiz with her fighter.
In Madrid, one Tunguska multiple launcher was positioned between buildings, its radar mast barely protruding over the rooftops.
The little prefab tent/building looked very neat, large enough with tables, chairs and some disposable laptops. Drinks were also available.
All went to have their evening meal, MREs, in a large tent of the Alpine troops.
Round the “convention area” there were also the six 20mm machine cannon that Juan had brought.
All went to sleep early to be fresh in the morning.
Around eight in the morning everyone and everything was ready and there only was another hour to wait with cigarettes and black coffee.
At about ten to nine appeared a twin-engined plane, a Fokker turboprop. Juan had a green flare fired at the end of the runway. After the plane landed, a Jeep had it taxi to the spot where the meeting would be held.
Five “gentlemen” got out, accompanied by one woman who said she was the interpreter. Six of them, plus pilots.
Rin and Ruko led the visitors to where the others were waiting. They did not know what to think about the two young girls, each carrying a gun with the hammer visibly cocked, but safed.
When all were inside and presentations were made, Yanna addressed the English, in Spanish.
- Dear visitors, Group Centre welcomes you. We have no quarrel with you, we are eager to hear what you have come to inform us about. You will have our undivided attention. Please be seated. Would you like coffee, tea or something else?
Tea was acceptable and the twins served the visitors.
The English delegation seemed to be composed exclusively by civilians, what Yanna thought to be strange. A man, called Professor Stern, addressed his hosts:
- Ladies and Gentlemen, you are, just like us, some of the very few survivors of the catastrophe that has so radically changed the world as we knew it with a disease whose nature or origin we have not been able to detect.
Now, it belongs to us, survivors of this drama, to build a whole new world and make it flourish like a freshly sown flower garden.
We, English, have a century-long experience in administrating large areas and populations and we would like to collaborate with you to accomplish such a gigantic task. Of course, I have to add immediately to this that this enterprise will bring immense advantage and wealth to its leaders, in exchange for the humane responsibility they will take.
You will agree that the welfare of the future world population will be of our greatest concern, isn’t it?
Group Centre had gone quiet by hearing such a load of bullshit that could have been written by Tony Blair himself. Nadia got more nervous as the interpreter went on.
As Eric stood up, the others signalled him that he could go on answering. Yanna was playing with her Minox.
While Eric formulated his answer as carefully and politely as he could, Mikhail stood on the roof platform of the air traffic tower –the highest point he could reach- and checked the camouflage that had been applied to the meeting building: large rectangular and square pieces of canvas that made the building, from the air, fade away between the other buildings.
Immediately after the receptions, the two planes, flags, everything had been moved to the other side of the runway and placed near another –fake- prefab buiding, well visible and even having a large flag laid open on the ground, together with neatly parked vehicles. Sorosa had come up with that idea, you never know.
Mikhail, up there, kept contact with Raissa and Elena of whom he thought they were going to prune the trees with their wings whenever he saw one of them coming around low and fast.
And then, again, he came out of nowhere, just like that: an A10 Thunderbolt “Warthog”, the most effective ground attack plane ever built. Very manoeuvrable, massively armoured and massively armed with his GAU 30mm Gatling-type gun that could fire around 4000 rounds per minute.
Mikhail could barely warn Raissa when a first burst of projectiles ploughed almost straight through the fake constructions of Sorosa.
A burst of 20mm tracers from Juan’s men went in the direction of the A10, who made a wide turn at some distance to go in for a second attack. Raissa had him locked on her fire control radar already, pushed the throttles against the stops and went towards the enemy on full afterburners.
The Tunguska also had the A10 locked on when Raissa gave the A10 a burst of Russian steel that did not much more than to blow off some “body parts” of the A10 without any further consequences. Then her speed was much too high to come back fast as she has to take much to wide a turn. This gave the A10 the opportunity to shoot its target completely up, ignoring the four 20mm guns of the Alpine troops and the fact that Elena scored multiple hits on one of the A10’s engines, thoroughly disabling it. The A10 made a run for it, on one engine. Truly the sturdiest jet plane ever built. But that was until he got one of the Tunguskas up his ass. No more A10, no chute either.
The whole affair had lasted less than five minutes.
Everyone laid flat on the floor in the “conference room” and stayed there till Lieutenant Sorosa said over the VHF that the coast was clear.
When the Professor got up as well, he looked straight into the barrel of Yanna’s 9mm SIG pistol.
-So, Professor Stern, or shall I say Professor Sepple? Or whomever? And now, you will start with telling us who your boss is. And look what I got here for you.
On her little Minox screen, Yanna showed the picture she had made in Geneva. While Yanna looked away for a couple of seconds, the female interpreter of the English took a pistol from her bag. Rin, however, was faster and the woman got three hollow-point 9mm bullets into her belly. The SIG can fire in bursts of three cartridges and the third bullet leaves the barrel before this can affect the aim of the weapon.
“Tenno heika” (May the Emperor live ten thousand years) Rin said.
“Banzai” (hurray) Ruko added.
Not bad for a twelve-year-old. Ruko held her sister by the hand and said something like “the next one is mine”. Nadia nodded admiringly to the girls.
A few minutes later, the five men, of whom four had not said a word yet, sat handcuffed, each on a chair.
- And now I want to know, Yanna said. Who are you and what do you want? This went on in English. And I want to know it fast, as in NOW. And let me add to that that we have the immediate capacity to convert the whole of your little country in a heap of smouldering ash and not inhabitable for the next ten thousand years. Do you understand what I am saying, mister? Or do I have to repeat myself?
- I assure you, Madam, that we have come here with the most peaceful intentions. Our only purpose is to make sure that the “new” world population can develop itself in peace and harmony and…
Stern got a very hard smack with a rifle butt across his ugly face.
- Stop the bullshitting, you fat pig, Yanna said, or do you want to play with the children?
Stern looked at his interpreter who was bleeding to death on the floor and then he saw the pretty, smiling face of Ruko who came towards him and aimed her pistol at his family jewels.
Stern got very, very pale in his face.
- They are bankers, Stern said; there is no “boss”
- Like those four there? Yanna asked.
- Yes, bankers and politicians, they can really help you, Madam, they are our very best collaborators and you can really trust them.
That was too much for Yanna, he should not have said that.
- Ruko ?
Three shots, as in a machine gun burst. One man fell off his chair. Ruko’s face lit up with her prettiest smile.
“Hanamaru” Rin said. (Good mark, as in school).
- I think you have still not understood, you stinking son-of-a-whore. You are going to tell me NOW, and I mean NOW, tell me what your plans are. Or do you want to see these lovely twins have really fun with your companions and yourself? Japan never forgot the allied war crimes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the Tokyo fire bombings. And we don’t give a flying fuck in a rolling donut whether you guys are UK or US, do you understand what I am saying, you piece of abortion reject?
Stern was close to a heart attack. He caught some breath and talked. The said how the international banking community had understood how overpopulation was limiting profits and had ordered a ‘population cleansing” and financed it. How he had been involved in the development of “Substance C”. C as in “Clean”. And how the plan had been developed to form a single “World Government” as soon as the situation would have stabilized itself, possibly with the collaboration of other groups of survivors, if those would be “worthy”. The whole explanation took about an hour. Then, a sweating and exhausted Stern just stopped talking.
Group Centre said nothing. Yanna felt like giving Stern to the children for a bit of fun. She didn’t.
- Heee, Yanna said, grinning. We all missed something. Hahahahaaa. That A10 was not only after us, heheh, he fell for the camouflage trap and destroyed what would have comprised you too hey, Stern, and your famous bankers. Your “bosses” betrayed you as well. So you guys are not as important as you want us to believe. Disposable diplomats, what a joke!
But that does change the whole image. Or not?
That A10 opened fire twice, your base must know that. And then he fell out of the air. How? That is for your base to guess. On the other hand, if he could fire twice, I think that your base assumes he has fulfilled his mission and that YOU have also been taken out.
So, all WE want to find out now is who your REAL bosses are. That can be a bit of a puzzle, but we got time.
Guys, I think that we can go home now. We take these three here with us. That Fokker is shot up and someone take care of those pilots.
What do you guys think?
Let’s do it.
With the three “diplomats”, cuffed, in the load space of a Pegaso truck, the whole group was back home some ten hours later. Raissa landed with just a swig of cheap vodka left in her fuel tanks and swearing like Genghis Kahn’s mother-in-law for not having downed that A10.
At home, Hideki did not recognize his daughters, not even out of uniform, but with a kind of grin on their faces that he had never seen before. Rina also thought they looked changed. The also noticed that the girls went on babbling with each other while they took their SIG pistols apart, cleaned them and put them back together with automatic-like movements as if they had done it hundreds of times. Rina thought she must have missed something during the past months. They weren’t the little girls with the little bunch of flowers anymore, even if their smile was as lovely as ever.
It made Hideki think of his grandmother, always smiling, although she had been horribly burnt during that criminal attack on Hiroshima, and his sister, who was born with only one arm.
The atmosphere in the house of The Family was a bit poisonous, that evening. Not amongst each other, but in the presence of the three “diplomats” who were sitting on their knees, still cuffed, at the side of the room.
Ute, gentle and compassionate as she was, brought them something to eat. But Rin, with a nasty grin, took the plates out of Ute’s hand and emptied them on the floor. The English could lick it up if they wanted.
Nadia said something about finding out who was actually behind the whole thing, but added that the room in the house of The Family was not the ideal place for an “interrogation”.
All agreed with that and Juan’s men brought the three to the barracks in Cádiz. Ruko said she would go there too, the next day, together with her sister.
Rina protested loudly and even Hideki stood up at the table. But then, Ruko took her gun and put it “forcefully” down on the table, without saying a word. Rina and Hideki did not insist.
On the next day, at 0900 hrs, Rin and Ruko appeared at the gates of the Arsenal in Cádiz, driving their little golf cart. Both were barefoot, wore a skirt and shirt, nekomimi cat ears, pistol belt and holstered gun and both also had a rabbit rag doll. The guards let them through, of course, and they went to Nadia’s office,
Stern and his accomplices each sat on a chair by a table, together with Nadia and two guards. The twins went to stand against a wall, looked at Nadia but didn’t salute. Nadia looked back at them but did not salute either. Each of the twins held their rag doll in their left hand, by its right foot.
As Nadia went on with her interrogation and Stern kept giving evasive answers, Nadia got seriously pissed off and cast a glance at Rin. Rin, hardly looking up and without showing any emotion at all, flicked the safety lever of her pistol to off and a burst of three 9m slugs shot the left knee of the nearest “banker” to shreds. The man jerked around in an intense scream of pain before his brains decided to have him lose consciousness.
Stern finally understood that he found himself between a rock and a hard place and decided that it might be better to talk and say what he knew. And that was really not very much.
All he knew is that there were two places in the UK where people had protected themselves. He knew one of them: Hack Green, approximately in the center of the UK. Military were in charge, but they listened to a man call Blach. He estimated that Hack Green held about five hundred people in all. He supposed there might be other survivors. But that was all he knew.
Nadia could live with that. The English were useless now, even as bargaining material since the A10 had tried to liquidate them like all the others.
The twins took over and three heads exploded in as many bursts from the SIGs. Nadia had the crap cleaned up and brought to the trash disposal unit. Rin and Ruko dragged their rabbit rag dolls back to their golf cart, drove home, but stopped underway to pluck some flowers for Rina and Ute.
The next day, another “war council” was held at the house of The Family.
Ferrán thought they stood against an enemy they would have to count with and who also wanted to restore total plutocracy. They did not know the strength of the enemy but one had some idea about its equipment. They had lost some personnel and another plane and pilot. Then there was that other group Stern had mentioned of which they knew nothing, not even if they existed at all.
Yanna thought the enemy did not know much about The Family either and they did not think about a nuclear retaliation from that side. Yanna still feared action from small groups of crack commandos.
Ferrán, on the other hand, thought about looking for other groups of survivors with which they could make alliances against the English-plutocratic danger.
The alternative was 300 megatons over the UK, but no one thought that to be a really good idea. Juan proposed that everyone give it some thought and gather again in a week. Ferrán added half-jokingly that they maybe ought to contact the Chinese or go on a search for more Russian survivors. And what about the Japanese?
Main problem was that radio was their main practical means of communications and that the English, of course, could hear all they said. And also could be very busy pinpointing the position of the Family’s base. Not good either. Ok, we will see next week.
Little Ortrud was playing with a red balloon Hans had blown up for her and she came to the chicken coop where the twins were busy. Rin and Ruko liked the company of their little sister and often played with her. Then, Ruko suddenly ran off, into the house, upstairs to Rina.
- Haha san (mom) can a balloon fly to China?
- Why do you ask?
- Hang letter on balloon, tell the Chinese to come here, with us.
- You have to ask your dad, I don’t know anything about balloons
- Nyaa (meow).
Ruko ran downstairs, got the little golf cart and drove to Hideki’s little clinic. She arrived when her dad was busy taking care of one of Juan’s men who had stepped on a sea urchin. She waited till her dad was ready with that and then asked him the same question.
Hideki first laughed and said that they would need a very very large balloon, and where would they find the gas to fill it? But as Hideki was listing objections, he then hesitated, stopped talking and thought about it.
- Know what? Go find Ferrán and ask him the same question, he is a pilot and an engineer, after all. And I can write some Chinese.
Ruko found Ferrán talking with Nadia, who were both a bit surprised to seeing her appear like that.
Ferrán and Nadia listened and then got Juan to listen to it, too.
- There are weather balloons at the station in the Sierra Nevada, Juan said, and meteorological charts. And there is a depot of Air Liquide near Jerez, we must be able to find helium or hydrogen there, even butane is lighter than air.
- Get to work, guys, Nadia said.
It took them about a day to get all the equipment and the it took Ferrán and Nadia some more time to make an educated guess about winds, altitudes and whatever so that the balloons would –maybe- land somewhere in China and –maybe- found.
Each balloon carried a letter written in English, Russian, Japanese and one single sentence in Chinese: “Bring this to the authorities”.
The text said: we are an international group of survivors of the global disaster, located in Europe and Russia. We dispose of conventional and nuclear armament en we are being threatened by a group from the former United Kingdom who wants to create a New World Order, based on their old principles of criminal religions and greed. We think that this is not permissible and we are asking for your support. If you can, try reaching us via satellite telephone every day between 2100 and 2200 Hrs Zulu. Please encrypt your message with the following key. We are scanning ten Asian satellites but please know that we do NOT master the Chinese language.
The night that followed, three very large weather balloons disappeared into the darkness. Each carried a fluo orange painted plastic box and a long red streamer. Nadia estimated that, with a bit of luck, the journey would take some ten days. They had no idea of where they would land, but certainly not in England.
Elena asked why go through all this trouble and just fly there.
- And get shot at? We have no idea how the whole Asian situation is. Who survives and how? Wanna stumble over a bunch of crazy North Koreans? Better go careful about this, Nadia said.
Daily life of The Family went on in its routines and there had been a couple of meetings more, but none had brought a solution for the “problem England”. And two months later, there was still no news from the Far East.
And then Yanna brought forward a delicate subject: reproduction.
If they wanted it or not, something had to be done about that before it was too late, if they didn’t want to just die out. There was no other choice. Others also found this to be a delicate subject but it was decided that Hideki would check all women and come up with a list of those who would be suitable, and there were not that many of them.
Seventeen of the eighteen Alpine troops, Rina, 35, border case, Rin, Ruko and Ortrud in some years, yes. All the others too old. Hideki knew very well that many women have had children at 40 and over but he thought it were better not to take risks.
Yanna was assigned the task of talking to the women and make them conscious of the relative urgency of the matter. They would be exempt of chores, the community would look after them, they would have no obligation at all of having any “ties” with the fathers. Two months later, eighteen women were pregnant, including Rina.
That didn’t change much for Rina who just went on computering in her attic and was “playing” with radios.
It was on some day in December that Rina got an unintelligible message over a satellite connection that was obviously still working. Someone was obviously using the encryption key that she had given with the balloons. She supposed that the female voice on the other side was speaking Japanese. Rina asked to wait a moment in English and called the twins. She told them to talk to the lady while she called Hideki over the VHF.
Hideki had a long conversation with the lady on the other side. In the meantime, Rina had called the others to hear Hideki’s report.
During the meeting that followed, Hideki said that one balloon, mostly emptied of its gas, had washed up on a beach of an island called Amami-Oshima, a bit south of Kyushu, where a group of survivors was established.
They were quite a large group, about thirty thousand people, of which military engineers and scientists who were at work there during the “event” and who had probably been saved because the wind had shifted twice and that not even half of the original population had been affected. This Godly Wind, the Kami Kaze, had saved them.
There were also other groups of survivors in Japan, but they had very little contact with them. They said that they could not come to Spain to help but that they could arrange for a ship to be sent to China to ask for help. They were convinced that there were larger groups of survivors in China. They ended by saying that they would talk again the next day.
Nadia sad that it might be possible to travel to China over land, but that earned her some funny looks.
The next day, Hideki explained that no one had to travel to Spain but that The Family would like to have talks with the Chinese to try to convince them to help forming a kind of alliance against the Anglo-Saxons.
That was the second day.
Nadia and Yanna thought it might be better if they’d have a conversation with the Japanese first and Elena said that Japan was within reach of the big ekranoplan, fast and under any radar and they could install and extra internal fuel tank, the ekranoplan was carrying a bladder-type extra tank anyway that could contain 5000 liters. They thought it probable that they would be able to find jet fuel mostly anywhere since the ekranoplan’s engines would burn any type of kerosene anyway, even diesel fuel if it had to.
Hideki asked if the Japanese would agree with a visit. They answered that they would gladly have The Family as guests and that jet fuel was not an issue.
So who would go?
Elena, Yanna, Nadia, Ferrán, Hideki, the twins. The others would “hold the fort”.
The ekranoplan got loaded with with four jeeps, light weapons and ammo, food and some gifts for the Japanese, some sundry stuff. The flight would take more than 24 hours.
The ekranoplan’s eight engines pushed the machine over the wave tops and where they had a very calm sea, Elena could shut down two engines to save fuel, since they were carrying only half of their possible payload.
26 hours later, the machine neared the coast of Amami-Oshima and a couple of flares and smoke cans led them to the little port in Setouchi bay, where they just beached the ekranoplan to avoid port entrance and mooring problems.
The reception was more than friendly by a small committee amongst which was the Daimyo, whom the Japanese had chosen as their “Head of State”. They had also walked away from the time and resource wasting “babble house” political system and had one civilian and military leader. No bullshit and all were very pleased with that. Traditional attire had become more than fashionable. Without telephone and electricity wires, one could easily imagine how Japan would have looked in 1920. All remnants of American occupation had been erased, even the smallest Coca-Cola ad.
With Hideki as spokesperson, the hosts supposed he was the Daimyo of The Family, since he spoke a civilized language and was very polite. They did think that his bodyguards were a bit young, though. They asked themselves why he had not stayed in Japan.
After a more than decent meal, Hideki told the story of The Family, the Russians, the Spaniards and ended by telling how they now felt threatened by the “English”. Then he asked what the Japanese knew about the rest of the world.
The Daimyo let Colonel Toyoda answer that question.
- We know about as much as you do, Toyoda said. Just like you, we have tried to reach the rest of the world. We heard a few radio broadcasts, just like you, and not much that we could understand. We have a few people here who speak English and some who speak Chinese but that is very much it.
You know that we are a seafaring nation and that our ships are amongst the best and most seaworthy ever built. Two years ago we “discovered” crewmembers of a whaler, including an officer. These ships will take ANY weather. We “acquired” one of these ships and partly adapted it, assembled a crew out of the local fishermen population and made a world trip.
We may even have passed close to you, albeit unseen. Siberia and Alaska are almost empty. We met Inuit who told us that they did not know of any “white” survivors in Canada.
In what used to be the USA, we only had contact with Native Americans and black people. That situation was not very clear to us and we were very lucky to fly the Imperial Japanese war flag, The Rising Sun, that many recognized as fundamentally anti US government as we used to know it.
The population over there, they said, is estimated around 500.000 and is divided into two distinct groups, more or less the North-South division of the US civil war. The black people in the South and the Native Americans in the North. A sort of agreement made after survivors, together, had fought regular US troops that had left their shelters after the “event”, Both sides’ losses were enormous but the “insurgents” prevailed, after which all “whites” they could locate were systematically killed, of which large numbers of civilians in the New York and Washington, DC area.
We also heard of a plan of black people to return to Africa.
We could not meet any survivors in South America or Australia.
In the Middle East we observed goats and camels.
We do not know much about Asia. China is something else, but we only met military personnel in Shanghai who did not say much and were friendly but made it very clear to us that we could not stay there.
Now you know about as much as we do. I do want to add that fish reserves are growing exponentially, which pleases us very much.
Hideki explained that The Family did not want to bomb the former UK back into the stone age although they could easily do it, but they would rather ask the Chinese, also a nuclear power, to take such a position that would convince these “English” to stay on their islands.
The Daimyo understood very well what The Family meant. He ordered an interpreter and personnel to accompany The Family to China. He added that that could take a week or so and that Hideki and his companions would be his guests in the meantime. The twins thought they were in heaven.
The Daimyo decided not to take a ship to China and the ekranoplan, again, proved to be very useful and the interpreter got the Chinese on the VHF as they neared the coast. It took a couple of hours before they were allowed to beach their machine near Shanghai where some fifty military personnel waited for them, armed to the teeth.
That was followed by some back-and-forth talking and then they were told that they would be brought to the city where they could meet a delegate of “The Authorities”.
They were allowed to use their own Jeeps instead of having to sit in an army truck.
In a barracks they met a man calls Zhang who said he was the local representative of the National Military Authorities. He spoke English reasonably well and said he was honoured to be able to meet this international company.
A long conversation followed that lasted well into the evening, interrupted a couple of times by phone calls of what Zhang called “The Central Authority” in Beijing.
They would get an answer the next day and Zhang had a copious meal served for his guests.
Zhang said that the Chinese population had incurred a loss that was estimated to be between 98 and 99 %. The military had taken over and relocated as many survivors as possible to the most fertile lands. Now, they were busy with reorganizing the nation into a functional whole.
There was no shortage of sleeping accommodations in the barracks and that is where the night was spent on Chinese soil.
In the morning, Zhang said that his superiors had great interest in meeting The Family and wanted to hear the “English” intervention in Europe in detail. So all were invited to Beijing. The journey would be by train. 1100 kilometers in a train in which The Family and some forty military were the only passengers. The trip took twenty hours and was tiring. From the station they were taken further in a bus.
Beijing was brilliant. The New Authorities had installed themselves in the Forbidden City, the ancient palace of the Emperors. The whole place looked empty except for some maintenance workers and some military. Inside, guards asked everyone to clear their weapons but did not ask to surrender them. One officer looked a bit astonished when the girls, together and choreographically, clicked the magazine out of their pistol with one hand, caught it gracefully in the other and then put it on the officer’s table. All in one single, fluid movement. Nice.
They were received by General Ling who told them the was the head of the Provisional Authority of the State of China.
Ling welcomed them and immediately added that he had found their report their “encounter” with the English most interesting, after which he confirmed what the Japanese had said about the former USA, that it had been emptied of all “whites” or people of Middle-Eastern ancestry and that those would not be a menace anymore.
England, he added, was a country with a cultural background of conquest, occupation, oppression, money, criminal exploitation and general Ling also thought that this should never again be a basis for infiltrating, occupy, oppress and exploitation and manipulating what now was left of the world population. Banking and other manipulations, consumption economies based on eternal growth and other thieving practices that had to be prevented by all means.
Ling also said that it would be very easy to bomb the former UK back to the Ice Age but he thought it were better to keep that possibility as a last resort.
Ling proposed that it would be good to confer about this in depth, but said that it was time to refresh one first and that dinner would be served in an hour. They were led to their quarters, each accompanied by a “sanitation attendant”.
About an hour later, all were pleasantly surprised by what real Chinese cuisine had to offer. It had nothing to do with what they had ever seen or tasted before. The evening ended with high expectations about the talks that would be held the next day.
Three months later, Bremerhaven, Germany.
Inside a machine room, a man opens an air valve and, after a short hesitation, a large 4.000 Hp, M.A.N. six cylinder marine diesel engine’s deep voice was heard again, after some forty years of silence and a complete overhaul. Half an hour later, its twin brother does the same.
U-2540, the 1943-built, type XXI German submarine, formerly known as the museum boat Wilhelm Bauer, has risen from the death.
It had begun when four officers of the former Bundesmarine, amongst which the Captain and the First Officer, had survived the “event” because they had spent a fortnight of vacation, mountaineering high up in the Alps.
When they came back, they had just stayed together. They had driven through most of Germany, had met with some survivors, here and there. Near Kiel they had formed a group, much in the same way The Family had done it.
They had radio contact but had not followed that up because they thought it not to be practical to try reaching faraway groups or individuals.
The First Officer had come up with the idea to go look at the surviving world, but the Captain had answered that their “own” boat was way too modern to do that with only four men because of the specialized personnel needed to run such a modern, hi-tech boat.
That had been “just an idea” but, after the second year that their group was installed, had grown to about two hundred men and women and routine was setting in, the Captain had continued thinking about a long recon voyage and the four officers had driven to Bremerhaven where the U-2540 was moored. After the war, the boat had been scuttled, then raised and restored to the last detail and had been at sea as a test platform for various new systems. After that it had been re-restored and then permanently moored as a museum boat.
They had found enthusiasts who were also interested in such an enterprise.
After a detailed inspection the boat had been towed to the Lloyd wharf and dry-dock.
After preliminary work had started, the workforce had grown to about fifty men of all trades, but most out of shipbuilding.
It took about a year of hard work till the Captain estimated the boat to be safe up to a depth of about one hundred meters.
In the Maritime Museum all relevant papers had been dug up, amongst which a “user’s manual” of the type XXI.
Fifteen men were needed to “sail” the boat, in the past that would have been three shifts totaling some forty-five or fifty men.
The fifteen best men were selected for a first test.
With two small tugs, U-2540 was towed through the North Lock into the Weser river. Staying on the surface, of course, the Captain ordered half power into the North Sea and observed how the boat behaved.
In the late afternoon, a diving test was made, over a spot in the Weser estuary, where here was no more than forty meters of water under the keel. All went well.
It took another month before they thought to be ready “to set sail”. Capt, Behrens had eighteen men, amongst which were two women-electricians. They could go to New York from Bremerhaven and back. That ought to work with the eighteen they were, they were not at war, they would stay on the surface all the time and only dive to stay under bad weather. First officer Lentzer had insisted that the boat be armed and after quite some searching in old storages they had found sixteen
wartime torpedoes that all looked in excellent condition in their crates but would need extensive testing and their warheads would need to be filled with suitable explosives.
There was also a hunt for 30mm ammunition for the four machine cannon that had replaced the wartime 20mm ones for which there was no ammo anyway.
Finally, the boat was loaded and fuelled up and carried extra stores like food and sundry items.
There was no escort when U-2540 went through the North Lock, into the Weser river and then into the North Sea.
Capt Behrens had decided to sail through the English Channel and look if any sign of life could be seen there. If the boat continued to behave well, they would try to reach New York. The boat went full speed, some twenty-five Km per hour.
On the conning tower of the streamlined boat, four men were on lookout, Oberleutnant Lentzer amongst them. There was nothing to see. They could still receive a GPS signal that permitted them to sail at night. Behrens thought that was important because it might permit them to see light, if any. And they would come very close to the narrowest point between the English coast and the European continent.
No light, no beacons, no lighthouses, nothing. But then, all on a sudden, they saw a large black shape not far in front of them. Lentzer called Behrens and they brought the boat to a stop.
Floodlight on and Behrens let his boat get slowly closer on the electric motors and then they saw that it was a large container ship that had anchored somewhere and whose anchor had slipped to the position they were in now.
Actually, something like that had to be expected in an area that had been one of the busiest shipping routes in the world.
Depth was eighty meters and Behrens had the boat lay on the bottom for the night. No much fear for collisions there.
At 0800 Hrs, Behrens gave the order to blow the ballast tanks and raise the boat up to periscope depth and look around first, just to make sure. Then, U-2540 surfaced again.
That container ship was not the only one, as they neared Antwerp and Dover, they found more ships, anchored or run ashore or on some of the sand banks. Obviously those, who had not been able to enter a port during the “event”.
Behrens went very slow and as high in the water as possible between that “battlefield” of some sixty or seventy ships.
When he was almost through that huge bone yard, he saw something very remarkable through his binoculars, at a distance he estimated to be some five hundred meters.
Behrens stopped his boat and had it dive to periscope depth.
Moored against a run aground tanker he saw a quite modern submarine boat where some human movement could be seen near and on the conning tower. Behrens hoped they had not seen or heard U-2540. He ordered absolute silence on his boat.
There was not much to be seen except for some men who were busy repairing a hydraulic cylinder in the deck of the boat. Then he saw a red rectangle painted on the conning tower. A red rectangle with five yellow stars. Chinese? What in the world was a Chinese sub doing in the English Channel?
- Lentzer!
- Yes, sir
- Look at that.
- Chinese?
- Looks like it
- What do those want here?
- No idea, I asked myself too.
- What do we do now?
- Reverse very slowly?
- We could also torpedo them to the bottom
- With torpedoes that are seventy years old, yea, right.
- They have been checked till the very last component, sir, explosives are recent.
- What do you call recent?
- Twenty years.
- Lentzer, are you on the side of the enemy?
- Sorry sir, but it is all we have.
- I was joking, Lentzer.
- Hahahahahaha, sir.
- I don’t think they will stay moored there till next year. We can just wait till they are gone and then be on our way.
- Yes, but I am very, very curious about what these Chinese are doing here.
- So am I!
- Ach, du Scheisse! Lentzer suddenly said.
- What is it?
- Look for yourself, Captain.
Out of nowhere appeared a corvette (a small warship) and set course straight to where the Chinese boat lay moored. The Chinese could not do anything because they still were working on that open hatch and no way they could dive in time.
Behrens had no idea how they had discovered the Chinese, maybe by coincidence, moored against a ship in that chaotic environment of that shipping “funnel”. Behrens thought they had not seen the periscope of U-2540.
Without anything that even vaguely looked like a warning, the English opened fire with their automatic 40mm Bofors gun, what almost immediately reduced the conning tower of the Chinese boat to scrap metal.
After that they fired a long burst by the waterline of the Chinese boat.
- Verfluchte Schweinehünde! Behrens called out.
He had U-2540 open its torpedo doors and Lenzer did not even have to calculate a firing solution since the English corvette did not move. He just had to aim the whole submarine at that short distance. He fired a spread of six torpedoes at a distance of six hundred meters, the minimum for the torpedoes to arm themselves.
This time, the English didn’t have any time to react either. Three hits, three times 350 Kg of Hexanite. The corvette went under in less than two minutes.
- Surface!
- Yes Captain.
- Let us go see if we can help those Chinese. These English are really scum. There is no war here for all I know and you don’t open fire without a warning.
And hoist a flag, dammit.
- We don’t have a flag, Captain.
- How so?
- All we have here is the old flag out of museum times.
- So?
- Kriegsmarine, second world war.
- That will do, second or third, doesn’t make a shred of difference and we just dismantled an enemy ship. So Kriegsmarine (war navy) is a perfect flag.
Luckily, the Chinese boat had not caught fire and five or six Chinese sailors had gotten out of the mangled conning tower. Behrens called them in English, but got an answer he could not understand. U-2540 moored alongside and an hour later two Germans were helping to cut away bent sheet steel with a cutting torch. The Chinese boat had no leaks but one of the ballast tanks was largely destroyed and repairing on the spot was not considered feasible
Two German corpsmen and others helped with the wounded and later with evacuating the sixteen dead.
In the meantime, Behrens was speaking with Capt. Wang in U-2540. Wang spoke enough English to make himself understood. Behrens was not a hero in English either, but with a bit of good will much can be achieved.
One of the first things Wang asked was if Behrens could reach The Family. Behrens had to answer that he did not have the faintest idea what Wang was talking about. That brought Wang to ask who Behrens and his men were and if Capt. Behrens was an officer of the Fourth Reich.
Behrens answered that they had not found another flag, to what Wang politely smiled and nodded.
Behrens said that they were just a group of German survivors who had decided to make a world trip in this very old boat they had, looking for other groups of survivors, nothing else. Wang nodded. Behrens asked what Wang had meant with “The Family”.
Wang said that he was very surprised that the Kriegsmarine would not have heard of The Family. Behrens swore on the head of his cat that he had no idea at all of what Wang was talking about.
Wang said that his superiors had ordered him to sail to England and to convince the English of the Chinese presence in Europe, on the demand of a strong multinational nuclear force that was very anti-Anglo-Saxon and already had reduced Gibraltar to a nuclear cemetery. The State of China has chosen to be on the side of The Family.
Wang thought that U-2540 belonged to the allies of The Family. The Family would be composed of Spanish, Russian, German, Swiss and Flemish personnel and that they had good relations with Japan (Wang had heard that bodyguards of The Family were young Japanese children, girls even) and that their political points of view were one hundred percent acceptable by the Chinese State.
The Family’s headquarters would be in Spain.
Wang and Behrens went to look at the damages. The Chinese boat had such damage that diving was not possible. Missile launchers were also disabled. The boat floated but that was about it.
- How many men have you got? Behrens asked
- Forty-five left now.
- Captain Wang, we do not have much choice, do we? Let us get started.
Where hey had first thought still to be able to save the Chinese boat, they had to play it otherwise now, and absolutely limit further losses.
And actually, Wang had fulfilled his orders: he had sailed to the former UK. He had been attacked by the UK and defeated the attacker. Next thing to do was to make the Chinese boat disappear.
There was enough room for the Chinese sailors on U-2540 who was only manned one-third. The Chinese brought some of their supplies.
Three small scuttling charges laid the Chinese Boat in the “shadow” of yet another container ship that had run aground. The English could only guess where the Chinese boat had gone.
Behrens kept his boat on periscope depth till they were out of that shallow English Channel, checked his position on his GPS, set course to Cádiz, dived to fifty meters and felt better as they got away from those damned islands.
The Family had not heard anything anymore from the English and asked themselves what to think of that.
However, they got news in a way they had not expected, and it was Rina again who ran screaming down the stairs. A bit later, Yanna, Eric and Alex ran up those same stairs.
They heard a call on their VHF, in German.
- The Family, this is U-2540
- Go ahead, U-2540
- The Family, we have Chinese shipwreck survivors for you. We are ten kilometers North of you, we ask permission to enter your port.
- You have it. Do you need help?
- A pilot were good
- We don’t have a real pilot but we can send someone out to you whom you can follow, this may take one hour.
- We will wait, The Family.
- The Family out.
Big commotion in the house and large question marks everywhere. Nadia and Raissa were in the air fifteen minute later, Ferrán and Luis stayed in reserve, Juan got underway with twenty men in a truck, Mikhail had a Tunguska come from under its camo. Hans drove to the port to get his boat out.
Exactly one hour later U-2540 surfaced, about one Kilometer from the port entrance. It followed Hans into the port where it moored along the east quay.
The sailors were assigned barracks in the Arsenal and Behrens, Lentzer and Wang together with an interpreter who spoke Japanese were taken to the Big House of The Family. Hans said that Ute would surely like to talk to the two women-electricians, so they were invited as well.
The encounter was very friendly and there was a funny moment when Capt. Wang remained convinced of the fact that Hideki was the General of The Family.
Hideki did not say anything about the “Elections” but said that all-important decisions were being made by the community, much as it had once been in China. He carefully avoided the word “communism”, though. Wang said that he understood what Hideki meant. Nadia and the others also arrived.
All gathered around the large table, presentations were made and then Yanna suggested that Wang and Behrens would tell their story first. Capt. Wang started by saying that he had received orders from his superiors to travel to the former UK and make certain that the English would be aware of the presence of the State of China’s Marine.
While he told his story, Jutta Werners and Hannelore Mayer, the two electricians of U-2540, sat with Ute and Ortrud at the kitchen table, with a large pitcher of fresh lemonade.
Ute wanted to know everything about Germany now, if there were many survivors, even how the weather was.
Jutta and Hannelore could not say much more than that the situation ought to be about the same all over the world, that small groups survived here and there and that people tried to survive with what they could, had and found. Jutta said that the whole of Recklinghausen, where she was from, was dead. She even thought to be the only survivor from that town and that she never had heard anything anymore from her boyfriend, Jürgen Mauser. And that she never found him, either.
Ute, suddenly, looked shocked.
- That is my eldest son’s name, she said, Jürgen Mauser. He was twenty-four then. And my youngest son, Erwin, was twenty-one then.
- Yes, that is the one, Jutta said, he had a brother whose name was Erwin. I never seen Jürgen again.
- He never told me he had a girlfriend.
- We kept that to ourselves for a while
Ute did not answer.
The Family heard how the “English” had become aware of a Chinese presence: a corvette had opened fire on a moored Chinese boat that was easily recognizable by its flag and a bit later that same corvette was lying on the bottom of the sea. The Chinese boat is also gone. The English can think of that whatever they want. The Chinese seamen, however, would not be back home the next day.
Behrens and Lentzer also knew now how the situation in the former USA was, so they did not need to travel there. Yanna proposed that all would spend some time in Cádiz and later decide what to do. The Chinese could be brought back home with an ekranoplan. Yanna thought it might be beneficial for them to spend some time in Europe.
During the next meeting all agreed that a usable and safe communications network would have to be established between friendly nations and groups. Satellites would fall out of the sky sooner or later and all will be back to radio and telex-over-radio, so search would begin for old equipment.
Furthermore, one would see how the “New World” would evolve.
Agriculture, reproduction, education were now the most important items for all.
It would become a long way to walk and Yanna hoped that all would make the right choices.
The road to Utopia was open.
The End.
Copyright Rudolf. A. De Meter 2010
Rougnac, France, the 14th of August, 2010.
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