Alternate Generals II

Twelve Legions of Angels R. M. Meluch

"What the hell am I reading here?" The Reichsmarschall turned back to the cover page of the offensive manuscript.Twelve Legions of Angels the damned thing was titled. Small eyes glinted blue tracer rounds at the Oberstleutnant who had brought it. "What is this slop?"

The Oberstleutnant blanched. May have made a mistake coming here. Still, he had drawn the short straw. Nowhere to go but forward. "It is a work of-oh, what to call it? — speculative fiction,I suppose."

"It's sedition! Why did you bring this to me? Turn the swine over to the Gestapo!"

"The swine is one of ours."

The small eyes grew as wide as they could. "German?"

"No, Herr Reichsmarschall. Air man."

The flare of anger subsided to a troubled scowl. The Gestapo thugs were out of the question now. The Luftwaffe took care of its own problems. "English?"

The Oberstleutnant gave a brisk nod. "Former C in C of the RAF Fighter Command. Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding-retired. The RAF sacked him directly after Dunkirk."

The scowl deepened. Dunkirk. Not Hermann Goering's finest hour. He had let the British Expeditionary Force escape across the Channel-even with the lack of British air cover.

That lack got the RAF flyboys rightly spat upon in their own streets, while all of England exalted the miracle of the boats.

Always astonishing what the British will call a miracle. They had abandoned thousands of French allies on the beach, and though they had managed to ferry a quarter million British soldiers across the Channel, it was still a bloody retreat! Those quarter million soldiers had not been enough to turn away Goering's Eagle Attack! Nor that of the Sealion. Queer sort of miracle, that.

"Why was this Dowding relieved from command?" Goering demanded.

"The RAF forced him into retirement for refusing to send Spitfires to France."

"Do you mean he had Spitfires to send and he didn't? His best aircraft? Was he trying to help the Reich?"

"No, Herr Reichsmarschall. The opposite according to this." The Oberstleutnant gave the manuscript a gingerly tap. "It was part of his strategy."

"Oh,strategy was it."

"From what I could read. This seems to be a treatise on how Herr Dowding would have run the British air campaign."

"Another armchair expert." Goering sniffed.

"He flew in France," the Oberstleutnant advised quietly.

"Old enough to retire and he was still flying?"

"In the Great War, Herr Reichsmarschall."

"Ah." Had all of Hermann's attention now. A shared history there. The Blue Max gleamed under the Reichsmarschall's chins. He could sense an instant warmth toward this brother under the cowling. An addled, idiot brother on the wrong side, but a brother all the same, from a time when real men flew in open cockpits, the wind and prop wash bitter in their faces, grit clattering against goggles, when your kite could turn on a thought, and there were no parachutes.

The Fat One became magnanimous. Victors could afford to be. He looked forward to marshaling a combined force of Spitfires and Messerschmitts against the Bolshevik menace.

A clack of heels in the doorway demanded attention. An adjutant: "It's time, Herr Reichsmarschall." Further questions regarding angels, however many of them, must wait.

Out to the balcony festooned with red, white, and black buntings, to take up a place flanking the Fuhrer and the British king.

Crowds surged like the stormy ocean with thunderoussieg heils.

Down below, within the palace gates, a semicircle of VIPs stood up from their chairs.

Beyond that, the Mall stretched like a runway between fields of raised salutes. And here came the airplanes.

The procession extended twenty-five miles for the flyover at Buckingham Palace on this, the first anniversary of the end of theKanalkampf, the conflict which the losing side had called the Battle of Britain.

You saw them first, a blot upon the sky. Then their roar shook the ground, the kind that throttled your throat, shook the heart in your chest.

Pride of place went to Hitler's bombers. The HE 111s' cut-out wing roots gave them a distinctive silhouette, unlike the JU 88s, looking from the ground unnervingly like British Blenheims. Their radial engines' clatter gave them their German accent.

Only then came the ME 109s, radiators whistling. Hard- lined, vicious shapes, ingeschwader strength, they peppered the low cast sky for miles.

A lull, then, on the horizon with a signature purring you need only hear once to know immediately, advanced British Rolls Royce engines-aschwarm of Hurricanes in Nazi colors. Stable gun platforms, those. The Hurricanes had delivered a convincing punch to their erstwhile adversaries, and they could take a beating. Shooting them was like shooting a wicker basket. But the Hurri was not a nimble crate. With Spitfires cleared from the sky, the ME 109s had chewed them up.

Next came the Spitfires, emblazoned with swastikas. A single surviving vic of them liberated from the crushed RAF. The lead craft wore a Geshwadercommodore's stripes and a Micky Mouse emblem on his cowling. That one broke formation and rolled.

Unexpected. Hermann growled disapproval, but his eyes gleamed. Boys will be boys.

Elegant, agile crates. The Spitfire was the ME 109's graceful, Britannic twin.

"Pretty kites," someone said.

Apparently too pretty for Air Chief Marshal Dowding to use. The stingy man had only sent a handful of them to France to aid his allies. True, he had only a few Spitfires at any one time, but he hoarded all he had. For what? A rainy day? The storm had come!

And this the man who wrote a book on how the battle for Britain should have been run?

Nothing, thought Hermann Goering, nothing could have stopped his Luftwaffe.

Unnoticed in the crowds, near a bench in St. James's Park, a drab, forlorn gent watched Stukas advance in plague swarms. They were not diving today, so the crowds would not hear their screamer whistles. Not for terror this pass. Yet they terrified. The sky blackened with masses of crook-winged monsters.

Slow. They were slow. But once England spent her Spitfires and Hurricanes, there had been nothing to stop these slow monsters from lining up their attack runs from up high. And once they bunted over, nothing could hit a Stuka in a dive. The dive-bombers had picked off the ships of the proud British Navy at will, clearing the way for invasion.

All the fibres in his body quivered with pain as though he was burning alive at the utter horror of the sight. The Stukas blotted out the meagre sun.

Someone who had seen an American cinema said, "Run Toto, run!" The Stukas became flying monkeys in a little girl's nightmare. Yes, that was it. This was all unnatural. Not right.Not right.

Still trembling in the lull that followed the horrific Stukas, he had to acknowledge the logistical feat involved in this procession. There were airfields and assembly areas to organize, times aloft and varying speeds and ranges of aircraft to be calculated. Times required to reach altitude. All the difficulties of Big Wings.

Of course, these pilots knew exactly where they were going, and no one was even shooting at them.

Next, perhaps most hideous of all, came a lopsided vic-one Lancaster, one Hurricane, and one Spitfire-in red, white, and black.

The program called them the Fuhrer's Flight.

Vision blurred as he tried to watch them pass over the palace-blurred the swastikas from the heroic shapes, blurred the colours back to those they had worn in defense of Britain.

Bleary gaze dropped to the balcony.

He saw Union Jack buntings in place of Nazi flags. And instead of that evil man, a queen in a green dress. And in place of Reichsmarschall Goering, a very pretty princess.

And down below, within the palace gates in those chairs where Hitler's favored sat, a bunch of old men called the Few.

He did not know what the Few were. The word just popped into his grief-addled head along with the thought that it was fifty years later and he was dead.

He had become quietly unhinged.

He fled, pushing through the crowds with barely audible requests for pardon.

His picture and his name had long since disappeared from the press, so he was not a widely known figure anymore. He passed unrecognized and scarcely noticed. He was not the first grown man to leave the aerial display in tears.

Hermann Goering blew back into the palace with an energized swagger. Dashed the offending manuscript off the table with his baton.Twelve Legions of Angels strew the Persian carpet. "How did you come by this work?" he demanded of the Oberstleutnant.

"The publisher turned it over to us, Herr Reichsmarschall."

Stopped the big man mid-strut. "He ispublishing it!"

"Trying to. Yes, Herr Reichsmarschall."

"Would anyone take this Dowding seriously?"

"Difficult to say. Herr Dowding is not a particularly lovable figure. His most influential supporter-one Keith Park, very popular fellow-went down with his boys in the battle."

"So the man is not lovable," Goering dismissed that. "His words-are they dangerous or lunatic?"

"I… haven't the English to say."

"Then get English!" Goering bellowed. "Tell me what all this says!" Gestured about with his baton. "Briefly!"

The Oberstleutnant glanced sorrowfully at the scattered pages of angels. Noted with some small relief that Herr Dowding was a detailed, exacting man and had the pages numbered and clearly typed.

"Tell me if what he says in this book could make sense to anyone, or does Hugh Dowding come off the complete fool he seems to me. No use shooting an old man unless we have to. Someone could decide he was lovable!"

Hugh Dowding moved without direction, oblivious to his surroundings until his soles crunched on a pavement aglitter with glass shards.

He lifted his gaze to a storefront. Had been this way before, yet was slow to recognize the jeweler's shop where Sarah's young man had bought the ring with which he had asked for her hand. The shop was dark within, all chaos and ruin.

He stepped carefully through the gaping opening that should have been a window. "Mr. Rose? Mr. Rose?" Searched the shambles.

A curt bark from the street: "Here now! You there!You there! " The silhouette of a bobby at the window. "I see you! Out with you now!"

Hugh Dowding picked his way back through the glass and splinters to the window. Inquired, "Mr. Rose. Where is Mr. Rose?"

The bobby sized him up. Decided the older gent was not the looter he had first taken him for. "Here now." Reached over the sill for Dowding's elbow. "Mind the step."

"Did Mr. Rose get out before this happened? Is he well?"

"I wouldn't worry about that much, sir, if I were you. Move along now." He motioned with his nightstick. The armband, de rigueur these days for men in uniform, waved a spidery cross.

Hugh Dowding hurried home.

Lights in all the windows welcomed him. The door opened to an oasis in the horror of the day, the house warm and alive with gay feminine chatter. Sarah and her bridesmaids practiced hooking that eternal train of satin onto Sarah's bustle.

Sarah turned at her father's entrance. Beamed, showing off her assemblage. "What do you think?"

Tears again. Found his wife at his side. His arm fit naturally around her waist. "Clarice, can this vision possibly be mine?"

She gave his chest a tender slap. "No one else's."

Their daughter was radiant.

Clarice carried a lot of sewing stuff under one arm. A work in progress. "What's all this?" Rather late to be constructing another dress.

"We've had a bit of a disaster," said Clarice. "My dress got burned at the cleaner."

Hugh Dowding bristled. What had the clot been thinking to use that kind of heat on antique silk? "I shall have words with the bounder."

But no. There were no words to be had with the proprietor.

The dress had burned along with the rest of the cleaner's establishment.

Dowding drew the curtains closed. The world outside had gone to hell.

Dick Trafford, the British air attache upon whom the task had been foisted, turned another tedious page. Groaned. Ground his teeth at every self-righteous paragraph.

What made Stuffy Dowding think that anythinghe did could have made a difference? He would have forced us into a defensive battle. His strategy involved avoiding casualties rather than inflicting them on the enemy. His plan was to hold out until the Channel became too rough for the Germans to launch a crossing. Not the sort of military objective that wins wars.

He found fault with everything the RAF did. Especially with the RAF's finding fault with that Heath Robinson defensive organization Dowding left behind him.

Trafford did not appreciate the accusatory tones with which Stuffy dressed down those who sabotagedhis RDF system.

Sabotaged. He had the nerve to use that word!

The Radio Direction Finding system successfully detected enemy aircraft approaching England, but that information had not arrived where it needed to go. The links of Dowding's complex communication system broke down.Our fault.

He blames us for lack of intercepts. Likens us to inept runners in a relay race, bobbling the baton pass.

Does this man not realize how difficult it is to route information in times like that? There was no time! The information could change in a moment.

The system would have needed to work like a clock, and Dowding certainly had a clocklike mind. No fighting man here.

Had Dowding still been in charge, he would have eliminated standing patrols, and instead waited until his RDF detected enemy craft on their way. This (he says) would lessen the chance of the Luftwaffe catching us on the ground between patrols.

Kept harping on the harsh reality that a Spitfire needed twenty minutes to climb to effective altitude. True. But might the humble air attache point out to the esteemed ACM Dowding that the RDF apparatus pointoutward? Once the Luftwaffe crossed the coast, they were out of electronic sight. What point having the altitude advantage over the enemy if you did not know whether he had turned?

To this problem, Dowding answered with his Observer Corps. A true scientific marvel there. Involved men and women with binoculars going outside and looking up.

This Stone Age organization would have telephoned vectors to Ops who would track the plots on a map. Ground Controllers would radio the course changes to fighter aircraft already aloft.

Did the man not read his own words? Could he not see howstuffy he was? The whole concept ran so counter to the RAF fighting spirit that one could not read more than a page of it without needing to get up and walk off the insult.

Dowding wrote in highly critical terms of the aggressive leadership that followed his tepid reign. He found fault with RAF attacks on the Luftwaffe bases in Normandy.

Well, Stuffy, if we had not hit their airfields, there would have been still more of them camping on the French coast in still closer striking distance of our shores. We would have lostsooner.

Dowding's contention was that we should have preyed on the weakness of the ME 109, which the Spitfire shared; its lack of range. A fighter going either direction had only minutes over enemy territory in which to do battle before it must turn around, else risk ditching in the Channel. A fighter over its own homeland could battle until it dropped out of the sky into friendly soil, the pilot free to fight again.

Dowding wrote that we need never have crossed the Channel to have won the conflict, but that the Luftwaffe must. Said we should have letthem ditch in the Channel after tangling with our Spitfires. After the Spitfires had sent the MEs packing, the Germans' underpowered bombers would have been easy fodder for the Hurricanes and the Ack Ack guns. Said we threw away our advantage.

Dowding would not even have dispatched interceptors for those German fighters who came over two by two on free hunts. Just let the pairs of MEs come buzzing over for a jolly, stitch up the tarmac, and return to France. Those Dowding would have left to the sector guns. Said he would not have been provoked into an aerial battle. Did not want to expend the aircraft.

"Stuffy, you wouldn't have spent them at all!" Dick Trafford shouted at the manuscript. Provoked. "Aircraft are not a defensive weapon! The RDF facedout! You use it to guide bombers and fighters to their target and home again, you pompous twit! The Hun knows how to use aircraft!"

Had come out of his chair. Sat back down. Glanced self-consciously about. Hoped his shouts had not carried through the walls.

Returned to his labour, reading how we should have sat and let the Germans shoot us. Wait for the bombers before we did anything.

Dowding criticized the RAF's lack of adherence to a single coherent plan-his.

Hit nearly home with that one. Plans. The RAF had no want of plans. Everyone was an expert. Too many plans and no commitment toone. That killed us.

But to say thatthis one, Hugh Dowding's, was the one that would have saved England was as absurd as it was arrogant.

Stuffy had particularly strong words for the Big Wing approach, wherein vast numbers of enemy aircraft were met with vast numbers of interceptors. A natural plan of action. But Stuffy faulted the time it took to muster a Big Wing, then to find the enemy without the help of an Observer Corps.

A Big Wing put all one's resources in one place. When that place had been on the ground, refueling, a second huge wave of the Luftwaffe's limitless attackers had destroyed much of our Big Wing on the ground.

Did not hindsight make any man appear brilliant?

In what was surely the most bald stroke of impudence, he called Douglas Bader a truly heroic young man of unquestioned courage and ardent patriotism with a faulty grasp of tactics and none of strategy. A junior officer given too much credence.

Trafford snarled at the page: Douglas Bader died in defense of his country. How generous of you not to question his courage.

In parting, this mother hen complained bitterly of the RAF's sending up untrained pilots. Did he think he could have told the Hun to wait while we got enough air under our pilots' bums to qualify? The battle would have been lost by the time Dowding let them fight!

Turned the last page. The end, none too soon. The anger stayed. Felt like telling the Reichsmarschall to shoot him.

They should have put Stuffy out to pasture long ago. The unmitigated conceit of this old man that he could be one of those rare souls upon whom events of the world pivot.

Dowding returned to the jeweler's shop. Like the tongue that probes a chipped tooth again and again, making sure that nothing changed in the instant between visits, he could not stay away. He stood, helpless, before the gutted, blackened wound.

Sensed someone pass behind him on the pavement. Glanced after passerby.

A young man kitted up like a Pilot Officer at dispersal, complete with yellow Mae West over his wool jersey. No swastika on his arm. He wore his second-best blue trousers and fleece-lined boots.

Wondered if the young man knew he was dead.

Dowding had never before seen a ghost, but knew one when he saw him. A little startled that he was not more alarmed.

Followed the young man into a church. Took off his cap. Slid into the pew beside him. "Are you lost, son?"

The Pilot Officer nodded, gaze far away. "I was looking for heaven, actually. It should be here."

"Here?" Dowding asked.

The Pilot Officer nodded again. "Here. This. ThisEngland." Depth of feeling in the name. "But it's not here."

"No," Dowding said sadly. "It is not." Eyes to the cross, "How could He let this happen?"

"How could you?"

Dowding floundered. "How couldI?"

The Pilot Officer looked at him at last. "It is your fault."

Deeper and deeper under water Dowding floundered. "How is this my fault?"

"You weren't here for us."

"I–I was retired." How very puny and unacceptable that sounded to his own ears.

And deeper. "Are you sure you did not ask for it?"

Dowding coughed, surprised. "I never! Would never!"

"Did you not?" said the youth, then, in a voice not his, " 'Almighty Father, anything but this. I cannot bear it. Let this cup pass away from me. Did you not? As the bombs fell and we flew to our deaths, with only you piloting this ship through the worst storm of its existence. Did you not let go the tiller, leave your heavy burden to someone else, and go merrily to attend your pretty daughter's wedding and sleep in your warm wife's bed?"

"How dare-" Stopped himself. This boy had died for England. And he, he was preparing his pretty daughter's wedding.

"Are you sure you did not ask to get out of what needed to be done? Did not say 'It is too much for me? »

A searching moment. A croaking groan, "No. I didn't. I wouldn't. I would give anything for my country. Anything."

"Would you, Abraham?"

"My name is not-oh. Oh my." Gave him pause. Felt the quiver in his chin. The sacrifice of Abraham. "My family are dearer to me than life."

"Your life is not what hung in the balance."

"But… my son!"

"Your son. Your wife. Your daughter. Your happiness. Your sanity."

"Why them? Why my wife? Why my-" Could not talk. Was dangerously near to weeping again.

The Pilot Officer produced a sheaf of papers from his boot. Dowding recognized his manuscript. Part of it. "You say you should have devoted more effort to organizing communications and to developing the capabilities of the RDF. You should have. But it was not the task for a happy man to be wholly focused on the RDF, the links between the spotter corps and Ops and dispersal and the pilots in the air." He bounced the pages. "This calls for a strict taskmaster. Detailed. Blunt. Undistracted."

A man with a loving family was not so disagreeable and difficult as the time demanded.

"You weren't there, Hugh Dowding. And you were needed. And now youdare say you could have made a difference." He presentedTwelve Legions of Angels.

"I never had the chance! I feel there is no one else who could fight as I do!"

"To make the hardest decisions ever demanded of a man, when God Himself is silent? To stay the course without knowing for sure that all would be well in the end? With only the conviction of your own rightness and trust in what you cannot see?"

"I would have. By God, I would have. Inever asked to be relieved! I neverwould ask, had I the chance."

"Your children will never have been born."

Too many thoughts ramming together. Dizzy between hope and crashing despair. Drew breath with difficulty. "You're saying it can be done again!"

"It can be done the way you decided. Whatdid you decide?"

Would have jumped at the answer, but for the cost. "What of the souls of my children? If they are never born, do I condemn them to the outer darkness?"

"None of us has the power to damn any soul but our own."

Sat silent, gazing at the stained glass windows.

The Pilot Officer stood up. "Be here Saturday at eleven o'clock if you did not ask to be spared."

"Then what will happen?"

"Then you did not ask to be spared."

"My daughter's wedding is at eleven o'clock."

Met the Pilot Officer's silent stare. Not a surprised stare. Rather disparaging.

"I can't!" Dowding blurted.

"Then don't." The Pilot Officer stalked out of the church.

Dowding ran out to the street after him, but of course he was not there.

When Dick Trafford had his report ready for delivery, the Reichsmarschall was to be found at a hunt club.

The German airman who admitted the British air attache to the hall found his name amusing-Dick.Dick was German forfat. Dick Trafford, a slight man, was notdick.

"Our Hermann isdick!" The German laughed, ushered Dick to the Presence.

The girth and breadth of Hermann Goering were encased in a foxhunter's bright red habit, complete with black helmet and riding crop. A pack of cheerfully subservient English foxhounds fawned about his black boots.

Surely he did not mean to inflict that bulk upon some unhappy steed!

But no. The Reichsmarschall stood regally still, posing for an artist with two full tubes of red oils in his arsenal. In the adjoining chamber, exuberant young Luftwaffe pilots drank liberated brandy and talked with their hands under a cloud of aromatic cigar smoke.

Without breaking pose, Hermann's little eyes slid Dick's way. "So, Fat Trafford. Tell me about Herr Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding. Would anyone take his stupid book seriously? You are hesitating. That means yes."

"Not precisely," Trafford found his tongue. "No one with any knowledge of the facts would. But to a layman- Who knows? He bandies about technical terms and numbers with such authority, someone might take him at his word. What with his rank."

"He does not admit that you lost to German superiority?"

"No one ever questioned the superiority of German strength and numbers."

"So his plot to defeat my Luftwaffe was to… do what?"

"Rather a lot of nothing, from what I gather. He would avoid fighting. Reserves everything he can."

"Andthat was going to stop the Stukas!"

"The Spitfires and Hurricanes he reserved could have neutralized the Stukas. He says. Truthfully, Mr. Goering, Stukasare slow."

"Not in a dive." Goering's wide chest expanded in pride.

"Mr. Goering,you would be quick in a dive."

Silence gripped the club. The pilots' boasting from the next room, the clinking of glasses, even breathing stopped.

The thump of tails wagging became very loud.

Until Goering's lusty laughter sounded the all clear, scattered the dogs, and upset the painter.

Goering dropped his pose, shooed the painter away, and called for a drink.

Told Dick Trafford that the RAF must silence Hugh Dowding. "He is yours. You take care of him."

And he was off to join his lads with a snap of his riding crop. "Tally ho!"

Clarice turned over in the bed, shook her husband's shoulder. "Mister Dowding! You are thrashing and you've got all the covers!"

To his mumbled apologies she offered to heat some milk. He told her that would be very nice, and the two shuffled down the stairs to the kitchen.

In the mundanity of this place-of the motions of this beloved woman, no longer young, heating milk, of his own slippers on his blue-veined feet-the demons with which he wrestled lost their reality.

He had been agonizing: Did I do this? Did I sell England for my happiness?

And if I sell my happiness back for England, what of my Clarice? My Sarah? My John? Their children?

Did I really ask for the burden of command during England's darkest hour to lift from my shoulders? And itdid?

Here, now, the idea that he should yet hold the balance upon which the fate of the world hung seemed weird, impossible.

Well, there it is. I have gone completely starkers.

Caught between hideous alternatives, to live in guilt or to live in sorrow, he had discovered the obvious third-that there was no choice. He was a deluded old man who could only embarrass his daughter on her wedding day by chasing angels.

He was free to let it all go as God's will. He could live with his loving wife and dote on his coming grandchildren with a clear conscience.

There was nothing he could do.

A package arrived from Germany for the bride. The father of the bride saw fit to take a look before passing it on to his daughter.

A framed portrait of Adolph Hitler.

"It's odious!" Clarice cried. "Who could have done this!"

"The German Air Ministry." Dowding read the card congratulating Sarah on her wedding and wishing her many healthy Aryan children.

"What can we do!" Clarice shrieked in a whisper. "We can't give it to Sarah!"

"Certainly not," said Dowding.

"But someone is sure to call on her! What can she say when they ask what she did with it!"

"She shall tell them it hangs in her father's study. And so it shall." He whisked it away, out of sight of tender eyes.

Dowding was tapping a nail into the wall when the callers entered his study like storm troopers in RAF blue.

One wore an Air Marshal's insignia, apparently only here to lend authority, for one of the other men actually led this sortie. That one shook a fat pile of papers at Dowding, demanding, "Have you any other copies of this?" While the other men ransacked the room.

"This" was Twelve Legions of Angels.

Dowding advised his visitors that their lack of civility was uncalled for. They need not conduct affairs like hooligans.

The ringleader grew purple in the face. "Don't get the rest of us shot because you can't face reality! Exactly what did you expect to gain from this-this appalling treatise? The love of a nation?" High incredulity in that question. "It is over! It isdone. It cannot be undone! You have nothing to gain except a bullet for rehashing it! And may I say, sir, you should be ashamed of this! What makes you think you could have done better than better men than you!We gave all we had!»

Dowding, politely, "What I proposed was that a more careful, less glamorous man might have spent all we had more efficiently."

By then the henchmen had found the carbon. Crammed all the pages of both manuscripts into the hearth and set a match to them.

"Open the flue if you don't mind awfully," said Dowding.

The callers stayed to see the manuscripts well and truly burned.

The Air Marshal, stone white in mortal embarrassment, offered a private aside, weakly, "You are taking this rather well, Dowding."

"I shall rewrite it," Dowding said without excitement.

The Air Marshal found the courage to look the man in the eyes. "Don't. Dowding, you embarrass yourself. You have a charmed life. You got through this war unscathed. You have a lovely family. Don't ruin it for yourself. Get out of London. Go back to Moffat. Stay out of public life. For heaven's sake,write a different book."

"Write nothing!" the other shouted. "You lost France for us! The world does not need a tract from you on how wars are to be waged!" Looked to the guttering fire. "We can go now."

Dowding returned to hanging his picture. "When you see your masters, thank them for this gift."

They found their own way out.

The day arrived on which Dowding was to give his daughter away. He was rooting through the desk in his study after his best cuff links, when he glanced up to lock gazes with Adolph Hitler. The image caught the melting madness in the eyes.

That picture did not belong there. Not right. Not right. This should notbe.

The indecision returned. Adolph and the clock ticking closer to eleven. The hour of decision.

What if he had actually talked to an angel? Could he afford to toss away the chance-the most remote, feeble and pitiful of chances-that it was true?

Perhaps remote, feeble and pitiful chances were all one ever got when it came to changing history.

It was insane. He could not possibly fail his daughter on her day of days.

Days that would never exist for her at all were he to follow the angel. Were the dire promise to prove true.

Had he certainty, he might have steeled himself to the task. But the possibility, theprobability, remained that he was deluded. And grasping at a false chance held consequences as dire as those of which the angel spoke-no less dire for their lack of global importance.

His daughter's confusion, anger, tears, humiliation in front of everyone. The questionwhy? She would never forgive him. The pain in Clarice's eyes. She would carry the betrayal like a wound for the rest of her days. Walk in shame on his arm. Shrink from the whispers behind hands-Did you hear what hedid?Even his enemies could not speak of it without wincing.Poor Sarah. Poor Clarice.

Fumbling fingers rattled the cuff links in the drawer. He could not fasten them. Had to ask Clarice.

She fit them tidily into his cuffs. Straightened his collar, while their son John went outside to bring the car.

"You look grand Mr. Dowding. But pale. You feel cold. Are you well?"

He took her palm from his cheek, kissed it, pressed it back to his cheek. "I have all a man could ever ask heaven for. Ah, here's the car."

John bounded round the car to open the rear door for his parents. Snugged up the armband required of men in uniform in public.

Hugh Dowding's throat constricted. Sweat broke in pinpricks on his scalp. He drew his pocket watch to check yet again the advancing hour. Clarice's hand touched his. "Do stop."

Time dwindled as they rode toward the church.

Needles of fear stung under his tongue. Heartbeat shook his throat.

An overturned lorry brought them to a halt behind a line of cars. Progress continued by creeping starts and stops. Even Clarice became anxious.

"Not to worry," John said, turning hard down a side street. He negotiated a few more turns to come out on a parallel avenue.

One block north of the angel's church.

"What time is it?" Clarice asked. "Hugh? Hugh!"

Dowding was clawing at the back of his son's seat.Aryan grandchildren. "Let me out of the car. I cannot breathe."

Was already opening the door as John braked.

"Hugh! Where are you going! We arelate!"

Shutting the door after himself: "John, take your mother ahead. I- You won't even know I'm gone."

Tyres screeched. Stopped just short of the man who had stepped off the curb.

Heedless, he proceeded at an old man's fragile running gait, straight across the path of the Air Marshal's motor car.

Dick Trafford sat up. "Good lord, is that Dowding?"

"Can't be." The Air Marshal watched the huddled figure go, kitted up in his best, running to a church. "I thought his daughter was marrying today."

"She is. He's gone to the wrong ruddy church!"

He looked terribly fragile. Seemed to have shrunk from the days when they had been adversaries. The Air Marshal regretted the visitation. The words. The burning manuscript. "That was… harsh."

"Did he not deserve it!" Trafford cried. "Pompous coward! Old twit!" Angry at Dowding's presumption. Angry that he should land the task of shutting him up.

"Do you think he will stay quiet? What if he rewrites his book?"

"I don't care." Trafford snarled the gears. "It is not as if anyone of any importance will listen to him."

The Air Marshal nodded, sat back. "Still. I cannot help thinking we treated him shabbily."