The Shadow in the Glass by Justin Richards & Stephen Cole

Author:Justin Richards & Stephen Cole [Richards, Justin & Cole, Stephen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Science-Fiction - Doctor Who
ISBN: 9780563538387
Publisher: BBC Books
Published: 2001-03-31T22:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Winston Churchill signed into the War Rooms and set off for his private study, his mood as gloomy as the corridors he trudged along. He always felt the same dreary déjà vu coming here to this fortress for civil servants; his vitality dulled as if buried deep in the reinforced concrete that kept them safe from attack. All he knew was a weary, festering resentment of Hitler, the man who had made it necessary to live, and work and plan like this skulking in the ground while, up above, London burned. It was something of an irony that coming here, to the one place the bombs could never reach, should place him so bitterly in mind of the carnage wreaked above.

He remembered being here years back, in 1940, insisting his aides and staff accompany him up above to the rooftop, so that they could watch the bombs fall on the city’s back. To witness helplessly each explosion, each senseless ruination of the skyline, the snuffing out of so many lives, so that in the morning when the death statistics found their way to in-trays each man there could marry the numbers to a meaning.

His footsteps echoed disconsolately on the tiled floor. Could it really be four years since the Blitz this coming September? And in June, only a month ago, the new terror had begun, when the first V1s had been launched at London. Churchill had been forced to come here more often again since then. The destruction of life surrounded him still, but the British way of life would never be destroyed. Churchill had pledged that to the people of Great Britain. And the war would be won, and decisively so. One day.

He rounded a corner. In the dim light he perceived the usual dog-eared sign on the wall: a bare light bulb glowing fiercely with a red line through it, big black capitals demanding HAVE YOU SWITCHED OFF?

‘If only I could,’ grumbled Churchill, fishing in his pocket for the heavy iron key as he finally reached his office door.

But the door was unlocked.

Churchill was about to charge off and find a secretary to bully about security when the door opened abruptly.

Churchill should have been angry, outraged, or at the very least surprised. But when he saw who it was waiting for him inside, dressed in a dark, expensive-looking suit and sitting nonchalantly behind the oak desk as if he’d been casually ruling the roost in Churchill’s absence, he wasn’t surprised in the least. He wasn’t even surprised that the man looked just the same as when last they’d met, back when the King had abdicated, fully eight years ago.* His straggly-curled hair was perhaps a little longer but it was still blond, and his full, proud face was barely lined.

* See Doctor Who – Players

‘Doctor,’ said Churchill, a slow smile spreading across his face.

‘It’s been a while, Winston.’

‘I’m surprised our paths haven’t crossed sooner in this wretched war.’

‘So am I. The timing of my arrivals has hardly improved.

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