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Somewhere in Gloucestershire
December 1946

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Bertie’s leg shook uncontrollably, the heel of his hobnail boot vibrating against the concrete. The dull rhythm cut through the chatter of the room but no one paid attention. No one cared.

Below the low-hanging lamps a pall of smoke had formed, the stench of nicotine filling the cold bunker. He had been allowed to keep his cigarettes but they were gone in record time, his fingers yellow, his trousers ashen. An old soup tin half-filled with butts sat on the table beside him.

Hunching forward in an effort to stop the trembling, he glanced up at his keepers. They were an odd bunch. Almost all were heavily bearded, wearing a variety of boiler suits, civvies and uniforms, matched the motley collection of firearms. Yet despite all the Bolshie trappings, several were clearly well-bred – or at least well educated, and the mood was genial. They had all been polite to him considering the circumstances, addressing him knowingly as Mr Johnson and requesting he come into their custody.

His bodyguards hadn’t been so lucky, their bodies at that very moment somewhere in the Forest of Dean, their features softening and fading under the falling snow.

Bertie caught the eyes of the younger men and immediately bowed his head again. The slow pad of leather moved towards him.

“Mr. Johnson?”, came the voice. He looked up. The deep, soft unaccented voice did not match the face. The dark mane of slowly receding hair, patchy beard and fierce monobrow contradicted the unwrinkled youthful skin and thick spectacles. He looked like a chemist’s assistant gone feral.

“Yes?”, croaked Bertie as he attempted to mask his fear, his shoulders pulling back and his chin rising in a comical fashion. A disparate chuckle amongst the men saw his pale face redden but he pretended not to notice the snorts and rolling eyes.

“A cigarette?”, said the young man with a broad, thin but sincere smile, revealing a packet from his tunic.

“Why yes. Y-yes thank you very m-much.”

He took one and fumbled for a match. The young man presented an already burning lighter. Bertie recognised it as his own. He began to open his mouth in protest but the polite yet firm look in the young man’s eyes informed him he was well aware who had owned it. He lit his cigarette and sat back in silence.

“Good”? The young man asked.

“Yes- thank you, r-rather nice.”

“Course you like them!”, barked one of the other men from a darkened corner, a Glaswegian, “They’re German!”

The whole room burst out laughing.

Bertie bit his lip and hunched back down, trying to stop the shaking. It had been a strange forty-eight hours. The address from the Palace balcony. The awful howl that had risen up from the crowd, like death itself. Louis had been swift, bundling him out into the countryside as the crack of gunfire started to echo through the city streets. Safe house to safe house. The faintest buzz excuse to dive into the treeline. Driving through the Forest had been the mistake, safety from the air yes but the ambush was all too easy. Now he was in the hand of revolutionaries but more importantly so were his daughters.

What had he done? They had given him a choice when David was killed, move aside for George and his son. But he had refused to shirk his duty. Like father had taught him.

Duty.

Had he really done his duty? Then why did Cambridge burn with incendiaries from American bombs? Why were tens of thousands of brave Tommies buried in the Russian earth? Why was news reaching abroad of nightmare camps on Orkney? He knew Louis and the rest had kept things from him but could he claim true ignorance?

“Attention!”.

“That means you too Johnson!”, barked the Glaswegian.

The entire room stood up as the door swung open. In strode a lanky, bald figure in a khaki uniform devoid of insignia. His squinting, sharp eyes scanned the room methodically before falling on Bertie. Beneath a neat moustache, crawled a truly mischievous smile. From behind him came another man into the room, smaller with a huge bulbous nose and wiry eyebrows that leapt at the sight of the prisoner.

“Jackpot!”, the unmistakable Yank Levy exclaimed in his battered drawl.

The first man remained silent for a moment, his eyes boring into Bertie. He knew who he was. The leader of the British Free Army. The man who had ordered his brother’s death. The man known to millions home and abroad simply as 'the Captain'.

“Sergeant Foot?”, he called, the young man from earlier taking Bertie gently by the arm as the barrel of a revolver pushed into his spine, “Prepare the prisoner for transport.”

He turned to leave before looking Bertie once more in the eye. “Your daughters are safe. For now.”

Tom Wintringham left the King-Emperor to be shackled and blindfolded, holding his fate, his family's -and possibly the nation's- in his hands.

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