‘We have been expecting infiltration of our sea forts for some time,’ said Fleming, eventually closing the bag and placing it on the dashboard. ‘I have to admire the way you went about it. I suppose you intended to build up a relationship with Brownlow?’

‘I’m not a spy,’ said Polly grimly.

Fleming laughed quietly. ‘You’ll tell us everything eventually, so why not make it easy on yourself? Tell us all we want to know and I can promise you’ll go to Holloway rather than up against the stained and bullet-pocked brick wall in Bellhouse.’

‘I’m not a spy,’ Polly repeated desperately, realizing her story about a lover killed in North Africa would soon be proven untrue. Possessing no identification papers for Fleming and his kind—no history here whatsoever—she foresaw the questions would be never-ending because no answer she could give would ever be believed or confirmed. Her only option was to escape and hide, but how? She looked at the object clinging to her arm and realized that perhaps there was another option.

Immediately upon thinking this, she felt a tension of forces webbing through her body from the alien thing. For a second her environment seemed to grow dark and she had a deeper vision of a vast colourless continuum, over which all her present surroundings seemed a translucent moving watercolour. Then suddenly she panicked and clamped down on it all, somehow, and the world around her returned to normal.

What happened then? Muse 184 has the facility to monitor your biorhythms, and they just went crazy. It is now transmitting a ‘wounded soldier’ warning.

‘I have my way out of this situation, but I’m too scared to take it. The thing wants to take me through time, but I don’t know where to,’ she subvocalized.

Perhaps you’d better save that option for when they apply the electrodes.

‘Thank you for your comforting words.’ Polly winced.

Including the car she rode in, every machine she now saw would have been classified as a serious antique in her own era. The few tractors on the fields were small machines, grey or dull red, pulling ploughs little bigger than were once pulled by a team of horses, but of a suitable scale for the little fields they occupied. There were many laid-over hedges, and many other fields contained livestock. The roads they drove upon were unmarked by lines and never wider than double-track.

Occasionally they passed khaki-painted military vehicles and clusters of armed soldiers. Twice they were stopped, but Fleming’s papers quickly got them moving again. Old propeller-driven aeroplanes frequently thundered overhead. The people in the villages were dressed for historical drama. Polly was feeling increasingly lost.

‘Here we are, Ramsden Bellhouse,’ announced Fleming at last.

The village looked no different from any of the others they had driven through. They turned into a drive barred by a counter-weighted gate. A guard carrying a Sten gun walked over from the log he had been sitting on to enjoy a crafty cigarette. He peered into their car and after a moment nodded to Fleming, then went to raise the gate. Soon the vehicle pulled up beside a large old house that was ancient even in this antique age.

‘I’m told this place has an interesting history,’ said Fleming. ‘It’s about four centuries old and supposedly haunted by some headless woman, but then don’t all buildings that old have their resident ghosts? It’s ideal for us though: not too far from our bases or from the railway station, but just isolated enough so that the civvies don’t hear or see something they might not like.’

Polly was hustled out of the car and into the building. She just had time to observe a large old-fashioned kitchen, a table scattered with ashtrays, empty cigarette packets and the detritus of terminal tea consumption before she was herded up some narrow stairs, along a drafty high-ceilinged hall, and into a wood-panelled room. It contained only a single patinated desk and two chairs, and looked cold and inhospitable. But then she had expected no different.

‘Sit down,’ said Fleming, as he closed the door. Polly noticed the other two men had not joined them, and heard the ominous clonk of the door being locked from the other side. She gazed through leaded windows across the surrounding trees and a patchwork of fields. Glancing lower, she noticed a low roof about two metres below the window, and wondered if, given the opportunity, she could scramble that way to the ground without breaking her neck. Sitting, as instructed, she observed stains on the desk’s surface: some were obviously teacup rings, but she wondered about some of the others.

Fleming deposited a notebook and Polly’s hip bag on his own side of the desk, then walked past her to the window, taking out a packet of cigarettes. She saw that his brand was rather fancy — quite long and bearing three gold bands. He struck a match and lit up.

‘Do you mind if I smoke, too?’ she asked.

‘Go ahead,’ he said nonchalantly.

After a moment’s hesitation Polly reached over and pulled her hip bag closer. Opening it, she saw that her taser, her lighter, and some make-up items were missing. Taking out her pack of tobacco, she rolled herself a cigarette, all the time aware that she was being closely watched. As she brought it to her lips, Fleming’s hand shot round in front of her to light it with her own lighter. Once her cigarette was lit, he dropped the lighter on the table and walked round to his own seat.

‘Interesting little gadget that,’ said Fleming. ‘I haven’t seen anything quite like it, but then the Germans are quite clever at making interesting little devices.’ He reached across the desk and dragged the hip bag back in front of him. Taking out Polly’s purse, he nipped it open and examined the contents again. As he studied the chipcards, euro notes and coins his expression became increasingly puzzled.

Watching him, Polly realized what was probably bothering him—all the coins and notes had dates on them.

After a moment he said, ‘Do your masters in Berlin honestly think we would fall for such a silly ruse. Just because we haven’t made bonfires out of Mr Wells’s books does not mean we cannot distinguish between the fact and fiction of them.’

‘I don’t understand what you mean.’

‘I too have read The Time Machine.’

‘I still don’t understand…’

‘The Time Machine’ was a novel by a guy called H. G. Wells. It was about time travel. That’s what he’s referring to.

Fleming turned his attention to Polly’s watch. He stared at it for a long moment, then said, ‘Give me that.’

Polly slipped it from her wrist and slid it across.

‘I see I can’t fool you,’ she said sarcastically.

He studied the LCD display, pressed some of the buttons and called up the miniscreen then the texting service, which was obviously offline. After a moment he obtained the calculator function and, using the buttons to control the cursor, actually got it to carry out some basic functions. This certainly seemed to unnerve him, so he inspected the strap, then turned the watch over. He then took out a penknife.

‘I see that a lot of preparation has gone into this. What was the idea?’

He flipped off the back of the watch and when he saw the workings his face went white. ‘Very interesting,’ he said uncertainly.

‘You win the war in 1945,’ Polly said.

I’m not sure this is the brightest idea you’ve had.

Polly explained, ‘I come from about two hundred years in the future, as you can see by the dates on the coinage.’

Fleming just stared at her, before clicking the back of the watch into place. He then began examining closely all the other contents of her hip bag: the wrapping of her tobacco, her cigarette papers, the condoms and even a packet of sweets. He took out the spermicidal spray and tested it on the air. Next he took her taser out of his pocket.