The meeting was held below street level, as most important ones were these days.
Rain tapped softly against the narrow windows. The only light in the room came from green-glass desk lamps and a projector that clicked noisily every few seconds as it advanced through aerial reconnaissance slides.
On the screen was a sequence of photographs taken from a high-altitude British scout plane: the Catalonian ridge, or what was left of it.
It looked like Hell had skimmed the earth with a hot blade.
Sir Alistair Fenwick; who was a senior analyst at the Royal Ordnance Technical Board stood beside the projector with a small remote clicker in hand. He did not smile. He never did.
"Slide seventeen," he said without looking at the men gathered around the long polished table.
The image that appeared next showed a close-up of a shattered defensive emplacement:
concrete fused and bubbled, sandbags scorched but oddly intact in shape; carbonized husks.
A French tank turret had been blown thirty meters from its hull, yet showed no signs of a traditional explosive force.
"That," Fenwick said coolly, "is not the work of high explosives. Nor is it chemical. And despite what the frogs may think, it wasn’t a bloody lightning strike either."
A few officers chuckled darkly. The Foreign Office delegate winced.
Colonel Thomas Blackwood leaned forward, fingers laced.
Fenwick nodded once. "Yes. Fuel-air weapons. Specifically, cluster-dispersal systems with aerosolized secondary detonation clouds. And likely an advanced pressure-fragmentation admixture for bunker-piercing follow-up."
He let the silence hang.
"We’ve confirmed traces of oxidized aluminum powder and vaporized organics at the blast epicenters; same as in Japan."
An MI6 liaison officer frowned. "That was written off as a seismic anomaly, wasn’t it?"
Fenwick turned to him, mildly incredulous. "By whom? The Japanese? Of course they did. They lost four of their largest cities in under three seconds. They called it an earthquake because they didn’t want to admit they’d lost the war from orbit."
"...But the Germans did admit to using missiles in Japan," the same man added.
Fenwick nodded again, slower this time. "They admitted to the delivery method. Not the warhead. They’ve never once disclosed what was inside those things."
Colonel Blackwood tapped a pencil on the table. "And now you’re saying they’ve found a way to miniaturize that technology? Deliver it from a bomber?"
Fenwick’s expression darkened.
"No. I’m saying they’ve perfected it. Whatever was tested in Japan was primitive compared to this. That was a hammer. Designed to inflict substantial damage across an entire city in order to compel capitulation... This was a scalpel."
He advanced the slide again; an overhead of the ridge at night.
"And here’s the real marvel," Fenwick continued. "There were no heat plumes detected by any French or British radar site. No contrails. No sonic booms. We don’t know whether this came from missiles or a high-altitude drop, but either way..."
He turned back to the room, voice now lower, almost reverent.
"Gentlemen... we are not just behind. We are decades behind. This is not technology that we have ever even thought could exist in concept until Germany launched their missiles on Japan. And until today it was entirely theoretical. This is is something out of a science fiction novel."
Sir Reginald Halwell of the Admiralty cleared his throat.
"And you’re certain it’s German?"
Fenwick didn’t answer immediately. Instead, he walked to the table and pulled out a sealed brown envelope marked EYES ONLY – VICTORIA-RED CHANNEL.
From it, he produced a blurry photo; grainy, taken at extreme range, but unmistakable.
It showed the silhouette of a large black aircraft with swept wings and four visible propellors, It was banking into cloud cover above Catalonia flanked by a wing of smaller fighters.
"Photographed by one of our fast-lensing recon birds on emergency deployment over Barcelona. Taken at approximately 3:15 AM; six minutes before the ridge vanished."
No one spoke for a long moment.
Finally, Colonel Blackwood broke the silence.
"That’s not a Do 17..."
"No," Fenwick said. "It’s not."
He slid the photo across the table. Two words were scribbled hastily in pencil at the bottom:
But the answer was becoming clear.
The mountain air still tasted of ash.
Erwin Rommel stood at the edge of a shattered overlook, binoculars pressed to his eyes.
Below, the ridgeline where French Republican forces had entrenched for weeks was now nothing more than a scorched valley of smoldering craters.
He lowered the lens. "It’s gone," he said flatly.
Beside him, Erich von Zehntner didn’t respond at first. He was too busy listening to the frantic radio chatter crackling in his headset.
Spanish, German, even broken Catalan as advance elements of the International Legion began probing the gaps in the line.
"They’re pulling back in a panic," Erich muttered. "No cohesion. No counter-artillery. Command chain’s been gutted."
Rommel’s jaw clenched. "Then we move now."
A runner approached, breathless. "Sir, Legion spearheads are requesting armor support. There’s no resistance along Route 9. They think the French 3rd Heavy Regiment was annihilated."
Erich exchanged a look with Rommel.
"They weren’t wrong."
Rommel turned back to his map. "We exploit the breach before they recover. Motorized infantry through the pass, armor follows. Tell the Catalans to press the left flank hard. We’ll drive them into the sea or into French territory by the end of the week."
"And the bomb?" Erich asked carefully.
Rommel didn’t answer at first. His eyes were still locked on the valley.
When he spoke, it was quiet.
"I’ve seen battlefields before. But that... that wasn’t war. That was God pressing his thumb down on a map."
He folded the map, then looked at his adjutant.
"Make sure the world sees what happens when Germany doesn’t send its armies; but its wrath."
Then the two men walked off into the morning smoke, toward the breach.
Germany had revealed just one of its cards hidden in its deck. And the one they had chosen had terrified the world.
Some nations like France who were years behind, could only argue and theorize about what the Germans had used, and how they pulled it off.
Others, like Britain had confirmed the suspicions they had for some time.
Germany was not just ahead of the curve.... They were grading it.