by Jack Crowder

It was eight o'clock the next morning when she let herself into her flat. The morning's post had arrived. Her landlady always slipped it beneath the door. Katherine bent down, picked up the letters, and immediately tossed three envelopes into the trash bin in the kitchen. She did not need to read them because she had written them herself and mailed them from different locations around London. Under normal circumstances, Katherine would receive no personal letters, for she had no friends and no family in Britain. But it would be odd for a young, attractive, educated woman never to correspond with anyone --and her landlady was a bit of a snoop-- so Katherine engaged in an elaborate ruse to make sure she had a steady stream of personal mail.

She went into the bathroom and opened the taps above the tub. The pressure was low, the water trickled from the spigot in a thread, but at least it was hot today. Water was in short supply because of the dry summer and fall, and the government was threatening to ration that too. Filling the tub would take several minutes.

Katherine Pryde had been in no position to make demands at the time of her recruitment, but she made one anyway--enough money to live comfortably. She had been raised in large town houses and sprawling country estates--both her parents had come from the upper classes--and spending a war in some hovel of a boardinghouse sharing a bathroom with six other people was out of the question. Her cover was a war widow from a middle-class family of respectable means and her flat matched it to perfection, a modest yet comfortable set of rooms in a Victorian in Earl's Court.

The sitting room was cozy and modestly furnished, though a stranger might have been struck by the complete lack of anything personal. There were no photographs and no mementos. There was a separate bedroom with a comfortable double bed, a kitchen with all modern appliances, and her own bathroom with a large tub.

The flat had other qualities that normal Englishwomen living alone might not demand. It was on the top floor, where her Allies suitcase radio could receive transmissions from Manhattan with little interference, and the Victorian bay window in the sitting room provided a clear view of the street below.

She went into the kitchen and placed a kettle of water on the stove. The volunteer work was time-consuming and exhausting but it was essential for her cover. Everyone was doing something to help. It wouldn't look right for a healthy young woman with no family to be nothing for the war effort. Signing up to work at a munitions factory was risky--her cover might not withstand much of a background check--and joining the Wrens was out of the question. The Women's Voluntary Service was the perfect compromise. They were desperate for people. When Katherine went to sign up in September 1991 she was put to work that same night. She cared for the injured at St. Thomas Hospital and handed out books and biscuits in the underground during the night raids. By all appearances she was the model young Englishwoman doing her bit.

Sometimes she had to laugh.

The kettle screamed. She returned to the kitchen and made tea. Like all Londoners she had become addicted to tea and cigarettes. It seemed the whole country was living on tannin and tobacco, and Katherine was no exception. She had used up her ration of powdered milk and sugar so she drank the tea plain. At moments like these, she longed for the strong bitter coffee of home and a piece of sweet cherry pie.

She finished the first cup and poured a second. She wanted to take a bath, crawl into bed, and sleep round the clock, but she had work to do, and she needed to stay awake. She would have been home an hour earlier if she moved around London like a normal woman. She would have taken the underground straight across London to Earl's Court. But Katherine did not move around London like a normal woman. She had taken a train, then a bus, then a taxi, then another bus. She had stepped off the bus early and walked the final quarter mile to her flat, constantly checking to make sure she wasn't followed. When she finally arrived home she was soaked by the rain but confident she was alone. After more than five years, some agents might be tempted to become complacent. Katherine would never become complacent. It was one of the reasons she survived when others had been arrested and hanged.

She went into the bathroom and undressed in front of the mirror. She was tall and fit; years of heavy riding and hunting had made her much stronger than most women and many men. She was broad through the front of her shoulders, her arms were smooth and firm as a statue's. She undid the clasp that held her hair in a discreet nurse's bun, and it tumbled about her neck and shoulders, framing her face. Her eyes were dry brown -- the color of an enchanted desert, her father had always said -- and the cheekbones were wide and prominent, more Jewish than English. The nose was long and graceful, the mouth generous, with a pair of sensuous lips.

She thought, All in all, you're still a very attractive woman, Katherine Pryde.

She climbed into the tub, feeling suddenly very alone. Logan had warned her about the loneliness. Sometimes it was actually worse than the fear. She thought it would be better if she were completely alone--isolated on a desert island or mountaintop -- than to be surrounded by people she could not touch.

She had not allowed herself a lover since the Englishman. She missed men and she missed sex but she could live without both. Desire, like all her emotions, was something she could turn on and off like a light switch. Besides, having a man was difficult in her line of work. Men tended to become obsessive about her. The last thing she needed now was a lovesick man looking into her past.

Katherine finished her bath and got out. She combed her wet hair quickly and put on her robe. She went to the kitchen and opened the door to the pantry. The shelves were barren. The suitcase radio was on the top shelf. She brought it down and took it into the sitting room near the window, where the reception room was the best. She opened the lid and switched it on.

There was another reason why she had never been caught: Katherine stayed off the airwaves. Each week she switched on the radio for a period of ten minutes. If Manhattan had orders for her they would send them then.

Since the fall of the war there had been nothing, only the hiss of the atmosphere.

She had communicated with Manhattan just once, the night after she murdered the woman in Suffolk and assumed her new identity. Kayla Liba. She thought of the woman now, feeling no remorse. Katherine was a soldier, and during wartime soldiers were forced to kill. Besides, the murder was not gratuitous. It was absolutely necessary.

There were two ways for an agent to slip into Britain: clandestinely, by parachute or small boat, or openly, by passenger ship or airplane. Each method had drawbacks. Attempting to slip into the country undetected from the air or by small boat was risky. The agent might be spotted or injured in the jump; simply learning how to parachute would have added months to Katherine's already interminable training. The second method--coming by legal means--carried its own danger. The agent would have to go through passport control. A record would be made of the date and port of entry. When war broke out, X-Force (the central intelligence agency circling mutant immigrants into Europe) would surely rely on those records to help track down spies. If a foreigner entered the country and never left, X-Force would safely assume that person was an American agent. Logan devised a solution: enter Britain safe by boat, then erase the record of the entry by erasing the actual person. Simple, except for one thing--it required a body. Kayla Liba, in death, became Katherine Pryde. X-Force had never discovered Katherine because they had never looked. Her entry and departure were both accounted for. They had no hint Katherine ever existed.

Katherine poured another cup of tea, slipped on her earphones, and waited.

She nearly spilled it on herself when, five minutes later, the radio cracked into life.

The operator in Manhattan tapped into a burst of code.

American keyers had the reputation of being the most precise in the world. Also the fastest. Katherine struggled to keep up. When the Manhattan operator finished, she asked him to repeat the message.

He did, more slowly.

Katherine acknowledged and signed off.

It took several minutes to find her codebook and several more to decode the message. When she was finished, she stared at it in disbelief.

EXECUTE RENDEZVOUS.

Director Logan finally wanted her to meet with a new agent.

The Allies had won after six decades of fighting but tranquility never ensued. In fact, the only peace in the lands that occurred was two months of celebration that the iron-gloved hand of Apocalypse had been destroyed. Everyone just forgot that he had two hands. The arising Black Air and HellFire Branch of Axis control crushed X-Men forces within Europe. A period of violence in American erupted for the first time since the vote to attack Apocalypse. Broadly speaking it is a conflict between Loyalists, who are predominantly European and who want the world to unite once more under the rule of Apocalypse, and Republicans, who are predominately Englishmen under the restored United States of America. Each side has produced a veritable alphabet soup of paramilitary groups and terrorist organizations. The most famous, of course, is the Impermanent Horsemen Army, the IHA. It has carried out hundreds of assassinations and thousands of bombings in the New England States. In 1997, it nearly succeeded in blowing up President Henry McCoy and his government in the rebuilt White House in Washington D.C. In the same year, it fired a mortar into Times Square, the seat of American power. The Republicans have their gunmen and bombers too and they have carried out appalling acts of terrorism. In fact, of the three thousand and five hundred people killed since this began, most have been Loyalists.