says Reynard, “it won't work.” “Do it.” “But Monsieur Carter, surely …” Reynard looks over to the Irishman for support but he's out cold in the armchair now, empty wine bottles at his feet. In this last year, it has been harder on him with each passing month. Even drunk, the visions are too much to bear, and Reynard can hardly blame him for his wretched state. A million Polish workers taken away on trains at German gunpoint to join Czech civilians, to be worked to death. Copenhagen and Oslo taken by Hitler's forces. Bombs aimed for the bridges of Rotterdam falling on the city center. British troops evacuated from Norway. Germans marching into Brussels and Antwerp. The British falling back from Boulogne and Calais. Dunkirk. They have a week before the Nazis enter Paris now, a week to stop it all, to find some turning point that they can change to rewrite history; but Finnan is a wreck and both of them … they've been almost without sleep now for the last four months, both Reynard and Carter, working round the clock just to transcribe the Irishman's mad ravings, the could-bes and the might-have-beens, pinning timelines, glossaries and indexes to the walls, planned alterations scribbled in margins.
