The spring's sun was warm, wafting through the windows in a cool golden glow as the morning crawled deeper into a clear and clean afternoon. Clear blue skies lay open across the skies. An uncharacteristic openness he found for England. There was a refreshing ease in the weather as he looked up out the window from the bread knife he held gingerly in his hands. The curved metal blade curved up to the ceiling as if some flagpole with no banner to man the mast.

Outside the windows in the gardens below of Ditchley manor the current resident strolled the gardens. His mad bulldog face gabbing and barking in his mad-dog English with a male companion. Not too far away the bulldog's wife prowled between the rose bushes, shadowing the pair of gentlemen. It was only 12:45. Winston Churchill had just stepped out from his study after his scotch and whiskey to patrol the petunias, basking in springtime pleasantries.

Even to the adder hidden in their midst, the comfortable warmth and the youthful life of the pristine English countryside was enough to encourage one to forget one simple, horrifying fact. That outside these walls, across the country-side, across a spit of water called the English Channel, there was war. William was no stranger to war as he watched the man he was assigned to through the clear crystal glass as he watched through the windows of the dining hall.

No one was around. No one to watch. It had to be over a year now. He felt he perhaps forgot he was even German at all. He had lost himself so deep into the Scottish act, he feared that when he walked into Berlin he would have the same insincere drunken drawl. William scowled. He couldn't bring it to mind. Not here. Not when he ensured preparations were so close. He wasn't William Hans Gröber anymore. He was Dougal McAffroy.

Dougal McAffroy wasn't from Köln. Douglas McAffroy had never even seen Cornwall, let alone the European mainland. Dougal had joined the military hoping to see the fields of France, to kiss French lips, and drink French Bourbon. He wanted to taste German chocolate, feel Italian women. He wouldn't mind wading through storms of sand and silt in North Africa, where lived a class of people so backwards it was like he was in the ages of Saladin.

No. Dougal McAffroy was in England. Surrounded by Englishmen. But Dougal was also stoic, well-tempered, and could hide any sort of resentment, impatience, or feeling of injustice. Despite him having hated the English before William ever came to dislike them. At least not these fat pompous types, their noses shoved so far up their own asses. They were cold as iron to William. Almost more so than the German people. And people like Churchill were still rolled into that ancient tradition of Victorian culture, where the men were strong and powerful, projecting themselves ever more forward.

Oh how deep inside William wished to cut the dicks off the men who thrusted. But he mustn't be as crass as the American.

His hands trembled as he wrangled with the welling of William. The light of the spring-time afternoon shone off the shaking metal of the knife blade as he angled it down. Holding it in one hand by the handle, and the other by a black-gloved hand. He must be careful to not touch the steel, lest he come to contact with the Wolfsbane.

There were so many preparations he lost count. He did them robotically, planned out methodically every time he assisted in laying the table. He even began to forget how or why he managed to get to this strategic position. How the English bulldog could not sniff out the rat. They were not terriers, for sure.

And it was in the meditative poise and practice that he put the silverware down with gloved hands that he allowed this to be committed to memory as much as it was forgotten. Anything written could be found. The only thing that could not was the mind.

Wolfsbane, hemlock, cyanide, even dimethylmercury. He had laced everything with anything he could procure. He imagined if anyone asked it was better for them to never know. Silverware thinly coated with Aconite, hemlock sprinkled in the food, cyanide added to the pies, and dimethymercury to the whiskey.

He had come to start drinking his own bottles of cheap scotch. When prompted, he claimed he never acquired the taste for expensive alcohol. He'd shrug it off. He was a tailor's son after all. How peculiar.

He looked up from the table as he lay out the silverware, thinking to himself. Would he be eating today? “No, I'm sorry sir. But I just ate.” was the prepared reply. He recited it carefully under his breath, paying close attention to the vibrato restriction of his throat as he molded his accent around the words.

“No, I'm sorry sir. But I just ate.”

“No, I'm sorry sir. But I just ate.”

“No, I'm sorry sir. But I just ate.”

“No, I'm sorry sir. But I just a-” the grandfather clock on the far war chimed. Its loud clanging rings echoing through the austere confines of the Georgian-era dining hall. The loud brassy rings of its chimes echoing from brass curtain rod to tiled black and white marble floor. From the austere teak tables to the richly wood paneled walls. He looked up. 1:00.

That clock always ran fast, but soon the Minister would be arriving. He leaned up to look out the windows, and sure enough Churchill was strolling through the gardens, waving a thick cigar through his heavy fingers as he marched up to the house. Walking under spring blossom and budding trees. Winston Churchil was a monster of habit, and from the kitchen the succulent smells of this afternoon's luncheon wafted out.

He leaned down over the table, laying out the last batches of silverware. The poison invisible over the steel. Today would be duck roast. Everyone would be making good use. Everyone had to die. It was a sacrifice that had to be taken.

For the fatherland.

Better to not ask.

As the doors were thrown open and the men of the house walked through followed by their wives William stepped back from the table. Keeping a polite face as he greeted the cackling and smiling men into the dining hall. The thick smell of tobacco smoke filled the great chamber as Churchill puffed the sausage of a cigar clamped between his teeth. His great bulldog face peeling back into a smile as the venerable Ronald Tree finished some humorous anecdote. By this point, the instincts and training honed over the years took control, and William could feel the time blue.

Calculated, authoritarian, and Victorian. The men swept around the table as did the women. Finding their seats. Dougal watched with innocents as he hovered in the background, retreating away from the table as the servers came in. William watched from behind his glass eyes as his prey took their seats. Churchill and Tree reaching out for their light whiskey and scotch. They boomed with conversation. Ignorantly sipping the hidden toxins.

The seconds passed to minutes. Or the minutes moved through the minutes. Time was lost in the patience. But the food was brought out. The finely roasted smells of glazed poultry exploding like a bomb as they were wheeled out of the kitchen. The cook placing the tray of duck to the table, garnished with vegetables from carrots to artichokes. The steaming caramelized glaze smelled of maple syrup and bourbon.

([url=http://youtu.be/x_artPecEaM]Action Tiem[/url])

The men ate. Dougal disappearing into the backdrop as silverware chipped and glided across gilded white china. The flush and white meat of the roasted duck gingerly hanging from the prongs of laced forks. The smell and the taste was tempting. It made Dougal's stomach turn inside. It twisted hungrily, watching. Wanting to lash out like a hound. But behind it on the leash, was William. The leather straps of restraint wound tight around his clenched fists as he watched and waited.

Then there came the shift at the table. A slowing of the pace, and a change in the complexion. It started first with the women. Barely a few minutes in. Their delicate tasting and appraising of each piece of duck affording them the longest exposure to the traces coated along the blade. It came to them like illness. Slow and steady. Organically. Their faces lost color, and they complained of feeling faint. Then something else happened. Something deep and internal when they realized something was wrong. Something sincerely, deeply wrong.

And it wasn't the food.

When they found out, so did the men take notice. Tree and Churchill both looking up, then standing to help their wives. Panic stricken murmurings floated from their mouths. Wide-eyed expressions searching. They shouted for Dougal to get help. He panicked, hesitated. Shot for the door, crying for help. William watched from behind, seeing the circus on fold with a deep curiosity.

When Dougal returned, rushing, heart racing, and ahead of the other servants he came back to a scene from a Sherlock Holmes novel. On the floor lay the women. Leaning over his wife Forest, too weak to cry, and too close to death to stand. Staggering on his feet, holding the back of his chair as he tried to stay strong was Churchill. The old dog's face looked to have seen a ghost. His eyes half-rolled into his head. He muttered under his breath, seemingly to plead with Dougal.

But his face turned to horror. A deep batty expression, driven to animal horror when the wool had been pulled of. Realizing in the moment before he passed Dougal was not who he seemed. In the moment before his heart stopped William stepped forward, the subtle change in composure. The coldness of his expression for the deed. Two soldiers connected as one, and it was realized between the two.

It was over.

And now William sat, standing at the door of a great airplane. Looking down at the island of Cyprus below. Flak cannons bursting around him like the spring flowers that were no doubt still in bloom outside Ditchley manor. The warm wet air of the Mediterranean brushing passed the SS officers cheek as he watched the ground below from the cut out in his aircraft. There would be no poisons today. Today would be the jump.

The Junker shuddered under William's feet, jostling him by the open door at the side of the aircraft. His grip on the handle above him tightened reflexively as he looked down at the island passing below him. The afternoon was as clear over Crete as it was during that fateful day in Oxfordshire. Not a cloud dotted the blue heavens. Only the dark swarm of the Luftwaffe graced the azure scene. And the blooming black flowers of flak.

Behind him sat the hull's worth of forty-odd SS foot soldiers. They leaned against their rifles, rocking as the plane rolled and muttering low under their breaths. The chaotic bumping of the Junker was by no means a relaxing ride, and it had only gotten worse since they left Italy. Several already had already vomited on the floor, and the sickly yellow-green fluid washed back and forth across the thin metal. Its pungent strong smell mixed with the acrid sulfuric stench of aircraft fuel.

The general mission was clear. To land on Crete and support the Fallschirmjäger regulars in seizing the island. To drive out, route, or kill the Commonwealth men and their allies. To establish Crete as a staging ground for Greece. Off the coast the Royal Navy patrolled, taking potshots against the Luftwaffe swarm. They'd need to be dealt with later.

For William and his men though they had another objective than to simple seize Crete. The location of, and eventual capture or termination of the British operations commander on the island. Baron Bernard Freyberg.

The plane rocked again and William's helmet knocked against the frame of the doorway. He took a deep sigh. Alongside the door the signal light switched from red to yellow. It was nearly time.

“KOMARADEN!” William boomed, shouting over the roar of the engines, “Take positions! Check gear!” he ordered.

Their drop was soon.