The harbor of Santander was a cauldron of salt air, clanging cranes, and shouted orders that carried in half a dozen languages.
Men bustled over the broad docks, hoisting crates from steamships that belched coal smoke into the pale afternoon sky.
Uniforms of every cut and color moved among them; German feldgrau mingling with the deep forest green of Hungarian dragoons, the sand-hued tunics of Italian Celere tank crews brushing past the trim naval blue of Greek staff officers.
At the heart of this tumult stood two men who could have been mistaken for brothers at a careless glance.
Both were broad-shouldered, with stern hawkish profiles. However, one was adorned with understated silver piping; the mark of German staff. And the other a mere captain.
But the elder was unmistakably Rommel, the legendary Wüstenfuchs of another world perhaps, but in this timeline merely a brilliant, still-young general cut from cold steel and mountain frost.
