Time and Time Again (28 page)

It would be time to face life in a century yet to unfold. Just like everybody else.

What would he do?

He stared at the blank document on the screen of his laptop.

The first word he typed was ‘Cassie’.

He hadn’t planned it but of course it was inevitable. Or was it?

He added a question mark.

Cassie?

Did she have a part to play?

Perhaps he really couldn’t face a life without her.

He wrote:
Suicide?

Then, almost at once, he pressed delete and watched the cursor gobble up that second word. It just wasn’t an option. He was a soldier. He didn’t run. Nobody was going to kill Guts Stanton, least of all himself. And the reason for that wasn’t because of his old fear that there might be a heaven and hell.

It was because he
wanted
to live.

He could see that he had been given an opportunity more exciting and extraordinary than any man had ever been given in all the human story. A chance to live in a different and better age, before the world got small and boring, before man’s horizon had been reduced to the parameters of a smart phone screen. He had a chance to be a part of a whole different course for humanity, to help shape it. Chronos had made him rich, he was uniquely trained, uniquely well informed and entirely without dependants or responsibilities.

It was actually a dream come true.

He pressed the delete button again. The cursor reversed backwards across the single word on his screen, erasing it one space at a time.

First the question mark. Then the ‘e’. Then the ‘i’, the ‘s’ … another ‘s’, an ‘a’ and finally the capital ‘C’. The whole word gone.

Cassie gone.

She would always be a part of his soul but she was no longer a part of his life. He was in another dimension of space and time, one in which she had never existed nor would ever exist. It was time to begin to live again.

The screen was empty once again. A blank page.

As was his life.

On a sudden thought he typed: Shackleton.

He could actually
join
him. A lifelong hero. The great New Zealander’s Antarctic expedition wouldn’t leave for another two months. With the money Stanton had and the skills he could offer, he was certain he could get a place on board. To join Shackleton on his quest to cross the Antarctic! For a man like Stanton that was Nirvana. To do it hard. The way the
real
heroes used to do it. In leather and oilskin. With ropes and dogs and ship’s biscuit rations and only the stars and a compass for guidance. To do things the way men did them before the twentieth century ruined
everything
.

Shackleton.

He pressed underline.
Shackleton
. That was definitely an option. Any man in Stanton’s old regiment would have given ten lifetimes for such an opportunity.

Next he wrote:
Everest?

Could he climb it? He’d climbed some bloody tough peaks in his time. The Matterhorn, the Eiger. Why not Everest? He could be the first. The first to do it, forty years before it had been done in the last loop of time. And without oxygen. He could be the first human being on that summit, the first living thing to touch that pristine space. Before the rubbish, the discarded food packs and old equipment. The corpses and the frozen turds. To be there when it was
new
.

Next he wrote:
Fly the Atlantic?

Lindbergh did in ’27. Stanton would beat the anti-Semitic bastard. He had thirteen years. He’d start by learning to fly. In a
real
flying machine made of wire and canvas, not a pressurized metal tube full of duty free, in-flight catering and other people.

Perhaps he would somehow find a way to get back into the army. After all, he was a better trained soldier than any other man on the planet. Perhaps one day he would ride the Northwest Frontier! Or gallop across desert kingdoms with T. E. Lawrence.

Then Stanton surprised himself by typing another word.

Bernadette
.

She’d been on his mind since the previous week in Vienna. He’d pushed the thought away through guilt about Cassie. About infidelity to a spirit. A memory. It was ridiculous. What the hell did he have to feel guilty about? He underlined the word.

Bernadette
.

Then he closed his computer.

A handful of
Boy’s Own
adventures and a beautiful girl with laughing Irish eyes. That was enough dreaming for one night.

He’d think about it all again the following evening. After he had finished his mission.

When the future was finally his to plan.

THE FOLLOWING MORNING
Stanton rose early, turned on his little gas ring and made some coffee. He had no food in the flat apart from some chocolate but he wasn’t hungry. He never was on the day of a mission. Some of the guys had sworn by a big breakfast before heading in country but Stanton always felt that hunger kept him sharp.

He began a final check of his equipment. Taking out his rifle, breaking it down, inspecting it, cleaning it one last time even though it didn’t need it. Then packing it away again.

Next he put on his body armour underneath his jacket. He didn’t
think
he’d need it. But then he hadn’t thought he’d need his pistol in Sarajevo and if he hadn’t had it in his pocket, Princip would undoubtedly have shot the Archduke and Europe would be only a couple of weeks away from war.

He put the Glock pistol in his pocket.

Then he took from the bigger of his bags a sheaf of printed leaflets. Leaflets he had brought all the way from the twenty-first century. Inflammatory leaflets coloured mainly bright red. He put the leaflets in the smaller of his two bags beside his rifle.

He was ready.

He left his apartment and took the U-Bahn, descending into the clean and efficiently run transport arteries of the city, riding the spanking new, punctual-to-the-second train and emerging at Potsdamer Platz.

The scheduled time for the royal appearance was still an hour and a half away but already the presence of police and temporary barriers was attracting a crowd. A presentation platform had been erected above the great maze of new tram lines that had been laid, snaking silver tracks that weaved over and crisscrossed the venerable Potsdamer Platz looking like so much steel spaghetti. It was difficult to imagine how trams from all directions could navigate them without smashing together in the middle.

The platform was bedecked with flags and golden eagles, ancient symbols of military and Imperial power. They were in sharp contrast to the civic banner that hung among them proclaiming
Berlin! Weltstadt!
, announcing the municipal council’s proud boast that their ultra-modern capital was the first world city.

Imperial and municipal. The two Berlins truly were meeting at Potsdamer Platz.

And in the middle of it, set at waist height, there was a purple ribbon stretched between two golden staffs.

That was where the Emperor would be standing. Scissors in hand.

Stanton turned away. There was nothing else to see at the moment. The troops had not yet arrived. Nor had any of the dignitaries who were to sit in the little grandstand that had been erected so the great and the good might watch the Kaiser perform his snip. Stanton stared back behind him, east across Leipziger Platz to the magnificent western end of the Wertheim department store. It really was a fantastic building. The façade was stern, angular and massively solid in grey granite. Four huge arches reached halfway up the rock face and above that stone pillars soared skyward to a steep, slate-tiled pelmet running around its entirety as if the building were wearing a steel helmet.

In Berlin even the department stores looked like soldiers.

That shop looked solid enough to stand for ever, as if nothing could dent its solidity and certitude. But Stanton knew different. He closed his eyes for a moment and conjured up the pictures he had seen of that very building in utter ruins. The gutted, burnt-out, half-smashed victim of war and revolution. That could happen. It
had
happened. But now it wouldn’t. That shop would stand for centuries as its architect had intended, delighting generations of shoppers at the heart of a city too rich to fight.

Because of what he must do that day.

And it did seem as if fate was on his side this time. In fact, Stanton could scarcely believe his good fortune. Any gunman mounted on top of that steel grey precipice would have an angle of fire that would cover Potsdamer Platz in almost its entirety, certainly the part where the Kaiser would be cutting the ribbon. The three hundred metres or so between the store and the podium were open road and public plaza. There was literally nothing between where Stanton intended to place himself and his Imperial target.

He walked back towards the store, sweating beneath his protective vest. It was twelve noon and a shift of shop workers had just clocked off for lunch. The road was flooded with pretty girls all dressed in the Wertheim livery. Only a generation ago those girls would have been peasants as their mothers and grandmothers had been, but Berlin was growing at a frantic pace. It needed workers and it was prepared to pay. There were so many blonde heads, all bleached white gold by sun-drenched country childhoods. It was like walking through a field of daffodils.

He’d save them. He’d save those girls. They’d all have husbands and their children would have fathers because of him. Germany would survive. The better Germany, the Germany of fabulous department stores, expanding tram networks and bouquets of happy, pretty shop girls. The Kaiser would be gone but this time round he would not take Germany with him.

Wertheim’s was simply enormous. It boasted eighty-three lifts. Eighty-three! In
1914
. Stanton had had no idea. If the year before anyone had asked him how many lifts the biggest shop in Berlin had before the Great War, he’d have guessed at perhaps six at the most. And Wertheim’s wasn’t even the biggest. There was Jandorf’s and Tiet’s and, largest and newest of all, the Kaufhaus des Westens. History had always taught Stanton to think of prewar Berlin as a sort of urban military parade ground, but in fact it was basically all about the shopping, like a twenty-first-century airport. Crazy with success and awash with money. Such a lot to have thrown away to please an unbalanced ruler and a few vicious old generals.

Well, not this time around.

Stanton stepped beneath the great front arches and entered the famed atrium. Even though he’d reconnoitred it on each of the three previous afternoons it still took his breath away. It was like being inside a cathedral, a cathedral to commerce. A great glass-topped inner space reached up five storeys to the roof. In the centre was a huge statue of a noble-looking female peasant with a harvest basket in her arms, who no doubt represented some sort of pastoral ideal. The figure was framed by twin staircases, which curled around her and led up to five levels of smart internal arcades. Like the inside of a vast cream
Kuchen
, each layer stuffed with perfumes and chocolates, handbags and dresses, and all sorts of luxury items. Stuff which was about as far from the pastoral ideal as it would be possible to get.

Stanton headed for one of the eighty-three lifts. He passed the delicatessen and patisserie. More whipped cream, lots more. He wondered why they bothered with the cake bit at all.

He took the lift to the fifth floor and walked from there up to the roof garden. He wanted to be able to approach it discreetly at his own pace, not be ejected stage centre through the doors of a lift. He got out at household fittings and furniture: great heavy wooden cabinets and vast double-sprung cushioned settees. He wondered why they had decided to sell the largest, heaviest goods on the sixth floor.

Walking at a gentle pace, his gun bag firmly gripped in his right hand, Stanton took the short stairway up on to the roof garden. It was busy, just as it had been on his previous visits. Everywhere contented people were enjoying ices or ordering an early lunch. No
Kuchen
yet. They’d get into that in the early afternoon.

Stanton walked purposefully across the garden, a tall, impressive, commanding figure. A figure of authority. That was the way to avoid being challenged – look like you were in charge. Arriving at the door to the outer roof with its stern message of
Verboten
he paused and nodded with evident approval, as if finding everything in order. Then he took out a notebook and pen and strode through the door. He had done exactly that on his previous three visits. Had any of the busy and harassed waitresses thought to question him, which he thought extremely unlikely, he would have informed them that he was an inspector on a visit of inspection. One thing he knew about Berliners was that they respected authority, and if you displayed it, you had it.

As expected, he wasn’t challenged. These were different times to those in which he had been brought up. Random mass terror was still a rare thing then and the concept of homeland security didn’t really exist, as had been witnessed by the woeful security arrangements made for the Archduke in Sarajevo. In London the Prime Minister walked down Whitehall to Parliament from Downing Street every day, without a police escort. And that in a country which had the previous year been on the verge of civil war over Ireland.

This was an age where if a man had the small amount of balls required to walk through a
Verboten
sign, he could wander round pretty much on any roof he fancied. Even one that overlooked a place where the head of state was scheduled to present himself publicly.

Stanton looked at his watch. The Kaiser was scheduled to make his appearance in less than an hour.

The watch reminded him of Bernadette. ‘
It doesn’t tick!
’

He really loved her voice.

He looked about himself. He was alone on the roof and completely unobserved. He began to make his way towards the eastern end of the building, moving from chimney to chimney, avoiding treading on air vents.

He was about halfway between the roof garden and the roof ledge when he heard voices and before he had time to take cover two workmen appeared before him from behind an asphalt-covered ventilation shaft.