Time and Time Again

29

STANTON LEFT THE cafe and walked out on to Unter Den Linden intent on one last reconnoitre of his chosen vantage point. It was a delightful morning and the sun was shining through the linden trees and the chestnuts, making a dappled pattern on the road. Cars, carriages and pedestrians hurried up and down and policemen waved their arms about.

When Stanton had arrived in Berlin, instead of checking into a hotel, he’d taken a short-let furnished apartment. He had no idea when a suitable opportunity to carry out his mission would arise and reckoned that he might be resident in the city for months waiting for the perfect hit to present itself. He certainly didn’t intend to rush it. After all, he would very likely get only one chance. If he failed, there was a fair possibility he would be captured. Even if he got away, the Kaiser’s security people would be so spooked that it might prove impossible ever to get another opportunity. He was painfully aware that unlike with the Sarajevo mission he had no benefit of hindsight this time, and that apart from having superior equipment, his chances were no better than any other assassin’s would have been.

As it turned out he hadn’t needed to wait very long at all because on only the third morning after he had arrived from Vienna a royal ceremony was announced to take place in Potsdamer Platz. A glance at the published arrangements was enough to convince Stanton that his chance had arrived.

He strolled along Unter den Linden and turned south into Friedrichstrasse then on to Leipziger Strasse and into Leipziger Platz, from where he intended to take up his firing position.

Leipziger Platz was adjacent to Potsdamer Platz, the heart of Imperial Berlin. This was the great transport hub of the city, across which were laid numerous tram lines. The arrival of automobiles in large numbers had placed extra pressure on the Platz and extensive reorganization had been required. A new layout for the maze of tram tracks had been put in place and the Kaiser himself had been persuaded to journey in from his Potsdam Palace to declare it open.

This was considered a great coup for the municipal authorities who, unlike the army, found it very difficult to persuade the Emperor to interest himself in their activities. They had therefore made a great fuss over the arrangements for the ceremony, all of which were fully described in the papers.

Stanton had spent the days since the announcement had been made laying his plans. It was clear that he needed elevation to get a clear shot. The target would no doubt be on a podium but he was likely to be surrounded by staff and he certainly couldn’t rely on the German security team being as unfathomably incompetent as the Austrian one had been in Sarajevo. Stanton only had to look at the difference in the state of the two nation’s armies and economies to be clear that dealing with the Germans was going to be a very different thing from dealing with the Austro-Hungarians. Royal protection techniques and theory might have been less advanced than they were in Stanton’s personal experience but it would nonetheless be a big mistake to underestimate the German police and Secret Service.

Fortunately for Stanton there existed an obvious platform from which to fire. Leipziger Platz was famous for its shops and restaurants, and most famous among these was the Wertheim department store. This was a truly massive structure at the end of Leipziger Strasse, facing on to Leipziger Platz: ninety metres of shop front towering over the plaza and offering an uninterrupted view of Potsdamer Platz beyond.

And the Wertheim had a roof garden.

A roof garden from which it was possible to gain access to the rest of the roof, and to which the only impediment to trespass was a sign on a small door informing the public that access was Verboten; a door through which Stanton had simply stepped on the three previous days and through which he stepped now.

These truly were more innocent times.

The roof area outside the fenced area of the cafe garden was much like the roofs of most large buildings, a maze of chimneys, pipes and ventilation shafts. Plenty of cover, making it possible to be completely concealed within a very few steps of leaving the cafe.

Having made his way to the position he had selected on the edge of the roof of the Wertheim store, Stanton looked out over Potsdamer Platz far below him. The great junction was crisscrossed with trams and cars and scuttling pedestrians. Tomorrow it would be filled with cheering crowds, marching bands and lines of policemen. And in the middle of it, his target. The vantage point simply could not have been more perfect. No sniper had ever been better served.

He crept back across the roof and made his way home.

That night, in his little apartment, Stanton got out his computer and attempted to write down his thoughts. The following day would be the last one when events in Europe would bear any resemblance to how they had unfolded in the previous twentieth century.

Preventing the Sarajevo assassination had merely put the catastrophe on hold. Europe remained a primed bomb with the Kaiser itching to light the fuse. It was still perfectly possible for the twentieth century to unfold in exactly the same disastrous manner that it had the last time. Tomorrow all that would change. He would eliminate the root cause of conflict and there would begin an entirely new history. One single bullet from another world would send the whole course of human events plunging into uncharted waters.

And with that his own mission, his purpose in this time and place, would be over. He would have done his duty.

And what then?

For the five weeks that he had been living in the past he had been able to avoid that question. The business of Chronos was too pressing, his work too important. But in just a few hours that would all be over. He wouldn’t be a special agent from the future any more. Just a lonely man prone to strange and fantastical dreams about peoples and events that had never occurred nor would ever occur.

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.