Time and Time Again

35

THE STREET OUTSIDE was almost empty. All that was left were a few SPD volunteers guarding the doors of the building.

Stanton set off to walk back to his rented apartment. After his conversation with Luxemburg and Liebknecht he was feeling more uneasy than ever. He wanted a cigarette. Whisky always did that to him. Scotch and a fag just went together so damn well. Perhaps he could have one now?

Did he really have to keep his promise to Cassie? After all, he’d never actually had the chance to make that promise. And even if he had, there really was no chance of her catching him out.

Cassie and cigarettes led his mind on to Bernadette: the name at the bottom of the list he’d made about his future. He decided that very soon he’d go to Ireland. She wouldn’t be hard to find. The whole country was owned by a handful of families. He’d track down the Burdettes of County Wicklow in an hour. Perhaps he’d become a gentleman farmer in the lush pastures of the Emerald Isle. He could certainly afford a decent spread.

For a moment he pictured himself with her, together in a big old country house, dogs, horses, cows, corn … children?

He felt a pang in his heart. What was he thinking? He could never replace Tessa and Bill. Besides which, he’d only known the woman a night.

Perhaps it was the whisky that made him careless. Or the fact that he’d recently faced down an angry mob and the adrenalin was still pumping in his veins. Or else that there were two women competing for space in his head. But for whatever reason, Stanton’s usually finely tuned survival instincts were a little dulled and he did not recognize he was in danger almost until the threat was upon him.

A couple of footsteps, a shout and he was pinned.

A smell of schnapps and beer and cigars in his nose.

Angry voices in his ear.

Sneering, youthful faces all around. Precious, neatly clipped little moustaches above snarling lips. Peaked caps on shaven heads.

There were four of them that he was aware of. Two had held him by the arms and slammed him against a wall, while the other couple had already started laying in with their fists.

Shit. He was being beaten up.

Stanton was alert enough now. Sufficiently on his mettle even to have managed to tense his abs before the first punch went in. He was gratified to hear one of his assailants cry in pain as the man’s fist made violent contact with a stomach sculpted in a twenty-first-century gym regime and rigorously maintained during his recent time in Scotland. Nobody, not even the very fit, worked out in 1914 in the way people were to work out a hundred years later – nobody had the time.

You couldn’t tense your face, though, and now a fist smashed into his, seriously rattling his jaw. They were pummelling thick and fast and if he didn’t gain release from the prone position they had him in he could easily and quickly be beaten to death.

They had his arms held tight, young strong hands gripping him fiercely. Release from that was not an option, so his best hope was his feet. Using the grip in which he was held as a convenient support, he kicked up his legs from his waist and then, pushing outwards from his shoulders, extended his body fully in mid-air, launching both feet firmly into the face of one of his attackers, breaking the man’s nose and knocking him backwards to the ground. Then he let his feet drop back to the pavement but only in order to bounce off the ground and pop up again, extending himself fully from the shoulders once more and kicking out. The trick didn’t work quite as well the second time because the other man dodged the kick, but Stanton was able to twist his body in mid-air and lock his legs around the man’s neck instead. At this point he could feel the grip that held his arms loosening. He was in danger of being dropped on his head. However, he was able in time to grab on to the arms that were holding him and with another almighty twist of his body bring the four of them down on to the pavement together.

Stanton was the first on his feet.

‘Come on, you bastards,’ he snarled in English. ‘Let’s see how well you do when you’re not attacking from behind.’

All four of the attackers got to their feet, although the one with the broken nose clearly had no intention of taking any further part in the battle. Stanton, on the other hand, was fired up. He hadn’t had a proper fight in a long time and he was confident he could dispense with the three remaining assailants now that they no longer had the advantage of surprise.

Two of them came at him at once with the third hanging back, watching for a chance. Stanton floored the first two with single blows. It was that simple. Chop. Crunch. The young attackers had come along expecting a street brawl, an easy gang-beating of a helplessly outnumbered victim, and instead had encountered a highly focused expert in unarmed combat.

The young men seemed to be getting the message. They staggered back to their feet but showed no inclination to come at Stanton again.

‘Run home, boys,’ he said in German, ‘because I warn you, if you try to jump me again, I’ll break your necks.’

He turned to walk away but found himself confronted by a fifth man, the Junker student whom he’d faced off earlier. Clearly the man had found his shaming at Stanton’s hands too much to bear and, having watched his tormentor disappear into the SPD headquarters, had assembled his gang and hung around waiting for a chance to get his own back.

Now the young student was at a loss. His expected punishment beating had turned into a rout. Revenge had not been served.

‘Go home, boy,’ Stanton repeated. ‘Geh’ nach Hause, Junge – you’ve got lectures in the morning.’

Maybe it was that that did it. The patronizing tone. The young man’s face contorted with hatred and furious spite.

He drew a pistol.

Stanton didn’t stand a chance. The student shot him in the stomach.

He collapsed to his knees, holding his abdomen.

He heard a voice from behind him, one of the other young thugs.

‘Helmut! You’ve shot a cop! Are you crazy?’

‘He’s not a cop! You saw him go in with the Polish whore. He’s one of them.’

‘That’s right – he spoke English,’ another voice said. ‘What cop talks in English?’

‘We should clear out anyway,’ the first voice from behind said. ‘You got him in the guts. He’s done for. It’s murder, Helmut. We have to run.’

Stanton’s vision was blurring now but he could see the man in front hesitate. He wondered whether Helmut was thinking about shooting him again. But instead he just ran past. Stanton heard the clatter of their boots as they ran away up the street.

He was alone now. Looking down at the rapidly growing mess of crimson on his stomach. An abdominal, that was very bad. Only the heart, the spine or the head could be worse, although none so painful.

He tried to collect his thoughts, which were swimming now.

He wondered if he could get back to his apartment.

Not a chance – he’d be dead from loss of blood before he got halfway.

Could he maybe make it back to Rosa Luxemburg? She certainly owed him.

Maybe. But even that was a few hundred metres and he was losing a lot of blood very quickly. Any movement was going to increase the speed of that loss by a considerable margin.

Best to sit. Apply pressure to the wound and hope for help.

He heard a whistle. The gunshot must have alerted the police. Or perhaps somebody had heard it and called them.

He remembered his own gun. A Glock made in 2023. What were the laws on side arms, he wondered? Did they have to be licensed in Berlin in 1914? Either way a gun in his pocket was going to lead to questions. Particularly one of unknown make and revolutionary design.

He had another two in the larger bag in his apartment.

If he ever saw it again. If he survived the night.

There was a drain in the gutter between his feet. He pulled the Glock from his pocket and dropped it into the gridded darkness.

Then he lost consciousness.

The police found him shortly thereafter and took him to the Berliner Buch teaching hospital, where he was operated on immediately. He’d been lucky. It turned out that the bullet had not gone through his stomach but was lodged in the abdominal cavity. The student’s pistol had been a pretty measly affair, probably normally only used on rats and rabbits. No vital organs had been perforated. Nonetheless it was a serious wound and removing the bullet required delicate surgery. This was successful but Stanton had already lost a huge amount of blood and was weak. His immune system couldn’t cope. Almost inevitably for a time before antibiotics, the wound became infected.

At some point or other during the confusion of his delirious dreams Stanton heard a doctor say, ‘He’s dying.’