The Empire of Time

16

‘Otto… we need to talk.’

Freisler stands before me, blocking my way. If I asked him to move, he would; he’s not an impolite man, but there’s something about his manner that gives me pause for thought.

‘Sure.’

‘Not here,’ he says, and places his hand on my upper arm. I look at it pointedly, and he removes it without comment. He knows I don’t really like him – that I instinctively don’t like him – but it doesn’t seem to worry him. Nothing does.

He turns and, tapping in the code, makes the door open on to his rooms. As it hisses apart, he looks round at me and gestures for me to enter.

I step inside. Books line the walls. In one corner is a chair. Otherwise there’s nothing. No bed, no table, and no sign in the room I glimpse through the archway that he has any of these things. It makes me wonder where he sleeps, or even if he sleeps. Fanciful, I know, but Freisler attracts speculation like that.

‘Well?’ I ask. ‘What did you want to say?’

Freisler is a strange fish. He’s a good twenty years older than me, and people say he was Hecht’s favourite, once upon a time. Until I came along. Not that he’s ever made any comment on it – not in my earshot, anyway – only I guess it might irk him, that he might see me somehow as his usurper.

He looks at me now with that cold, supercilious stare of his, eyes half-closed under those heavy lids, his long face almost nodding. They call him Hecht’s Jagdhund – his ‘bloodhound’ – and there is a certain dog-like quality to him, only he’s far too intelligent to deserve that sobriquet. Freisler is very much his own man, however loyal he is to Hecht.

‘I thought you should know what happened back there,’ he says, his voice clipped, businesslike.

‘I thought I did. Someone spotted me as I went in. They changed agents and—’

I stop, because Freisler is shaking his head. ‘I meant what really happened.’

‘Go on.’

‘It wasn’t you.’

‘No?’

‘No, it was those two… idiotisch.’

I blink, shocked. It’s not like Freisler to offer any form of criticism. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Hecht’s played it down. He had to. Barbarossa had been green-lit. Any criticism of Seydlitz…’

Would have meant the cancellation of his project…

I nod my understanding. ‘So?’

‘So it endangers us all. That level of incompetence, I mean. It undermines what we’ve been doing.’

‘But surely…?’

‘When they killed those Russians, they tripped all kind of alarm wires. The Russians sent in quite a few of their agents to have a really close look to see what was going on. It got quite hairy back there for a time. And you know what they were looking at?’

‘What?’

‘Seydlitz. They paid him a lot of attention. You know how they do. One of their men will be sitting at a nearby table in a bar, listening in, while another one will be standing outside in the street as he comes out. It’s how they work. They get to know our men really well.’ Freisler smiles; a cold, wintry smile. ‘Luckily we have me. And the Russians don’t have a clue who I am.’

But you know who they are…

‘So why are you telling me? Why not Hecht?’

‘Hecht’s busy. Very busy. Besides, I wanted to alert you.’

‘Alert me?’

‘About Seydlitz. I’ve an instinct for these things.’

It’s almost ironic. ‘You think him unsound?’

‘No. Seydlitz is immensely sound. He would do anything for the Volk. He’s clever and resourceful and his project – Barbarossa – is a good one. It had a good chance of succeeding. Only the Russians know now who he is, and he can be headstrong. The killings… I can’t help thinking that we’ll pay for them. How, I don’t know, only—’

‘Did they bring them back?’

‘The two that were killed? Of course they did. They may have three times as many agents out there, but they don’t waste men for nothing. Besides, it was easy for them. Just a minor change in Time. Why, that very evening I was drinking with them like they were old friends.’

I stare at Freisler a moment, trying to understand him; wondering if I’ve got him wrong. Then, with a small dismissive shrug, he goes over and takes a book down from the shelf. As he turns back, he glances at me. ‘That’s it,’ he says. ‘All I’ve got to say.’

‘Ah. Only I thought…’

But it doesn’t matter what I was thinking. Freisler has said his piece and – in a manner reminiscent of Hecht – he has dismissed me. But maybe that too is part of his game: to remind me that he’s closer to the centre of things than I am, however it might seem.

‘Oh,’ he says, as if he’s suddenly remembered. ‘Your friend Ernst was asking after you. Wanted to know if you had an answer.’

Do I imagine the cold smile that flickers across his lips, or is he really such a bastard as to know already and enjoy making a taunt of it?

‘Thanks,’ I say, emphasising the word. ‘And thanks for the warning. I’ll sleep on it.’

17

Ernst is in my room when I get back, but one glance at me tells him more than he wants to know.

‘Hecht said no, didn’t he?’

‘Yes. He feels you aren’t ready yet.’

Ernst slumps down into the chair. ‘Shit!’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I know. Only it’s so unfair.’

I don’t want to argue, so I change the subject. ‘You’ll never guess who I’ve just been speaking to.’

‘Who?’

‘Freisler.’

‘Freisler? That bastard!’

‘Oh come. He’s not the friendliest of men, but—’

‘But what? Those eyes of his, the heavy lids, it’s like he’s shielding his soul. Preventing you from looking in and seeing what a vacuous bastard he truly is. They say he does all of Hecht’s dirty work.’

‘Someone has to.’

‘Sure. But he doesn’t have to like it so much, and it doesn’t mean I have to like him.’ Ernst stands, agitated now. ‘So what did the Jagdhund say?’

I smile at my old friend’s relentlessness. ‘He says he has a feeling – an instinct – about Seydlitz. He thinks we should watch him carefully. Oh, and he thinks that maybe the Russians have singled him out. They were very interested, it seems.’

Ernst nods thoughtfully. He knows what it’s like to have the Russians single you out.

‘You should keep an eye.’

‘I shall.’

‘But right now…’ Ernst grins. ‘Right now I could do with a drink.’

18

Ernst stares at me, his eyes gleaming. ‘So… when will the first report come back?’

‘Within the hour. That is, if Hecht isn’t studying it right now.’

‘Ah.’ Ernst looks thoughtful. He strokes his close-shaven chin, then shakes his dark unruly mop of hair. I know him so well that I can tell there’s something he wants to say – something he maybe wants to ask – but he doesn’t quite know how.

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing, it’s… nothing.’

‘No?’ But I leave it. Ernst is like that. He takes his time coming to the point. There’s nothing rash about him, nothing ill-considered.

We’re in the North Bar. Not that it’s north. Direction is arbitrary here in the Nichtraum. Yet we need a sense of it, and so where we sit, on a balcony overlooking the pool, is deemed the polar north.

‘I hear Klaus is back,’ I say, filling the sudden silence. ‘How’s he getting on? And how’s our old friend Nevsky?’

Klaus Kubhart is Ernst’s replacement back in thirteenth-century Russia, his protégé. Ernst trained him up, taught him everything he knew about the era, then sent him back.

‘Klaus is fine,’ Ernst answers, wiping froth from his upper lip. ‘He’s doing well. As for Nevsky… he’s just as foul-mouthed and gargantuanly conceited as when you last met him.’

I take a long sip of my beer. So it is with heroes. Theirs and ours. Some are genuine, others painted so to suit the purposes of history. But Nevsky is one of the worst I’ve come across. To the Russians he’s a demi-god, the saviour of their nation from the Swedes and the Teuton Knights, but then they’ve never met the man in person, were never forced to spend an evening in his odious company.

Of such men and women is the Chain of Time compounded. If there’s a human type, then that type has been a king, their faults, like their virtues, exaggerated by the power they wield. I have seen them all: priests and sadists, pedants and visionaries, the lazy and the psychotic, adventurers, hedonists and nihilists, the corrupt and the cynical, the feeble-minded and the iron-willed, gluttons and simpletons, schemers and cowards and oh so many more.

To find the weakest among them is our task, for through such men might history be changed.

Yet history is not just the tales of individual men; there are tides and currents, and while the strong man might swim and the weak man flounder, it is usually to men of little consequence – your average swimmer – that Chance hands the poisoned chalice of kingship.

Of this and other things Ernst and I converse, as we so often do. It’s nothing new, yet it’s good simply to be there with him. Silence would suit as well, for we have been through much together, Ernst and I. We owe each other lives.

‘So when is Klaus going back?’

Ernst looks away, embarrassed by the question. Yet he must have known it would come. ‘Later,’ he says quietly. ‘He came back to pick something up.’

‘Ah.’ But I don’t press him. He knows why I asked. Knows why I want to go there with him, only…

Only there are some things we simply cannot talk about.

‘How’s Frederick?’ he asks, and I laugh. It’s been some while since I’ve been back in ‘my era’.

‘Did I tell you? I had to stop some bastard taking a pot-shot at him.’

Ernst grins. ‘A Russian?’

‘No. An Austrian, damn it!’

We both laugh. Time is the strangest thing: just when you think it’s set, so it flows and alters. Small, subtle alterations.

Ernst finishes his drink, then stands. ‘I’d better go. I have to see Klaus before he returns.’

I look up, overeager. ‘You want me to tag along?’

He shakes his head. ‘No, Otto.’ Then, smiling: ‘I’d best go now.’

‘Then take care. And when you need me…’

‘I know.’ And he turns and leaves, quickly, before he can change his mind.

19

I’m in my room, alone, lying on my pallet bed, reading Lermentov’s A Hero of Our Time when a messenger comes from Hecht.

It’s Leni, one of the younger couriers.

She hands me an envelope, then leaves.

I peel it open.

Inside is a wafer-thin file and a handwritten note.

Normally Hecht would have sent a typescript – it’s not his practice to let us see our fellow agents reporting to camera – but this time he clearly wants me to. Which implies that he wants me to observe Seydlitz himself, not just what he says.

I walk over to my desk and switch on the lamp, then pour myself a drink and settle to the report, slipping the tiny slither of plastic into the viewing slot.

At once Seydlitz appears on screen. His is sitting in a chalet-style room, sparsely furnished, with a view of forest through the open window behind him. He’s wearing evening dress, a high white collar and a black bow-tie, loosened now, so that he looks very much of that time. Indeed, with his ash-blond hair and grey eyes, his square jaw and perfect bone structure, he looks the perfect Aryan – a regular young god – but has he fooled them? Have they accepted him at face value?

One last detail. On the table, to the left of the picture, is a packet of cigarettes, a blue packet with the name prominently displayed. Beside them is a small cream-covered flip-book of matches – the kind restaurants give to their customers. I smile. Whether it’s stress, or just part of the disguise, Seydlitz has become a smoker.

But before he’s had a chance to say a word – even as he takes a breath, ready to launch in – I freeze the image.

You see, for a moment I think I must have glimpsed something – a shadow, maybe, or the hint of someone else in the room with him – yet tracking back I find nothing. Seydlitz is alone.

I let it run.

Seydlitz speaks in a hushed yet awed voice:

‘Time hangs in the balance. I know that. Earlier, as I walked down the corridor, guards in dress black saluted me. Perhaps they sensed the urgency of my mission. If I failed to convince the Führer… But I could not think of failure. I had to succeed.’

He glances aside, as if getting things clear in his head, then resumes:

‘When I entered the room, Hitler was standing with his back to me, still mulling things over. He’d read all the reports and knew now that what I told him at our last meeting had come about. Despite which, well, finally he turned. His vividly blue eyes searched my face for some final sign that this was all a trick, some elaborate form of treachery.’

Seydlitz shakes his head.

‘It’s so intense, that gaze of his, so… penetrating. Yet I don’t think he saw anything. “It is true, then, Herr Seydlitz,” he said. “Does it all come to nothing?”

‘“Yes,” I said.

‘He stared at me a moment longer, then, abruptly, he looked away, smashing his right fist into his left palm.

‘“There must be something!” he said. “Some way of changing it.” He turned back to me, his eyes wide, filled with a strange, unfathomable pain. “There has to be!”’

Seydlitz moves back slightly, the momentary intensity draining from him. There is the faintest smile, quickly gone. He is enjoying this.

‘We were not alone, you understand. I mean, I’d scarcely been aware of the others, but they were there, standing against the walls to either side, like shadows, listening and looking on, saying nothing. Himmler and Rosenberg. Ribbentrop and Ley, Goebbels, Bormann, Speer, Goering and Funk. Hess, of course, had fled a month back, just as I’d said he would.’

He reaches up and removes his tie, then undoes the top two buttons of his shirt. He’s sweating now.

‘Hitler was still watching me, the same intensity in his eyes, his head slightly lowered. I could see that this frightened him, perhaps more than death itself. Yes, and he’d changed since our last encounter. He looked at me now as if he saw the figure of Fate itself come down the years to reveal to him the futility of his endeavours.’

And with good reason, I think, noting the date of the report. It was the evening of 21 June 1941. In the morning German troops would cross the border and invade Russia. Operation Barbarossa would begin.

Seydlitz clears his throat.

‘I told him: “Already things are changing. Today, for instance, you, my Führer, wrote a letter to Mussolini. In it you said to him: ‘Whatever may come now, Duce, our situation cannot become worse as a result of this step. It can only improve.’”

‘I saw the effect that had on him. He blanched and his mouth fell open. Every tiny little thing was adding to my authority; each tiny revelation undermining his certainty. In time he would be mine entirely – dependent on me.’

I smile. Seydlitz is a big man, broad-shouldered and heavily muscled, yet sharp, like a figure from the Nibelungen. I could imagine the scene, Seydlitz’s strong, resonant, orator’s voice filling the low, raftered room of the Wolfensschanze, while outside the summer day was dying and the gloom of the East Prussian forest pressed closer, making the room seem cold despite the fire.

In my mind’s eye I could picture Hitler there, in the dead of winter, alone in that room, studying the maps. They would tell a different story then.

Seydlitz smiles.

‘I was hard, unrelenting. “But it will not improve,” I said. “Though you come to the gates of Moscow itself, you shall not enter them, for when the snows come, they will find you naked.”

‘As I said, it was harsh. But Hitler responded in kind. He faced me squarely, his chin raised, defiant yet in the face of Fate. “What do you want?”

‘“For myself,” I said, “nothing, but for my people… I want everything. For them I want the future.”

‘Hitler laughed sharply. “The future?” Even so, I saw it had touched a chord. “And who are your people?” he asked.’

Again Seydlitz pauses. That last word – Volk in the tongue he would have been speaking in the ancient German of that time – was heavily, almost ironically emphasised. This was clearly important to Hitler. He was alluding, of course, to his concept of the Herrenvolk, the chosen race not of God but of the evolutionary universe itself.

Seydlitz reaches out and takes a cigarette from the pack and, striking a match, lights up. He takes a long draw on it, exhaling the smoke in a long, satisfied breath before continuing.

‘“The Germans,” I said. “The Volk.”

‘It was clearly what he wanted to hear. He stared once more, searching my eyes, and then he nodded. His hand made a small gesture of acceptance. I had him.’

Seydlitz’s hand makes the gesture. He looks away, grinning now, clearly pleased with himself, then faces the camera again. Smoke from the cigarette trails up between his fingers.

‘“On the evening of October sixth,” I said, “the first snows will fall. General Guderian will see it and notify you. But long before then conditions will have made your advance difficult, and by the second of December, the advance will falter outside Moscow. Some of the Fifty-Eighth Division will reach the outskirts, but they will fall back.”

‘I looked from Hitler to Goering. This much was reiteration, but I could see how much it impressed them.

‘“Then,” I said, “on the sixth of December the Russians will counter-attack. On the seventh the Japanese will attack the US naval base at Pearl Harbor. These two events will determine the whole course of the war.”’

Seydlitz draws on the cigarette. His eyes slip to the side as he remembers.

‘Hitler was watching me very closely by this stage, glaring at me, his whole will opposed to what I was saying. I could see from the tension in his body that he would have liked to have struck me or flown into a rage. Only he believed me. It was frustration that made him clench his fists. What I’d shown him could not be disbelieved. There was no way of knowing – of anticipating – such things.

‘“Your machine,” Hitler said, stepping closer. “What it sees… is it fixed?”

‘“No,” I said. “It can be altered.”

‘With that, his whole expression changed. A smile came to his lips. It transformed the intensity of his stare into something almost demonic.

‘He fixed me with that stare. “And you can change it?”’

Seydlitz looks down at the cigarette thoughtfully.

‘“I know how to act,” I said. “How to influence the outcome of events.”

‘Hitler seemed pleased. “You’ve done this?” he asked.

‘“Yes,” I said.’

Only it’s a lie. Seydlitz doesn’t know for certain how to change events. None of us do, when it comes right down to it. But he can try. He is there to try.

He leans in closer, relishing his role as narrator:

‘“We have made plans,” I told him. “Changes of emphasis. Innovations. Tactical variations. Things that will have their effect.”

‘Hitler stared back at me, his suspicion momentarily naked. Then he smiled. “And what is your role in this, Herr Seydlitz?”

‘I laughed. The time for modesty was past. They understand few things, these early men, but they understand them well. Greed. Power. The survival of the strong.

‘“I want to govern Russia,” I said. “I want the German Ukraine. In return I will help bring you victory. I will advise you…”’

Seydlitz pauses, remembering something:

‘I saw how Goering looked at me, then away. That’s one man I’ll have to deal with in the not-so-distant future. But Hitler…

‘He stood there, looking at me pensively, and then he smiled – a smile of recognition and understanding. “And when the snows come?”

‘I met his eyes. “This time we shall be ready for them.”’

20

‘Well?’ Hecht asks. ‘You’ve seen his body language. What do you think?’

I tear my gaze away from the shining image of the Tree and meet Hecht’s eyes.

‘I think he’s enjoying himself. He seemed relaxed. Confident. Why? Do you still have doubts?’

‘No…’

But Freisler does, I finish for him in my head.

‘He’s doing well,’ I say. ‘Much better than I thought, if you want the truth.’

Hecht smiles. ‘He’s very capable.’

‘Yes…’

There’s a moment’s silence, then Hecht nods. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘You can go now.’

I stand.

‘But Otto…’

‘Yes, Meister?’

‘Keep an eye. I’ll send you the summaries.’

21

Seydlitz had gone back further to hatch his scheme, back beyond the beginning of that century. Officials had been bribed with freshly minted gold, and perfectly forged documents were entered into the records of the US government: nationalisation papers; certificates of marriage and birth. All this to establish his team’s credentials – the ‘reality’ of their existence. In the Twenties they obtained passports, travelled, met those who, later, they would need to meet again. And so on through the Thirties, stretching their group existence thin – sufficient to create the fiction; enough to satisfy the prying eyes of Himmler’s agents when, eventually, they came to look.

And so Seydlitz was twice-born in the records of this world; once in the Indiana of 1896, and again in the Berlin of 2963. What vast gulfs separated those times. Otto, studying the files, knew how it felt. When Seydlitz walked the streets of Columbus, Indiana, back in those distant days of his first birth, he no doubt found it exhilarating simply to stroll beneath an open sky on a spring day, the sun on his bare arms. Like heaven.

He entered Germany through neutral Sweden in the autumn of 1940. France had fallen by then. Hitler was in the ascendant. Russia and the United States had yet to enter the arena. Great Britain was alone in holding out against the Führer. In such circumstances his mission seemed possessed of little attraction. Why should Hitler listen? What could Seydlitz offer that destiny – in Hitler’s mind – had not already granted him?

Nothing that Hitler did, it seemed, could go wrong. Each step he took raised him higher. Destiny, surely, meant to raise him higher still – maybe to the very pinnacle itself? So he thought. And soon, Seydlitz knew, he would lose touch with the reality of Germany’s situation. His sense of destiny would, piece by piece, destroy what he had built. The Fatherland, the Volk itself, would be sacrificed to Hitler’s sense of his own greatness.

Unless they could stop him. Unless they could undermine his confidence before he ceased listening to conflicting views.

Seydlitz had studied him long, watched him on film and read of him until he could sense the thought behind each look, the feeling behind every gesture. Hitler was a consummate actor, a master of the art of self-delusion. In his speeches he would work himself into a state of total belief – as credulous, as much a victim to his creative manipulation of the truth as the least of them who watched and listened, their eyes agleam, their lips shaping echoes of his words. But he was also cunning, paranoid, utterly ruthless.

In the summer of 1941 the fantasist and the realist were delicately balanced in his nature, but after the snows nothing would be the same again – that balance would shift ineradicably. Hitler would become a recluse, hidden away in the Wolfensschanze, Hitler’s Wolf’s Lair, his military command post in the heart of the Mazurian forest; refusing to acknowledge the fact of his defeats; talking endlessly, repetitively of the victories of the past and dreaming of the miracle to come.

He did not know it, but Seydlitz was that miracle: the future come to greet him. He was Hitler’s fate, his destiny, the deus ex machina that would change the very shape of history and bring about the Dream.

Stettin, where Seydlitz landed, was a cold, suspicious place. As an American national he was at first treated politely if not warmly by the local SS. What was he doing there? What did he want? Who was he going to meet? This was expected.

‘I have a meeting with Herr Funk,’ he said.

Things changed at once. Walther Funk was President of the Reichsbank and Minister of Economics. The SS officer looked at him, noting that he spoke perfect German and that his name was Seydlitz. An honourable Prussian name. Hostility was replaced by respect, even by a degree of obedience. A telephone was brought and he made the call.

Funk’s secretary hesitated, then put him through. In a minute or two it was achieved. Funk had received his letter and remembered him. Funk was busy, yes, but he would see him.

Seydlitz smiled and handed the phone across to the officer, letting him confirm the details. There was no real secret to this business. No doubt Funk did remember him. It had been at Cologne in ’35. Funk had been running the Wirtschaftspolitischer Pressedienst and acting as contact man between the Nazis and big business. Seydlitz had gone out of his way to impress him with talk of his company’s vast wealth and his admiration of the Reich. But this was not why Funk had agreed to meet him. Germany needed foreign currency badly, and he had promised much in his letter.

Funk, he knew, was unimportant in himself. He had replaced the capable Schact – Hitler had appointed him in the interval at the Opera House – and had taken on a subordinate role in the Nazi machine. But Funk was his entry. Funk would introduce him to others who, in their turn, would bring him to Hitler.

He spent the winter in Berlin, the real Berlin, not the claustrophobic Nichtraum – the ‘no-place’ – he remembered from his own, personal past. This was a very different city. The spirit of the New Order hung over the place, transforming its massive boulevards as well as its old world streets. He walked down the Unter Den Linden with its imposing buildings and its massive sculptures. Standing beneath Rauch’s magnificent equestrian statue of Frederick, he felt a thrill pass through him. Here was the Dream. Here, in the purity of this vast and magnificent architecture, was the very seed of the Reich.

That winter was a busy one for Seydlitz. He met Julius Streicher, the whip-bearing Gauleiter of Nuremberg. Streicher and Funk introduced him to the Foreign Minister, Ribbentrop. By December, his name had been mentioned to Hitler. In the first week of January, Goebbels came to see him. By then more than five million dollars had entered the Nazi coffers – all of it perfectly forged, none of it distinguishable in any way from the real thing – such was proof of his friendship to the Party and to the Führer. Goebbels sounded him out. Unlike Streicher or Funk he was a clever, perceptive man. Goebbels came meaning to see through Seydlitz, but went away strangely pleased with him, wondering how he might fit him into his propagandist schemes.

He first met Hitler in the February of 1941, in Berlin, at the Opera. It was Wagner, naturally. Das Rheingold. Afterwards there was a small reception. Seydlitz entered late, accompanying Ribbentrop. There the introduction was made.

‘You enjoyed the opera?’ Hitler asked, extending his hand and smiling.

Seydlitz smiled and bowed his head in salute. ‘I was moved, Führer.’

He released Hitler’s hand and met his eyes. Hitler was watching him, smiling, nodding. Then he gestured towards the nearby table. ‘Will you have a drink, Herr Seydlitz?’

Seydlitz shook his head. ‘Thank you, but no, Führer. I do not drink alcohol. Nor do I eat meat.’

He saw how Hitler’s eyes lit at that. It pleased him greatly. ‘Then we have much in common, Herr Seydlitz.’

‘I hope so, for I would dearly like to serve you.’

There was no weakness in the words, as if to serve Hitler were the natural channel for the strong. This too pleased Hitler inordinately, flattered his ego beyond the superficial phrases of such as Ley and Ribbentrop. He glanced at Goebbels and gave the slightest nod, as if to confirm something they had discussed earlier, then he looked back at Seydlitz, his intensely blue eyes filled with a sudden, almost passionate warmth.

‘We must meet again, Herr Seydlitz. I would like you to be my guest at Berchtesgaden. We must talk.’

At that Hitler nodded curtly and turned away. It was done. He had gained access to Hitler. That was the easy part – the hardest lay ahead.

22

In ancient Rome it would take a full six weeks to spread the emperor’s writ throughout the empire. By the eighteenth century, news from Far Cathay would take six months or more to make its way to Europe. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, however, communication was instantaneous. News arrived as it happened. When the Twin Towers fell, the world watched it happen live.

We differ in but one respect. Our news is from the Past.

Seydlitz has been gone a mere eight hours subjective, yet already word of his great enterprise comes back to us.

I shower, then return to the latest report. Hecht has been busy, dispatching agents to assist, sending advice, attempting to fine-tune the venture. But essentially Seydlitz is alone. On his shoulders lies the fate of all. And to my mind, he’s doing well. Whatever Freisler might think – whatever his instinct – Seydlitz has done a masterful job so far. He has Hitler in his pocket.

We can but wait, as the changes begin – a new branch sprouting on the Tree above Hecht’s desk: a single glistening thread of brilliant light.

Hecht himself is in conference with the Genewart – or so we call that shadowy presence. Hans Gehlen was his real name, when he was properly alive. He was the genius behind Four-Oh; this Nichtraum or ‘no-space’ bunker – Neu Berlin – that lies outside the normal laws of the universe. He has been dead two centuries, yet his ‘presence’ – his Genewart – lives on, encoded in the gaseous centre of the great AI that runs the Nichtraum.

Some knowledge must await its proper time. We knew, as long ago as the end of the twentieth century, of superstrings and Q-balls. It was mere theory then. They said there were twelve dimensions, ten of Space and two of Time: seven and one folded in – ‘hidden’, one might say, from human perception. Yet it took eight centuries for the right man – Gehlen – to come along and transform that theory into practice.

Q-balls. For centuries they were as rare as the mythical unicorn, but then Hans Gehlen arrived and, with a stroke of genius, found a way of entrapping one of those dark nutshell universes. Travelling at over a hundred kilometres a second and containing 10 to the 22nd power particles, Q-balls zip through anything, even the burning heart of stars. Forged in the white heat of the newborn universe, they are incredibly stable yet also incredibly difficult to capture. One thing, and one thing alone can slow them down – a neutron star.

By the twenty-eighth century, black-hole technology had progressed to the point where it was safe, the accidents of earlier years forgotten. Tiny black holes, smaller than a pin-head, had been created and maintained and, as an energy source, had replaced all other forms. Yet it was not until Gehlen came and captured a Q-ball in the core of an artificial neutron star that its full potential was made plain.

Entering the neutron star, the Q-ball would begin to eat away at it, slowly destabilising it, until – wham! – a supernova would be born.

But not for ten million years. Moreover there were useful side effects. As the Q-ball burrowed into the heart of the neutron star, so it would spit out tiny blue flashes – Cerenkov radiation. These sprays of brilliant light were pions – particles traveling faster than the speed of light. Time travellers, no less. It was Gehlen who finally harnessed them, and who gave us the technology to use them.

Unfortunately, the Russians learned our secret, and in the war that followed…

But that’s another story. Gehlen himself is dead, yet we have use of him. Hecht will sit with his shadowy presence night after night, discussing matters and seeking advice, continuing the war we lost two centuries ago.

I switch on the viewer. At once, Seydlitz’s face fills the screen. I sit back, listening again, enjoying his explanations, knowing that this is warfare, thirtieth-century style, for as much as not a single shot is fired. Or, as my old friend Frederick once termed it – ‘War by other means.’

23

In the three weeks between their first and second meetings, Seydlitz had no further contact with Hitler, but Goebbels came to visit him. This time Seydlitz sounded him, used Goebbels to forward his purpose.

‘There is a machine,’ he said, introducing the topic, ‘unlike any other machine ever built. It sees things.’

Goebbels frowned, a half-smile on his lips. ‘I don’t follow you. Sees what?’

‘Things yet to be. Events blind to normal sight.’

Goebbels laughed. ‘What kind of game is this, Herr Seydlitz?’

‘No game. Look here.’

He handed Goebbels a sheet of paper. It was a photographic copy of Basic Order No. 24, ‘Regarding Collaboration with Japan’, signed by Adolf Hitler and dated 5 March 1941. That date was three days off.

‘What is this?’ Goebbels asked. Then, looking sharply at Seydlitz: ‘How did you get this?’

‘The machine. Hold on to that for three days and see what happens. When the order comes, check it against what you have. Then come and see me again.’

For a moment Goebbels simply watched him, and Seydlitz knew that the whole venture was balanced on a knife’s edge. Then he folded the paper, put it in his jacket pocket and stood. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘For now I’ll play your game. But when I see you next, you will explain this fully, understand?’

‘I understand, Herr Goebbels.’

On the sixth Goebbels returned. Seydlitz gave him copies of newspapers dated a week ahead, photostats of documents relating to the secret discussions with the British, none of which had yet happened at that time. He gave him a separate sheet of quotations from various people – things they would say in Goebbels’ presence in the next few days. This, more than anything, would convince him. Seydlitz could imagine him standing there, amazed to hear the words uttered, as if to a script.

When Seydlitz saw him next it was at Berchtesgaden. Goebbels met him at the station and they drove together up to the Berghof. The last few days had changed Goebbels. You could see that at once. He looked at Seydlitz now with a mixture of wonder and fear.

‘Your machine,’ he said, staring out away from Seydlitz as they sat there in the back of the Mercedes. ‘How much can it see? How far ahead?’

Seydlitz did not look at him, but kept looking at the magnificent scenery of the Bavarian Alps, conscious that none of this existed in his time.

‘Five years. After that things grow uncertain.’

Goebbels nodded. In the driver’s mirror Seydlitz could see him frowning deeply, trying to accommodate this new fact. He could sense how keyed-up Goebbels was, so full of unasked questions.

‘Does Hitler know?’ he asked, turning slightly. ‘Have you mentioned this to him?’

‘I’ve…’ Then he laughed; a strange little high-pitched laugh. ‘How do you mention something like this, Herr Seydlitz?’ Goebbels looked at Seydlitz directly, challengingly. ‘But you knew that, didn’t you? That’s why you approached me first. Because it isn’t a thing to be mentioned, is it? You have to prove it – show how potent this “seeing” is – before the mind can accept it.’

Seydlitz nodded.

He had not been wrong. Goebbels was the key. His belief would make it easier for Hitler to believe. And with belief would come change.

The Führer met them on the steps and ushered them into the house, taking Seydlitz’s hand firmly, warmly, then touching his shoulder.

‘It is good to see you again, Herr Seydlitz. There are so few men of culture left in the world. So many little men, destroying life with their putrid visions.’

Seydlitz laughed and quickly agreed. It had begun. In the next few hours he would come to know at first-hand what others had reported of Hitler: his tendency to lecture; his refusal to listen to another, conflicting view. But Seydlitz played him with genius. Whenever Hitler paused he would insert a comment that both confirmed and illuminated his argument and Hitler would seize on it with an almost childish glee. Seydlitz pampered his hatred of modernism in art, gave him evidence of the superiority of Aryan culture, and fostered his anti-Semitism with instances from history. They talked all afternoon, and when it was time for dinner, Hitler was delighted with his new friend, beaming openly as he led Seydlitz to his chair.

‘We are exceptional men, Herr Seydlitz, are we not? Is it not right, then, that destiny places us at the fulcrum of history?’

It was too perfect, too opportune a moment to be missed. Seydlitz nodded and took his seat, then broached the subject. There would be no better time than this.

‘Barbarossa will fail,’ he said. ‘In October the line will be halted, at Leningrad in the north, at Rzhev, Mozhaisk and Orel in the centre, and at Stalingrad, Grozny, Pyatigorsk and Maikop in the south.’

Hitler’s smile had gone. He stood there by his chair, staring at Seydlitz as if he had suddenly changed shape. Across from them Goebbels was watching, equally intent, his eyes going from Seydlitz to Hitler.

‘What?’ Hitler said after a moment. ‘What did you say?’

Seydlitz reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope, then handed it across. In it was a report from General Guderian, from the Russian front, dated late October 1941.

Hitler took out the report. Seydlitz saw how his face twitched as he read it, noted how his left leg and left arm trembled when he was excited by something – advance signs of the savage disability to come. Hitler looked up abruptly from the report and glared at Seydlitz, then threw the paper down. There was spittle on his lips.

‘What lies are these? What vicious game is this, Herr Seydlitz?’

Seydlitz had prepared himself for Hitler’s anger; even so, its sheer, elemental force was unexpected. It was like facing the figure of Hatred itself. He rose from his seat and bowed deeply, as a soldier bows before his commander.

‘Forgive me, Führer, but it is how it will be,’ he said. ‘I have built a machine that sees the future.’

Hitler laughed at the absurdity. Then he looked to Goebbels. ‘Did you know of this, Joseph?’

Goebbels nodded, but you could see how intimidated he was, how reluctant he was to own up to what he knew for a fact. For a moment it was even possible that he was going to deny Seydlitz. Yet he did believe, and in his sharp but devious mind he could imagine what defeat in Russia would mean.

‘It’s true,’ he said, softly at first, then, much louder. ‘Herr Seydlitz has proved it to me beyond all doubt. His machine sees into the future.’

Again Hitler laughed, but there was no humour in it. ‘Have you all gone mad? Even you, Joseph?’

He turned away, a look of sheer disgust on his face. Then he turned back. ‘We cannot see into the future, we can only make the future!’ And he hammered his right hand into his left palm as he said this, glaring at Seydlitz defiantly.

‘Let me prove it, Führer. Please! For the sake of us all!’

The sneer grew more excessive. He shook his head in a gesture of finality, but it was all or nothing now and Seydlitz risked his fury, pressing on.

‘In my bags I have further documents. Maps, newspapers, secret documents, transcripts of conversations. All of them copies of things that do not yet exist. Look at them. Examine them. See if these things come about. And meanwhile put me under house arrest. Under armed guard. Then, on the twenty-first of June, at Wolfensschanze on the evening before the Russian invasion, see me again.’

Hitler was looking away from him now, staring directly at Goebbels. ‘This proves it to me. We attack Russia in May, not in June. The man is raving.’

But Goebbels shook his head. ‘Listen to him, I beg you, Führer. If he’s wrong then no harm is done. But if he’s right…’

Hitler stood there a moment, glaring at his Propaganda Minister, then he seemed to relent and soften. Goebbels was, after all, his oldest friend. They had shared this journey since the early Twenties.

‘There will be a coup,’ Seydlitz said. ‘In Belgrade. On the twenty-seventh of March. Ten days later you will strike hard to avenge this outrage. The operation will be named Retribution. You will crush the Yugoslavs. Then you will turn and face Russia. But only then.’

Hitler laughed scornfully, but met his eyes again. He had calmed down, but his eyes were dangerous, incensed even by the sight of Seydlitz. ‘A coup? In Belgrade? They wouldn’t dare.’ He shook his head exaggeratedly. ‘And yet you see all this as if it has happened.’

Seydlitz nodded. ‘As though it were all in the past.’

For a moment longer Hitler stared at him, then he waved him away impatiently. ‘Put him under house arrest.’

Guards came to his summons, took Seydlitz by the arms.

‘You are a fool, Herr Seydlitz. But I will humour Joseph here. I will look at your evidence. And when I know it for the garbage that it is, I will have you killed. Understand?’

Unsmiling, like the soldier that he was, Seydlitz bowed his head silently. Hitler’s threat meant nothing now. He had won. Day by day the evidence would mount, until, when they met again at Wolfensschanze, Hitler would be his.

24

Seydlitz was in his rooms in Friedrichsfelde when the summons came. It was 6.15 a.m. on the morning of 21 June 1941. More than one hundred and fifty German, Romanian and Finnish divisions were waiting on the Russian borders, complete with nineteen armoured divisions, twelve motorised divisions and air cover of 2,700 planes. Three great armies under Generals Leeb, Bock and Rundstedt. Great but fragile, for none of them was equipped for a winter campaign.

He had an hour to get his things together before they came to take him to the aerodrome for the flight east. This in itself was different. Historically, Hitler had been in the Chancellery in Berlin on the night of the invasion, Goebbels entertaining some Italian guests at the Schwanenwerder. But not this time.

25

‘Otto, come…’

I follow Hecht out, along the broad, central corridor that leads directly to the platform. There, in that great, domed circle, surrounded by the buzz of our technicians, we wait. The women look up from their screens expectantly. It is not often that Hecht comes to greet an agent at the platform, but everyone here knows how important this is.

Seydlitz will appear any moment now, returning for the first time since he boarded ship in Sweden.

There is to be a meeting – one final consultation before he goes back. Hecht looks at me and smiles. He does not need to tell me to say nothing. That goes without saying. Things are more complex than normal. While we know what has happened, Seydlitz does not. In his time-line he has yet to meet Hitler; has yet to have that fateful meeting in the Wolfensschanze. In his own personal time-line, Seydlitz has yet to send his report back. And that could prove dangerous. To prevent the possibility of time paradoxes, he must go to that meeting without prior knowledge of its outcome.

Oh yes, it happens sometimes. From our viewpoint, here on the very edge of Time, our knowledge of the Past is not always sequential. Yet we must deal with it as though it was. Harsh experience has taught us so. Play games with Time and Time can play wicked games on you. Ask Hans Gehlen. Or what’s left of him.

There is a sudden pulse in the platform, a crackling in the air as ions spark and tiny flashes of electricity pass across its surface. Then, with a sudden surge of power, Seydlitz begins to appear. I put my hand up, shielding my eyes, as a tiny circle of intense light – the focus – jumps into being, and in a fraction of a second, Seydlitz himself takes solid form, ribcage and arms only visible at first, then pelvis and head and legs, the whole thing sprouting, fleshing out from that single, brilliant point, blood vessels and nerves, muscle, bone and inner organs visible for the briefest instant as the focus bleeds light into the living body, slowly fading with a dying flicker.

As Seydlitz blinks and looks about him, I realise that this could well be the last time it will be like this. This is not just some pawn’s move in the Great Game but a bid to take their queen, maybe even to checkmate the king itself. As the repercussions of his scheme begin to take effect, so this all would change. I shiver at the thought of it. If all goes well, the circle will be broken and Berlin – our Berlin – will cease to exist. And we with it. But that would be a small price to pay for such a victory. Neu Berlin might die, but Europe would live, the Volk be saved.

As the force shield comes down, Seydlitz looks across at us and smiles. From the thirty-two long, low desks about the great circle of the platform comes a murmur of greeting. Seated at those desks, the Volk’s technicians – all of them women, many of them heavily pregnant – smile back at him, pleased to see him safely home.

Objectively he has been gone less than a day; subjectively it has been close on eleven months.

Someone throws a cloak about him, another hands him a drink. One of the women gives him a hand and helps him down.

‘How goes it?’ Hecht asks, as if he didn’t know.

For a moment Seydlitz finds it hard to understand what Hecht has said. His ear has grown too accustomed to the old tongue. The Anglicised ergot we speak is very different, more American than German, the bastardised product of a thousand years of change. Hecht repeats the question.

Seydlitz smiles. ‘I’ve met him. Got him to listen to me. And I am to see him again tomorrow. At Wolfensschanze. I think he’ll listen.’

Hecht nods. There is sadness as well as hope in his face. For Berlin there are possibly only a few, small hours remaining, whatever happens. If Seydlitz’s scheme succeeds it will wink out of existence – or exist only in the memories of those who have gone back.

Seydlitz is clearly disoriented. After the open skies and freedom of the Past this place is acutely claustrophobic. I know from experience what he is thinking: how had he stood this? How could any of us survive like this, cooped up like prisoners in this air-tight hell?

Walls are everywhere. Four-Oh is the last bunker, the last gallant outcrop, fighting against the Russian enemy that surrounds it on every side and in every dimension. Each day, each hour, almost every second, quantum missiles hammer into our defences, homing in on the platform’s carrier signal, slowly weakening our force fields bit by tiny bit, breaking down our mighty resistance. Clever, subtle missiles, like the probability worms, which burrow into the very fabric of the Nichtraum itself, destroying the bonds between moments.

Things we don’t feel or hear, but which are there all the same.

We have bought time – each tiny change has guaranteed our survival and extended it – but all about us lies the darkness, and a map drawn red from Atlantic to Pacific.

Maybe that is why Hecht has decided on this final cast. Nothing small this time. Instead a major change, for whatever results can surely be no worse than this slow attrition, this gradual wearing down.

Seydlitz looks about him once more, noting the brave, familiar faces that surround him. These are his people, his Volk. For them he has gone back. For them he has striven to change the destiny of the Reich. For if the Reich fails a second time then there is nothing.

Yet it is hard, standing there, not to feel doubt. In spite of all we have done – both here and in the Past – it all seems so very fragile. One wrong decision, one moment’s tiredness, and it would all be gone. As if it had never been. History would forget us.

Seydlitz stays an hour. Friends come and wish him ‘Stärke’ – ‘strength’. Not ‘luck’ or ‘love’ but ‘strength’. Such is our world – the world he now goes back to change.

26

On the morning of the twenty second – the first day of Barbarossa – Seydlitz held a conference. There were six of them: Hitler, Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Bormann and himself. The projector was set up in the Map Room and a screen hung in front of the Graf portrait of Frederick the Great. Elite members of the Shutzstaffel, Himmler’s SS, stood outside, alongside Hitler’s personal bodyguard, Ratenhuber, guarding the doors, ensuring no one entered. Inside, four of them sat in a staggered line facing the screen. Seydlitz at the projector just behind them. At his signal, Goebbels dimmed the lights and returned to his seat. A moment later the beam from the projector cut into the darkness. The screen lit up, forming flickering images.

And so he began showing them, for the first time, the future he would now set out to change.

Seydlitz kept his comments brief and to the point. Several times, at Hitler’s order, he froze the image and wound it back. He could sense that Hitler was still reluctant – that part of him refused, even now, to believe in what he was seeing. It was hard for him – harder than for any of them – for it struck at the very core of what he thought of himself, the Man of Destiny. This was the outcome of his vision, his failure. But Seydlitz could not present it as that. He knew Hitler too well. This is betrayal, he had to say. This is what will be unless we act. He had ready a list of traitors and their crimes.

The images were simple but effective. The Russian snows. Transport and soldiers floundering in the mud of the sudden thaw. Zhukov’s Siberian regiments driving the Wehrmacht back. Then on in time – to General Paulus surrendering at Stalingrad. Burning tanks in the Tunisian desert. The British liberating Athens. The failure of the U-boat campaign. The sky dark with American bombers, Dresden a single burning pyre. The landings in Normandy, the gallant Rommel thrown back. Then, shocking in its juxtaposition, the Map Room where they sat, devastated after Stauffenberg’s assassination attempt on the Führer. Black American troops sitting in an amphibian vehicle, crossing the Rhine, grinning into the camera. Berlin in ruins, the Chancellery a pile, Hitler Youth detachments fighting a last-ditch battle against the Russians. Then Mussolini, bloodless, hanging from a meat hook in the Piazzale Loreto between Gelormini and Petacci, his mistress. Goebbels’ body, charred but still recognisable, beside those of his wife and six children. Goering, sat in the dock at Nuremberg, Judge Robert Jackson pointing across at him.

And nowhere a single sign of hope. These were images of annihilation – of a Dream reduced to nightmare. When the lights came up again Seydlitz went to the front and looked at them. Goebbels, beside the light switch, was ashen. Bormann looked down at his feet. Goering was tugging at his collar as if it was too tight and staring away distractedly. Himmler, however, was looking to the Führer, waiting to be told what he should do. There was a kind of hopeless trust in him, a deficiency of character. Seydlitz had kept back his death.

Hitler was silent for a time. Then he stood and turned his head towards Seydlitz. His eyes, at that moment, were filled with a bitter hatred.

‘You were betrayed,’ Seydlitz said calmly. ‘The Jews, your generals, even some of those you trusted best – they betrayed you. What you have seen is the chronicle of their betrayal.’

Hitler narrowed his eyes, but said nothing. Seydlitz took the list from his pocket and handed it across. It was detailed. Names, dates, arrangements. More than five hundred names in all. Not all the traitors – not Himmler, Goering, Rommel – but many who would surprise him. Hitler took the list and opened it, watching Seydlitz all the while. Then he looked down, studying it.

‘What is this?’

‘A list, Führer. Of traitors.’

Hitler looked up sharply, then back at the list, flicking through the pages, stopping now and then, his eyebrows going up, his face registering unfeigned surprise, even pain. Many of the leading figures of the Reich were listed. Abruptly he folded the sheaf. His hand was trembling now and his face was red with anger. His arm shot out to his left, holding the list.

‘Heinrich! Take this and copy it! Then act on it! At once!’

Himmler took it, then bowed in salute and clicked his heels. In an instant he was gone from the room. The repercussions would begin at once.

Seydlitz had been careful in selecting that list. None of those who would lead the Wehrmacht to the gates of Moscow were named. Nor were those whose treachery lay more in Hitler’s failings than their own. But in one single swoop he had rid the Reich of most of its major doubters and schemers. It was a beginning. But there was much more to be done. It was not enough to prune the tree of state, they had to stimulate new growth, and do what no one before Seydlitz had ever managed: to change the mind of Hitler.

Seydlitz faced him again.

‘Though I was born in another land, I am, before all, a German. And as a German I recognise that the destiny of my people is bound inextricably with the destiny of the Führer. My machine has seen much that is ill. But the illness lies not with destiny but with a betrayal of that destiny, in the poverty of others’ little lives.’

Seydlitz let that sink in a moment; saw how they all watched him, waiting to hear what he would say next.

‘How can a leader lead if those whom he must trust – must, because he is but one man, however great, and mortal in spite of all – how can he lead if they are false, if the information they provide him with is false, if their advice is false? How, in the face of such overwhelming falsity, can a leader lead?’

Hitler was nodding. The trembling in his left arm had almost gone. Seydlitz could see that his words were working, the spell drawing him in.

‘The policy of legality served us well in gaining power in Germany. It was a tactic born of genius. To use against our enemies that which they valued most. To see through the democratic sham and grab the reality of power.’ Hitler was nodding more strongly now, smiling at Seydlitz; his eyes, which only moments earlier had burned with anger, were now filled with fervour. Seydlitz had studied him well. Now his long hours of study reaped their dividend. He played him as Hitler had once played others, as indeed Seydlitz had played him once before, after the opera that time, weaving a spell of words about him, binding him fast to the Dream.

‘What was legality if not the pacification of our enemies until we were strong enough to strike at them? An exploitation of their intrinsic rottenness? What was legality if not the means to our necessary destiny?’

Hitler laughed. ‘Indeed, it was so!’

At his side the others joined his laughter. The mood had changed. It was time to strike.

‘What then will it be in the years to come, but a means by which the Führer will unite the continent of Europe in a single Reich, from the Atlantic to the Urals, from the Arctic circle to the Mediterranean!’

Goering spoke. ‘What then of Mussolini? What of the Italians, the Spaniards?’

Seydlitz looked directly at Hitler as he answered. ‘Are not the meetings at Hendaye, Montoire and Brenner eloquent enough? These southern Europeans are rotten through and through. There is something weak, something corrupt in their very nature. But while we need them we can use them. In time, however, our use will have ended and then we shall pay them for their rottenness.’

Seydlitz knew that Hitler would not be quite so pleased with this little speech, even as he nodded. Seydlitz knew that Franco had bested the Führer in the discussions at Hendaye and kept Spain out of the war. At Montoire, the Vichy-French had wriggled out of any real commitment to the Reich. And at Brenner Hitler had confronted Mussolini with his duplicity in attacking Greece without consultation. It was no secret that this trilogy of failings had irked Hitler all winter. Seydlitz’s reminder was the opening of an old wound, cruel but necessary.

‘You said you knew ways,’ Hitler said. ‘Ways of changing the future…’

There was suspicion in those vividly blue eyes. Suspicion and an element of pure dislike. He was a man who would have no rivals, and in all he did Seydlitz seemed to set himself up as rival to him. In this, as in so much, he needed to be devious. He needed to make these schemes – like Manstein’s for the invasion of France – seem Hitler’s own.

‘My role is simple, Führer. My task easy. I must help the leader lead. I must clear away the falsity in those surrounding him. I must pave the way for victory. For destiny.’

Hitler laughed, amused at Seydlitz despite his suspicion. ‘By killing traitors? Is that all of your mighty scheme?’

Seydlitz shook his head. ‘You have already shown us the path. It is already written, in Mein Kampf. Our enemy is Russia. We must crush the Russians at any cost. But to do so we must avoid a war on two fronts.’

Seydlitz took a breath, then said it. ‘We must pacify the Americans.’

27

He began a new routine. Each morning at six he would leave his chalet and walk the forty metres to the Wolfensschanze, past the armed SS guards and into the Map Room. There, Hitler and he would go through orders and consider the reports from the front. At first he suggested few strategic changes. Then slowly, taking care to make each change seem as though it had sprung from Hitler’s mind, he began to manipulate the war.

At first Hitler was loath to take up Seydlitz’s suggestion regarding America. Despite all the evidence, he continued to see them as a weak, divided nation.

‘So they are,’ Seydlitz would say. ‘But when Japan attacks, something will happen to them. Their pride will be hurt and they’ll respond. The challenge will make them strong.’

It was this argument, much more than the ‘fact’ – documented and presented long before – that eventually persuaded him. Ribbentrop was sacked as Foreign Minister and Admiral Raeder, a less abrasive, more honourable man, was sent to Washington to ensure the peace. Raeder’s appointment was a temporary move, but effective. He would be needed later, when the U-boat offensive began in earnest, but in July and August of 1941, as German troops drove the Russians back relentlessly, he successfully wooed the right-wing elements of American public opinion. The Tripartite Pact, less than a year old, was dramatically dropped. Without a word of explanation, Japan ceased to be an ally. The effect in Washington was considerable. Roosevelt summoned Raeder. Through an interpreter Raeder explained that Hitler did not want war with either the United States or Britain. Russia alone was his enemy. There were many Germans in America, he went on to say. It would be a tragedy if German should have to fight German. Roosevelt remained sceptical, but his certainty had been shaken. Hitler called off his U-boats and cut all derogatory references to Roosevelt from his speeches. It was an old game and he enjoyed it.

Dr Todt, the Armaments Minister, had been on the list of traitors. This was a fabrication and ended Todt’s life ten months earlier than otherwise. In his place Hitler appointed Albert Speer. From the first Speer’s influence was marked. New factories were opened in the conquered Russian territories. Fuel dumps were established. New tracked equipment was hastily manufactured to designs Seydlitz provided. Winter clothing was stockpiled in warehouses close to the front. When the snows came this time they would find the German army well prepared.

The fleet was moved south, from the Norwegian coast. Two divisions were spared to strengthen the Italian push on Egypt. Revolt was fermented in Iraq and in Egypt itself. The bombing of British cities stopped and all efforts returned to destroying their airfields. Each move strengthened Germany’s position and brought them one step closer to success.

And all the while Seydlitz had his men moving back and forth through Time, reporting back to him on the progress of their machinations. Up ahead – in the time to come – things were slowly changing in their favour, but still the major thing remained the same: when the snows came the Russians would halt the German advance and throw them back. From that moment the war would be lost. Their actions – small as they were – had extended the war into the early months of 1947. Even so, defeat was inevitable.

Early on Seydlitz had been forced to show them the ‘machine’. It was a fake, of course, primed with a few gobbets of information his men had prepared elsewhere, but its focus was real enough. Seydlitz told them there were two such machines, focusing on the future. The other was somewhere in Spain, hidden where they would never find it. That was not liked, but it was understood. Hitler even smiled when Seydlitz told him.

‘You are a cautious man,’ he said.

Seydlitz nodded. More cautious than he knew.

The big changes came in August. Instead of sending the Centre Army south, Hitler ordered General Bock to press on to Moscow. On the seventeenth there was a major engagement thirty kilometres south-west of the Russian capital, and two days later Guderian swept into the city. There followed a week of hand-to-hand and street-by-street fighting. But by 28 August Moscow had been taken. Bock dug in, then sent Guderian and Hoth, his two Panzer commanders, north to help the attack on Leningrad.

On 30 August Seydlitz accompanied Hitler on his first visit to Moscow. There, in the Kremlin, Hitler took a march past of his triumphant army, standing where Stalin himself had stood only four months earlier.

Stalin had fled, but he had not got far. Seydlitz’s men had traced him and found him, and in a small village eighty kilometres east of Moscow they ambushed him. On the morning of 2 September, they woke Hitler at five and presented him with the body.

What did the future look like after this? Moscow and Stalin had both fallen. They had cut the head from the Russian bear, but would the bear fall? Up ahead they saw the counter-attack, led by Zhukov. There was still the possibility of failure. But then, in mid-September, Leningrad fell and Zhukov himself was taken.

For Seydlitz these were heady days, and while they unfolded there was a kind of camaraderie between Hitler and himself. But in the aftermath of Leningrad, as in the north they dug in and looked to the south for further victories, a sour note slowly crept in.

Among the small but elite group surrounding Hitler – those who knew Seydlitz’s role in events – things had changed. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, the power base had shifted. Goebbels was closest to Seydlitz, perhaps, but there were others who looked to him first and Hitler after for their lead. Goering was effusive in his praise, while Himmler, ever the follower and never an innovator, balanced precariously between obedience to the Führer and deference to Seydlitz.

For all that he did to defuse this situation – for all his humility, self-deprecation and pampering of Hitler’s monomaniacal ego – Seydlitz could not wholly deflect Hitler’s jealousy and suspicion. Memories of what Hitler had done to Strasser and Rohm in 1934 haunted him, not because he feared for his own life, but because his death might mean the failure of the whole scheme. Seydlitz had always been a rival, and though he might claim – and rightly – that such plans were Hitler’s alone, espoused as early as 1924 in Mein Kampf, Hitler only had to look about him to see what they truly thought. Even Bormann, the most loyal of his acolytes and his private secretary, looked on Seydlitz as a saviour.

Up ahead things had improved beyond recognition. The East was secure. Continental Europe was Hitler’s. Britain was a satellite. The Middle East was steadily being conquered. But in the present things were coming to a head. What if Hitler decided Seydlitz was dispensible?

On the evening that Kiev fell – the first evening of snow, in late October – he had his first argument with Hitler. They were in a field camp outside the city. News had just come of the surrender of a Russian army of almost one and a half million men. This, even more than Moscow, was the height of their success. This was victory – the capitulation of the last Russian forces west of the Urals. As Seydlitz heard the sober words of the report he felt both joy and sadness. The Russians had been beaten – the age-old threat finally defeated – but up ahead, in 2999, Berlin, his Berlin, had, he was certain, ceased to be. His exile was complete. This now was home.

He turned to Hitler and looked at him. Hitler was staring down at his hands, which were clenched one over the other. There was no sign of surprise, certainly nothing of the elation one might have expected him to feel at such a moment. Instead there was the merest nod of his head. Then he looked up.

‘So it’s done,’ he said. ‘Just as you said, Herr Seydlitz.’

Seydlitz did not move. Hitler’s eyes seemed to hold him there, intense, his anger and hatred suddenly so raw, so naked, that Seydlitz knew he had come to a decision.

‘You have done it all,’ Seydlitz said, letting nothing show in his face. ‘You have done more than any man has ever done. More than Frederick. More than Napoleon. More than Alexander or Caesar.’

But they were empty, fatuous words, for all their truth, and Hitler knew it as well as he.

Hitler turned away. ‘I am tired, Herr Seydlitz. You will excuse me?’

It was so odd a thing for him to say that Seydlitz knew he would need to be careful that night. Unless he acted he would be dead before morning.

That evening he jumped forward to the world of 2999, and jumped back almost instantly.

He had jumped on to a platform, without walls, suspended in the darkness of space. Beneath him – a hundred miles below where he stood suspended – lay a planet. Earth? A lifeless world, anyway. A smooth, iced globe surrounded by a thin, rarefied atmosphere.

Afterwards, as he lay there on the floor of his tent, gasping for breath, his limbs trembled, remembering what he had seen. His throat was raw from the single breath he had taken, his eyes felt burned, and his skin seemed to prickle with an unnatural heat.

What had happened? What in Urd’s name had happened?

He had only moments to speculate. Even as he lay there two men came into the tent and stood over him. He knew them both – knew why they were there. Heinrich Himmler and Reinhard Heydrich. Each held a pistol.

He tried to speak, but the bitter cold had done something to his vocal chords. Instead, through stinging, watery eyes, Seydlitz looked up at them and smiled.

Tell Hitler this, he thought. And jumped.

28

Hecht smiles then switches off the screen. Above him, the Tree of Worlds glows brightly in the shadowed room.

‘It goes well.’

‘But what he saw…’

‘Don’t worry, Otto. It isn’t finished yet. The days ahead…’ He falls silent, as if he’s said too much.

I meet his eyes. ‘I thought it might—’

‘Become reality? No, Otto. Look.’

I look. The great trunk of the World Tree glows a crystalline white, like a thick column of ice-cold water falling, perpetually falling from the dark into the dark. About that trunk, a cluster of smaller, finer threads branch off, like tiny colourful lightning bolts, snaking out then up, bending back upon themselves until they almost reach the crown. Almost… for about the great Tree’s crown is a tiny circle of darkness. Not a single thread crosses that dark ring, nor can it, for if one did…

I imagine it. Imagine reality becoming something other than itself.

‘But why?’

‘Be patient, Otto. All will come clear.’

He reaches over, hands me the latest report.

I smile. Seydlitz might think us all dead, but he has not forgotten his duty. He has not neglected his reports.

‘He’s still there, then?’

Hecht nods, but says no more. And so I stand and, leaving that place, return to my room, my head buzzing, wondering if, when the change finally comes, I will remember anything of this.

29

When the snows came they were ready. From the safety of a room in Heidelberg, Seydlitz read the reports in the newspapers. The counter-offensive by the Siberian divisions was turned back and routed at Kolomna, ninety kilometres south-east of Moscow. Hitler’s armies – warmly clothed, well-fed and housed, their tracked vehicles coping with the heavy snows – held the line and in many places extended it. Saratov, on the Volga, fell in the last week of December, Stalingrad a month later. When Gorki fell in the second week of February the war in the East was finally and irrevocably decided. The Russian generals capitulated at Kazan, ceding all of the land west of the Volga to Germany. Hitler was pictured on the newsreels, standing on the banks of the Volga, looking outwards and smiling. Behind him Goering and the generals looked on, smug, knowing they had achieved what Napoleon had only dreamed of doing.

That was the public face of things. Other events were already in motion. Garrisons were being built all along the Volga and throughout the conquered territory. Himmler’s extermination of the Slav intelligentsia and the Jews was under way. Already many divisions were heading back west, preparing for a new campaign.

Seydlitz’s small dream of ruling Russian Europe was dead. Nonetheless, he rejoiced that the bigger Dream lived on, applauding each triumph of the Reich. When Japan finally attacked the USA at Pearl Harbor on the last day of February 1942, he held his breath, but Hitler, true to his plan, held back from a declaration of war and surprised Roosevelt with an open letter of sympathy and friendship – a letter much quoted in the American press, who played down its hypocritical condemnation of his former allies. Audaciously, Hitler offered the Americans five of his best divisions to wage war against the Japanese. It was his own touch, and played cleverly upon the racial antagonisms newly awakened in the American nation. Roosevelt refused, but his refusal won him few friends, except in Britain.

For Seydlitz the winter was a hard one, not because he was materially uncomfortable – he had stashed clothes, papers, and sufficient money in a wood near Mosbach – but because of that glimpse he’d had of the world to come. Settling in Heidelberg, he quickly re-established contact with his men, meeting them at the buried focus – effectively a miniaturised platform – just outside the town. In the months that followed, while the Reich grew and prospered, they began their tentative exploration of the years ahead.

In the short term, all seemed well. The policy of pacifying America worked beautifully. While they trounced the Japanese in the Pacific arena, Hitler invaded Britain, and, after a bitter, frustrating campaign, finally took it. By the end of 1943, Italy, Romania, Hungary, Bulgaria and Sweden had all been assimilated peacefully into the Reich. Then, in the summer of 1944, Hitler attacked and conquered Spain in eight short weeks. Turkey followed before the year was out.

Europe was his. The Middle East was next. Then Africa. On 20 April 1949 – his sixtieth birthday – he proclaimed himself Emperor of Greater Germany, holding the coronation ceremony in his new capital of Linz, amid Wagnerian pageantry that made the old Nuremberg rallies look tame.

Then, somewhere in the middle of 1952, there was a hole in Space-Time itself. A vast, unfathomable maelstrom in the fabric of reality. And after? – nothing but darkness, ice, the falling snow.

They lost three men tracing the edges of the flaw, but estimated its epicentre at or around the middle of June 1952. Somewhere there it had happened, whatever it was, and its effects had distorted Time both on and back. There was no way to tell what had happened: no way to anticipate the immediate cause. Even so, something had caused it, and Seydlitz knew that if they looked hard enough they would find it.

At first he suspected treachery. Irrationally, Seydlitz believed it was the Russians, pre-empting them, outguessing them maybe in a game through Time. But when he calmed down, he realised how ridiculous that was. They had seen ahead – seen the total, irreversible defeat of Russia, even before Seydlitz’s experience at Kiev. It had to be Hitler.

They began their search at the end of 1944, gathering information from throughout the Reich. Slowly, painstakingly, they combed through 1945, looking for something that might provide an insight into what had happened in ’52. Seydlitz was looking particularly for developments in weaponry – for something big enough and advanced enough to cause what they had seen up ahead. Only later, when it grew clearer what it was, did he realise that he had been looking in the wrong direction.

It wasn’t Hitler after all. It was Roosevelt.

30

It was early morning – sometime after two – and Paul Joseph Goebbels was alone in his bedroom, seated before the dressing-table mirror, removing his tie. His evening jacket lay on the bed behind him and as his fingers reached to unfasten the stud at the back of his neck, he yawned.

Seydlitz appeared silently, into the shadows at the back of the long, high-ceilinged room. He stood there a while, out of sight, watching Goebbels, then stepped out into the light, and stood there directly behind Goebbels, where he could see him in the mirror.

Seydlitz watched his face, saw him start, his eyes widening further as he recognised who it was. That moment’s naked fear turned into something more complex, more calculated. Goebbels turned and faced Seydlitz, looking down at his hands, finding them empty.

‘Max?’

‘How are you, Paul?’

Goebbels lowered his eyes a moment, then looked back at him ‘Things go well enough, Max.’

He could sense Goebbels’ suspicion, his uncertainty. They were almost tangible. But behind them was something else. A warmth, a degree of respect that remained intact. Slowly he smiled. ‘Where did you go, Max? Where have you been?’

‘Here and there. Is the Führer well?’

The smile tightened. ‘In good health.’ He hesitated, then added, ‘I have orders to kill you if I see you. We all have.’

Seydlitz nodded. ‘I understand. There is only one Führer, eh?’

Goebbels looked at him sadly. ‘I liked you, Max. I suppose I still like you, but…’ He shrugged.

Goebbels was unarmed, but there were guards outside the door. He had only to call out. Even so, he waited, knowing that Seydlitz must have a good reason for coming to him.

‘You must warn the Führer. Tell him not to antagonise the Americans. He must wait before he presses them on the Jewish question.’

‘Why?’

The tie still hung loose about Goebbels’ neck. His dark hair, slicked back from the forehead, shone in the lamplight.

‘They have a secret weapon. Unimaginably powerful. Something we cannot fight. So powerful, in fact, that they do not know how harmful it is themselves.’

Seydlitz shuddered, thinking of the hole in Space-Time only three years in the future.

Goebbels looked away, then shook his head. ‘It may be so, Max, but I can’t help you.’

‘What do you mean? This is important, Paul. If they use it – and they will – it will mean the end not just of the Reich, but of mankind!’

Goebbels laughed. ‘Tell that to Hitler, Max. Germany is mankind, remember?’

There was a sourness in him Seydlitz had never seen before.

‘What’s happened, Paul?’

‘It’s nothing,’ he answered, but his expression said the opposite. ‘Just that Hitler wouldn’t listen even if I told him. He hears nothing I say these days. He—’ Goebbels looked away, as if in sudden pain at the thought of it, then continued. ‘He remains loyal. I am still, outwardly, Minister of Propaganda. But I have no influence with him. You understand, Max?’

‘Why?’

Goebbels looked at him and smiled sadly. ‘Because I liked you, Max. And because I was the one who brought you to him.’

Seydlitz went cold, understanding suddenly what he should have known before. He had been the great rival to Hitler, and all those that liked him were therefore traitors.

‘I’m only alive, I think, because he saw that film of me. At least, of my corpse. The thought that I had stayed with him when all the others were gone. That I was willing to die with him and for him.’

‘Then there’s no hope.’

Goebbels was silent for a time, staring down at his hands, then he looked up again. ‘You’ve seen this weapon used?’

‘Yes,’ he lied.

Strangely, Goebbels laughed. ‘You know, when we took Spain, Hitler had them scour the country for the other machine. The one we had – your one – never worked again after Kiev.’

‘It never worked anyway.’

‘What do you mean? The documents. The films – they were all false?’

‘No. They were real enough. But they didn’t come from the machine.’

Goebbels was looking at Seydlitz oddly now.

‘You see, I’ve not been looking at the future at all. I’ve been studying the past…’ And, putting his hand to his chest, Seydlitz disappeared.

31

If Hitler would not listen, then there was only one solution – they would destroy the weapon before it could be used. A direct assault was likely to be difficult and possibly dangerous; instead they made their investigations, then went back fifteen years and killed all of the scientists involved. The weapon would never be built.

They were celebrating when the first of their men came back from up ahead. ‘It’s still there,’ he said. ‘Unchanged.’

Seydlitz shook his head, for the first time conscious that this might not be as simple as he’d thought. When the second man didn’t return, they went back. The scientists were dead, but the weapon still existed, as if it was anchored to the epicentre, its existence guaranteed by that vast rupture in Space-Time up ahead.

‘It’s hopeless,’ one of his men – Ritter – said.

Seydlitz turned and struck him. ‘Nothing’s hopeless! Remember how we were in Four-Oh? Remember how hopeless that seemed? But we defeated them, didn’t we?’

Ritter touched his bloodied lip and nodded. There was no more talk of hopelessness.

There had to be a way out – some way of changing it all. For a time his mind refused to see it, and even when it did he shook his head. It was far too drastic.

Looking at his men Seydlitz knew this was something he would have to do alone. He could not ask one of them to do it for him. He would go back and kill Hitler. Kill him before he was ever born.

32

It was late in the season. An icy wind blew across the Waldviertel from Poland, a north-easterly that set up a fierce howling through the trees surrounding the village. Seydlitz had been walking most of the afternoon and it was growing dark as he came to the outskirts. It was a remote, uncultivated place, even for that year, and he shivered as he stood there, looking across at it in the twilight. Two dozen houses, a church, an inn, and at the back of all the forest, dark and primeval.

Few travellers chose to come this way.

He had been walking to the side of the track, avoiding the deeply rutted mud at the centre. Now, as he came into the broad, central street, he had to cross and recross, avoiding the huge puddles that had formed. The houses seemed well kept: sturdy, wooden buildings that served as barn and stable as well as home. On his left as he passed, in a space between two houses, a man was unharnessing a horse. He stared at Seydlitz openly as he passed – as if he were a thief – and watched him until the wall of the house obscured him. Even then he stepped out on to the street, clearly wanting to see where Seydlitz went. So it was here. Strangers were not welcome. The people here were simple, hard-working peasant stock, Czech in origin and suspicious by nature. They spoke a mixture of Czech and German, though neither with any grace, and talked of the capital, Vienna, as though it were in another country than their own.

Seydlitz walked on, conscious of how odd he seemed, walking in out of nowhere to this godforsaken place. The village was Dollersheim. The year was 1836, and ahead of him – only metres away now – was the inn where he hoped to meet the man he’d come to see, Johann Georg Hiedler, an itinerant miller and the supposed grandfather of Adolf Hitler.

Three open wooden steps led up to the inn door. He climbed them and tried the door. It was locked. He knocked and waited, turning to smile at the villagers who stood there watching him. There were five of them now, just standing there, staring at him, wondering who he was and what he wanted. He knocked again. A moment later there was the sound of a bolt being drawn back. The door swung open.

The landlord was a short, balding man with a cast in one eye. He turned his head to one side as he looked at Seydlitz, then, in rusty German, asked him what he wanted.

‘A room, a meal, a beer.’ Seydlitz saw how the innkeeper looked him up and down, trying to estimate what kind of man he was, then he put out his hand.

Seydlitz smiled and took two large coins from his leather purse. ‘Here,’ he said, placing them in his palm. He watched him test them with his teeth. Silver thalers. Far more than his upkeep would cost. Satisfied, the man nodded and stepped back, letting Seydlitz pass.

Five hours later Seydlitz was sitting in the corner of the smoky room, his feet up on a stool, a pewter tankard in hand. Across the table from him Johann Hiedler was leaning forward, Seydlitz’s sketchbook open on his knees, his steiner forgotten for the while.

‘These are good,’ he grunted, looking up at Seydlitz, his vividly blue eyes smiling. He wiped at his moustache and then took another swig of his beer. ‘Very good indeed. You have real talent, Herr Friedrich.’

He was stouter than his grandson, but the eyes, the mouth were the same. Not only that, but those gestures – which had grown so familiar to Seydlitz from those morning conferences at the Wolfensschanze – were here in embryo, as it were. The same movement of the hands above the paper, the same abrupt and yet sweeping motions that had so infuriated General Halder more than a century on. But this was a slovenly, complacent man – his whole posture spoke of a certain weakness and inattention. There was no sharpness to him, no intensity. Like a poor copy he sat there, bloated, double-chinned, more like a man of sixty than one of forty-four. Yet here was the man whose seed contained the destiny of Europe. Seydlitz looked at him and almost laughed.

‘They are all right,’ Seydlitz said, non-commitally. ‘In my studio in Dresden is my real work. Oil paintings. Landscapes mainly.’

Hiedler nodded, watching Seydlitz carefully, impressed by his lies. The sketches had been done by one of Seydlitz’s men – copied directly from the notebooks of the German romantic painter, Caspar David Friedrich. For his cover he had stolen the details of Friedrich’s life, but the man and his work were of no real interest. Like Wagner it was a tool – a means of getting what he wanted. It was enough for Seydlitz that they did their work: put Hiedler at his ease and explained Seydlitz’s clothes, his accent and his presence there in that remote place.

‘I drew when I was a younger man.’

Hiedler closed the pad and sat back, his loose, fleshy lips forming a smile. ‘I believe I too could have been a painter, if circumstances had been different.’

Seydlitz smiled and bowed his head slightly. In this too Hiedler was like his grandson, boastful and vain. But there the similarity ended, for his ambitions – his dreams – were small and uninspired.

A woman came to their table, bringing a jug of ale. Seydlitz put his hand over the mouth of his cup.

‘No more for me, thanks. I must be up early tomorrow.’

But Hiedler had no such qualms. He thrust his glass at the woman and waited while she poured.

Seydlitz had not looked at her – was conscious of her only as a dull brown shape beside him – but then Hiedler spoke to her.

‘Will you be staying here tonight, Maria?’

Seydlitz looked up. She had a plain, almost severe face, the nose small but sharp, the lips thin and pinched. Her long auburn hair had strands of grey in it and was tied back in a single plait. He knew at once who she was.

She looked at Seydlitz before she answered Hiedler. ‘I am.’

For a moment longer her eyes rested on him, and then, with a brief glance at Hiedler, she backed away. There was a faint colour in her cheeks.

Hiedler leaned forward. ‘A good woman that Maria. Her father was an ogre. He beat her.’ Then, lowering his voice, ‘And maybe other things too, eh?’

Seydlitz joined his laughter, liking him even less, but glad that it was so. It would make it so much easier to kill him.

Later, as he climbed the stairs, he thought of the woman. It would be best if he killed her too, just to be sure. But now that he’d seen Hiedler he was certain in his mind that he was the father of her child. Or would have been. Kill him and it ended. There would be no reason for Roosevelt to use his weapon.

33

The bed was lumpy and uncomfortable, but Seydlitz slept soundly and woke with the dawn. For a while he lay beneath the rough blanket, thinking about the day ahead, then he smiled and sat up, drawing back the heavy curtain.

Outside it was bright but cold. Ice rimed the edges of the puddles and filled the rutted tracks. Faint flakes of snow drifted slowly from the sky. The first snow of winter.

He dressed, then sat on the bed and checked his weapon thoroughly. It was a nice job, a Honig. Its eight, needle-fine chambers would fire a tightly focused beam. He placed it carefully in his shoulder holster, then buttoned his jacket.

He greeted Hiedler, who was waiting for him in the room below, like an old friend. He found him at the table they had shared the evening before, an empty bowl in front of him. Seydlitz had arranged with him that he would take him to the sight of an old ruin in the woods. Hiedler had seen such a ruin sketched in his pad and had mentioned that there was one only a few miles from the village. Seeing his opportunity Seydlitz had asked him if he would take him there. Hiedler had agreed at once.

‘Did you sleep well, Herr Friedrich?’

‘Very well indeed, Herr Hiedler.’

He waved aside the offer of breakfast. ‘I would as soon get going. If it’s as you say, then I would like to get a full day’s work.’

Hiedler nodded. ‘I have prepared everything. Maria has packed us lunch.’

‘Good. Then I’ll get my coat and we’ll be off.’

On the way Seydlitz talked to him, sounding him about his life, getting a good idea of the kind of man he was, but offering little about himself. Hiedler’s was a dull, uneventful life, lacking in even those small things that give a life its quality. Even so, he seemed content, even self-satisfied. If he had only been born into a better family…

Seydlitz smiled and nodded, detesting him. Then, at last, he brought the talk round to Maria.

‘The woman at the inn. Is she the innkeeper’s wife?’

Hiedler laughed and stopped, turning to face him. ‘Maria?’

They were on a steep hillside, a dense wood to their right, pastures falling away to their left. It was darker now and the snow was falling heavier. Flakes rested in Hiedler’s dark, fine hair. ‘Kurth is a fool. And not just a fool.’ He laughed again, his wet mouth falling open as he tipped his head back. ‘He can’t get it up. You know?’ Again he laughed. ‘He had a wife, but she ran off. Maria helps him out now and then, that’s all.’

‘Oh?’ Seydlitz looked surprised ‘She’s not married, then?’

Hiedler’s eyes narrowed. For a moment he seemed to glare at Seydlitz, then he relented, and turned his head to one side. A strange, lecherous light came into his eyes. ‘You want to know the truth?’

Seydlitz frowned. ‘What do you mean?’

In answer Hiedler pulled off his right glove and thrust it in Seydlitz’s face. ‘That’s her,’ he said. ‘Her smell.’ It stank of her – was ripe with her most intimate scent. ‘All last night I had her. In the room next to Kurth’s.’ He grinned ferociously. ‘He lies there listening to us, unable to sleep for the sounds coming through his wall.’

He laughed ferociously, then pulled his glove back on.

Seydlitz had gone cold. This changed things. He had hoped to spare the woman, but now – now she too would have to die.

‘Isn’t that risky? I mean, what if she falls pregnant?’

Hiedler shook his head. ‘There’s no danger of that. She’s much older than she seems. Thirty-nine, would you believe?’ He laughed. ‘No, I could fuck her until the seas froze over and there’d be no chance of her swelling out!’

They walked on. Where the land dipped they went down, to the right, following an old path that was now grassed over. Through the trees Seydlitz could see the dark outline of a ruined building. Tall arches and soaring buttresses, the stone black against the snow that now lay over everything.

Coming out from the trees, he stopped on a ledge of rock, looking down into the clearing. ‘It’s beautiful,’ he said, for the first time meaning what he said. ‘But what happened? Why did it fall?’

Hiedler clambered down and then looked up at him. Behind him fallen stone littered the snow.

‘Impudence,’ he said. ‘They meant it to last a thousand years.’ Seydlitz shivered and turned his head slightly. The irony was discomfiting. So why did it fall? The thought returned more strongly. He began to climb down, feeling a sudden wrongness to things.

He was halfway down when he heard the noise above him. He turned, one hand holding on to the outjutting slate, and looked up. Above him stood the woman. She was looking down at him and smiling. In her hand was a gun, a large-mouthed Spica.

She had appeared from nowhere.

He put his hand to his chest and jumped. Or tried to. Nothing at all. He was still standing there, the rocky outcrop cold through his glove, the woman above him.

She laughed. ‘Poor boy,’ she said. ‘You poor, poor boy.’

Behind him Hiedler also laughed, but it was not the foolish, self-complacent laughter of before. It was sharper now, more wicked.

Seydlitz clambered down and faced him. The slackness had gone from Hiedler’s face now. With one hand he beckoned Seydlitz on, while in the other he held a Spica similar to the woman’s.

Russians.

‘What have you done to me?’

The Russian smiled. ‘We borrowed you for a time. While you were sleeping. Maria drugged you.’

‘And this?’ he indicated the ruins, the woods on all sides.

‘A game,’ the Russian said. ‘An entertainment. We’re filming all of this, you know. It will be a great success back home when we show it. The last stand of the Third Reich. Its final defeat.’ He chuckled, enjoying himself. ‘The look on your face was wonderful.’

Seydlitz stared at him, not understanding.

‘I’ve seen this already. Heard myself say all this many times before. It’s an odd feeling, you know, being here, doing these things and saying these words after having seen them so many times.’

Seydlitz was silent, trying to understand. They must have cut the focus from his chest. Cut it and healed it. Which meant that they had had him in their charge for months, maybe even years. And all the while he’d slept – or thought he’d slept – in Herr Kurth’s room. There was a sour taste in his mouth, a tightness in his stomach, but he wasn’t beaten yet.

‘I don’t believe you,’ he said.

‘Have it your way.’

Seydlitz circled him, watching the Spica, afraid that he would fire it before he had a chance to use his own weapon.

‘You gave yourself away,’ the Russian said. ‘Time after time you skimped. Only did half your work. Enough to get you by and no more. And you thought it would do.’ He sniffed his disgust. ‘You amateur, Seydlitz.’

The Russian was silent a moment. Then, surprisingly, he sat down on one of the piles of stone and lowered his gun. ‘Like this,’ he said. ‘You didn’t stop to think why there should be a ruin here, in Austria. All the ruins are north, in Puritan Germany. Here the Reformation never happened. The Catholic monasteries were never sacked, never fell into ruin.’

‘So where are we?’

He laughed. ‘Russia. And this – like the village – is all a sham. Convincing, but a sham for all that.’

Seydlitz looked across at the woman. She still stood there on the ledge, but her gun was out of sight now. Seydlitz moved slowly to his right, closer to a low wall, keeping both of them in sight.

‘It was amusing, watching what you did. We learned much from you. That business in ’52, for instance. A bugger of a thing to happen, eh?’ The Russian slapped his thigh and laughed. ‘There you were, all the while warning Hitler against the dangers of provoking America, against a war on two fronts, quoting Mein Kampf at him, and all the time forgetting that there are no fronts in Time. No fronts at all.’

Seydlitz drew the Honig. The Russian looked at it and smiled, while the woman actually laughed. He threw it down.

‘You understand, then, Herr Seydlitz?’

Seydlitz nodded. ‘So what now? You know what happens. What do I do?’

‘You came here to kill me, didn’t you? Then, when you’d done that, you were going to go back for the woman.’

He hesitated, then nodded.

‘Speak up!’

Seydlitz took a deep breath, then wiped snow from his hair and brow. ‘Yes. So what is this? A trial?’

‘Not quite.’

The woman was climbing down. She came across and stood there at the Russian’s side. She seemed tense suddenly, awkward.

‘Come on,’ she said. ‘Let’s get it over with.’

They went round past the towering, half-ruined chancel of the ersatz monastery, picking their way between vast chunks of fallen masonry. There, against the massive wall, stood a cottage. Light shone from its single window. Smoke rose from a hole in its roof.

‘There,’ the Russian said, pointing towards it. ‘Inside. The woman will join you in a while.’

Seydlitz turned to look at him, but he had turned away and was talking to the woman now in Russian. Seydlitz hesitated, then did as he was told.

Inside was a single large room, sparsely furnished. A peasant’s dwelling. A fire burned in a brick grate, but the walls were wood and wattle. It was a Slavic dwelling, primitive, inferior. He looked about it, feeling an aversion for its crudeness.

As he stood there the woman entered. She glanced at him once, then closed the door and crossed the room. With her back to him she began to undress. When she was naked she slipped between the sheets of the bed and called to him.

‘Why?’ he asked. ‘Why should I?’

‘Because you must. Eventually. Oh, we’ve played this out thirty times and more, but you will. I know you will, because I’ve seen it.’

Seydlitz shook his head. He understood none of this. What was it? One final humiliation? Did they think that he couldn’t get it up?

She laughed softly. ‘You, Seydlitz, are dead. But in me you’ll live on. In my child.’

‘You’ve seen this?’ Seydlitz laughed. ‘I can’t believe it.’

‘He’s tall, like you. A strong man. A leader like no other.’

Seydlitz shivered. It was as if they knew his deepest, most treasured dream. He stared at her, his mouth open, shaking his head slowly.

‘It’s true,’ she said, sitting up, letting the sheets fall back to reveal her breasts. Not an old woman at all, but a girl. A young, attractive girl. Seydlitz looked at her and felt a trembling pass through him.

My child. My son. A leader like no other.

‘No,’ he said. ‘This is a trick. A game.’

‘No game,’ she answered. ‘This much is for real. This much will remain unchanged.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘This is the last of it. The tying of ends. The circle mended. Only the file to remind us of the cost of meddling.’

Seydlitz hesitated. He had looked at her face in another light and found it plain, but now he saw its strength, its beauty.

‘I would have killed you.’

‘I know,’ she answered. ‘It doesn’t matter. Only this matters now.’ And, smiling, she drew back the cover. ‘Come, Max. Undress and join me here. Your son awaits creation. Destiny calls him.’

Seydlitz shivered violently. Destiny…

‘Yes. Now come. I want you.’

34

Seydlitz lay there, watching her dress. Outside, in the twilight, the snow fell heavily. Inside, the flames of the fire cast flickering shadows everywhere. He watched the light’s pattern on the smooth skin of her back as she stooped to lift her skirt up over her legs and waist. Her breasts hung free, part in light, part in shadow, and her eyes, when she looked at him, shone with their own inner warmth.

For the first, and perhaps for the only time in his life, Seydlitz was relaxed, at ease. Desire – all desire – had been quenched in him by her, and he looked at last with eyes freed from the wanting that had shaped his life. You, Seydlitz, are dead, she had said, and he had no reason to doubt her. But this was not defeat. His seed lived on in her. Even now it was growing in her, forming their child, their son.

‘What will you call him?’

She had fastened her bra and pulled on her jumper. Now she was pulling on a pair of socks – long socks, thick and woollen – that reached up to her pale and slender thighs.

‘I called him Joseph.’

‘Not Max, then?’

‘No. Nor Adolf.’

Her smile was tighter now. She pulled on her long leather boots, then reached for her coat. ‘I guess I should thank you, really.’

‘Thank me?’

‘For spreading the seed.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘You weren’t meant to.’

He leaned up on one elbow. ‘Do I just wait? Will someone come for me?’

She fastened her coat then looked at him. ‘No. No one will come now.’

The gun was in her pocket. She took it out and pointed it at him. It seemed too large for her hand. A man’s gun.

Seydlitz sighed, watching her. No, there was nothing in her eyes. What warmth there’d been had been only the warmth of satisfaction – of a job well done, a victory achieved. There was no love, no caring there. Those too had been illusory. But what had he expected?

‘Go ahead,’ he said. ‘Get it over with.’

She nodded. ‘I’m sorry. Perhaps I should feel more. I love my son, and what I see of him in you I also love. But you’re not him, Max Seydlitz. You never could be him. And anyway, you have to die. This has to happen.’

Seydlitz said it for her. ‘You’ve seen it.’

She nodded. ‘Our son will be a Russian. And not just any Russian. The Russian. The architect of our modern state.’ Her face lit with pride. ‘A strong and powerful man. A hawk among men.’

Seydlitz stared at her, stunned. Chkalov, that’s who she meant. His son would be Joseph Maksymovich Chkalov, otherwise known as Yastryeb, ‘the Hawk’, Grand Master of Time and rival of their own Grand Master, Hecht.

‘Impossible,’ he said, his voice a whisper. But she was shaking her head.

‘I took him back. Two hundred years. Back to when it all began. That’s where I gave birth to him. The rest’ – she smiled – ‘is history.’

‘I still don’t understand. Why me?’

‘Your DNA. It’s special. One of our analysts noticed the similarity. How closely it resembled Yastryeb’s. And then we noticed others, among the young agents you were sending out into Time. Germans, but not entirely German. Your seed, Max. Your sons.’

Seydlitz opened his mouth to say something, then saw what she meant. He looked appalled.

‘You understand, then?’

‘Russians? I’ve been fathering Russians?’

The gun was still pointed at him. ‘It’s not quite as simple as that. But it was there, among the repeated sequences in chromosome eight. A copy-cat pattern. Like ours, very like ours, but one which your platform still considered German. What I believe you’d call a permitted code. That’s what we used.’

‘Used?’

‘To identify those we could—’

He lunged at her and, as he did, she shot him, knowing he would lunge, one bullet to the head, one to the heart. Making sure. Completing the circle.

‘—turn,’ she said, finishing what she had begun, a sharp and sudden pain in her face, seeing the mess she’d made of him.

She threw the gun down and half turned, seeing Lavrov in the doorway where he always was. Yes, and now it began. Sixteen hours they had. Sixteen hours to do all that they needed to get done.

She looked at him one last time, then stood. ‘He’s all yours,’ she said, knowing from having watched herself a hundred times that these were her last recorded words.

Sixteen hours.