The Empire of Time

109

That night I dream of her.

Night has fallen and we’re in the forest, running, naked in the moonlight, the paleness of her body flashing between the trees ahead of me. I can hear the breath hiss from me, while ahead, in that moonlit dark, her laughter peals out, like the laughter of enchantment. All night we run, hunter and prey. Slowly I gain on her, leaping fallen logs and rocks, running silently, tirelessly through the endless forest, until, in a glade at the bottom of a long, rock-strewn slope, she turns and faces me, a surging, silvered river at her back, a dark stand of pines beyond. She looks about her, like a wild and cornered animal, beautiful in her savagery, but I am upon her and, as I step from the trees, she smiles.

The dark and perfect buds of her breasts are aroused, and as she steps into my arms so her flesh is warm and moist against my own. Her soft mouth lifts to meet mine in a kiss.

And as she kisses me, I wake, aroused, wanting her.

‘Katerina…’

I turn, burying my face in my pillow, then turn back, groaning, unable to bear it.

You might think that I could go to her. But how? Every second of my waking day is taken up. Even so, perhaps I could slip back in Time and spend a day or two with her? After all, I could make it seem that I’d been gone only a moment.

True. Only to do so I would need to be sent back. To travel in Time I must use the platform. And why go back to that particular time right now? For what purpose? To help Ernst subvert Prince Nevsky? But Ernst is trapped, and until he’s freed…

Or, to put it more simply – how would I explain it all to Hecht?

You see my dilemma. And even if I could go back, to what point would I go? If I have married her, then that’s done and in the Past and you might think that I could go back to some moment when she was mine – when, without a moment’s hesitation, I might slip into her bed and, waking her, make tender love. But such a moment does not as yet exist. As things stand I have yet to make her mine. Nor is it certain that I shall, for all that’s in the future – my future, not the world’s.

‘Otto?’

I look up, and find Leni standing there in the doorway. She smiles apologetically, an embarrassed smile, and it’s only then that I realise my condition.

I throw a sheet over my nakedness, then sit up, taking the sealed envelope from her. As I open it, she crouches, meeting my eyes.

‘Are you… in need?’

I know what she means. Do I want to sleep with her? It would not be the first time. Far from it. But things are different now.

‘No, I…’

I fall silent, reading what Hecht has written.

‘Otto?’

I look at her again. Leni is beautiful. Oh, all of our women are beautiful in their different ways, but Leni especially so, with her strong yet narrow face, her short blonde hair and her neat, full-figured body.

‘I have to go,’ I say. ‘It’s time.’

‘Ah…’ And her eyes seem regretful. She smiles. ‘Another time, perhaps?’

‘Perhaps.’

When she’s gone I shower and dress then gather together what I’ll need for the journey. It isn’t much: a gun, a knife and a picture I drew last night of Katerina, the old one having disintegrated in the jump that did for Burckel. Or what pretended to be Burckel. All else will be awaiting me at the platform.

Hecht too is waiting there. He smiles and briefly grips my shoulder. ‘Good luck, Otto. You know what you must do.’

I nod, then step up on to the platform, my bundle in one hand. Urte meets my eyes from behind one of the work-stations and smiles. ‘Good luck.’

And she brings her hand down on to the pad.

110

As the cruiser banks to make its final approach, I look down through cloud at the city below. The Jungfernsee is directly below, the lake’s surface shining like a long, burnished mirror in the last hour of daylight. From this height you can see what a vast, sprawling metropolis Neu Berlin is, a strange, black, crystalline growth, filling the North Brandenburg plain. Even so, the fortress dominates the view, its central tower a vast, extended peak.

There’s a faint murmur of exchanges from the cockpit – our pilot speaking to the control tower – then we begin our descent, swooping down out of the evening sky.

Glancing across, I smile at Heusinger. Klaus knows this age, this place – he’s been here many times – but this once he’s taking a minor role. This time he’s secretary to me, the new ambassador of the Confederation of North American States. I’ve not worked with Klaus before, but he seems an amiable young man, polite, enthusiastic, and thoroughly – thoroughly – German.

This is Hecht’s plan, evolved and carried out while I was being put back together – a thousand tiny slivers of bone removed from my flesh, my right eye rebuilt, my hair and skin re-grown.

Until now we’ve kept our agents on the hinterland of the action, in the suburbs of Neu Berlin and in several other cities of the Empire – in Cologne and New Magdeburg, Hamburg, Lodz, Munich, Oslo and Lisbon. But now we are to move inside, into the fortress for the first time. It’s time to break bread with the decision-makers. Time to meet them face-to-face.

I understand Hecht’s reasoning. It has not been possible to play it otherwise before now. Much of the success of our game depends on subterfuge, on our agents being kept in the shadows, indistinguishable from any native of the Age. But life inside the fortress is lived in the glare of the spotlight. Inside, we must be open and bold. Such a ‘throw’ as this cannot be attempted more than once. Not without alerting the Russians.

Moreover, there are historical factors that we must not disturb – things that must happen. Hans Gehlen, for instance. Right now, in June 2747, Gehlen is a young man of twenty-eight, a genius who, in the coming days – and I do mean days, not weeks – will unravel the mystery of Time and, in so doing, begin the great cycle within which we all exist. Nothing must happen to him. Nor, indeed, to several others who must fulfil their destinies, here in this Age. We have agents in place, of course, protecting them, overseeing them at every moment, yet we must be careful that some action – seemingly harmless but historically fatal – does not unweave our careful planning.

Oh yes. And for once Germany must fall. And everything – everything – be blown to pieces. For that is what happened. That is what awaits us, down the line in 2747. Ragnarok. The twilight of the gods… And afterwards? The Nichtraum. Four-Oh. And war. Eternal racial war – Rassenkampf – with Russia. All else can change, but not that.

We land on top of the garrison building, in the shadow of the massive back wall of the fortress. Stepping down, I look across and up at the huge bulk of the central tower which climbs a thousand metres into the sunlight. Everything’s on a massive scale, yet as I turn to face the welcoming party I register a moment’s shock.

They’re huge, the smallest of them ten feet if they’re an inch.

The five stroll toward us across the open space, then stop and, with a strangely disconcerting uniformity of movement, bow to us. As they straighten, I note how their heads and shoulders are in direct sunlight, their features golden in the sun’s last rays, while their bodies – like us, like every part of us – lie in deep shadow.

The tallest of them stands at the centre of the group, a pace or two in front. He’s head and shoulders bigger than his companions and wears a long black cloak. His face is old and lined, yet also strong and deeply tanned. His grey eyes meet mine with a smile.

‘Ambassador. I am Tief, the King’s chancellor. Welcome to Greater Germany.’

Tief. It means ‘deep’ in the old tongue.

I thank him, yet all the while I’m conscious of the difference in our physical statures. I feel like a child before him, yet he seems to make nothing of it. There’s a kindness in his face that’s wholly unexpected.

‘Come,’ he says simply. ‘You must be hungry after your long journey.’

We walk among those giant figures across a narrow bridge – a giddying drop beneath us, like a chasm in a mountainside – and through a massive circular portal, the curved beams beautifully carved, into a huge yet shadowed banqueting hall.

I say hall, only it’s really a massive slab of stone – or Kunstlichestahl – jutting out into the centre of what is, in essence, one vast single chamber. It’s like being inside a giant lighthouse, to the walls of which have been affixed hundreds of these vast platforms. I can see others above and below us, and between them strange shapes move slowly, drifting between the levels.

I look about me. The black marble floor is empty but for one long table at the far end, set with silver and piled high with huge platters of food.

We take our places and, for a time, indulge in pleasantries. Nothing too profound, and nothing that touches on my business with the King. Tief and I do most of the talking, but eventually the meal comes to an end and, with a smile, Tief stands and, beckoning to me, turns from the table.

I follow, joining him at the edge of the floor. It’s a remarkable sight. Above us and below, other platforms, similar to our own, jut out from the great curved inner wall of the fortress. No stairways link these giant slabs, and in a moment I understand why, as a portion of the floor we’re standing on breaks off and, with a movement that seems almost motionless, glides down towards one of the lower platforms.

I feel a kind of excited fear at being suspended above the drop. A moment’s loss of balance and I would fall a thousand metres. Yet the view beneath me is magnificent. There are kitchens and halls, workshops and classrooms, and – everywhere I look – hundreds of servants, tiny, dark, anonymous-looking figures, moving slowly, silently about their business. Not to speak of the guards.

I glance up, seeing how the platforms above me seem to defy gravity, everything here on a scale to make us lesser beings – we Naturlich – feel smaller, inferior. Or maybe I mistake the intent. Maybe it’s just that the gods build like gods.

Another platform now approaches, a hall with pillars and a dozen great throne-like chairs along one side. As the segment of floor that’s carried us melds with the edge of it, so two silent guards bow low, averting their eyes. Beyond them, the servants they have been supervising fall to their knees, their foreheads pressed to the floor. There is a profound silence to the place, such that our footfalls echo on the stone.

We cross that great, empty floor, approaching a huge archway, each of the massive wooden doors carved with the giant figure of a bear, symbol of Berlin throughout the ages.

Tief turns to me. ‘The King awaits you within. You may look at him, but you must not speak. Not without his permission.’

‘And you, Chancellor?’

He smiles. ‘I shall wait here for you. When you are done, I will take you to your quarters. Meanwhile your secretary will be attended to.’

I smile. ‘You are most kind.’

He bows once more, his long body folding elegantly within its cloak.

The throne room is dark, the ceiling a long way overhead, lost in the shadows. We seem ‘indoors’ here, cut off from the openness of the rest of the fortress. Huge wooden beams cross the darkness above me, the dark forms of ancient banners dangling from their heights. There is a musty smell of age, as if this place has stood a thousand years. Lamps flicker in iron cressets to left and right, high up. I walk forward slowly, hesitantly, my eyes straining to make out the figure of the King. Just ahead of me is an imposing flight of steps – each broad stone step a good metre deep – at the top of which is an enormous marble throne. I make my way towards it and, kneeling at the foot, bow low, resting my forehead on my knee.

‘Please stand, Herr Manninger.’

The voice comes from behind me, to my right.

I straighten and turn, even as he takes a step closer, looming over me.

If Tief was big, the King is massive. He’s three times the height of me, so big a man he seems not made of flesh but of rock. His bare arms ripple with muscles, and though I know he is over two centuries old, he looks no more than fifty. He wears a great fur about his shoulders, like he’s king of the primeval forest, but no ancient king ever looked so mighty, so magnificent.

Looking at him, I am awed. King Manfred is the end result of centuries of selective breeding – a creature at the very limits of what mankind might possibly be. But there’s another reason to be awed by Manfred, because here is the longest serving king in Germany’s long history. He has ruled this land for eighty-seven years, surviving six coups and nine assassination attempts. Yet as he gives me his hand – my own engulfed by it – he seems untroubled, almost free of cares. His blue eyes smile down gently at me.

‘It’s okay,’ he says, in a deep rich voice. ‘You may speak, Herr Manninger. Or should I call you Lucius?’ His smile broadens momentarily. ‘How was your flight?’

‘It was long, Meister, and, I confess, rather tedious…’

I know it’s rude, but I can’t stop staring at him. He is – and it might seem a strange thing to say about another man – quite beautiful. It’s little wonder that his people consider him a god.

The Russians have their own genetic elite, of course – their podytyelt – but they are as nothing beside these Adel.

‘I was, I have to say, surprised.’

‘Surprised, Meister?’

‘Yes.’ And he sits, on the fifth step up, his long legs sprawled out before him like two fallen pines. ‘Oh, I knew that things were happening out in America, that it was no longer such a barbarian wilderness as once it was, but…’

I bow low, acknowledging that. ‘Things have changed. Since the Confederation was formed we have striven hard to eradicate disease and hunger among our people.’

I pause, and am taken by surprise by the interest in his eyes. His is a powerful nation of a billion and a half, America a ragged conglomerate of states totalling no more than eighty million souls – less than the southern quarter of Berlin itself – and he knows this, yet he listens as if we were equals, and I realise what a clever, well-balanced man he is. One might expect a degree of arrogance from such a being, yet he shows no sign.

‘So I’ve heard. Indeed, I understand that you’ve made great strides.’

‘Small steps, Meister, but in the right direction. These fifty years…’ I pause and lower my head slightly. ‘Our achievements might seem modest compared to your own, yet we are proud to have emerged from the darkness.’

There is history here – a lot of history – yet it can be simply stated. At the end of the twenty-first century, the United States came into conflict with its main trading rival, China, and fought what it hoped would be a decisive war. It was. America lost. Not that China won, exactly. Only Europe survived the conflict. Or rather Germany and European Russia.

‘Six centuries of darkness,’ he says, and looks away, as if he sees it clear. ‘It is hard to imagine your people’s suffering.’

‘Meister…’

Only I have seen it. I’ve been there, along with Ernst. Long ago, admittedly, but not so long that I can forget the awfulness of it. After the bombs had fallen there was nothing. Nothing but ashes.

‘Your king?’

I am loath to correct him, yet I must, if only for the sake of consistency – of getting our story right. ‘Our president, Meister…’

He smiles, indulging me. ‘Your president, then. Does he send me word?’

I take the sealed envelope from my pocket and, bowing low, offer it to him. He opens it and reads, then looks across at me.

‘I see…’

It’s not what I expected him to say. He doesn’t seem surprised. But then, what could surprise a man as old and worldly wise as he? It is a request to become his ally. Unsurprising, maybe, only the document, like all else about us, is a fake. Only the seal is genuine. The writing is Hecht’s, the sentiments his alone. Even so, it seems to do the trick.

I kneel. ‘Meister?’

‘Yes, Lucius?’

‘Should I kiss your ring?’

111

It might seem that my business here is done – that all it takes is for the King to say yes, but that’s not so. Though Manfred is lord and master here and has the power of life and death over all, he still needs to consult those who matter in his realm: his many sons and brothers on the one hand; the Guild on the other.

The one body he doesn’t need to consult is the army, and that’s his one great strength, for the army is fiercely loyal to Manfred. And not merely his Leibstandarte – his fortress elite – but the greater mass of the Wehrmacht – the people’s army.

There’s to be a meeting of all parties later this evening, which we are to attend. A feast. Until then Heusinger and I are granted the freedom of the fortress.

Tief offers to be our guide, to show us whatever we wish to see. It’s a generous offer, yet I wonder just how far I might push it.

‘You have heard tell of the Hall of Kings?’ Tief enquires.

I stare at him, surprised. ‘That is a story, surely?’

‘No, no. It exists. Would you like to see?’

‘Why yes, I—’

Tief speaks to the air. ‘Arrange it.’

And so we follow, in a kind of daze, because this is the stuff legends are made of, and true enough, as we step through the massive door, the Hall stretches out before us, a long, comparatively narrow space with a series of high, domed ceilings. The floor is marble, not fake, but a beautiful Italian stone, pure white, with the thinnest streaks of black.

The first of a dozen large glass cases faces us, not a dozen paces distant, like a giant bell jar, its massive, rounded dome reflecting the light of a circle of glow-globes that hover just above.

Tief strides across, then turns, awaiting us. We walk across, then stare.

‘This was the first of them,’ Tief says. ‘The prototype. It’s a lot bigger than a normal man, as you see – a good metre taller – but compared to what followed it’s a crude attempt.’

I look up at Tief, surprised by his comments. Or perhaps they’re sanctioned. Perhaps this is the official view – for this is one of Manfred’s ancestors, the very first of the Adel. Not a king as such, but in the direct genetic line. I stare at the thin, sickly looking creature and can see how it must have suffered. Not so much a man as an experiment in gene-manipulation, this creature looks as alien as anything I glimpsed in Werner’s makeshift morgue.

‘You can see the problems at a glance,’ Tief says. ‘Though the genes had been stripped down and cleaned, and though they did their best to choose for strength, health and intelligence, what resulted… well, you can see it with your own eyes. The first of the Adel were unsustainable.’

And preserved here for all time, I think, wondering what the living creature would have made of such a humiliating fate.

We walk on, to the second of the great glass cases. This one, though little taller than the first, is slightly more human. Not so thin or sickly looking. Yet he shares the pallor of the first, and the same look of unarticulated misery is in his swollen eyes.

Tief smiles at it fondly. ‘With Hans here the geneticists thought they had solved most of the problems, or at least that they were moving in the right direction. The muscle-development, while not good, was much better than in the prototype, and – as you can see – Hans is much stronger, much more viable. Even so, he lasted only twenty-eight years.’

‘And the first? The prototype?’

Tief makes a sad face. ‘Seventeen.’

I nod and walk on, following Tief, listening as he tells me the history of each of these sad creatures. Some are an improvement, others – some markedly so – a regression. Yet every last one of them suffers from those problems that beset humans with greater height, greater body weight: problems of bone-weakness, of poor muscle-development and inadequate heart capacity. For the first nine generations of Adel these problems seemed insuperable. Sickly dinosaurs, they seemed. An evolutionary dead-end. Not only that, but they rarely bred true, nor naturally. Right up until the tenth generation they were, to all intents and purposes, an artificial race, needing the constant help of experts to sustain their line.

We stand beneath the ninth and last of the jars as Tief finishes his tour. Ahead of us the Hall stretches away, echoing empty, not a single glass case between us and the exit a hundred metres distant.

For with the tenth generation the geneticists finally got it right. With Manfred the quest was ended, the ‘greater man’ – the Übermensch – finally made flesh; a viable species, bigger and better than anyone had dreamed of: one that bore live children, and whose lifespan was twice that of mere old sapiens. It was an awesome victory over nature, a staggering vindication of scientific pride. And to the people? To the people it was as if the gods had returned to the earth.

‘Are you tired yet?’ Tief asks. ‘Or would you like to see more?’

‘Lead on,’ I say, and smile. And there’s much to see. The fortress is a wonder in itself, nine palaces in one. Here is luxury – self-indulgence, some might say – quite beyond imagining, yet I quickly tire of it. Besides, there’s something else I want to see, and after a while I take Tief aside and whisper to him.

‘Hmmm…’ he says. ‘That may prove difficult. But who knows? Let me ask, anyway. The Grand Master may just be in a mood to show you his domain, and if he is…’

Tief smiles.

If he is, I think, then we are done here.

I have the map in my head, you understand – the map our two-headed friend Reichenau gave me, identifying the position of the power source. All I need is to match one single point on it with some reality, and then…

But that’s to jump ahead.

We wait, among the furs and tapestries, the marble statuary and the endless gold, while Tief goes off to see what he can do.

I’m silent, thoughtful, but Heusinger’s excitement makes him talk. He loves being here inside the fortress. For twenty years and more he’s dreamed of this.

‘Did you see that painting? That was a Petsch, surely?’

It was. But not one of them will survive. The greatest art works of a thousand years and all – all – will be consumed by the coming fires.

Petsch too will die, and his beloved Pauline. And the thought of it suddenly makes me think of Katerina, and of her mortality. Curiously, her natural lifespan is something I’ve not thought of before that instant and a pang goes through me to think that she will grow old and die.

I look down, distressed, for no good reason fearful for her. Where is she now? And what is she doing?

The answer is that she is everywhere back there; anchored in a million moments to her world, her life like the wake a ship makes in its travels. I can go back and dip into the stream of her being, but she… she is tethered there, tied to her eternal Now.

I look up, meaning to say something to Heusinger, when I realise we are no longer alone. Across from me, seated in a chair by the doorway, is another giant – one of the Adel. And not just any giant. This is clearly the King’s son, for that face, though different in its way, is similar enough to make its source quite clear.

I glance at Heusinger, then quickly bow.

He is dressed like a barbarian, in tight-fitting black leather trousers and a sheepskin jerkin that leaves his hugely muscled arms bare. In his thick, studded leather belt there is a short stabbing sword, like the Romans used to wear. I say short, but the whole thing is bigger than me. He could cleave me crown to groin with such a weapon.

I say he is like his father, but the likeness is that of caricature. Whereas Manfred seems confident and calm with a serenity that suggests great wisdom, this seed of his – if indeed this creature is a direct fruit of Manfred’s loins and not concocted in some vat of chemicals somewhere – seems cruel and spiteful. He has said nothing, done nothing, and yet I see it in his face. There’s a sneering arrogance to his features. His lips, his nose, his deeply blue eyes, all suggest a vicious, petulant nature, and when he speaks, the nasal tone of his voice confirms it for me. Here is a man not to be crossed, not even to be argued with.

‘Who the fuck are you?’

‘Meister,’ I say, bowing low. ‘I am the envoy of the Confederation of North American States. Your father…’

‘Quiet!’

I keep my head lowered, my eyes averted. Though I have the King’s protection, I do not wish to anger this man in any way, though I sense my mere presence is provocation enough.

He stands and, towering above me, walks round me.

‘America…’ And the sneer within that single word becomes a laugh. A laugh that is snuffed out suddenly like a candle. He leans closer, his voice lowered, as if offering me a confidence. ‘We do not need you, whatever he thinks…’

I know by ‘he’ he means his father, the King, but I say nothing. I wait for more, secretly praying that Tief will choose that moment to return, but when someone comes it isn’t Tief, but a woman, another giant, a sister to this sneering demon. She wears a long, revealing cloak of purest white, against which her ash-blonde hair cascades like fine strands of precious metals.

‘Who’s this?’ she asks, her tone dismissing me out of hand.

‘Americans,’ he answers, and they both laugh, a cruel laughter, as if they would enjoy watching us be slowly tortured. My eyes slide sideways, looking to Heusinger. He no doubt knows who these two are and how important they are in the pecking order inside the fortress, but there’s no way I can ask him.

‘He’s a puny little specimen, don’t you think?’ she says, walking round me, then lifting my chin with one frighteningly enormous finger.

‘Hideous,’ her brother says. Yet as my eyes meet her sapphire blue eyes, I note a flicker of interest. Of curiosity. Her scathing disinterest is, it seems, a front, a mask put on to satisfy her brother. But she herself is wondering why I’m there, and why my own eyes show no fear, no awe of her.

I’d smile, only that would let her know that I’d seen through her, and then she might be angry with me.

She turns away, her finger drawing back from my chin, my flesh tingling where she has touched me.

And strangely – strangest of all, perhaps – I find I am attracted to her. As her long, elegant body turns from me, I am aroused. I look down, confused and dismayed, and force myself to think of Katerina, hoping that somehow her image in my head will displace this sudden, unwanted sign, yet my body continues to betray me. The feel of her finger on my flesh, that strange, hard pressure of her touch, has made me wonder what it would be like to sleep with such a goddess.

I shudder, frightened by the thought, appalled that I could even think it.

‘Lucius…’

For a moment I do not recognise my alias. Then, with a strange jerk of my head, I glance across at Heusinger. He gestures towards the empty space in front of us.

‘They’ve gone.’

‘Ah.’ But I feel cold. The shock of the encounter has quite thrown me. ‘Who were they?’

‘The male was Manfred’s sixth son, Hagen. His third wife Gunnhilde’s son.’

‘And the female?’

There’s the slightest quaver in my voice, but not enough to betray the reason for my interest.

‘I’m not sure. Gudrun, probably. They’re twins, you see. Her and her sister, Fricka. Manfred’s nieces.’

‘Ah…’

But then Tief returns, his open, smiling countenance refreshing after such sneers, such lofty arrogance.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘but I’m afraid it isn’t possible to see the Guild quarters just now. The Grand Master has called a special session of the Council and it would not do to intrude upon them. Tomorrow, perhaps?’

‘Of course,’ I say, far more interested by this development – expected as it is – than Tief knows. ‘Tomorrow, then…’

But I know now that it has begun. Just as in the history books. Only I shall be there this time.

112

Our quarters turn out to be a single monstrous bedroom, strewn with awnings that keep those above from spying on us. Alone there, sprawled out on a double bed large enough to house a dozen of my kind, I ask Heusinger to brief me on the internal politics of the court.

‘What you have to ask yourself,’ he says, ‘is what each faction wants. They all want war, of course – unrelenting, perpetual war – but how that war is fought and who controls it, such details are at the heart of their disagreements.’

He pauses to pour me a cup of wine, then continues.

‘The King, naturally, wants things kept as they are. Peace would be disastrous for him. The army is his chief support, and he needs to keep his generals happy. But equally an escalation of the war could prove just as dangerous, in that it would mean giving too much power to those fighting the war on his behalf – power that would, of necessity, be removed from his hands. No, what Manfred wants is stability – no one rocking any boats and the status quo maintained indefinitely.’

‘And the Guild?’

Heusinger shrugs. ‘It’s hard to read. The Grand Master keeps his cards very close to his chest. There’s no “official” Guild policy, but it would seem that the Guild wants precisely what the King wants. You’d think from that that they’d be his staunchest allies in council, only the days when the Grand Master had influence over the King are long past. Manfred acts without consulting them these days, and that infuriates them. More than anything, they’d like to see a new king, one they might control.’

It seems a harsh analysis, and if the Guild are listening – which they undoubtedly are – they’ll not take kindly to it. But we are not here to make friends. We’re not even here to forge the alliance we are supposedly seeking; we’re here to disable the power source, and we must survive in this snake-pit until we can discover where it is and make our move.

‘Do the Guild speak with one voice?’

Again Heusinger shrugs. ‘Once more, it’s hard to tell. If there are disagreements among them, they’re kept well hidden. But it wouldn’t surprise me. They’re not as machine-like as they look. Bio-mechanisms they may be, robots they’re not.’

‘Which brings us to the King’s close family.’ Heusinger laughs, then sips his wine. ‘I say close, but only in the genetic sense. There’s more hatred among this parcel of relatives than in a roomful of cats on heat. The King’s brothers and his sons might be envied for what they have – for a lifestyle matched only by the gods – yet they see themselves as prisoners here in the fortress. They feel impotent, powerless, much more so than the Guild. Like the Guild, they want power, but the only way they could gain it would be to kill the King.’

‘They’ve tried, I take it?’

Heusinger nods. ‘That difficulty aside, their main problem is in agreeing on a replacement. Killing Manfred would be only the start of their difficulties. With the present king dead there would be coups and counter-coups and – who knows? – maybe even civil war. There are at least four separate “pretenders” to the throne and their hatred of each other outshines their hatred of the King.’

‘I see. So in essence there are three factions…’

Heusinger laughs and shakes his head. ‘If only it were that simple, Lucius. No, beyond the internal politics of the court, there’s a much greater problem, that of the Undrehungar, the revolutionary parties, especially the Unbeachtet. They may not have a voice in the King’s council, but their existence cannot be ignored. They’re a real thorn in Manfred’s side. The Security forces try their hardest to deal with them – to eradicate them – but like the famed hydra, cut off one head and another quickly grows. No, Lucius, the Empire is in turmoil; it festers with discontent. And that’s where our friends the Russians come into the picture, for though they cannot hope to win the war, they can still dream of undermining things here. Their agents…’

Heusinger stops and smiles, imagining what the listeners are making of this, then continues. ‘Well, put it this way… I am told that there are places in the city where half the population speak German with a Russian accent.’

We both laugh, but the thought of that troubles me. I think of Burckel and what they managed to do to him, and I wonder just how far, how deeply, the Russians have infiltrated our network here.

‘So to whom should we be most friendly? The King?’

‘He seems our greatest hope. But it wouldn’t harm to court the favour of the Guild. The Teuton Knights are far from being a spent force in this land. They are – or so I’m told – building a spacecraft.’

I can almost hear the indrawn breath, the sudden panic among the various listeners. For this is a secret, and Heusinger has dropped it into the mix as if it were well known. The Guild will want to know how we found out and who the traitor is in their midst. The King, for his part, will want to know why the Guild is building rocket ships without his knowledge.

‘I guess we should get ready,’ I say, as if nothing has been said. ‘You have the gifts for the King?’

There is a knock, not loud or hammering, but firm and sharp. Tief’s knock, if I’m not mistaken. I look to Heusinger and smile.

‘Come in.’

Tief pushes back the massive doors and enters. Was he listening? His face betrays nothing. ‘Gentlemen,’ he says, bowing low. ‘Forgive me for intruding, but there’s to be a ceremony – an offering to the gods – and the King…’ He smiles. ‘The King asks if you would like to witness it.’

‘It would be an honour,’ I say. And it’s true. Not only that, but it is some while since I gave thanks to Urd.

Tief waits while we prepare ourselves, then leads us out, across the platform and then down – floating on a piece of Kunstlichestahl no bigger than a desk top – on to a broad balcony that looks out over what seems a cross between an ancient chapel and a woodland glade, the one transposed inside the other. The walls are bare stone, with stained-glass windows in a medieval style, but there is also earth and rocks, pines and flowing streams, and at the centre of all a great ash tree, towering above the rest, its crown on a level with where we stand, above it all.

The World Tree, Ygdrasil.

Before it stands the King, and others so very like him that I assume they are his brothers and his sons. Those closest to him. Those that hate him most. Sensing me there, he turns, then gestures to me to come down. I glance at Tief, then descend by way of a small stone stairwell, walking out among those giants until I am at the King’s side.

He towers above me, wearing a cloak of midnight blue so dark it seems made of the night itself.

I stand to his right. To his left stands a boy – taller than I, yet a child – holding a basket of apples. But not any just apples. These are huge, gilded apples that glow from within, silver and gold, like they were grown on some magical tree.

Manfred reaches into the basket and plucks out one silver apple and one gold and, holding them high before him, offers them to the World Tree. His voice booms deeply in that silent, enclosed space, deeper than any human voice I’ve ever heard.

‘Urd, daughter of Mimer, who is mind and memory, Goddess of Fate, Queen of Life and Death, accept my offerings and, with your sisters Verdande and Skuld, guardians of the Past and Future, vouchsafe our destinies.’

The Tree shimmers, as if alive, and I see, high in its branches, a great bird, an eagle. Vedfolner, perhaps. It is a movement of the bird’s great wings that has made the Tree shimmer, yet the illusion that the gods responded is strong.

Two handmaidens, half Manfred’s size, dressed in virginal white, step out from the shadows to either side and, accepting his offerings, step across to the foot of the great trunk. They place them there, then step back, and as they do, so a fierce beam of light crackles in the air above, consuming the apples.

Manfred waits a moment, then, taking two more apples, holds them high and speaks again, his voice deep and resonant.

‘All-Father Odin, one-eyed God of War, grant us your love and protection. Wisest of gods, you who were at time’s first dawn, you of the nine and forty names who sees the fate of men and gods, watch over us and give us victory over our enemies.’

Again the handmaidens take the apples and place them by the World Tree, and again they are consumed by the blazing light.

For a third time, Manfred takes two apples and holds them high. His eyes shine now with belief, and his voice, when it sounds a third time, seems to resonate in my bones.

‘Freyja, Goddess of Fertility, whose handmaidens sit beneath the boughs of the great World Tree, grant us long life and happiness and many children. May your beauty be our inspiration always.’

From all sides there comes a deep murmur of agreement. All about me and above me, heads bow towards the great Tree. Again it shimmers.

It is the simplest of ceremonies, over in a moment, yet I find myself moved beyond all expectation. I am used to the forms and phrases, for this is our religion, yet rarely have I heard them uttered with such conviction, such belief, never have I felt so certain of the gods’ existence, and so, after a moment, I bow low, as if in Odin’s eye, and Manfred, seeing this, places one of his great hands upon my shoulders.

‘You have gods in your country, Lucius?’

‘We do, Meister. But none as powerful as these.’

And I mean it. For though I have believed in the gods since I was a child, rarely have I felt their living presence as I did today.

We walk on, across the soft dark soil, and through, beneath the boughs of the great World Tree, into a long, lamp-lit corridor and thence into the Hall. And once again I am surprised, for what surrounds me is no less than an ancient chieftain’s lodge, a huge, log-walled chamber with great shields and swords and axes on the walls, built in the ancient style. At the centre nine great trestle benches have been set up, eight in the main body of the Hall, in four rows of two, and one at the head, raised on a platform above the rest, as in olden days. There’s straw on the cold stone floor, and, as in centuries past, a great fire roars in a massive grate to one side. The scent of burning pine fills the Hall.

I have sat in halls like this – smaller, danker halls, admittedly – when Germania was but a scattering of tribes hated by Rome and unified by lust and aggression. I have sat and eaten thus with many an ancient king, even with the great Hermann of the Cherusci, known to Rome as Arminius, whose armies defeated three legions in the Teutoburg forest, back in ad 16, but this is the strangest gathering I’ve ever attended; for while those ancient kings sought to impress me with the ‘luxury’, the modernity of their lodges, these Übermensch approach things from the opposite direction. They play at this retrograde simplicity, as if it suits them to be plain, unadorned brutes. Barbarism is in their blood, like a drug, yet their brutality is a matter of style.

It’s a strange gathering in another respect, too, for rarely have I seen such a mixture of types of people – huge and tiny, gene-sculpted and bio-mechanical. The Guildsmen are conspicuously absent, and I note immediately that two of the benches at the centre sit empty. While the King goes among his people, shaking this man’s hand or speaking to another, I look about me, surprised to see so many Naturlich among the ranks of the Adel. Heusinger, at my side, is pointing out various ministers, explaining their role in things, when I notice Gudrun, seated to my right.

It’s barely an hour since I saw her last, yet she seems more beautiful than ever. Not only that, but when our eyes meet, she seems to start with surprise.

That moment’s startlement confuses me. What does it mean? Surely she can’t be interested in me? Yet to my surprise she stands and, coming across, smiles and gives me her hand. Her eyes are strange. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were filled with gratitude. But why should she be grateful?

She leans down and whispers. ‘Thank you, Otto.’

This time I’m shocked. Shocked that she knows my proper name. But I also haven’t a clue why she should be thanking me.

‘I’m sorry?’

But there’s no time to find out. Tief appears at my side and, hurrying me on, leads me across to the high table.

Everything here is manufactured to the scale of the Adel. Massive silver platters, bowl-sized cups, knives the size of swords, the forks like tridents. Even so, the King has made concessions to his guests, and though it makes us feel like infants at an adults’ table, we have been given special chairs, special bowls and plates and cutlery.

The King, indeed, has honoured us, placing us to his left at the high table, above many who are patently brothers and sons – princes all of this mighty race.

Many an eye is on Heusinger and me. Many a scowling face scans us haughtily and looks away, as if we are – quite literally – beneath their interest. Among them I notice Hagen, seated with several of his brothers on one of the tables below and to my left. His sneering smile seems to welcome me, though I know he wishes me nothing but ill. I look to Gudrun again, seated among a group of maidens to the right, Valkyrie all, their blonde hair braided for the feast, plate armour beneath their silken, flowing robes, like illustrations from some ancient book of myth. And as I look, so she meets my eyes again, then looks away, as if flustered. As if something has happened between us when I know for a fact that it hasn’t. And I wonder if this is some kind of game she’s playing, to wind up Hagen, maybe. To make that bastard jealous. Only Hagen isn’t conscious of it.

There’s a strong buzz of talk, then a trumpet blows and all there stand, looking towards the two great doors at the far end of the Hall.

They march in like a cohort of ancient legionaries, four abreast behind the Grand Master, awkward, mechanical-looking creatures in pale blue full-length cloaks trimmed with purple, each of them identical to the Guildsman I saw at the club. Yet though they are huge by comparison to ordinary men, beside these Adel they seem diminutive. As they march to their places, I notice a kind of mocking superiority in the eyes of the Adel, as if the Adel know they don’t have to march four abreast to intimidate their enemies.

We wait as the Grand Master bows before the King, then wait a moment longer, the silence strained, as the Guild Knights take their places. Then and only then, does the King sit again, relaxing, turning to me with a smile, even as the Hall fills with talk and laughter once more.

‘Our friend Adelbert does love to make an entrance…’

Adelbert is the Grand Master, and that sentence sets the tone, for from there on the King confides in me, letting me know just what he thinks of whom, and why.

‘You see those five,’ he says, raising his voice as he points out a group of Adel seated to our right, close by the maidens. They look to be of an age with him – brothers, not sons. ‘They look full of themselves, don’t they, Lucius? But they’re lucky to be alive. I had them neutered. Made sure those sons-of-bitches wouldn’t breed.’

I raise an eyebrow and he explains.

‘They tried to kill me.’ He smiles, then raises his goblet to them in a toast. ‘I could have had them killed, only they are my brothers, after all.’

It’s impossible not to see the bitterness in their eyes, the festering hatred, and I wonder how Manfred can live with this and still be sane. No wonder Burckel called this a hornets’ nest.

He looks to me again, even as the first dish is served. A rich meat broth, with fresh-baked bread.

‘Your king, Lucius, is he as small as you?’

‘Our president…’

‘Forgive me, your president. Is he…?’ And he gestures to me with an amused smile, as if I ought to know what a pathetic specimen I seem. And maybe it’s so, but I don’t feel intimidated by him. I know that his kind are a genetic dead end. The Future, however it turns out, is not going to be ruled by these Adel.

I smile pleasantly. ‘He’s a small man, yes, and thin, too. But very clever. And tough. You don’t know how tough such a small man can be.’

‘Oh, I can guess, Lucius.’ And, taking a spoon the size of a ladle, he begins to eat his broth, tearing at a loaf that’s as large as a roasting pig.

I’m surprised at the way he launches into his food, for you would have thought there would be a taster, considering how much his own family want him dead, yet he seems to take no precautions against poisoning.

Or maybe I’m just missing something.

Between mouthfuls, he continues our conversation. ‘You’ve met Hagen, I understand. A nasty little brute, isn’t he? But typical of my children. Ingrates all. And none too bright, either, despite their genes. At least, not as bright as they need to be. As for their mothers, my wives…’

He gestures to his right, where, at the end of our table, a group of women have been sitting all this while in total silence, not eating, their sour expressions an indication of just how little they want to be there.

‘Grasping bitches, the lot of them! Not a pinch of kindness in any of them, even the youngest! They think only of their sons and who will rule when I am dead. But what do you expect when you have to fuck your own family?’

I don’t know what to say. His candour throws me. I stare, then shake my head, as if I’m dreaming, but Manfred seems not to worry whether I answer him or not. He merely wants to talk, to berate those about him.

‘They say it’s our destiny. That the future belongs to the better race. Well, so it is, Lucius. We are the future. But getting there…’ He laughs bitterly. This is a different king from the one I met earlier in the day, and it makes me wonder what has happened to make him so.

‘Take this war we’re having with the Russians. This “race war”, or Rassenkampf, as my ministers love to call it. What’s that all about? How in Thor’s name did we get ourselves embroiled in that? Is that too part of our genetic destiny? Must we obliterate all of our rivals to succeed? Because if that’s so…’

‘Meister…’

Tief interrupts, sensing, perhaps, that the King is about to overstep the mark.

‘Yes, Tief,’ he says, turning towards him, a weary sigh escaping him. ‘What is it?’

‘The Grand Master wishes to speak to our guest. He asks if he might take a place at the high table.’

‘Ho ho!’ Manfred says, and rubs his massive hands together, as if delighted. ‘Tell him to approach. Oh, and set him a place… there… facing me. I’d like to see him struggle with the broth.’

My eyes clearly have a question in them, because he leans towards me and, in an exaggerated whisper says: ‘They don’t eat, Lucius, they re-charge.’

And he giggles. At least, as much as such a big man can giggle. It’s a rich, deep chortle that goes on and on and only stops as the Grand Master steps up on to the platform.

The Hall falls silent.

The King stands and puts out a hand, as if offering a place to a friend, but I can see how little friendship there is between the two men. The Grand Master bows, then, at the King’s gesture, sits, facing us. And as I look at him, I have my first surprise. Though he is mostly metal and wire, plastic and lubricant, there is someone in there. Two bright eyes sit back some way in that great mask-like piece of circuitry, like someone has been trapped inside.

Hydraulics hiss. Metal creaks. ‘Ambassador.’

The voice is smooth and deep, without a trace of machine-enhancement.

‘Grand Master,’ I reply, with a little bow, conscious that, for all his title claims, there is only one real ‘master’ in this Hall, and that’s the King.

His head moves slightly, like a tank turret, taking bearings on my face. ‘I understand that you wished to see the Guild apartments. I am most regretful that we could not grant you that today. But if you would be my guest? Tomorrow, at dawn?’

Though Tief has undoubtedly told the King of my request, the Grand Master’s courtesy clearly surprises Manfred, and he glances at me.

‘That would be most kind,’ I say, ‘unless, of course, the King has other plans for me.’

‘No, Lucius,’ he says. ‘You must go. I’m told it’s very Spartan there. But you’ll like their theatres, I’m sure… I’m told they have plenty of theatres…’

I look down, trying not to smile. Manfred doesn’t mean places of entertainment, he means operating theatres. For Guildsmen aren’t born Guildsmen, they’re made, transformed into the kind of complex bio-mechanism that sits before me only after hundreds of operations. Manfred might make a joke of it now, but it’s why, as a breed, they’re so well used to pain. So capable of transcending it.

The Grand Master waits a moment, as if expecting more, then speaks again, looking to me as he does.

‘Forgive me, Ambassador, but I’m curious. Why did your masters send so small a mission? There are, I understand, just two of you.’

I smile. ‘That’s so.’

‘Ah… yes… yet it would seem…’

‘Inadequate?’

Manfred, beside me, smiles. But I sense he too would like to know the reasoning, so I continue.

‘It’s a matter of simple expediency, Grand Master. A larger mission would have required a much bigger craft, and we do not have one. As you probably realise, we are rebuilding fast, yet our level of technology…’ And I shrug, as if my admission of our weakness is endearing, but the Grand Master looks far from amused.

‘There is another matter,’ he begins. ‘You say you have come from America, yet our agents report that you flew in from Africa. From the Tunisian coast, to be precise.’

‘That’s true,’ I say. ‘We have a base, in Dakhla, on the coast of the Western Sahara. One of several small outposts that facilitate trade.’

‘Ah. And you flew there first?’

‘And refuelled. It would not have done to have flown in over Germany with an empty tank. Who knows where we might have dropped out of the sky – and on to what…’

Manfred laughs, amused, but I am beginning to wonder what the point of these questions is. Don’t the Guild believe us? Have they other information about our mission?

‘You’ve heard why they’ve come?’ Manfred asks, looking directly at the Grand Master.

Again that turret of a head revolves, like it’s about to take aim. ‘No, Meister… though I believe we shall be discussing it.’

Manfred, however, is not so polite. ‘Oh, he knows, Lucius. Our friend Adelbert here has his spies everywhere. And so do we. They know what we are doing and we know everything about them… or almost everything.’

The Grand Master is staring at Manfred now, his head seemingly frozen in one position, as if some mechanism has locked.

‘They love the pretence,’ Manfred says, an edge now to his voice. ‘They love to make people think they’re on my side, even while they’re spying and prying and building spaceships…’

‘Meister!’ the Grand Master protests. ‘We are not!’

‘Not? You mean, not spying on me? Not prying into my affairs?’

The Grand Master’s head unlocks, makes a fluid sideways motion. He seems about to say more, then decides against.

Manfred, though, does not leave it. ‘It will be destroyed, Grand Master. And you will give me proof that it has been destroyed. And as for its architects – you will hand them over to me, tomorrow, before midday.’

‘Meister, I…’

‘Tomorrow!’

The Grand Master bows, then stands, waiting to be dismissed, and for a moment I begin to think that Manfred will keep him there, only even the King can only take things so far, and after a second or two’s delay, he waves his hand, dismissing him.

‘I’m sorry, Lucius,’ he says, as the Grand Master takes a seat below us. ‘I meant to keep that business until later… but he annoys me. He’s so humourless… so pompous and self-righteous. Yes, and such a hypocrite. They say he likes boys. Young boys…’

I glance at the King, surprised. Then again, these are people who have lived in each other’s pockets for a century and more. That’s time enough and more for nerves to fray and tempers be shredded. The only wonder is that they haven’t self-destructed before now.

These Adel have been bred with great wisdom, yet they’re also, in some crucial way, like children. Spoiled, petulant children. Even Manfred, now that I see it. Yes, even Manfred.

I’m about to be indiscreet – to ask Manfred about Gudrun – when the trumpet sounds again. I look across, and as the end doors open, I get a glimpse of a woman – an Adel, fully Manfred’s own size, cradling something in her arms. As she comes closer, so I make out what it is. A child – a baby, to be more precise – though no baby I have ever seen was quite so large, so obscenely overweight. Though a newborn, he must be four feet, maybe even five head to toe. And I know, without attempting it, that I’d as easily lift a horse and run a furlong with it on my back as lift and cuddle this child of Manfred’s.

Coming up on to the platform, the woman hands Manfred his child and he stands, the proud father, showing it to everyone, no trace of his earlier bitterness extended to this innocent. Yet as he hands it back, I note a flicker of sadness in his eyes, as if foreknowledge of the child’s inevitable corruption has darkened even this for him.

It’s at this point that I notice Gudrun stand and, with a word to those about her, leave hurriedly. I’ve noticed that she’s been distracted for some while, staring down into her untouched bowl and tugging almost compulsively at her braided hair, yet the way she leaves – without a sign, without a backward glance – makes me wonder just what’s been going through her mind.

She has been gone only seconds when there’s a huge explosion from somewhere below us. The platform shudders, and in the silence that follows, I turn to Manfred and see a strange, almost withdrawn expression in his eyes.

‘Tief,’ he says quietly. ‘Go find out what that is.’

As his chancellor hurries off, so Manfred sits there, picking absently at the half-eaten loaf, looking about him at his relatives, a kind of vacant yet predatory glare in his eyes.

Tief returns and, leaning in close, speaks softly to Manfred’s ear. For a moment there’s nothing, and then I notice how the King’s hands have clenched into fists; see, at the same moment, a strange, almost excruciating pain in his face.

Manfred stands, looking about him blindly, pain and rage at war in his face, tears coursing down his cheeks. And then he bellows at the watching Adel.

‘You cunts! You heartless fucking cunts!’

Eyes watch him warily from the body of the Hall. No one’s laughing. No one wants to draw attention to themselves. The King looks deadly in this mood. They know he’d as soon slit their throats as talk to them.

He gasps with pain, then looks to me. ‘Lucius. Come with me. You must see this.’

I don’t know why he asks me, but I follow hastily, running to keep up with his gigantic strides. Members of his special elite – his Leibstandarte – hurry to join us, forming a bodyguard about us as we hasten down a long curve of steps and out on to a kind of balcony.

It breaks off and floats out into the central space. There’s smoke below us, and a strong smell of burned plastic and roasted flesh. As we descend into it, I see that one of the lower platforms has been badly damaged, a large chunk of it blown away. It’s a sleeping chamber, and the place is a wreck, pieces of debris scattered everywhere.

Manfred groans as he takes it in. ‘Father Odin, weep for her,’ he says quietly, tears running one after another down his massive face.

I look to Tief, but he shakes his head, as if he’s loath to say a word. But Manfred notices my curiosity, and, with a shuddering breath, tells me what I’m seeing.

‘Her name was Signy, Lucius, and she was my aunt. The best of them. The sweetest, kindest of women. My mother’s sister. Her best friend, and, after my mother died, mine.’

And I see in that instant just what a blow this is to him. Whoever did this meant to cripple him. To strike right at the heart.

We step out on to the damaged platform, to a scene of carnage. There is a body in the bed but it would be hard to identify it. It looks like it’s been flayed. In fact, there’s so much blood about that I realise it can’t have come from just one person, no matter how big she was.

Manfred staggers, then straightens. ‘I’ll find them, Tief. And when I do…’

His face is filled with horror at the sight, but there’s also a hardness there now, a determination, and I know that his vengeance will be horrible. Such a vengeance as might empty Asgard. Or would do, were there time. But Manfred’s time is running out. This is the start of it. The beginning of the end.

‘Do we know who was here?’ he asks a captain of the guard, who presents himself before us.

‘There were six in all, Meister. Your aunt, two of her serving women, a guard, and her grand-daughters…’

Manfred blinks, shocked. ‘The twins? Gudrun and Fricka?’

Impossible, I almost say. Gudrun could not have got down here in time. Only…

Only what? Only she should have been here? Or was, and then wasn’t…?

It doesn’t quite make sense. Not yet. But I’m beginning to have an inkling of what happened. Or part of it, anyway.

I need now to get away. To be somewhere where my absence won’t be missed.

‘Forgive me,’ I say quietly. ‘But I feel quite…’

Manfred reaches out and holds my arm with one of those huge hands, as if to keep me standing.

‘You understand now, though? You understand?’

‘Your Meister, I—’

‘I’ll find out who did this, and be sure I’ll make their lives a living hell. Only…’

Only what? He never says. Just looks to Tief and nods. And, releasing me to Tief’s care, he turns back to stare at the figure on the bed – that awful bloodied scarecrow of a corpse – his eyes so bleak I cannot bear to look in them again.

A king. Who could bear to be a king?

113

Tief sees me back to my quarters. Heusinger’s waiting there, and when I tell him what I want to do, he shrugs, as if he’s expected all along that I’d do something crazy.

‘You’re going to consult Hecht, though?’ he asks, but though I nod, he doesn’t believe me. Only I know now with a gut-driven certainty that my fate and Gudrun’s are tied together somehow. She would have died there, at her great-aunt’s bedside, but for my intervention. Which must mean she’s important. Just why I don’t know as yet, but I do know – or think I know – what I’m about to do.

‘Wait for me,’ I say to Heusinger, then jump. Back to Four-Oh.

Hecht is busy, but it doesn’t take much to persuade the women. I have them send me back first to the moment after the explosion, armed with a camera. Then that done, they send me back again, to the moment after I first met her – after that meeting with her and her odious brother Hagen.

As she steps out of the chamber, so she finds me there, her eyes widening in surprise.

‘But I thought…’ And she looks back.

‘Oh, I am in there,’ I say quickly. ‘But I’m here too.’

‘But you can’t be. I mean…’

‘Listen,’ I say, with such unexpected authority that she falls silent. ‘I am not what I seem to be. My name is Otto Behr and I come from the future. If you want proof of it, just look.’

And I hand her the holo-prints.

‘Urd’s breath,’ she says, horrified. ‘Who is…?’ And then she recognises the hangings behind the bed and gasps.

I feel sorry giving her such pain, but it’s necessary, even if I’m not sure why just yet.

‘I can’t prevent this from happening. But I can prevent you from being there. You were going to see her, weren’t you?’

She nods, shocked now, silent.

‘Well, don’t. Go to the banquet instead. You’ll see me there. You must thank me and use my proper name. Okay?’

‘Okay…’ But then she looks at me, a moment’s uncertainty in her eyes. I can almost read what she’s thinking. What if this is a trick?

‘You want me to prove it?’

‘If you can travel in time…’ She blinks, then nods to herself. ‘I broke a cup, a favourite of mine, just this morning. If you could bring it to me whole.’

I nod. ‘But first you must take me to your rooms. I must know where I am jumping to.’

‘Of course.’ And then she shakes her head as if she’s gone mad. ‘Otto, you say? A time traveller?’

‘You want proof?’

She hesitates, then nods.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘Then let’s go at once. There’s no time to lose.’

114

I hand her the cup, a pretty lavender-glazed thing the size of a small punch bowl. In her hands it seems fine almost, delicate.

‘What’s happening, Otto? Why are you here?’

‘There’s a war going on,’ I say, breaking all the rules in saying it. ‘A war in time. And for some reason I need you to be alive. I don’t know why just yet, but…’

‘My aunt, my sister Fricka?’

I shake my head. I can’t save everyone. And the explosion has to happen. It’s part of the chain of events that leads… Well, you’ll see, I hope. Only I can’t disturb that part of it. It has to happen. Manfred has to be riled by the act. He has to seek his vengeance.

Even now he’s giving orders, rounding up the suspects. Bringing them in to his torture chambers, happy to tilt his kingdom into anarchy for the sake of his dead aunt.

Gudrun puts the cup down, then looks at me, her eyes now filled with wonder. ‘Otto… what’s really happening?’

‘I can’t say,’ I say. ‘Only that I need you.’

She almost smiles at that. And then I jump, leaving her there, the loosest of loose strands that somehow – I hope – will come to make sense.

115

I jump back, to those moments after the explosion. Back to the beginning of the madness that will rip everything apart. Tief has left, to do his master’s bidding, leaving Heusinger and I alone. Much will happen this evening, but we cannot be a part of it. No, this evening we must trust to history. It is tomorrow at dawn that our part in events begins.

Or so I’ve been led to think. Only it doesn’t happen that way. Already things are changing. The simple fact of our presence there has changed it, maybe, or the act of involving Gudrun. Whichever it is, I am summoned again just after midnight, and taken down to the very roots of Asgard – to the great dungeons – where I am brought once more into Manfred’s regal presence. I ought not to be, perhaps, yet I am surprised by his appearance. His hair is matted and he is wearing a butcher’s apron that is encrusted with blood.

The bitter anger – one might almost term it madness – that was in his eyes, has grown, intensified, one might say. To see such a huge man in his rage is fearful indeed, yet he smiles at me graciously and has me sit, before gesturing to Tief.

‘I wanted you to see this, Lucius,’ he says, one great, bloodstained hand resting lightly on my shoulder. ‘I wanted you to bear witness to the depths of iniquity of my kin.’

He says ‘kin’ like it’s the foulest blasphemy he could utter.

I swallow, wondering what’s in store, but I don’t have long to wait. One by one they are dragged out into our presence, the marks of torture clear on them. Sons and brothers, Guildsmen and ministers, wives, uncles, even his daughters. Not a single one of them has escaped investigation. His torturers have been busy tonight, and this is the result, this series of confessions and betrayals.

But lest you think me soft, I have seen worse than this. I was in Novgorod, in the winter of 1570, when the tsar, Ivan IV – known to history as ‘the Terrible’ – earned his name by putting whole families through holes in the ice. I was there when he boiled one of his own ministers – Nikita Funikov – alive, and when he forced his cousin’s wife and children to drink great cups of poison.

Oh, I’ve seen worse than this, but not from such a man. History is filled with the acts of demons. Such is nature. It is only when such a great man – a man filled with the potential for good – is brought to such wickedness, that the gods weep.

And the last of them to be brought is Gudrun. I stand, shocked to see her in that condition, her head shaved, the torturer’s scars livid on her pale flesh. Is this why I saved her? For this?

‘Otto?’

Manfred has turned, staring at me. I am standing, I realise, staring open-mouthed at Gudrun.

‘Why her?’ I ask quietly.

‘What?’ Manfred asks, as if my question makes no sense. ‘She was supposed to be there, and she wasn’t. She…’

I don’t wait to hear any more. I jump, and find Hecht waiting for me this time.

‘What is it, Otto? What’s happening?’

I tell him and he frowns. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Nor do I,’ I say, interrupting. ‘But she’s important.’

‘You know that for a fact?’

I shake my head. No, it’s instinct. Pure gut instinct. Only Hecht won’t buy that. Or will he? If we’ve failed before, maybe he’s willing to take a gamble on my instincts. Or maybe that’s why we’ve failed. The truth is I don’t know.

‘Otto? What do you want to do?’

I hesitate, then say it. ‘I want to go back again. To change it somehow, so that she’ll be safe.’

‘This isn’t…?’

‘A love thing? No. It’s instinct. Pure gut instinct.’

Hecht smiles. ‘Then let’s go with that.’

‘What?’

‘You heard me. We’ve tried everything else.’

‘Sorry?’

Hecht’s smile fades. ‘We’ve done this thirteen times now, Otto, and every time we’ve had to unravel it all and start all over. But this time… this thing with Gudrun. It’s a new twist. It didn’t happen before. The thing with the cup…’

Hecht turns and clicks his fingers. At once Urte comes across. In her hands is the lavender-glazed cup I went back and ‘saved’ as proof to Gudrun that I could travel in time.

I stare at it, amazed.

‘It was in Gehlen’s trunk,’ Hecht says, ‘among his things. We asked him where it came from, but he never understood why it was there. But now, perhaps, we know. It’s a time-loop, Otto. It can’t be anything else.’

116

I jump back, to the moment after I left her, and watch her blink, almost in disbelief, as – having vanished into the air itself – I reappear an instant later.

‘Change of plan,’ I say. ‘You must leave here. If Manfred finds you…’

It proves difficult to persuade her. There’s no ‘cup’ I can return with to prove what I’m saying, yet she believes me. Only she doesn’t like it. Running away, she feels, will only ‘prove’ her guilt. But she has no choice. Manfred – Manfred, that is, after his aunt’s death – will be in no mood to listen to the truth. Guilty and innocent alike will feel his wrath, and I can’t change that. If that doesn’t happen, then the rest of it won’t happen either, and neither we nor the Russians can allow that. But I can save Gudrun, and it seems I must.

‘Where will you go?’ I ask.

‘To Erfurt.’

‘Erfurt?’

‘In Thuringia. We have a castle there. It’s not often used, but my aunt…’

She stops, then looks to me again. ‘Is it true? Is it really going to happen?’ I nod, then, taking the images from my pocket, hand them to her. ‘Here. Keep them. But go. There’s no time to lose. And let no one else know where you’re going. Every second counts now.’

She hesitates, then stoops and, unexpectedly, kisses me, that huge mouth of hers leaving the softest, most delicate touch upon my lips. And then she’s gone.

I stare after her, then put my hand up to my lips, amazed.

And jump. Back to the room. Back to the moment, just after midnight, when Manfred summons me again.

117

I watch the dawn come up from the battlements of Asgard, Heusinger beside me. After the night’s events I fully expect Adelbert to overlook his invitation to me, yet even as the first light breaks over the eastern suburbs the Grand Master sends for me.

‘What a night,’ he says, as I am ushered into his presence.

The room’s a high-tech cell. Bare stone walls surround a central nest of cutting-edge technology. But what did I expect? These are warrior-brothers, after all. The same thinking that drove their distant ancestors, the Teuton Knights, drives them.

‘I didn’t think…’ I begin, then stop, seeing how he’s watching me from where he’s seated before his screen.

Like Hecht, I think, surprised to be making that connection. Yet it’s true.

‘That I’d keep my word?’

But there’s no edge to that. If anything – and this is the greatest surprise of all – Adelbert seems amused. But why? Because he survived the night?

‘You seem… unconcerned by what’s happened.’

‘Unconcerned? No… everything that happens in the palace concerns me. Unsurprised might be better. It was only time before Manfred lost it.’

It’s such a casual comment, that I actually wonder if I heard aright.

‘Lost it?’

‘His patience. His temper. His sang-froid.’

Unexpectedly, Adelbert laughs. Distinctly human laughter from what looks like a machine.

‘Were you…?’

‘Behind the bomb? No. Not that I’d admit it if we were. Manfred will be watching us even now, sifting our words. Especially now. But this once, no. I rather liked his aunt. Or maybe “liked” is too strong a word. Respected.’

He pauses, then his head rotates again, his eyes meeting mine.

‘You want to know who did?’

‘You know?’

‘I’m fairly sure.’

‘Does Manfred know that?’

‘Not yet.’ And there’s a mischievous tone to his voice. ‘Not until I tell him.’

‘But…’

‘Our king is a great man. Passionate. Strong. Wise, even. Yet he could learn something from the Brotherhood. How to distance himself, for instance. How not to succumb to anger.’

I’m not sure I want to have this conversation. It feels like I’m betraying Manfred simply by talking to Adelbert this way.

‘Anger can be a useful tool,’ Adelbert continues, ‘only it must be controlled, channelled. To let it shape one’s actions…’

He stands, then slowly comes across, speaking quietly to me, leaning in, as if confiding some great secret. ‘I have the men who did it. Would you like to see them?’

This is all a game, I realise. Through me, Adelbert teases Manfred. Or torments him, maybe. Yet if Manfred really is watching…

I nod, and he gestures to me to follow. And so I follow, down a long, steep flight of steps into the very depths of the earth. There, in a long, dimly lit cell, chained to the wall, their feet dangling, are three men. Two of them are strangers, the other…

He meets my eyes briefly, then looks away, giving no hint that he knows me. And maybe he doesn’t, not in this time-strand. But I know him. He’s Reichenau’s man, Heinrich.

Adelbert stands there, contemplating his prisoners, so still he seems switched off.

‘How did you find them?’

His great head swivels round. His eyes, peering out from that mass of metal and plastic, meet mine.

‘We were trailing them. There was an incident, two nights back. One of our Guildsmen was killed in the Tempelhof, and these three – known agents of a revolutionary clique – were observed in the immediate vicinity. It might have been coincidence, only last night they entered the Konigsturm, under the pretext of undertaking basic maintenance work. They were there, in Signy’s chambers, less than an hour before the explosion.’

‘I see…’

Only I don’t. Why, after all, should Reichenau want Signy dead? What did he hope to achieve, other than to bring Manfred’s deadly fury down upon his over-sized head?

It makes no sense. And yet, historically, it’s true. It’s what happened, every time.

And what has happened yet again. Only this time I’m here, mixed up in it, and Gudrun’s free, and…?

I turn and look at Heinrich once again. Reichenau’s the key. Only the key to what? To de-stabilising the whole situation? If so, then why? Does he – patriot that he is – want Germany to fail? Is that his aim? To bring the whole thing crashing down?

Or doesn’t he know? What if it’s just some vast miscalculation on his part?

Manfred’s voice sounds suddenly in the air about us. ‘Meister Adelbert…’

‘Yes, Majesty…’

‘You will deliver them at once.’

‘Of course, your Majesty.’

I’m sure he’d smile; if he could. As it is, he turns and, gesturing to me, says simply, ‘Come.’

118

‘Well?’ Heusinger asks, when I’m back with him. ‘Did you…?’

Find it? I shake my head.

‘You saw…?’

‘Everything.’

Yes, and nothing I saw correlated in any way with the map Reichenau gave me. The power source, wherever it is, isn’t here. Not in the Konigsturm, anyway.

Heusinger hesitates, knowing that every word we say is being listened to. Then he shrugs. ‘So what do we do now?’

‘Gehlen,’ I say. ‘We go and see Gehlen.’

‘But that’s—’

‘Not permitted? Maybe not. But if anyone knows where it is, he does.’

Heusinger stares at me. ‘Maybe, only we don’t know enough about him. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t been briefed about Gehlen.’

I haven’t either. And that is a weakness. But that isn’t going to stop me. My instinct is so strong at this moment that I can almost touch it, and didn’t Hecht himself say I should go with that?

I smile, and that only makes it worse for Heusinger. He wants to argue with me, only that would only make things worse, because if they are listening to every word and acting on them, then they’ll be busy right now, asking themselves why we’re so interested in one of their leading physicists and whether there’s a connection.

Which there isn’t. Not yet anyway. Only they’re not to know that.

‘Trust me, Klaus. I know what I’m doing.’

‘Do you?’

‘Yes.’ And I make it sound convincing. Only the truth is I don’t. What I’m doing now is operating on the basis that if all else fails, try Chance. Flip a coin, roll a dice, turn a card and see what turns up.

‘Do you know where he lives?’

‘No. But I can ask.’

‘Lucius, can I ask you something?’

‘Go on.’

‘What if you’re wrong? What if this is why you’ve failed each time?’

119

If it is, then we’re fucked, because I’ve no other strategy right now. I’m trusting to a glazed lavender cup, a beautiful goddess and pure gut instinct. Reason has nothing to do with it.

Tief comes at our summons, looking tired, as if he hasn’t slept, which is probably the truth. His secretary, a small, nondescript man – a Naturlich – stands just beyond him, very much in his shadow.

‘Gehlen?’ Tief says, looking surprised by my request. ‘I don’t see why not. Only… may I ask why?’

I look to Heusinger. ‘Our president… he much admires the man. His most recent work on positronic collision…’

Tief stares at me, then shrugs and makes a gesture to his secretary, who hurries off at once. ‘Okay. I’ll arrange it. But forgive me now, I—’

‘How is he?’ I quickly ask. ‘The King, I mean.’

Tief hesitates, then, softly, ‘I fear for him, Lucius. This business…’

He says no more, but I understand. This business has unhinged Manfred. Reason has fled. What lies ahead is darkness, and Manfred at the centre of it all, like a black hole, sucking everything – every single last thing – into himself.

‘Good luck,’ I say. ‘And thanks.’

‘Think nothing of it,’ Tief says, then turns away and is gone.

I turn, looking back into the chamber. Heusinger is still staring at me.

‘You should go back,’ he says. ‘Consult Hecht.’

‘No,’ I say, and as I say it I feel a strange certainty welling up in me. ‘This time I’m doing it strictly my way.’

120

The coincidence does not, of course, evade me. We are in Erfurt, in Thuringia, just about to touch down, and as the craft descends towards the platform, I am conscious that she is nearby, and that Fate has shaped it so.

Fate or the gods.

Gehlen is here, too, for this is where he works three days of the week. Just south of here, to be precise, in Orhdruf. And it’s there, if anywhere, that the singularity – their tame black hole – is kept.

‘Rather you than me,’ the pilot says, as he gently touches down.

I look to him. ‘Sorry?’

‘This place…’ He shudders. ‘When they turn the power on, all manner of strange things happen.’

‘What?’

‘The big accelerator… it jumbles up reality. I was here once when they switched it on. One moment I was clean-shaven, my hair neatly trimmed, the next… bushy as a bear, holes in my clothes.’

‘You’re kidding.’

He laughs. ‘As I said: strange things happen near that place.’

I frown. It isn’t possible, is it? I mean, the place is only a particle accelerator. A powerful one, maybe, but even so…

I stare at the pilot, wondering if he’s joking with me. All Ages have their superstitions, after all – their urban legends, if you like – and why not this for the Age of Super-Science?

One of Tief’s men greets me from the craft and ushers me quickly through customs and out to a waiting hover-car. It’s only when we’re in the air that I realise that we’re not heading south but west.

‘It’s okay,’ the man says, not looking up from the controls. ‘She’s expecting you.’

‘She?’

‘The Princess.’

And now I am confused, because Tief isn’t supposed to know about that. Unless this isn’t Tief’s man at all.

‘How did she…?’

‘She’s been waiting. She knew you’d come.’

I’m quiet after that, looking out over the landscape as the urban sprawl that surrounds Erfurt gives way to countryside, until there, in a fold of the land just ahead of us, lies a castle – an ancient-looking Schloss with turrets and a keep. We head for it and touch down on the battlements.

Gudrun stands there in the doorway, waiting for me. She looks more beautiful than ever, in a pale blue full-length gown, her golden hair, let loose from its braid, falling in twisting ringlets down to her waist. There is a necklace of fine gold about her lovely neck and as she sees me she smiles.

‘Otto.’

What do I say? That I’m not here to see her? That I have to see Gehlen, and soon?

I smile and walk across, letting her take my hands in hers, overwhelmed once again by the sheer size of her, by her unearthly beauty.

She has been crying. Tears stain her cheeks. She smiles and gently laughs.

‘Forgive me, Otto, it’s just…’

‘Does Manfred know where you are?’

She looks away. ‘I don’t know. If he does…’

If he did she would be dead. Or maybe not. Maybe he’s content to wreak havoc only on those within his reach. Maybe he’s too distracted thus to worry too much over one absent face.

‘And Tief?’

‘Tief is my uncle.’

‘Ah…’

So that’s it. That’s why I’m here, and not with Gehlen. Even so…

‘Gudrun – can I ask you a favour?’

‘Anything.’

‘I need to see someone. A man. He works not far from here, In Orhdruf.’

‘Gehlen, you mean? But he’s here already. I had him brought.’

‘You had him…?’ I stare at her, surprised.

She smiles. ‘My uncle said you wanted that. But I had to see you. And so…’

What was it Hecht once said to me? That Fate is a boat without a rudder. Well, so it seems right now, as, my hand in hers, I walk beside her, like a young child beside his mother.

She takes me through to a nearby chamber where a massive table has been set for just the two of us. We take our seats at one end of it, then, at her command, the servants leave us.

We are alone.

Gudrun looks to me, her blue eyes smiling through some deeper sadness. ‘You know what has been happening, Otto?’

‘In the Konigsturm?’

She nods.

‘Yes. I saw some of it,’ I say quietly. ‘Manfred summoned me down to the cells to witness what’s been happening. It was awful.’

She sighs and reaches out to cover my hand with her own. ‘Why does it have to be like this, Otto? What went wrong?’

That, perhaps, is the hardest question to answer. But I try.

‘Because it has to go wrong. Because all of this is fated.’

‘All of it?’

I smile. ‘Almost all. There are things that can’t be changed. Otherwise…’

‘Otherwise what?’

‘Otherwise I’m not here at all. And if I’m not here…’

‘I don’t see that,’ she says with a passion that once again surprises me. ‘I don’t see why it has to be so.’

‘Because this is where it begins. Time travel. Gehlen invents it. Here, within the next two days.’

Her eyes widen, her mouth falls softly open. ‘Oh…’

‘So now you know.’

She removes her hand and sits back, lost for a moment in her own thoughts. Then she looks at me again. ‘So I’m… part of the circle?’

Her understanding pleases me. ‘Yes. But don’t ask me how. Don’t for Urd’s sake ask me how.’

121

Gehlen is furious. As I step through the door he almost runs at me and pokes me in the chest.

‘What in fuck’s sake is going on? I’ve work to do, and you bastards bring me here and make me kick my sodding heels…’

He stops, seeing how strangely I am looking at him.

And what do I see? A youngish man of twenty-eight, slight of build and short – less than five feet six – who has already lost most of his hair. Yet his eyes are unlike any I have ever seen. If intelligence can be seen, then Gehlen has intelligence. It fair burns in those dark green eyes of his.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say, bowing to him slightly. ‘It wasn’t at my order. But I did need to see you as a matter of some urgency.’

He stands back a little, his whole manner arrogant, superior.

‘And who the fuck are you?’

I almost smile. Here he is, our hero – creator of everything we depend on at Four-Oh – and he’s acting like an odious little toad.

‘My name is Lucius Manninger and I’m the American ambassador.’

‘So Lucius Manninger, what do you want?’

How direct can I be? More to the point, how far can I trust Gehlen?

‘Not here,’ I say, conscious of the camera on the wall just above and beyond him.

‘Then not anywhere. I have no secrets. My masters know what I am.’

Only that’s not true. They’ve no idea what’s in his head. Not a clue.

I smile. ‘Okay. Then I’ll ask you straight. Has there been a drain on the power source these last few days?’

It isn’t ‘straight’ at all, but it does get a reaction.

‘How did you know that?’

Reichenau, I could say, only I don’t. ‘A little bird told me.’

Gehlen gives the faintest nod. ‘And this little bird… why were they talking to you? More to the point, what’s your interest?’

How do I answer that? Do I just press on and hope that Tief and his master, Manfred, are so distracted that they’ll not notice what I’m up to? No. I can’t count on that. So I keep to my cover story. At least, until I can get Gehlen alone, and out of range of a camera.

‘It’s like this,’ I say. ‘We – America, that is – are considering an alliance with Greater Germany. We thought that we would benefit from such an arrangement. Only…’

Gehlen’s eyes bore into me. ‘Only what?’

‘Only things are falling apart here. You’ve heard what’s happening at the Konigsturm?’

Gehlen laughs humourlessly. ‘Why would I know what’s happening there? I’m a physicist, not a courtier.’

‘Maybe. But even physicists can be affected by what’s happening at court.’

‘There’s been another cull has there?’

‘You could say that.’

‘So what’s different about this one? They happen. Nothing changes.’

‘I think you’re wrong. But the power drain…’

‘Is a fault somewhere. It has to be.’

‘Why?’

‘Because the maths doesn’t work. The power has to go somewhere. Energy can’t just vanish, that’s a universal law – it has to be conserved.’

‘Somewhere? Or somewhen?’

He looks at me strangely, then laughs. ‘You really don’t understand, do you?’

‘Maybe not. Only there is drainage, correct?’

‘Correct.’

‘And you don’t know why.’

‘Not yet.’

‘Where is it kept?’

‘Pardon?’

‘The singularity. Where is it? It isn’t under Berlin.’

Gehlen smiles, then looks up at the camera. ‘Can I go now? I’ve work to do.’ He looks back at me. ‘Oh, and I’d curb that curiosity of yours, if I were you. People have been killed for less. Even ambassadors.’

‘It’s under Erfurt, isn’t it?’

Gehlen doesn’t even so much as blink. ‘Even if it were, I wouldn’t tell you.’ He pauses. ‘I serve my masters well, and honestly.’

That may be so, only his masters are about to let him down. And I still need to find out where the power source is so I can shut it down and free Ernst.

Or maybe I do know. Maybe my guess was spot on. Erfurt. It would make sense. If Gehlen were using immense magnetic forces to bend the trajectory of basic particles, then he’d not do it under Berlin. He’d do it elsewhere. Somewhere much smaller. Like Erfurt. Which would explain the pilot’s strange comments.

Time-jumps, caused by the manipulation – the distortion – of the basic laws of reality.

Gehlen waits, and after a moment a door opens at the far end of the chamber we are in and a servant bows his head as Gehlen walks across and, without a word, without a backward glance, leaves the room. Leaving me alone.

‘Otto?’

The voice is hers. She has been watching our exchange. Listening in.

‘Yes, Gudrun?’

‘Why did you want to know those things?’

122

I explain it to her, when we’re alone together, and she laughs.

‘How silly you are. You only had to ask.’

‘What?’

‘You want to see the accelerator, right? Well, I can take you in with me, as my guest. I have clearance.’

I stare at her. ‘But you’re…’

‘A princess. Of the royal blood. And Tief’s niece. And people do what I tell them to.’

‘But Manfred…’

‘Is busy. And while he is – while he’s looking elsewhere – I can get you inside.’ She smiles. ‘Maybe that’s why.’

I stare at her, then laugh. She’s quick. Quicker than I expected. And maybe it is why I ‘saved’ her. To be my key. My way in.

‘Okay,’ I say. ‘But can we go there now?’

Her smile seems a foot wide. ‘The flyer’s waiting. We only have to get on board.’

123

Seeing me, Gehlen groans, then gives a great huff of exasperation.

‘You? What are you doing here?’

‘He’s with me,’ Gudrun says, squeezing in through the hatch.

The flyer isn’t designed for someone her size, but she makes do, taking two seats and stretching her long legs out along the aisle. And I find that being inside such a small space with her has a strange, dream-like quality, like sharing a rabbit hole with Alice.

As the ship lifts and glides towards its cruising altitude, Gehlen tries to ignore us only Gudrun has other ideas. Looking to me, she gestures towards the overhead cams.

‘They’re off. You can speak freely if you want.’

I look to Gehlen.

‘No,’ he says. ‘Not even with the cameras off. I’ve nothing to say to you.’

‘You’ve been working on it,’ I say. ‘Trying to understand the fluctuations. The discontinuities.’

His head jerks round, alarmed.

‘Oh, nothing visible, nothing out loud. Nothing the watchers could make out. But in your head…’

He seems shocked. ‘How do you know that?’

I don’t say. I let him dangle a moment. Then – ‘You want to talk?’

‘No!’ But he says it too quickly, and that’s the give-away. He does want to talk. In fact, he positively aches to share his thoughts.

I shrug. ‘Okay.’

He’s still for a while, then he turns and looks at me. ‘Who are you?’

‘A friend.’

‘I don’t believe that. A friend wouldn’t expose me like this.’

‘Expose you?’

‘To suspicion. I’ve children…’

‘I know.’

‘Then you’ll know I can’t take risks. I can’t talk. I can’t…’ He looks down, then sighs heavily. ‘I just can’t, that’s all.’

I like him better when he’s not being so cock-sure and arrogant. And I take his point about his children. Only… they’ll be dead two days from now. Dead. And there is nothing any of us can do about it.

I soften a little. ‘Look… I’m sorry. But what’s done is done. I’ve met you now. And if Manfred has any suspicions, he’ll have them whether you speak to me or not.’

‘Only I won’t.’

‘So you’ve said.’ I leave a brief silence, then, as if to Gudrun, say: ‘It’s the equations. They keep running off to infinity. And that’s bad. It indicates that the laws of physics are breaking down.’

I look back at Gehlen, who’s now staring at me open-mouthed.

‘Either that,’ I add quietly, ‘or the maths is wrong.’

‘The maths is right,’ he says, so softly that I have to strain to hear him. ‘I’ve checked it endless times. In my head.’

‘And now there’s drainage, too.’

Gehlen meets my eyes and nods.

‘Somewhen,’ I say.

‘Yes… only it isn’t possible.’

124

They’re waiting for us at Erfurt – four of Manfred’s ships. As we land, their guns are trained on us.

‘Shit!’ Gehlen says, his face pressed to the cabin window. ‘Shit!’

He turns and glares at me. And who can blame him? Only I can change it; make it all right again.

I concentrate, thinking it through. I could jump, back to Four-Oh, then jump directly to the moment before I first meet Gehlen. There, confronting myself, I could tell myself not to board the flyer with Gehlen, but let him return alone, unhindered, to Erfurt. The rest could be left to transpire as it did until that point.

Right. Only there’s a problem. If I don’t get on the flyer, then I won’t be there to make the jump back to Four-Oh when things go wrong. If I take myself out of the loop, the loop will vanish.

In other words, we’re fucked.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘Sorry?’ He looks at me despairingly. ‘You’ve ruined me! You and your stupid fucking questions!’

And he puts his head in his hands and groans.

Get a grip, I want to say. No one is going to harm you. Only I don’t know that. Because this is a whole new train of events I’ve set in motion. And if I can’t jump out…

But before I can even begin to think of a solution, Gudrun takes matters into her massive hands.

I hear the sound of safeties being taken off, feel a new tension in the air and, turning round, realise that Gudrun is no longer in the craft.

She’s outside, talking to one of the soldiers. I can’t make out what’s being said, but suddenly the man’s voice rises to an angry shout.

I rush to the hatch and look out. Gudrun is standing there, towering over the man – a captain – while all about her his men point their weapons up at her. It’s a tense moment and I try to defuse it.

‘Gudrun… move back from him. And for Urd’s sake do as he says.’

She looks at me, surprised. I sense that it’s against a habit of a lifetime for her to take orders from a common Wehrmacht officer. Even so, she does as I’ve asked.

Things relax a little.

The officer looks to me and nods. ‘Ambassador. I have orders to take you back to Berlin. To the Konigsturm.’

‘And my friend?’ I ask, indicating Gehlen, who can be seen through the thick glass of the cabin window.

But the officer doesn’t say. ‘If you would come now, Herr Lucius…’

125

What have I done? What in Urd’s name have I done?

On the flight back to Berlin, I picture it. Gehlen in chains in a cell in the Gefangnis, the Guild prison, unable to complete his work. Unable to come up with the equations that will be the saving of us all.

In which case…

I stop, mentally staring out over an abyss. Surely, if I have fucked things up, then it will simply end? If Gehlen doesn’t complete his work, then we’ll all just disappear, like so many ghosts – isn’t that so?

Isn’t it?

But here I am still, bound hand and foot, a prisoner, sitting between two visored soldiers in the back of a troop-carrier.

So maybe it isn’t over yet. Maybe…

No. No maybes. It can’t be over. Something has to happen. Something which sets it right. Which allows Gehlen to complete his work and forge the circle.

After all, the snake has to swallow its tail.

Back at the Konigsturm I am taken straight to Manfred’s private suite where, roused from his bed, he comes out to face me, draped in a dark blue silk gown the size of a sail, a deep anger in his clear blue eyes.

‘Lucius, oh my dear Lucius, what have you been up to?’

‘It’s Otto,’ I say. ‘Otto Behr. And I’m German.’

But he seems not to hear me. Or ignores me. Whichever, he gestures towards the centre of the great chamber, and as he does, so a holo-image forms, life-size in the air.

‘Do you know this man?’

I do, if only from the distinctive double head. It’s Reichenau.

‘No.’

‘He says he knows you.’

‘You have him prisoner?’

‘We did. In the Gefangnis. But he blasted his way out. He and his accomplices.’

I am quiet for a time. When I look up again, I see that Manfred’s watching me. He seems less angry now.

‘Tell me,’ he says. ‘What were you doing down there? Why were you so interested in the power source?’

‘I had heard rumours, my lord.’

‘Rumours?’

‘That there was leakage. That the impossible had happened and that the black hole was failing.’

Manfred studies me a moment, then turns away. ‘Are you working for them, Lucius?’

‘Them?’

‘The Russians.’

I laugh. It’s so preposterous, it’s almost funny. ‘No. For us.’

‘Us? Who’s us?’ And he half turns towards me as he asks, like he’s teasing a child.

‘The Volk. The German people.’

‘Ah.’ He’s quiet a moment, then. ‘Your arrival. It was… timely, shall we say. Just as things began to go wrong. The drainage. The bomb. Perhaps…?’

He doesn’t finish his perhaps, just leaves it as a general insinuation.

‘I have done nothing, My Lord.’

‘Nothing? Smuggling my niece out of the palace. Trying to get in to our highest security establishment. Mixing with the leader of the Unbeachtet – the most powerful Undrehungar sect. You call these nothings?’

‘I’ve never met the man.’

‘And yet he says he knows you. Made a great point of it, in fact.’

‘Before he escaped.’ I pause, then: ‘I didn’t think it possible, to escape from the Gefangnis.’

Manfred turns and faces me. ‘I ought to have you killed. You, and Gehlen and that stupid meddling niece of mine. Only…’

I wait and he finishes. ‘Only I’ve seen too many die these past few hours.’

So I’m to live. Good. It saves me disappointing him and jumping straight out of there.

He crouches, his face almost at the level of my own, yet not quite. Even on his haunches he is still a good few feet taller than me.

‘So what were you talking about? In the flyer…’

‘My lord?’

‘Just tell me, Lucius. Save yourself the pain. I really don’t want to hurt you. I rather liked you. You seemed… fresh. Untouched by it all.’

I’m silent, and so he sighs and straightens, his tall, well-proportioned body seeming to climb up and up until his head almost touches the ceiling of the room, high as that is.

‘Oh, Lucius, why don’t you simply tell me? It makes things so much easier. So much… nicer.’

‘I asked him about the leakages.’

‘And he said?’

‘He wouldn’t answer. He’s very loyal. Was fearful for his children.’

‘A boy and girl, I understand…’

I look up at Manfred. Is he teasing me now? Being sadistic? Has last night’s work broken something in his mind?

But he only looks disappointed.

‘What will happen to him?’

‘Gehlen? Nothing. He’s far too valuable. Besides, I believe him.’

‘And Gudrun?’

Manfred doesn’t answer, and after a moment there’s a knock. It’s Tief. He stands there in the huge doorway, his grey head bowed, awaiting his master’s orders.

‘Your niece,’ Manfred says. ‘She must tell us everything. Unless she does…’

Tief seems to bow even lower. ‘Master.’ And then he turns and leaves, obedient to the last.

Manfred looks at me. ‘You say your name is Otto?’

‘Yes, My Lord.’

‘Then tell me, Otto. What’s happening? What’s really happening?’

126

I want to help her, only I don’t know how. I don’t even know where she is.

Jump, I tell myself. Go back. Unthread it all, stitch by stitch, then put it back together differently.

Only how? And, more to the point, when?

My mind’s a blank. For once I’m totally at a loss. Gudrun’s important – she has to be – only I don’t know in what way. I’ve not a clue what part she has to play, except that she clearly does.

Manfred didn’t like it that I refused to talk, but for some reason he’s loath to torture it out of me. Or maybe he’s trusting to Gudrun telling him everything he wants to know.

Guards take me back to the guest quarters. There’s no sign of Heusinger, and when I ask, they refuse to tell me where he is.

I sit on the bed and wait. I could jump, sure, but why jump until I need to? Why not see first where this time-strand leads?

An hour passes and then, at last, someone comes.

It’s Tief. He looks at me, a grave sadness in his eyes, then shakes his head. ‘You should never have intervened,’ he says. ‘You should have let things take their course.’

I frown. What does he mean by that? Does he know I’m a Reisende? Has Gudrun told him everything?

‘How is she?’ I ask.

‘Alive.’

It’s an ominous answer.

‘Will she be punished?’

‘That’s not for me to say.’

‘She had no part in it, you know.’

Tief says nothing. But it’s noticeable how he won’t even look at me now. As if, like Manfred, he’s badly disappointed in me. After a moment he says, ‘You must come now. The King wishes to speak with you again.’

I go with him. I have no choice, unless, of course, to jump, and as I said… I want to know where this all leads.

Manfred is in his War Room, one great wall of which is dominated by a giant map. Germany is in black, to the left of the great screen; Russia, in red of course, is to the right. And that is all there is, almost as if nothing else exists.

Death and blood, I think, looking at the stark contrast of the colours.

‘Herr Behr,’ he says, greeting me. ‘Come, take a seat. I want you to see this.’

That seems my role, as far as he’s concerned. To be his witness. To sit there watching while he acts. And so I shall, for a time.

There’s a nest of computer-stations just below where we are sitting, between Manfred and the giant map. In each small semi-circular station sits one of his commanders. As he speaks to each, so they swivel round in their great padded chairs and look up at him through dark glass visors on which quick strands of colourful lettering run.

Ge’not, I note with surprise.

‘Marshal von Pasenow…’

‘Yes, Your Majesty?’

‘You can begin the assault.’

Von Pasenow gives a beaming smile of pride within the darkness of the glass, then swivels back. On the map a bright line of gold begins to glow in the most northerly sector, broadening by the moment.

Manfred looks to me, then gestures towards the map.

‘They’ll hit back. Or try to. Only this time my commanders will be operating under zero restraint. This time it’s total war.’ He meets my eyes. ‘Us or them.’

The thought of it chills me, but only because I know. Billions dead, and the great Earth itself a wasteland.

We could stop it, only if we did, we too would disappear, and immediately it would happen yet again, for this alone is ‘locked in’, like there’s some sick set of scales at work, creating this warped balance. We get time travel, yes, but at the greatest cost imaginable.

So it is. For this is how it happened. And how it’s happening now, for all my attempts to meddle.

I might have known. Only… Ernst is still trapped, and if I don’t free him then I won’t get back to Katerina. And that – though it seems so very little in the great scheme of things, so selfish – is, for me, unthinkable.

‘What if they use their bombs?’ I ask.

‘We’ll shoot them down.’

‘And what if they’ve bombs in place, right here, in Neu Berlin?’

He looks at me pointedly. ‘Have they?’

‘If I were them, I would. Wouldn’t you?’

He almost smiles. ‘We have. In Moscow.’

‘Then…?’

‘Our agents are at work right now. Rounding them up. Neutralising them.’

‘You’re that confident?’

He nods. ‘We infiltrated them long ago. Sleepers. Counter-agents. It began last night, after we freed Reichenau.’

‘You let him go?’ That does surprise me.

‘And watched where he ran to.’

‘So you have him under observation?’

Manfred looks away, for the first time uncomfortable. ‘We did. But he vanished.’

‘Vanished?’

‘Into thin air. One moment he was standing there, the next…’

My mouth falls open. Reichenau… Reichenau the patriot. Another fucking Russian.

I stand. ‘Forgive me, but I have to go.’

‘Go?’ Manfred looks both confused and annoyed. ‘But I haven’t said you could go anywhere.’

‘Forgive me, Your Majesty,’ I say and bow. And as I do, so I jump, leaving him staring at the air in shock.

127

Hecht, for once, is anxious to see me. He hurries me from the platform to his room, and there, an infinity of space between us and any listening ears, I tell him what I know.

‘And that’s it?’ Hecht looks almost as disappointed as Manfred was in me.

I nod. ‘Gehlen wouldn’t speak. He just wouldn’t cooperate. If I could get in closer to him, make friends with him somehow…’

Hecht laughs. ‘No one makes friends with Gehlen. Even his wife was a stranger to him.’

‘But he has children.’

‘Yes, but they die, along with everyone else. What use are they?’

It’s harsh, but I know what he means. ‘Maybe they’re the key. Maybe if I can get close to them, then I can get close to Gehlen.’

Hecht sits back, staring at me sceptically. ‘I thought Gudrun was the key.’

‘She was, only…’

‘Look, Otto, you’re playing blind man’s bluff, and you know it. Your instincts…’ Hecht sighs. ‘There’s something you ought to see. To make you understand why I’m taking you off this case.’

‘But…’

Hecht raises a hand and I fall silent. ‘Just come with me. Back to the platform. I think it’s time you understood something.’

128

I stand there, staring about me in awe.

Bare rock climbs from the green, a half mile and more, into a vividly blue sky, the deepest blue I’ve ever seen, while down here, on the floor of the valley, a crystal-clear stream meanders its way through the lush grass that covers the lower slopes like moss in a bowl.

I reach down and pluck a blade at the base. It’s thick and long and as broad as a man’s hand, greener than green, so it seems, and fat with moisture; a sword of greenness, the very grass of Eden. Among its rich, ripe verdancy, the great nodding heads of flowers – their massive petals garishly bright, red, yellow and purple – tower over me on every side, while great orange and blue butterflies the size of dinner plates flutter and dance in the air wherever I look.

The encampment is further down, nestled at the lower end of the valley, alongside the network of caves that pepper the limestone walls. It’s hot, humidly so, the sun a large, flattened ball of orange at our backs. A tropical sun.

Hecht turns to me and smiles. He looks transformed out here; a new man. His grey eyes gleam as he looks about him, taking in deep lungfuls of the sweet-scented air.

‘Urd save us, Otto. Just look at this place!’

But I don’t need to be told. I am already struck by its beauty.

‘Where are we?’

‘Three hundred and ten thousand years bc. Give or take a century or two.’

I stare at him, astonished. As far as I know, this is the furthest back any of us have ventured. Here, we are on the very edge of things, the very limit of the platform’s reach. Not that there isn’t power enough to go back further, but beyond this we can’t guarantee the accuracy. Beyond this, as Hecht’s assured me many times, it’s all hit and miss.

We walk on, and as we descend towards the far end of the valley and the huts come into view, so someone steps out of the largest of them and, raising his left hand to shade his eyes from the sun, waves to us with his right. It’s Hecht – another, younger Hecht, but him, definitely him.

Beyond the huts are a few tended plots and pens for the animals, innovations Hecht has clearly brought with him, for the natives of this age were mainly hunters, and were for the best part of a million years.

‘Are those what I think they are?’ I ask, the slightest anxiety in my voice.

‘They are,’ he says. ‘See if you can tell the men from the women.’

The creatures are gathered in a tiny group to the right, a dozen or so of them, the long auburn hair that totally covers their bodies making them seem more ape than human, but these are no apes, these are Neanderthal.

As we come closer, young Hecht calls out to us.

‘Did you remember the gifts?’

Hecht lifts the sack he’s carrying, and as he does, so there’s an excited keening among the creatures.

Closer to, we see how they hold back, as if shy or frightened, keeping their distance. But as Hecht takes the sack and turns to them, they crowd about him, stroking his arms and back and shoulders as he hands out the gifts, a low, deeply burred murmur of sound coming from the creatures.

They’re much shorter than us, but stouter and, I’d guess, much heavier. Though their arms and legs are shorter, they’re built like bulls, their heads especially. And, of course, they have those famous pronounced brows, which give their eye sockets a deep, almost cavernous appearance.

Hecht’s eyes are shining with an excitement I’ve never seen in them before. ‘Look at their hands, Otto,’ he half whispers. ‘Look how delicate they are!’

I’ve noticed it. And though one cannot call these people gentle exactly, they seem quite sensitive. You only have to see their paintings in the caves to realise that.

The gifts given out, Hecht turns back to me, still smiling, a very different Hecht from the one I’m used to. He’s relaxed and totally off guard here in the distant past.

‘They call themselves the huuruuhr,’ he says, making a deep rolling sound in the back of his throat. ‘As you saw, they have their own language. But I’ve been teaching one or two of them our language, and you’ll have a chance later on to talk to them. First let me show you around.’

I want to ask him what we’re doing back here, wasting time, when Ernst is still trapped; only I know that no time’s passing up the line. We can step back a second after we’ve left and carry on. But Hecht seems to need this break. Indeed, I can see now how he manages to carry on. This is how he recharges. By coming here.

The creatures have begun to wander away, yet as they do I note how one of them – a female? – looks back at us, an expression of pure curiosity in her deep-set eyes. She has a picture book, I see, holding it to her thickly haired chest as reverently as any priest ever held a bible.

‘Who is that one?’ I ask Hecht quietly.

‘That’s Ooris. You’ll meet her later. I think you’ll be surprised. But first come and meet my older brother, Albrecht.’

His older brother. That, naturally, surprises me. Even that Hecht has a brother is a revelation. Yet it makes sense now that I know. I always wondered who it was he confided in. Who shared his thoughts, the way he shares ours.

Albrecht leads us inside, into his hut. It’s one big, open room, with a large bed in one corner and a desk in another. All very simple and unadorned. Albrecht smiles and offers me the chair, but I’m happy to stand.

‘So you’re Otto,’ he says, his eyes taking me in. ‘The Einzelkind.’

I look to Hecht, surprised. But Hecht seems unperturbed. ‘Albrecht knows everything,’ he says. ‘And I mean everything.’

I wonder what that means, because there are surely things that even Hecht doesn’t know, if I’m anything to go by.

‘He’s the Keeper,’ Hecht says. ‘But you’ll see that later.’

I’m not sure what Hecht means by ‘Keeper’, but I let it pass. All in good time, I think, trying to take in what this all means.

Hecht has a brother, who knows everything.

I look about me, taking in small details. There’s a picture of a woman in a silver frame on the table beside the bed. Their mother? If so, I’ve never seen her before.

Albrecht, meanwhile, is looking to his brother. ‘It didn’t work, I take it?’

‘No.’ Hecht hesitates, then: ‘It was another blind alley.’

I guess he’s talking about my last trip back to Asgard.

‘That’s why we’re here,’ Hecht says. ‘I thought it was time Otto knew.’

Albrecht nods. ‘I thought so. But why now?’

Hecht shrugs. ‘Because…’

I don’t quite follow, but it would seem that our failures have brought Hecht to a decision.

‘It’s becoming impenetrable back there,’ he says after a moment. ‘There has to be a path through the maze, but what it is…’

Albrecht nods. Then, looking to me, he smiles again. ‘Forgive me, Otto. I’m being a dreadful host. You must be hungry after your travels. Would you like something? A sandwich, perhaps, or a drink of some kind?’

It’s an odd thing to be asked when you’re back in Neanderthal times, but I smile and nod. ‘That would be nice,’ I say, and watch as he goes to the door, and in fluent Neanderthal, bids one of the natives bring me something.

129

An hour later the three of us are climbing the grassy, tree-covered slope beyond the cabin, emerging on to a broad ridge, from which we look down across a landscape which – though I’ve seen many landscapes in many times – is the most spectacular I’ve ever seen. In the distance, running the length of the horizon there’s a mountain range, its seemingly endless peaks dominating the skyline from north to south.

‘The Alps,’ Hecht says, and I nod, realising where – geographically – we are.

Between us and the mountains is an Edenic country of rock and pool and tree; an undulating landscape of such magnificent wild beauty that it makes me think that there really was a Fall, and that this is what we yearn for when our imaginings turn to such things.

‘They’re out there now,’ Hecht says, ‘hunting.’

‘They?’

‘The rest of the huuruuhr.’

‘Ah…’ And I relax. For a moment I thought Hecht was speaking of the Russians. But this is one place they surely don’t know about. One place they’d never guess we came to.

‘Come,’ Hecht says. ‘It’s just there, down the path.’

We follow a dirt path down through the rocks, then turn left, through a screen of cypress trees, into a dark and narrow space. There, between two smooth, white stone walls, lies a steel door.

It looks like a vault.

‘Otto, I have to ask you not to look for a moment.’

I avert my eyes as Hecht taps a code into the keypad by the door. A moment later it hisses open, a draft of cool air reaching out to envelop us.

We go inside, into a marvel of high-tech efficiency. It’s a library, a massive storage room, with endless screens and shelves stretching floor to ceiling and, in one corner, a long kunstlichestahl work surface on which are all manner of tapes and files.

‘Welcome,’ Albrecht says, turning to me and grinning that by-now-familiar grin of his that separates him so distinctly from his brother. ‘This is where it’s all kept.’

The Keeper… And I understand, instantly and without needing to be told, that this is where Hecht stores it all. All of the information about all the different pasts we’ve visited. Details of all the changes are here, of all our failed attempts to make it different.

Hecht sees the movement in my face and smiles, a pale smile compared to that of his brother’s, but similar.

‘I see you understand. I knew you would. It’s all here. Everything. And Albrecht is the curator. He makes sense of it all. When I lose direction, I come back here and he shows me what I need to see.’ Hecht looks to his brother fondly. ‘It would be too much for one man.’

I see that at a glance. There must be tens of thousands of files stored here, in all manner of formats. And not just files, I note, but things. Things from a hundred Ages and more.

‘It’s unaffected, you see,’ Albrecht says, walking across and picking up a file, then inserting it into a nearby touch-screen. ‘If it were further up the line, then any changes that you made would make changes here. But being so far back… nothing changes.’

‘That’s right,’ Hecht says, ‘so when I come back here after a major paradigm shift, say, Albrecht reminds me. He shows me what was. All of those realities that I’d forgotten, that had been erased from my memory by Time.’

‘So just how different is it?’

‘Not much,’ Albrecht answers, concentrating on what he’s doing. ‘At least, not as much as you’d think.’

He’s quiet a moment, then gestures for me to come across and join him.

‘Look,’ he says. ‘Here’s one of your earlier de-briefings.’

For the next half hour I stand there, half-crouched over the touch-screen, watching myself answer Hecht’s questions about where I’d been, and what I’d seen and what was done. And not a single word of it remembered.

As it finishes I look to Albrecht. ‘Which of them was that?’

‘That was your sixth trip back,’ Hecht says, answering for him. ‘That’s when we knew that something odd was happening; that it wasn’t going to be as easy as we’d anticipated. That’s when we started going out on a limb – though nothing as left-field as your last trip back.’

‘And nothing works?’

They don’t need to answer that. Of course it doesn’t. That’s why we’re here. But I’m thinking aloud now.

‘But the cup…’

Albrecht looks to his brother. ‘The cup?’

‘The lavender-glazed cup,’ Hecht explains, then looks to me. ‘What about it?’

‘Just that it has to get into Gehlen’s possession somehow. That has to happen.’

‘Okay. But what’s the significance of that?’

‘I don’t know. Only that…’ I close my eyes and try to concentrate.

There are certain things that have to happen. Gehlen has to discover the equations, and Germany and Russia have to be destroyed. We know that and the Russians know that. But what about the power source? Does that have to be found? Do we have to free Ernst from the time-trap? Or is that something we have no control over?

Hecht, it seems, doesn’t know, and nor does Albrecht, because if they did, then we’d not be making these wild stabs in the dark.

Opening my eyes again, I look to Hecht. ‘One more try.’

He shakes his head.

‘Why not?’

‘Because the Russians know you’re there.’

‘They must have known that for some while.’

‘Maybe… but it grows riskier each time. If they get you—’

Albrecht looks to him sharply, and he falls silent.

‘What?’ I ask. ‘What don’t I know?’

‘Nothing,’ Hecht says. But he’s lying. And he doesn’t do it well.

‘What if we keep someone close this time,’ Albrecht says. ‘Someone who can jump in and pull him out of there immediately if there’s any trouble.’

‘No!’

‘Why?’

I’m almost pleading with him now.

‘Because it’s too risky. Besides, someone new—’

‘Won’t know what’s going on,’ I interject. ‘Look. Why don’t you show me what happened – all of it; all thirteen attempts – then send me in again, armed with what I know. After all, if this is a maze, then maybe knowing what doesn’t work – what paths not to follow – might just work.’

Hecht stares at me thoughtfully, then, quietly,. ‘You really want to do that?’

I nod.

‘All of it? I warn you, some of it’s quite gruesome.’

I frown. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean you died. Several times. We had to jump in and get you out – change time and unweave events. It wasn’t very pretty.’

‘I died?’

Hecht nods.

I swallow, then, knowing there’s no other course, look to Albrecht. ‘Show me. Every last little thing you have.’

130

That evening, as the sun sinks below the rim of the valley, Hecht ceremonially lights a massive fire at the centre of the encampment. It’s burning bright – throwing flickering shadows across the huts – when the hunters return, stepping out of the darkness in threes and fours, throwing down their captured prey on a great pile beside the main hut before joining the rest of the tribe about the fire.

And even as the men return, so the women get down to work, skinning and cutting up the dead animals, preparing the meat for the fire. Among them I notice Ooris. Indeed, it’s hard not to notice her, for she seems to be at the heart of all the activity, organising the women, making sure each task is done well. And when the first of the food is ready, it is Ooris who brings a great wooden platter of it across to us, where we sit in front of Albrecht’s hut and, bowing before us, makes an offering.

There is a kind of silence – a silence breached only by the roar and crackle of the fire – as she bows low, waiting for us to take the well-charred meat from the bowl.

Hecht looks to me and smiles. ‘You first, Otto.’

I take a large chunk of meat – the leg of some beast – and almost drop it, not realising just how hot it is.

‘Here,’ Hecht says, handing me a carved wooden plate.

I drop the meat on to the plate, then look up, smiling. ‘Thank you, Ooris.’

And as I say it, I almost feel she blushes. Only how would I tell in this half-light, and in that deep-set face? Yet there’s a distinct movement of her body, which seems to indicate a certain pleasure at my thanks, as well as a feminine shyness.

Finally, Hecht takes the last piece and, raising it, offers a word or two of thanks to the hunters, his voice richly burred as he utters their strange and ancient speech. And then the feast begins.

After a while, Ooris comes across again and, with that same, gentle shyness, sits down in front of us.

‘Hello,’ she says, her voice strangely deep. ‘Did you…’ She hesitates, then, more confidently. ‘Did you enjoy the meal?’

Her Volksprach is excellent. Hecht, I note is looking on, wearing a more earnest expression than I’ve seen him wear all evening, like he himself is being tested here.

‘I did,’ I answer, nodding exaggeratedly. ‘You speak our language very well.’

‘Thank you,’ she says, and this time – from this close, and in the fire’s light – I see that she does blush. Indeed, though her form is somewhat heavy, somewhat frightening, there’s something about her face that’s almost attractive. There is a definite sweetness to her, and – I guess because she speaks our language – I find myself re-categorising her there and then, elevating her, I suppose you’d say, from ape to human. She is like us, despite her outer form.

She glances up, then looks down quickly, averting her eyes, that gesture so human, so like a love-shy teenage girl of some later Age, that again she comes suddenly alive to me, no longer just a creature. And it’s that image that stays with me as, later, I drift into sleep: of a Neanderthal woman, smiling shyly, reminding me, despite all physical differences, of something that I’m missing so acutely that it brings me close to tears.

131

Heavy rain, falling on the roof of the hut, wakes me before dawn. I go to the doorway and look out at a valley transformed. Mist drifts like clouds of dense smoke, obscuring vision briefly, then clearing to reveal a landscape washed fresh and new.

It’s only when I turn to speak to Hecht that I realise he’s not there.

I walk across to Albrecht’s cabin, expecting to find the two of them there, but that too is empty. Stepping outside, I look about me, but the encampment is silent, the huuruuhr sprawled in their huts, sleeping off last night’s drunken feast.

The rain is still falling, a warm, pleasant rain. Peeling off my top, I walk out into it and stand there, looking out along the length of the valley, enjoying the simple beauty of the view. My hair is plastered to my head, my trousers soaked, but it doesn’t matter. This is the best feeling – being alive on a morning like this.

‘Otto?’

I turn, to find Hecht and his brother there. Hecht’s carrying a pack. He smiles at me. ‘You’re an early riser. I thought you’d still be asleep.’

‘I couldn’t,’ I say. ‘The rain…’

‘Have you had breakfast?’

‘No.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘Famished.’

‘Then come. I’ll cook you a breakfast you’ll never forget.’

I wonder where they’ve been and what they’ve been doing, but there’s something else I want to raise.

‘I had a dream,’ I say as we walk back, ‘just before I woke. It was about Reichenau. You know, our two-headed friend.’

Hecht turns and looks at me. ‘Go on.’

‘In my dream he was speaking Russian. Fluent Russian. With a Suzdal accent.’

Hecht laughs. ‘Suzdal, eh? So he’s a Moscow boy, perhaps?’

‘It wasn’t just that. In my dream he was fishing…’

‘Fishing?’

‘Yes… sitting there on the bank of a river, on a lazy summer’s day, just fishing. I was on a boat, you see, drifting downstream, the faintest breeze in the sail, and there he was, on the bank, as casual as could be. He looked up and spoke to me, just as if he’d been expecting me.’

‘In Russian?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what did he say?’

I smile. ‘I can’t remember. It’s like the words themselves didn’t matter. It’s what lay behind them.’

‘And what was behind them?’

‘I’m not sure. Only it got me thinking. Why did he tell Manfred that he knew me? Was he trying to get me into trouble? Or what was he trying to do? It just seems strange that he even mentioned me.’

‘Maybe Manfred asked him about you. Directly, I mean. Maybe he showed him a holo-image.’

‘Maybe…’ Only I don’t think that. In fact, I’m pretty sure that Manfred implied that Reichenau raised the subject.

Hecht’s silent, then he turns and looks at me again. ‘So you think Reichenau’s a Russian agent?’

‘I don’t know. In my dreams…’

He stops, and Albrecht and I stop too. ‘Do you trust your dreams, Otto?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I mean that maybe they tell us the truth sometimes. Truths that we’d otherwise never come upon?’

‘I don’t know. They’re only dreams, after all.’

‘And yet you trust to your instincts. How do they differ from your dreams? In what fashion?’

I stare at Hecht, surprised. Maybe it’s being back here that makes him so, but he seems very different right now.

He smiles. ‘Maybe he’s the key. Not Gudrun, nor Gehlen, nor Manfred, but Reichenau. Maybe he’s the one you need to go back and see.’

‘You’re kidding.’

‘Why should I be? It’s the one place we haven’t been. Not in the last few days of it, anyway.’

‘I don’t know. The map he gave me…’

‘Wasn’t of the Konigsturm, I know. That doesn’t mean it doesn’t locate where the source is. You just have to find out where that building is.’

‘And how do I do that?’

Albrecht laughs. ‘By asking Reichenau?’

‘You think he’d answer me?’

‘Not if he is a Russian agent,’ Hecht says. ‘But we don’t know that yet. Besides, why give it to you unless it means something?’

‘To waste my time?’

‘There are other ways of doing that. No. I think the map is genuine.’

That puzzles me – why should Hecht think that? – but I let it pass.

We are still standing there, in the rain, the cabin fifty yards away, waiting, it seems, for Hecht to say something, or do something. But all he does is smile, then turn and walk on. As if, in that moment, he has seen it all clearly.

132

I never get that promised breakfast. The decision made, Hecht wants to act on it at once. He has Albrecht compile a dossier of all we know on Reichenau – not a lot, as it turns out – then has me study it.

I don’t learn a lot that I didn’t already know, only a few incidentals about his past, gleaned from the state records. His ‘daughter’, so-called, is no relation at all. Nor could she have been, now that I think of it. Doppelgehirn aren’t born that way, after all – they’re manufactured: their two brains sewn into a single skull. What surprises me is that he should make that claim. As if he needed family.

‘Maybe it makes him feel less of a freak,’ Albrecht says, speaking bluntly.

‘Or maybe he’s just a liar.’

Hecht looks to me and smiles. ‘Well, there’s only one way to find out…’

Which is why, a mere half hour later, I am back in that tiny cabin, perched high above the vast metallic floor of Werkstätt 9, awaiting Reichenau’s return.

It is the evening of the bombing in the Konigsturm – only an hour before Manfred turns everything upside down in his quest for vengeance. A poised moment. And Reichenau is out there somewhere, involved somehow, while his ‘daughter’ serves me tea and makes small talk. Or so it is at first. But then it changes.

‘Your friend, Burckel…’

I look to her and smile. ‘Yes?’

‘Do you trust him?’

It’s a strange question. ‘Why?’

‘It’s nothing.’

Only it clearly is. She has a reason for mentioning it. ‘Burckel’s a dear friend,’ I say, remembering what happened. ‘I’d trust him with my life.’

‘And yet he’s not what he seems. You can see it at a glance.’

I don’t answer, but it tends to confirm what I’ve been thinking – that these are Russian agents. If so, they would know about Burckel. But then, why mention it now?

She looks at me, then shrugs. ‘It’s true what my father says. You’re not from here. You have an aura.’

‘An aura?’ I almost laugh. It’s the strangest thing anyone has ever said to me. ‘You mean I glow or something?’

‘Or something.’

That’s much too cryptic for my liking. I pause, reassessing things. She’s far from stupid, and she’s not saying these things merely to break the silence. They have a purpose. But what?

‘What do you see?’

She hesitates, then says, ‘Burckel watches you, did you know that? Like he’s waiting for the outer shell to crack open and some stranger to step out. But he’s not wrong, is he? That’s how you are. I can see it for myself.’

‘Yes, but…?’

‘What do I see?’ Her eyes in that strangely broad face stare back at me with a real intensity. ‘I see a man walking in a maze, not knowing who he really is. A man cut off from the true meaning of his actions. A man…’

She stops, then walks over to the shelves and pulls something down. It’s an old leather-covered photo album.

‘There,’ she says, and hands it to me.

I open it and catch my breath. The first photo, the print almost the size of the page, is of me, standing at Nevsky’s side beside a stream in northern Russia. And there, in the background, is Ernst.

I go to speak, but there are heavy footsteps on the metal walkway outside, and then the door creaks open.

It’s Reichenau. He takes me in at a glance – sees what I’m holding – and gives a knowing smile. Then, as if nothing’s happened, he takes off his jacket and throws it down, then pours himself a big tumbler of the clear liquor that we shared last time I was here. He takes a sip, then turns to face me, using his ‘reasonable’ voice – the ‘pleasant uncle’ voice of his controlling half.

‘Herr Behr. I wondered when…’

He knows my name, and has an album of photographs which – I turn the pages one by one – seem to be all of me.

‘It’s begun,’ he says to her, and she nods. ‘Where’s Heinrich?’

‘Gone,’ she says. ‘I sent him south with Karl and Gustav.’

‘What is this?’ I ask, holding the album out to him.

‘I had you checked out,’ he says. ‘I had to be sure who you were.’

‘Yes, but why?’

‘To make sure you weren’t a threat to me.’

‘A threat?’

‘You’ve got the map. What more do you want?’

‘I want to know where it’s for.’

He laughs. ‘I thought you knew.’

‘Are you Russian?’

It’s not what I meant to ask, but this is all so strange.

‘No,’ he says. ‘I’m German. Doubly so.’ And he laughs.

‘But you can’t be.’

‘No? Why not?’

‘Because I know all our agents.’

‘Like Hecht’s brother, I suppose.’

That stops me dead. Just what is going on? Is this some strange reality shift? I mean, the album… it must have taken a great deal of effort to compile it, and for what purpose? And then there’s his last comment.

I feel a small frisson of fear. I have never felt so cut adrift, so far from understanding what’s going on.

‘You’re near the hub here,’ he says, as if he reads my mind. ‘Where things are at their most chaotic. Step back a little – a day or two – and it becomes much simpler, but the further in you go, the closer you get. Well, I think you understand, eh, Otto?’

Hecht called it a maze. A maze I’ve failed to navigate no less than thirteen times now – one that’s left me dead on more than one occasion. And maybe this, strange as it is, is part of it. Only… how do I make sense of it?

Is Reichenau friend or foe?

I watch him change his shirt, and then he turns to me.

‘You want a lift?’

It’s so unexpected, I laugh. ‘A lift?’

‘To Gehlen’s. I can drop you there if you want.’

‘You’ll take me?’

‘If it’s the only way.’

The only way to what? ‘I don’t understand…’

It’s an admission of weakness, of… well, of ignorance, I guess. Only I need to know what’s going on, before I go even further out on a limb.

‘Come,’ he says simply. ‘We’ll talk as we go.’

133

The flyer is a bright red Angestellte – an ‘Executive’ – which is ironic considering that Reichenau is supposed to be a revolutionary. It’s a regular tank of a machine, stately yet brutal, the very type that ‘executives’ seem to like, and Reichenau handles it like it’s a sports model.

Oh, and there’s one other thing I note as I slide in beside him. There is a sticker on the passenger window, like one of those jokey things you often see, only this one reads ‘standig Verandern’ – ‘perpetual change’.

‘Why doesn’t Hecht know more about you?’ I ask, without preamble.

‘Because I’ve kept myself to myself. Until now.’

‘Okay. So what’s changed?’

He glances at me, then returns his gaze to the packed traffic channel, easing the flyer into a faster stream.

‘It seemed to me that you needed help.’

‘Help?’

‘To complete the circle. To close the loop. We none of us exist without that.’

I stare at him, astonished. ‘But—’

‘I’ve been waiting for you to come to me a second time.’ He pauses, then – ‘It was fore-ordained.’

Nonsense, I think. Then again, this tiny sector of Time seems dense with loops; as if everyone’s been trying to change it subtly without altering the major currents.

Which is probably the truth.

Only I’ve still no handle on Reichenau, and the fact is I still don’t trust him.

‘You know Gehlen?’

‘For some years. I helped him once.’

This isn’t in the histories. ‘Helped him? In what way?’

‘He killed a man, in a bar-room brawl when he was much younger. I went back and changed things.’

‘And he knew about all this?’

‘Of course not. He mustn’t know. It doesn’t work like that.’

‘Then…?’

‘I befriended him… before the brawl, that is. Bought him a drink and talked with him. Got him home in one piece. He was grateful. We became friends.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

He laughs. ‘Fine. Don’t believe me. But you’ll see.’

134

He’s right. I do see. Because Gehlen greets him at the barrier like a brother, hugging him close and patting his back, not put off by that awful, overlarge head of his. Maybe he feels that they’re both freaks – one physical, one mental – but whatever it is, the connection seems genuine.

We are in the stacks of Hellersdorf, in sprawling East Berlin, at the gates of a ‘secure’ enclave, a drop of a mile and a half beneath the semi-circular platform on which we stand.

Gehlen steps back from Reichenau and looks at me coldly. ‘Who’s this?’

‘This is Otto,’ Reichenau says. ‘Otto Behr. He wants to speak with you.’

Hearing my name, Gehlen starts. ‘Behr? B. E. H. R. Behr?’

I nod. ‘Yes, why?’

‘That’s strange. Very strange. There’s a package, you see. It was delivered to my assistant two days back…’

‘There,’ Reichenau says. ‘Loops.’

Gehlen looks to the Dopplegehirn. ‘Sorry?’

But Reichenau just smiles and shrugs. ‘It’s nothing. But I have to go now. I’m expected at the Gefangnis…’

Again, the way he casually drops that in makes me feel he knows much more than he’s telling me. Even so, I’m here, with Gehlen, and there’s a package.

‘Has he…?’ Gehlen begins.

‘Here,’ Reichenau says, and hands Gehlen a security pass, made out in my ‘official’ name and with my holo-image on it.

Gehlen frowns. ‘Manninger?’

‘It’s what the authorities know him as. But Otto’s fine. You can trust him.’

The words send a little tingle down my spine. You can trust him. Why? What does he know that I don’t?

I watch him climb back into the flyer, then turn to see Gehlen watching me. He says nothing, just turns and heads towards the gate, leaving me to follow.

135

I am here for one reason only – to locate the far end of the time-anchor so that we can free Ernst. Nothing else matters. But this business with Reichenau has thrown me. As I follow Gehlen down a long corridor and up a narrow flight of stairs, I ask myself a few questions.

If Reichenau is one of our agents, then why have we never seen him at the platform? Is it because – as he seems to imply – he’s kept himself to himself, further up the line, or is it because he’s Russian, and thus wouldn’t pass through the screens without self-destructing?

But if he’s Russian, why is he helping me? Why did he give me the map? Why also did he deliver me to Gehlen?

After all, the Russians have tried their best to kill me almost every time I’ve come here bar the last, and that was only because I jumped out early.

And then there’s the photo album – where does that fit?

In fact, none of it quite fits. All of the pieces seem to come from different puzzles.

Or different realities?

I think about what Reichenau said – about things growing more chaotic the closer you get to the hub of things – and wonder if that might not be true. Maybe that’s why I keep failing.

Gehlen stops and turns to me. He’s standing before a plain black door. ‘This is it.’

I look about me, surprised by just how nondescript the place is, considering. You’d think a man of Gehlen’s stature would live in something more luxurious than this.

Not that this isn’t expensive.

We go inside. A child is crying somewhere off to the left, and as I step through into the main living room, a small, blonde-haired woman – tired-looking, dressed in a pale blue one-piece – comes out of the state-of-the-art kitchen on the far side.

‘Hans, I—’

She stops, surprised to see me there.

‘This is Otto,’ Gehlen says. ‘He’s a friend of Reichenau.’

The mention of Reichenau clearly doesn’t please her. In fact, from her reaction, I’d judge she doesn’t like the man. And me from association…

‘Hi,’ I say, but she doesn’t answer. She looks to Gehlen again.

‘Meister Lofthaus was on while you were up at the gate. He says we have to go to the safe haven. The King himself has ordered it.’ She pauses, then: ‘I’ve sent the servants home already.’

Gehlen sighs. ‘Then we’d better pack.’ He looks to me. ‘Forgive me. It seems you’ve made a wasted journey.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ I say. ‘We can talk on the way.’

Gehlen looks at me oddly, then shrugs. He crosses the room, then takes down a small trunk – the very same that still exists, up the line at Four-Oh – and places it on the low coffee table in the centre of the room.

‘What do you want to know?’

I wonder how direct I can be, and whether he’d answer me. Probably not. This too is probably being watched.

‘I’ve heard rumours,’ I say, remembering the last time I said this to him, in the flyer back from Gudrun’s palace, ‘that things have become… unstable.’

He glances at me, then continues packing. ‘What did Reichenau mean by loops?’

‘I don’t know.’

But I can see he doesn’t believe me.

‘Things are fine,’ he says, after a moment. ‘The rumours are wrong.’

I take a pen and notepad from my pocket and write down the equations – memorised earlier – then tear off the top sheet and hand it to him. He reads it almost carelessly, then double-takes. ‘Thor’s teeth!’

Straightening, he looks directly at me – for the first time the whole of him there in his gaze; an intense, powerful gaze that, for the first time, reveals his true intelligence.

‘Where did you get this?’

‘It’s right, isn’t it? The equations go off to infinity, which indicates that the laws of physics are breaking down.’

‘It isn’t right. It can’t be right.’

‘But it is.’

He nods.

‘Drainage.’

‘Impossible,’ he answers, and again I get a strong feeling of déjà vu.

‘The discontinuities,’ I say. ‘They have to mean something.’

Gehlen stares back at me and shakes his head slowly, but his eyes say yes.

His wife returns to the room, their little girl in tow, a bundle of clothes in her arms. Placing the clothes down beside the trunk, she begins to pack while the child stares sullenly at me.

Gehlen turns away. His chest rises and falls, as if he’s been running. This whole business has agitated him greatly. He turns back, as if about to say something, when his three-year-old son, Manfred, runs into the room. Seeing him, Gehlen smiles; a very different Gehlen suddenly there before me. Crouching, he hugs the boy, then listens attentively as this son says something to his ear.

‘Okay,’ he says. ‘But three things only. That’s all you can take.’

And Manfred runs off, back into his room.

Gehlen straightens, then looks at me again. ‘How do you know all this?’

‘Things get out…’

He nods. After all, this is a society of spies. Then, as if he’s remembered something, he goes over to the shelves and takes something down. Stepping across, he hands it to me.

I stare at the label on the package. It’s Hecht’s handwriting but it’s addressed to me, care of Gehlen, and I wonder why. This is what Burckel delivered two days ago, when he went AWOL. The same package that Dankevich sent his men back to get, when they, for some reason, failed to return.

As I begin to pick at the wrapping, so young Manfred runs in again, saying something about a missing toy. Gehlen, watching me, makes to turn and go with the boy, to search for it in his room, and it’s then, as he takes the first step across the room, that I see what’s in the package and call out to Gehlen, my voice urgent, telling him to stay exactly where he is.

Gehlen turns, surprised, then laughs, seeing what I’m holding. ‘There he is,’ he says to his son. ‘There’s George…’

And he takes a step towards me, his son’s tiny hand in his own, both of them smiling…

The explosion in the bedroom is deafening. It knocks us all off of our feet. The room is filled suddenly with smoke and dust. But as I get up, I see that no one’s badly hurt. The bomb has failed. Gehlen is still alive, and as I stand, brushing the dust off my clothes, I notice how he’s staring at me like I’ve been transformed.

Neighbours come running, asking if we’re okay. Both children are crying, and Gehlen’s wife just sits there, badly shaken. An alarm is going off somewhere now, its repetitive drone shredding the nerves, but no one’s hurt.

I let out a long, sighing breath, then look down at the object I’m holding and shake my head. It’s a child’s toy. A small, yellow giraffe, twelve inches long and made of soft rubber.

Gehlen comes across and takes it from me, staring at it in wonder. ‘George,’ he says. Then, looking up into my face, he asks: ‘How did you…?’

Loops, I want to say, but I just shrug.

Only he’s too intelligent not to make connections. Too clever not to unpick this conundrum stitch by stitch and put it back together. Oh, and I know what you’re thinking: that Hecht could simply have sent him the equations, only that isn’t how it works. Not for something as essential as this. This once the ‘fallacy of inaction theory’ doesn’t apply. We know, because we’ve tried.

But maybe this is enough. After all, Gehlen has been working on Q-balls for some time now – trying to fit them into the general picture – and though thus far he’s failed, maybe this will give him the jolt that will allow him to think the unthinkable.

A toy giraffe named George…

I stare at it in his hands and laugh, and he looks up at me.

‘Hetty,’ he says, speaking to his wife, his eyes never leaving me. ‘Leave that now. Just take the children and go to the safe haven. I’ll join you later. There’s something I have to do.’

136

It is happening, even as we’re in the air. It is ten past two and the Russians, reeling under the first massive, five-pronged assault, have withdrawn their forces to a line that runs from Riga in the north to Odessa in the south. They are regrouping, ready to push the Germans back after this latest feint in the Great Game. Only they’re mistaken, for the rules of the game have changed.

They have yet to realise that, this time, Manfred is in earnest.

Vast fists of heavy cloud dominate the sky outside, their sculpted shapes so dark and bruised they’re almost purple, yet between them I can see great swathes of sunlit meadow. Indeed, the whole landscape has a brooding, unnatural look to it. The great world of field and wood and stream looks super-real in these, its final moments.

Soon – not long now – the first of the bombs will fall.

I look across at Gehlen. His face looks strange, mask-like, in the golden light from the portal just beyond him. I study him a moment, as one might study any natural phenomenon.

Gehlen is lightning. Gehlen is pure electricity, fallen to the Earth. He is a sun, throwing out energy and ideas – enough for a hundred thousand lesser men. And yet he is also a man, flawed and mortal.

Conscious of my attention, he turns to me.

‘I don’t know why you need to know any of this, but you get one shot, okay?’

‘Okay.’

I have been mulling things over on the way down. Wondering why, for instance, there were no guards on Gehlen’s apartment, and why, other than his importance to Manfred, they should want to bomb him, and whether it was Russian agents who did it. Time agents, that is.

Only time agents would have monitored the results and jumped back in again just as soon as they saw they’d failed. And then… but that gets complicated, so it can’t have been that.

Reichenau?

More than anything, I want to know what Reichenau’s part in this is, because if anyone’s setting off these bombs – and from the news reports we’ve heard, there’s been a whole spate of them – it’s Reichenau’s Unbeachtat, his revolutionaries.

But why should Reichenau put me in a position where I could save Gehlen, if it was he who planted the bomb in the first place? Or is there something glaringly simple that I’ve overlooked?

I look to Gehlen once again. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Because I owe you a life.’

I gesture towards the cameras. ‘You aren’t afraid of…?’

‘Of being watched? I don’t think anyone’s being watched right now. It’s chaos out there. But if you must know, I’ve permission to show you round.’

‘Permission?’ That surprises me more than anything he’s said. ‘From whom?’

‘From Tief. He has instructed me to show you whatever you need to see.’

And he hands me a sealed document, from Tief’s office, granting me access to the facility at Orhdruf.

Which makes no sense at all.

Or rather, it makes me want to jump back, right there and then, and present it all to Hecht; to let his cool reason play over everything I’ve seen and heard like a searchlight, making sense of it all.

‘I see,’ I say, although I don’t. ‘I see.’

137

Rain is falling, spotting the soft, pale stone of the battlements as we step down from the ship. Orhdruf, I note with some surprise, is another castle; a fact I completely overlooked last time, distracted possibly by Manfred’s cruisers, waiting to arrest me.

Gehlen takes Tief’s pass from me and, waving it overhead for the security cameras, walks across the pad and through the gate, leaving me to hurry after.

We make our way down several dark twists of steps and along dank, dimly lit corridors until, at the bottom of one last twist of steps, we come out into the most curious of laboratories.

It was a chapel once, I’m sure. Two long lines of slender stone pillars form walks to left and right. Between them are several huge work-benches, piled high with electrical equipment. Two assistants – one young, one surprisingly ancient – look up as Gehlen approaches, surprise registering on their faces as they see me there.

‘This is Otto,’ Gehlen says, looking about him for something. ‘He’s come to see how we do things here.’

It’s a strange thing to say, and almost humorous, only the two assistants don’t laugh. They simply stare at me suspiciously.

I look about me, surprised by how chaotic everything appears. It looks more like a dump than a workplace. Notebooks lie open everywhere you look, their pages filled with strange diagrams and scrawled figures, many of which are crossed through. It makes me think – not for the first time – that Hecht ought to have sent someone with a better scientific grasp. Then again…

‘Okay,’ Gehlen says, pocketing a small, round object. ‘You want to see? Then let’s see. We’ll take the lift down to the seventh level.’

138

We step into the room and there it is, spinning slowly in the darkness, so dark it almost seems bright. You can’t actually see it, of course, but then again you can’t fail not to see it. The brain registers it somehow as an absence.

We are wearing protective clothes, and dark visors, and I wonder how we can stand only a metre or so away from a black hole and not be sucked in… only we can. It might seem like magic, but as Gehlen himself has said: ‘It’s not magic, it’s physics. If the maths works, it works.’

I don’t claim to even begin to understand this; the equations are so far beyond my comprehension that my mind simply rejects them. It was hard enough memorising them to do my party trick. Only they work. And because they do, Gehlen has been able to create a ‘field’ in this room that contains the singularity.

‘Where is it?’ I ask, expecting some visual sign of the fluctuation, of the ‘drainage’ which, I know, is linked directly to Ernst back across the centuries.

‘It’s inside,’ Gehlen says. ‘Just within what we call the Cauchy Horizon.’

I haven’t a clue what he’s talking about, but I’m disappointed that I can’t see anything I can ‘switch off’ to end Ernst’s misery.

‘Pions,’ he says quietly, musing aloud. ‘It has to be something to do with the pion emission rate.’

I know what pions are. That’s something all of us at Four-Oh learned in our studies. They’re particles that travel faster than the speed of light.

I turn and look at him, but I can’t make out his features through the doubled thicknesses of glass.

‘How is it actually used?’

Gehlen turns and points through the wall. ‘There are catchment spheres – huge great things – in separate chambers surrounding us on all sides. Above, below, all around us. It’s complex, but essentially we use the accelerator to fire particles into it, and they “jump” – that is, they disappear in one position and reappear in another – over there, within one of the spheres. And this is happening all the time. Every nano-second. Huge amounts of energy jumping from here to there through… well, through nowhere really.’

‘And the spheres…?’

‘Feed energy – huge amounts of energy – into the grid. There are dozens of them in all, so if one of them fails…’

‘And do they?’

‘No. Not until now, that is.’ He smiles. ‘It’s all switched off at present, otherwise we couldn’t have come in here. We’d have been bathed in Cerenkov radiation…’

I wait for an explanation and – of a kind – it comes.

‘Not a good thing.’

‘So what are you going to do?’ I ask. ‘Just how are you going to get inside that… thing?’

Gehlen laughs. ‘You know… for once, I haven’t a clue.’

‘You haven’t…?’

I fall silent as the ‘absence’ at the centre of the room swells momentarily, and then seems to vanish to the tiniest point.

‘What’s happening?’

But Gehlen’s not listening. He’s staring at the singularity, unable to believe his eyes, for it has begun to burn an intense golden colour, like the darkness at its pinpoint centre has caught fire.

‘Out!’ Gehlen says, as if having a wall between us and that thing will make any difference. ‘Out of here now!’

139

For the next hour, Gehlen sits in the gallery, watching the screen as the singularity goes through a terrifying series of metamorphoses. I sit there next to him, dry-mouthed, wondering just what’s going on, and whether this is the end. But Gehlen is silent, pondering the significance of what he’s seeing – as if he reads each change as a set of figures.

Which is perhaps the truth. After all, he does see things differently from the rest of us. But time’s passing, and Ernst is still trapped, and if even Gehlen can’t see a solution, then maybe there isn’t one.

Maybe Ernst has to be trapped for it all to work.

It’s a dreadful thought, but I’m forced now to consider it.

Yet even as I do, something else occurs to me. There’s nothing in the histories about what happened to the singularity during the coming conflict. Nothing that survived, anyway. Within the next fifteen hours everything on the surface of the planet will be destroyed, but we’re deep down here, just like the command bunkers in Moscow and Berlin, and there’s the possibility that this too survived the general devastation. Only… there’s no record of it.

From the perspective of Four-Oh – anchored up the line in 2999 – this doesn’t exist, and therefore didn’t survive.

But is that so?

If the black hole had been destroyed, or even freed from its restraints, then surely it would have taken the Earth with it? I mean… something this powerful…

I look to Gehlen, meaning to ask him what would happen, but he raises a hand, as if to deflect my question, and I can see from the intensity of his manner that he’s thinking something through.

And then he smiles.

‘Of course,’ he says. ‘I should have thought of that before.’

140

And so it happens. As simply as that. Gehlen stands and nods, the smile remaining on his lips. Yet if he realises just how significant the moment is, he doesn’t show it.

Time travel. Pions and Q-balls and energy that appears and disappears contrary to the laws of normal physics, that jumps from ‘now’ to ‘then’ and back again. Oh, he hasn’t got it all. Far from it. But I can see he has enough. Enough to keep a smile on his lips that don’t often deign to register amusement. And he’ll work on that, these next few hours, until it’s there, complete – ready for us to use…

He looks across at me and shrugs. ‘I guess I’d better write it down.’

I frown, as if I don’t understand, and he laughs.

‘I’m sorry. Just that it’s come to me. What was wrong, that is. Or not wrong…’

Yet even then he keeps it to himself. He doesn’t want to say – not explicitly – what it is he’s seen.

‘Can you stop it?’

‘The leakage?’

‘Yes.’

‘I guess so. If I wanted.’

‘Then…?’

I don’t understand what he’s waiting for. If he can, then why doesn’t he?

You think, perhaps, that I should just tell him the truth – about Ernst, that is – and be done with it. But I can’t. It’s a paradox too many. Gehlen has to get there all by himself. There is no other way, and believe me we’ve tried a few. It’s like there’s some cosmic watcher, waiting to whip the magic carpet out from under our feet should we open our mouths to Gehlen, or slip him a note, or…

And now it’s my turn to smile, because I realise that I’ve done, in effect, what others have failed to do. I’ve already jogged Gehlen’s mind on to the right track, and I’ve done it with a toy yellow giraffe named George.

Or Hecht has, to be more accurate. After all, I was only the link-man. The messenger boy.

‘Otto…’ Gehlen says quietly, handing me Tief’s pass, which has been in his custody all this while. ‘Forgive me, but I have to work. Take the lift back to the first level. There’s a sun room there. I’ll join you in a while.’

I look to him, meaning to argue, but I can see at a glance that it’ll do no good. He has already dismissed me from his mind.

I turn away, meaning to walk over to the lift, then stop dead, realising where I am.

Reichenau’s map. This is it! This room, not the one in which the singularity is kept. It’s here.

Again it makes no sense, for the map was supposed to indicate where the singularity was. Only I’ve seen that. I know now where that is and it doesn’t help. But this… this correlates perfectly to the map. And where the singularity should be…

I turn and stare at the point in space where, on Reichenau’s map, the black hole was marked. Only it’s not a black hole, it’s a simple, old-fashioned computer screen, the word ‘Werktafel’ prominently displayed across the top surface, while on the screen itself…

…is the singularity. Or a detailed graphic representation of it.

I wonder what that means. I take a step towards it and Gehlen looks up.

‘Otto, please. Go now.’

I glance at him, then nod and leave. Nothing – and I mean nothing – is more important right now than letting Gehlen work through the equations.

141

The lift, as I observed earlier, has no camera in it. Thus, as the doors hiss shut, I jump, back to Four-Oh.

It’s quiet about the platform, the lights dimmed. There’s no sign of Hecht, but the women are there. The women are always there.

‘Where’s Hecht?’

‘Sleeping,’ Kathe says, coming across.

‘I need to see him.’

‘You can’t.’

‘What?’

‘You don’t need to,’ Urte adds, stepping alongside.

‘I…’

She hands me something, and I stare at it and laugh. And then I jump. Back again. Back into the lift, a second later.

142

The lift doors hiss open. I step out, looking about me for a sign, but even as I do, a guard approaches, gun raised, and demands my ID.

I show him Tief’s pass, and he takes a long while staring at it through the dark glass of his visor. There’s a delay as he mumbles something into his lip-mike, and then his head jerks up and he steps back, snapping smartly to attention, his head bowed, the pass held out to me.

Even now, even as it’s all falling apart, they go through the motions. Not that the guard knows. Not as I know.

The sun room is, in fact, a great, glass-walled balcony, looking west. The view is spectacular, the peaks of the Thuringer Wald dominating the skyline. There’s a long bar against the back wall and plush white leather settees facing the view. A steward looks up from behind the bar, then hurries over, all politeness.

‘What would the Meister like?’

‘A beer. A Beck’s if you have one.’

He nods and hurries away, leaving me to walk over to the great curving glass and look down, five hundred metres and more, to the courtyard far below. People are milling about down there, getting into transports, hurrying like ants, for what good it’ll do them.

It is seventeen minutes to five. Far to the east, more than a thousand miles from where I’m standing now, the second phase of the invasion is under way. Manfred’s southern army is sweeping north even as I wait for my beer, making directly for Kiev, at whatever cost. The Russians, shocked by the ferocity of the fighting, are reassessing their strategy. Three of their seven armies have been over-run and the situation is becoming serious. They have already recalled all reservists, and their eastern forces – under-strength and ill-equipped to fight a major campaign – have been brought west to beef up the defences surrounding their capital, Moscow.

They have begun to think the unthinkable.

The steward returns, hands me my beer, drops of ice-cold perspiration on the glass. I sip at it and smile my thanks, then turn back, studying, for a moment, the way the afternoon sunlight falls upon the distant mountains.

Between them and where I stand, the land rises and falls in great folds of green, the Gera river snaking its way like a thread of blue across the rugged terrain.

There’s no sign, from where I stand, of the great north German megapolis that sprawls like some deadly crystal growth across the continent, from Amsterdam in the west, to Berlin in the east. From here one might almost believe that it never happened; that the Germany of rolling hills and dense, dark copses still existed. A Germany of castles and principalities, of Saxons and Westphalians, Thuringians, Prussians, and all the myriad other German tribes.

I have seen it all, and nothing – nothing – is as poignant as this. To see the last of it. Before the Earth glows molten red. Before the Nuclear Winter that’s to follow.

I sit, relaxing, content to wait for once, to let it all wash over me. And it’s then that she comes, ducking beneath the lintel, then straightening, her head, even then, barely scraping beneath the ceiling.

‘Otto?’

I turn on the settee and look across at her, surprised.

‘Gudrun… What are you doing here?’

She smiles, then slowly comes across. ‘I came to see you.’

I stand, facing her. ‘How did you…?’

‘My uncle’s secretary. He told me you were here.’

‘Ah…’

The settees are huge, big enough even for her, and so she settles beside me, reaching across to take my hand, mine, as ever, engulfed within her own.

The steward is hovering again, clearly overawed by Gudrun’s presence.

‘My lady…’ he says, in an reverent whisper, and bows so low I almost think he’s going to touch his knees with his forehead.

‘A glass of wine. A Lohengrin…’

She turns her attention back to me, then grins, seeing what I’ve placed upon the low table to the side. She lifts the lavender-glazed cup and turns it carefully in her hands, understanding its significance.

‘How did you get this?’

‘I brought it back with me. Gehlen must have it, in his trunk. It’s a loop.’

She nods, then sets it down again. Looking back at me, she smiles again, a pure radiance in her face. ‘I’m glad you didn’t go, Otto. I would have been sad not to see you one last time.’

Me too. How sad I hadn’t realised until that moment. I squeeze her hand, and feel her respond.

‘How much time have we?’

‘Until the morning. Only…’

Her eyes look a query at me. ‘Only?’

‘There are things I have to do.’

She nods, a trace of sadness returning to her eyes. ‘What is it like, Otto, where you come from?’

I smile. ‘It isn’t really a place at all. More a series of connected rooms. And there’s the platform… ‘

‘The platform?’

‘When I jump back. That’s where I go. Where the women are.’

But I notice that she’s looking past me, and I turn and see at once what’s caught her attention. Two craft, coming in low – maybe no more than fifty metres above the surface.

‘Ours,’ says the steward, as he hands Gudrun her drink. ‘They’ll be coming in from—’

But we don’t hear what he says, because suddenly an alarm is sounding, and the two craft have peeled off – one to the left, one to the right.

There’s a sudden grinding sound from above our heads – the sound, I realise, of a massive gun-turret rotating to face the incoming threat – and then it opens up, sending out a vivid trace of shells

The two fighters change trajectory, cutting back in, heading straight for us now, coming in fast, and I realise that if they keep on their current course, they’ll hit the castle right slap bang where we are.

Other guns have also opened up now, and a continuous, deafening hail of shells and lasers are arcing through the air. But still the craft come on.

And then, suddenly, one explodes, a searing ball of flame leaving its after-image on the retina, yet even as it does, so two missiles snake out from the other craft, cutting the air like torpedoes, haring directly towards us at a frightening speed.

I close my eyes and place my free hand on my chest, preparing to jump right out of there, when there’s an enormous explosion; one that makes the whole castle shudder. My eyes jerk open, to see a great ball of smoke rolling up into the sky, fragments of superheated metal cascading into the courtyard far below.

‘Close,’ the steward mutters.

My ears are ringing. I swallow, then look to Gudrun. She sighs, then gives a little shudder.

‘Guildsmen,’ I say.

‘What?’ she says, shocked by what I’ve said.

‘I said they were Guildsmen. It’s civil war, Gudrun. Meister Adelbert has had enough.’

‘Enough? But he’s—’

‘A powerful man,’ Gehlen finishes, stepping alongside.

I look up at him. ‘I thought you had work to do.’

He looks back at me clearly now, like a veil has lifted from his eyes. ‘I did. But it didn’t take me long. I’ve finished now. It was…’ He shrugs. ‘I’ve left it on the board. If you’re interested. Which I think you may be.’

Gehlen turns, looking to the Princess, then bows. ‘My lady…’

‘Hans.’ She leans forward and picks up the lavender-glazed cup. ‘You must take this. Put it in your trunk. It’s… necessary.’

‘A loop?’ he asks, looking to me. ‘Like the toy?’

I nod. ‘A loop.’

Gehlen smiles. ‘This is strange. I mean… that you’re here at all. It means that it works.’

I smile. ‘Yes.’

‘Then you can get me out of here.’

‘I…’

I am about to say no, but I stop dead, my heart racing suddenly. Why not? After all, all we have to do is get a team back here and fit a focus into Gehlen’s chest. Even this late, there’s time. Time for the graft to take, that is.

But it would mean leaving his wife and children to their fate, because there’d be no time to get them done. And besides it isn’t always safe – not on children their age.

I’m quite certain that I wouldn’t want to make such a decision. But Gehlen might think differently.

‘Wait here,’ I say, meaning to jump. Yet even as I say the words, I notice a movement in the air beyond Gehlen, then hear laughter. Familiar laughter.

Reichenau steps out and points the laser directly at my head. He’s grinning, like this is the ultimate joke.

Gehlen whirls about. ‘Michael…?’

‘My name is Reichenau,’ he says, introducing himself to Gudrun, ‘Michael Reichenau.’ And, stepping forward smartly, he rips Gehlen’s shirt open and, with what’s clearly a practised move, slaps a small, flesh-coloured circle against his chest.

‘There,’ he says, smiling across at me. ‘Mine.’

‘Yours?’ And then I realise. It’s the same kind of ‘plug’ as was used on Ernst. Coded to Gehlen’s genes, no doubt.

I’m about to say something, when Reichenau turns and gestures to the steward.

‘You! More drinks! A Lahmung for me, and make it a large one!’

He gestures towards the settees with the gun.

‘Come now. Sit down everybody… We’ve so much to talk about.’

143

Gehlen sits there, deeply uncomfortable. The plug on his chest is itching, only he can’t get beneath it to scratch it and he can’t remove it. Reichenau, sitting across from him, looks on, gun in one hand, drink in the other, amused.

Gudrun stares at him angrily. ‘What manner of creature are you?’

‘I am a Doppelgehirn,’ Reichenau answers coldly. ‘I was made thus, in the laboratories of the Konigsturm itself.’ He smiles icily. ‘You might say I am a king’s man.’

‘And that?’ Gudrun asks, indicating the plug.

‘It’s as I said. It makes him mine. Ask Otto. He knows.’

Both Gehlen and Gudrun look to me, but I can’t answer them.

Reichenau turns to me, waving the gun idly before him. ‘Work it out. I’m sure you can. Only don’t take too long. I know you won’t.’

He’s right. In fact, I’ve worked it out already. He needed me to save Gehlen, so that Gehlen might have the chance to ‘discover’ the time equations. But now that’s done, he wants Gehlen for himself. Or – to be precise – for the equations that are in Gehlen’s head.

‘Why are you still here?’ I ask. ‘You have what you want.’

Reichenau raises his glass. ‘I thought it would be pleasant to share a glass or two… to toast our success.’ Again he smiles, his over-large mouth stretched thin. ‘That was some maze, huh?’

‘Yes.’ Only I sense that I haven’t even got to the edges of this maze. Not yet.

I stand. If I can’t do anything here, then I can at least jump back and change things earlier. But Reichenau is smiling again.

‘No point,’ he says. ‘I only change it back… And here we sit.’

I sit again, sip at my Beck’s, and stare out at the sunlit mountains. Why is he waiting? Why hasn’t he just jumped? And then it hits me.

The ‘plug’ is like a focus. It needs time to interact with the body. Maybe not as much time as an actual focus, but… Reichenau finishes his drink, then throws the glass aside and stands. ‘Wrong,’ he says to me. ‘It’s immediate. But you’d have found that out.’

He reaches out, placing a hand on Gehlen’s shoulder, then looks to me and smiles. ‘Until the next time, eh?’

And they’re gone. Like they were never there. I look to Gudrun, but she’s looking down, into her lap, and I see – now that I’ve freed myself of my obsession with Reichenau – that she’s been crying.

I walk over to her and take her hand once more. ‘What?’ I say gently. ‘What is it?’

She looks up, her big blue eyes staring back at mine moistly. ‘It’s nothing. Really, it’s nothing.’ She sniffs deeply, then, forcing herself to smile, points past me.

‘The cup,’ she says. ‘It has to be placed in Gehlen’s trunk, doesn’t it?’

I nod.

‘Then let’s do that. Let’s at least get that right.’

‘Okay…’ And as I think where Gehlen’s trunk is, I remember what else is in that room, and what Gehlen said to me no more than fifteen minutes back.

I’ve finished now… I’ve left it on the board. If you’re interested. Which I think you may be…

Interested? I laugh, and Gudrun stares at me, astonished.

‘What?’ she asked.

‘Stay here,’ I say, grabbing up the cup. ‘I promise I’ll be back.’ And I hurry from the room, heading for the lift.

144

Diederich stares at the screen a moment longer, then looks up, giving me a beaming smile.

‘It’s all here. Everything we need. And more.’

‘More?’

‘Yes. He worked it out. Look.’ And Diederich flicks through several pages until he comes to what might as well, to my eyes, be ancient Babylonian.

‘What is that?’

‘It’s Ernst’s position in Space-Time,’ Hecht says, coming into the room. ‘Gehlen pinpointed exactly where it is, and thus where the leakage was going to. That’s the equation for it.’

‘I thought we’d lost Gehlen.’

‘We did. But now we’ve snatched him back. Or part of him…’

‘You’ve…’

‘No time,’ Hecht says. ‘We need to get a team back there to Orhdruf straight away. If we can plug the leak…’

Ernst will go free.

‘A team?’ I ask.

‘Three of us,’ Hecht says, and looks to me meaningfully, as if to ask ‘Do you want to come?’

‘Why, yes…’

‘Then let’s go. Horst… make a copy of that. We’ll need it when we’re there.’

145

We jump back in – Hecht and Diederich and I – directly into the room where the singularity’s kept.

We’re suited up, of course, even though it’s switched off right now.

‘So what are we going to do?’ I ask, staring at that dark absence that’s at the centre of it all.

‘We’re going to flood it with energy, that’s what,’ Diederich says enthusiastically. ‘In fact, we’re going to push so much energy through it that it’s going to overload.’

‘And what good will that do?’

‘No good at all,’ Hecht answers, ‘here.’

‘But if we’re right,’ Diederich adds. ‘That is, if Gehlen’s figures are correct…’

I don’t understand it at all. Least of all why we’re inside here if we’re going to flood the black hole with energy – presumably its own.

‘But how do we…?’

In answer, Diederich takes something from his pocket and holds it up. It looks like a pebble. A tiny, silver pebble. ‘This here. We just toss it in like so…’

And, like a child playing a game, he casually casts the tiny, silver pebble into the heart of the singularity where it vanishes.

I’m about to say something when I hear voices from the room next door. Gehlen’s voice, and then my own.

‘But…’

‘Now out,’ Hecht says, placing his hand to his chest. And like ghosts, he, and then Diederich, and finally I, vanish.

146

‘No wonder,’ I say, back at Four-Oh, as I step out of my suit, thinking of the way the singularity changed colour so spectacularly while Gehlen and I were in the room with it. ‘But what was that?’

‘The gizmo?’ Diederich combs back his thinning hair with his fingers and laughs. ‘That’s something Gehlen came up with. And not before time. He’s been thinking on the problem for the best part of two centuries now.’

‘Ah… But has it worked?’

Hecht shrugs off the suit trousers and nods. ‘If you mean, has it freed Ernst, then yes. Only…’

‘Tell him,’ Diederich says. ‘It won’t harm.’

I frown. ‘Tell me what?’

‘He has his own platform,’ Hecht says.

‘He?’

‘Reichenau. At least, that’s what Gehlen now thinks. It’s the only thing that makes any sense. And we think we know how. The black hole, at Orhdruf. He stole it.’

I laugh. ‘He stole a black hole?’

Diederich nods. ‘So Gehlen reckons.’

‘And we think we know where,’ Hecht says.

‘Well, where?’

‘You remember that huge gap in space and time we ran across, after Seydlitz’s “Barbarossa” project in 1952?’

‘Yes.’

‘When we over-loaded the time-anchor, we made it unstable. In effect, it broke loose.’

‘And?’

Diederich looks away. ‘We didn’t realise…’

‘Realise what?’

Hecht gives a long sigh, then answers me. ‘Imagine you’ve got a really taut steel hawser, keeping a ship tight to the shore, and then you cut it. Imagine it flying back, all of the tension in the cable suddenly released, so that it whips back. Well… it was like that. When we made the time-anchor unstable, it whipped back through time, burning a huge great hole through it.’

‘A hole?’

‘More like a gash,’ Diederich says.

‘It’ll heal,’ Hecht says, ‘given time. Only…’

‘Only that’s why,’ Diederich finishes for him.

‘Why what?’

‘Why we can’t see him. Reichenau… Because that’s where he’s been. Inside that tear in Space-Time. Only now that we know where it is…’

‘Back in 1952?’

Hecht nods.

‘Then why don’t we…?’

‘Not yet,’ Hecht says. ‘Not until we know more. Anyway, there’s something else we have to do first.’

‘Ernst?’

Hecht nods. ‘Come on,’ he says. ‘Let’s go bring him home.’

147

The clearing is different this time. The bivouac-style tents are still there, and the stalls, yet there’s no sign of Ernst. The place is still and dark, no shining presence in the air.

I look to Hecht, alarmed, but he seems unperturbed. He walks on, towards one of the larger bivouacs and, ducking beneath the awning, goes inside.

I follow, and there, on the floor, surrounded by a kneeling host of pilgrims – two or three dozen of the ragged fellows – is Ernst. He looks deathly pale and his breathing is faint. As I step closer, he mumbles something and then groans, such pain in so weak a sound.

Hecht claps his hands. ‘Out!’ he yells. ‘Now!’ And he kicks out at the nearest peasant.

I’m shocked. I have never seen Hecht this angry. He turns and looks at me, raw emotion in his face.

‘If I ever get my hands on him…’

Reichenau…

I nod, then get to work, clearing that dark, malodorous tent, the toe of my boot pushing the last, reluctant pilgrim from the place.

I turn and look. Hecht is kneeling over Ernst now, listening to his chest. He looks up, deeply concerned, then reaches out and, cradling Ernst, lifts him.

‘Burn the place,’ he says. And then he jumps.

I stand there, looking at that awful, disease-ridden pallet on which they’d lain him; then, shuddering with disgust, I draw the laser from my belt and aim.

148

They send him back six months and repair him physically. But mentally?

Mentally, Ernst is in bad shape. Whatever he went through inside the time-trap, we can only ever glimpse the tiniest part of it. Imagine Time standing still. Imagine it freezing about you. Just imagine yourself embedded in ice. Eternally.

Then imagine being conscious all the while it happened.

Ernst smiles up at me from his bed, then lifts his head and shoulders from the nest of cushions in which he lays.

‘Otto…’

He’s clearly pleased to see me, yet his smile is so pale, so wintry, that it chokes me up. This is the first time I’ve seen him since he came back, and I can see the difference.

Ernst will never be the same.

I sit down beside him on the bed, looking at him, studying his face, then reach out to embrace him.

He’s so light; there seems so little of him. Like a cancer patient. Only the problem isn’t physical. Physically there’s nothing wrong with him.

As I move back from him, I notice the cards and flowers on the table on the far side of the bed.

‘From the women,’ he says, seeing where I’m looking. ‘They came and saw me earlier.’

‘They’re glad you’re home,’ I say. ‘And so am I.’ I pause, then. ‘It must have been hard.’

Ernst says nothing. He doesn’t have to; the damage is in his face.

‘Are you okay?’ I ask, after a moment.

‘Yes… yes, fine.’

Both of his hands are in mine. I look down at them, noting the translucency of the flesh, the strange, angular thinness of the fingers. They lay there in mine, impassive, switched off.

I meet his eyes again. ‘What did they say? I mean… about getting you back into the programme?’

Ernst looks down. ‘I’ve not asked him yet. But I guess they’ll need to be careful.’ He’s quiet a moment, then: ‘I understand that. If I were him…’

I wait, then, when he offers nothing more, I say cheerfully, ‘I’ll speak to him, maybe. See if we can’t ease you back into things. Something simple. Familiar.’

He smiles wanly, like there’s only so much energy to generate it. ‘Thanks, Otto. It’s so good to see you…’

‘Time heals…’

Only, coming away from him, I wonder. Maybe there are experiences that leave so deep a scar they never properly heal.

I have to go back. To Orhdruf. To complete the circle. Only first there’s someone else I have to see. Someone else who thinks he’s seen the last of me.

149

Manfred is alone in the War Room. It’s late – after three in the morning – and he has sent the others to their beds. This is the last night. When the sun comes up, it will all blow away in the wind.

I appear in the shadows by the door, stepping silently from the air.

Sensing something, Manfred looks up. He doesn’t see me at first, but then he does.

‘Lucius… or is it Otto now? How did you get in?’

If he fears assassination, he doesn’t show it. But he is tired, I can see. I walk across, then sit, on a bench seat close to him.

‘How goes the war?’

‘It’s…’ He stops, then, remembering what happened last time we met, stares at me directly. ‘You vanished.’

‘I know.’

‘But how do you…?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’

The great map behind me is mainly black now. Manfred’s armies have routed the Russians. But it isn’t over. Far from it. The final phase is about to begin.

‘You know how they’ll respond,’ I say.

‘I know.’

‘Then why? Why destroy it all?’

But he has no answer. Only that he must. He stands up, towering above me, then turns as the great door on the far side of the room hisses open. It’s Tief.

‘Are you all right, My Lord?’

‘Yes, Meister Tief. As you see, Otto has returned. Stepped out of the air.’

Tief nods. ‘I saw, My Lord. One moment there was nothing, the next he was there.’

Manfred turns and looks down at me. ‘I always knew.’

‘Knew?’

‘That there was something strange about you. All that talk of alliances…’ He pauses, then. ‘But not a Russian?’

‘Never a Russian, My Lord.’

Tief clears his throat, and Manfred looks back at him. ‘Yes, Tief?’

‘They have an answer.’

‘They?’

‘The Russians, My Lord. To our ultimatum.’

‘Ah…’

‘And My Lord?’

‘Yes?’

‘The Konigsturm is burning. The Guild…’

‘I know, Tief. I know.’

It is civil war. Guild against King. Army against Undrehungar. As if one enemy wasn’t enough.

I watch Manfred walk across and climb up on to the raised, semi-circular platform. Across from him the great screen changes. The map dissolves and in its place appear seven seated figures, as over-large as they are in life; greybeards in pale grey full-length cloaks. They look curiously ancient – medieval, almost. This is the Russian veche – or seven of the nine, at least – their supreme council of rulers. Like Manfred and his kin, they form a genetic elite among their kind – podytyelt, as they’re known– yet they have nothing of Manfred’s grandeur. They’re poor specimens by comparison, and I find myself thinking that, like the Guildsmen, it needs full seven of them to match a single one of Manfred’s ilk.

The two who are missing are already dead, their leader, Chkalov, one of them, assassinated at the very outset by Manfred’s agents in the Kremlin.

‘Gentlemen,’ Manfred says, giving them a sweeping – ironic? – bow. ‘You wish to surrender?’

The eldest of the Russians – seated at the very centre of the group – leans forward slightly and looks from side to side before he speaks.

‘We have come to a decision.’

‘A decision?’ Manfred gives a short, humourless laugh, then shakes his head. ‘I’ll have no terms. You will surrender unconditionally.’

There’s a moment’s silence, and then the elder speaks again. His face is bitter now, his hatred for Manfred showing clear suddenly. ‘You leave us no choice.’

Manfred lifts his head slightly. ‘You capitulate then?’

The old man seems exhausted. Even so, he is defiant to the last. ‘Never. Not until hell itself freezes over.’

Or the Earth boils…

Surprised, Manfred points towards their spokesman. ‘You will surrender. You have no choice.’

‘We shall destroy you first.’

And all of us, I think. But this is all written. Unchangeable. Manfred has backed the rats – as he’s so often called them – into a corner from which they can’t escape. And now the rats are biting back. If they must die, they will die – as they see it – honourably.

Such pride. Such stupid, self-destructive pride.

‘So be it,’ Manfred says wearily. And he cuts contact. On the screen the figures vanish, the great map reappears.

I stand there, shocked. Knowing about this was one thing, but seeing it…

And I do see it. I see it in Manfred’s eyes, particularly; in the way he bends over the rail, like a runner whose energy is wholly spent. This isn’t war, it’s suicide. Only Manfred didn’t want to go alone. He wanted to take everyone with him. Like that bastard Hitler. That’s why he pushed them to the edge. Not to win. He could never win.

‘You can’t,’ I say quietly, stepping towards him. ‘You can’t!’

He looks up, meeting my eyes, then turns and speaks to the air: ‘Code Black Cloud,’ he says. ‘Target: Moscow…’

My mouth works soundlessly. There have been exchanges of missiles already. Cities have already been destroyed. But thus far it’s been tactical. Brinkmanship. Now the real destruction begins. Hell itself will gape.

Already – even at that moment – the missiles are soaring upwards in great arcs towards their targets. German missiles, and Russian too.

Manfred looks to me again, and to my unspoken question answers: ‘Why not? Rather this than a world run by the Guild. It’s over, Otto. Finished.’

And as he says the word, so there’s a loud commotion outside and a sudden, violent hammering on the door, as if Thor himself is demanding entrance. A moment later it hisses open. Two Guildsmen step through and take up position, their weapons raised.

Adelbert enters a moment later, slowly, cautiously, his head swivelling from side to side. If he’s smiling, then he’s smiling deep within that nest of wires and plastic and metal that’s his head.

‘My Lord,’ he says, and bows, as if the title means anything any longer. For Adelbert has won. Germany is his now.

‘Guild Master,’ Manfred answers, and again he gives that low, ironic bow. ‘Or should I just call you… Master?’

Step by mechanical step he comes, until he’s just below Manfred, at the foot of the metal steps that lead up to the platform. He looks up, his turret of a head tilting slowly back.

‘You will be treated well…’

Manfred laughs tonelessly. ‘I will be dead. And so will you. Unless, of course…’

Adelbert seems puzzled. ‘Unless, My Lord?’

‘Unless you can stop the missiles in mid air.’

‘My Lord…?’

Manfred moves back a little, allowing Adelbert to see the map. On it now are a series of tiny, colourful streaks, to the right and left of the central mass, like tears – or claw marks – in the surface of the screen.

‘It’s the final phase,’ Manfred says, coming slowly down the steps until he’s on a level with Adelbert, facing him, towering over him.

‘But they…’

‘Told me to go to hell.’ Manfred laughs once more, then walks past Adelbert, towards where I’m seated.

‘Otto. You know what happens. Tell him.’

‘It’s over,’ I say, feeling sick to the stomach now that I’ve seen what really happened. ‘Nothing will survive.’

It’s not strictly true. Something will survive. The two deep bunkers for a start. And Reichenau, perhaps, if we’re right about him. But it’s as close to the truth as I can say.

‘But why?’ Adelbert says. And, strangely, there’s real emotion in his voice.

‘Because you bastards would fuck it all up. Make it a living hell.’

Adelbert doesn’t answer. He stands there, still and silent, like he’s been turned into a pillar of salt.

Manfred sits alongside me, his long legs sprawled out before him.

‘How long before the first one falls?’ he asks, his overlarge head turned towards me, his eyes – which I once thought wise – defying me to challenge what he’s done.

‘Eighteen minutes,’ I say.

‘And the last?’

‘Approximately four and a half hours.’

‘That long?’ Manfred gives a long sigh. ‘And you’ll be gone, I take it?’

‘Yes, My Lord.’

He nods, then turns away and, closing his eyes, yawns deeply. Getting to his feet, he walks back to where Adelbert still stands, silent and motionless.

‘What is it, Grand Master? Seized up? Rain got to you?’

Adelbert’s head swivels round. His voice is angry now. ‘You’re a fool, Manfred. A wicked fool.’

‘As if you care for a single one of them!’ Manfred huffs contemptuously. ‘No! Let the bombs fall! Let the earth be wiped clean of our kind! Let there be no more wars, no more Rassenkampf! Thirty centuries is quite enough!’

He falls silent. The colored streaks on the map have lengthened, reaching out from west and east, the foremost missiles crossing trajectories. In a while they will all cross over. More are joining them by the moment, as matters escalate. Soon the whole map will be cross-hatched with the trails of missiles.

For me, it’s time to depart. I have borne witness to the final act of this tragedy – this dark comedy of two nations, hell-bent on each other’s extinction. There is no more.

Or rather, there’s one last thing. One last person I must see.

I stand and bow, first to Adelbert, and then, finally, to Manfred.

‘My Lord…’

But as he shapes his mouth to answer I am gone. As he too will be gone before the dawn. Into the air. Ashes to ashes…

150

She is not in the sun room. The great lounge is empty and burned out, the great glass window cracked and darkened by smoke. I go up and find her on the battlements, staring out towards the east, her long, golden hair falling to her waist. Beyond her the sun is rising for the last time on a living world.

‘Gudrun?’

She turns to face me, her face in shadow. ‘Otto? Is that you? Have you come?’

‘I said I would.’

‘Yes, but…’

I go across to her and see, as I come closer, that her eyes are gone. Burned from her face. She is blind now. She will never see the dawn. Even so, she seems to stare down at me.

‘What is it?’

I am wearing protective lenses. Fast-reactors, that form a thick film immediately there’s a change in the light. And fortunately so… for as she speaks, there’s a blinding flash, like the whole world has been turned into a negative of itself. Gudrun’s dark shape is outlined in liquid silver.

As it fades – the light bleeding back into the dark – I feel a tingling on my face. My eyes hurt, but at least they’re not damaged.

‘Leipzig,’ I say.

‘Leipzig?’ And then she realises. ‘Oh, sweet mother…’

I step closer, reaching out to take her hands. ‘Your eyes…’

‘It surprised me,’ she says. ‘No one told me…’

Looking up into her ruined face, I could cry for all that spoiled beauty. Even so, she smiles, and as she does, I remember how she looked.

‘There can’t be many left,’ she says. ‘I’ve heard them. Felt the heat from them on my cheeks and on my arms.’

Her arms are burned, I realise. The flesh is peeling from them.

I swallow and make to answer, but at that moment the sound hits us in a wave, the air throbbing and growling, making us both clamp our hands over our ears, for it’s like the sound of a million souls howling forlornly on the wind.

Such an awful, bestial sound.

And then that too fades, and the stillness that follows is strange, for the silence is perfect. It is dawn, but not a single bird is singing. Not a single cock crows. There’s no sound of trains, or planes or—

Gudrun kneels, facing me, her hands reaching blindly for my face until she finds it. Her fingers cup my cheeks.

‘Otto?’

‘Yes, sweet lady?’

‘Do you have someone you love? Back where you come from?’

I am about to say no – not where I come from – but this is no time to be pedantic.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Her name is Katerina. And she is as beautiful as you, my lady.’

‘As I am now?’

‘Oh, you are still beautiful.’

‘But my eyes.’

‘I remember your eyes. If I close mine, I can see them perfectly.’ Her fingers make a small movement on my face, then move back. She stands and looks about her, as if she’s sensing the air, her head turning slowly this way and then that.

‘When…’ Her voice breaks. She takes a moment, then begins again. ‘When do they bomb Erfurt?’

‘Soon, my lady.’

‘And you… you will be gone?’

‘Yes…’

And it feels like a betrayal. Like I could do something. Only I can’t.

‘Will you… will you come back and see me?’

‘See you?’

‘In the Past. You could remind me. Show me the cup. Maybe…’

She falls silent.

‘Maybe?’

She turns, smiling again, looking down at me, almost as if she can still see me. ‘Oh, it would never have worked… the size of me and the size of you…’

I shiver. ‘I—’

‘Oh, I know, Otto. You love Katerina. And you’re an honest man, not a rogue. But it would have been so sweet, to have had you, somewhere, somewhen. In some loose strand of time, maybe. You and I…’

I close my eyes, tormented, for there is nothing I can do. I cannot return. I cannot grant her wish. And even if I could…

‘I must go,’ I say, and find that I hate myself for uttering the words. ‘I…’

‘I love you, Otto. Did you know that?’

I give a tiny, surprised laugh, then look to her. But why is it absurd? Why could I not be loved by such a one as her?

Because she is a goddess, Otto. Because such unions are not meant. And besides, there’s Katerina.

There is. Only this once, I feel, perhaps, she’d understand. For Gudrun, at that moment, burned as she is, still has an unearthly beauty. And maybe that’s why. Maybe such beauty had to perish, because…

But there is no ‘because’. Here at the end, all I can register is the pointlessness of it all. As the last bombs fall, what can I say but that this never should have happened.

Rassenkampf. What madman conjured up the notion?

‘My lady…’

And I jump, because if I stay a moment longer my heart will break.

My lady…

Dead, I think, as the platform shimmers into being all about me. She is dead.

And my heart feels heavy like a stone, and when Hecht asks me what it is, I turn from him and walk away, unable, for once, to trust myself to speak. Wanting only to find some dark and lonely spot and grieve. For that’s what’s needed now.

151

‘Otto?’

I roll over on to my back and look up. Ernst is sitting there, in my chair, across the room from where I lie. ‘What time is it?’

‘It’s now.’ And he laughs at the old joke. For it’s always ‘now’ in Four-Oh.

He hesitates, then asks. ‘Are you all right?’

‘Me? Yes, I’m fine. You?’

‘It’s just that…’

‘Go on.’

‘Just that you seemed hurt.’

I give the faintest nod, then sit up, knuckling my eyes and yawning. ‘How long did I sleep?’

‘Two days.’

‘Two…?’ I laugh. ‘Urd help us, was I that tired?’

‘It would seem so.’

Ernst stands. ‘Hecht wants to see us.’

‘Us?’

‘Yes, us. And he wants to see us now.’

152

For once, Hecht comes to the point slowly. ‘It was Ernst’s idea… a good one as it happens.’

I glance at Ernst, who’s sitting cross-legged beside me, then look back at Hecht.

‘Go on…’

‘It’s a sector you both know. Somewhere familiar…’

‘1239,’ Ernst says.

I try not to look surprised. ‘1239?’

Hecht nods. ‘Novgorod. You both know it well, so there shouldn’t be any problems. The idea is to ease Ernst back into things.’

‘Right. And the pretext?’

‘To meet Nevsky,’ Ernst answers. ‘And to get in tight with him.’

‘But Nevsky is in Moscow all that winter.’

‘That’s right,’ Hecht says. ‘So you go to him. You and Ernst. It’ll allow you to acclimatise. To get to learn a bit more about conditions there.’

‘But…’

I stop. I don’t know why I’m objecting. It’s what I want, after all. To go back there and see her. But I’m concerned for Ernst. Worried that this might be too soon, that such a trip might prove too demanding for him.

‘When would we go?’

Hecht shrugs. ‘When everything’s prepared. Ernst will brief you. He’s come up with a neat little scheme. And besides…’ He meets my eyes. ‘… it’ll be good for you both to take things easy. These have been difficult times.’

That’s true, but when I get Ernst alone again, I ask him exactly what he’s got planned.

‘It’s a thank you,’ he says.

‘A what?’

‘For doing what you did. For freeing me. You put yourself in grave danger…’

‘Of course I did. You’d have done the same.’

‘I know, but—’

And he begins to spell it out, until finally I stare at him and laugh, surprised by just how devious he can be. Devious… and yet as honest as they come. I reach and embrace him, holding him to me tightly.

‘You’re a good friend, Ernst. The very best of friends.’

‘And you, Otto, are quite mad.’

I move a little away from him. ‘Mad?’

‘Yes, and me too… for pandering to you.’

I grin. ‘So just when did you come up with this little scheme?’

‘Oh, I had time,’ he says, and his eyes take on the slightest sadness as he says it. ‘Or do you forget? Six months lying on my back. That’s a long time. Time enough to come up with a dozen such schemes.’

I look at him thoughtfully. In the last few days he seems to have changed a lot. And all for the better. So just maybe…

‘Ernst?’

‘Yes, Otto?’

‘You mustn’t hide anything from me, understand? You must tell me if it ever gets too much.’

‘Of course,’ he says, and reaches out to clasp my hand again. ‘Of course.’

153

One dream, one final dream, before I let them ‘purge’ me of the memory.

It is of her, of course. Not Katerina, but Gudrun.

In the dream we are on the battlements again, at Orhdruf, standing side by side as the dawn breaks. Turning to me, she lifts me up on to her massive shoulders, my legs wrapped tight about her thick, exquisitely pale neck. And there I nestle, her long golden tresses like a blanket beneath me, the perfumed scent of her in my nostrils, as I look past her at the beauty of the surrounding countryside.

Slowly she turns, and as she turns, so she lifts, light as a feather, from the flagstones, and drifts out, as the birds freeze in the air and Time stands still.

Her head turns, until she’s looking up at me, her beautiful blue eyes smiling back; and then she speaks, her voice slow and deep, like the tape’s been slowed.

‘You see, Otto? You see?’

And I wake, cold and shivering and alone, and call out. And Urte comes and lies with me, holding me until the morning, until they can locate the memory and remove it.

Because sometimes it hurts to dream. Sometimes you can see too much.