Time and Time Again

30

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

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

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

He put the Glock pistol in his pocket.

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

He was ready.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In Berlin even the department stores looked like soldiers.

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

Because of what he must do that day.

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

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

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

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

Well, not this time around.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He really loved her voice.

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

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

Fortunately they were more surprised to see somebody besides themselves on the roof than Stanton was, and he recovered first.

‘Good morning,’ he said loudly in German, moving to place the sun behind him. ‘The staff in the coffee garden informed me that there were men on the roof. Kindly explain your purpose for being here.’

Again the natural presumption of authority was the key. Had he hesitated it was possible that the men might have challenged him, but he gave them no chance.

‘We’re works and maintenance,’ one of the men replied.

‘Please may I see your authorization,’ Stanton went on.

Stanton could see that they were hesitating. No doubt they had performed maintenance work on the roof many times and never been challenged before. If he gave them time to think they might just decide it was them who should be asking the questions.

‘His Imperial Highness is making an appearance in Potsdamer Platz this lunchtime. I’m sure you are aware of this. The surrounding area is therefore subject to inspection. Kindly show me your authorization at once.’

That did it. The men produced their time cards.

‘Thank you,’ Stanton said after a cursory glance, ‘this is in order. Please inform me what the purpose of your work is here today.’

‘A couple of the girls in cushions and soft furnishings were complaining about a fluttering and banging. They thought it was a bird, which sometimes do get caught in the air vents, but we can’t find anything so either they imagined it or else it’s got away.’

‘Or it’s dead,’ his companion volunteered. ‘They sometimes just die of panic. In which case the girls’ll smell it in a day or two and we’ll know to take the grid off and fish it out.’

‘That’s right,’ the first man agreed.

‘Good,’ Stanton said, ‘and your purpose here is finished?’

‘Yes. We’re done now. We was going on our break. We had thought about taking it here, sir. What with the sun and air, sir.’

Stanton noticed that the second man was carrying a vacuum flask and a small cloth-covered bundle, which he took to be their lunch.

‘I’m afraid that will not be possible today. The roof must be cleared.’

The two men shrugged, touched their caps and left, exiting via a service hatch, which Stanton noted as a possible escape route should he need to make a hurried exit.

When the men had gone, Stanton pondered the encounter. He didn’t think it would cause him problems. After all, he intended to be back in his apartment in Mitte before the police had even deduced that the shot might have come from the top of the Wertheim store. There was no doubt that his bullet, if successful, would make a pretty big mess of the Kaiser’s skull and in the process punch the man clean off the podium. Working out an angle of trajectory from the corpse would be impossible so the cops would only ever be able to guess at the location of the gunman. He was a very long way away and the shot would be difficult using a gun made in 1914. It would therefore take them some time to include the Wertheim roof in their list of possibilities. If they ever did get around to interviewing the two workmen about the ‘official’ who had ordered them from the roof, the trail would be long cold.

It had been an unsettling moment, though, and he slipped off the safety catch of the Glock in his pocket just in case. If necessary he would kill anyone who attempted to confront him.

He was horribly aware that he only had one shot at saving the world.

Alone once more, Stanton made his way to the edge of the roof. There was a small ledge from which the slate-tiled ‘helmet’ of the building sloped steeply away for three metres or so, ending in a fringe of iron guttering that prevented him from seeing the colonnaded edifice beneath.

Stanton sat down, opened the bag he was carrying and took out the pieces of his rifle and sight. Having assembled the gun, he took off his jacket and bunched it up on the ledge as a cushion for a steady aim. Then he took stock of the scene that was now gathering in the Potsdamer Platz three hundred metres to the west.

Lines of troops had now assembled and the viewing stand was filling up. By looking through his telescopic sight Stanton could see the faces of the dignitaries and their wives quite clearly beneath their polished top hats and fancy confections of lace and flowers. The centre of the presentation podium was still empty but there were a number of people assembled at either end. Glancing further afield Stanton saw that a military band was playing, the sound of which was reaching him borne on the breeze. Between the band and the podium there was a space lined on either side with soldiers where it was clear the Emperor’s car would cross the Platz.

He settled down to wait, hoping that the celebrated German efficiency would deliver the Emperor on time. In fact, he arrived a few minutes early, perhaps anxious to get such a boringly non-military function over with as soon as possible so that he could get back to his beloved parade grounds. There was a stirring in the crowd, and the rhythm of the distant music changed to what Stanton thought he recognized as ‘God Save The King’. He was momentarily taken aback before recalling having read that the German Imperial anthem Heil Dir Im Siegerkranz used the same tune. The anthem signalled the arrival of the royal motorcade.

There was much cheering and waving of hats as the middle car drew up in front of the red carpet. The small crowd, which had been swollen by the host of golden daffodils on their lunch break from the department store, were clearly enjoying the occasion. A gaggle of dignitaries scurried forward to greet the monarch. Stanton couldn’t see this part of the proceedings because the royal car was in the way. He could only imagine the great man trying to look interested while the details of the new tram-line pattern were explained to him.

A few moments passed and the party emerged from under the cover of the roof of the car and the Kaiser strode up the red carpet towards the podium. Stanton viewed the scene through his gun sight but there was no chance to get a clean shot. The monarch was leading the group and all Stanton could see through the crowd of top hats that followed him were the ostrich plumes of his ridiculous helmet. Wilhelm was, of course, in uniform. Only he would have felt it appropriate to dress up as an admiral of the fleet or a commander of the heavy cavalry in order to open a new tram junction.

The Kaiser mounted the platform. Stanton, who was already stretched out on his stomach behind the telescopic lens of his rifle, placed his finger against the trigger and took a view through the cross hairs. It was a fairly long range so the target bobbed about considerably in the circle of his lens but hopefully when it arrived at centre stage it would be still. But Stanton doubted that the Kaiser would remain still for long. The whole event was scheduled for only fifteen minutes and the Kaiser appeared to have brought no notes with him. Perhaps he would not speak at all and simply deliver the snip.

Stanton settled deeper into his firing position, the barrel of the gun resting on his folded jacket on the ledge.

The Kaiser took his position in front of the ribbon and nodded. It seemed he definitely did not intend to say anything as an officer approached him at once carrying a cushion on which was a pair of scissors. The Kaiser took up the scissors and reached forward to cut the ribbon.

Bang!

A shot was fired.

But it wasn’t Stanton who fired it. Stanton felt a massive pain in his back, as if somebody had taken a clump hammer and brought it down with all their might on a space just to the right of his spine, just behind his heart.

He’d been shot at and but for the polyethylene ballistic plates in his Gore-tex vest he would have been dead already.

Stanton let go of his rifle and rolled over. Already the Glock semi-automatic was in his hand. All in an instant he saw a grey-clad figure with a shaven head standing ten metres or so away with a rifle at his shoulder. The figure must have managed to cock the bolt with inordinate speed because there was another crack and Stanton felt another horrendous blow to his chest, a ferocious steel punch from a tiny ballistic fist which left him gasping for breath. However, the body armour saved his life a second time and despite the twin blows he’d taken on the back and front of his body, Stanton was able to bring his handgun up into the firing position and return fire. He loosed off three rounds in scarcely more than a second. The first missed, but the second two hit the man in the arm and upper chest, knocking him backwards against the chimney in front of which he was standing.

Stanton didn’t even watch his assailant fall fully to the ground. Even as the man slid down the chimney into a heap, Stanton had rolled back over on to his front. Gasping at the pain in his bruised chest, he took up his telescopic rifle once more. It had been incredible misfortune that some sort of guard had happened upon him at that time. The Kaiser’s people were clearly a massive step up from the Austrians, as indeed Stanton had feared they would be. They must have decided to sweep the roofs after all. Nonetheless as long as there weren’t any more of them he might still have time to get his man.

Glancing down into the Potsdamer Platz he realized that the whole incident with the guard had only taken a matter of seconds. The Kaiser was still cutting the ribbon. It seemed to be proving troublesome and two officials had stepped forward to pull the thing tight to make it easier to cut.

Stanton thanked the heavens for the German public’s appetite for military bands. Gun fights make a noise and while his own Glock was a relatively quiet piece the two rifle shots might easily have carried as far as the podium had a brass band not been playing. They had no doubt been heard in the roof garden but Stanton could only hope they had been ignored. There were plenty of motor cars in Berlin and cars from that time backfired a lot.

Putting all other thoughts from his mind, Stanton settled once more and, after a moment’s searching through the magnified lens, picked up his target in the cross hairs. The Emperor was standing quite alone, behind the little ribbon at the front of the stage. The dignitaries had all gathered at the edges of the podium, apart from the two holding the ribbon. Stanton was glad to see that the Kaiserin was not present. He had no wish to shoot a man in front of his wife.

Now, with the Kaiser in his sights, he could see the man’s face close up for the first time. It was shocking how familiar it was, even to a man born towards the end of the twentieth century. That moustache, so fierce and uncompromising, the waxed and carefully arranged glory of what had at that time been the most famous whiskers on the planet. The eyes, not unkind at all, but made deliberately fierce from years of assuming a look as stern as he could make it. Stanton knew that the Kaiser had been quite friendly and considerate as a schoolboy, but later as a guards officer and young ruler he had deliberately cultivated an abrupt and imperious manner. He’d thought it was expected of him.

Looking at the man, Stanton was also struck by his resemblance to the British royals, even the ones who had been born a hundred years after him. That was one strong gene pool. And powerful. Incredibly powerful. The British King, the German Kaiser, the Russian Tsar. All first cousins. How strange the world had once been.

Stanton raised the angle of his sighting by an infinitesimally small margin, bringing his cross hairs up to a point an inch above the space between the Emperor’s eyes. The man was speaking now, perhaps complaining about the bluntness of the scissors, but keeping himself stiff and rigid as he did so.

Formal, proper.

Dead.

Stanton watched his target’s head explode through the magnified lens. He had known he’d only get one shot and so had used ammunition that was designed to do the maximum damage.

And it had. As the man’s body seemed to half float, half stagger backwards there was almost nothing left above its shoulders at all.

Stanton had completed his mission.

Archduke Franz Ferdinand was alive and the Kaiser was dead.

The Great War had been averted.

The world had been saved.